A MYSTERIOUS MANUSCRIPT

                                                               Johan van Manen


Johan van Manen was born in Holland in 1877. He joined the Theosophical Society in that country in 1895. In 1897 he acted as a translator for H. S. Olcott. During the period of 1904 and 1906 he was the Honorary Secretary of the first Convention of the Federation of European Sections of the TS. He came to Adyar in February 1909 with C. W. Leadbeater. From 1909 to 1916 he was the Assistant Director of the Adyar Library and helped to furnish it with rare manuscripts. Later on he was the General Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society in Bengal and the editor of its Journal. He passed away in 1943. The article reproduced here was originally published in The Theosophist, January 1911. (Source: The Theosophical Year Book, 1937)

 

A Mysterious Manuscript (Source: The Theosophist, January 1911)

The Manuscripts in the Adyar Library

The collection of manuscripts in the Adyar Library is really unique in its Sanskrit department. It contains already over twelve thousand works – of which several indeed are duplicates of the same treatise, but of which, on the other hand, a considerable number are unique, not known to exist in any other library, and, lastly of which a great number (if not unique) are of great rarity. Besides these Sanskrit Manuscripts there are also several others, the presence of which in our collections is perhaps less known to the public. We have, for instance, a magnificent copy of the Pāli Tripitaka and a small number of other Pāli works, and further some Telugu, Tamil, Chinese, Javanese and Tibetan Manuscripts. Besides these, again, we possess a considerable number of Japanese and Chinese prints (mostly Buddhistic) both in xylography and typography, amongst which are the Tokyo edition of the Chinese Tripitaka, and also, the late King of Siam’s printed edition of the Pāli Tripitaka in Siamese characters.

Our library being a young one with very limited financial means at its disposal, some of the works in languages other than Sanskrit have not yet been adequately determined and catalogued, though it may be added that at least the Chinese Tripitaka has now been duly arranged by Mr. Spurgeon Medhurst and ourselves, and that we have also determined the character of the few bundles of Tibetan Manuscripts in our possession. The latter contain nothing of a startling nature. There is, we may say of course, a copy of the Vajracchedika or Rdo-rje-gchod-pa; then there are some minor treatises relating to Padmasambhava and similar matters, important neither in contents nor extent, nor in perfection of the writer’s art. We may perhaps add that we ourselves possess a small collection of Tibetan blockprints, comprising some 2,700 leaves, and containing amongst other matter an Açtasahasrikā Prajnāparamitā, two different editions of Milaraspa (each containing the two works), and two different Padma Thangyigs (both differing from the texts made known by Grünwedel and Schlagintweit).

A Solitary Leaf of a Tibetan Manuscript

Besides the Manuscripts mentioned above there is one other Tibetan production in our collection, a solitary leaf of what is evidently a big book. It is a splendid specimen of Tibetan calligraphy, though the leaf itself has not come to us in an altogether undamaged condition. On both outer ends it shows clear traces of being singed or burned, and on the right hand side perhaps an inch has broken off, the material having become brittle when undergoing its fire-ordeal. The text is only slightly interfered with, at the most the width of one of one or two letters having been lost in this way; and these lost letters, owing to the nature of the text written on the leaf, can be easily restored, as this text consists chiefly of a series of formulae which occur over and over again with only a slight verbal change in a single expression or group of expressions. The material of the leaf is some tough and leathery paper, colored dark blue and polished on that part of it on which the text has been written. The letters, beautifully and clearly executed, about a quarter of an inch high (pa, ba and the like), do not show any difference from the modern form and are written or painted in the well-known shiny, yellowish-golden color which lends such beauty to Tibetan writings of that class. The leaf contains eight lines on each side; it measures exactly ten inches high and in its present condition nearly 24½ inches long, but its length may have originally been 1 to 1½ inches more. Our reproduction on a scale of a little under one-third gives a clear idea of the state and appearance of the leaf on its recto side.

How the Manuscript Came to Us

The history of the arrival of the Manuscript in the Adyar Library is already romantic in itself. Dr. [Otto] Schrader, the Director, had, soon after his first arrival in India, taken care of a young Brahmana orphan to whom he intended to give a good education with a view of qualifying him for secretarial work of some kind. After having been placed in the Central Hindu College, the lad preferred, however, to lead the parivrājaka  life, went north and was subsequently only occasionally heard of. He seems to have wandered through Nepal amongst other places, and in November, 1908, Dr. Schrader received the late tidings from him. This news was contained in a letter (bearing the postmark of Askote, Almora, November 17th, 1908 ), giving some particulars about his present condition and asking for a determination  of the nature and contents of the Manuscript leaf, sent by the same mail per book-post under separate cover. He stated that a friend he had met possessed a collection of such leaves, of which this was one, but did not know what it was, and would be glad to be enlightened on the point. With characteristic forgetfulness he neglected to add his present address, so that no answer could be sent; and after several months Dr. Schrader, unhappily, destroyed the letter, the precise contents of which he is now no longer able to recall. How this manuscript came into the possession of the youthful brahmachārin’s friend remains thus an unsolved problem. Let its solution be as it may; the fact remains that we are in the possession of this tantalizing knowledge that somewhere up north someone possesses the remainder of this Manuscript, not knowing its unique value, which am going to demonstrate further on, perhaps not taking due care of it, whilst we are impotent to rescue it from oblivion and possible decay or disappearance.

The Unique Character of the Manuscript

When Dr. Schrader, on a mere chance occasion, during the autumn of 1909, submitted the Manuscript to me I at once recognised it as something special and remarkable. On first sight I found its orthography quite peculiar showing the ancient da-drag and the subjoined vowel, ya between the initial m and the vowels e and i in full use. Most readers will exclaim: “What are these da-drag and subjoined ya?” They represent ancient forms of Tibetan orthography, which, according to modern authorities, ceased to be employed before about the year 800 of our era. It will be seen immediately how important that single leaf at once became by this discovery. For either we have before us a modern copy artificially reproducing the obsolete orthography – and an example of such a procedure is as yet absolutely unknown – or we have a genuine old Manuscript dating from within a century or two of the introduction of writing into Tibet, which took place in about 640 A.D. It would bring us into contact with the work of the earliest translators from Sanskrit into Tibetan, and would in another way be of importance as indicating the survival at the present day of bulky specimens of the old writing, examples of which – in a very limited number – have until now only been found buried under the devastating but preservative sands of Turkestan.

What hopes for further discovery this possibility evokes it is needless to say. Let us mention only the importance such discoveries would have for the intricate history and genetic development of the Buddhist writings. Textual criticism could not hope for a better find. Little wonder, then, that I remained perplexed as to the truth of the matter, and could not easily pass over the fact that the appearance of our leaf is fresh, that it does not clearly indicate any hoary past, and does not lend force to the theory that this leaf is more than a thousand years old. And yet the cold Tibetan climate is a good preserver, better than that of tropical India with its moisture, its heat and its devouring insects.

To What Work the Leaf Belongs

In attempting to solve the above puzzle the first step to take is evidently to determine to what work this isolated leaf belongs. Unhappily there is no marginal short title on the leaf, such as is found in almost all xylographs; there is no chapter closing or beginning, no colophon or other indication which might give it a clue. The only thing is to judge the contents as such. There is however one indication of a secondary nature, and that is the page number. The leaf is marked on its recto side ga x x go-bshi or in other words Vol. III, page 94. Taking the volume number as applying to a single work – seeing that this is a Manuscript, and not a printed work, in which separate treatises are often included in a number of volumes, and accordingly marked with a volume number which has no reference to their individual length – the whole work must be of considerable bulk.

Now a perusal of the contents showed the enumeration of the various well-known series of the four (five) fruits or paths (srotāpatti, etc., including rang-byang-chhub or pratyekabuddha as the fifth), the six parāmitās, the eighteen shūnyatās, and the mention of several other series, which are, however, not singly enumerated like the former, but only mentioned collectively, as for example the four noble truths, the noble eightfold path, the four meditations, the eight escapes or emancipations, and the five powers. It is clear that the most probable hypothesis is that, with regard to length (at the least three volumes) and contents, we have here to do with one of the larger Prajnāparāmitās. And if this be so, the choice must lie between the Shatasahasrikā (the 100,000 shloka Prajnāparāmitā), the Panchavimshatishasrikā (in 25,000 shlokas) and the Actadashasrikā (in 18,000 shlokas). The two smaller recensions, the Dashasahasrikā (in 10,000 shlokas) and the Actasahasrika (in 8,000 shlokas) are scarcely probable as the original work, as both are continually printed in Tibet in a single volume, and it is not likely that our Manuscript, containing as much matter on a page as the printed editions, would expand to (at least) three volumes in writing. 

Going a step further, considering all elements at my disposal, I have come finally to this conclusion that the most likely hypothesis is to assign our fragment as belonging to the 25,000 shloka recension, called by abbreviation nyi-khri in Tibetan, and consisting in reality – as that word indicates – of perhaps roughly 20,000 shlokas. I need not detail how I have finally come to this conclusion, which, it must be remembered, is after all only a hypothesis. Suffice it to add still that a rapid glance through this 25,000 shloka recension of the Chinese Tripitaka, one through the Sanskrit 8,000 shloka edition published in the Bibliotheca Indica by Rajendralāla Mitra, one through the Tibetan 100,000 shloka edition as far as published in the Bibliotheca Indica by Pratāpachandra Ghosha, have only given me several dizzy headaches, but have not led me to an identification of our passage.

