The Path April 1888

PARTISANSHIP IN THEOSOPHY Alexander Fullerton

(A PAPER READ BEFORE THE ARYAN T. S. OF NEW YORK, MARCH 20TH, 1888.)
Theosophy is both a Philosophy and a Religion, and hence springs from the intellectual
faculties which nourish thought and from the emotional faculties which nourish piety. The
same fact holds of Theology. It, too, is a combination of a theory of the mind with an
aspiration of the heart, the theory expounding the human and the Divine, and the aspiration
impelling the human to the Divine. Theosophy and Theology are alike, then, in uniting a
mental system with a spiritual impulse, and in deriving them from identical constituents of
human nature. Moreover, it might be shown that there is a parallelism in their claim to
exposition from authority, in their assertion that things seen are temporal while the things
which are not seen are eternal, in their avowal that light comes only to those who seek it with
singleness of heart, and in their aim to uplift humanity through the consoling, inspiring,
invigorating influences of those who generously teach, prompt, strengthen their kind.
With so much that is common to these systems in their nature, structure, and purpose, one
may very naturally infer, some likeness in their dangers, if not in their history; and it is
therefore in no way surprising that the brief career of Western Theosophy should have
already exhibited some of the traits which have been conspicuous in the far longer course of
its sister. Missionary zeal, devoted labor, uncounting sacrifice, the moulding power of
conviction, all are there; but so, too, do we see at times a spirit of assertion, natural
perhaps to the devotee, though inconsonant with the philosophy he champions. In its full
development, a development reached in the embittered contests over doctrinal questions in
the Christian Church, this spirit became so acrimonious and so virulent, so relentless,
uncompromising, and savage, that the accepted term for extreme party-hatred is "odium
theologicum," a term which for all time should warn the disputatious and cool the eager. No
such development has been attained in Theosophy; it hardly ever can be. Two facts may be
relied upon for its restraint. One is that the higher plateaux of spiritual achievement are only
gained as the mounting soul expands its sense of brotherhood, toleration, and good-will, pari
passu with which goes on an atrophy of self-insistence and of all traits making vindictiveness
possible. The other is that Theosophy, having no visible hierarchical system, offers no
external rewards to partisans, no mitres, no professorships, no prelatical thrones to tempt
ambition and compensate zeal. From controversies like the Arian, and from persecutions like
the Papal, we are therefore free.
And yet no discreet Theosophist can say that there are not symptoms of the disease and a
consequent need of treatment. Sometimes in literature, sometimes in the Theosophical
Society, sometimes in private speech or act, we see an attitude expressing a state of mind
which may fitly be called partisan. And just so far as it is really so, and just as far as its
principle, if logically carried out, would result in some measure of repression, does it embody
inchoately a Theosophical Ignatius Loyola. And, conversely, if such an inchoate monster is to
be effectually slain, it will be by destroying the source from which comes his vitality.
First let us look at some manifestations of the partisan spirit, and then inspect the cause
through the killing of which they too will die. Perhaps we cannot do better than take the
departments already referred to.

1. Literature. In the explication of any doctrine, especially of any doctrine at variance from
that generally held, there of necessity come efforts to show its conformity with admitted facts
and that this conformity is not found elsewhere. Both efforts exact argument, and both meet
response. Then comes rejoinder, probably excitement, possibly warfare. The argument and
the rejoinder are right, the excitement and the warfare wrong. That they are theosophically
wrong will appear later on; that they are philosophically wrong may be evidenced now.
Coolness is the attribute of him who is sure of his footing, and of him who knows that to
allow perturbation through anger is to give advantage to an opponent: dispassionateness
belongs to him who knows that opinion is fallible, that truth has many aspects, that no sincere
seeker can be wholly wrong, and that there is common ground beneath contentions; calmness
marks him who feels that controversies should be impersonal, that right may be trusted to
vindicate itself in time, that spectators are repelled by bitter speech. But is it certain that these
facts have always had recognition in our polemics? How as to Theosophical treatment of
contemporary science? I have been pained, annoyed, revolted even, at the tone of malignant
contempt assumed in part of our best literature towards scientific men and books. It may be
that they have stopped short of nature's deepest meanings and have attributed to matter the
potency which is spirit's; but their learning, their patient search, their tireless determination to
fathom facts, their utter self-abnegation when a truth is to be exhumed or a law disclosed, and
the countless, immeasurable, priceless blessings with which they have enriched and
prolonged the life of man, it is ungenerous to question and senseless to deny. They may be at
times dogmatic. But if dogmatism is unseemly in physical science, is it less so in
metaphysical science? If curt contempt is the Occultist's portion from the Professor, is
stinging speech the Occultist's best reply? What difference is there in principle between
arrogance in the realm of matter and arrogance in the realm of mind?
In less pronounced colors the partisan spirit has sometimes tinged the treatment of
Theosophic doctrine. It is understood that the discussion of whether man's nature is
susceptible of a four-fold or a seven-fold division has not been without an infusion of gall.
No one will claim that comparison of views on exoteric Christendom has always been
conducted with judicial placidity. Take, too, the matter of vegetarianism. To say that to
certain people, for certain purposes, and at certain times a purely vegetable diet is essential, is
to take a defensible, nay, a demonstrable, position. But to say that the killing of animals is
minor murder, that beef constitutes an impassible barrier to beatitude, and that the use of
vegetables is a dictate of morals, like truth, or honor, or honesty, is really to distort fact into
phantasy and to bring ridicule upon religion. Even more than this: by leveling, like the
scientist, spiritual matters to a physical basis, it exemplifies the old proverb of the meeting of
extremes, for it is as gross materialism to condition the soul's functions upon the stomach as
to condition them upon the brain. Almost the first remark once made to me by a warm
Theosophist was, "I trust you are a vegetarian." The tone of suspense, of anxiety, of
foreboding implied that otherwise my case was hopeless. So in certain Theosophic articles we
are told that, if spiritually stationary, it is because we are not leading "the life," and that "the
life" cannot be led if we eat meat. Surely this is the note of a partisan. It recalls the
ecclesiastical threat that our souls cannot be quickened till our bodies have been baptized.
2. The Theosophical Society. This has not as yet been split asunder into sects. But it easily
might be if either of the two sect-producing fortes is allowed to work. One of these is the
recognition of a body of dogmas, adhesion to which distinguishes orthodox believers from
dissenters. The other is unthinking servitude to a spiritual leader. Both forces may be studied
in Church History. Theosophy discountenances both. It distinctly states that Truth is One, and
that apprehension of it will become so only as interior vision escapes the perturbing influence

of self-assertion; also that Truth has no value except as realized within, any formal,
undiscriminating, thoughtless clinging to a system or a man being absolutely worthless. This
sternly individual process of enlightenment precludes the sect idea, for it insists that each
man must develop on his own lines, and it forbids an objective measure by which all are to be
gauged. There have been times when the cries "I am of Paul" and "I of Apollos" have neared
an utterance in the Society, and those are the times when the teachings of the Founders
should be re-memorized and the records of Church History re-read.
It may be, too, that broad reaches of Theosophic thought, deep experience of Theosophic
moulding, rich perception of Theosophic future, have not saved from a somewhat narrow
estimate of the Theosophic mission. The profundity and abstractness of Occultism create at
first a very natural supposition that its appeal is only to the higher classes. Two facts at once
rebut this, the welcome it receives among the lowly, and the obvious working of Karma in
the distribution of social status. Yet the supposition recurs; and if some of our ablest brethren
have felt their sympathies limited or their energies curtailed, it may be because of a certain
clannishness, a certain partisanship, which they would eject at once if they so read it.
Clearer than daylight is the truth that any factious organization, any covetousness for office,
any effort to carry personal preferences through force of votes, is as incompatible with
sincere devotion to the Society as with sincere devotion to a Church. And so would be any
action, spirit, policy, aiming to use the Body as an agency for a member, the whole for the
purposes of a part.
3. Private speech or act. The possibilities here have been largely indicated above. Yet it is
entirely conceivable that the most hospitable thinkers among us are not wholly beyond a start
at the presentation of new truth, a suspicion that it is unorthodox because unfamiliar. There is
required a very wide training outside of Theosophy to secure full acceptance of some very
elemental maxims. For instance: The novelty of a thought is no presumption against its
correctness; Propositions are not strengthened by their appearance in print; Affirmations by
great names do not dispense from judgment the humblest learner; Self-respect requires the
confession, not the maintenance, of mistake. In the onward course of an Occultist any one of
these maxims may often need recall; for prejudice is a long-lived influence, swaying
sentiment pro or con, vitalizing the instinct of party vindication or of personal consistency.
Nor are we private thinkers safe from yet another pitfall, race prepossession. Much proper
discussion goes on over the comparative merits of the Orient and the West. When any one of
us has assigned to each what he conceives its due, it is still possible for a partisan spirit to
arise. For warm appreciation may be unqualified; it may refuse to allow error or may always
condone it. The services of either section may seem so vast as to make criticism impertinent
and discrimination a sacrilege. It is just here that the motto of the Society comes in, "There
is no religion higher than Truth." There is no record so shining, no name so eminent, no
position so dignified, as to screen from the application of impartial tests. And it would be a
sorry day for the Theosophic cause if the concession was ever made that a hemisphere, a race,
a class, a man, or a book, was exempt from respectful, but self-respecting, analysis.
Every form of partisanship, however and wherever displayed, and whether by a Theologian
or a Theosophist, is traceable ultimately to one single source, a conviction of infallibility.
When any man is dogmatic or sectional, it is because he knows himself to be right. Caution
comes from doubt. But no man can really know himself to be right. To infallibility there is
one essential pre-requisite, Omniscience. Approaching it there may be a state so closely

allied with the Divine, so dissociated from fleshly bonds that the spiritual eye sees Truth
without a medium, without an error. And it may be remarked, in passing, that in such a state
all contradictions will vanish and all eyes perceive alike; from which fact follows the
consequence that, during our era of controversies and of combats, no such state can have
been attained. Nor can it ever be attained during incarnations.
Inevitably the ties of matter bind and confine the spirit's range; the vision is not cloudless or
serene; influences from the flesh pervert, distort the mind. No man sees truth absolutely, but
only as its light is colored by his constitutional environment. Oliver Wendell Holmes has
aptly stated this with an illustration from chemistry. We cannot, he says, get the pure article,
for that is combined in the mind with our personal qualities: what we get is the Smithate of
Truth or the Brownate of Truth. But every dogmatist, every partisan, assumes virtually the
reverse. He really claims, in the particular topic, to be free from error, to have a right to his
own way because that way is in itself right, in other words, to be infallible. Philosophy and
the deeper consciousness unite to nullify that claim.
Partisanship in Theosophy is untheosophic. It is this not merely because it contravenes the
doctrine of Fraternity, jeopardizes the existence and the expansion of the Society, invites all
the evils which ecclesiasticism might teach to shun, disappoints the hopes of those who
thought to find a refuge from the strife of creeds, and paralyzes the functions of the Higher
self; but because it impugns the conviction that there is no monopoly of truth to race or caste
or man, and because it falsifies the law that we advance only as we abate selfhood and
increase docility. Any man can tell whether he is guilty of it by inquiring whether his
opinions are soluble. If they are not, he may be a student or a sciolist or a dilettante, but not a
disciple, not a Theosophist. And if at any time, for any purpose, or with any motive, he feels
the impatient spirit rise within him, he may know that its root is a consciousness of
infallibility arid that its perfected fruit would be a devastation of mankind.

