The evolution
OF LIFE AND FORM

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ANNIE
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Evolution of

Life and Form

Foiiy Lectures delivered at the Twenty -third Anniversary Meeting
of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, 1898.

BY

ANNIE BESANT
//

SECOND EDITION

LONDON : THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
BENARES : THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY

1900

^9

r

CONTENTS.

Page
Ancient and Modern Science 5

Functions of the Gods 46

BvoivUTioN OF Life 90 v

Evolution of Form 124

Digitized by the Internet Arciiive
in 2007 with funding from
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http://www.archive.org/details/evolutionoflifefOObesarich

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

[FIRST LECTURE.]

ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE.

My Brothers : — The subject on which I am to
address you this morning, and the three mornings
that follow, is one of considerable complexity and
difficulty. I do not apologise to you for th e difficulty
of my theme. When we meet here in our Anniver-
sary Meeting, we meet as students and not simply
as superficial men and women of the world. We try
to prepare ourselves, by study, for the exchange of
thought which in these gatherings takes place, and
although the subject is a difficult one, although it is
not possible to make it clear and intelligible without
the use of certain technical terms, yet, to the student
technical terms — being precise — are really the easiest
to understand, and inasmuch as, in a great majority
at least, we are students, I who speak, and you who
listen, we may be content to treat the subject in a
-somewhat formal and technical way. Roughly, my
outline is this. I want to lay before you an intelli-
gible conception of evolution, taking it on its two
sides, that of the evolving life and that of the

6 Evolution of Life and Form.

developing forms. I begin by laying before you a
sketch of the methods of '* Ancient and Modern
Science," the direction in which each has worked,
and is working, the ultimate union that, we hope,
may take place between them. For what could more
fully presage the good of the whole world, what
could promise more happily for the relationship
between the different races of humanity, than to draw
together on the plane of mind the science of antiquity
and of modern days, the science of the East and of
the West, and, by wedding them to each other, draw
together the nations that are now divided, and make
objective that brotherhood of humanity of which we
dream.

Dealing first with ancient and modern science in
this broad and general way, and taking that as my
subject for this morning, I shall pass on to-morrow
to speak on the *' Functions of the Gods," meaning
by that phrase the activities of that invisible side of
nature on which the whole of the visible depends.
Whether we use here the name '* Devas " to represent
those developed spiritual intelligences, or whether
with the child of Islam, with the Hebrew or the Chris-
tian, we speak of the " Angels" and ''Archangels,"
the name matters nothing; the conception is common
to every faith of man. We shall study their func-
tions in the universe, and try to understand how they

Ancient and Modern Science. 7

act as the ministers of the Divine Will. Then we
shall pass on to treat of that ** Evolution of Life"
which lies underneath the evolution of forms.
Finally, we shall treat the '^ Evolution of Forms,"
and see how, in that evolution, is the promise of
final perfection, how all is working to a perfect
ending, how the best that we can dream of is less
than the performance of God.

That is the outline of our work. Let us at once
begin the first section of the subject — Ancient and
Modern Science.

Now, in the olden times, in those times to which
in this land our thought turns back most fondly
with reverence and with pride, in those times, here,
as in every other ancient land. Religion and Science
were wedded together, and there was no discord
between the intelligence and the spirit. It matters
not whither you wander amid the ancient nations
of the world : you may travel through the whole of
Chaldea; you may study the remains of ancient
Egypt; you may go through Persia and search
amid her monuments ; you may cross the Atlantic
to America, and unbury the cities that were lost ere
yet the Aztecs had made the mighty State which
fell under the blows of the Spaniards ; you may go
into China and, in the vast recesses of that well-
nigh unknown land, you may search for what has

8 Evolution of Life and Form.

been left there from ancient days ; or without going
outside the limits of your own land, you may take
the literature that is our pride, the mighty books
written by the Rishis of the past ; and everywhere
antiquity speaks with a single tongue. Religion
reveals the spirit, the spiritual truth which is one.
Intelligence studies that truth in its manifold
manifestations, and its work ; science, studying the
phenomena which are images of aspects of the
Divine, is the handmaid, is the sister, of religion,
and between them discord is unnatural and fatal to
progress. That is the ancient view ; but when we
come to our own century a new phenomenon
presents itself to our gaze — religion on the one side
suspicious of science in its progress, science on the
other hand apt to be proudly contemptuous of
religious claims. How has the divorce arisen?
Why this discord between two of the great helpers
of human evolution ? The reason is not far to seek.
In the western world the science of the elder time,
the science of antiquity, disappeared in the great
flood of barbaric invasions, underneath the whirl-
pool caused by the ruins of the Roman Empire,
and later on, underneath the wreckage of that
same Empire with its new centre in Constantinople.
The invasions of barbarians, both from the East
and the North, sweeping over the European conti-