Clairvoyance to the Rescue

So there the matter stood, without prospect of further development, when I bethought myself that it might be interesting to attempt an appeal to the powers of trained clairvoyance for some suggestions, or perhaps a solution to the problem. So on the evening of November 17, 1909, at 9.30 P.M., after the day’s work was over, I went to Mr. Leadbeater with the Manuscript, outlined the case to him, and asked him if he would be kind enough to go into the question either by sheer clairvoyance or by psychometry. It should be understood that I told him only the barest facts of the case: that here was a Manuscript which according to its orthographic peculiarities must be supposed to have been written before 800 A.D., that it was Tibetan, and that further than that there was nothing known about it, neither as to its ultimate provenance nor as to of what work it formed part. Unnecessary to add that Mr. Leadbeater knows no Tibetan or other Oriental languages; and though himself a Buddhist and keenly interested in its living aspects, has made no scientific studies concerning its development, nor is specially acquainted with the literature about it by any but the more popular writers amongst the western Buddhist scholars.

Readers of the Magazine are familiar with the results of clairvoyant enquiry as applied to historic researches through the series of ‘Lives of Alcyone’. Those as yet unfamiliar with this subject can do no better than read Mr. Leadbeater’s own little manual on Clairvoyance, describing the whole theory concerning the exercise of this power; and they may also advantageously compare Mr. Mead’s remarks on this subject in the introduction to his work on Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? It is here, of course, not the place to insert a petitio principii concerning the reality of clairvoyance, some knowledge of which subject is taken for granted in our readers. Psychic researchers may note down the case here related as an interesting document for study, and those interested in this problem will find a good illustration of a chance example of clairvoyance, quite casually demonstrated without any previous preparation or warning. In the regular and systematic exercise of the power in lengthy series of investigations, such as those connected with Thought-forms, Ancient Peru, Occult Chemistry, and others, the existence of some preliminary preparation might be argued, but here we have a mere chance chip thrown off from the block, and the spontaneity of its production has a special demonstrational value.

The Date of the Leaf

Mr. Leadbeater, at once, most kindly, acquiesced in my wishes. It has been my privilege – as it has been that of many others in close connection with him – to have often witnessed such little spontaneous ‘asides’ to his more regular work. Those of us who have had this experience might construct an interesting evidential chain of argument and circumstance in favor of the reality of his possession of this abnormal power in a scientific sense.

He first took the leaf in his hands, sat quietly for a few moments, half closed his eyes, and began to speak. The Manuscript was very old, he said; it had been written in Tibet, or at least somewhere among the mountains of the Himālayan chain, or those north of them. He could not at first say exactly where. Glancing over contemporary Europe to find some landmarks for the fixing of the date – a process said to be quite feasible – it was found that it was about the time of Pepin le Bref and Charlemagne. Some interesting details of personal description of the latter were given, some glimpses of scenes in his life were depicted, and some living touches of the life of the times were described in a most casual manner, and in the merest passing. A glance over contemporary England confirmed the approximate date gained, and whilst Mr. Leadbeater was wandering round amongst these pictures of ancient life, I looked up and verified such details as lent themselves to it from the cyclopedia. It has always struck me as an amusing fact that, whereas in olden times the wizard – at least traditionally – had his proper setting in picturesque and dramatic surroundings, he now-a-days uses a prosaic typewriter, and does not despise the use of dictionary and cyclopedia to check as far as possible his own results. In occult methods, too, civilization brings progress!

A direct question brought the answer that, running rapidly over the history of the Manuscript in reverse order, from the present day to its genesis, our leaf proved to be the original production and not a later copy of it. At the moment no further precision of the date fixed was attempted, as this would entail considerable difficulty; for in such a matter concrete minute points of comparison are needed, fixed points as it were, and these depend largely on the actual knowledge present in the consciousness of the seer. Within historical times, this would not be very difficult for countries whose languages the seer understands; but for nations speaking languages or using chronologies unknown to him, the process would be laborious. Some practical makeshifts are in many cases resorted to, as for instance, when in events coinciding with Roman times the contemporary name of the acting consul was looked up and then his date read up in some cyclopedia. Huge periods are commonly computed from astronomical observations.

The Author of the Leaf

Having fixed his attention on the writer of the Manuscript, Mr. Leadbeater gave a description of him and ascertained some facts connected with him. His name was unluckily not determined, though somehow in a vague way the name Sambhava was mentioned in connection with him. He was an oldish man of commanding appearance, seemingly of some Mongolian race – perhaps Tibeto-Chinese. There was an impression that he had been born somewhere on or near the Chinese frontier. He was observed writing in a sort of monastery, a great bare walled place, part of a much larger establishment. This place was, in a sort, identified in an interesting way. During the summer of 1909 Mr. Leadbeater and myself had read the proofs of Ekai Kawaguchi’s work Three Years in Tibet which was published by The Theosophist Office. Whilst clairvoyantly looking at the Tibetan writer, long since dead and gone, and at his dwelling-place, Mr. Leadbeater said that this was the same place which Kawaguchi had visited and described in his book. He stated: ‘Look up Kawaguchi; you will find there the description of the same place. It is situated to the east of the river. Nyalba (or Nyalva) is the name of a village near by.’ Upon being asked how he knew this, he answered that a habitual exercise of clairvoyance brings with it the automatic arising of pictures of the original when various subjects are spoken or read of. So, in reading a book of travel, the practised clairvoyant continually sees before him the real scenes and incidents described. In this way he recognised the old monastery as that which he had seen in connection with Kawaguchi’s book. The detail is interesting. But I have not been able to identify the place from any description in the book.

The Writing of the Book

The vision showed the beautiful Manuscript and there was ‘lots of it’. The Manuscript in the final state, of which our solitary leaf is a specimen, was not the immediate result of the translation. The translation itself was done from a palm-leaf Manuscript, written in some form of Sanskrit. The ancient translator worked at it as his great life-task, taking many years over it. His labor was a sort of secret charge. The first draft was written on some dirty-looking white-grey paper. From this the Manuscript was copied with scrupulous care and in painfully neat calligraphy on the blue paper of which we have the sample. The writing was done, it seems, with some kind of bamboo or wooden brush or pen. My notes do not record the detail, but I believe it was given at the time. The copying as well as the translation were equally sacred tasks to the Tibetan monk.

According to Csoma de Körös-Feer the Tibetan translation of the 25,000 shloka recension of the Prajnāpāramitā is unknown.

Glossolaly

Except in the Christian Creed, where he has given pontou pilêtou as the original form of the pontiou pilatou in the Gospels, Mr. Leadbeater has to my knowledge never yet published direct readings from ancient Manuscripts, clairaudiently obtained. The more interesting is it that on this occasion he reproduced several larger and smaller snatches of sound heard from the Tibetan writer in reading his Manuscripts. It must be borne in mind that clairvoyance does not in itself enable its possessor to read ancient Manuscripts if he does not know their script, but the clairvoyant, or rather clairaudient can hear and reproduce the sounds uttered by the people of the time who read these writings aloud. The sounds heard seem to belong to three different categories. They are those of the Sanskritic original, those of the Tibetan translation, and one sentence which seems Chinese.

I will spell as well as I can phonetically with the ordinary continental values of the letters.

(a) Chinese
The monk began his readings with what seemed a set formula running somewhat as follows, though the exact order of the sounds is not guaranteed.

fo do bo zo

Remarks:

This looks more Chinese than Tibetan, and may represent an invocation in the monk’s mother tongue, as he was possibly a Chinaman by birth. It must be remembered that the titles of the Chinese Pāramitās abound in monosyllables having an o sound. The Chinese names for the three Chinese versions of the 25,000 shloka recension are named: Fāng-kwāng-pān- jo-po-lo-mi-ching, Mo-hö- pān-jo-po-lo-mi-ching, and Kwāng-tsān-pān-jo-po-lo-mi-ching . Pān-jo-po-lo-mi-to is the Chinese transcription for Prajnāpāramitā.

(b) Tibetan
The following sentences and isolated works or expressions were dictated as Tibetan. They were of course pronounced through an untrained English larynx by one not conversant with Tibetan, nor, for the matter of that, with Sanskrit or Chinese.

1.fo khiën khab dzju  lobchen thupha
2.tcha khiën sangtszu lo bat tsze gyal bor ang khor bat zug hrang po chellung phota .

Remarks:

An adherent to the doctrine of sub-conscious memory will probably see in ang
khor bat a reminiscence of the famous ruins in Cambodia.

3.Shrī chen.
4.naljor.
5.genpakdenchub.
6.norlab dipak denpo.

Remarks:

Number one may be intended to represent a name; I have a lingering remembrance that it was given as such, but I have not recorded the fact in my notes.
Number two was a sentence from the book.
Number three and five were isolated words.
Number four was a word known to Mr. Leadbeater and recognized by him, as it is used in Theosophical literature, it is of course the Tibetan equivalent for Yoga, Yogin, Yogāchārya or Yogāchāra.
Number six may be a name again.

(c) Sanskritic (Classical Sanskrit, Buddhistic Sanskrit, Pāli?)
Taken from the original Manuscript from which the Tibetan translation was made.

1. Itipisso bhagavan arahan

Remarks:

This is evidently the well-known Pāli formula: Iti pi so bhagavā arahan sammāsambuddho vijjā-carana-sampanno sugato lokavidū, etc.  It would be strange to find Pāli in the original instead of some form of Sanskrit if our book is really one of the Prajnāpāramitās. But a similar formula was at one time known to Tibetan Buddhists  in the form: “Itapi so Bhagavā(n) Samjaksambudho vidschdschatscharanasampano Sugato Lokavidjānuttaro” (as transcribed by Schiefner), given the language of Magadha.

The words were given as the beginning of a sentence.

May it be that Mr. Leadbeater heard the Pāli form in Ceylon during the course of
his lengthy residence there, and clothed the nearly similar sounds in a form reminiscent of them in some sub-conscious?