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The Path October 1888

KARMA AND PROVIDENCE Alexander Fullerton

Theosophy is reconstructing our conceptions of the universe, and reinterpreting the facts and
tendencies and laws of life. When it first appeared on the outskirts of Western thought, an
alien in origin and sentiment, it seemed a curious product of Oriental dreaminess, a trifle
fantastic as to garb, a little uncouth in its bearing before the wonders of our gifted age, and
very far from practical in its ideas of either duty or aspiration; but because of its difference
from all familiar figures, and because, too, it held in its hands the Wand of Magic and was
known to have used it with most unaccountable results, certainly a subject for interest,
perhaps for study. Not very many years have passed, and yet the newspapers are reporting it,
the public turns an ear to it, literature is discussing and fiction appropriating it. The eyes
which first inspected it with curiosity are now examining it with interest, and the minds
which then surmised that it might hold some truth are now reverent as before an oracle. More
than this, hearts weary and sad, weary of explanations which did not explain and of
consolations which did not console, sad because finding that the ills of existence are not to be
salved with arbitrary beliefs or distant hopes, rallied under the influence of that reviving
touch, and demanded fuller, richer knowledge. Most of all, the awakened spirit, realizing that
conventional tenets were an opiate and not a tonic, hurled them away and arose in the vigor
of a definite and intelligible aspiration. And all classes of inquirers, just in proportion as the
inquiry was sincere and its pursuit continued, found a singular dwarfing of all other topics, a
spontaneous, increasing concentration upon this as the one before which the rest were
insignificant.
As Theosophy advanced from the outskirts to the centre of thought in the West it was
confronted, one after another, with the great problems which in every age and in every land
have engrossed the energy of the thinker. The meaning and end of existence, the nature and
direction of responsibility, our future in the world beyond death, these and kindred
questions lie at the door of the soul and meet it on its first excursion into the universe of
inquiry. The primary duty of every religious system has been a reply to them, and if that was
unsatisfying, men would have none of it. Theosophy undergoes the same rigid interrogation
as the rest, and if it has encroached upon the preserves of other faiths and is giving answers to
queries on later subjects, we must believe that this is because its first responses were
convincing.
Very early in its course it is brought face to face with the great question of Providence, and
must give its own interpretation of it. There is one already on the ground. It may not be
logical or even rational, but it has the advantage of being in possession and of calming some
of the strongest, if not the most meritorious, solicitudes of the soul.
The demand for an active, supervising Deity is almost as universal as a demand for any Deity
at all. A Creator withdrawing from care over his creation seems a contradiction in thought.
The term "Father" voices the soul's need for a guardianship which shall be both authoritative
and paternal. In his "Philosophy of Religion," Morrell found that the last analysis of the
religious sentiment is into a sense of dependence. But this almost necessarily implies the
converse qualities of provision, oversight, supply. Then, too, the emotional faculty calls for
satisfaction. Faith needs a sympathetic ear, a responsive touch, a readiness to use every power
of nature for the relief of an appealing sufferer. Thus instinct and devotion unite to cause
belief in Providence, and the difficulty of supposing that the Supreme Being looks after all

the petty affairs of each of us is met by the fact that to the Infinite all are practicable, and,
indeed, that in such a presence gradations in importance disappear.
There is, hence, a stage of religious experience in which every incident in the world of things
and men is supposed to express a Divine purpose. God is present everywhere, acting
everywhere, adjusting everywhere. "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered," said
Jesus. But in time comes an inevitable change. It is seen that the actual system, however
ordered, by no means provides universal good. There are great wastes of sickening sorrow,
vast and recurring areas of destitution, bitter cries from weariness and loss and agony. The
intellect follows this up by its discovery of the reign of law. Events are not disconnected
revelations of as many Divine intentions, but effects rigorously joined to their antecedent
causes. As causation is better and more extensively perceived, the domain of admitted law
expands, absorbing steadily the territory of Providence, and displacing the conception of
ordering with the conception of order. At last no ground is left. Law is seen to pervade the
universe, and to be the condition of all science, all foresight, all business. A life-insurance
policy assumes the whole scientific doctrine of the reign of law.
But the sentimental want, though baffled, is not extinct. "There may be truth," it urges, "in the
theory of causation and in the belief that the universe is a great machine, wisely contrived,
endowed with sufficient impetus, and working automatically along. Yet all machines are
liable to disarrangement, and exigencies arise for which the most perfect do not provide. It
may very well be, then, that at grave crises, or for particular purposes, or to avert an evil,
interposition may be proper. Let it be admitted that the usual administration is by law, if only
is made concession that a Providence is sometimes possible." But even this the stern man of
science must refuse. He is forced to answer that, whatever may be true of imperfect machines
of human make, no breakdown is conceivable in one of celestial origin; and that, even if we
could conceive of a universe conducted partly by law and partly by manipulation, we could
never define their limits or foresee which would act.
One more plea remains. "I will not contest," says the sentimental want, "the doctrine of
uniformity in physical things. But they are not the whole of life. Moral ends are more
important. In the interest of morals, Providence is a necessity. To teach a lesson, to
emphasize a warning, to recall from recklessness or frivolity or sin, interpositions are
essential. A blind material universe, mechanically turning out its infants and swallowing up
its dead, is no fitting expression of a Divine fulness. There must be some higher aim, some
better purpose." "There is," replies the thinker, "but not as you imagine it. All nature is
crowded with moralities; its very uniformity ensures their exhibition. But even if it did not, if
occasional interferences were more impressive, how are you to interpret them? You have not
the clue to their meaning, and your prophets expound it differently. They do not even
expound it fairly. For, as it would jar on the religious sentiment to attribute to Providence the
harsh and bitter things, it is mainly the good things with which they credit it. The sickness
overcome, the life saved, the steamer rescued, the boon secured, the peril escaped are
providential; not the sickness fatal, the life lost, the steamer wrecked, the boon forfeited, the
peril triumphant. But if the one is, the other must be. If it is a Providence which brings one
vessel safely through the violence of a tempest, it must be a Providence which abandons
another to its fate. If it is a Providence which puts a Washington at the head of one nation, it
is a Providence which puts a Louis Napoleon at the head of another. If a skater, breaking
through the ice, is saved by Providence, the drowning of his comrade must be by Providence:
if Providence accounts for a fortunate investment, a fulfilled presentiment, a happy marriage,

it must also be accountable for the broken bank, the discredited prediction, the annals of the
Divorce Court.
Nor have we any clue to the interpretation. It will not do to say "The Moral Lesson," for we
do not know what the lesson is, nor whether it is a lesson at all. A boy swimming on Sunday
is drowned. "This," urges the religious press, "expresses the Divine displeasure of such misuse of Sunday." "But," replies the logician, "it can hardly do so unless you are prepared to
show that all boys swimming on Sunday are drowned, and none on other days." Purpose is
the very essence of Providence. If we have no clue to the purpose we have no clue to the
Providence; for us it does not exist. Nor can you escape the difficulty by saying that it is
inscrutable, for that vacates the whole position. If we are unable to scrutinize Providence, we
are unable to make assertions about it, much more to expound it. So long as it keeps utterly in
the dark, we cannot even prove that it is there,"
Thus, step by step, relentless reason forces back the struggling theory of an interposing power
ever at work in manipulation, adjustment, the rectification of error in the machine of its own
construction, the insistence on truths which it does not enable us to discover, the mumbling of
unintelligible warnings which we have no power to make clear. Baffled, confused, exhausted,
the old doctrine is now near its end. But the spirit which has informed it is vigorous as ever.
Not a whit depressed, it still asserts the need for the perpetual presence of a moral force, for a
Providence outside of which not a sparrow shall fall, not a wrong escape.
And it is right. No such sustained cry of the human heart could well be fallacious. It is one of
the vindications, one of the glories, of Theosophy that it gives the frankest, most ungrudging
welcome to every want, intellectual or sentimental, of humanity, and then provides for it. To
me it seems that this is peculiarly true in the matter of Providence. The religious instinct will
never give up its demand for a Providence. It revolts at the thought that there is no moral
order in the world, that good and bad fare alike, that character goes for nothing. An elaborate
system in which the Supreme Being has expressed all the qualities but those most strongly
called for, is to it a monstrosity and a contradiction. You may wrench away from it its
theories and its whimsical or unsatisfying methods of interpretation, but it will construct new
ones at once. With what amplitude of recognition Theosophy steps forward to greet this
instinct! "You are entirely right," it says. "I am with you in fullest sympathy. You cannot
insist more than I that the moralities exact an agency by which their vindication shall be
assured. But such an agency must be intelligible and consistent. It must be so comprehensive
that not a right or a wrong shall go unrewarded, so impartial that it handles all men with
absolute equality, so precise that its equations shall exactly balance. You can never invent
such, you can never discover it. But you do not need to. The doctrine of Karma, the treasured
possession of the Wisdom-Religion, fulfils all the requirements you insist upon, avoids all the
difficulties which embarrass you, and responds to every call of reason, justice, and the moral
sense."
The vast superiority of Karma as a substitute for the conventional idea of Providence is
evident from every point of view. It is not a negation of Providence, it is an enlarged
affirmation of it. Instead of a fitful, capricious, inconstant, purposeless, mysterious,
undecipherable force, it is a lucid, inerrant, steady, and meaningful adjuster. For what, after
all, is its definition? The law of ethical causation. Law, not whim: causation, not accident;
and this, which the most orthodox now admit in the worlds of physics and of mind, extended
to the noblest region, that of morals. Not that every incident of every life is to be read as a
revelation of immediate desert, for that would be to forget the correlative doctrine of

Reincarnation; but that the sum total of experiences in the chain of lives cannot err, and that
the significance of the items in any one link may measurably be inferred. The conception of
Providence expands till it covers everything. The religious instinct is satisfied, the claims of
reason are allowed, the demand of justice is fulfilled.
I think that the devotional books of the future will print "Karma" where they now print
"Providence." The concept is so much richer that the poorer one will not long content. The
word "Karma" is not as strange as it was formerly. Sometimes we see it in improbable
quarters. By and by it will be domesticated into the language, for Theosophists constantly
employ it, and though to transpose Gladstone's definition of a deputation they do not
signify many, they certainly signify much. After it is domesticated people will not be afraid
of it. Then they will come to like it, as we all like what is familiar. In time the meaning will
filter into them. It will displace the old narrow conception and establish itself as a broad and
healthy philosophy of life. And when Karma is recognized, not merely as an ever-acting
principle, but as an ever-forming fund, what may not be hoped for in the melioration of
mankind?

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THEOSOPHICAL UNIVERSITY PRESS ONLINE

The Path November 1888

ANALOGIES Alexander Fullerton

Theosophy being of recent disclosure to the West, and none of us, therefore, having been
Theosophists from childhood, almost every one encounters perplexities from the
unfamiliarity of the new facts and of the new methods of thought. We may be entirely
convinced of their correctness; the demonstration may be conclusive; in fulness, reason,
stimulus, and expectation, the new faith is so obviously richer that the deserted one may
appear incomparably jejune and poor; we may have become fluent with its ideas and its
terms; nevertheless, its whole genius is so diverse from all hitherto habitual to us that we do
not as yet think or move quite easily. It is as if an inhabitant of the dry Egyptian plain was
transported, to Switzerland. It would not be only a revelation as to scenery, but an induction
into a new life, whereof the sights, the sounds, the movements, the habits, the very air
breathed and water drunk, had been wholly unknown. Until all these had become familiar,
there would be a process of mental re-moulding, re-adjustment, modification. And so with the
thinker transported from the circumscribed habitat of conventionalism to the stupendous
scenery of the Theosophic domain. His Deity has been an enlarged, not always an exalted,
Man; his universe ended with the telescope; his chronology went back but 60 centuries; other
than animals, he knew of but three kinds of beings, men, angels, and demons; human life
was short, not easily justified, and morally puzzling; its hereafter was hazy, and all but its
terrors had been carefully concealed; of its present, nothing could be known except what was
disclosed to the eyes, ears, and touch, and any supposition of forces or beings or agencies
beyond was probably absurd and certainly false.
Out of these ideas the Theosophist has removed to a realm practically boundless. Limitations
have dropped off in every direction. Anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity vanish at once.
Matter expands till it fills space. Existing chronologies have as much real antiquity as
yesterday's newspaper. Life multiplies till air, earth, fire, water, the illimitable ether teem
with it. Humanity receives a justification and acquires a destiny. Light is poured into futurity.
The senses, as sole criteria of fact, are deposed; means are put within reach by which the
investigation of the whole universe is made possible. There is no boundary line to
knowledge; there is not even an horizon.
Now, of course, our mental capacities cannot instantly enlarge to this. The fresh air is
invigorating, but then it is strange. The lungs are inelastic, the muscles torpid, the movements
new. We hardly realize our freedom, and at every slight excursion we strike against some old
prejudice or error, or feel the cramp which reminds us how long and how closely we had been
bound. This is inevitable, but it is also temporary. We shall acquire agility; the cramp will
gradually disappear; the errors discarded as beliefs will steadily weaken as hindrances; new
habits of thought will form, new powers of perception develop, new vigor of advance arise.
Revolutions do not go backwards, nor are the emancipated again enslaved.
In the happy process of enlargement, we are wise, I think, to meet every check or difficulty
with whatever means, however humble, may most effectually remove it. And it very often
happens, in Theosophic thought, that a perplexity dissolves if we can confront it with some
visible, familiar fact in life. The latter, being known to us, if in clear analogy with the former
which is not known, may dissipate its strangeness and secure for it a welcome. Nor is this an
artificial or whimsical procedure. It is but an application of the doctrine of Analogies, which,

