English
Clear- sighted students may as readily discern true theosophy disguised in the symbolism of religion, as the most intelligent exponents of religious doctrine will discern the spirit of religion in the sublime teaching of occult science; but at all events popular corrupt religion is apt to regard the destinies of man after death as subject to treatment which, whether gracious or retributive, is influenced by considerations quite external to himself; and exact thinking must recognise such treatment as capricious—as outside the law of cause and effect which operates so invariably in all realms of Nature, fairly open to observation. The- osophy, on the other hand, in regard to the progress of humanity, embodies an infinite exaltation of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. All future experiences of each of us in turn are the inevitable and logical outcome of our previous acts with their con- current states of mind. The apparent irregularity and injustice of life is an appearance merely due to the fact that we take too short a view of life when we think that we perceive such irregularity and injustice. Spiritual science reveals the fact that each human life stretches both in front of and behind any given period of physical manifestation to an enormous extent. On the whole account the events and conditions of each life in turn are the effects of antecedent causes. With this magnificent revelation, which is at the toot of all truly, scientific views of human existence, 28 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. we shall be largely concerned later on; but there are some general principles concerning the potentialities of human progress which may be dealt with at once. If we start from the safe point of departure to be found in the established fact that some persons have a much more highly perceptive organism than others, and if we keep touch with the idea that faculty itself is the product of causes, we are at all events within reach of a plausible hypothesis pointing to the theory that people may perhaps be able by appropriate effort to develop the aptitudes of their own organism for cognising a wider range of natural phenomena than those which are reflected in the five senses. And if so, do we not come within range of the idea that human evolution may be the product of two lines of force, the one proceeding, so to speak, from Nature at large, and representing the normal impulse of evolution, the other generated by the spontaneous volition of the individual, and representing the previously dormant principle of Divinity within him ? This idea is really the keynote of the scientific view of human spiritual evolution. The will force of each human being who would rise in Nature must be united with the evolutionary tendencies of the race as a whole in order that his greatest possible development may be brought about. The plain common-sense of this should be obvious to any one who will dwell in thought on the deep significance of any among many con- ventional religious phrases that are constantly echoed and rarely appreciated. Take, for instance, the familiar idea that in God we live and move and have INTRODUCTORY. 29 our being. The converse — spoken with all due reverence—is a corollary of that statement. God—the spirit or influence of God—lives +m us, and in so far as we have consciousness of being very ungodlike in many respects, it should be obvious that the extent to which that condition of things may be destined to become a vital truth, depends on the degree to which we render ourselves, so to speak, habitable for God. But surely, if one human being has rendered himself very much more habitable for God than another, that human being is the one whose will has become amore potent force than the will of the other, for it is more largely infused with the Will which, in its perfection, is recognised as the first cause of all things, and the guiding principle of Nature and evolution. Who can fail to see what nonsense it must be to predicate the same immediate destiny in evolution for the God-inhabited man and the mere self-centred human animal. True, conventional religion, taking refuge in a meek faith that the worst sinner may be purified somehow in another world, is content to remain in ignorance of the way in which its paradox works,—of the device by which it is arranged that opposite causes should produce the same effect; but occult science, comprehending the patience of Nature, as well as its invariability, is well aware that the human animal will have other chances, besides any one in particular that we may see him wasting, for making the efforts that will render himself—in some future personality—the temple of spiritual conscious- ness. Opportunities may be wasted, and if so they 30 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. may recur. The considerations governing that reflection will be examined later on. The all-important point is that at some stage or other of his career a human being must undertake his own evolution—unite an adequately powerful ray of the Universal Spirit with his own consciousness—or he will not evolve up into those superior realms of evolution which the humanity of our own epoch merely exists to subserve. Nor is that the whole of the thought which this simple view of the subject suggests. It is a commonplace of all scientific thinking that there cannot be immobility in Nature; there must be progress or retrogression— change of some sort. Nothing really stands still, either in the cycles of astronomy, or chemical change, or metaphysical condition. A man may live one life, perhaps, and appear to be neither higher nor lower in the scale of Nature at the close of it than he was at the beginning ; but one life is after all but a brief interval in eternity, or even in those very protracted cycles of time which occult science prefers to handle rather than to prattle, with the modern creeds, of conceptions so embarrassing to the finite mind as eternity and infinitude. The man, as a continuous being, having a life history of which the one physical personality is but a single link, cannot stand still in evolution. It is an intellec- tual absurdity to imagine man doing that. He must either advance or recede; progress or retrogress like everything else—every being else—in Nature. Up to the rank in creation where most of us are standing now, such retrogression as has been possible need not INTRODUCTORY. 31 for the moment be considered. The great automatic forces of evolution have driven each individual forward. There has been suffering perhaps, if during the process of such driving his will has been set against the Great Power behind him, but broadly speaking there has been no retrogression. From the humbler spheres of con- sciousness in the lower kingdoms of N ature the soul, in dim ages of the past, has risen upward. Through processes of ethereal existence antedating the humanity of the type now attained, the individuality has moved onward towards its higher destinies as a human being qualified to say with a full comprehension of what it is about—‘‘ Now I will blend this consciousness and volition which is myself with the superior divine con- sciousness of which I am the material mirror, and thus illuminated and inspired I will move forward again ever onward and upward.”’ But just because he is now qualified to say this if he chooses to act upon such a declaration, a man is also qualified to determine that it is all too much trouble; too painful for the time-being, perhaps. And then if the election is so made, the human consciousness which is the product of natural evolution so far, chooses, in effect, to unite itself with matter and its limitations, instead of with spirit and its potentialities. It is not necessary to Stop here and at full length attempt to define the characteristics of the descent that must then set in. It should be obvious to any rational understanding that such a descent is the inevitable alternative to the conscious self-directed ascent, at the turning point of evolution, wherever that may be, at which a higher 32 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. progress to be achieved by the preparation of the interior self for the access of the Divine influx is offered to each man in turn as a potentiality of the conscious- ness he has attained. But looking upward and consider- ing the prospects of humanity—so very ill compre- hended as yet by the world at large—in their broadest aspects the truth just defined is one of pre-eminent significance. We have got half-way through the great evolutionary process on which the human faculty is launched. So far we have been led and supported. For the rest of the way we must push on ourselves— seeing our way; understanding what is expected of us; resolute to fulfil the Divine purpose. Nor from this moment onward need we be any longer in the dark concerning the road to be travelled, the interior development we have it in our power to reach, nor the attributes of that rank in Nature which it is open to us to attain. The view of the whole evolu- tionary scheme that has been gradually set forth in Theosophical literature is now sufficiently complete to make the prospects of the future as intelligible as the history of the past. We are. as I have said, half-way through the whole “ manvantara,”’ or period within which the present chapter of spiritual evolution is designed to take place. The time spent up to now— on other planets besides this—has been counted in millions of ages. Millions of ages lie before the human family for the full and complete development of its evolution. Paying attention for the moment to that which may be described as normal evolution alone, occult science shows us that the stupendous task of INTRODUCTORY.