Mr. Leadbeater himself thinks this hypothesis probable. It was his opinion that in each of these cases, out of a torrent of unknown words which he heard, his mind pounced upon such as were already partly familiar to it, and even that he might easily have been deceived by apparent and superficial resemblances to words sub-consciously present in his mind.

2. Saririr pilikulenda.
3. Buddha rajanān wahanseye nama swawera.

Remarks:

Buddharajanānwahansé is an honorific title frequently applied in Ceylon to the Buddha. The words heard may only have resembled these.

We publish the above details in the hope that some reader or readers thoroughly conversant with spoken Tibetan and Chinese or with Buddhistic Sanskrit may shed some light on the problems they raise. As an almost unique example of what they are in the way of recovered sounds from the past heard by clairaudience in time, they cannot fail to have also a special interest for the student of such matters.

The Pre-History of the Document

What we have written up till now has a special interest mainly for the psychic researcher, the philologist and the student of Buddhist history and literature, and generally also for the Theosophist. What now follows is of special and almost exclusive interest to the latter. For the stray scholar, who may have happened to meet and read these pages, hypothesis and description cease and romance begins. But even if he should regard what follows as a mere story, it is an interesting one which will amuse him if no more. Needless to say that we ourselves regard the following to be as much a subject for serious consideration as what has gone before, and that we consider that our own faculties and expectations are by no means the measure of the possible or the true. Besides, we are able to bring forward a few corroborative arguments with regard to some points of the story.

After having come thus far in the description of the author, his place and time and book, I asked Mr. Leadbeater to go a step further and follow up the Sanskrit Manuscript from which the Tibetan translation was made. By tracing it back to some other Manuscript from which, in its turn, it might prove to have been copied, and so on, we would at last come to the original author and also probably to the title of the book.

Already, when describing the Tibetan translator, he had said hat the man looked somehow familiar though he did not finally identify him (not as to name, but as to ego). Also the Sanskrit Manuscript had a ‘curious feel’ about it, he said. And in acceding to my request he very soon said: “I believe that Master K.H. may have something to do with the book.” He then described how in ascending along the line of time, the Master’s influence became perceptible in the Manuscript, growing stronger and stronger as he moved into the earlier past, until at last he found Master K.H. himself as its author nearly two thousand years ago. First the Manuscript took him to India. It was interesting to watch the description of how the surrounding climate was softening, and at last was transformed into one of tropical heat, and how the country in which he was moving changed from icy Tibet to glaring India. After a few centuries he found himself transported – much to his surprise – to the identical monastery and library where Alcyone (in the thirtieth life) was abbot and librarian. In that library the Manuscript was one of the great treasures, and either that self-same Manuscript, or a copy made from it, was the Sanskrit book seen in the hands of the Tibetan translator. As this life of Alcyone will soon appear in The Theosophist, we need not give any particulars here, but satisfy ourselves with the statement that its time was about 650 A.D. and the place Kanyakubja.

Nāgārjuna

It is well-known in Theosophical circles that it has been stated that he who is now Master K.H. was known in a former life as Pythagoras, and some centuries later in India as Nāgārjuna  – a great saint and scholar in the early Buddhist world, renowned as a mighty sorcerer and great philosopher, a voluminous author, a Methusalah who lived for three centuries as a Buddhist patriarch, the focus of countless legends, stories, traditions and even fairy-tales. To him at last the investigation leads when searching for the ultimate (or rather penultimate, as we shall see) origin of our mysterious leaf. The following are the bare facts as Mr. Leadbeater told them that evening.

We are now somewhere near the time that the Christian gospels were written, about 200 A.D., or rather a little less; between 150 and 180 A.D., would be more exact. Nāgārjuna is now an old man. He wrote the original Manuscript, but this was itself not an original production, but a translation from an Atlantean Manuscript. There is already a queer and romantic story current about it. This Manuscript was a holy relic when one of the later Atlantean migrations left Poseidonis. They took it with them to India. After a long time of peaceful dwelling in the new land, the Āryan hordes begin to invade the country from the North. The older Atlantean tribe began to be harassed and to be sorely pressed. They fought like lions but without avail. They formed the kshattriya or rājan caste, and were red-colored. At last they saw their doom was sealed, and they decided to bury their sacred treasure. They did, and it remained buried in a dry sandy place for thousands of years, quite undisturbed. This Atlantean Manuscript was enclosed in an air-tight case, hermetically sealed and made out of some sort of metal. Its preservation remained perfect.

Nāgārjuna got hold of information about it and located it by some magical means, after which he dug it up. The Manuscript was written in colored hieroglyphs on what seem metal plates. It was about two feet long and twelve inches broad. There were twenty-seven lines of script, written on one side of the plates only, which numbered one hundred and fifty-three. In translation the text expanded considerably. It was translated on palm-leaves about sixteen inches long and four high, on which twelve lines were written on both sides. About three of such palm leaves went to one metal sheet. The translation seems to consist of three parts – three bundles anyhow. The work is known as Sambodhi; this is the original title and Nāgārjuna is the translator. This translation is somehow dual in its nature. There seems first to be a mere translation, corresponding exactly to the original, and then secondly, under the same title, something which seems a commentary. There ought therefore to be two books or parts, with the same name but quite different contents.

After this translation was made, and the work commenced its wandering career throughout the centuries, it began to expand. This process of expansion went on and on till the book reached Tibet. And even before it reached India from Atlantis, it had already begun increasing its initial size.

A curious phrase in or connected with the initial Manuscript is: “The great King of Glory who liveth for 124,000 years.”

This then is the story of the Manuscript in so far as it related to Nāgārjuna, and so far as briefly outlined in a short and cursory investigation lasting in all scarcely more than one hour, certainly less than two hours.

Some Corroborative Observations on the Previous Paragraph

The first interesting corroboration for our story is that, in effect, there exists a legend that Nāgārjuna did find a case with manuscripts from which he drew the materials for writing the Pāramitās, all of which tradition ascribes to him. In the popular versions this case was recovered from the nether-world or the sea, by the aid of a King of the Nāgas. It will be remembered that occult enquiry has suggested the equivalence of the name Nāga – really meaning serpent, a mystical being playing a great part in early Buddhist legend – with the name of an Atlantean tribe or race. They were so called, it is stated, because of their tribal totem, borne before them in war, was a snake. Nepālese Manuscripts of the Prajnāpāramitā record in their colophons that they had been drawn from the nether-world by Nāgārjuna. The Chinese biography of Nāgārjuna relates the story as follows:

“Nāgarāja (King of the Dragons) took pity on him [Nāgārjuna] and took him with him to his palace at the bottom of the sea, and showed him there seven precious receptacles, containing the Vaipulya books and other Sūtras of a deep and mystical meaning; Nāgārjuna read them for ninety consecutive days, and then returned to the earth with a case (Kiste).”

Waddell  adds that Nāgārjuna alleged the Buddha Himself had composed the treatise.

A second corroboration is perhaps to be found in the fact that the 25,000 shloka recension is commonly given as printed in three volumes, which fact may have something to do with the ‘three original parts’ described.

The third is with regard to the name Sambodhi. In the 25,000 shloka recension of the work, the fourth of its eight chapters is called Sarvakārābhisambodha or ‘cognisance of all forms, whereby the Bodhisattva acquires a right understanding of the various phases of the mind under different circumstances’, and the sixth chapter is called Ekākshna-visambodha, or ‘knowledge of all times present, past and future’.

The fourth corroboration is with regard to the statement that there were two different books, a translation and a commentary. Rājendralāla Mitra writes in his work already quoted, p. xiv, the following:

“The second abridgment of the large work [the 100,000 shloka recension of the Prajnāpāramitā] is usually reckoned at 25,000 shlokas … but … roughly calculated it is limited to 20,045 shlokas… Though professedly a digest, the arrangement of the work is not founded on the plan of the Shatasahasrika, and the treatment of the subject is generally different. In fact the work is an independent one on the subject of Nihilism bearing on the attributes of Buddha.”

For a quite recent discovery of the existence of a separate work included in the Prajnāpāramitās see M. Haraprasāda Shāstrī in the J. & P. A. S. B. Vol. VI, No. 8, August, 1910, p. 425. This short note is quite important for our present problem and was published a year after Mr. Leadbeater’s researches. It also gives some clue to the process of expansion of the earlier versions, and states that the prose portions of the work alone are original, the verses are ‘different works’.

All the above considerations deserve further careful study, and it is highly desirable that all those competent to shed more light on these problems should not hesitate to co-operate towards this end.

Back to Atlantis

The investigation did not altogether end with the facts ascertained concerning Nāgārjuna's part in the production of our manuscript. A further endeavor was made to trace back the Atlantean plates to their origin. The inquiry was a quite summary one and disclosed only a few general data, but one of them was of special interest. It was found that ultimately the primary Manuscript was one which Master M., when, more than ten thousand years ago, a Ruler in Poseidonis, had had copied. Mr. Leadbeater stated: “Master M. has had a hand in it also. I am not surprised. For wherever you find Master K.H. there you may be sure you will somehow meet Master M. also.” It was not definitely stated at what time this took place. Anyhow the copy was, some 11,500 years ago, in the possession of a secret society then existing in the capital of Poseidonis, and having wide ramifications all through the land. It was then a period of the grossest general corruption, but at the same time this hidden league of white magicians and good, pure people was active in the very heart of the degraded civilisation.

