The Writings of Annie Besant
Avataras
by
Annie Besant
Four Lectures Delivered at the
Twenty-fourth Anniversary Meeting
of the Theosophical Society at Adyar Madras, December 1899.
Lectures
What is an Avatara
The Source of and Need for Avataras
Some Special Avataras
Shri
FIRST
LECTURE
What is an Avatara
Brothers:
Every time that we come here together to study the fundamental truths of all
religions, I cannot but feel how vast is the subject, how small the expounder,
how mighty the horizon that opens before our thoughts, how narrow the words
which strive to sketch it for your eyes. Year after year we meet,
time after time we strive to fathom some of those great mysteries of life, of
the Self, which form the only subject really worthy of the profoundest thought
of man. All else is passing; all else is transient; all else is but the toy of
a moment Fame and power, wealth and science all that is in this world below
is as nothing beside the grandeur of the Eternal Self in the universe and in
man, one in all His manifold manifestations, marvellous and beautiful in every
form that He puts forth. And this year, of all the manifestations of the
Supreme, we are going to dare to study the holiest of the holiest, those
manifestations of God in the world in which He shows Himself as divine, coming
to help the world that He has made, shining forth in His essential nature, the
form but a thin film which scarce veils the Divinity from our eyes. How then
shall we venture to approach it, how shall we dare to study it, save with
deepest reverence, with profoundest humility; for if there needs for the study
of His works patience, reverence and humbleness of heart, what when we study
Him whose works but partially reveal Him, when we try to understand what is
meant by an Avatara, what is the meaning, what the purpose of such a
revelation?
Our
President has truly said that in all the faiths of the world there is belief in
such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as to truth that which is as the
hall mark on the silver showing that the metal is pure that ancient maxim is
here valid, that whatever has been believed everywhere, whatever has been
believed at every time, and by every one, that is true, that is reality.
Religions quarrel over many details; men dispute over many propositions; but
where human heart and human voice speak a single word, there you have the mark
of truth, there you have the sign of spiritual reality. But in dealing with the
subject one difficulty faces us, faces you as hearers, faces
myself as speaker. In every religion in modern times truth is shorn of her full
proportions; the intellect alone cannot grasp the many aspects of the one
truth. So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy, each one
showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the other aspects
which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in which we are passes on
from century to century, from millennium to millennium, knowledge becomes
dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those
who know; and those who speak with clear vision of the spiritual verity are
lost amidst the crowds, who only hold traditions whose origin they fail to
understand. The priest and the prophet, to use two well-known words, have ever
in later times come into conflict one with the other. The priest carries on the
traditions of antiquity; too often he has lost the knowledge that made them
real. The prophet coming forth from time to time with the divine word hot as
fire on his lips speaks out the ancient truth and illuminates tradition. But
they who cling to the words of tradition are apt to be blinded by the light of
the fire and to call out "heretic" against the one who speaks the
truth that they have lost Therefore, in religion after religion, when some
great teacher has arisen, there have been opposition, clamour, rejection,
because the truth he spoke was too mighty to be narrowed within the limits of
half-blinded men. And in such a subject as we are to study to-day, certain
grooves have been made, certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is
running, and I know that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs,
at some points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather
repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it grasped.
Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topic I should
sometimes come athwart some of the dividing lines of different schools of Hindu
thought; I may not, I dare not, narrow the truth I have learnt, to suit the
limitations that have grown up by the ignorance of ages, nor make that which is
the spiritual verity conform to the empty traditions that are left in the faiths
of the world. By the duty laid upon me by the Master that I serve, by the truth
that He has bidden me speak in the ears of men of all the faiths that are in
this modern world; by these I must tell you what is true, no matter whether or
not you agree with it for the moment; for the truth that is spoken wins
submission afterwards, if not at the moment; and any one who speaks of the
Rishis of antiquity must speak the truths that they taught in their days, and
not repeat the mere commonplaces of commentators of modern times and the petty
orthodoxies that ring us in on every side and divide man from man.
I
propose in order to simplify this great subject to divide it under certain
heads. I propose first to remind you of the two great divisions recognised by
all who have thought on the subject; then to take up especially, for this
morning, the question "What is an Avatara?" To-morrow we shall put
and strive to answer, partly at least, the question, "Who is the source of
Avataras?" Then later we shall take up special Avataras both of the kosmos
and of human races. Thus I hope to place before you a clear, definite
succession of ideas on this great subject, not asking you to believe them
because I speak them, not asking you to accept them because I utter them. Your
reason is the bar to which every truth must come which is true for you; and you
err deeply, almost fatally, if you let the voice of authority impose itself
where you do not answer to the speaking. Every truth is only true to you as you
see it. and as it illuminates the mind; and truth however true is not yet truth
for you, unless your heart opens out to receive it, as the flower opens out its
heart to receive the rays of the morning sun.
First,
then, let us take a statement that men of every religion will accept Divine
manifestations of a special kind take place from time to time as the need
arises for their appearance; and these special manifestations are marked out
from the universal manifestation of God in His kosmos; for never forget that in
the lowest creature that crawls the earth Ishvara is present as in the highest
Deva. But there are certain special manifestations marked out from this general
self-revelation in the kosmos, and it is these special manifestations which are
called forth by special needs. Two words especially have been used in Hinduism,
marking a certain distinction in the nature of the manifestation one the word
"Avatara", the other the word "A'vesha." Only for a moment
need we stop on the meaning of the words, important to us because the literal
meaning of the words points to the fundamental difference between the two. The
word "Avatara", as you know, has as its root "tri", passing
over, and with the prefix which is added, the "ava", you get the idea
of descent, one who descends. That is the literal meaning of the word. The
other word has as its root "vish", permeating, penetrating,
pervading, and you have there the thought of something which is permeated or
penetrated. So that while in the one case, Avatara, there is the thought of a
descent from above, from Ishvara to man or animal; in the other, there is
rather the idea of an entity already existing who is influenced, permeated,
pervaded by the divine power, specially illuminated as it were. And thus we
have a kind of intermediate step, if one may say so, between the divine
manifestation in the Avatara and in the kosmos the partial divine
manifestation in one who is permeated by the influence of the Supreme, or of
some other being who practically dominates the individual, the Ego who is thus
permeated.
Now
what are the occasions which lead to these great manifestations? None can speak
with mightier authority on this point than He who came Himself as an Avatara
just before the beginning of our own age, the Divine Lord Shri Krishna Himself.
Turn to that marvellous poem, the Bhagavad-Gita, to the fourth Adhyaya, Shlokas
7 and 8; there He tells us what draws Him forth to birth into His world in the
manifested form of the Supreme :
"When
Dharma, righteousness, law decays, when Adharma unrighteousness,
lawlessness is exalted, then I Myself come forth: for the protection of the
good, for the destruction of the evil, for the establishing firmly of Dharma, I
am born from age to age". That is what He tells us of the coming forth of
the Avatara. That is, the needs of His world call upon Him to manifest Himself
in His divine power; and we know from other of His sayings that in addition to
those which deal with the human needs, there are certain kosmic necessities
which in the earlier ages of the world's story called forth special
manifestations. When in the great wheel of evolution another turn round has to
be given, when some new form, new type of life is coming forth, then also the
Supreme reveals Himself, embodying the type which thus He initiates in His
kosmos, and in this way turning that everlasting wheel which He comes forth as
Ishvara to turn. Such then, speaking quite generally, the
meaning of the word, and the object of the coming.
From
that we may fitly turn to the more special question, "What is an
Avatara?" And it is here that I must ask your close attention, nay, your
patient consideration, where points that to some extent may be unfamiliar are
laid before you; for as I said, it is the occult view of the truth which I am
going to partially unveil, and those who have not thus studied truth need to
think carefully ere they reject, need to consider long ere they refuse. We
shall see as we try to answer the question bow far the great authorities help
us to understand, and how far the lack of knowledge in reading those
authorities has led to misconception. You may remember that the late learned T.
Subba Row in the lectures that he gave on the Bhagavad-Gita put to you a
certain view of the Avatara, that it was a descent of Ishvara or, as he said,
using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for
Ishvara a descent of Ishvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With all
respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot but think
that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at that time
desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case after case, having so
wide a field to cover in the small number of lectures that he gave, and he
therefore chose out one form, as we may say, of self-revelation, leaving
untouched the others, which now in dealing with the subject by itself we have
full time to study. Let me then begin as it were at the beginning, and then
give you certain authorities which may make the view easier to accept; let me
state without any kind of attempt to veil or evade, what is really an Avatara.
Fundamentally He is the result of evolution. In far past Kalpas, in worlds
other than this, nay, in universes earlier than our own, those who were to be
Avataras climbed slowly, step by step, the vast ladder of evolution, climbing
from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to man, from man to
Jivanmukta, from Jivanmukta higher and higher yet, up the mighty hierarchy that
stretches beyond Those who have liberated Themselves from the bonds of
humanity; until at last, thus climbing, They cast off not only all the limits
of the separated Ego, not only burst asunder the limitations of the separated
Self, but entered Ishvara Himself and expanded into the all-consciousness of
the Lord, becoming one in knowledge as they had ever been one in essence with
that eternal Life from which originally they came forth, living in that life,
centres without circumferences, living centres, one with the Supreme. There
stretches behind such a One the endless chain of birth after birth, of
manifestation after manifestation. During the stage in which He was human,
during the long climbing up of the ladder of humanity, there were two special
characteristics that marked out the future Avatara from the ranks of men. One
his absolute bhakti, his devotion to the Supreme; for only those who are
bhaktas and who to their bhakti have wed gnyana, or knowledge, can reach this
goal; for by devotion, says Shri Krishna, can a man "enter into My being."
And the need of the devotion for the future Avatara is this: he must keep the
centre that he has built even in the life of Ishvara, so that he may be able to
draw the circumference once again round that centre, in order that he may come
forth as a manifestation of Ishvara, one with Him in knowledge, one with Him in
power, the very Supreme Himself in earthly life; he must hence have the power
of limiting himself to form, for no form can exist in the universe save as
there is a centre within it round which that form is drawn. He must be so
devoted as to be willing to remain for the service of the universe while
Ishvara Himself abides in it, to share the continual sacrifice made by Him, the
sacrifice whereby the universe lives. But not devotion alone marks this great
One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as Ishvara is, a lover of
humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love for men nay, men,
do I say? it is too narrow unless within him burns the flame of love for
everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in this universe of God, he will
not be able to come forth as the Supreme whose life and love are in everything
that He has brought forth out of His eternal and inexhaustible life.
"There is nothing", says the Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that
may exist bereft of me;" [Bhagavad-Gita, x. 39 ]
and unless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can love everything
that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only the good but the evil,
not only the attractive but the repellent, unless in every form he sees the
Self, he cannot climb the steep path the Avatara must tread.
These,
then, are the two great characteristics of the man who is to become the special
manifestation of God bhakti, love to the One in whom he is to merge, and love
to those whose very life is the life of God. Only as these come forth in the
man is he on the path that leads him to be in future universes, in far, far
future kalpas an Avatara coming as God to man.
Now
on this view of the nature of an Avatara difficulties, I know, arise; but they
are difficulties that arise from a partial view, and then from that view having
been merely accepted, as a rule, on the authority of some great name, instead
of on the thinking out and thorough understanding of it by the man who repeats
the shibboleth of his own sect or school. The view once taken, every text in
Shruti or Smriti that goes against that view is twisted out of its natural
meaning, in order to be made to agree with the idea which already dominates the
mind. That is the difficulty with every religion; a man acquires his view by
tradition, by habit, by birth, by public opinion, by the surroundings of his
own time and of his own day. He finds in the scriptures which belong to no
time, to no day, to no one age, and to no one people, but are expressions of
the eternal Veda he finds in them many texts that do not fit into the narrow
framework that he has made; and because he too often cares for the framework
more than for the truth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in,
in some dislocated fashion; and the ingenuity of the commentator too often
appears in the skill with which he can make words appear to mean what they do
not mean in their grammatical and obvious sense. Thus, men of every school,
under the mighty names of men who knew the truth but who could only give such
portion of truth as they deemed man at the time was able to receive use their
names to buttress up mistaken interpretations, and thus walls are continually
built up to block the advancing life of man.
Now
let me take one example from one of the greatest names, one who knew the truth
he spoke, but also, like every teacher, had to remember that while he was man,
those to whom he spoke were children that could not grasp truth with virile
understanding. That great teacher, founder of one of the three schools of the
Vedanta, Shri Ramanujacharya, in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita a
priceless work which men of every school might read and profit by dealing
with the phrase in which Shri Krishna declares that He has had "bahuni
janmani" "many births", points out how vast the variety of those
births had been. Then, confining himself to His manifestations as Ishvara
that is after He had attained to the Supreme he says quite truly that He was
born by His own will; not by karma that compelled Him, not by any force outside
Him that coerced Him, but by His own will He came forth as Ishvara and
incarnated in one form or another. But there is nothing said there of the
innumerable steps traversed by the mighty One ere yet He merged Himself in the
Supreme. Those are left on one side, unmentioned, unnoticed, because what the
writer had in his view was to present to the hearts of men a great Object for
adoration, who might gradually lift them upwards and upwards until the Self
should blossom in them in turn. No word is said of the previous kalpas, of the
universes stretching backward into the illimitable past He speaks of His birth
as Deva, as Naga, as Gandharva, as those many shapes that He has taken by His
own will. As you know, or as you may learn if you turn to Shrimad-Bhagavata,
there is a much longer list of manifestations than the ten usually called
Avataras. There are given one after another the forms which seem strange to the
superficial reader when connected in modern thought with the Supreme. But we
find light thrown on the question by some other words of the great Lord; and we
also find in one famous book, full of occult hints though not with much
explanation of the hints given the Yoga Vasishtha, a clear definite statement
that the deities, as Mahadeva, Vishnu and Brahma, have all climbed upward to
the mighty posts They hold. [Part II., Chapter ii.,
Shlokas 14, 15, 16 ] And that may well be so, if you think of it; there is
nothing derogatory to Them in the thought; for there is but one Existence, the
eternal fount of all that comes forth as separated, whether separated in the
universe as Ishvara, or separated in the copy of the universe in man; there is
but One without a second; there is no life but His, no independence but His, no
self-existence but His, and from Him Gods and men and all take their root and
exist for ever in and by His one eternal life. Different stages of
manifestation, but the One Self in all the different stages, the One living in
all; and if it be true, as true it is, that the Self in man is "unborn,
constant, eternal, ancient", it is because the Self in man is one with the
One Self-existent, and Ishvara Himself is only the mightiest manifestation of
that One who knows no second near Himself. Says an English poet:
Closer
is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.
The
Self is in you and in me, as much as the Self is in Ishvara, that One, eternal,
unchanging, un-decaying, whereof every manifested existence is but one ray of
glory. Thus it is true, that which is taught in the Yoga Vasishtha; true it is
that even the greatest, before whom we bow in worship, has climbed in ages past
all human reckoning to be one with the Supreme, and, ever there, to manifest
Himself as God to the world.
But
now we come to a distinction that we find made, and it is a real one. We read
of a Purnavatara, a full, complete, Avatara. What is the meaning of that word
"full" as applied to the Avatara? The name is given, as we know, to
Shri Krishna. He is marked out specially by that name.