say the Adepts, pervades the universe. "As above, so below" is one of their constant maxims.
We are quite right to use it in our humbler exercises.
Of the many illustrations possible let us take, this evening, one from each of three planes of
life, that below us, our own, and that above us.
For the conception of a medium of existence diverse from ours, diffused, invisible, yet
material, though of a far more tenuous and rarefied nature than our air, science has happily
prepared us by its "Undulatory Theory of Light," wherein is predicated a sensitive ether
pervading space. We have, therefore, no antecedent difficulty in conceding an unseen world
of more delicate texture than this. But science has done nothing to people it, and so the
Theosophic doctrine of Elementals is new. We are abundantly accustomed to the word, yet
the thing has perhaps for us not wholly lost a fanciful quality and entered the region of fact.
Now I have found it to gain reality by thought on this wise. It is difficult to conceive of the
direct action of will upon matter. There seems no mode by which an intangible, immaterial
purpose can educe obedience from a lifeless, irresponsive block. I see a stick lying 20 feet
away. I will it to approach me, but there is in it no consciousness of my will, and there is no
apparent link between the distinct kingdoms of mind and matter. I sign to my dog, and he
brings it at once. Here, then, is the link supplied, an intermediary agency with sufficient
intelligence, on the one side, to apprehend the order, and with the physical power, on the
other, to carry it out. The widely-separated kingdoms are connected by a medium uniting
some of the features of each. In fact, a very subtle question in thought is promptly solved by
one of the most common-place facts in life.
Analogy instantly suggests a similar nature and function in Elementals, and hence a similar
naturalness. What is there either improbable or inconceivable in an order of beings lower than
our own, with no more conscience than have some grades of animals and with as much
intelligence as have others, quite as controllable by men who understand them as are animals
by men who understand them, and dwelling in a medium which, though unseen, may be as
real as the unseen ether of Light? But Analogy does not stop here. Those of you who have
read Sir John Lubbock's remarkable monograph on Earth-Worms know that the whole face of
nature is being constantly re-formed through that humble agency. That is to say, an
important, an indispensable, condition of agriculture is committed to the charge of a lowly,
unprogressive, mindless creature, which lives, perpetuates its species, blindly performs its
mission, and expires. Why, then, may not a somewhat higher function in Nature be entrusted
to a somewhat higher organism, a still higher function to a still higher organism, and so on,
the intelligence and the physical strength increasing, but there being no moral endowment
because there are no moral duties? If earth-worms knead the soil and coral-insects erect
islands in the ocean, it seems not unreasonable that larger operations in ever-active Nature,
less mechanical and more intelligent, may be effected by Elemental spirits. And analogy goes
still further. We see in animals instincts and habits which may as well mark Elementals.
Secretiveness, playfulness, mischievousness, friendliness or hostility to man, a transmitted
tendency to routine, constructive power, conformity to laws in mechanics, all are
illustrated in dogs, kittens, monkeys, beavers, birds, and bees. Why then may they not exist in
sylphs and gnomes? In fact, if the perfection and regularity of a bee's honeycomb, which
combines the maximum of space with the minimum of material, are due to the action of a
conscious being, why may not this be equally true of a crystal? Yet again. The enormous
differentiation of animal life in structure and quality, according to its function and its habitat,
seems to indicate a corresponding differentiation, for corresponding reasons, of Elemental
life in the various regions and operations peculiar to it. The four classes usually mentioned

are doubtless capable of subdivision indefinitely. And once more. No small part of the animal
world has been subdued to the will of man. This is, of course, mainly due to his larger
intelligence, yet is in measure the result of his ability to impart, record, and transmit
observations. The same reasons seem to justify the possibility of his controlling Elementals.
Indeed, the theological doctrine that he is to conquer the earth implies that he is to conquer
the beings which mould the earth, and any far-reaching vision of human triumph must
include a sway over all lower organisms.
It would seem, then, that analogies from very familiar facts around us warrant some vivid
conception of the unseen beings no less around us. Our knowledge of the animal kingdom
impels to a belief in the Elemental kingdom.
Let us now step up to the plane of man, and attempt a similar process there. Whether we look
at the lives of men or at the conventional beliefs they hold, it is equally evident that this
present visible existence is considered the normal and important one, its interests being
necessarily dominant, and those of the future, invisible world, however to be cared for, being,
from the nature of the case, subordinate. More or less of this mode of thought has been so
habitual with ourselves that we probably find the opposite, the Theosophic, mode only
natural while we are reading Theosophic books or afterwards meditating on their contents.
And yet most certain is it that Theosophy affirms the real, permanent, important life to be
unseen, that which depends upon a material environment being absolutely transient and
relatively mean. As the Adept, St. Paul, expressed it, "The things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
Now if we are to be true Theosophists in either thought or aim, we have to reverse our former
conception. The invisible world has to become the true world, and the visible world the
deceptive world. And here again analogy is at hand to help us. The simplest incidents or acts
disclose the tremendous forces hidden from sight. A leaf falls because of the all-pervading
principle of gravitation; I hold this paper because of an inscrutable energy behind the
muscular contraction which is its physical expression. You who are listening to these words
hear them, indeed, through undulations set up in a material atmosphere and impinging on the
tympanum of the ear; but no sense can reach the mysterious force which transmits the
vibrations of the material tympanum to the unmaterial mind, still less the force which
transmutes mere sound into thought, least of all the force which is mind. Look around you in
the world and analyse the causes of the seething activity everywhere apparent. Every sound,
every movement in this great city has its source in some desire of the inner being,
ambition, love, acquisitiveness, or other. We can hardly take one step from visible things
towards their causes before we are in the realm of the invisible. All roads seem to lead to the
unseen. It, not matter, has "the promise and the potency" of every form of life.
But if the mechanics of daily life, if the continuance of vegetation, the conservation of vital
powers, the evolution of all terrestrial advance are referable back to impalpable forces,
gravitation, electricity, magnetism, etc., only the effects of which we see; if even our own
careers and the very constitution of society itself are but the objective, visible results from
subjective, intangible desires; is it too much to say that the unseen is as much vaster than the
seen in its resources as it must be in its extent? A pebble, a stick, a leaf has behind it
stupendous powers; it is insignificant, but it reveals the immeasurable.
The effect of observation, then, is to belittle the seen in comparison with the unseen; and
herein Theosophy is in complete analogy with science. Yet surely the analogy need not pause

at this point, but may proceed to urge that the constitution, the training, and the destiny of
Man may justly be based on the same principle. The material elements must be the less
important elements, the material life the less important life. Permanency, potency,
boundlessness must inhere in a region which is not transient, weak, limited, as is this earth.
And, indeed, our confidence in the analogy is strengthened by the fact that, up to a certain
point, it is held to vigorously by all men in civilized lands. Cultivation of the mind is
considered finer than cultivation of the body; the scholar ranks higher than the athlete. But if
it is admitted that spiritual powers are nobler than mental, even as mental are nobler than
physical, which is, in truth, the position of the Theosophist, it follows that there is the
same reason for developing the spirit rather than the mind, that there is for developing the
mind rather than the body. The same principle which elevates a Herbert Spencer above a
Sullivan will, analogically extended, elevate an Adept above a Herbert Spencer. And it
follows that, when we read of the training given to secure mastery of self, ascendency over
distraction from discomfort or desire, fixedness of meditation with a view to enlightenment, a
distaste for levels of being lower than the highest, we have not encountered something which
is chimerical or grotesque, but a sober, logical, scientific method of spiritual education.
The third illustration proposed is from the plane of life above us, that of Adepts. No doubt
there is, among Theosophists, much misconception of the Adept character. For present
purposes, however, we may describe him as an advanced man, who, through the expanding of
the spiritual principle, has become a Master in mind and over matter, and whose powers are
therefore, from the conventional point of view, supernatural. (1) All this, to the
conventionalist, appears nonsense. To us it is a reality. Nevertheless, there is a certain
remoteness about it. There is only one conceded Initiate in Western lands, and few of us have
been privileged to see her. The East is faraway, and residence even in it by no means ensures
approach to a Master. Hence belief is not always without misgivings, and I suppose there are
few Theosophists who are not at times staggered by the strangeness of the conception. Still, it
too is not without its analogies, and the weak may fortify themselves by recalling them.
All history shows that deeds beyond experience have been pronounced incredible upon
hearsay, and pronounced miraculous upon being seen. An astronomer foretells an eclipse to
barbarians; he is ridiculed till it arrives, and then he is worshipped. The Adept from whom I
have quoted a sentence once healed a cripple in cultivated Greece, and was hailed with the
cry, "The Gods have come down to us in the likeness of men." In these days, though
apotheosis does not follow phenomena, incredulity lasts till demonstration. It has been so
with every great invention of modern times, and it must be so till is pulverized the inveterate
habit of judging impossible that which does not square with ordinary observation. The
moment we realize not concede only the dictum that "there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy," we are unshackled; and the moment we
perceive that those things are attainable, our freedom has begun. And why should it not be
so? Every new fact in science or invention means that an explorer has been where we have
not been, and has brought back something which we have not seen before. Surely we are
accustomed to the idea that realms beyond our ken are being daily entered, examined, and
sampled. Where, and on what principle, are we to set bounds to them? Is the Astral Light
necessarily more impervious than the Space-Ether? If a Tyndall may reveal the vibrations of
the one, is it impossible that a Adept may reveal the photo-pictures of the other? In fact, (one
may ask), is an Adept more impossible than a Tyndall? Each represents high ability,
developed by specialized training into exceptional power.

We speak now, it is true, of matters on planes lower than the spiritual. But this does not
vitiate the analogy. For, 1st, the difference between the lofty spiritual functions of an Adept
and the highest attainments of an acute physicist is not any more truly a difference in kind
than are those attainments of the physicist and the solely-muscular capacities of a burly
savage; and, 2nd, if antecedent improbabilities of evolution fail in the one case, they may in
the other. Indeed, one may say that the contrast between an Adept and a Tyndall is not any
greater than between a Tyndall and a savage.
Moreover, there is yet another consideration. All of us know that our unseen minds may, and
do, grow in power of apprehension and in thoroughness of insight. We know, too, that the
moral nature, also unseen, expands and strengthens with appropriate exercise. It would seem,
then, that the spiritual principle, no less unseen, may no less have capacities as yet feeble. It,
too, may evolve, and quicken, and ultimately triumph.
These various analogies indicate that an Adept is not a phantasm, or a chimera, or an
ingenious invention of Mr. Sinnett, but an entirely possible flower of a peculiarly rich, a
highly cultivated, yet an entirely natural, soil. And, if so, we believers are not only judicially
yielding to the burden of testimony, but are rationally following the pathway of logic. Before
the sceptic and the scoffer we have only to point to Nature, Analogy, and Fact.
Reverting now to the propositions with which this paper began, it would appear that the
means to give reality to the more distinctive features of Theosophy is to perceive their
likeness to those in departments of life better known. While we treat them as eccentric, we
are never free from a haunting suspicion that they are doubtful. But if they are merely an
extension of principles elsewhere demonstrated, if analogy shows that, so far from being
isolated or grotesque, they lie really along the very lines enclosing conceded fact, the only
thing needed for greater peace of mind is greater use of mind. The demand is not for more
faith, but for more reason. We are not required to apologize, internally or externally, for
positions which seem at first odd, but rather to assert that they are quite what might have been
expected from the very constitution of being. Given a world enormously transcending that
which we can see or hear or touch with our physical senses, its repletion with various forms
of life seems inevitable. Given a humanity whose most powerful motives and impulses come
from interior desire, and whose development on the material plane is necessarily limited
while that on the immaterial plane has no bounds whatever, there can hardly be question as to
the true sphere of effort. Given a telescopic look into the realm of Evolution, with some
apprehension of what that discloses and means and foretells, and the supposition that
Adeptship is incredible becomes infantile. More than this; there awakens a prevision that we
ourselves are the proper subjects for all the fulness which analogy assigns to the race, and an
assurance that every day of duty wrought and concentration gained is speeding us on to a
time when incarnations shall have been completed and destiny shall have been achieved.
FOOTNOTES:
1. The reference, of course, is only to White Adepts. (return to text)