Now in the fifteenth of the series of lives of Orion – which series will be published in course of time in the pages of The Theosophist – its hero lived in a female body in Poseidonis, from 9603-9564 B.C. She, together with another woman (Sirius) belonging to same mountain tribe as herself, was made captive in a military expedition of the Toltec army against her people, and both were carried off to the city and apportioned as slaves to a rich and highly placed official. They suffered torture and abuse to such an extent that they attempted to run away and they were ultimately successful in reaching a place of safety. Whilst hurrying through the streets of the town on their way to freedom they actually passed the house in which the meeting-place of this secret society was situated. When arriving at the point in his story, telling of the existence of this secret brotherhood, Mr. Leadbeater suddenly exclaimed in tones half of despair, half of anger: “And by Jove, they did not know, they did not know!” On being asked: “Who did not know what?” he explained the above situation, and said that if the two fugitives had only turned in there, they would have been safe and their tribulations ended. In seeing the house in which the Manuscript was guarded, and being back in the times and places of Orion’s life in that period, the other pictures connected with all concerned had also been evoked, and for the first time he realised what might have been in that life, instead of what actually was. Certainly this was the first time that I witnessed emotions manifested because of adventures of more than ten thousand years ago.

A Tangled Skein

A tangled skein, indeed, has the strange story of our mysterious Manuscript proved itself according to its occult history obtained by clairvoyance, according to its immediate history in arriving in the Adyar Library, and according to the evidence of its special orthographic character. The intermingled threads have now been unravelled, but another tissue has at the same time been woven in connection with it. We find two Masters, Alcyone, Sirius, Orion, more or less directly connected with it – further investigation would perhaps reveal more kārmic links. Involuntarily we therefore ask ourselves a question which seems to suggest itself: May the coming of this leaf to us carry some purpose as yet unknown? We do not know; perhaps the future will show.

Conclusion

Before ending we must once more emphasise the fact that this little investigation was undertaken quite on the spur of the moment, without any preparation whatever. The various details outlined above were not in the least all known to myself, and even of the little of what I knew about the Prajnāpāramitās and Nāgārjuna I did not tell a word to Mr. Leadbeater in outlining the case when submitting it to him. This casual investigation, besides, was only one of many similar ones which I have seen Mr. Leadbeater undertake in a like way. Let us admit, to say the least of it, that the story, taken as a mere concoction, is a clever improvisation for one not consulting a single book at the time, and without any special knowledge of Oriental languages and the more technical literature about them. Let us admit again that the instantaneous use of the imagination in the manufacture of such a consistent story, or such use of the dramatic powers of the sub-conscious self, would be – if anyone wishes to ascribe the tale to their action – of a nature remarkable enough to merit some attention and to demand some explanation.

We hope that the above narrative, quite apart from its interest to Theosophists, may serve a useful end in offering a remarkable ‘case’ for those interested in the whole problem of clairvoyance, or of the Theosophical doctrine of the ākāshic records. It is a typical little case, perhaps not rich enough in details and data to furnish sufficient materials for scientific study and analysis to reach final conclusions, yet certainly sufficient as a starting point for such study. There must be several people with the abilities of a Flournoy or an Lutoslawski, to mention widely divergent temperaments, who, in combination with Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese scholars, might contribute a most instructive discussion of this report. It seems to me that their labors would not be uselessly employed on it. There are great difficulties still to be explained, as for instance, the utterly Buddhistic nature of our leaf in connection with its alleged pre-Buddhistic origin, but all the more welcome would be all additional information which would enable us to understand all this – in whatever direction that explanation might eventually prove to lie.

REFERENCES:

1. The initial letter a does not occur on the leaf, so we cannot compare its form with the variety designated by L. D. Barnett in the J. R. A. S. [Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society], 1903, p. 111, as characteristic of Tibetan paleography.
2. ‘one who wanders’. [PO]
3. Though the accompanying letter was destroyed, happily the cover in which the Manuscript was sent was kept, which enables us to fix the date given.
4. For some literature on the subject see Jäschke ‘Tibetan Grammar’ (1883) § 34, and Dictionaries (1871 or 1881) s. v. da.; Csoma de Körös ‘Grammar of the Tibetan Language’ (1834), p. 11; Schmidt ‘Grammatik der Tibetischen Sprache’ (1839), p. 20, 21; Sarat Chandra Dās ‘Tibetan-English Dictionary’ (1902) s. v. da-drag; L. D. Barnett, J.R.A.S., 1903, p. 109 and p. 821; W. W. Rockhill, J.R.A.S., 1903, p. 572; L. A. Waddell, J.R.A.S., 1909, p. 923 (especially p. 942) and compare also p. 69; S. W. Bushell, J.R.A.S., 1880, p. 435 (especially plates after p. 534; the subjoined ya seems to be there, but the rubbing is very imperfect); M. A. Stein ‘Preliminary Report, etc., in Chinese Turkestan’ (1901) last plate and p. 57. From Laufer’s ‘Studien zur Sprachwissenchaft der Tibeter Zamatog’ in the Sitzungsberichte der philos.-philol. u. d. hist. Classe der k. b. Ak. d. Wissensch. zu München 1898), p. 519, we must conclude, ex omisione, that the Tibetan Grammar Zamatog, written in about 1500 A.D., no longer knows the da-drag, whereas Thonmi-sambhota’s grammar (about 625 A.D.) treats of it, according to A.H. Francke in the J.&P.A.S.B., 1910, p. 410. Whilst correcting the proofs of this article the October numbers of the J.R.A.S., for 1910, have come to hand, in which see L. A. Waddell, p. 1247 and especially p. 1250 and 1251. In this article the da-drag is proven to have been employed as late as about 840 A.D.
5.I will not enter into any technical discussion about the peculiarities of the Manuscript, if any such exist. That may be referred to more learned heads. Let me however note one point, the occurrence of the curious term rang-byang-chhub in the series srotāpatti, etc., after arhat, which term Chandra Dās in his dictionary (1166 b.) gives as the equivalent of rang-sangs-rgyas or pratyekabuddha. I may also add that the use of the da-drag does not tally with Barnett’s analysis of it in the Eudere fragments, J.R.A.S., 1903, pp. 110, 111. 
6.The above according to Csoma de Körös-Leon Feer in the ‘Anales du Museé Guimet’, Vol. II, p. 199. It should be remarked that whilst these authors give the 25,000 shloka recension as contained in three volumes, both the catalogue of the R.A.S.B. (‘A nominal list of Tibetan Manuscripts and xylographs’, etc., by P. Ghosha, p. 4, 5) and of the St. Petersburg Academy (I. J. Schmidt and O. Böhtlingk ‘Verzeichniss der Tibetischen Handschriften und Holzdrucke’, etc. [1846], Nos. 187-190) indicate only editions in four volumes.
7. It is curious that during all the twelve years that this publication has been in progress no one concerned has noticed that on the outer titles from the beginning till end stong phrag brgyad pa has been printed and on the inner and chapter titles stong phrag brgya pa. Jäschke has a clerical error in his London (1881) dictionary and gives stong phrag as ‘ten thousand’; his Gnadau (1871) dictionary is correct on this point.
8. Bunyiu Nanjio ‘Catalogue, etc., of the Chinese Buddhist Tripitaka’, Oxford, 1883, col.4.
9. kh=Greek chi; ië as in French bière.
10. dzju as in English jujube.
11. Something between thirpa (ir an in English thirst), thupha or thirpo (short o).
12. Bat or pat.
13. Hrang very guttural in its initials and the a sound very short.
14. Phota or phoda.
15. Something between chen, short chan or chin.
16. “That is the Noble One, the Saintly One, the perfectly Enlightened One, filled with Wisdom and Virtue, the Welcome One, whose look penetrates the worlds”, etc. See Bhikkhu Nānatiloka ‘Die Reden des Buddha’, Erster Band, Einer-Buch, Leipzig, [1910?], p. 57. The formula does not seem to occur in the written cannon of Ceylon, but to be in current use among the Buddhist population.
17.  A Schiefner ‘Wassiljew’s Vorrede, etc, zu Tārānātha’s Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien’, St. Petersburg, 1869, p. 29.
18. See about Nāgārjuna: Albert Grünwedel ‘Mythologie des Buddhismus in Tibet und der Mongolei’, Leipzig, 1900, p. 29; L. A. Waddell ‘The Buddhism of Tibet’, London, 1895, p. 10; W. Wassiljew ‘Der Buddhismus’, St. Petersburg, 1860, p. 232, also translated into English in ‘The Indian Antiquary’, Vol. IV, Bombay, 1875, p. 141. A list of literature on Nāgārjuna in Grünwedel’s work, note 31, p. 203.
19. J. & P. A. S. B., Vol. VI, 1910, p. 309 and 426.
20. Wassiljew ‘Der Buddhismus’ and ‘Indian Antiquary’. See note to previous paragraph. The English translation is defective.
21. ‘The Buddhism of Tibet’, p. 11.
22. Rājendralāla Mitra ‘Ashtasahasrika’ (Biblioteca Indica), Calcuta, 1888, p. xiv, xv.
 

  

AN HOUR WITH Mr. LEADBEATER

Ernest Wood

(Originally published in the Adyar Bulletin, November 1909)


I looked up again enquiringly from the piles of letters, answered and unanswered, that lay before me on the little round-cornered, black table in the famous octagon room. The sunlight glared at me from the smooth river, and smiled upon me from the luscious grass and the green palm-fronds. The hum of distant liquid voices reached my ears. The white cat lay coiled asleep upon the sofa. The round clock pursued its humble patient song. But he did not move his head, still bent upon the facile fingers, scribing obediently the message of the inner worlds. My eyes rested with open admiration and gratitude upon his form, powerful as a Greek statue, though seated at the prosaic desk.

Involuntary I sighed, as I laid down a small handful of selected letters with a little rustle.