Truly the word "purna" cannot apply to the Illimitable, the Infinite;
He may not be shown forth in any form; the eye may never behold Him; only the
spirit that is Himself can know the One. What is meant
by it is that, so far as is possible within the limits of form, the
manifestation of the formless appears, so far as is possible it came forth in
that great One who came for the helping of the world. This may assist you to
grasp the distinction. Where the manifestation is that of a Purnavatara, then
at any moment of time, at His own will, by Yoga or otherwise, He can transcend
every limit of the form in which He binds Himself by His own will, and shine
forth as the Lord of the Universe, within whom all the Universe is contained.
Think for a moment once more of Shri Krishna, who teaches us so much on this.
Turn to that great storehouse of spiritual wisdom, the Mahabharata, to the
Ashvamedha Parva which contains the Anugita, and you will find that Arjuna
after the great battle, forgetting the teaching that was given him on
Kurukshetra, asked his Teacher to repeat that teaching once again. And Shri
Krishna, rebuking him for the fickleness of his mind and stating that He was
much displeased that such knowledge should by fickleness have been forgotten,
uttered these remarkable words: "It is not possible for me to state it in
full in that way. I discoursed to thee on the Supreme Brahman, having
concentrated myself in Yoga." And then He goes on to give out the essence
of that teaching, but not in the same sublime form as we have it in the
Bhagavad-Gita. That is one thing that shows you what is meant by a Purnavatara;
in a condition of Yoga, into which He throws Himself at will, He knows Himself
as Lord of everything, as the Supreme on whom the Universe is built. Nay more;
thrice at least I am not sure if there may have been more cases, but if so I
cannot at the moment remember them thrice at least during His life as Shri
Krishna He shows himself forth as Ishvara, the Supreme. Once in the court of
Dhritarashtra, when the madly foolish Duryodhana talked about imprisoning
within cell-walls the universal Lord whom the universe cannot confine; and to
show the wild folly of the arrogant prince, out in the court before every eye
He shone forth as Lord of all, filling earth and sky with His glory, and all
forms human and divine, superhuman and subhuman, were seen gathered round Him
in the life from which they spring. Then on Kurukshetra to Arjuna, His beloved
disciple, to whom He gave the divine vision that he might see Him in His
Vaishnava form, the form of Vishnu, the Supreme Upholder of the Universe. And
later, on his way back to Dvaraka, meeting with Utanka, He and the sage came to
a misunderstanding, and the sage was preparing to curse the Lord; to save him
from the folly of uttering a curse against the Supreme, as a child might throw
a tiny pebble against a rock of immemorial age, He shone out before the eyes of
him who was really His bhakta, and showed him the great Vaishnava form, that of
the Supreme. What do those manifestations show? that at will He can show
himself forth as Lord of all, casting aside the limits of human form in which
men live; casting aside the appearance so familiar to those around Him, He
could reveal himself as the mighty One, Ishvara who is the life of all. There
is the mark of a Purnavatara; always within His grasp, at will, is the power to
show Himself forth as Ishvara.
But
why the thought may arise in your minds are not all Avataras of this kind,
since all are verily of the Supreme Lord? The answer is that by His own will,
by his own Maya, He veils Himself within the limits which serve the creatures whom He has come to help. Ah, how different He is, this
Mighty One, from you and me! When we are talking to some one who knows a little
less than ourselves, we talk out all we know to show our knowledge, expanding
ourselves as much as we can so as to astonish and make marvel the one to whom
we speak; that is because we are so small that we fear our greatness will not
be recognised unless we make ourselves as large as we can to astonish, if
possible to terrify; but when He comes who is really great, who is mightier
than anything which He produces, He makes Himself small in order to help those
whom He loves. And do you know, my brothers, that only in proportion as His
spirit enters into us, can we in our little measure be helpers in the universe
of which He is the one life; until we, in all our doings and speakings, place
ourselves within the one we want to help and not outside him, feeling as he
feels, thinking as he thinks, knowing for the time as he knows, with all his
limitations, although there may be further knowledge beyond, we cannot truly
help; that is the condition of all true help given by man to man, as it is the
only condition of the help which is given to man by God Himself.
And
so in other Avataras, He limits Himself for men's sake. Take the great king,
Shri Rama. What did he come to show? The ideal kshattriya, in
every relation of the kshattriya life; as son perfect as son alike to loving
father and to jealous and for the time unkind step-mother. For you may
remember that when the father's wife who was not His own mother bade him go
forth to the forest on the very eve of His coronation as heir, His gentle
answer was: "Mother, I go". Perfect as son.
Perfect as husband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to show out
what husband should be to wife, how could He in the forest, when Sita had been
reft away by Ravana, have shown the grief, have uttered the piteous
lamentations, which have drawn tears from thousands of eyes, as He calls on
plants and on trees, on animals and birds, on Gods and men, to tell Him where
His wife, His other self, the life of His life, had gone? How could he have
taught men what wife should be to husband's heart unless He had limited
Himself? The consciously Omnipresent Deity could not seek and search for His
beloved who had disappeared. And then as king; as perfect king as He was
perfect son and husband. When the welfare of His subjects was concerned, when
the safety of the realm was to be thought of, when He remembered that He as
king stood for God and must be perfect in the eyes of His subjects, so that
they might give the obedience and the loyalty, which men can only give to one
whom they know as greater than themselves, then even His wife was put aside;
then the test of the fire for Sita, the unsullied and the suffering; then She
must pass through it to show that no sin or pollution had come upon Her by the
foul touch of Ravana, the Rakshasa; then the demand that ere husband's heart
that had been riven might again clasp the wife. She must come forth pure as
woman; and all this, because He was king as well as husband, and on the throne
the people honoured as divine there must only be purity, spotless as driven
snow. Those limitations were needed in order that a perfect example might be
given to man, and man might learn to climb by reproducing virtues, made small
in order that his small grasp might hold them.
We
come to the second great class of manifestations, that to which I alluded in
the beginning as covered by the wide term Avesha. In that case it is not that a
man in past universes has climbed upward and has become one with Ishvara; but
it is that a man has climbed so far as to become so great, so perfect in his
manhood, and so full of love and devotion to God and man, that God is able to
permeate him with a portion of His own influence, His own power, His own
knowledge, and send him forth into the world as a superhuman manifestation of
Himself. The individual Ego remains; that is the great distinction. The man is
there, though the power that is acting is the manifested God. Therefore the
manifestation will be coloured by the special characteristics of the one over
whom this overshadowing is made; and you will be able to trace in the thoughts
of this inspired teacher, the characteristics of the race, of the individual,
of the form of knowledge which belongs to that man in the incarnation in which
the great overshadowing takes place. That is the fundamental difference.
But
here we find that we come at once to endless grades, endless varieties, and
down the ladder of lesser and lesser evolution we may tread, step by step,
until we come to the lower grades that we call inspiration. In a case of Avesha
it generally continues through a great portion of the life, the latter portion,
as a rule, and it is comparatively seldom withdrawn. Inspiration, as generally
understood, is a more partial thing, more temporary. Divine power comes down. illuminates and irradiates the man for the moment, and he
speaks for the time with authority, with knowledge, which in his normal state
he will be unable probably to compass. Such are the prophets who have
illuminated the world age after age; such were in ancient days the brahmanas
who were the mouth of God. Then truly the distinction was not that I spoke of
between priest and prophet; both were joined in the one illumination, and the
teaching of the priest and the preaching of the prophet ran on the same lines
and gave forth the same great truths. But in later times the distinction arose
by the failure of the priesthood, when the priest turned aside for money, for
fame, for power, for all the things with which only younger souls ought to
concern themselves human toys with which human babies play, and do wisely in
so playing, for they grow by them. Then the priests became formal, the prophets
became more and more rare, until the great fact of inspiration was thrown back wholly
into the past, as though God or man had altered, man no longer divine in his
nature, God no longer willing to speak words in the ears of men. But
inspiration is a fact in all its stages; and it goes far farther than some of
you may think. The inspiration of the prophets, spiritually mighty and
convincing, is needed, and they come to the world to give a new impulse to
spiritual truth. But there is a general inspiration that any one may share who
strives to show out the divine life from which no son of man is excluded, for
every son of man is sun of God. Have you ever been drawn away for a moment into
higher, more peaceful realms, when you have come across something of beauty, of
art, of the wonders of science, of the grandeur of philosophy? Have you for a
time lost sight of the pettinesses of earth, of trivial troubles, of small
worries and annoyances, and felt yourself lifted into a calmer region, into a
light that is not the light of common earth? Have you ever stood before some
wondrous picture wherein the palette of the painter has been taxed to light the
canvas with all the hues of beauteous colour that art can give to human sight?
Or have you seen in some wondrous sculpture, the gracious living curves that
the chisel has freed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened
while the diviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem to
hear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being played and
echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peak with the
snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving nature that shows out
God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have known any of these peaceful
spots in life's desert, then you know how all-pervading is inspiration; how
wondrous the beauty and the power of God shown forth in man and in the world;
then you know, if you never knew it before, the truth of that great
proclamation of Shri Krishna the Beloved: "Whatever is royal, good,
beautiful, and mighty, understand thou that to go forth from My
Splendour"; [ Bhagavad-Gita, x. 41] all is the reflection of that tejas
[Splendour, radiance ] which is His and His alone. For as there is nought in
the universe without His love and life, so there is no beauty that is not His
beauty, that is not a ray of the illimitable splendour, one little beam from
the unfailing source of life.
SECOND LECTURE
The Source of and Need for Avataras
Brothers:
You will remember that yesterday, in dividing the
subject under different heads, I put down certain questions which we would take
in order. We dealt yesterday with the question: "What is an Avatara?"
The second question that we are to try to answer, "What is the source of
Avataras?" is a question that leads us deep into the mysteries of the
kosmos, and needs at least an outline of kosmic growth and evolution in order
to give an intelligible answer. I hope to-day to be able also to deal with the
succeeding question, "How does the need for Avataras arise?" This
will leave us for to-morrow the subject of the special Avataras, and I shall
endeavour, if possible, during to-morrow's discourse, to touch on nine of the
Avataras out of the ten recognised as standing out from all other
manifestations of the Supreme. Then, if I am able to accomplish that task, we
shall still have one morning left, and that I propose to give entirely to the
study of the greatest of the Avataras, the Lord Shri Krishna Himself,
endeavouring, if possible, to mark out the great characteristics of His life
and His work, and, it may be, to meet and answer some of the objections of the
ignorant which, especially in these later days, have been levelled against Him
by those who understand nothing of His nature, nothing of the mighty work He
came to accomplish in the world.
Now
we are to begin to-day by seeking an answer to the question, "What is the
source of Avataras?" and it is likely that I am going to take a line of
thought somewhat unfamiliar, carrying us, as it does, outside the ordinary
lines of our study which deals more with the evolution of man, of the spiritual
nature within him. It carries us to those far off times, almost
incomprehensible to us, when our universe was coming into manifestation, when
its very foundations, as it were, were being laid. In answering the question,
however, the mere answer is simple. It is recognised in all religions admitting
divine incarnations and they include the great religions of the world it is
admitted that the source of Avataras, the source of the Divine incarnations, is
the second or middle manifestation of the sacred Triad. It matters not whether
with Hindus we speak of the Trimurti, or whether with Christians we speak of
the Trinity, the fundamental idea is one and the same. Taking first for a
moment the Christian symbology, you will find that every Christian tells you
that the one divine incarnation acknowledged in Christianity for in
Christianity they believe in one special incarnation only you will find in
the Christian nomenclature the divine incarnation or Avatara is that of the
second person of the Trinity. No Christian will tell you that there has ever
been an incarnation of God the Father, the primeval Source of life. They will
never tell you that there has been an incarnation of the third Person of the
Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom, of
creative Intelligence, who built up the world-materials. But they will always
say that it was the second Person, the Son, who took human form, who appeared
under the likeness of humanity, who was manifested as man for helping the
salvation of the world. And if you analyse what is meant by that phrase, what,
to the mind of the Christian, is conveyed by the thought of the second Person
of the Trinity for remember in dealing with a religion that is not yours you
should seek for the thought not the form, you should look at the idea not at
the label, for the thoughts are universal while the forms divide, the ideas are
identical while the labels are marks of separation if you seek for the
underlying thought you will find it is this: the sign of the second Person of
the Trinity is duality; also, He is the underlying life of the world; by His
power the worlds were made, and are sustained, supported, and protected. You
will find that while the Spirit of Wisdom is spoken of as bringing order out of
disorder, kosmos out of chaos, that it is by the manifested Word of God, or the
second Person of the Trinity, it is by Him that all forms are builded up in
this world, and it is specially in His image that man is made. So also when we
turn to what will be more familiar to the vast majority of you, the symbology
of Hinduism, you will find that all Avataras have their source in Vishnu, in
Him who pervades the universe, as the very name Vishnu implies, who is the
Supporter, the Protector, the pervading, all-permeating Life by which the
universe is held together, and by which it is sustained. Taking the names of
the Trimurti so familiar to us all not the philosophical names Sat, Chit,
Ananda, those names which in philosophy show the attributes of the Supreme Brahman
taking the concrete idea, we have Mahadeva or Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma:
three names, just as in the other religion we have three names; but the same
fact comes out, that it is the middle or central one of the Three who is the
source of Avataras. There has never been a direct Avatara of Mahadeva, of Shiva
Himself. Appearances? Yes. Manifestations?
Yes. Coming in form for a special purpose served by that form? Oh yes. Take the
Mahabharata, and you find Him appearing in the form of the hunter, the Kirata,
and testing the intuition of Arjuna, and struggling with him to test his
strength, his courage, and finally his devotion to Himself. But that is a mere
form taken for a purpose and cast aside the moment the purpose is served;
almost, we may say, a mere illusion, produced to serve a special purpose and
then thrown away as having completed that which it was intended to perform.
Over and over again you find such appearances of Mahadeva. You may remember one
most beautiful story, in which He appears in the form of a Chandala [An
outcaste, equivalent to a scavenger ] at the gateway of His own city of Kashi,
when one who was especially overshadowed by a manifestation of Himself, Shri
Shankaracharya, was coming with his disciples to the sacred city; veiling Himself
in the form of an outcaste for to Him all forms are the same, the human
differences are but as the grains of sand which vanish before the majesty of
His greatness He rolled Himself in the dust before the gateway, so that the
great teacher could not walk across without touching Him, and he called to the
Chandala to make way in order that the brahmana might go on unpolluted by the
touch of the outcaste; then the Lord, speaking through the form He had chosen,
rebuked the very one whom His power overshadowed, asking him questions which he
could not answer and thus abasing his pride and teaching him humility. Such
forms truly He has taken, but these are not what we can call Avataras; mere
passing forms, not manifestations upon earth where a life is lived and a great
drama is played out So with Brahma; He also has appeared from time to time, has
manifested Himself for some special purpose; but there is no Avatara of Brahma,
which we can speak of by that very definite and well understood term.
Now
for this fact there must be some reason. Why is it that we do not find the
source of Avataras alike in all these great divine manifestations? Why do they
come from only one aspect and that the aspect of Vishnu? I need not remind you
that there is but one Self, and that these names we use are the names of the
aspects that are manifested by the Supreme; we must not separate them so much
as to lose sight of the underlying unity. For remember how, when a worshipper
of Vishnu had a feeling in his heart against a worshipper of Mahadeva, as he
bowed before the image of Hari, the face of the image divided itself in half,
and Shiva or Hara appeared on one side and Vishnu or Hari appeared on the
other, and the two, smiling as one face on the bigoted worshipper, told him
that Mahadeva and Vishnu were but one. But in Their functions a division
arises; They manifest along different lines, as it were, in the kosmos and for
the helping of man; not for Him but for us, do these lines of apparent
separateness arise.