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The Path May 1889

WHY A GURU IS YET PREMATURE Alexander Fullerton

The first step on the Theosophic path is naturally acceptance of the Theosophic doctrine. But
this is by no means a dry and lifeless creed; it is a spirited, vitalizing scheme, so permeated
with a final cause that its acceptance almost spontaneously generates some measure of
purpose, hope, endeavor. To realize the conception is well nigh to echo it. So noble is the
theory of the universe presented, so rich the picture of what human life is and means, so
elevated and pure the motive which is everywhere insisted on as the condition of all progress,
that natures at all sympathetic with the spiritual respond at once to its disclosures, are fired
with its genius, aspire to its privilege. As this impulse develops into a purpose, as larger
reading gives shape to the conception and fuller meditation clarifies it, there is born, almost
of necessity, a wish for a guide along the intricate and darksome path which has just opened,
some better-instructed spirit who knows the way from having trod it, and can save from
disappointment and from wasted strength. I suppose that there is no sincere Theosophist,
perceiving something of the measureless work before him and yet resolved that it be
undertaken and pursued, whose first heart-cry is not for a Guru. Such a teacher seems the
imperative, the indispensable, pre-requisite to any advance at all.
Nor, when we look somewhat more closely at the conditions around it, does a demand like
this appear unwarranted. Here, let us say, is a genuine aspirant. He has a fairly accurate idea
of the goal to be attained, but no idea of the means to its attainment. He desires spiritual
illumination. But the faculties thereto, he is told, are as yet dormant in him. He asks how he is
to become conscious of their existence, how arouse them to action, how assure himself that
their action is normal. There is no reply. He reads that the first duty of the student is
embodied in the maxim "Know thyself." He struggles with the question whether this means
to know himself as a specimen of analyzed human nature, peering into the mysteries of
biology, physiology, mind, and the psychic nature, in which case a lifetime would be too
short, or whether it means to know himself in his individual peculiarities, tendencies,
weaknesses, desires. A mistake here might hopelessly mislead him. Yet the books which give
the dictum do not settle the question it excites. He inquires if any particular diet, habit, daily
observance is requisite to progress, and hereto, indeed, answers abound, but they are variant,
opposite, and contradictory. He peruses the Manual which, both from its title and its
teachings, is believed by all Theosophists to throw light upon the path, but much of it is
enigmatical, and its explanations have to be explained. Somewhat disheartened, he asks its
author, "How am I to eradicate selfishness from my nature?", and receives this reply,
"That is what every man must find out for himself."
These difficulties are largely external. But others quite as serious encompass any attempt at
internal action. In the Manual to which I have referred, he is told, among other directions
towards "Seeking the Way" to "seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of
your own inmost being." What is the meaning of this; indeed, has it any: Meditation is also
recommended. But meditation must have some topic and be conducted on some plan. Neither
is vouchsafed. Most of the prescriptions for developing the spiritual senses, even when
intelligibly expressed, pre-suppose a familiarity with abstruse interior processes which are the
very things as to which a beginner, in our land, is particularly ignorant. If he is to reverse his
whole mental habitudes, think on different lines, invoke a new set of thought appliances, he
must have, it would seem, some hint of the first steps and stages, some competent instructor
to start him, some voice which shall be distinct in either the silence or the Babe in other

words, a Guru. And thus, whether we look at the general fact in regard to beginners, or at the
causes producing the fact, it appears that demand for a Guru is the earliest cry of the newborn Theosophist.
On the other hand, however, it is just as certain that no such Guru is provided. In one sense,
indeed, it may be said that any one who has more information is Guru to him who has less,
and that any author, any friend, any speaker may thus sustain quad hoc this relation. But in
the specific, technical sense, Gurus, whatever may be our desire for them, are not accorded
us: and if there is justification for the desire, there must be justification for the denial to it. It
may not be amiss to look into the grounds on which that rests.
A Guru, be it remembered, is not a teacher of general learning, but a teacher of a particular
science. His teaching presupposes an adult mind, some educational advantages, and a
moderate attainment in principle, self-knowledge, and self-discipline. These things are the
preparation, the basis, the needful foundation for his work. It is in this spiritual science as in
secular education. A child, it is true, has a teacher from the beginning, but this is because
there is nothing to go upon; he has to start with the alphabet, and that must be communicated
to him. Through his later Course he has the two resources of ability to read and to reflect
the condition of all advance and of aid from masters, and with these he completes his
general studies. Then comes that specific training which would be impossible without the
preliminary. If he is to be a lawyer, a physician, a clergyman, he applies for and receives the
distinctly professional instruction he needs, just so, it would seem, is the case in Occult
Science. A Guru for a person just devoting himself to Theosophy would be as much out of
place as a Professor of Law or Medicine teaching the alphabet in an infant school. His
functions begin where antecedent attainments make them possible, and as we expect to find
in a Medical College only such students as have laid the foundation for a specific training in a
general training, so we expect to find under Gurus only such natures as have reached the
point where their directions would be either intelligible or efficacious. For, obviously, they
could not be understood if their terms, their meaning, the line and mode of thought were
wholly unfamiliar: nor could they be operative if the faculties addressed, the motives
emphasized, the powers incited were yet in abeyance. On the purely intellectual side there
must be some reasonable acquaintance with the truths from which the whole system starts;
and on the purely spiritual side there must be a facility of apprehension and an incisiveness of
intuition which are the result, not of a brief aspiration, but of years of systematic effort. It is
noticeable that, in such expositions of Esoteric methods as have been given us, it is distinctly
stated that it is the developed faculty of intuition in the student upon which his teachers rely.
But this is the very faculty of which we beginners know least, and to give us a Guru whose
main work would be its employment would be precisely the same thing as to address a
syllogism in logic to a child who had no idea what logic meant and who was wholly unable to
reason.
But this is not the only consideration. In secular studies the successful instructor is he who
most consistently acts upon the meaning of the word "education," an educing, a drawingout of what is in the student. Education is not so much a pouring in of information as the
eliciting of the aptitudes, forces, vigors, which lie within. Very much of the whole process is
in the encouragement to independent action, the cultivation of that spirit of energetic
enterprise which does not shirk difficulties but surmounts them, the fortifying of that manly
resolve which, not refusing assistance or disdaining experience, yet feels that the most
satisfactory triumphs are those which one wins oneself, and that a gift is not comparable to an
achievement. There is a vast difference in morale between the classical student who works

out a difficult passage and the one who cons a translation, just so in that developing process
which, we are given to understand, precedes and constitutes a fitness for Guru guidance. A
Theosophist finds himself encompassed by perplexities. It would be comfortable to be
relieved by another. But would it be best? The old classic fable of the cartman and Hercules
is the answer. No; the ingenuity, the patience, the strength aroused by the need would all be
lost if the extrication came from another. We are better men, finer men, stronger men, and we
are far more capable of subsequent advance, if we work out these problems for ourselves,
getting light by seeking it, not by asking for it, capturing truth, not accepting it. This is the
type of men the Masters want for the future custodians of the mysteries, and why should they
thwart the supply by spoiling it?
Then, too, there is still another consideration. We most assuredly have no right to demand
further privileges till we have exhausted those now given. If any man has fully read, and
not merely read, but digested, the best attainable literature in the main features of
Theosophic truth; if he has a fairly accurate conception of the spiritual philosophy; if he has
his carnal nature well in hand and is not seriously disturbed by tumultuous revolts which have
now become hopeless; if the personal element, the selfish element, is so far refined away that
it but slightly taints his motive and his work; if his duties are as much a matter of principle as
his aspirations; if he has overcome mind-wanderings and gained the power to think with
intentness and continuity; if he has made all the attainments possible to unassisted zeal; if, in
short, he has used up all the material provided and hence can do no more; then, surely, he
is in a position to claim a Guru. We may surmise, indeed, that in such case the Guru would
already have arrived. But if not one of these things is true; if the reading is imperfect, the
conception thin, the passions strong, the self vigorous, the duty scant, the concentration poor,
the attainment insignificant, the material hardly touched; what possible need for an advanced
teacher? And if we can picture to ourselves a disciple thus feebly-equipped accosting a Guru
(supposing such an official to be recognizable) and, inviting guidance, is it not inevitable that
the Guru should reply, smilingly, that the disciple was not yet ready for him?
This may seem a discouraging state of things. But I do not think that it is really so. We have
never been promised Gurus at our very early stage of progress, and, if we expect them, it is
because of a misapprehension for which we have only to blame ourselves. To get out of
illusions, to correct errors by examining them, is part of our necessary experience, and quite
as much so in the department of theoretical development as in the department of practical life.
Nor is the deprivation of present hope for Gurus so serious a drawback as might appear. It no
doubt throws us more upon ourselves, but this is the very thing which we most need, for it is
the arousing of self-help, self-energy, se/f-effort which is iterated all through the scheme. Nor
is it the fact that there is no objective aid except from Gurus. There is plenty of it. In the small
Library of the Aryan Society we have enough intelligible direction for more needs than any
of us, its members, are likely to feel. I do not say that they are always explicit, or always
copious, or always systematized, but perhaps the necessity for extracting the clearness and
the fullness and the proportion gives an important exercise to the faculties which we are
striving to expand. To illustrate: We are told in Esoteric Buddhism that there are seven
principles in the composition of a man. Of course it is not claimed that these are all sharply
separated, but there is a distinction and we ought to frame some idea of it. Suppose, then, that
a student, having carefully read the chapter thereon, determines to give fifteen minutes to
close thought on the difference between the fourth, the Animal Soul, and the fifth, the Human
Soul. Here is a definite subject for meditation, and abundant material for the process. If now
he turns to Patanjali, he finds that Concentration is the "Hindering of the modifications of the
thinking principle," in other words, a stoppage of wandering thought, or of all thought on