“Yes?” and I looked up again, to find his eyes smiling at me half-humorously over the rims of his spectacles.

“More articles,” said I, − a formula in constant use. “The ‘Theosophical Thirst Quencher’ would like one on ‘Parabrahman’; ‘The Shining Light’ wishes to publish full details about ‘Avitchi,’ ‘The Peaceful Aspirant’ desires you to dowse with an authoritative statement its long and heated correspondence on the subject of ‘Taking the Kingdom of Heaven by Storm’; the ‘Practical Theosophist’ desires an article on ‘Comets and Falling Stars’; the −”

“Enough!” I remained silent, waiting, while he mused a while. “I wonder if people really want to know these things; and if they do, if they know why?”

I waited silently for a few moments, and then took up the question.

“How different all these questions must seem to the Ego on his own plane; I suppose that when he is awake at all he has his own interests and activities on the higher mental plane; which must be rather different from those of the personality! Yet I don’t quite see why the personality should favour different activities if it is, so far as consciousness is concerned, only a reflection of the Ego!”

My generalship succeeded beyond all expectations. The noise of the rabbit drew even the white cat, a gentlemanly ruffian, out of his slumbers; he yawned and stretched himself, wiped his feet on my immaculate dhotie and sharpened his claws in the calf of my leg.

Mr. Leadbeater disposed his paper-weights to save his treasures from the snatching fingers of the monsoon wind, and sat up.

“Certainly,” said he, “The Ego lives a life and has interests and activities on his own plane; but you must remember that he only puts down a very small part, so to speak, of himself. That part gets itself entangled in interests which because of their partiality are often along different lines than the general activities of the Ego itself. In fact, the Ego lives a life of its own on its own plane, and does not pay particular attention to the lower life of the personality, unless something rather unusual happens to it.”

“I fancy I have heard you say that it is one of the works of the Masters to ray out upon the Ego a constant stream of divine influence. Does any or much of this get passed on to the personality?”

“Well, that depends upon the connection between the Ego and the personality, which is very different in different cases. There is almost infinite variety in human life. The spiritual force rays upon the Ego and some little of it certainly comes through into the personality; because, you see, though the Ego has put forth a part of himself he does not cut himself off entirely from it, though in the case of all ordinary people the Ego and the personality are very different things. The Ego in such cases has not much grasp of the personality, nor a clear conception of its purpose in sending it forth; and, again, the small piece which meets us in the personality grows to have ways and opinions of its own. It is developing by the experience which it gains, and this is passed on to the Ego; but along with this real development it usually gathers a good deal which is hardly worthy of the name. It acquires knowledge, – but also prejudices, – which are not really knowledge at all. It does not become quite free from the prejudices – not only of knowledge, or rather the absence, but of feeling and action as well – until the man reaches adeptship. It gradually discovers these things to be prejudices, and progresses through them; but has always a great deal of limitation from which the Ego is entirely free.

“You ask how much of the spiritual force passes on to the personality. One could only decide in a particular case by using clairvoyance. But something of it must flow through always, because the lower is attached to the higher, just as the hand is attached to the body by the arm. It is certain that the personality must get something, but then it can only receive what it is able to receive. It is also a question of qualities. The Master might quite conceivably be playing upon certain of the qualities of the Ego which were very obscure in the personality, and in that case, of course, very little would come down.”

“It is not unlike the reverse action in which the personality, as it were, feeds the Ego,” I remarked. “There the lower experience may be retained in the tendencies of the permanent atoms of the physical, astral and lower mental planes, and draw the Ego again into like experiences according to their vibration rates; but only those things can be handed on to the spiritual or permanent Ego which are compatible with its nature and interests.”

“Precisely. Remember, though, that one tends to exclude the good and the other the bad, or rather I should say the spiritual and the material, for nothing is bad. You can sometimes see many of the influences at work, by clairvoyance. On a certain day, for example, you may see a characteristic very much intensified, with no outward reason. The cause is often to be found in what is taking place at some higher level, – the stimulation of that quality in the Ego. Sometimes a man finds himself overflowing with affection or devotion, and quite unable to understand why on the physical plane. The cause is usually again the stimulation of the Ego, or it may be that the Ego is taking some special interest in the personality for the time being.”

“Perhaps in our meditation we draw such attention on the part of the Ego?” I queried.

“Yes, certainly. But it is well to keep in mind that we must try to reach up to join that higher activity, and not try to interrupt it to draw down its attention to the lower. As regards the influence it is certainly invited by right meditation, which is always effective, even though things may seem to be very dull and quite without zest in the physical. The reaching up of the Ego itself often means its neglect to send energy down to the personality, and this, of course leaves the latter feeling rather dull and in the shade. The extent, then, to which the personality is influenced depends upon two things principally – the strength of the connection at the time between the Ego and the personality, and the particular work which the Master is doing upon the Ego, that is, the particular qualities He is playing upon.”

“Meditation, and the study of these spiritual subjects makes a very great big difference, then, in the life of the Ego?”

“Yes, very much indeed. The usual person who has not taken up these matters seriously has, as it were, only a thread of connection between the higher and the lower self. The personality seems to be all, and the Ego, though it undoubtedly exists on its own plane, is not at all likely to be doing anything actively there. It is very much like a chicken which is growing inside an egg. But in the case of some of ourselves who have been making efforts in the right direction, we may hope that the Ego is becoming quite vividly conscious. He has broken through the shell, and is living a life of great activity and power. As we go on we become able to unify our personal consciousness with the life of the Ego, as far as that is possible; and then we have only the one consciousness and all that we have here is the consciousness of the Ego, who knows all that is going on. But with many people at the present day there is often considerable opposition between the personality and the Ego. In fact, there are many things to be taken into account. If you have to deal with a fairly advanced Ego you will often find him somewhat inconsiderate to his body. You see, whatever is put down into the personality is so much taken from him. I have again and again seen cases where the Ego was somewhat impatient and withdrew into himself somewhat – but in cases such as these is always a flow, which is not possible with the ordinary man. In the ordinary man the part is as it were put down and left, though not quite cut off, but at this stage there is constant communication between the two along the channel. Therefore he can withdraw whenever he chooses, and leave a very poor representation of the real man behind. So the relations between the lower and higher self vary very much in different people and at different stages of development.”

“And at what does the Ego work in these cases?”

“Oh, he may be learning things on his own plane; or helping other Egos – there are very many kinds of work for which he may need an accession of strength. You may have noticed that sometimes, after you have completed a special piece of work that has needed the cooperation to a large extent of the Ego – as, for example, sometimes lecturing to a large audience – he takes away the energy and leaves the personality with only enough to feel rather dispirited with. For a time he admitted there was some importance in the work, but afterwards he leaves the poor personality feeling rather depressed. Of course, depression comes much more from other reasons, such as the presence of an astral entity in a low spirited condition, or of some non-human beings. And joy also is not always due to the influence of the Ego – in fact, the man does not think much about his own feelings when he is in a fit condition to receive an influx of power – but may be produced by the proximity of harmonious nature-spirits, or in a variety of other ways.”

“Is the channel a permanent thing, always open?”

“By no means. Sometimes it appears almost choked up, which is quite an easy possibility in view of the narrowness of the thread in most cases. Then the force may break through again on some occasion such as that of a conversion. But for many of us there is a constant flow in some measure. Meditation conscientiously done, opens the channel and keeps it open.”

“Will you explain how the different kinds of meditation affect the flow, and how we may best bring it down?” I queried.

“Don’t bring it down. It is better to go up to it,” – he glanced reproachfully at me, and meaningly at the clock. I transferred my eyes to its relentless face, and abashed by its stony gaze lapsed into silence, burying myself in the stacks of correspondence. 
 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE ENQUIRER

   C. W. Leadbeater

(Originally published in The Adyar Bulletin, February 1911)

I have received many letters from those who are put in the position of lecturers and teachers of Theosophy, asking how best to meet the constant demands of enquirers for proof of the accuracy of the Theosophical teaching. Another common remark of the enquirer is:  “You have a large literature: I am a busy man.  Where am I to begin in all this?  Give me the most important part first.”

Instead of writing a number of private letters, I have thought it best to put an answer, once for all, in the pages of The Adyar Bulletin, to which later enquirers can be referred.

What should be the attitude of the enquirer towards the wonderful mass of new truth which is put before him in Theosophical teaching?  It should be an intelligently receptive attitude—not one of carping criticism on the one hand, nor of blind belief on the other, but of endeavour to understand the different facts as they are presented to him, and to make them his own.  In Theosophy we strongly deprecate the attitude of blind belief, for we say that it has been the cause of a vast amount of the evil of the world. On this point the teaching of the Eastern Masters is emphatic, for they regard superstition as one of the fetters which it is absolutely necessary that a man should cast off before he can hope to make any progress on the occult Path. They also regard doubt as a fetter, but they say that the only way to get rid of doubt is not by blind faith, but by the acquisition of knowledge. It would be quite useless for a man to exchange blind faith in orthodox Christianity for a similar blind faith in those who happened to be writing or speaking on Theosophy.  To say: “Thus saith Madame Blavatsky or Mrs. Besant,” is after all only a small advance on saying: “Thus saith S. Paul of S. John.”

We who live in western countries have a bad heredity behind us in these matters, for the point of view of our forefathers has usually been either the blind faith of the unintelligent and biassed person, or the blank and rather militant incredulity of the materialist.  We have been too much in the habit of thinking that what does not happen in Europe or America is not worth taking account of, and that nobody outside of ourselves knows anything at all.  Many of us have grown up in the midst of the ridiculous theory that there was only one religion in the world, and that the vast majority of its inhabitants were ‘heathens,’ whom we had to ‘save,’ and that if we could not do that, they must be left to ‘the uncovenanted mercies of God’. It seems incredible that civilised people could ever believe anything so silly, but what I state is actually the fact. When we think that we may have had among our recent ancestors people who were capable of that, we see at once that we are but ill-prepared for the reception of a rational creed.