Looking
thus at it, we shall be able to find the answer to our question, not only who
is the source of Avataras, but why Vishnu is the source. And it is here that I
come to the unfamiliar part where I shall have to ask for your special
attention as regards the building of the universe. Now I am using the word
"universe", in the sense of our solar system. There are many other
systems, each of them complete in itself, and, therefore, rightly spoken of as
a kosmos, a universe. But each of these systems in its turn is part of a mightier
system, and our sun, the centre of our own system, though it be in very truth
the manifested physical body of Ishwara Himself, is not the only sun. If you
look through the vast fields of space, myriads of suns are there, each one the
centre of its own system, of its own universe; and our sun, supreme to us, is
but, as it were, a planet in a vaster system, its orbit curved round a sun
greater than itself. So in turn that sun, round which our sun is circling, is
planet to a yet mightier sun, and each set of systems in its turn circles round
a more central sun, and so on we know not how far may stretch the chain that
to us is illimitable: for who is able to plumb the depths and heights of space,
or to find a manifested circumference which takes in all universes! Nay, we say
that they are infinite in number, and that there is no end to the
manifestations of the one Life.
Now
that is true physically. Look at the physical universe with the eye of spirit,
and you see in it a picture of the spiritual universe. A great word was spoken
by one of the Masters or Rishis, whom in this Society we honour and whose
teachings we follow. Speaking to one of His disciples, or pupils, He rebuked
him, because, He said in words never to be forgotten by those who have read them:
"You always look at the things of the spirit with the eyes of the flesh.
What you ought to do is to look at the things of the flesh with the eyes of the
spirit". Now, what does that mean? It means that instead of trying to
degrade the spiritual and to limit it within the narrow bounds of the physical,
and to say of the spiritual that it cannot be because the human brain is unable
clearly to grasp it, we ought to look at the physical universe with a deeper
insight and see in it the image, the shadow, the reflection of the spiritual
world, and learn the spiritual verities by studying the images that exist of
them in the physical world around us. The physical world is easier to grasp. Do
not think the spiritual is modelled on the physical; the physical is fundamentally
modelled on the spiritual, and if you look at the physical with the eye of
spirit, then you find that it is the image of the higher, and then you are able
to grasp the higher truth by studying the faint reflections that you see in the
world around you. That is what I ask you to do now. Just as you have your sun
and suns, many universes, each one part of a system mightier than itself, so in
the spiritual universe there is hierarchy beyond hierarchy of spiritual
intelligences who are as the suns of the spiritual world. Our physical system
has at its centre the great spiritual Intelligence manifested as a Trinity, the
Ishvara of that system. Then beyond Him there is a mightier Ishvara, round whom
Those who are on the level of the Ishvara of our system
circle, looking to Him as Their central life. And beyond Him yet another, and
beyond Him others and others yet, until as the physical universes are beyond
our thinking, the spiritual hierarchy stretches also beyond our thought, and,
dazzled and blinded by the splendour, we sink back to earth, as Arjuna was
blinded when the Vaishnava form shone forth on him, and we cry: "Oh! show us again Thy more limited form that we may know it and
live by it We are not yet ready for the mightier manifestations. We are
blinded, not helped, by such blaze of divine splendour."
And
so we find that if we would learn we must limit ourselves nay, we must try to
expand ourselves to the limits of our own system. Why? I have met people who
have not really any grasp of this little world, this grain of dust in which
they live, who cannot be content unless you answer questions about the One
Existence, the Para-Brahma, whom sages revere in silence, not daring to speak
even with illuminated mind that knows nirvanic life and has expanded to
nirvanic consciousness. The more ignorant the man, the more he thinks he can
grasp. The less he understands, the more he resents being told that there are
some things beyond the grasp of his intellect, existences so mighty that he
cannot even dream of the lowest of the attributes that mark them out. And for
myself, who know myself ignorant, who know that many an age must pass ere I
shall be able to think of dealing with these profounder problems, I sometimes
gauge the ignorance of the questioner by the questions that he asks as to the
ultimate existences, and when he wants to know what he calls the primary
origin, I know that he has not even grasped the one-thousandth part of the
origin out of which he himself has sprung. Therefore, I say to you frankly that
these mighty Ones whom we worship are the Gods of our system; beyond them there
stretch mightier Ones yet, whom, perhaps, myriads of kalpas hence, we may begin
to understand and worship.
Let
us then confine ourselves to our own system and be glad if we can catch some
ray of the glory that illumines it Vishnu has His own functions, as also have
Brahma and Mahadeva. The first work in this system is done by the third of the
sacred great Ones of the Trimurti, Brahma, as you all know, for you have read
that there came forth the creative Intelligence as the third of the divine
manifestations. I care not what is the symbology you take; perchance that of
the Vishnu Purana will be most familiar, wherein the unmanifested Vishnu is
beneath the water, standing as the first of the Trimurti, then the Lotus,
standing as the second, and the opened Lotus showing Brahma, the third, the
creative Mind. You may remember that the work of creation began with His
activity. When we study from the occult standpoint in what that activity
consisted, we find it consisted in impregnating with His own life the matter of
the solar system; that He gave His own life to build up form after form of
atom, to make the great divisions in the kosmos; that He formed, one after
another, the five kinds of matter. Working by His mind He is sometimes spoken
of as Mahat, the great One, Intelligence He formed Tattvas one after another.
Tattvas, you may remember from last year, are the foundations of the atoms, and
there are five of them manifested at the present time. That is His special
work. Then He meditates, and forms as thoughts come forth. There His
manifest work may be said to end, though He maintains ever the life of the
atom. As far as the active work of the kosmos is concerned, He gives way to the
next of the great forces that is to work, the force of Vishnu. His work is to
gather together that matter that has been built, shaped, prepared, vivified,
and build it into definite forms after the creative ideas brought forth by the
meditation of Brahma. He gives to matter a binding force; He gives to it those
energies that hold form together. No form exists without Him, whether it be moving or unmoving. How often does Shri Krishna, speaking
as the supreme Vishnu, lay stress on this fact He is the life in every form;
without it the form could not exist, without it it would go back to its
primeval elements and no longer live as form. He is the all-pervading life; the
"Supporter of the Universe" is one of His names. Mahadeva
has a different function in the universe; especially is He the great Yogi;
especially is He the great Teacher, the Mahaguru; He is sometimes called
Jagatguru, the Teacher of the world. Over and over again to take a
comparatively modern example, as the Gurugita we find Him as Teacher, to whom
Parvati goes asking for instruction as to the nature of the Guru. He it is who
defines the Guru's work, He it is who inspires the Guru's teaching. Every Guru
on earth is a reflection of Mahadeva, and it is His life which he is commissioned
to give out to the world. Yogi, immersed in contemplation, taking the ascetic
form always that marks out His functions. For the symbols by which the mighty
Ones are shown in the teachings are not meaningless, but are replete with the
deepest meaning. And when you see Him represented as the eternal Yogi, with the
cord in His hand, sitting as an ascetic in contemplation, it means that He is
the supreme ideal of the ascetic life, and that men who come especially under
His influence must pass out of home, out of family, out of the normal ties of
evolution, and give themselves to a life of asceticism, to a life of
renunciation, to share, however feebly, in that mighty yoga by which the
universe is kept alive.
He
then manifests not as Avatara, but such manifestations come from Him who is the
God, the Spirit, of evolution, who evolves all forms. That is why from Vishnu
all these Avataras come. For it is He who by His infinite love dwells in every
form that He has made; with patience that nothing can exhaust, with love that
nothing can tire, with quiet, calm endurance which no folly of man can shake
from its eternal peace. He lives in every form, moulding it as it will bear the
moulding, shaping it as it yields itself to His impulse, binding Himself, limiting
Himself in order that His universe may grow, Lord of eternal life and bliss,
dwelling in every form. If you grasp this, it is not difficult to say why from
Him alone the Avataras come. Who else should take form save the One who gives
form? Who else should work with this unending love save He, who, while the
universe exists, binds Himself that the universe may live and ultimately share
His freedom? He is bound that the universe may be free. Who else then should
come forth when special need arises?
And
He gives the great types. Let me remind you of the Shrimad-Bhagavata, where in
an early chapter of the first Book, the 3rd chapter, a very long list is given
of the forms that Vishnu took, not only the great Avataras, but also a large
number of others. It is said He appeared as
There
He gives the law of these appearances: "When, O son of Pritha, I live in
the order of the deities, then I act in every respect
as a deity. When I live in the order of the Gandharvas, then I act in every
respect as a Gandharva. When I live in the order of the Nagas, I act as a Naga.
When I live in the order of the Yakshas, or that of the Rakshasas, I act after
the manner of that order. Born now in the order of humanity, I must act as a human
being." A profound truth, a truth that few in modern
times recognise. Every type in the universe, in its own place, is good;
every type in the universe, in its own place, is necessary. There is no life
save His life; how then could any type come into existence apart from the
universal life, bereft whereof nothing can exist?
We
speak of good forms and evil, and rightly, as regards our own evolution. But
from the wider standpoint of the kosmos, good and evil are relative terms, and
everything is very good in the sight of the Supreme who lives in every one. How
can a type come into existence in which He cannot live? How can anything live
and move, save as it has its being in Him? Each type has its work; each type
has its place; the type of the Rakshasa as much as the type of the Deva, of the
Asura as much as of the Sura. Let me give you one curious little simple
example, which yet has a certain graphic force. You have a pole you want to
move, and that pole is on a pivot, like the mountain which churned the ocean, a
pole with its two ends, positive and negative we will call them. The positive
end, we will say, is pushed in the direction of the river (the river flowing
beyond one end of the hall at Adyar). The negative pole is pushed in what
direction? In the opposite. And those who are pushing
it have their faces turned in the opposite direction. One man looks at the river, the other man has his back to it, looking in the
opposite direction. But the pole turns in the one direction although they push
in opposite directions. They are working round the same circle, and the pole
goes faster because it is pushed from its two ends. There is the picture of our
universe. The positive force you call the Deva or Sura; his face is turned, it
seems, to God. The negative force you call the Rakshasa or Asura; his face, it
seems, is turned away from God. Ah no! God is everywhere, in every point of the
circle round which they tread; and they tread His circle and do His will and no
otherwise; and all at length find rest and peace in Him.
Therefore
Shri Krishna Himself can incarnate in the form of Rakshasa, and when in that
form He will act as Rakshasa and not as Deva, doing that part of the divine
work with the same perfection as He does the other, which men in their limited
vision call the good. A great truth hard to grasp. I
shall have to return to it presently in speaking of Ravana, one of the
mightiest types of, perhaps the greatest of, all the Rakshasas. And we shall
see, if we can follow, how the profound truth works out But remember, if in the
minds of some of you there is some hesitation in accepting this, that the words
that I read are not mine, but those of the Lord who spoke of His own embodying;
He has left on record for your teaching, that He has embodied Himself in the
form of Rakshasa and has acted after the manner of that order.
Leaving
that for a moment, there is one other point I must take, ere speaking of the
need for Avataras. and it is this: when the great
central Deities have manifested, then there come forth from Them seven Deities
of what we may call the second order. In Theosophy, they are spoken
of as the planetary Logoi, to distinguish them from the great solar Logoi, the
central Life. Each of These has to do with one of the
seven sacred planets, and with the chain of worlds connected with that planet.
Our world is one of the links in this chain, and you and I pass round this
chain in successive incarnations in the great stages of life. The world our
present world is the midway globe of one such chain. One Logos of the
secondary order presides over the evolution of this chain of worlds. He shows
out three aspects, reflections of the great Logoi who are at the centre of the
system. You have read perhaps of the seven-leaved lotus, the Saptaparnapadma;
looked at with the higher sight, gazed at with the open vision of the seer,
that mighty group of creative and directing Beings looks like the lotus with
its seven leaves and the great Ones are at the heart of the lotus. It is as
though you could see a vast lotus-flower spread out in space, the tips of the
seven leaves being the mighty Intelligences presiding over the evolution of the
chains of worlds. That lotus symbol is no mere symbol but a high reality, as
seen in that wondrous world wherefrom the symbol has been taken by the sages.
And because the great Rishis of old saw with the open eye of knowledge, saw the
lotus-flower spread in space, they took it as the symbol of kosmos, the lotus
with its seven leaves, each one a mighty Deva presiding over a separate line of
evolution. We are primarily concerned with our own planetary Deva and through
Him with the great Devas of the solar system.
Now
my reason for mentioning this is to explain one word that has puzzled many
students. Mahavishnu, the great Vishnu, why that particular epithet? What does
it mean when that phrase is used? It means the great solar Logos, Vishnu in His
essential nature: but there is a reflection of His glory, a reflection of His
power, of His love, in more immediate connection with ourselves
and our own world. He is His representative, as a viceroy may represent the
king. Some of the Avataras we shall find came forth from Mahavishnu through the
planetary Logos, who is concerned with our evolution and the evolution of the
world. But the Purnavatara that I spoke of yesterday comes forth directly from
Mahavishnu, with no intermediary between Himself and the world that He comes to
help. Here is another distinction between the Purnavatara and those more
limited ones, that I could not mention yesterday,
because the words used would, at that stage, have been unintelligible. We shall
find to-morrow, when we come to deal with the Avataras Matsya, Kurma, and so
on, that these special Avataras, connected with the evolution of certain types
in the world, while indirectly from Mahavishnu, come through the mediation of
His mighty representative for our own chain, the wondrous Intelligence that
conveys His love and ministers His will, and is the channel of His
all-pervading and supporting power. When we come to study Shri Krishna we shall
find that there is no intermediary. He stands as the Supreme Himself. And while
in the other cases there is the Presence that may be recognised as an
intermediary, it is absent in the case of the great Lord of Life.
Leaving
that for further elaboration then to-morrow, let us try to answer the next
question, "How arises this need for Avataras?" because in the minds
of some, quite naturally, a difficulty does arise. The difficulty that many
thoughtful people feel may be formulated thus: "Surely the whole plan of
the world is in the mind of the Logos from the beginning, and surely we cannot
suppose that He is working like a human workman, not thoroughly understanding
that at which He aims. He must be the architect as well as the builder; He must
make the plan as well as carry it out He is not like the mason who puts a stone
in the wall where he is told, and knows nothing of the architecture of the
building to which he is contributing. He is the master-builder, the great
architect of the universe, and everything in the plan of that universe must be
in His mind ere ever the universe began. But if that be
so and we cannot think otherwise how is it that the need for special intervention
arises? Does not the fact of special intervention imply some unforeseen
difficulty that has arisen? If there must be a kind of interference with the
working out of the plan, does that not look as if in the original plan some
force was left out of account, some difficulty had not been seen, something had
arisen for which preparation had not been made? If it be not
so, why the need for interference, which looks as though it were brought about
to meet an unforeseen event?" A natural,
reasonable, and perfectly fair question. Let us try to answer it. I do
not believe in shirking difficulties; it is better to look them in the face,
and see if an answer be possible.
Now
the answer comes along three different lines. There are three great classes of
facts, each of which contributes to the necessity; and each, foreseen by the
Logos, is definitely prepared for as needing a particular manifestation.