other subjects than the one before the mind. What he has to do, therefore, is to check by the
will all roaming of his mind, and fasten it simply and solely on the distinction he would
realize. The process is twofold, an exercise in concentration and an exercise in imagery.
He will almost instantaneously experience the extreme difficulty of restraining the natural
wanderings of the mind, and form some estimate of the task which lies through years before
him, that of making his mind as docile and as manageable by the will as are his hands or
his eyes. Before the fifteen minutes have passed, he will perceive, as he never perceived
before, the distinction between the mind and the will, and that, before thought can be
effected, the mind must be broken in, subdued, put under curb and rein. But also he will have
begun to discriminate, though imperfectly because of the yet imperfect process, between the
elements making up the fourth, and those making up the fifth principle. He will have taken
one step towards disentangling and grouping under their appropriate heads the desires, loves,
tastes, qualities, as these have a physical or an intellectual basis. In fact, his introduction into
this mere vestibule of Theosophic schooling will have accomplished a triple effect, some
suspicion of the vastness of the curriculum awaiting him, some admission that the matter
already furnished for him is most copious, some perception that within him he will find the
true, the ever-widening field for his most careful and persistent effort. I might add a fourth,
resignation to the obvious consequence that a Guru is yet a very long way off.
Take one more illustration, this time of interpretation. One of the first rules given in Light
on the Path is "Kill out desire of comfort." This statement is extreme, and, like all extreme
statements, untrustworthy. Theosophy is nothing if not reasonable, and it could not be
reasonable if it enjoined the extirpation of an innocent wish as if it were a vice. Moreover, if
desire for comfort is to be treated as a vice, its opposite must be treated as a virtue, in which
case the desire for discomfort ranks with honor and truth and justice. This is so absurd that
some qualified meaning to the words is dictated by common sense. When we think out the
topic, observing Patanjali's rule of Concentration, the thought clears up. As conduct is
directed by will and will is moved by desire, the main conduct of life follows from the main
desire, and if this is for physical luxury, spiritual upliftings and exercises will be
subordinated. Nor is this all. So far as the two are antagonistic, the physical should be
depressed, and the rule would therefore seem to formulate this principle, that wherever a
bodily craving is incompatible with the growth of spirituality, it must be made to give way.
Thus interpreted, it is harmonious with reason and expressive of truth.
It might even be said, and, I fancy, with no little correctness as to most of us, that we are not
yet at the stage when so mild a use of the meditative power as that indicated in these two
illustrations is needed. There is a consensus of all authority, from the Bhagavad-Gita to
Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science, that the very first practical act in Theosophy is the
seizing hold of the reins over oneself. If a man is irritable, or mean, or slothful, or censorious,
or greedy, or exacting, or selfish, or ungenerous, qualities which are not crimes, but which
are really as fatal to any high standard of character, he has his Theosophic work at hand.
So long as any one of these or like pettinesses exists, that first work is unfinished. It is far
from improbable that some of such blemishes remain on those Theosophists who cry out for a
Guru. And yet would there be anything more ludicrous than a Guru for a man who is peevish
because the weather is bad, or who gives less to the Theosophical Society than he does for his
tobacco?
Looking over the whole subject impartially, I doubt if we should greatly err in stating thus the
rule, that no one has a right to expect a Guru until he has exhausted all other and attainable
resources. He certainly cannot demand new powers if neglecting those possessed, and if not

new powers, why new opportunities? Similarly as to books, duties, exercises, and privileges.
And if this is the fact, then the desire for Guru guidance which so many feel and not a few
express, is less an evidence of mature purpose than of immature perception. It needs revision
rather than stimulus, correction rather than approval. Should that wholesome process give a
chill to Theosophic zeal, such consequence would be the surest proof that the zeal had been
but a subtle form of that ambition which we are told is a curse. For, evidently, the desire
would not have been for truth or fact, but for a phase of self-importance, for a chance at selfdisplay. And self-love as an element in spiritual development is not favored by Theosophy
more than self-love in secular life.
Yet there is a corollary to the rule. Walt Whitman has stated it in one line which we beginners
can only trust, but which more advanced students can surely verify, "When the materials
are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear."

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The Path May 1891

ATTITUDE TO KARMIC LAW Alexander Fullerton

The consciousness of being under Law affects different minds in different ways. With some it
arouses bitter, indignant revolt, a dim sense of helplessness making that spirit more intense.
With others there is a feeling of despair: "What matters it how we struggle, since the Law
will have its way, caring nothing for tears or agony or desolation?" Others treat the matter
with indifference: "As the machinery of the universe is confessedly not in our hands, and as
we are anyhow the product of a system of evolution, we might as well act conformably to that
stage we have reached, letting the Law look after us, which, indeed, it is its business to do."
Any one of these attitudes would be justifiable if the Law was arbitrary, or one-sided, or
imperfect, or mechanical, or heartless, or merely punitive, As a piece of cold mechanism, or
as a purely disciplinary force, it certainly can evoke neither good-will nor glad compliance.
Some perception of this has influenced the preaching of the modern pulpit. Jonathan
Edwards's famous sermon on "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" would be as impossible
today as a mediaeval harangue upon the Devil. Priest and layman have alike come to see not
only that terrorism will not produce piety, but that penalties which are remote, factitious, and
evadeable do not permanently influence conduct. Consequently all modern preaching
assumes a different hue. Hell and the Devil are not formally abolished, but are locked up in
ecclesiastical museums, where they are treated with great respect, indeed, but whence they
are not permitted to emerge. The present appeal is to the Goodness of God, the Power of
Motive, the Development of Character, the Christ Principle within, the essential Divinity of
Man, and the like. There is less pungency, but more reality; the lurid has given place to the
sunful.
Still, no change of mental tone will abolish facts. If the theological outlook is more goodnatured, as well as more hopeful, it has in no wise more clearly perceived either the
omnipresence or the wisdom of the great Law of Karma, the fundamental truth in any system
which purposes to take men as they are and make them what they should be. And therefore it
is that Theosophy proclaims every other system as mistaken and misleading, offering
palliatives or nostrums instead of the only remedy which goes direct to the seat of the evil
and effects a genuine cure. Law is emphasized as unflinchingly as by an Edwards or a Calvin,
but it is not imaginary or brutal, it is as replete with rewards as with punishments, and it
embodies the perfection of Justice and Wisdom.
A perception of this perfectness, this all-roundedness, is the antidote to every feeling towards
Law other than that of cordial homage. Nobody will venerate a power which is ever on the
alert for peccadilloes and sins, but passes by good deeds as without its scope. To be really
fair, it must be as open-eyed to every worthy act as to the opposite, and recompense right as
unfailingly as wrong. Once perceived as utterly just, it can be respected, trusted, obeyed. Men
will esteem a record which is photographically accurate, and confide in an administration
which they know is honest. Why should they not, when they realize that a high thought, a
gentle word, a kind act is as sure of its result as a meanness, a selfishness, or a brutality?
When Law is felt to be absolutely fair, resentment towards it ceases. This is on the same
principle as is exhibited in schools where the teacher is seen to be invariably just. Boys do not
ask for no rule, for the total abolition of all control or oversight, but only that the rule shall be
reasonable and right, the control impartial and judicious. A teacher who is as quick to see

merit as shortcoming, who has no favorites and never vacillates, is the one who evokes
respect, confidence, and obedience. And in the great Karmic field, the perception that Karma
has no distinction of persons or qualities, notes every thought or act of every kind, is beyond
all influence and above all cajolery, is spotless in its impartiality and rectitude, brings about
confidence, confidence evokes respect, and respect arouses friendship.
It puts an end, too, to despair. The Law cares nothing, indeed, for tears, since dislike to
discipline is no reason for withholding it; but as sorrow comes only as effect, never
spontaneously, there is no question of a sullen submission to evils arbitrarily inflicted and
impossible of escape. When a man knows that there is nothing whatever to prevent his own
abolition of suffering, the very consciousness of his resources suffuses him with hope.
Indifference also is cured. True we are evolving. But equally true that we are evolving along
the line we prefer. If that line crosses the normal order, and if we are content, for the sake of
present satisfaction, to accept all the consequences which must follow selfish opposition, the
way is certainly open. But, then, neither those consequences nor the contrary ones from
enlightened obedience are mere experiences of a stage in development: they are the fitting
results of what was a choice. No man is unconcerned over a choice wherein he himself is
entirely free, and whereof he himself receives the returns.
Concede the Law of Karma, vindicate its complete pervasiveness and its utter impartiality,
show it as full in its notice of good as in its notice of wrong, and you strike the note to which
human nature will respond. Men crave Justice from the Higher Powers. They do not ask for
unlimited licence, but for fair and equable treatment. Make them see that Karma, and it alone,
supplies this, and they are content. The moral sentiment is met, the claim to liberty is
allowed, the motive to reverence is stirred. And as the grandly generous nature of that Law is
disclosed, its copious reward blessing the worthy and its very inflictions tender with reform,
it assumes the countenance of a friend, a friend who may be implicitly trusted and should be
unswervingly served.

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THE SOLIDARITY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Alexander

Fullerton
The one-ness in any association must result from a common conviction enlivened by motive.
Unless men have something in common they will not associate, and that something is what
prompts the association. But mere abstract beliefs are inadequate to cause cohesion: only
when they are vitalized by a purpose does magnetism set in.
Such is the genesis of all unions. A stock company expresses visibly the facts that certain
individuals are convinced that a certain business department may be profitably exploited, and
that they desire to secure the gain. A Public Library means that various citizens believe in
literature as ennobling and wish to bring it within their own reach. A Charity Hospital
presupposes that its founders felt unrelieved suffering to be an evil, and were anxious to aid
in its cure. So in every other organization of units. There is first a belief, then a motive, then a
combination to effectuate it.
It is obvious also that when either the belief clouds or the motive weakens, the association is
abandoned. The stockholder sells out if he scents failure in his Company, the reader resigns
from the Library when he has lost interest in books, the subscriber to the Hospital withholds
his subscription as his philanthropy abates. Persuasion is hopeless unless the belief is restored
or the motive revived.
The Theosophical Society exemplifies the facts exemplified in every other Society. Men do
not enter it, any more than other bodies, without a reason, nor amalgamate with it without an
impulse, nor remain in it when these expire. There must have been some inducement to its
formation, and the same inducement must recruit its membership.
As to mere condition to entrance, nothing could be simpler, belief in the doctrine of
Universal Brotherhood, beyond which there is no exaction. But this is an abstraction, not of
itself prompting to membership. Even the wish to express it would alone hardly influence a
man to join, he being already a member of the Universal Brotherhood, Humanity, and not
particularly needing to say so. If he joins, it can only be because he has further convictions
and desires to give them practical force. If we scrutinize the motion resulting in our own
entrance into the Society a surer disclosure than dry speculation, we shall find it, I think,
in the assurance that some finer truth is contained in the term "Theosophy" than is discerned
elsewhere and without, and in the wish to ascertain it for our own benefit and to promulgate it
for that of others. Just what that truth may be, how many or how defined its departments,
what its range or certainty or value; how strong the purpose to acquire it; how vigorous the
desire to extend it; may as yet be indeterminate. But that Theosophy holds truth, that some
portion of it commends itself to our intelligence and moral sense, that we crave further light
and fuller action, these seem the combined facts which moved us to seek admission.
Very varied are the degrees and nature of this primary experience. Sometimes it is little more
than curiosity, weariness of unsatisfying systems suggesting that this novel field may promise
better. Sometimes there is an instinctual grasp of the fact that a whole region of thought and
motive, so decidedly a revelation to Western eyes and so evidenced from history and
literature and physical marvels, must contain pearls of great price. Sometimes a particular
doctrine instantly evokes assent as eminently rational in itself and as solving difficulties

hitherto hopeless, and the inference arises that a philosophy so satisfying on one point may be
equally so on others. But whatever the amount of life in the germinal thought, the very
slightest life produces interest, and the thought and the interest point to union with the
Theosophical Society.
As a member identifies himself with the studies and the work of the Society, and in exact
proportion as he does so, there come a light into his mind, an assurance into his heart, a
transformation into his life. The spark spoken of in Light on the Path enlarges, swells into a
gleam, a flame, warming and shining through every part of his being. His perplexities abate,
his doubts dwindle, his perception becomes more acute, and his knowledge expands.
Conscience softens, sympathy grows, intelligence strengthens. Life has a new meaning, a rich
purpose, as the decaying notions of earlier days are supplanted by the now developing
vitalities of a real Nature. If with steady hand he represses the habits which tie him down to
animal routine, and if he encourages the higher nature to every flight, and if he consecrates
his means to that great aim of spreading broadcast the truths which are saving him and may
save the world, thus living the life and dispensing it, he daily frees himself more and more
from the limitations which distress and thwart, and revels in that sunny liberty which only
they enjoy who are in harmony with the Universe and its Law. Theosophy has not only
convinced him, it has emancipated him: the Society is more than an association, it is the
almoner of blessings to a world.
There is, of course, a converse process. It is where the original interest has died down, the
more tangible affairs around it displacing it, and so Theosophical thought fades away, Society
meetings lose charm and are deserted, membership becomes distasteful and is silently
dropped or formally repudiated. As the doctrine has no longer vitality, neither has the impulse
to promulgate it, and the lack of sympathy with the Society very properly leads to retirement
from it.
The real cohesiveness of members, the magnetic force which draws them together and
overcomes all tendencies to disunion, is the conviction of certain truths, coupled with the
desire to extend them through the world. This is the case also with a Church. But a great
distinction separates the two. The Theosophical Society does not hold to a collection of
doctrines as revealed by God, but as ascertained by man with the powers God has given him;
nor as transcending reason and to be received with unreasoning faith, but as demonstrated by
reason and verified better as it enlarges; nor as remote from practical human life, but as
exemplified throughout it and in every item of it. The Society does not missionize because
ignorance of doctrine loses the favor of the Almighty, but because it imperils the well-being
of men; nor does it attempt to proselyte or to threaten or to persuade, but only to make known
that all may examine; nor even to make known as a perfunctory duty, but because it perceives
that only through knowledge of the Laws of Life can life ever be corrected and made happy
and progressive. It points out evil and the cure for evil precisely as a sanitary engineer
expounds the conditions to healthy homes and bodies; not at all as a policeman who enforces
an arbitrary proclamation from his Chief. Hence its spirit and its motive and its method have
no ecclesiastical analogy, and it is as far from a Creed as it is from a Ritual.
This distinction made, the solidarity of the Theosophical Society is evidently in the tenacity
with which its members hold to Theosophy, and the self-forgetful zeal with which they
disseminate Theosophy abroad. Solidarity is not in numbers. Mere formal membership
creates no strength, excites no effort, produces no result. Belief in Universal Brotherhood is a
dead belief until it prompts exertion for the benefit of that Brotherhood, and the exertion is