Again, we have been unfortunate in that we had not even the whole of Christianity, for history shows us that what has been taught to us is only a dismembered fragment of the original form of that religion.  Before the Gnostic doctors were cast out, Christianity had a system of philosophy fully equal to that of the other religions, but after their departure it was but a truncated faith. Still its ethics remained to it, and they will be found to be exactly the same as those of the other great world-faiths.  In Theosophy we hold that it matters little what a man believes, but much what he does; whether he is kind and noble, just and gentle, pure and true.
It may be of interest to western readers to remember that on this subject the teaching of the Christian scripture is exactly the same as that of Theosophy.  In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew will be found a striking account, said to have been given by the Christ Himself, of what is commonly called the day of Judgment, when all men are to be brought before Him and their final destiny is to be decided according to the answer which they are able to give to His questions.  Remember that, according to the theory, the Christ Himself is to be the judge on that occasion, and therefore He can make no mistake as to the procedure. What then are the questions upon the answers to which the future of these men is to depend?  From what one hears of modern Christianity one would expect that the first question would be: ‘Do you believe in Me?’ and the second one:  “Do you attend Church regularly?” The Christ, however, unaccountably forgets to ask either of these questions.  He asks:  “Did you feed the hungry, did you give drink to the thirsty, did you clothe the naked, did you visit those who were sick and in prison?”  That is to say, “were you ordinarily kind and charitable in you relations to your fellow-men?”

And it is according to the answers to those questions that the destiny of the man is decided.  So far as He, the Judge, has explained Himself, any heathen who had done these things would at once pass into eternal felicity, for He says no single word about belief at all.  As regards all these virtues the teachings of all the religions are identical.  The daily life of a really good Christian will be found to be identical with that of a really good Buddhist or a really good Hindu. One will call his religious exercises by the name of prayer, while the others call them meditation, but in the nature of them there is little difference.  Each enjoins the practice of the same virtues; each reprobates the same vices.

We must clear our minds utterly of the extraordinary theory that a man’s religion is a question of importance.  It depends entirely upon where the man happens to be born.  You are, let us say, a Christian, and you cannot conceive it as possible that you could have been anything else; yet if you had been born in an Indian family, you would have belonged just as unquestioningly to the Hindu religion, or to the Buddhist if you had been born in Ceylon or Siam.  Therefore we must entirely cast aside the curious prejudice that it is necessary for a man to hold some particular form of religion if he is to obtain final perfection.

On taking up the study of Theosophy it is necessary that we should adopt an entirely new attitude—that we should open the doors of the mind, and learn to treat religion as a matter of common-sense, exactly as we do science.  On the one hand we must accept nothing which does not commend itself to us as reasonable, and on the other hand we must not expect proofs of a nature incongruous with the fact which we are considering.  It is often impossible to give for psychological problems and theories a demonstration along mathematical lines, or a proof on the physical plane which a man can hold in his hand.  The proof of any proposition must be congruous with the nature of the proposition, and consequently the final proof of some of the deepest Theosophical doctrines must lie in the experience of the evolved soul.

A common-sense attitude will enable us to determine whether we can know a certain thing positively, or whether it is necessary to take first what seems to be a reasonable working hypothesis, and then see how far future experience supports or weakens it.  Much of the Theosophical teaching must remain as a hypothesis for each man until he is able to develop powers by which he can see for himself; but in the meantime he may easily acquire practical certainty with regard to it, by weighing it against all other hypotheses and seeing how perfectly it, and it alone, accounts for the observed phenomena of life. This is exactly the ground on which are held a large number of what are commonly called scientific facts.

It is a valuable exercise for the student to think carefully which of his beliefs in ordinary life are really founded upon direct personal knowledge.  He believes, for example, that the earth rotates upon its axis; yet all the evidence of his daily life goes to prove exactly the contrary. The ground is stable beneath his feet, and he cannot in any way prove to himself that the sun, moon and stars do not really move above him, exactly as they appear to do. There is proof available of the rotation of the earth. There is the Foucault pendulum experiment and the experiment with the gyroscope.  If a man has seen those experiments tried, he knows that the earth rotates; if he has not, he does not know it, but only believes it.  He believes it on good evidence, but it is not the evidence of his senses. A reasonable hypothesis is necessary in order to induce a man to work, and here his imagination comes into play.  He must be evolved enough to imagine a thing as possible, or he must be able to abstract his ideas and deduce from them a working principle, before he can be induced to make an effort towards proving a fact as true.
Theosophy presents to the student several working hypotheses which appeal to his reason, and at the same time it promises him success in demonstrating them to be true, if he will do certain things.  It tells him that some men have already had success in this demonstration, that they have been able to develop in themselves certain powers which enable them to know that these things are true, and that therefore it is possible for him also to do this, though it does not conceal from him the difficulty of the undertaking.

Theosophy has a considerable literature, but it has no inspired Scriptures.  We who write books on the various branches of the subject, put before our friends the results of our investigations, and we take every care that what we state shall be scrupulously accurate as far as our knowledge goes; but the model which we set before us when we write is not the sacred Scripture but the scientific manual.  So far as the western world is concerned, the study of Theosophical subjects is comparatively a new one, although in the East many books have been written in which these matters are expounded; but these oriental books naturally do not approach them from the modern scientific point of view.  Our plan in verifying the information originally given to us has been just what was adopted in the beginning of the sciences of chemistry or astronomy—a careful observation of all the phenomena within reach, their tabulation, and the endeavour to deduce from them the general laws which govern them.
We are then in the position of the early students of a new science, and although, thanks to the information we have received from eastern Teachers, we have already grasped the main outline of our science, our own investigations are constantly adding to our knowledge of its detail, and this fact often makes it necessary for us to modify statements made in the earlier days of the movement, and to amend imperfect or premature generalisations.  The details will increase in number and accuracy as the number of those who can make the investigations increases, but the broad outlines of principles which have been given to us will always remain the same.

Our attitude to Theosophy should, I think, be thus characterised:

(1) We must not exchange the blind belief in the authority of the Church for an equally blind faith in personal Theosophical teachers.

(2) We must preserve an open mind and an intelligently receptive attitude.

(3) We should accept as working hypotheses the truths which are given to us, and should set to work to prove them for ourselves.

(4) We should realise that this teaching sets before us the scheme of the Logos for His universe, and that the condition of making progress in that universe is to learn the rules of that scheme, and set ourselves to work with them and not against them.

(5) We should seek development or progress not for the sake of ourselves, but in order that the knowledge we may acquire may be used for the benefit of humanity, and that we may fit ourselves to be the servants of that humanity.

(6) We must change absolutely our point of view towards life.  When regarding the sorrow and suffering of the world, we must put aside the despairing attitude of the theologian for one of hopefulness, because the teachings fills us with the calm certainty that everything will at last be well.

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRUTHS

Again, Theosophy lays before us a vast mass of new truths with regard to the constitution both of man and of the universe, and also with regard to their past and future.  Though the outline is simple the detail is considerable. We have therefore to think in what order we shall consider these truths; what is their relative importance. It seems to me that they group themselves naturally into three great classes:  first, the ethical teachings, and the reason for them; second, the explanation of the constitution of man and the planes on which he lives; third, the remainder of the teaching, the great mass of information about planetary chains and earlier races of mankind.

They come thus in order of importance because the knowledge of the ethical teaching and the reason for it is necessary for the daily life of man, because as he learns even a little of it he can instantly proceed to put it into practice. If, having learnt so much, something should occur to prevent him from learning more, he will still have gained a priceless possession—one which will affect the whole of his future life, not in this world only but in others also.

The second block of information, with regard to the constitution of man and the world in which he lives, is also of great importance to him, as showing him how to do many of the things which the first division of the teaching has commended to him, as showing him also how to be much more useful to his fellow-men than he could be without this knowledge.

The third block of teaching, though keenly interesting, is less directly practical.  It has its value; it has a great value; for from the past we may in many cases predict the future, and from it we may learn many a lesson which will be of help to us in that future. At that same time one must admit that a man might be just a loyal a subject, just as good a citizen, and just as useful to his fellow-men if he had never heard about the planetary chains, whereas it is not true that he would be just as good in any of those capacities if he remained ignorant of the first and second of our great classes of truth.

First, the ethics and the reason for them. The ethical teaching of Theosophy is precisely the same as that of any and all of the great religions.  There is therefore nothing new for us to learn here; the only difference is that Theosophy gives us a scientific reason for our ethics, which most religions do not. This consideration of the reason for ethical teaching involves a very large block of the Theosophical teaching, for the ultimate reason for all good action is that it may be in harmony with the divine plan, the will of the Logos. That we may understand what will be in harmony with it, we must first try to grasp as much as is possible for us of that divine plan itself. This involves the consideration of the nature of God and the method of His working, and also His relation to man. Under this head we must speak of the Logos of our solar system, and the beginnings of that system, of the atom and planes, of the nature, of the formation, constitution and development of man, and of the methods appointed for that development, and the way in which he can hasten it, and of the obstacles which he will find in his way.