The
first of these lines arises from what I may perhaps call the nature of things.
I remarked at the beginning of this lecture on the fact that our universe, our
system, is part of a greater whole, not separate, not independent, not primary,
in comparatively a low scale in the universe, our sun a planet in a vaster
system. Now what does that imply? As regards matter, Prakriti, it implies that
our system is builded out of matter already existing, out of matter already
gifted with certain properties, out of matter that spreads through all space,
and from which every Logos takes His materials, modifying it according to His
own plan and according to His own will. When we speak of Mulaprakriti, the root
of matter, we do not mean that it exists as the matter we know. No philosopher,
no thinker would dream of saying that that which spreads throughout space is
identical with the matter of our very elementary solar system. It is the root
of matter, that of which all forms of matter are merely modifications. What
does that imply? It implies that our great Lord, who brought our solar system
into existence, is taking matter which already has certain properties given to
it by One yet mightier than Himself. In that matter
three gunas exist in equilibrium, and it is the breath of the Logos that throws
them out of equilibrium, and causes the motion by which our system is brought
into existence. There must be a throwing out of equilibrium, for equilibrium
means Pralaya, where there is not motion, nor any manifestation of life and
form. When life and form come forth, equilibrium must have been disturbed, and
motion must be liberated by which the world shall be built But the moment you
grasp that truth you see that there must be certain limitations by virtue of
the very material in which the Deity is working for the making of the system.
It is true that when out of His system, when not conditioned and confined and
limited by it, as He is by His most gracious will, it is true that He would be
the Lord of that matter by virtue of His union with the mightier Life beyond;
but when for the building of the world He limits Himself within His Maya, then
He must work within the conditions of those materials that limit His activity,
as we are told over and over again.
Now
when in the ceaseless interplay of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, Tamas has the
ascendancy, aided and, as it were, worked by Rajas, so that they predominate
over Sattva in the foreseen evolution, when the two combining overpower the
third, when the force of Rajas and the inertia and stubbornness of Tamas,
binding themselves together, check the action, the harmony, the pleasure-giving
qualities of Sattva, then comes one of the conditions in which the Lord comes
forth to restore that which had been disturbed of the balanced interworking of
the three gunas, and to make again such balance between them as shall enable
evolution to go forward smoothly and not be checked in its progress. He
re-establishes the balance of power which gives orderly motion, the order
having been disturbed by the co-operation of the two in contradistinction to
the third. In these fundamental attributes of matter, the three gunas lies the first reason of the need for Avataras.
The
second need has to do with man himself, and now we come back in both the second
and the third to that question of good and evil, of which I have already
spoken, Ishvara, when He came to deal with the evolution of man with all
reverence I say it had a harder task to perform than in the evolution of the
lower forms of life. On them the law is imposed and they must obey its impulse.
On the mineral the law is compulsory; every mineral moves according to the law,
without interposing any impulse from itself to work against the will of the
One. In the vegetable world the law is imposed, and every plant grows in
orderly method according to the law within it, developing steadily and in the
fashion of its order, interposing no impulse of its own. Nay, in the animal
world save perhaps when we come to its highest members the law is still a
force overpowering everything else, sweeping everything before it, carrying
along all living things. A wheel turning on the road might carry with it on its
axle the fly that happened to have settled there; it does not interpose any
obstacle to the turning of the wheel. If the fly comes on to the circumference
of the wheel and opposes itself to its motion, it is crushed without the
slightest jarring of the wheel that rolls on, and the form goes out of
existence, and the life takes other shapes.
So
is the wheel of law in the three lower kingdoms. But with man it is not so. In
man Ishvara sets himself to produce an image of Himself,
which is not the case in the lower kingdoms. As life has evolved, one force
after another has come out, and in man there begins to come out the central
life, for the time has arrived for the evolution of the sovereign power of
will, the self-initiated motion which is part of the life of the Supreme. Do
not misunderstand me for the subject is a subtle one; there is only one will
in the universe, the will of Ishvara, and all must conform itself to that will,
all is conditioned by that will, all must move according to that will, and that
will marks out the straight line of evolution. There may be swerving neither to
the right hand nor to the left There is one will only which in its aspect to us
is free, but inasmuch as our life is the life of Ishvara Himself, inasmuch as
there is but one Self and that Self is yours and mine as much as His for He
has given us His very Self to be our Self and our life there must evolve at
one stage of this wondrous evolution that royal power of will which is seen in
Him. And from the Atma within us, which is Himself in
us, there flows forth the sovereign will into the sheaths in which the Atma is
as it were held. Now what happens is this: force goes out through the sheaths
and gives them some of its own nature, and each sheath begins to set up a
reflection of the will on its own account, and you get the "I" of the
body which wants to go this way, and the "I" of passion or emotion
which wants to go that way, and the "I" of the mind which wants to go
a third way, and none of these ways is the way of the Atma, the Supreme. These
are the illusory wills of man, and there is one way in which you may
distinguish them from the true will. Each of them is determined in its
direction by external attraction; the man's body wants to move in a particular
way because something attracts it, or something else repels it: it moves to
what it likes, to what is congenial to it. it moves
away from that which it dislikes, from that from which it feels itself
repelled. But that motion of the body is but motion determined by the Ishvara
outside, as it were, rather than by the Ishvara within, by the kosmos around
and not by the Self within, which has not yet achieved its mastery of the
kosmos. So with the emotions or passions: they are drawn this way or that by
the objects of the senses, and the "senses move after their appropriate
objects"; it is not the "I", the Self, which moves. And so also with the mind. "The mind is fickle and
restless, O Krishna, it seems as hard to curb as the wind", and the mind
lets the senses run after objects as a horse that has broken its reins flies
away with the unskilled driver. All these forces are set up; and there is one
more thing to remember. These forces reinforce the rajasic guna and help to
bring about that predominance of which I spoke; all these reckless desires that
are not according to the one will are yet necessary in order that the will may
evolve and in order to train and develop the man.
Do
you say why? How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you
choose good if you knew not evil? How would you
recognise the light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were
no resistance? The forces that are called dark, the forces of the Rakshasas, of
the Asuras, of all that seem to be working against Ishvara these are the
forces that call out the inner strength of the Self in man, by struggling with
which the forces of Atma within the man are developed, and without which he
would remain in Pralaya for evermore. It is a perfectly stagnant pool where
there is no motion, and there you get corruption and not life. The evolution of
force can only be made by struggle, by combat, by effort, by exercise, and
inasmuch as Ishvara is building men and not babies, He must draw out men's
forces by pulling against their strength, making them struggle in order to
attain, and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life that otherwise would
remain enfolded in itself. In the seed the life is hidden, but it will not
grow, if you leave the seed alone. Place it on this table here, and come back a
century hence, and, if you find it, it will be a seed still and nothing more.
So also is the Atma in man ere evolution and struggle have begun. Plant your
seed in the ground, so that the forces in the ground press on it, and the rays
of the sun from outside make vibrations that work on it, and the water from the
rain comes through the soil into it and forces it to swell then the seed
begins to grow; but as it begins to grow it finds the earth around. How shall it
grow but by pushing at it and so bringing out the energies of life that are
within it? And against the opposition of the ground the roots strike down, and
against the opposition of the ground the growing point mounts upward, and by
the opposition of the ground the forces are evolved that make the seed grow,
and the little plant appears above the soil. Then the wind comes and blows and
tries to drag it away, and, in order that it may live and not perish, it
strikes its roots deeper and gives itself a better hold against the battering
force of the wind, and so the tree grows against the forces which try to tear
it out And if these forces were not, there would have been no growth of the
root And so with the root of Ishvara, the life within us; were everything
around us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent It is
the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us onward and
brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain
undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throw him on a couch with
pillows on every side, and bring his meals and put them into his mouth, so that
he moves not limb nor exercises mind. Throw him on a desert, where there is no
food nor water to be found; let the sun beat down on his head, the wind blow
against him; let his mind be made to think how to meet the necessities of the
body, and the man grows into a man and not a log. That is why there are forces
which you call evil. In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes
to us from Ishvara, but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that, by
opposing it, we may draw out our strength. Then we begin to understand that
these forces are necessary, and that they are within the plan of Ishvara. They
test evolution, they strengthen evolution, so that it does not take the next
step onward till it has strength enough to hold its own, one step made firm by
opposition before the next is taken. But when, by the conflicting wills of men,
the forces that work for retardation, to keep a man back till he is able to
overcome them and go on, when they are so reinforced by men's unruly wishes
that they are beginning, as it were, to threaten progress, then ere that check
takes place, there is reinforcement from the other side: the presence of the
Avatara of the forces that threaten evolution calls forth the presence of the
Avatara that leads to the progress of humanity.
We
come to the third cause. The Avatara does not come forth without a call. The
earth, it is said, is very heavy with its load of evil, "Save us, O
supreme Lord", the Devas come and cry. In answer to that cry the Lord
comes forth. But what is this that I spoke of purposely by a strange phrase to
catch your attention, that I spoke of as an Avatara of
evil? By the will of the one Supreme, there is one incarnated in form who
gathers up together the forces that make for retardation, in order that, thus
gathered together, they may be destroyed by the opposing force of good, and
thus the balance may be re-established and evolution go on along its appointed
road. Devas work for joy, the reward of Heaven. Svarga is their home, and they
serve the Supreme for the joys that there they have. Rakshasas
also serve Him, first for rule on earth, and power to grasp and hold and enjoy
as they will in this lower world. Both sides serve for reward, and are
moved by the things that please.
And
in order, as our time is drawing to a close, that I may take one great example
to show how these work, let me take the mighty one, Ravana of Lanka, that we
may give a concrete form to a rather difficult and abstruse thought. Ravana, as
you all know, was the mighty intelligence, the Rakshasa, who called forth the
coming of Shri Rama. But look back into the past, and what was he? Keeper of
Vishnu's heaven, door-keeper of the mighty Lord, devotee, bhakta, absolutely
devoted to the Lord. Look at his past, and where do you find a bhakta of
Mahadeva more absolute in devotion than the one who came forth later as Ravana?
It was he who cast his head into the fire in order that Mahadeva might be
served. It is he in whose name have been written some of the most exquisite
stotras, breathing the spirit of completest devotion; in one of them, you may
remember and you could scarcely carry devotion to a further point it is in
the mouth of Ravana words are put appealing to Mahadeva, and describing Him as
surrounded by forms the most repellent and undesirable, surrounded on every
side by pisachas and bhutas, [Goblins and elementals ] which to us seem but the
embodiment of the dark shadows of the burning ghat, forms from which all beauty
is withdrawn. He cries out in a passion of love:
Better
wear pisacha-form, so we
Evermore are near and wait on Thee.
How
did he then come to be the ravisher of Sita and the enemy of God?
You
know how through lack of intuition, through lack of power to recognise the
meaning of an order, following the words not the spirit, following the outside
not the inner, he refused to open the door of heaven when Sanat Kumara came and
demanded entrance. In order that that which was lacking might be filled, in
order that that which was wanting might be earned, that which was called a
curse was pronounced, a curse which was the natural reaction from the mistake.
He was asked: "Will you have seven incarnations friendly to Vishnu, or
three in which you will be His enemy and oppose Him?" And because he was a
true bhakta, and because every moment of absence, from his Lord meant to him
hell of torture, he chose three of enmity, which would let him go back sooner
to the Feet of the Beloved, rather than the seven of happiness, of
friendliness. Better a short time of utter enmity than a longer remaining away
with apparent happiness. It was love not hatred that made him choose the form
of a Rakshasa rather than the form of a Rishi. There is the first note of
explanation.
Then,
coming into the form of Rakshasa, he must do his duty as Rakshasa. This was no
weak man to be swayed by momentary thought, by transient objects. He had all
the learning of the Vedas. With him, it was said, passed away Vedic learning,
with him it disappeared from earth. He knew his duty. What was his duty? To put
forward every force which was in his mighty nature in order to check evolution,
and so call out every force in man which could be called out by opposing energy
which had to be overcome; to gather round him all the forces which were
opposing evolution; to make himself king of the whole, centre and law-giver to
every force that was setting itself against the will of the Lord; to gather them
together as it were into one head, to call them together into one arm; so that
when their apparent triumph made the cry of the earth go up to Vishnu, the
answer might come in Rama's Avatara and they be destroyed, that the life-wave
might go on.
Nobly
he did the work, thoroughly he discharged his duty. It is said that even sages
are confused about Dharma, and truly it is subtle and hard to grasp in its
entirety, though the fragment the plain man sees be simple enough. His Dharma
was the Dharma of a Rakshasa, to lead the whole forces of evil against One whom in his inner soul, then clouded, he loved. When
Shri Rama came, when He was wandering in the forest, how could he sting Him
into leaving the life of His life. His
beloved Sita, and into coming out into the world to do His work? By
taking away from Him the one thing to which He clung, by taking away from Him
the wife whom He loved as His very Self, by placing her in the spot where all
the forces of evil were gathered together, so making one head for destruction,
which the arrow of Shri Rama might destroy. Then the mighty battle, then the
struggle with all the forces of his great nature, that the law might be obeyed
to the uttermost, duly fulfilled to the last grain, the debt paid that was
owed; and then ah then! the shaft of the Beloved,
then the arrow of Shri Rama that struck off the head from the seeming enemy,
from the real devotee. And from the corpse of the Rakshasa that fell upon the
field near Lanka, the devotee went up to Goloka [A name for one of the
heavens.] to sit at the feet of the Beloved, and rest for awhile till the third
incarnation had to be lived out.
Such
then are some of the reasons by, the ways in which the coming of the Avatara is
brought about And my last word to you, my brothers,
to-day is but a sentence, in order to avoid the possibility of a mistake to
which our diving into these depths of thought may possibly give rise. Remember
that though all powers are His, all forces His, Rakshasa as much as Deva, Asura
as much as Sura; remember that for your evolution you must be on the side of
good, and struggle to the utmost against evil. Do not let the thoughts I have
put lead you into a bog, into a pit of hell, in which you may for the time
perish, that because evil is relative, because it exists by the one will,
because Rakshasa is His as much as Deva, therefore you shall go on their side
and walk along their path. It is not so. If you yield to ambition, if you yield
to pride, if you set yourselves against the will of Ishvara, if you struggle
for the separated self, if in yourselves now you identify yourself with the
past in which you have dwelt instead of with the future towards which you
should be directing your steps, then, if your Karma be at a certain stage, you
pass into the ranks of those who work as enemies, because you have chosen that
fate for yourself, at the promptings of the lower nature. Then with bitter
inner pain even if with complete submission accepting the Karma, but with
profound sorrow, you shall have to work out your own will against the will of
the Beloved, and feel the anguish of the rending that separates the inner from
the outer life. The will of Ishvara for you is evolution; these forces are made
to help your evolution but only if you strive against them. If you yield to
them, then they carry you away. You do not then call out your own strength, but
only strengthen them. Therefore, O Arjuna, stand up and fight. Do not be
supine; do not yield yourself to the forces; they are there to call out your
energies by opposition and you must not sink down on the floor of the chariot
And my last word is the word of Shri Krishna to Arjuna: "Take up your bow,
stand up and fight"
Some
Special Avataras
The
subject this morning, my brothers, is in some ways an easy and in other ways a
difficult one; easy, inasmuch as the stories of the Avataras can be readily
told and readily grasped; difficult, inasmuch as the meaning that underlies
these manifestations may possibly be in some ways unfamiliar, may not have been
thoroughly thought out by individual hearers. And I must begin with a general
word as to these special Avataras. You may remember that I said that the whole
universe may be regarded as the Avatara of the Supreme, the Self-revelation of
Ishvara. But we are not dealing with that general Self-revelation; nor are we
even considering the very many revelations that have taken place from time to
time, marked out by special characteristics; for we have seen by referring to
one or two of the old writings that many lists are given of the comings of the
Lord, and we are to-day concerned with only some of those, those that are
accepted specially as Avataras.