aimless if it has no definite purpose, and fruitless if the purpose be unintelligent or illconsidered. Study of Aryan religions or psychic powers gives cohesion only so long as a
student for selfish objects thinks he gains by union, and will never lead to large or generous
altruism. If the members of the Society are to be welded into compact strength, a strength to
withstand attack from without and dissension from within, it can only be as they are pervaded
with the great warmth of a common conviction and a common mission. The conviction is that
Theosophy is a truth, that it expresses the actual facts in the universe and the actual mode of
man's spiritual advance, that as a philosophy and a religion it is not speculative but
demonstrated. The mission is that this truth shall be so proclaimed that every ear may hear
and every willing heart respond, that ignorance shall be everywhere dispelled and the way
thrown open to intelligent choice, that no one shall continue in darkness and mistake and
progressive misery through any causes but his own will. Such union is the counsel of our
Elder Brethren. In the MSS. of an Adept it is written: "Have solidarity among yourselves like
the fingers on one hand. Each member should strive to feel so towards the other". Filled with
Theosophic doctrine and burning with Theosophic purpose, the members of the Society will
have a solidarity no antagonisms can overcome; and as their own assurance deepens with
larger knowledge and more copious experience, and as their consecration becomes more
heartfelt, more intense, more unreserved, they will see in limitless measure the triumph which
is as yet but partial, and rejoice that the treasure they have best valued by straining to
dispense has become the delight of all humanity, the common patrimony of the Universal
Brotherhood.

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DEATH Alexander Fullerton

Theosophists who were not brought up under "Evangelical" influences have no adequate
perception of the change Theosophy makes in the view of death. To an orthodox, death is a
penal infliction indicative of Divine wrath, the close to all hope of change or reformation,
mysterious and awful and terrifying in every aspect, but especially because it introduces into
the immediate presence of God a soul which is then to receive assignment of woe or bliss.
Which shall be assigned can never be foreseen, for, as not character but faith is the
determining factor, and as no one can say whether the faith of the deceased was sufficient to
"justify", there must be painful uncertainty in every case short of conspicuous saintliness. The
harrowing fears, the agonies of doubt and misgiving undergone by pious relatives over every
open grave, no arithmetic can ever compute.
But the conception keeps also the living in terror. St. Paul most justly describes those who
"through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage". Not knowing when it would
come, but only that it was horrible in its details and incalculably momentous in its
consequences, with no security as to its outcome beyond a sentiment known to be fickle and
avowed to be deceptive, is it any wonder that orthodoxy kept them shuddering along every
step of the way towards the open tomb at which it ceaselessly pointed?
It is one of the measureless blessings of Theosophy that this odious libel on God and Nature
is demolished, the whole demoniacal conception obliterated, and the aspect of death
completely revolutionized. With an indignant sneer Theosophy shatters the terrorizing image,
and substitutes for it a benignant, rational, and kindly figure.
The notion that death is a punishment for sin is the basis for the orthodox erection, and this is
blasted to atoms by proof that death is a natural step from lower to higher planes, the
necessary transfer from scenes one has exhausted to those still in store. It is no more
arbitrary, no more terrific, than birth. But, in itself, it is not even a calamity. Far worse would
be the fate of one doomed never to die, ever to pass centuries of wearied disappointment
without hope of relief or change. Even the orthodox have occasionally sensed this, and,
momentarily blind to the slight on the Divine judgments, have sung, "I would not live always;
I ask not to stay".
Having thus removed the ground-work of the misrepresentation of death, Theosophy
proceeds to erect a true conception. As death is but a door, a transit from earth-life to life
beyond earth, all must turn on the view of each. Now earth-life, says Theosophy, is that era
during which an incarnate individuality undergoes experience, forms character, and suffers
whatever evil its demerits demand; life beyond earth is the era during which the individuality,
no longer incarnate, digests the results of that experience, reposes in the wealth of that
character, and enjoys whatever good its merits deserve. Here, in this mixture of right and
wrong, and turbulence and serenity, and peace and warfare, we have our partial reward and
also our copious discipline: there, in the calm sunlight of subjective existence, sorrows have
passed away and heavenly rest comes to soothe and refresh the one who has ceased from his
labors. But when that rest has fulfilled its needs, when full reward has been given and the
time has come for another pilgrimage, the individuality returns to earth-life, assumes a
different personality, and begins again the formation of its character.

Observe, says Theosophy, the contrast between earth-life and the other, and so the new view
we must take of death. There is no "Day" of Judgment, for Judgment is daily and unceasing.
There is no nearer presence of God, for, whether with bodies or without them, "in Him we
live and move and have our being". There is no "final doom", for no finality is possible while
character is forming, and "doom" has no meaning apart from desert. "Hell" is not a future and
outside torment into which sinners shall be dropped when the loss of their bodies makes it
possible to get at them, but a present and interior state which they create for themselves
through their passions and wrongs. "Heaven" is not a remote and exterior scene where saints
are to congregate in resurrected bodies and imperfectly disciplined souls, but a condition of
the internal man, realizable on earth so far as his development has made it possible, and off
the earth in a measure unattainable while enfleshed. Punishment is not future, but present; not
there, but here; not beyond the earth, but on the earth. And happiness, though found here too,
is there without alloy.
This being so, we see at once the different aspect Theosophy gives to natural death. Not the
introducer to an uncertain future, with the chances greatly in favor of woe, but to certain,
assured peace and happiness. Never the stern avenger, he is ever the kind friend who opens
the door to bliss. No pain enters the unseen world, and we, with knowledge that only bliss is
ever found within it, can lose all fear as we contemplate that door afar or see it opening for
our approach. For where is the pain, where the discipline and sorrow that we know must
follow our many faults? In life. Birth, not death, is what introduces us to sorrow and ensures
that every sin shall meet its recompense. If we are to be terrorized at any of Nature's
processes, it must be the cradle, not the grave. If any one is free from either danger or
uncertainty, it must be that which ushers only to joy and peace.
What an unspeakable boon has Theosophy thus given to men appalled with the horrors of a
mistaken creed! As true conceptions of life and death make their way throughout the land,
what wretchedness will they dispel, what agony of spirit for self and loved ones, what
hardness and coldness towards the Author of all good. If Theosophy did nothing to uplift
higher motive and finer endeavor, if it disclosed no better ground for human fraternity and
mutual help, if it solved no mysteries and lighted no gulfs and cleared no doubts, if it gave no
rational interpretation to existence and furnished no adequate impulse to development and
it has done all these; yet it would have conferred this incalculable blessing, emancipation
from imaginary but bitter terror, the transformation of Death from an enemy to a friend, the
resurrection, not of a disintegrated carcass, but of a rational belief.

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THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES Alexander Fullerton

PERHAPS some additional light may be thrown upon this subject supposed to be so complex
if we reason backward instead of forward, inquiring what the constitution of man would seem
of necessity to be, and not merely investigating what it in fact is. And this may be done by
thought upon the "final cause" of his evolution.
A final cause is the end or object of an action, that for the sake of which anything is done, this
purposeful aim having therefore the force of causality. The final cause of a man's evolution is
the production of a being perfect in knowledge and experience. Hence, very evidently, the
knowledge and experience must be in every quarter, on every plane, through every function.
Now there are three ways whereby knowledge is acquired, sensation, perception, and
intuition. Sensation is the way through use of the bodily organs, as when information of the
nature of a table or chair is gained by touch and sight. Perception is the way through use of
the mental and reasoning faculty, as when information of facts in geometry is gained by
reflection on the necessary properties of figures. Diagrams may aid to comprehension, but the
fact that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles exists independently of
any drawing which may be used to illustrate it. Intuition is the way through use of the higher,
super-sensuous faculties, by which supersensuous truth is directly, without the medium of
ratiocination or inference, seized at once.
If we can imagine a purely spiritual, unembodied being, such a being as is suggested by the
word "angel", it is clear that his only avenue to truth would be through intuition. Without
physical organs, and raised above the plane whereon argument and induction range, intuition
would be his one resource. Of life and movement in his own sphere, of methods of
communication in thought and sympathy, he would have copious knowledge. But there it
would stop. Of the gradual processes of reflection and reason used in lower fields, much
more of such experimental tuition as comes through bodily life with bodily organs, not the
remotest conception would be possible. Not only would matter, with all its sensations and
restrictions, be foreign to him, but he would be a stranger to such emotions as result from the
relations and casualties of social existence on earth, sorrow, pity, sympathy, selfforgetfulness, self-sacrifice. That is to say, he would be ignorant of a vast range of instructive
experiences, and incapable of a large group of refining emotions.
If such a being is to supplement his apprehension of the cosmos by an understanding of that
part of it which has consolidated into gross matter, he must incarnate, must dwell in and learn
of the section he does not know. He has within him a spark from the Divine Essence, and that
is enshrined in a spiritual nature removed the one step from pure Divinity which makes
possible an individuality distinct from it. To these he is to add a physical body.
But put a spiritual being into such a body, and no junction results. There is no connecting tie,
nothing to bridge over the chasm between two entirely unlike natures. There must be
something to enable the spiritual to act upon the physical, and the physical to send messages
to the spiritual. Mind does this. On its higher side it reaches up to and affiliates with spirit; on
its lower it grasps and influences subtile matter. Though these opposite functions constitute
really two entities, they are so interlaced that they blend into each other and permit the
passage of thought and will. Thus we have five principles.

Still there is a gap. Intangible mind cannot directly act on gross matter, being still too ethereal
for immediate influence. A transmissive medium between mind and flesh is as needful as one
between spirit and matter. There is required a body so constituted as to touch at the same time
both mind and flesh, supplying a connection for vibrating influences. The astral body does
this. The real seat of the organs manifested in those of our five physical senses, it can catch
from the physique the sensations they receive and then transmit them to the intelligence
above. For it is this astral body which is as to this plane the real seer, hearer, taster, toucher,
smeller, and which mediates between gross flesh and subtile mind. And thus we have six
principles.
But what would an organism of flesh and bones be without the vitalizing force to conserve
and move it? Simply an inanimate mass. So to energize it for action there must be a
pervading life, a life of respiration and digestion and circulation and reproduction. The
everywhere-distributed vivifying element in Nature supplies this. Vibrating in each atom it
thrills through the system and makes it a part of the great whole, transforming a mere
apparatus into a living, functioning, active animal. And thus we have seven principles.
If, then, a pure spirit is to incarnate for experiential knowledge, the necessities of the case
appear to exact precisely that sevenfold nature which Theosophy asserts of man. A priori
considerations conduct to the conclusion otherwise demonstrable as fact.
On the supposition that there are these various elements in man, what would naturally be their
behavior when the life-principle is withdrawn from the physical body at what we call
"death"? This leaves as the enclosure of the five remaining principles an inanimate form,
insusceptible of influence to or from, and already beginning to disintegrate. This not only
dispenses from their longer union for experiential purposes, but directly prompts to a
severance. For the spirit enshrined in a spiritual nature no longer needs the link connecting it
with a body now worthless, and presumably would retire till ready for another incarnation.
But its close union with the Higher Mind has suffused the latter with something of its own
pure nature, imparting to it an immortal life. On the other hand, the close union of the Lower
Mind with the physical body through the astral has tainted it with the corruption which
bespeaks mortality. So the interfacings naturally drop apart, the mortal separates from the
immortal. The three higher principles pass on.
Why should the Lower Mind and the astral form cohere? The latter is no longer a vehicle for
transmission of sensation upwards or volition downwards. It, too, with the body, has lost its
vitality by the withdrawal of the Life-principle, and must drop away from the Lower Mind for
the same reason that the Lower has dropped from the Higher Mind and both from the body
itself. The second principle having departed, the first, third, and fourth fall separately into
gradual dissolution, while the fifth, sixth, and seventh, of undying nature, can have no further
touch with what are soon to end.
And here again, what would antecedently seem probable is declared a fact by the teachings of
Theosophy. Those who know affirm the conclusions of those who think. The opposite
processes of reason and revelation coincide in the result of vindicating the Seven-fold
Principle in Man, both as to the necessity of his construction and the method of his
dissolution.