Under the second heading we must take up in greater detail the various vehicles of man and their relation to the different planes of nature.  We must learn to understand ourselves, in order that we may direct intelligently the complicated machinery of the vehicles.  This is an intensely practical consideration for us; we are living upon all these planes now, though most of us do not know it; we are using our mental and astral bodies as bridges to carry to the physical brain the messages from the ego, and to carry back to him in return the information which they obtain from external impacts of all sorts. Unless we understand those bodies we cannot use them to the best advantage, we cannot get out of them all that we might.  Apart from the fact of that constant use of the vehicles, we all spend about a third of our lives in the astral body—in a state which we commonly call sleep. After physical death we enter upon a long life in these higher vehicles, and it becomes once more obvious that the more we know about them the more efficient and the more comfortable will this life be.  These higher bodies have their powers and their capacities as well as the physical body.  If we understand them we can utilise all these for our own advancement and for the helping of our fellows, so that their study is eminently practical.

The third division is that which treats of the past evolution of man.  It deals with the planetary chain of which our earth is a part, with its relation to other chains in the solar system, and with the successive life-waves which have passed over these chains.  It takes up the question of the work of the great Official who superintends the formation of each Root Race and its subdivision into branch races.  It explains how men come to be at such different levels in life, and accounts for the formation of classes and castes.  Although this appears to be less practical than the other kinds, we shall find not only that it is intensely interesting, but that it has its uses as well. It is a remarkable fact that all religions have made it a special point to teach their followers something of the beginnings of the world and of man.  In the Jewish scripture you have the extraordinary story of the earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis, which is unfortunately adopted just as it stands by the Christian Church; but each religion has some such story—even those of savage tribes. It is clear therefore that those who found religions must know that this information is of great importance for man. Madame Blavatsky has followed in the footsteps of her Teachers in that respect, for the whole of her monumental work, The Secret Doctrine, is a sermon upon the text of the Stanzas of Dzyan, which give an account of the origin of man and of our system.

The point of first importance is that we should live the life; the second that we should understand our possibilities; and when we have got so far, we may then take up with advantage the study of past history.  In following out thoroughly that first block of teaching, we have arrived at certainty in regard to the rest. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.”  The best way to prove to oneself the truth of these Theosophical doctrines is to take them for granted and to live as though they were true; then the proof will soon come.
 

CLAIRVOYANCE

 C. W. Leadbeater

(Originally published in The Theosophical Review, November, 1898)

Clairvoyance means literally nothing more than “clear-seeing,” and it is a word which has been sorely misused, and even degraded so far as to be employed to describe the trickery of a mountebank in a variety show.  Even in its more restricted sense it covers a wide range of phenomena, differing so greatly in character that it is not easy to give a definition of the word which shall be at once succinct and accurate.  It has been called “spiritual vision,” but no rendering could well be more misleading than that, for in the vast majority of cases there is no faculty connected with it which has the slightest claim to be honoured by so lofty a name.

For the purposes of this article we may, perhaps, define it as the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. It will be as well to premise that it is very frequently (though by no means always) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one will suffice.

The phenomena of clairvoyance differ so widely both in character and in degree that it is not very easy to decide how they can most satisfactorily be classified.  We might for example arrange them according to the kind of sight employed—whether it were devachanic, astral, or merely etheric. We might divide them according to the capacity of the clairvoyant, taking into consideration whether he was trained or untrained; whether his vision was regular and under his command, or spasmodic and independent of his volition; whether he could exercise it only when under mesmeric influence, or whether that assistance was unnecessary for him; whether he was able to use his faculty when awake in the physical body, or whether it was available only when he was temporarily away from that body in sleep or trance.

All these distinctions are of importance, and we shall have to take them all into consideration as we go on, but perhaps on the whole the most useful classification will be one something on the lines of that adopted by Mr. Sinnett in his Rationale of Mesmerism—a book, by the way, which all students of clairvoyance ought to read.  When we come to deal with the phenomena, then, we will arrange them rather according to the direction of the sight employed than to the plane upon which it is exercised, so that we may group instances of clairvoyance under some such headings as these:

1. Simple clairvoyance—that is to say, a mere opening of sight, enabling its possessor to see whatever astral or etheric entities happen to be present around him, but not including the power of observing either distant places or scenes belonging to any other time than the present.

2. Clairvoyance in space—the capacity to see scenes or events removed from the seer in space, and either too far distant for ordinary observation or concealed by intermediate objects.

3. Clairvoyance in time—that is to say, the capacity to see objects or events which are removed from the seer in time, or in other words the power of looking into the past or the future.

Before this more detailed explanation can usefully be attempted, however, it will be necessary for us to devote a little time to some preliminary considerations, in order that we may have clearly in mind a few broad facts as to the different planes on which clairvoyant vision may be exercised, and the conditions which render its exercise possible.

We are constantly assured in Theosophical literature that all these higher faculties are presently to be the heritage of mankind in general—that the capacity of clairvoyance, for example, lies latent in every one, and that those in whom it already manifests itself are simply in that one particular a little in advance of the rest of us. Now this statement is a true one, and yet it seems quite vague and unreal to the majority of people, simply because they regard such a faculty as something absolutely different from anything they have yet experienced, and feel fairly confident that they themselves, at any rate, are not within measurable distance of its development.

It may help to dispel this sense of unreality if we try to understand that clairvoyance, like so many other things in nature, is mainly a question of vibrations, and is in fact nothing but an extension of powers which we are all using every day of our lives. We are living all the while surrounded by a vast sea of mingled air and ether, the latter interpenetrating the former, as it does all physical matter; and it is chiefly by vibrations in that vast sea of matter that impressions reach us from the outside. This much we all know, but it may perhaps never have occurred to many of us that the number of these vibrations to which we are capable of responding is in reality quite infinitesimal.

Up among the exceedingly rapid vibrations which affect the ether there is a certain small section—a very small section—to which the retina of the human eye is capable of responding, and these particular vibrations produce in us the sensation which we call light.  That is to say, we are capable of seeing only those objects from which light of that particular kind can either issue or be reflected.

In exactly the same say the tympanum of the human ear is capable of responding to a certain very small range of comparatively slow vibrations—slow enough to affect the air which surrounds us; and so the only sounds which we can hear are those made by objects which are able to vibrate as some rate within that particular range.

In both cases it is a matter perfectly well known to science that there are large numbers of vibrations both above and below these two sections, and that consequently there is much light that we cannot see, and many sounds to which our ears are deaf.  In the case of light the action of these higher and lower vibrations is easily perceptible in the effects produced by the actinic rays at one end of the spectrum and the heat rays at the other.

As a matter of fact there exist vibrations of every conceivable degree of rapidity filling the whole vast space intervening between the slow sound waves and the swift light waves; nor is even that all, for there are undoubtedly vibrations slower than those of sound, and a whole infinity of them which are swifter than those known to us as light. So we begin to understand that the rates of vibrations by which we see and hear are only like two tiny groups of a few strings selected from an enormous harp of practically infinite extent, and when we think how much we have been able to learn and infer from the use of those minute fragments, we see vaguely what possibilities might lie before us if we were enabled to utilize the vast wonderful whole.

Another fact which needs to be considered in this connection is that different human beings vary considerably, though within relatively narrow limits, in their capacity of response even to the very few vibrations which are within reach of our physical senses.  I am not referring to the keenness of sight or of hearing that enables one man to see a fainter object or hear a slighter sound than another; it is not in the least a question of strength of vision but of extent of susceptibility.

For example, if any one will take a good bisulphide of carbon prism, and by its means throw a clear spectrum on a sheet of white paper, and then get a number of people to mark upon the paper the extreme limits of the spectrum as it appears to them, he is fairly certain to find that their powers of vision differ appreciably.  Some will see the violet extending much farther than the majority do; others will perhaps see rather less violet than most, while gaining a corresponding extension of vision at the red end. Some few there will perhaps be who can see farther than ordinary at both ends, and these will almost certainly be what we call sensitive people—susceptible in fact to a greater range of vibrations than are most men of the present day.

In hearing, the same difference can be tested by taking some sound which is just not too high to be audible—on the very verge of audibility as it were—and discovering how many among a given number of people are able to hear it. The squeak of a bat is a familiar instance of such a sound, and experiment will show that on a summer evening when the whole air is full of their shrills, needle-like cries quite a large number of men will be absolutely unconscious of them, and unable to hear anything at all.

Now these examples show certainly that there is no hard-and-fast limit to man’s power or response to either etheric or aerial vibrations, but that some among us already have that power to a wider extent than others, and it will even be found that the same man’s capacity varies on different occasions. It is therefore not difficult for us to imagine that it might be possible for a man to develope this power, and thus in time to learn to see much that is invisible to his fellow-men, and hear much that is inaudible to them, since we know perfectly well that enormous numbers of these additional vibrations do exist, and are simply as it were, awaiting recognition.

The experiment with the Röntgen rays give us an example of the startling results which are produced when even a very few of these additional vibrations are brought within human ken, and the transparency to these rays of many substances hitherto considered opaque at once show us one way at least in which we may explain such elementary clairvoyance as is involved in reading a letter inside a closed box, or describing those present in an adjoining apartment.  To learn to see by means of the Röntgen rays in addition to those ordinarily employed would be quite sufficient to enable anyone to perform a feat of magic of this order.

So far we have thought only of an extension of the purely physical senses of man; and when we remember that a man’s etheric body is in reality merely the finer part of his physical frame, and that therefore all his sense organs contain a large amount of etheric matter of various degrees of density, the capacities of which are still practically latent in most of us, we shall see that even if we confine ourselves to this line of development alone there are enormous possibilities of all kinds already opening out before us

But besides and beyond all this we know that man possesses an astral and a mental body, each of which can in process of time be aroused into activity, and will respond in turn to the vibrations of the matter of its own plane, thus opening up before the ego, and he learns to function through them, two entirely new and far wider worlds of knowledge and power.  Now these new worlds, though they are all around us and freely interpenetrate one another, are not to be thought of as distinct and entirely unconnected in substance, but rather as melting the one into the other, the lowest astral forming a direct series with the highest physical, just as the lowest mental in its turn forms a direct series with the highest astral.  We are not called upon in thinking of them to imagine some new and strange kind of matter, but simply to think of the ordinary physical kind as subdivided so very much more finely and vibrating so very much more rapidly as to introduce us to what are practically entirely new conditions and qualities.