Now
on one point I confess myself puzzled at the outset, and I do not know whether
in your exoteric literature light is thrown upon the point as to how these ten
were singled out, who was the person who chose them out of a longer list, on
what authority that list was proclaimed. On that point I must simply state the
question, leaving it unanswered. It may be a matter familiar to those who have
made researches into the exoteric literature. It is not a point of quite
sufficient importance for the moment to spend on it time and trouble, in what
we may call the occult way of research. I leave that then aside, for there is one
reason why some of these stand out in a way which is clear and definite. They
mark stages in the evolution of the world. They mark new departures in the
growth of the developing life, and whether it was that fact which underlay the
exoteric choice I am unable to say; but certainly that fact by itself is
sufficient to justify the special distinction which is made.
There
is one other general point to consider. Accounts of these Avataras are found in
the Puranas; allusions to them, to one or other of them, are found in other of
the ancient writings, but the moment you come to very much detail you must turn
to the Puranic accounts; as you are aware, sages, in giving those Puranas, very
often described things as they are seen on the higher planes, giving the description
of the underlying truth of facts and events; you have appearances described
which sound very strange in the lower world; you have facts asserted which
raise very much of challenge in modern days. When you read in the Puranas of
strange forms and marvellous appearances, when you read accounts of creatures
that seem unlike anything that you have ever heard of or dreamed of elsewhere,
the modern mind, with its somewhat narrow limitations, is apt to revolt against
the accounts that are given; the modern mind, trained within the limits of the
science of observation, is necessarily circumscribed within those limits and
those limits are of an exceedingly narrow description; they are limits which
belong only to modern time, modern to men, in the true sense of the word,
though geological researches stretch of course far back into what we call in
this nineteenth century the night of time. But you must remember that the
moment geology goes beyond the historic period, which is a mere moment in the
history of the world, it has more of guesses than of facts, more of theories
than of proofs. If you take half a dozen modern geologists and ask each of them
in turn for the date of the period of which records remain in the small number
of fossils collected, you will find that almost every man gives a different
date, and that they deal with differences of millions of years as though they
were only seconds or minutes of ours. So that you will have to remember in what
science can tell you of the world, however accurate it may be within its
limits, that these limits are exceedingly narrow, narrow I mean when measured
by the sight that goes back kalpa after kalpa, and that knows that the mind of
the Supreme is not limited to the manifestations of a few hundred thousands of years,
but goes back million after million, hundreds of millions after hundreds of
millions, and that the varieties of form, the enormous differences of types,
the marvellous kinds of creatures which have come out of that creative
imagination, transcend in actuality all that man's mind can dream of, and that
the very wildest images that man can make fall far short of the realities that
actually existed in the past kalpas through which the universe has gone. That
word of warning is necessary, and also the warning that on the higher planes
things look very different from what they look down here. You have here a
reflection only of part of those higher forms of existence. Space there has
more dimensions than it has on the physical plane, and each dimension of space
adds a new fundamental variety to form; if to illustrate this I may use a
simile I have often used, it may perhaps convey to you a little idea of what I
mean. Two similes I will take each throwing a little light on a very difficult
subject Suppose that a picture is presented to you of a solid form; the
picture, being made by pen or pencil on a sheet of paper, must show on the
sheet, which is practically of two dimensions a plane surface a three
dimensional form; so that if you want to represent a solid object, a vase, you
must draw it flat, and you can only represent the solidity of that vase by
resorting to certain devices of light and shade, to the artificial device which
is called perspective, in order to make an illusory semblance of the third dimension.
There on the plane surface you get a solid appearance, and the eye is deceived
into thinking it sees a solid when really it is looking at a flat surface. Now
as a matter of fact if you show a picture to a savage, an undeveloped savage,
or to a very young child, they will not see a solid but only a flat They will
not recognise the picture as being the picture of a solid object they have seen
in the world round them; they will not see that that artificial representation
is meant to show a familiar solid, and it passes by them without making any
impression on the mind; only the education of the eye enables you to see on a
flat surface the picture of a solid form. Now, by an effort of the imagination,
can you think of a solid as being the representation of a form in one dimension
more, shown by a kind of perspective? Then you may get a vague idea of what is
meant when we speak of a further dimension in space. As the picture is to the
vase, so is the vase to a higher object of which that vase itself is a reflection.
So again if you think, say, of the lotus flower I spoke of yesterday, as having
just the tips of its leaves above water, each tip would appear as a separate
object. If you know the whole you know that they are all parts of one object;
but coming over the surface of the water you will see tips only, one for each
leaf of the seven-leaved lotus. So is every globe in space an apparently
separate object, while in reality it is not separated at all, but part of a
whole that exists in a space of more dimensions; and the separateness is mere
illusion due to the limitations of our faculties.
Now
I have made this introduction in order to show you that when you read the
Puranas you consistently get the fact on the higher plane described in terms of
the lower, with the result that it seems unintelligible, seems
incomprehensible; then you have what is called an allegory, that is, a reality
which looks like a fancy down here, but is a deeper truth than the illusion of
physical matter, and is nearer to the reality of things than the things which
you call objective and real. If you follow that line of thought at all you will
read the Puranas with more intelligence and certainly with more reverence than
some of the modern Hindus are apt to show in the reading, and you will begin to
understand that when another vision is opened one sees things differently from
the way that one sees them on the physical plane, and that that which seems
impossible on the physical is what is really seen when you pass beyond the
physical limitations.
From
the Puranas then the stories come.
Let
me take the first three Avataras apart from the remainder, for a reason that
you will readily understand as we go through them. We take the Avatara which is
spoken of as that of Matsya or the fish; that which is spoken of as that of
Kurma or the tortoise; that which is spoken of as that of Varaha, or the boar.
Three animal forms; how strange! thinks the modern
graduate. How strange that the Supreme should take the forms of these lower
animals, a fish, a tortoise, a boar! What childish folly! "The babbling of
a race in its infancy", it is said by the pandits of the Western world. Do
not be so sure. Why this wonderful conceit as to the human form? Why should you
and I be the only worthy vessels of the Deity that have come out of the
illimitable Mind in the course of ages? What is there in this particular shape
of head, arms, and trunk which shall make it the only worthy vessel to serve as
a manifestation of the supreme Ishvara? I know of nothing so wonderful in the
mere outer form that should make that shape alone worthy to represent some of
the aspects of the Highest. And may it not be that from His standpoint those
great differences that we see between ourselves and those which we call the
lower forms of life may be almost imperceptible, since He transcends them all?
A little child sees an immense difference between himself of perhaps two and a
half feet high and a baby only a foot and a half high, and thinks himself a man
compared with that tiny form rolling on the ground and unable to walk. But to
the grown man there is not so much difference between the length of the two,
and one seems very much like the other. While we are very small we see great
differences between ourselves and others; but on the mountain top the hovel and
the palace do not differ so very much in height. They all look like anthills,
very much of the same size. And so from the standpoint of Ishvara, in the vast
hierarchies from the mineral to the loftiest Deva, the distinctions are but as
ant-hills in comparison with Himself, and one form or
another is equally worthy, so that it suits His purpose, and manifests His
will.
Now
for the Matsya Avatara; the story you will all know: when the great Manu,
Vaivasvata Manu, the Root Manu, as we call Him that is, a Manu not of one
race only, but of a whole vast round of kosmic evolution, presiding over the
seven globes that are linked for the evolution of the world that mighty Manu,
sitting one day immersed in contemplation, sees a tiny fish gasping for water;
and moved by compassion, as all great ones are, He takes up the little fish and
puts it in a bowl, and the fish grows till it fills the bowl; and He placed it
in a water vessel and it grew to the size of the vessel; then He took it out of
that vessel and put it into a bigger one; afterwards into a tank, a pond, a
river, the sea, and still the marvellous fish grew and grew and grew. The time
came when a vast change was impending; one of those changes called a minor
pralaya, and it was necessary that the seeds of life should be carried over
that pralaya to the next manvantara. That would be a minor pralaya and a minor
manvantara. What does that mean? It means a passage of the seeds of life from
one globe to another; from what we call the globe preceding our own to our own
earth. It is the function of the Root Manu, with the help and the guidance of
the planetary Logos, to transfer the seeds of life from one globe to the next,
so as to plant them in a new soil where further growth is possible. As waters
rose, waters of matter submerging the globe which was passing into pralaya, an
ark, a vessel appeared; into this vessel stepped the great Rishi with others,
and the seeds of life were carried by Them, and as They go forth upon the
waters a mighty fish appears and to the horn of that fish the vessel is
fastened by a rope, and it conveys the whole safely to the solid ground where
the Manu rebegins His work. A story! yes, but a story that tells a truth; for looking
at it as it takes place in the history of the world, we see the vast surging
ocean of matter, we see the Root Manu and the great Initiates with Him
gathering up the seeds of life from the world whose work is over, carrying them
under the guidance and with the help of the planetary Vishnu to the new globe
where new impulse is to be given to the life; and the reason why the fish form
was chosen was simply because in the building up again of the world, it was at
first covered with water, and only that form of life was originally possible,
so far as denser physical life was concerned.
You
have in that first stage what the geologists call the Silurian Age, the age of
fishes, when the great divine manifestation was of all these forms of life. The
Purana rightly starts in the previous Kalpa, rightly starts the manifestations
with the manifestation in the form of the fish. Not so very ridiculous after
all, you see, when read by knowledge instead of by ignorance; a truth, as the
Puranas are full of truth, if they were only read with intelligence and not
with prejudice.
But
some of you may say that there is confusion about these first Avataras; in
several accounts we find that the Boar stands the first; that is true, but the
key of it is this; the Boar Avatara initiated that evolution which was followed
unbrokenly by the human; whereas the other two bring in great stages, each of
which is regarded as a separate kalpa; and if you look into the Vishnu Purana
you will find there the key; for when that begins to relate the incarnation of
the Boar, there is just a sentence thrown in, that the Matsya and Kurma
Avataras belong to previous kalpas.
Now
if we take the theosophical nomenclature, we find each of these kalpas covers
what we call a Root Race, and you may remember that the first Root Race of
humanity had not human form at all but was simply a floating mass able to live
in the waters which then covered the earth, and only showing the ordinary
protoplasmic motions connected with such a type of life and possible at that
stage of its evolution. It was a seed of form rather than a form itself; it was
the seed planted by the Manu in the waters of the earth, that
out of that humanity might evolve. But the general course of physical evolution
passed through the stage of the fish; and geology there gives a true fact,
though it does not understand, naturally, the hidden meaning; while the Purana
gives you the reality of the manifestation, and the deeper truth that underlies
the stages of the evolving world.
Then
we find, tracing it onward, that this great age passes, and the world begins to
rise out of the waters. How then shall types be brought forth in order that
evolution may go on? The next great type is to be fitted either for land or for
water; for the next stage of the earth shows the waters draining gradually
away, and the land appearing, and the creatures that are the marked
characteristic of the age must exist partially on land and partially in water.
Here again there must be manifestation of the type of life, this time of what
we call the reptile type; the tortoise is chosen as the typical creature, and
while the tortoise typifies the type to be evolved, reptiles, amphibious
creatures of every description, swarm over the earth, becoming more and more
land-like in their character as the proportion of land to water increases.
There is meanwhile going on, in the "imperishable sacred land", a
preparation for further evolution. There is one part of the globe that changes
not, that from the beginning has been, and will last while the globe is
lasting; it is called the "imperishable land." And there the great
Rishis gather, and thence they ever come forth for the
helping of man; that is the imperishable sacred land, sometimes called the
"sacred pole of the earth." Pole itself exists not on the physical
plane but on the higher, and its reflection coming downwards makes, as it were,
one spot which never changes, but is ever guarded from the profane tread of
ordinary men. There took place a most instructive phenomenon. The type of the
evolution then preceding, the Tortoise, the Logos in that form, makes Himself
the base of the revolving axis of evolution. That is typified by Mandara, the
mountain which, placed on the tortoise, is made to revolve by the hosts of
Suras and Asuras, one pulling at the head of the serpent, and the other at the
tail the positive and negative forces that I spoke of yesterday. So the
churning begins in matter, evolving types of life. The type is ever evolved
before the lower manifestation, the type appears
before the copies of it are born in the lower world. And how often have the
students of the great Teachers themselves seen the very thing occur; the
churning of the waters of matter giving forth all the types of the many sorts
and species that are generated in the lower world; these are the archetypes, as
we call them, of classes and creatures, always produced in preparation for the
forward stretch of evolution. There came forth one by one the archetypes, the
elephant, the horse, the woman, and so on, one after another, showing the track
along which evolution was to go. And first of all, Amrita, nectar of
immortality, comes forth, symbol of the one life which passes through every
form and that life appears above the waters the taking of which is necessary
in order that every form may live.
We
cannot delay on details; I can only trace hastily the outline, showing you how
real is the truth that underlies the story, and as that gradually goes on and
the types are ready, there comes the whelming of the world under the waters,
and the great continents vanish for a time.
Then
comes the third Avatara, the Varaha. No earth is to be
seen; the waters of the flood have overwhelmed it. The types that are to be
produced on earth are waiting in the higher region for place on which to
manifest. How shall the earth be brought up from the waters which have
overwhelmed it? Now once again the great Helper is needed, the God, the
Protector of Evolution. Then in the form of a mighty Boar, whose form filled
the heaven, plunging down into the waters that He alone could separate, the
Great One descends. He brings up the earth from the lower region where it was
lying awaiting His coming; and the land rises up again from below the surface
of the flood, and the vast Lemurian continent is the earth of that far-off age.
Here science has a word to say, rightly enough, that on the Lemurian continent
were developed many types of life, and there the mammals first made their
appearance. Quite so; that was exactly what the sages taught thousands upon
thousands of years ago; that when the Boar, the great type of the mammal,
plunged into the waters to bring up the earth, then was started the mammalian
evolution, and the continent thus rescued from the waters was crowded with the
forms of the mammalian kingdom. Just as the Fish had typified the Silurian
epoch, just as the Tortoise had started on its way the great amphibian
evolution, so did the Boar, that typical mammal, start the mammalian evolution,
and we come to the Lemurian continent with its wonderful variety of forms of
mammalian life. Not so very ignorant after all, you see, the ancient writings!
For men are only re-discovering to-day what has been in the hands of the
followers of the Rishis for thousands, tens of thousands of years.