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SALVATION BY FAITH Alexander Fullerton

The making safe by faith defines the popular idea that a human soul is to escape punishment
for evil, not through a reformation of character, or through the cancellation of evil by a
subsequent effectuation of good, but through gratuitous pardon made possible because the
one believed in has already suffered to an extent which the law will regard as a vindication.
Beyond trusting wholly to the merits and work of a Savior, the culprit has nothing to do in the
procurement of salvation. It is an act of reliance, not a process of relief. Later reformation
attests the reality of the faith, but does not constitute it.
There are many grave objections to this scheme, logical, ethical, and moral. It is eminently
artificial, it is in harmony with nothing else in nature, it enthrones unreality in Heaven. By
making punishment a mere matter of debt, it voids it of its other two aspects disciplinary
and deterrent, and by making it transferable the connection between it and offense is lost. Nor
is the suffering congruous. It is resolved wholly into physical pain. But this is a different
thing from compunction, sorrow, remorse, which mentally follow transgression. The poignant
shame of repentance cannot be recast in terms of bleeding flesh and agonized nerves.
Then, too, moral sentiments are unbalanced. The shock at seeing the innocent suffer and the
guilty escape may be to some extent checked by urging that the suffering was voluntary and
from love of the guilty, but a question then arises as to the sacrifice of justice. Surpassing
love can hardly supplement defective justice, for in a Divine and therefore perfect system all
moral qualities are equally exhibited. And the supposed effect is circuitous. If a man is
aroused to consciousness of guilt by perceiving what some one else has undergone on his
behalf, the stimulants are sympathy and gratitude. Yet these do not demonstrate that the
broken law was right in itself, or that he ought not to have disregarded it, or that an
arrangement made without his consent binds him in honor to future obedience. Indeed, if the
debt of all humanity has been paid, it cannot properly be exacted a second time, and therefore
the inducement to obedience is to that extent logically lowered. Moreover salvation by faith
has but a partial operation. It deals only with the sentimental side of man. It is not educative
nor reformatory; still less does it take hold of the several elements in our composite nature
and make each evolve to the ideal of perfection.
These are but a few of the logical objections to the doctrine. Historically and individually its
consequences are what might be expected from the disconnecting of character from
retribution, and from the use of any other factor than desert in determining destiny. Substitute
a mechanism for a simply-acting law, and you are sure to have not only complication but
disaster. And so the consequence of displacing Karma for Faith has been to set religion apart
from morals, and to relieve from responsibility at the very point where it needs the sternest
enforcement. The test of character has become not merit but belief, and the gauge of
acceptability is not the degree to which self-discipline has attained, but the degree in which
self-discipline is renounced and the spiritual interests handed over to another.
And yet here, as in so many other theologizings, there is a root of truth beneath the perversion
and distortion. It is in the fact that a real faith in spiritual law must precede any actual attempt
at improvement. Men will not greatly exert themselves to secure that which is hazy or
dubious. If a thing is uncertain or ill-defined, there can be no heart in the pursuit of it. If evil
is not seen to be real, salvation will not appear to be valuable. Before there can be any wish,

much more any effort, to attain security from the penal consequences of wrong, the wrong
must be sensed, the consequences apprehended, and the security assessed. Only as the solemn
reality of these spiritual facts is felt acutely by the soul standing in their presence, will it
rouse itself to act thereon. And so salvation must come by faith.
The same faith must attend any true salvation, any scientific salvation, at every step of its
progress. As the steady discipline by which ordinary man is transformed from a vacillating,
inconstant tool of prejudice and passion to the calm, collected master of himself and Nature
goes on through incarnation after incarnation, there is not an action of the will without its
background of assured certainty in the correctness of the training. The human constitution,
the method of its evolution, the possibilities it enshrines, the laws regulating the seen and the
unseen spheres, the validity of the process, the certitude of its outcome, the existence of
Those who have attained, the assurance of Their sympathy and aid, all these must be truths
to the advancing soul or there can be no advance at all. It is not a blind faith, for it has
evidence sustaining it; yet it is not entire vision, for much is still unseen. But the faith grows.
Its inception is only partial and may be feeble. It was enough for the first step. As each
increment of vision verified the prophecy, the faith was confirmed. Things it took on trust are
now portions of consciousness; much that was confidence has now become certainty. Still,
the same condition to advance persists. The new step must be made because it is believed to
lead to greater heights, and if there was no such belief the soul would pause and droop. Doubt
would check, not as criminal but as weakening. And if faith is "the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen", it is because as a scientific fact there can be no pressing
forward into the region of the as yet experimentally unknown without an inward certainty that
we shall find it as represented and shall rejoice when there.
And so we are saved by faith. Not faith in another's merits, but in the possibility of evolving
our own; not faith in another's atoning work, but in our ability to so work that atonement shall
be needless; not faith in a visionary mechanism of substitution, but in the universal scheme of
Law; not faith in ecclesiastical systems, but in Divine order; not faith in a revelation from
God, but in a revelation of God. Braced with such a faith, salvation progresses steadily to its
end. It is a salvation from ignorance and paucity and feebleness, a salvation of the Divine in
man from the animal.

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SCIENTIFIC SALVATION Alexander Fullerton

Salvation means "the making safe". But safe from what? In the usage of contemporary
religionism, safe from future punishment for sin. If we inquire further as to the means to
safety, we find it to be reliance upon another who has purchased the right to save by having
himself undergone the punishment. The popular conception therefore considers the safety as
from suffering, its date the hereafter, and its reception a gift.
But this whole operation is evidently external to the cause which once produced the liability
to punishment and may produce it again. Punishment is the result of breaking of law; law is
broken because the individual's sympathies are with the thing prohibited; and if still with the
thing prohibited, they will continue to violate the prohibition. Hence law will be broken and
penalties incurred just so long as the law is distasteful, and the only way to ensure obedience
and a consequent immunity is a reversal of sympathy from the thing prohibited to the
prohibition.
Now the springs of this sympathy are in the physical appetites, the intellectual convictions,
and the moral sense. The state of the body, the mind, and the soul dictates the attitude
towards law, and if the attitude is to be changed, that state must be changed because its cause.
If a man who loves drunkenness, for instance, is to become sober by preference, it must be
through his body's loss of craving for stimulant, his mind's conviction of the good of sobriety,
and his soul's repugnance to the evil of indulgence. In other words, the whole man must face
about, not his taste merely, or his judgment, or his morals, but all in their totality. Only
then is he "safe", for he has no inducement to offend, no conviction to oppose, no impulsion
to resist. All unite in producing harmony with the law, conformity to its injunction, immunity
from its penalty.
In such a change, furthermore, each section of the composite being must receive distinct
treatment. A cancellation of the physical appetite will not alter the mental status or affect the
moral sense. Intellectual beliefs will not cure a disordered physique or reverse the pose of the
soul. Revolution in moral sentiment will not effect corresponding revolution in the body and
the mind. A radical change "conversion", from con, together, and verto, to turn can
come only as each is turned, and each can only be turned as the handling appropriate to it is
given.
If, then, a man is to be made safe from sin and from its penal effects, it can be by nothing
short of such a physical treatment of physical state, mental treatment of mental state, and
moral treatment of moral state as shall transform him from a hater of law to a lover of law.
He now obeys from preference, and is therefore free both from temptation and from
punishment.
Yet freedom from suffering in the pilgrimage of an Ego no more exhausts its evolutionary
demands than would a like freedom in one incarnation. Who would consider a life perfect if
guaranteed from all risk of disease or accident? Irrespective of such negative good, there is a
whole cycle of positive and progressive development. The body has to be trained to such
dexterity as is demanded by its avocation; the mind has to be fed with fact from many
separated areas and its powers educated to their highest potency; the soul has to be nurtured
with truth from above, and its voice in conscience grow clear and regnant. Each component

of man needs its copious expansion if it is to fulfil the law of being and mount to the heights
designed for it by the Supreme. Every separate incarnation in the chain is to contribute
something to the attainment of the ideal, until that ideal is complete and incarnations
needless. So long as any element is deficient must incarnations be repeated, and he only can
be "safe" from the hamperings of rebirth who has surmounted its necessity.
Considered as immunity from either violation of law or imperfection of existence, "salvation"
must, then, be achieved through the perfecting of each component of the being, and that
perfecting must be through the specific training required for each. In other words, it must be
scientific. Now what does this mean?
It means, negatively, that the accomplishment is not by a pious sentiment or a generous
sympathy or a spasmodic aspiration. It means, positively, that it is a systematic education of
every faculty under the laws impressed by Nature thereon, and after the experience which the
most enlightened practitioners have accumulated during aeons of action. Evolution of the
whole man beyond the danger-limit is as much a matter of formulated knowledge as is the
training for athletic sport or a college examination. Neither is done by an emotion or a spurt
or a faith: nor is it. Under accepted rules, crystallizing ancestral wisdom, the physical nature
is so disciplined that it becomes pliant to the will; the mind is so broadened and vivified that
it educes dormant faculty and ranges over areas previously unknown; the spiritual nature
secures uninterrupted action and harmonizes the whole being with the highest truth. Nothing
is left to haphazard or to impulse. All parts are developed in accord with law, and the several
faculties, fully ripened and in entire coordination, work without jar or an approach to friction.
As wisdom and goodness together advance, cognate powers appear, and when the whole
nature has reached the point of complete identification with the consciously-perceived
scheme of the universe, it is at one therewith in knowledge, character, and function. Thus
identified, it is an integral part. It has no discordant efforts, for its purposes are the same; it
has no isolated interests, for it is one with the All; it has no risks from broken law, for it is
fused with law. Possibilities of deflection are forever at an end. There is no danger of
fracture, for not a spot is weak. Having been harmoniously developed in every department
after the ideal mode, it is symmetrical and perfect. It exhibits the design of the Great
Architect; it reflects His will. It has no need of salvation. There is nothing to be saved from. It
is scientifically safe.