It is not then difficult for us to grasp the possibility of a steady and progressive extension of our senses, so that both by sight and by hearing we may be able to appreciate vibrations far higher and far lower than those which are ordinarily recognized.  A large section of these additional vibrations will still belong to the physical plane, and will merely enable us to obtain impressions from the etheric part of that plane, which is at present as a closed book to us.  Such impressions will still be received through the retina of the eye; of course they will affect its etheric rather than its solid matter, but we may nevertheless regard them as still appealing only to an organ specialized to receive them, and not the whole surface of the etheric body.

There are some abnormal cases, however, in which other parts of the etheric body respond to these additional vibrations as readily as, or even more readily then, those of the eye.  Such vagaries are explicable in various ways, but principally as effects of some partial astral development, for it will be found that the sensitive parts of the body almost invariably correspond with one or other of the chakras, or centres of vitality in the astral body. And though if astral consciousness be not yet developed these centres may not be available on their own plane, they are still strong enough to stimulate into keener activity the etheric matter which they interpenetrate.

When we come to deal with the astral senses themselves the methods of working are very different.  The astral body has no specialized sense-organs, but if a vibration which is within the limits of its power of cognition strikes any part of it, it responds to that vibration, and sight or hearing, as the case may be, is produced as the result. So that a person using astral vision does not need to turn and look at any object, but can see it equally well behind him or on one side; whereas one using etheric sight would be as far as this is concerned almost in the position of a man seeing physically in the ordinary way.

The vision of the devachanic or mental plane is again totally different, for in this case we can no longer speak of separate senses such as sight and hearing, but rather of one general sense which responds so fully to the vibrations reaching it that when any object comes within its cognition it at once comprehends it fully, and as it were sees it, hears it, feels it, and knows all there is to know about it by the one instantaneous operation. Yet  even this wonderful faculty differs in degree only and not in kind from those which are at our command at the present time; on the mental plane, just as on the physical, impressions are still conveyed by means of vibrations travelling from the object seen to the seer.

On the buddhic plane we meet for the first time with a quite new faculty having nothing in common with those of which we have spoken, for there a man cognizes any object by an entirely different method in which external vibrations play no part.  The object becomes part of himself, and he studies it from the inside instead of from the outside.  But with this power ordinary clairvoyance has nothing to do.

The development, either entire or partial, of any one of these faculties would come under our definition of clairvoyance—the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight.  But these faculties may be developed in various ways, and it will be well to say a few words as to these different lines.

We may presume that if it were possible for a man to be isolated during his evolution from all but the gentlest outside influences, and to unfold from the beginning in perfectly regular and normal fashion, he would probably develope his senses in regular order also.  He would find his physical senses gradually extending their scope until they responded to all the physical vibrations, of etheric as well as of denser matter; then in orderly sequence would come sensibility to the coarser part of the astral plane, and presently the finer part also would be included, until in due course the devachanic faculty dawned in its turn.

In real life, however, development so regular as this is hardly ever known, and many a man has occasional flashes of astral consciousness without any awakening of etheric vision at all. And this irregularity of development is one of the principal causes of man’s extraordinary liability to error in matters of clairvoyance—a liability from which there is no escape except by a long course of careful training under a qualified teacher.

Students of Theosophical literature are well aware that there are such teachers to be found—that even in this materialistic nineteenth century the old saying is still true, that “when the pupil is ready, the Master is ready also,” and that “in the hall of learning, when he is capable of entering there, the disciple will always find his Master.” They are well aware also that only under such guidance can a man develop his latent powers in safety and with certainty, since they know how fatally easy it is for the untrained clairvoyant to deceive himself as to the meaning and value of what he sees, or even absolutely to distort his vision completely in bringing it down into his physical consciousness.

It does not follow that even the pupil who is receiving regular instruction in the use of occult powers will find them unfolding themselves exactly in the regular order which was suggested above as probably ideal. His previous progress may not have been such as to make this for him the easiest or most desirable road; but at any rate he is in the hands of one who is perfectly competent to be his guide in spiritual development, and he rests in perfect contentment that the way along which he is taken will be that which is the best way for him.

Another great advantage which he gains is that whatever faculties he may acquire are definitely under his command and can be used fully and constantly when he needs them for his Theosophical work; whereas in the case of the untrained man such powers often manifest themselves only very partially and spasmodically, and appear to come and go, as it were, at their own sweet will.

It may reasonably be objected that if clairvoyant faculty is, as stated, a part of the occult development of man and so a sign of a certain amount of progress along that line, it seems strange that it should often be possessed by primitive peoples, or by the ignorant and uncultured among ourselves—persons who are obviously quite undeveloped, from whatever point of view one regards them. No doubt this does appear remarkable at first sight; but the fact is that the sensitiveness of the savage or of the coarse and vulgar European ignoramus is not really the same thing as the faculty of his properly trained brother, nor is it arrived at in the same way.

An exact and detailed explanation of the difference would lead us into rather recondite technicalities, but perhaps the general idea of the distinction between the two may be caught from an example taken from the very lowest plane of clairvoyance, in close contact with the denser physical. The etheric double in man is in exceedingly close relation to his nervous system, and any kind of action upon one of them speedily reacts on the other.  Now in the sporadic appearance of etheric sight in the savage, whether of Central Africa or of Western Europe, it has been observed that the corresponding nervous disturbance is almost entirely in the sympathetic system, and that the whole affair is practically beyond the man’s control—is in fact a sort of massive sensation vaguely belonging to the whole etheric body, rather than an exact and definite sense-perception communicated through a specialized organ

As in later races and amid higher development the strength of the man is more and more thrown into the evolution of the mental faculties, this vague sensitiveness usually disappears; but still later, when the spiritual man begins to unfold, he regains his clairvoyant power.  This time, however, the faculty is a precise and exact one, under the control of the man’s will, and exercised through a definite sense-organ; and it is noteworthy that any nervous action set up in sympathy with it is now almost exclusively in the cerebro-spinal system.

Occasional flashes of clairvoyance do, however, sometimes come to the highly cultured and spiritual-minded man, even though he may never have heard of the possibility of training such a faculty.  In his case such glimpses usually signify that he is approaching that stage in his evolution when these powers will naturally begin to manifest themselves, and their appearance should serve as an additional stimulus to him to strive to maintain that high standard of moral purity and mental balance without which clairvoyance is a curse and not a blessing to its possessor.

Between those who are entirely unimpressible and those who are in full possession of clairvoyant power there are may intermediate stages. One to which it will be worth while to give a passing glance in the stage in which a man, though he has no clairvoyant faculty in ordinary life, yet exhibits it more or less fully under the influence of mesmerism.  This is a case in which the psychic nature is already sensitive, but the consciousness is not yet capable of functioning in it amidst the manifold distractions of physical life. It needs to be set free by the temporary suspension of the outer senses in the mesmeric trance before  it can use the diviner faculties which are but just beginning to dawn within it  But of course even in the mesmeric trance there are innumerable degrees of lucidity, from the ordinary patient who is blankly unintelligent to the man whose power of sight is fully under the control of the operator, and can be directed whithersoever he wills, or to the more advanced stage in which, when the consciousness is once set free, it escapes altogether from the grasp of the magnetizer, and soars into fields of exalted vision where it is entirely beyond his reach.

Another step along the same path is that upon which such perfect suppression of the physical as that which occurs in the hypnotic trance is not necessary, but the power of supernormal sight, though still out of reach during waking life, becomes available when the body is held in the bonds of ordinary sleep. At this stage of development stood many of the prophets and seers of whom we read, who were ‘warned of God in a dream,” or communed with beings far higher than themselves in the silent watches of the night.

Most cultured people of the higher races of the world have this development to some extent; that is to say, the senses of their astral bodies are in full working order, and perfectly capable of receiving impressions from objects and entities of their own plane.  But to make that fact of any use to them down here in the physical body two changes are usually necessary; first, that the ego shall be awakened to the realities of that plane, and induced to emerge from the chrysalis formed by his own waking thoughts, and look round him to observe and to learn; and secondly, that the consciousness shall be so far retained during the return of the ego into his physical body as to enable him to impress upon his physical brain the recollection of what he has seen or learnt.

If the first of these changes has taken place, the second is of little importance, since the ego, the true man, will be able to profit by the information to be obtained upon that plane, even though he may not have the satisfaction of bringing through any remembrance of it into his waking life down here.

Students often ask how this clairvoyant faculty will first be manifested in themselves—how they may know when they have reached the stage at which its first faint foreshadowings are beginning to be visible. Cases differ so widely that it is impossible to give to this question any answer that will be universally applicable.

Some people begin by a plunge, as it were, and under some unusual stimulus become able just for once to see some striking vision; and very often in such a case, because the experience does not repeat itself, the seer comes in time to believe that on that occasion he must have been the victim of hallucination. Others begin by becoming intermittently conscious of the brilliant colours and vibrations of the human aura; yet others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others again see faces, landscapes, or coloured clouds floating before their eyes in the dark before they sink to rest; while perhaps the commonest experience of all is that of those who begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness what they have seen and heard on the other planes during sleep.

Having now to some extent cleared our ground, we may proceed to consider the various phenomena of clairvoyance under the three heads already mentioned.

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