Then
we come to a strange incarnation on this Lemurian continent: frightful
conflicts existed; we are nearing what in the theosophical nomenclature is the
middle of the third Race, and man as man will shortly appear with all the
characteristics of his nature. He is not yet quite come to birth; strange forms
are seen, half human and half animal, wholly monstrous; terrible struggles
arise between these monstrous forms born from the slime as it is said from
the remains of former creations and the newer and higher life in which the
future evolution is enshrined. These forms are represented in the Puranas as
those of the race of Daityas, who ruled the earth, who struggled against the
Deva manifestations, who conquered the Devas from time to time, who subjected
them, who ruled over earth and heaven alike, bringing every thing under their
sway. You may read in the splendid stanzas of the Book of Dzyan, as given us by
H. P. B., hints of that mighty struggle of which the Puranas are so full, a
struggle which was as real as any struggle of later days, an absolute
historical fact that many of us have seen. We are instructed over and over
again of a frightful conflict of forms, the forms of the past, monstrous in
their strength and in their outline, against whom the Sons of Light were
battling, against whom the great Lords of the Flame came down. One of these
conflicts, the greatest of all, is given in the story of the Avatara known as
that of Narasimha the Man-Lion. You know the story; what Hindu does not know
the story of Prahlada? In him we have typified the dawning spirituality which
is to show in the higher races of Daityas as they pass on into definite human
evolution, and their form gives way that sexual man may be born. I need not
dwell on that familiar story of the devotee of Vishnu; how his Daitya father
strove to kill him because the name of Hari was ever on his lips; how he strove
to slay him, with a sword, and the sword fell broken from the neck of the
child; how then he tried to poison him, and Vishnu appeared and ate first of
the poisoned rice, so that the boy might eat it with the name of Hari on his
lips; how his father strove to slay him by the furious elephant, by the fang of
the serpent, by throwing him over a precipice, and by crushing him under a
stone. But ever the cry of "Hari, Hari", brought deliverance, for in
the elephant, in the fang of the serpent, in the precipice, and in the stone,
Hari was ever present, and his devotee was safe in that presence: how finally
when the father, challenging the omnipresence of the Deity, pointed to the
stone pillar and said in mucking language: "Is your Hari also in the
pillar?" "Hari, Hari," cried the boy, and the pillar burst
asunder, and the mighty form came forth and slew the Daitya that doubted, in
order that he might learn the omnipresence of the Supreme. A
story? facts, not fiction; truth, not imagination; and if you could look
back to the time of those struggles, there would seem to you nothing strange or
abnormal in the story; for you would see it repeated with less vividness in the
smaller struggles where the Sons of the Fire were purging and redeeming the
earth, in order that the later human evolution might take place.
We
pass from those four Avataras, every one of which comes within what is called
the Satya Yuga of the earth not of the race remember, not the smaller cycle,
but of the earth the Satya Yuga of the earth as a whole, when periods of time
were of immense length, and when progress was marvellously slow. Then we come
to the next age, that which we call the Treta Yuga, that which is, in the
theosophical chronology and I put the two together in order that students may
be able to work their way out in detail the middle of the third Root Race,
when humanity receives the light from above, and when man as man begins to
evolve. How is that evolution marked? By the coming of the
Supreme in human form, as Vamana, the Dwarf. The
Dwarf? Yes; for man was as yet but dwarf in the truly human stature,
although vast in outer appearance; and He came as the inner man, small, yet
stronger than the outer form; against him was Bali, the mighty, showing the
outer form, while Vamana, the Dwarf, showed the man that should be. And when
It
is curious this question of the caste of the Avataras. When we once come to the
human Avataras, They are mostly kshattriyas, as you know, but in two cases They are brahmanas, and this is one of them; for He was
going to beg, and kshattriya might not beg. Only he to whom the earth's wealth
should be as nothing, who should have no store of wealth to hold, to whom gold
and earth should be as one, only he may go to beg. He was an ancient brahmana,
not a modern brahmana.
He
came with begging bowl in hand, to beg of the king; for of what use is
sacrifice unless something be given at the sacrifice? Now
And
I may just remind you in passing that there is one word in the Rig Veda, which
refers to this very Avatara, that has been a source of endless controversy and
dispute as to its meaning; there it is said:
Through
all this world strode Vishnu; thrice His foot He planted and the whole Was gathered in His footstep's dust. (
That
too is one of the "babblings of child humanity." I know not what
figure the greatest man could use more poetical, more full of meaning, more
sublime in its imagery, than that the whole world was gathered in the dust of
the foot of the Supreme. For what is the world save the dust of His footsteps,
and how would it have any life save as His foot has touched it?
So
we pass, still treading onwards in the Treta Yuga, and we come to another
manifestation that of Parashurama; a strange Avatara you may think, and a
partial Avatara, let me say, as we shall see when we come to look at His life
and read the words that are spoken of Him. The Yuga had now gone far and the
kshattriya caste had risen and was ruling, mighty in its power, great in its
authority, the one warrior ruling caste, and alas! abusing
its power, as men will do when souls are still being trained, and are young for
their surroundings. The kshattriya caste abused its power, built up in order
that it might rule; the duty of the ruler, remember, is essentially protection:
but these used their power not to protect, but to plunder, not to help but to
oppress. A terrible lesson must be taught the ruling caste, in order that it
might learn, if possible, that the duty of ruling was to protect and support
and help, and not to tyrannise and plunder. The first great lesson was given to
the kings of the earth, the rulers of men, a lesson
that had to be repeated over and over again, and is not yet completely learnt.
A divine manifestation came in order that that lesson might be taught; and the
Teacher was not a kshattriya save by mother. A strange story,
that story of the birth. Food given to two kshattriya women, each of
whom was to bear a son, the husband of one of them a brahmana; and the two
women exchanged the food, and that meant to bring forth a kshattriya son was
taken by the woman with the brahmana husband. An accident, men would say; there
are no accidents in a universe of law. The food which was full of kshattriya
energy thus went into the brahmana family, for it would not have been fitting
that a kshattriya should destroy kshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have
been so well taught to the world. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the
brahmana coming with an axe to slay the kshattriya, and three times seven times
that axe was raised in slaughter, cutting the kshattriya trunk off from the
surface of the earth. But while Parashurama was still in the body, a greater
Avatara came forth to show what a kshattriya king should be. The kshattriyas
abusing their place and their power were swept away by Parashurama, and, ere He
had left the earth where the bitter lesson had been taught, the ideal
kshattriya came down to teach, now by example, the lesson of what should be,
after the lesson of what should not be had been enforced. The boy Rama was
born, on whose exquisite story we have not time long to dwell, the ideal ruler,
the utterly perfect king. While a boy He went forth with the great teacher
Visvamitra, in order to protect the Yogi's sacrifice; a boy, almost a child,
but able to drive away, as you remember, the Rakshasas that interfered with the
sacrifice, and then He and His beloved brother Lakshmana and the Yogi went on
to the court of king Janaka. And there, at the court, was a great bow, a bow
which had belonged to Mahadeva Himself. To bend and string that bow was the
task for the man who would wed Sita, the child of marvellous birth, the maiden
who had sprung from the furrow as the plough went through the earth, who had no
physical father or physical mother. Who should wed the peerless maiden, the
incarnation of Shri, Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu?
Who should wed Her save the Avatara of Vishnu Himself?
So the mighty bow remained unstrung, for who might string it until the boy Rama
came? And He takes it up with boyish carelessness, and bends it so strongly
that it breaks in half, the crash echoing through earth and sky. He weds Sita,
the beautiful, and goes forth with Her, and with His brother Lakshmana and his
bride, and with His father who had come to the bridal, and with a vast
procession, wending their way back to their own town Ayodhya. This breaking of Mahadeva's
bow has rung through earth, the crashing of the bow has shaken all the worlds,
and all, both men and Devas, know that the bow has been broken. Among the
devotees of Mahadeva, Parashurama hears the clang of the broken bow, the bow of
the One He worshipped; and proud with the might of His strength, still with the
energy of Vishnu in Him, He goes forth to meet this insolent boy, who had dared
to break the bow that no other arm could bend. He challenges Him, and handing
His own bow bids Him try what He can do with that Can
He shoot an arrow from its string? Rama takes this offered bow, strings it, and
sets an arrow on the string. Then He stops, for in front of Him there is the
body of a brahmana; shall He draw an arrow against that form? As the two Ramas
stand face to face, the energy of the elder, it is written, passes into the
younger; the energy of Vishnu, the energy of the Supreme, leaves the form in
which it had been dwelling and enters the higher manifestation of the same
divine life. The bow was stretched and the arrow waiting, but Rama would not
shoot it forth lest harm should come, until He had pacified His antagonist;
then feeling that energy pass, Parashurama bows before Rama, diviner than
Himself, hails Him as the Supreme Lord of the worlds, bends in reverence before
Him, and then goes away. That Avatara was over, although the form in which the
energy had dwelt yet persisted. That is why I said it was a lesser Avatara.
Where you have the form persisting when the influence is withdrawn, you have
the clear proof that there the incarnation cannot be said to be complete; the
passing from the one to the other is the sign of the energy taken back by the
Giver and put into a new vessel in which new work is to be done.
The
story of Rama you know; we need not follow it further in detail; we spoke of it
yesterday in its highest aspect as combating the forces of evil and starting
the world, as it were, anew. We find the great reign of Rama lasting ten
thousand years in the Dvapara Yuga, the Yuga at the close of which Shri Krishna
came.
Then
comes the Mighty One, Shri Krishna Himself, of whom I speak not to-day; we will
try to study that Avatara to-morrow with such insight and reverence as we may
possess. Pass over that then for the moment, leaving it for fuller study, and
we come to the ninth Avatara as it is called, that of the Lord Buddha. Now
round this much controversy has raged, and a theory exists current to some
extent among the Hindus that the Lord Buddha, though an incarnation of Vishnu,
came to lead astray those who did not believe the Vedas, came to spread
confusion upon earth. Vishnu is the Lord of order, not of disorder; the Lord of
love, not the Lord of hatred; the Lord of compassion, who only slays to help
the life onward when the form has become an obstruction.
And they blaspheme who speak of an incarnation of the Supreme, as coming to
mislead the world that He has made. Rightly did your own learned pandit, T.
Subba Row, speak of that theory with the disdain born of knowledge; for no one
who has a shadow of occult learning, no one who knows anything of the inner
realities of life, could thus speak of that beautiful and gracious
manifestation of the Supreme, or dream that He could take the mighty form of an
Avatara in order to mislead.
But
there is another point to put about this Avatara, on which, perhaps, I may come
into conflict with people on another side. For this is the
difficulty of keeping the middle path, the razor path which goes neither to the
left nor to the right, along which the great Gurus lead us. On either
side you find objection to the central teaching. The Lord Buddha, in the
ordinary sense of the word, was not what we have defined as an Avatara. He was
the first of our own humanity who climbed upwards to that point, and there merged
in the Logos and received full illumination. His was not a body taken by the
Logos for the purpose of revealing Himself, but was the last in myriads of
births through which he had climbed to merge in Ishvara at last That is not
what is normally spoken of as an Avatara, though, you may say, the result truly
is the same. But in the case of the Avatara, the evolving births are in
previous kalpas, and the Avatara comes after the man has merged in the Logos,
and the body is taken for the purpose of revelation. But he who became Gautama
Buddha had climbed though birth after birth in our own kalpa, as well as in the
kalpas that went before; and he was incarnated many a time when the great
Fourth Race dwelt in mighty Atlantis, and rose onward to take the office of the
Buddha; for the Buddha is the title of an office, not of a particular man.
Finally by his own struggles, the very first of our race, he was able to reach
that great function in the world. What is the function? That
of the Teacher of Gods and men. The previous Buddhas had been Buddhas
who came from another planet Humanity had not lived long enough here to evolve
its own son to that height. Gautama Buddha was human born. He had evolved
through the Fourth Race into this first family of the Aryan Race, the Hindu. By
birth after birth in
But
the proclamation was not made primarily for
Hence
you find in the teachings of the Lord Buddha two great divisions; one a
philosophy meant for the learned, then an ethic disjoined from the philosophy,
so far as the masses are concerned, noble and pure and great, yet easy to be
grasped. For the Lord knew that we were going into an age of deeper and deeper
materialism, that other nations were going to arise, that
We
come to the tenth Avatara, the future one, the Kalki. Of that but little may be
said; but one or two hints perchance may be given. With His coming will dawn a
brighter age; with His coming the Kali Yuga will pass away; with His coming
will also come a higher race of men. He will come when there is born upon earth
the sixth Root Race. There will then be a great change in the world, a great
manifestation of truth, of occult truth, and when He comes then occultism will
again be able to show itself to the world by proofs that none will be able to
challenge or to deny; and He in His coming will give the rule over the sixth
Root Race to the two Kings, of whom you read in the Kalki Purana. As we look
back down the past stream of time we find over and over again two great figures
standing side by side the ideal King and the ideal Priest. They work
together; the one rules, the other teaches; the one
governs the nation, the other instructs it And such a pair of mighty ones come
down in every age for each and every Race. Each Race has its own Teacher, the
ideal brahmana, called in the Buddhist language the Bodhisattva, the learned,
full of wisdom and truth. Each has also its own ruler, the Manu. Those two we
can trace in the past, in Their actual incarnations; and we see Them in the
third, the fourth, and fifth Races; the Manu in each race is the ideal King,
the Brahmana in each race is the ideal Teacher; and we learn that when the
Kalki Avatara shall come He shall call from the sacred village of Shamballa
the village known to the occultist though not to the profane two Kings who
have remained throughout the age in order to help the world in its evolution.
And the name of the Manu who will be the King of the next Race, is said in the Purana
to be Moru; and the name of the ideal brahmana who will be the Teacher of the
next Race is said to be Devapi; and these two are King and Teacher for the
sixth Race that is to be born.
Those
of you who have read something of the wondrous story of the past will know that
the choosing out of the new Race, the evolving of it, the making of a new Root
Race, is a thing that takes centuries, milleniums, sometimes hundreds of
thousands of years; and that the two who are to be its King and Priest, the
Manu and the Brahmana, are at Their work throughout the centuries, choosing the
men who may be the seeds of the new Race. In the womb of the fourth Race a
choice was made out of which the fifth was born; isolated in the Gobi desert,
for enormous periods of time, that chosen family was trained, educated, reared,
till its Manu incarnated in it, and its Teacher also incarnated in it, and the
first Aryan family was led forth to settle in Aryavarta. Now in the womb of the
fifth Race, the sixth Race is a choosing, and the King and the Teacher of the
sixth Race are already at Their mighty and beneficent
work. They are choosing one by one, trying and testing, those who shall form
the nucleus of the sixth Race; They are taking soul by soul, subjecting each to
many a test, to many an ordeal, to see if there be the strength out of which a
new Race can spring; and in fulness of time when Their work is ready, then will
come the Kalki Avatara, to sweep away the darkness, to send the Kali Yuga into
the past, to proclaim the birth of the new Satya Yuga, with a new and more
spiritual Race, that is to live therein. Then will He call out the chosen, the
King Moru and the Brahmana Devapi, and give into Their hands the Race that now
They are building, the Race to inhabit a fairer world, to carry onwards the
evolution of humanity.
Shri
Krishna
My
brothers, there are themes so lofty that tongue of Deva would not suffice to do
full justice to that which they enclose, and when we think of the music of Shri
Krishna's flute, all human music seems as discord amidst its strains.
Nevertheless since bhakti grows by thought and word, it is not amiss that we
should come near a subject so sacred; only in dealing with it we must needs
feel our incompetency, we must needs regret our limitations, we must needs wish
for greater power of expression than we can have down here. For, perhaps, amid
all the divine manifestations that have glorified the world, there is none
which has aroused a wider, tenderer feeling than the Avatara which we are to
study this morning.