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The Path December 1892

INTERFERENCE BY ADEPTS Alexander Fullerton

When things are palpably going wrong in any department of life, and it is known that men
deeply interested therein have both the power and the skill to effect correction, they are
naturally expected to apply them. To abstain seems a denial of either the interest or the
ability. And so when the bitter sorrows of a vast humanity, or calamitous mismanagement in
national affairs, or the ills of a locality pain a philanthropic heart, and when it ejaculates a
wish that it was mighty enough to arrest the whole evil and dry away the tears from every
face, instinctively it wonders why Those who are do not. What is the use of prerogative if it
lies motionless when most needed; of what real value are superior knowledge and power if
they do not avert catastrophe and abate suffering? And, indeed, what are we to think of the
claim that They are tender and sympathetic and beneficent, if on the face of things They
appear wholly indifferent and inactive? Masters would seem a superfluity in Nature if, while
able to cure evil and establish good, They let each work itself out untouched.
We shall never solve this anomaly unless through the principle of analogy. Do we
instantaneously rectify every evil where we have the power? Every parent and employer can
answer this question, every teacher and guardian. All intelligent education is based on the
doctrine that truth is real to a mind only as it is realized, and that the realization comes
through experience. Guidance, suggestion, warning may be proffered, but, if defied, no
amount of coercive restraint can vindicate their wisdom to the recipient: he must learn it only
through the results of defiance. A muscular father could always hold back a son from games
or projects involving risk, but only at the sacrifice of his own time and the boy's experience.
A teacher could always interpose when a pupil was at bay over a problem in mathematics or
translation, but what would become of the patience, the resolution, the persistence, the mental
dexterity which are the fruit only of self-effort? And what, too, of the healthy glow from
conquest which is sweeter far than a relief conferred? It is by undergoing all the processes
which lead from inexperience to maturity that a mind becomes developed in its own powers,
and that it sees the reason for things and the reality underlying form. This never arrives
through the dictum of another, or his enforcement of counsel however wise. The governments
known as "paternal" are fatal to self-reliance, and foster a childishness of spirit and judgment
which results in national decay. It is as men and nations work out their own problems that
they reach wise and enduring issues.
Nor is this the only reason why Adepts are not interposing powers. Ordinary men, being less
enlightened, must necessarily have other convictions, and the less the enlightenment the more
positive the adherence to them. Any different course would therefore have to be secured
through sheer coercion, and the violent subjection of another's will is a thing repugnant to the
universal Law, to Justice, Right, and the very initial principles of Occult training. An Adept's
nature would preclude the wish for any pressure beyond currents of intelligence and good
feeling, and, if it could so far reverse itself, it would be held in check by Law.
And then there is the deep conviction of the sacredness of Karma. To wrest forces from their
natural course would do much more than introduce confusion and disorder into the moral
world: it would be to create new forces to re-act on their authors. Thus the two-fold result
would follow, that the normal order would be disarranged and its ordained good be lost, and
the created forces would rebound into the sphere which, because of its occultly-acquired
harmony with Law, has surpassed the range of Karmic influence. Illegal interference by

Adepts would therefore not only make things worse for men, it would put an end to
Adeptship.
But how, then, it may be asked, can Adepts act at all? Why is not suggestion, influence,
thought-impression as much an interference as restraint? Simply because it is in accordance
with Law and not in contravention of Law. Here again analogy illustrates. We point out to a
less experienced person a better way than his own, we suggest to our fellow-men more
sagacious plans and easier methods. The bringing of more light is ever a gracious and worthy
act. It proffers, it does not insist; it aids, it does not coerce. The choice, and therefore the
responsibility, still rest on the one approached. There is no subversion of will, no restraint of
freedom. No counter-forces are aroused, and no Karmic reaction excited. The gentle
influences of a kind cooperation steal peacefully over the mind addressed, and what would be
resentment at dictation is gratitude for assistance. There is health in help: there would be
palsy in prescription.
And so, it would seem, the policy of Adepts finds its vindication in our own. When we wish
to change the course of a neighbor or a nation, we know that it can effectively be done only
as the conviction prompting to that course is changed, and so we expound the contrary
considerations and suggest such facts as may operate on reason. Absence of dogmatic method
is the first requisite to tact. The plastic material of the human mind is moulded by
manipulation, not by blows. Thus the Adepts work. On the flowing currents They let loose a
thought which shall be borne along to a harbor where it will be welcomed; They put a motive
within the attractive range of a vigorous soul; They gently feed an aspiration which is
weakening or a force which has declined. Ever alert for that beneficence of which They are
the embodiment, They see with eagerness every glance towards higher possibilities, every
motion to a loftier plane. And then They aid it. They know how They were aided as They
struggled on to Their present sphere, and They pay the debt by passing on that given strength.
It may not be possible to obliterate human misery, for nothing can do that save obliteration of
the human ignorance and folly which produce misery, but it is possible to prompt a wish for
its obliteration, and then to help each philanthropist attempting it. And however silent the
Masters may seem, and however remote and listless, no man who deeply feels the call to
altruistic effort need doubt that it comes from that hidden Brotherhood, and no man who
responds to it need imagine that They who have reached him with Their voice will not reach
him with Their help.

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The Path November 1893

IMPOLITIC REFERENCE "H. P. B." Alexander Fullerton

Theosophy is rapidly pushing its way through journalistic and other channels, and is cropping
out in regions and hamlets the most unexpected. Its expansion during the last few years has
astonished even those who best know its merits, and every day brings new indications that it
is soon to be in the forefront of the questions of the age and the interest of the religious world.
For, in truth, it supplies the very desiderata for which earnest men have vainly sought, and
finds welcome in exact proportion as those meeting it are intelligent, open-minded, and
devout. A system which insists on including every fact which research can grasp, which
harmonizes each fact and each department of its vast philosophy, which solves the piteous
puzzles in every human life and lot, which nerves to the most patient endurance and the most
hopeful endeavor, is one which cannot be indifferent to those who think and feel and aspire.
Theosophy is not only exhaustive in its inclusions, it is most ingenuous in its methods. It
waives aside all cajolery or special pleading, and asks no one to give his assent to its
statements unless his reason is thoroughly convinced. Any other adhesion would be halfhearted, insincere, superficial: none such is congenial to a system which cares only for truth,
and for perception of truth, and for honest avowal of the perception. Unless a man finds its
teachings upheld by his judgment and his moral sense, it frankly tells him that he cannot
rightfully accept them.
But in order for the judgment to act, Theosophy furnishes copiously the material. The
philosophy may be divided into two parts, the facts and laws wholly beyond the reach of
us ordinary mortals, the facts and laws measurably within our reach but needing elucidation
by the former class. These it expounds with fulness, fortifying itself with the discoveries of
science and the best exercise of reason. Those it presents as upon the evidence of
extraordinary mortals, men whose larger acquisitions of faculty enable them to transcend our
limits and explore vast realms beyond. Then it connects the two and exhibits a consistent
scheme explanatory of all life seen and unseen, and by the beautiful harmony and relation of
all parts depicts a whole which is worthy of its Divine Author.
As knowledge of matters outside our ken can only be communicated to us through one of
ourselves, Theosophy avows that certain individuals have from time to time been used as
channels of these higher truths, the sources being above them, known to be such, avowed to
be such. Sometimes in sacred writings recognized as "Scriptures", sometimes in scientific
expositions of advanced grade, sometimes in moral or spiritual disquisitions, sometimes in
the translation of inaccessible or non-understood works, truth appertaining to loftier planes is
made to percolate down for the benefit and refreshment of dwellers upon the plains. In such
cases the channel was valued for its accuracy and its service; it did not authenticate the truth,
it transmitted it; it was not the authority but the witness. The truth, even, did not rest upon the
medium; its certitude was in the responsiveness of the auditor, and its sanction in the validity
of its source.
Thus it is that Theosophy approaches all hearers of this or any other age, large-minded,
open-handed, frank, inviting every critical research, discountenancing all sham or partiality,
pointing to proofs, citing evidence when accessible and furnishing testimony when not,
appealing only to reason and insight and perception. Its most conspicuous Apostles most
exhibit this spirit, and beg their pupils to look not to them but through them for the Truth

which is to make free. They disclaim names as finalities, and will not consent that texts are to
be fetters to the soul or any book weigh down a struggling mind. A disciple may reverence
his teacher, but not truly so by repetition of phrases or by any other course than that which
has convinced and qualified the teacher himself.
These facts have important bearing in the era to which Theosophy has now arrived. It has
passed beyond the stage of mere novelty, and its philosophy has larger coherence as well as
wider popular attention. Advance is being made into broader regions of thought, principles
are receiving fuller application, legitimate criticism is testing the soundness of doctrine. The
Theosophical Society finds a hearing in many quarters formerly barred to it, and its
expounders have audiences neither unfriendly nor unfair. To be distinct they have to be
explicit, and to be explicit they have to be precise. But this often seems to be dogmatic, to be
laying down fact as if incontestable, to be proclamatory of truth as assured. It is by no means
necessarily so, for the genuine expounder disclaims more than commendation to reason and
will not allow any coercive intention. It is his to suggest, to vindicate, to impress; never to
insist, demand, or extort. If there is appearance of dogmatism, it is contrary to his purpose
and spirit, utterly contrary to the Society he represents.
Even though there may be no real dogmatic character in Theosophy, the Society, or its
expounders, there may yet be an impolicy of reference which impairs the course of the
message. The revival in the West of the ancient Wisdom Religion came about through
Madame H. P. Blavatsky, herself an Initiate and a direct messenger from the Masters behind.
The services she gave to the Cause, the self-sacrificing devotion to her mission which marked
every day of her career, the contributions she made to Theosophical literature and learning,
no pen can fully compute. Theosophists feel for her a gratitude and veneration which they
may well feel for one who was the means of throwing open to them a new and boundless
spiritual life, and in her works they find an exhaustless treasure of scientific, moral, and
spiritual truth. Not unnaturally but still mistakenly, many of them extend this attitude from
their private studies to their public discussions, and forget that a reverence which is personal
cannot validate a proposition which is impersonal. To non-Theosophic hearers a doctrine
stands or falls by its conformity to reason and the moral sense, not by the repetition of a name
or a quotation from a book. Take Karma, for instance. If it is to become influential as a
motive in life, its existence and operations have to be shown by argument, analogy, and
illustration. All quarters can be drawn upon, and the larger the basis the surer the
construction. Demonstrated thus, it makes its way to the judgment and the heart. But treat it
as a dictum of Isis Unveiled, The Key to Theosophy, and The Secret Doctrine, consider it as
proved because H. P. B. said so, dispose airily of questions as worthless because they have no
sanction in H. P. B's works or words, and it becomes merely a shibboleth of adherence to a
side, not at all an ethical law to be verified by conviction.
And certainly the most devoted Theosophists who are usually also the most devoted
disciples of the Teacher are often willing to admit that this mistake has been made in
public exposition. It is a mistake in judgment, for the public are to be won through the merits
of a doctrine and not through appeals to an authority. It is a mistake in perception, for they
who perpetrate it forget that their own conversion to Theosophy was by conviction of reason,
reverence being a later experience. And it is a mistake in policy, for the free mind resents an
attempt to coerce it by a name instead of an attempt to influence it by a fact. So irritation is
aroused, and a truth which might be winsome is transformed into a dogma which must be
repellent, the spirit waxing impatient at the supposition that it can be over-awed by a
quotation or silenced by a term. Undoubtedly many a warming interest has been chilled by

supposition that Theosophy is expressed and bounded by H. P. B's published works, that it
has no other support than can be found from her, that all propositions are to be tested by their
conformity to the Secret Doctrine, that Theosophists think only as she allowed and believe
only as they are sure she would approve. And if an inquirer conceives that the choice is
between a free range of thought which shall carry him, unfettered, through every sphere and
bring him before every truth, and a circumscribed round which shall tether him to a name and
a book, he cannot be blamed if he thinks harsh things, says harsh words, and abjures
Theosophy, H. P. B., and the Society.
Now free-thought and insistence on reason as the vindication of doctrine are no disloyalty to
our great Leader. Rather are they homage to her, since she so battled for them. No one who
knew her or who is familiar with her works found her exacting of subservience to her views.
On the contrary, she held and taught and enjoined that submission without conviction was not
only worthless but unmanly, and her appeal was ever to argument and proof. We shall not
improve upon her by reversing her policy, and we shall not further the Cause she loved by
methods she disapproved. Loving reverence may express itself in loving imitation, the truest
homage in an extension of her own spirit. In commending Theosophy and its priceless
benefits to men, the genuine disciple of H. P. B. can refrain from phrases which she abjured
and references which she discountenanced, and can uphold the philosophy and its contents
and its conclusions with the richest of arguments and illustrations and verifications. As they
affect the public mind and swell the number of the enlightened and the aspiring, he will
become ever more conscious of the broad spirit of his mission, and, while not pushing the
name and words of H. P. B. to the forefront of his discourse, will know that behind it they are
a source of strength and inspiration and motive, flowing through his every thought and
impulse, even though rarely voiced in the hearing of the multitude.
[NOTE. The above article has my unqualified approval. It is easy to prove that the
Theosophical Society is not dogmatic and has no creed and no personal authority in matters
of doctrine or belief; but the wise Theosophist should see to it that undue attention is not
given to a line of proof that may arouse a needless opposition. W. Q. J.]

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