The
austerer glories of Mahadeva, the Lord of the burning ground, attract more the
hearts of those who are weary of the world and who see the futility of worldly
attractions; but Shri Krishna is the God of the household, the God of family
life, the God whose manifestations attract in every phase of His
Self-revelation; He is human to the very core; born in humanity, as He has
said, He acts as a man. As a child, He is a real child, full of playfulness, of
fun, of winsome grace. Growing up into boyhood, into manhood, He exercises the
same human fascination over the hearts of men, of women, and of children; the
God in whose presence there is always joy, the God in whose presence there is
continual laughter and music. When we think of Shri Krishna we seem to hear the
ripple of the river, the rustling of the leaves in the forest, the lowing of
the kine in the pasture, the laughter of happy children playing round their
parents' knees. He is so fundamentally the God who is human in everything; who
bends in human sympathy over the cradle of the babe, who sympathises with the
play of the youth, who is the friend of the lover, the blesser of the
bridegroom and the bride, who smiles on the young mother when her first-born
lies in her arms everywhere the God of love and of human happiness; what
wonder that His winsome grace has fascinated the hearts of men!
We
are to study Him, then, this morning. Now an Avatara I say this to clear away
some preliminary difficulties an Avatara has two great aspects to the world.
First, He is a historical fact Do not let that be forgotten. When you are
reading the story of the great Ones, you are reading history and not fable. But
it is more than history; the Avataras acts out on the stage of the world a
mighty drama. He is, as it were, a player on the world's of Shri Krishna, and
the vast range that He covered as regards His manifestations of complex human
life, in order to render the vast subject a little more manageable, I have
divided this drama, as it were, into its separate acts. I am using for a moment
the language of the stage, for I think it will make my meaning rather more clear. That is, in dealing with His life, I have taken
its stages which are clearly marked out, and in each of these we shall see one
great type of the teaching which the world is meant to learn from the playing
of this drama before the eyes of men. To some extent the stages correspond with
marked periods in the life, and to some extent they overlap each other; but by having
them clearly in our minds we shall be able, I think, to grasp better the whole
object of the Avatara we shall have as it were compartments in the mind in
which the different types of teaching may be placed.
First
then He comes to show forth to the world a great Object of bhakti, and the love
of God to His bhakta, or devotee. That is the aim of the first act of the great
drama to stand forth as the Object of devotion, and to show forth the love
with which God regards His devotees. We have there a marked stage in the life
of Shri Krishna.
Then
the second act of the drama may be said to be His character as the destroyer of
the opposing forces that retard evolution, and that
runs through the whole of His life.
The
third act is that of the statesman, the wise, politic, and intellectual actor
on the world's stage of history, the guiding force of the nation by His
wondrous policy and intelligence, standing forth not as king but rather as
statesman.
Then
we have Him as friend, the human friend, especially of the Pandavas and of
Arjuna.
The
next act is that of Shri Krishna as Teacher, the world-teacher, not the teacher
of one race alone.
Then
we see Him in the strange and wondrous aspect of the Searcher of the hearts of
men, the trier and tester of human nature.
Finally,
we may regard Him in His manifestation as the Supreme, the all-pervading life
of the universe, who looks on nothing as outside Himself, who embraces in His
arms evil and good, darkness and light, nothing alien to Himself.
Into
these seven acts, as it were, the life-history may be divided, and each of them
might serve as the study of a life-time instead of our compressing them into
the lecture of a morning. We will, however, take them in turn, however
inadequately; for the hints I give can be worked out by you in detail according
to the constitution of your own minds. One aspect will attract one man, another
aspect will attract another; all the aspects are worthy of study, all are
provocative of devotion. But most of all, with regard to devotion, is the
earliest stage of His life inspiring and full of benediction, those early years
of the Lord as infant, as child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in
the forest of Brindaban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wives
and their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. It is
noticeable and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would not have been
uttered that Shri Krishna chose to show Himself as the great object of
devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the form of a child, not in that of a
man.
Come
then with me to the time of His birth, remembering that before that birth took
place upon earth, the deities had been to Vishnu in the higher regions, and had
asked Him to interfere in order that earth might be lightened of her load, that
the oppression of the incarnate Daityas might be stayed; and then Vishnu said
to the Gods: Go ye and incarnate yourselves in portions among men, go ye and
take birth amid humanity. Great Rishis also took birth in the place where
Vishnu Himself was to be born, so that ere He came, the surroundings of the
drama were, as it were, made in the place of His coming, and those that we
speak of as the cowherds of Vraja, Nanda and those around Him, the Gopis and
all the inhabitants of that wondrously blessed spot, were, we are told,
"God-like persons"; nay more, they were "the Protectors of the
worlds" who were born as men for the progress of the world. But that means
that the Gods themselves had come down and taken birth as men; and when you
think of all that took place throughout the wonderful childhood of the Lila [Play ] of Shri Krishna, you must remember that those who
played that act of the drama were no ordinary men, no ordinary women; they were
the Protectors of the worlds incarnated as cowherds round Him. And the Gopis,
the graceful wives of the shepherds, they were the Rishis of ancient days, who
by devotion to Vishnu had gained the blessing of being incarnated as Gopis, in
order that they might surround His childhood, and pour out their love at the
tiny feet of the boy they saw as boy, of the God they worshipped as supreme.
When
all these preparations were made for the coming of the child, the child was
born. I am not dwelling on all the well-known incidents that surrounded His
birth, the prophecy that the destroyer of Kansa was to be born, the futile
shutting up in the dungeon, the chaining with irons, and all the other follies
with which the earthly tyrant strove to make impossible of accomplishment the
decree of the Supreme. You all know how his plans came to nothing, as the
mounds of sand raised by the hands of children are swept into a level plain
when one wave of the sea ripples over the playground of the child. He was born,
born in His four-armed form, shining out for the moment in the dungeon, which
before His birth had been irradiated by Him through His mother's body, who was
said to be like an alabaster vase so pure was she with a flame within it.
For the Lord Shri Krishna was within her womb, herself the alabaster vase which
was as a lamp containing Him, the world's light, so that the glory illuminated
the darkness of the dungeon where she lay. At His birth he came as Vishnu, for
the moment showing Himself with all the signs of the Deity on Him, with the
discus, with the conch, with the shrivatsa on His breast, with all the
recognised emblems of the Lord. But that form quickly vanished, and only the
human child lay before His parents' eyes. And the father, you remember, taking
Him up, passed through the great locked doors and all the rest of it, and
carried Him in safety into his brother's house, where He was to dwell in the
place prepared for His coming.
As
a babe He showed forth the power that was in Him, as we shall see, when we come
to the second stage, the destroyer of the forces of evil. But for the moment
only watch Him as He plays in his foster mother's house, as He gambols with
children of His own age. And as He is growing into a boy, able to go alone, He
begins wandering through the fields and through the forest, and the notes of
His wondrous flute are heard in all the groves and over all the plains. The
child, a child of five only five years of age when He wandered with His magic
flute in His hands, charming the hearts of all that heard; so that the boys left
tending the cattle and followed the music of the flute; the women left their
household tasks and followed where the flute was playing; the men ceased their
labours that they might feast their ears on the music of the flute. Nay, not
only the men, the women and the children, but the cows, it is said, stopped
their grazing to listen as the notes fell on their ears, and the calves ceased
suckling as the music came to them on the wind, and the river rippled up that
it might hear the better, and the trees bowed down their branches that they
might not lose a note, and the birds no longer sang lest their music should
make discord in the melody, as the wondrous child wandered over the country,
and the music of heaven flowed from His magic flute.
And
thus He lived and played and sported, and the hearts of all the cowherds and of
their wives and daughters went out to that marvellous child. And He played with
them and loved them, and they would take Him up and place His baby feet on
their bosoms, and would sing to Him as the Lord of all, the Supreme, the mighty One. They recognised the Deity in the child that
played round their homes, and many lessons He taught them, this child, amid His
gambols and His pranks lessons that still teach the world, and that those who
know most understand best.
Let
me take one instance which ignorant lips have used most in order to insult, to
try to defame the majesty that they do not understand. But let me say this:
that I believe that in most cases where these bitter insults are uttered, they
are uttered by people who have never really read the story, and who have heard
only bits of it and have supplied the rest out of their own imaginations. I
therefore take a particular incident which I have heard most spoken of with
bitterness as a proof of the frightful immorality of Shri Krishna.
While
the child of six was one day wandering along, as He would, a number of the
Gopis were bathing nude in the river, having cast aside their cloths as they
should not have done, that being against the law and showing carelessness of
womanly modesty. Leaving their garments on the bank they had plunged into the
river. The child of six saw this with the eye of insight, and He gathered up
their cloths and climbed up a tree near by, carrying them with Him, and threw
them round His own shoulders and waited to see what would chance. The water was
bitterly cold and the Gopis were shivering; but they did not like to come out
of it before the clear steady eyes of the child. And He called them to come and
get the garments they had thrown off; and as they hesitated, the baby lips told
them that they had sinned against God by immodestly casting aside the garments
that should have been worn, and must therefore expiate their sin by coming and
taking from His hands that which they had cast aside. They came and worshipped,
and He gave them back their robes. An immoral story, with a child of six as the
central figure! It is spoken of as though he were a full grown man, insulting
the modesty of women. The Gopis were Rishis, and the Lord, the Supreme, as a
babe is teaching them a lesson. But there is more than that; there is a
profound occult lesson below the story a story repeated over and over again
in different forms and it is this: that when the soul is approaching the
supreme Lord at one great stage of initiation, it has to pass through a great
ordeal; stripped of everything on which it has hitherto relied, stripped of
everything that is not of its inner Self, deprived of all external aid, of all
external protection, of all external covering, the soul itself, in its own
inherent life, must stand naked and alone with nothing to rely on, save the
life of the Self within it If it flinches before the ordeal, if it clings to
anything to which hitherto it has looked for help, if in that supreme hour it
cries out for friend or helper, nay even for the Guru himself, the soul fails
in that ordeal. Naked and alone it must go forth, with absolutely none to aid
it save the divinity within itself. And it is that nakedness of the soul as it
approaches the supreme goal, that is told of in that story of Shri Krishna, the
child, and the Gopis, the nakedness of life before the One who gave it You find
many another similar allegory. When the Lord comes in the Kalki, the tenth,
Avatara, He fights on the battlefield and is overcome. He uses all His weapons;
every weapon fails Him; and it is not till He casts every weapon aside and
fights with His naked hands, that He conquers. Exactly the
same idea. Intellect, everything, fails the naked soul before God.[ So in the "Imitation of Christ", the work of an
occultist, it is written that we must "naked follow the naked Jesus."
]
If
I have taken up this story specially, out of hundreds of stories, to dwell
upon, it is because it is one of the points of attack, and because you who are
Hindus by birth ought to know enough of the inner truths of your own religion
not to stand silent and ashamed when attacks are made, but should speak with
knowledge and thus prevent such blasphemies.
Then
we learn more details of His play with the Gopis as a child of seven: how He
wandered into the forest and disappeared and all went after Him seeking Him;
how they tried to imitate His own play, in order to fill up the void that was
left by His absence. The child of seven, that He was at this time, disappeared
for a while, but came back to those who loved Him, as God ever does with His
bhaktas. And then takes place that wondrous dance, the Rasa [Dance ] of Shri
Krishna, part of His Lila, when He multiplied Himself so that every pair of
Gopis found Him standing between them; amid the ring of women the child was
there between each pair of them, giving a hand to each; and so the mystic dance
was danced. This is another of these points of attack which are made by
ignorant minds. What but an unclean mind can see aught that is impure in the
child dancing there as lover and beloved? It is as though He looked forward
down the ages, and saw what later would be said, and it is as though He kept
the child form in the Lila, in order that He might breathe harmlessly into
men's blind unclean hearts the lesson that He would fain give. And what was the
lesson? One other incident I remind you of, before I draw the lesson from the
whole of this stage of His life. He sent for food. He who is the Feeder of the worlds, and some of His brahmanas refused to give it, and
sent away the boys who came to ask for food for Him; and when the men refused.
He sent them back to the women, to see if they too would refuse the food their
husbands had declined to give. And the women who have ever loved the Lord
caught up the food from every part of their houses where they could find it and
went out, crowds of them, bearing food for Him, leaving house, and husband, and
household duties. And all tried to stop them, but they would not be stopped;
and brothers and husbands and friends tried to hold them back, but no, they
must go to Him, to their Lover, Shri Krishna; He must not be hungry, the child
of their love. And so they went and gave Him food and He ate. But they say:
They left their husbands! they left their homes! how wrong to leave husbands and homes and follow after Shri
Krishna! The implication always is that their love was purely physical love, as
though that were possible with a child of seven. I know that words of physical
love are used, and I know it is said in a curious translation that "they
came under the spell of Cupid." It matters not for the words,
let us look at the facts. There is not a religion in the world that has not
taught that when the Supreme calls, all else must be cast aside. I have seen
Shri Krishna contrasted with Jesus of Nazareth to the detriment of Shri
Krishna, and a contrast is drawn between the purity of the one and the impurity
of the other; the proof given was that the husbands were left while the wives
went to play with and wait on the Lord. But I have read words that came from
the lips of Jesus of
It
is not only that you find the same teaching in both religions; but in every other
religion of the world the terms of physical love are used to describe the
relation between the soul and God. Take the "Song of Solomon". If you
take the Christian Bible and read the margin you will see "The Love of
Christ for His Church"; and if from the margin you look down the column,
you will find the most passionate of love songs, a description of the exquisite
female form in all the details of its attractive beauty; the cry of the lover
to the beloved to come to him that they might take their fill of love.
"Christ and His Church" is supposed to make it all right, and I am
content that it should be so. I have no word to say against the "Song of
Solomon", nor any complaint against its gorgeous and luxuriant imagery;
but I refuse to take from the Hebrew as pure, what I am to refuse from the
Hindu as impure. I ask that all may be judged by the same standard,
and that if one be condemned the same condemnation may be levelled against the
other. So also in the songs of the Sufis, the mystics of the faith of Islam,
woman's love is ever used as the best symbol of love between the soul and God.
In all ages the love between husband and wife has been the symbol of union
between the Supreme and His devotees; the closest of all earthly ties, the most
intimate of all earthly unions, the merging of heart and body of twain into one
where will you find a better image of the merging of the soul in its God?
Ever has the object of devotion been symbolised as the lover or husband, ever
the devotee as wife or mistress. This symbology is universal, because it is
fundamentally true. The absolute surrender of the wife to the husband is the
type upon earth of the absolute surrender of the soul to God. That is the
justification of the Rasa of Shri Krishna; that is the explanation of the story
of His life in Vraja.
I
have dwelt specially on this, my brothers, you all
know why. Let us pass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century
this story provoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming
in of the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas put into
the Bhagavad-Purana. I would to God that the Rishis had taken away the Shrimad
Bhagavata from a race that is unworthy to have it; that as They have already
withdrawn the greater part of the Vedas, the greater part of the ancient books,
they would take away also this story of the love of Shri Krishna, until men are
pure enough to read it without blasphemy and clean enough to read it without
ideas of sexuality.
Pass
from this to the next great stage, that of the Destroyer of evil, shortly, very
shortly. From the time when as a babe but a few weeks old He sucked to death
the Rakshasi, Putana; from the time He entered the great cave made by the
demon, and expanding Himself shivered the whole into fragments; from the time
He trampled on the head of the serpent Kaliya so that it might not poison the
water needed for the drinking of the people; until He left Vraja to meet Kansa,
we find Him ever chasing away every form of evil that came within the limits of
His abode. We are told that when He had left Vraja and stood in the tournament
field of Kansa with His brother, His brother and Himself
were mere boys, in the tender delicate bodies of youths. After the whole of the
Lila was over They were still children, when They went
forth to fight. From that time onwards He met, one after another, the great
incarnations of evil and crushed them with His resistless strength: we need not
dwell on these stories, for they fill His life.
We
come to the third stage of Statesman, a marvellously interesting feature in His
life the tact, the delicacy, the foresight, the skill in always putting the
man opposed to Him in the wrong, and so winning His way and carrying others
with Him. As you know, this part of His life is played out especially in
connection with the Pandavas. He is the one who in every difficulty steps
forward as ambassador; it is He who goes with Arjuna and Bhima to slay the
giant king Jarasandha, who was going to make a human sacrifice to Mahadeva, a
sacrifice that was put a stop to as blasphemous; it was He who went with them
in order that the conflict might take place without transgressing the strictest
rules of kshattriya morality. Follow Him as He and Arjuna and his brother enter
into the city of the king. They will not come by the open gate,
that is the pathway of the friend. They break down a portion of the wall
as a sign that they come as foes. They will not go undecorated; and challenged
why they wore flowers and sandal the answer is that they come for the
celebration of a triumph, the fulfilling of a vow. Offered food, the answer of
the great ambassador is that they will not take food then, that they will meet
the king later and explain their purpose. When the time arrives He tells him in
the most courteous but the clearest language that all these acts have been
performed that he may know that they had come not as friends but as foes to
challenge him to battle. So again when the question arises, after the thirteen
years of exile, how shall the land be won back without struggle, without fight,
you see Him standing in the assembly of Pandavas and their friends with the
wisest counsel how perchance war may be averted; you see Him offering to go as
ambassador that all the magic of His golden tongue may be used for the
preservation of peace; you see Him going as ambassador and avoiding all the
pavilions raised by the order of Duryodhana, that He may not take from one who
is a foe a courtesy that might bind him as a friend. So when he pays the call
on Duryodhana that courtesy demands, never failing in the perfect duty of the
ambassador, fulfilling every demand of politeness, He will not touch the food
that would make a bond between Himself and the one against whom He had come to
struggle. See how the only food that He will take is the food of the King's
brother, for that alone. He says, "is clean and
worthy to be eaten by me." See how in the assembly of hostile kings He
tries to pacify and tries to please. See how He apologises with the gentlest
humility; how to the great king, the blind king, He speaks in the name of the
Pandavas as suppliant, not as outraged and indignant foe. See how with soft
words He tries to turn away words of wrath, and uses every device of oratory to
win their hearts and convince their judgments. See how later again, when the
battle of Kurukshetra is over, when all the sons of the blind king are slain,
see how He goes once more as ambassador to meet the childless father and, still
bitterer, the childless mother, that the first anger may break itself on Him,
and His words may charm away the wrath and soothe the grief of the bereft. See
how later on He still guides and advises till all the work is done, till His
task is accomplished and His end is drawing near. A statesman of marvellous ability;
a politician of keenest tact and insight; as though to say to men of the world
that when they are acting as men of the world they should be careful of
righteousness, but also careful of discretion and of skill, that there is
nothing alien to the truth of religion in the skill of the tongue and in the
use of the keen intelligence of the brain.
Then
pass on again from Him as Statesman to His character as Friend. Would that I
had time to dwell on it, and paint you some of the fair pictures of His relations
with the family He loved so well, from the day when, standing in the midst of
the self-choice of Krishna, the fair future wife of the Pandavas, He saw for
the first time in that human incarnation Arjuna, His beloved of old. Think what
it must have been, when the eyes of the two young men met, with memories in the
one pair of the close friendship of the past, and the drawing of the other by
the tie of those many births to the ancient friend whom he knew not. From that
day when they first meet in this life onwards, how constant His friendship, how
ceaseless His protection, how careful His thought to guard their honour and
their lives; and yet how wise; at every point where His presence would have
frustrated the object of His coming, He goes away. He is not present at the
great game of dice, for that was necessary for the working out of the divine
purpose; He was away. Had He been there, He must needs
have interfered; had He been there, He could not have left His friends unaided.
He remained away, until Draupadi cried in her agony for help when her modesty
was threatened; then he came with Dharma and clothed her with garments as they
were dragged from her; but then the game was over, the dice were cast, and
destiny had gone on its appointed road.
How
strange to watch that working! One object followed without change, without
hesitation: but every means used that might give
people an opportunity of escaping if only they would. He came to bring about
that battle on Kurukshetra. He came, as we shall see in a moment, in order to
carry out that one object in preparation for the centuries that stretched in
front; but in the carrying of it out, He would give every chance to men who
were entangled in that evil by their own past, so that if one of them would
answer to His pleading he might come over to the side of light against the
forces of darkness. He never wavered in His object; yet He never left unused
one means that man could use to prevent that object taking place. A lesson full
of significance! The will of the Supreme must be done, but the doing of that
will is no excuse for any individual man who does not carry out the law to the
fullest of his power. Although the will must be carried out, everything should
be done that righteousness permits and that compassion suggests in order that
men may choose light rather than darkness, and that only the resolutely
obstinate may at last be whelmed in the ruin that falls upon the land.
As
Teacher need I speak of Him as teacher who gave the Bhagavad-Gita between the
contending armies on Kurukshetra? Teacher not of Arjuna alone, not of
As
Searcher of hearts Ah! here again He is so difficult
to understand, this Lord of Maya, this Master of illusion. He tests the hearts
of His beloved, not so much the world at large. To them is the teaching that
shall guide them aright. For Arjuna, for Bhima, for Yudhishthira, for them the
keener touch, the sharper trial, in order to see if within the heart one grain
of evil still remains, that will prevent their union with Himself. For what
does he seek? That they shall be His very own, that they
shall enter into His being. But they cannot enter therein while one seed
of evil remains in their hearts. They cannot enter therein while one sin is
left in their nature. And so in tenderness and not in anger, in wisest love and
not with a desire to mislead, the Lord of Love tries the hearts of His beloved,
so that any evil that is in them may be wrung out by the grip that He places on
them. Two or three occasions of it I remember. I may mention perhaps a couple
of them to show you the method of the trial. The battle of Kurukshetra had been
raging many a day; thousands and tens of thousands of the dead lay scattered on
that terrible field, and every day when the sun rose Bhishma came forth,
generalissimo of the army of the Kurus, carrying before him everything, save
where Arjuna barred his way; but Arjuna could not be everywhere; he was called
away, with the horses guided by the Charioteer Shri Krishna sweeping across the
field like a whirlwind, carrying victory in their course; and where the
Charioteer and Arjuna were not there Bhishma had his way. The hearts of the
Pandavas sank low within them, and at last one night under their tents, resting
ere the next day's struggle, the bitter despondency of King Yudhishthira broke
out in words, and he declared that until Bhishma was slain nothing could be
done. Then came the test from the lips of the searcher
of hearts. "Behold, I will go forth and slay him on the morrow."
Would Yudhishthira consent? A promise stood in his way. You may remember that
when Duryodhana and Arjuna went to Shri Krishna who lay sleeping, the question
arose as to what each should take. Alone, unarmed, Shri Krishna would go with
one, He would not fight; a mighty battalion of troops He would give to the
other. Arjuna chose the unarmed Krishna; Duryodhana, the mighty army ready to
fight; so the word of the Avatara was pledged that He would not fight. Unarmed
He went into the battle, clad in his yellow silken robe, and only with the whip
of the charioteer in His hand; twice, in order to stimulate Arjuna into combat,
He had sprung down from the chariot and gone forth with His whip in His hand as
though He would attack Bhishma and slay him where he fought Each time Arjuna
stopped Him, reminding Him of His words. Now came the
trial for the blameless King, as he is often called; should Shri Krishna break
His word to give him victory? He stood firm. "Thy promise is given",
was his answer; "that promise may not be broken." He passed the
trial; he stood the test But still one weakness was left in that noble heart;
one underlying weakness that threatened to keep him away from his Lord. The
lack of power to stand absolutely alone in the moment of trial, the ever
clinging to some one stronger than himself, in order that his own decision
might be upheld. That last weakness had to be burnt out as by fire. In a
critical moment of the battle the word came that the success of Drona was
carrying everything before him; that Drona was resistless and that the only way
to slay him was to spread the report that his son was dead, and then he would
no longer fight Bhima slew an elephant of the same name as Drona's son, and he
said in the hearing of Drona: "Ashvatthama is dead." But Drona would
not believe unless King Yudhishthira said so. Then the test came. Will he tell
a practical lie but a nominal truth, in order to win the battle? He refused;
not for his brother's pleadings would he do it Would
he stand firm by truth quite alone when all he revered seemed to be on the
other side? The great One said: "Say that Ashvatthama is slain".
Ought he to have done it because He, Shri Krishna, bade him? Ought he to have
told the lie because the revered One counselled it? Ah no! neither for the
voice of God nor man, may the human soul do a thing which he knows to be
against God and His law; and alone he must stand in the universe, rather than
sin against right And when the lie was told under cover of that excuse,
Yudhishthira doing what he wished in his heart under cover of the command from
one he revered, then he fell, his chariot descended to the ground, and
suffering and misery followed him from that day till the day of his ending,
until in the face of the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the
duty of protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven.
And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that
the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shri
Krishna counselled the telling of a lie! My brothers, can you not see beneath
the illusion? What is there in this world that the Supreme does not do? There
is no life but His, no Self but His, nothing save His life through all His universe; and every act is His act, when you go back
to the ultimates. He had warned them of that truth. "I" He said,
"am the gambling of the cheat", as well as the chants of the Veda.
Strange lesson, and hard to learn, and yet true. For at every stage of
evolution there is a lesson to be learnt He teaches all the lessons; at each
point of growth the next step is to be taken, and very often that step is the
experiencing of evil, in order that suffering may burn the desire for evil out
of the very heart. And just as the knife of the surgeon is different from the
knife of the murderer, although both may pierce the human flesh, the one
cutting to cure, the other to slay; so is the sharp knife of the Supreme, when
by experience of evil and consequent pain He purifies the man, different,
because the motive is other than the doing of evil to gratify passion, the
stepping aside from righteousness in order to please the lower nature.
Last
of all He shows himself as the Supreme; there is the Vaishnava form, the
universal form, the form that contains the universe. But still more is the Supreme
seen in the profound wisdom of the teaching, in the steadfastness of His walk
through life. Does it sound strange to say that God is seen more in the latter
than the former, that the outer form that contains the universe is less divine
than the perfect steadfast nature, swerving neither to the right hand nor the
left? Read that life again with this thought in your mind, of one purpose
followed to its end no matter what forces might play on the other side, and its
greatness may appear.
What
did He come to do? He came to give the last lesson to the kshattriya caste of
How
strange that sounds I To lay her open to invasion? He
who loved her to lay her open to conquest? He who had consecrated her, He who
had hallowed her plains and forests by His treading, and whose voice had rung
through her land? Aye, for He judges not as man judges,
and He sees the end from the beginning. India as she was of old, kept isolated
from all the world, was so kept that she might have the treasure of spiritual
knowledge poured into her and make a vessel for the
containing. But when you fill the vessel, you do not then put that vessel high
away on a shelf, and leave men thirsting for the liquid that it contains. The
mighty One filled His Indian vessel with the water of spiritual knowledge, and
at last the time came when that water should be poured out for the quenching of
the thirst of the world, and should not be left only for the quenching of the
thirst of a single nation, for the use of a single people. Therefore the Lover
of men came, in order that the water of life might be poured out; He broke down
the wall, so that the foreigner might overstep her borders. The Greeks swept
in, the Mussulmans swept in, invasion after invasion, invasion after invasion,
until the conquerors who now rule India were the latest in time. Do you see in
that only decay, only misery, only that
What
does it mean? I am not speaking politically, but from the standpoint of a
spiritual student, who is trying to understand how the evolution of the race
goes on. The people who last conquered India, who now rule her as governors,
are the people whose language is the most widely spread of all the languages of
the world, and it is likely to become the world's language. It belongs not only
to that little
There
is the deepest object of His coming, to prepare the spiritualisation of the
world. It is not enough that one nation shall be spiritual; it is not enough
that one country shall have wisdom; it is not enough that one land, however
mighty and however beloved and do not I love India as few of you love her? it is not enough that she should have the gold of spiritual
truth, and the rest of the world be paupers begging for a coin. No; far better
that for a time she should sink in the scale of nations, in order that what she
cannot do for herself may be done by divine agencies that are ever guiding the
evolution of the world. Thus what from outside looks as conquest and
subjection, to the eye of the spirit looks as the opening of the spiritual
temple, so that all the nations may come in and learn.
Only
that leaves to you a duty, a responsibility. I hear so much. I have spoken so
often, of the descendants of Rishis and of the blood of the Rishis in your
veins. True, but not enough. If you are again to be
what Shri Krishna means you to be in His eternal counsels, the brahmana of
nations, the teacher of divine truth, the mouth through which the Gods speak in
the ears of men, then the Indian nation must purify itself, then the Indian
nation must spiritualise itself. Shall your Scriptures spiritualise the whole
world while you remain unspiritual? Shall the wisdom of the Rishis go out to
Mlechchas in every part of the world, and they learn and profit by it, while
you, the physical descendants of the Rishis, know not your own literature and
love it even less than you know? That is the great lesson with which I would
fain close. So true is this, that, in order to gain teachers of the
Brahmavidya, which belongs to this land by right of birth, the great Rishis
have had to send some of their children to other lands in order that they may
come back to teach your own religion amidst your people. Shall it not be that
this shame shall come to an end? Shall it not be that there are some among you
that shall lead again the old spiritual life, and follow and love the Lord?
Shall it not be, not only here and there, but at last that the whole nation
shall show the power of Shri Krishna in His life incarnated amongst you, which
would really be greater than any special Avatara? May we not hope and pray that
His Avatara shall be the nation that incarnates His knowledge, His love, His universal brotherliness to every man that treads the
soil of earth? Away with the walls of separation, with the
disdain and contempt and hatred that divide Indian from Indian, and
PEACE TO
ALL BEINGS
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Cups of Tea, Mrs Trellis of
North Wales.
History
of the Theosophical Society
General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
and The History of Theosophy in
Wales
Her Teachers Morya & Koot
Hoomi
The
Most Basic Theosophy Website in the Universe
If you run a Theosophy Group
you can use
this as an introductory handout
Lentil burgers, a thousand
press ups before breakfast and
the daily 25 mile run may put it
off for a while but death
seems to get most of us in the end.
We are pleased to
present for your consideration, a
definitive work on the
subject by a Student of Katherine
Tingley entitled
Theosophy and the Number Seven
A selection of articles
relating to the esoteric
significance
of the Number 7 in Theosophy
The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
The Earth Base for Evolutionary Theosophy
_____________________
Tekels Park to be Sold to a Developer
Concerns are raised about the fate of the wildlife as
The Spiritual Retreat, Tekels Park in Camberley,
Surrey, England is to be sold to a developer
____________________
Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy By C
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
Try these if you are
looking for a
local
Theosophy Group or Centre
UK Listing of
Theosophical Groups
Worldwide
Directory of Theosophical Links
General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
and The History of Theosophy in
Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom
and has an eastern
border with England.
The land area is
just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North
Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long.
The population of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.