Ancient and Modern Science. g

nent, brought ignorance in the wake of barbaric con-
quest. The result was that night came down upon
knowledge and thick darkness enveloped the lands
which were to be the nursery of a new civilisation.
When the Sun of science again began to rise upon the
Western world, it presented itself in a form which
was alien, nay, which was more than alien, which
was hostile to the dominant religion of the time. It
came from the children of Islam. It came from those
who recognised Muhammed as their Prophet. From
the Muslim schools of Arabia came the first teachers
of modern science to Europe. True, they were really
by their intellectual ancestry descended from the
thought of Greece. They drew their inspiration
from the school of Plato through the Neo-Platonists ;
they reproduced the ideas of Porphyry and Ptolemy,
and of other Grecian and Egyptian thinkers, Neo-
Platonic and even Gnostic. But they threw over it
the garb of Islam, they presented it in the form of
Arabic thought. The result of this was that, as it
made its way into Spain in the wake of the conquer-
ing Moors, as it came with those who drove out of
the Southern Peninsula the rule of the Spanish
Christian monarchy, so the first aspect of science
to Christians was an aspect of hostility. It came
as an invading enemy and not as an illuminant to
all. Hence conflict arose ; some who were within

10 Evolution of Life ayid Form.

the limits of the mighty Church of Rome, touch-
ed by a longing for the new learning, stretched
out their hands to take the gifts that science was
bringing. These men were regarded with suspicion,
nay, with more than suspicion, with hatred that
broke out in bitter persecution. Who can read the
history of Roger Bacon, the wondrous monk ; who
can picture Copernicus on his death-bed as his
immortal work is brought to him ere yet his eyes
are closed, he having shrunk from earlier publica-
tion, lest the stake should be his portion ; who can
stand in the Field of Flowers in Rome, and see
there the statue erected where he was burned to
death, who dying in one century, lives for all cen-
turies to come — Giordano Bruno ; who can listen
to Galileo, as with faltering lips he denies the
truth he knows and utters the falsehood that he
knows not ; who can follow these martyr-steps, led
on by bitter memories of blood and fire, without
understanding the reason for the hostility of science
to religion, without confessing with shame and
sorrow that that hostility was caused and was
justified by the cruelties wreaked by religion on
science, when science was young and feeble?
Every one of us who stands upon the side of
religion should recognise that we are reaping the
bitter harvest of our own past errors, and that the

Ancient and Modern Science. ii

law is just which brings upon us the difficulties
and opposition we encounter in our modern days.
For as science grew strong, she grew strong with
the sword in her hands. She fought for every inch
of the ground on which she stood, and only so far
as she could guard herself was she safe from the
flame or from the prison. Hence she searched for
everything in nature that could serve as a weapon
against the foe that attacked her. Hence she
welcomed eagerly everything which seemed to
show that materialism was the true philosophy of
life. If we go back twenty-five years, to the time
when I and some of you were young, we shall find
that over western science there hung the shadow
of materialism, and that stronger and stronger
grew the scientific tendency to ''see in matter the
promise and the potency of every form of life."
You remember those famous words of Professor
Tyndall, no materialist in his thought and a
religious man in his aspirations, but wellnigh
driven by despair to claim fair field for science,
and to fling back the claims of religion, because
among them was included the right to gag, the
refusal to allow thought to be honestly uttered
by the thinker. But things are changing more
and more ; as religion has been growing more
liberal and more rational, science is becoming less

12 Evolution oj Life and Form.

materialistic and less aggressive ; and we shall see
presently that the most modern of modern science —
not quite the science that you get in your text-
books, for that is practically out-of-date in the
rush of thought which comes from the West, but
the science of the leaders of thought, the science
of the first men in the scientific camp — is more and
more approaching the domain where scientists will
recognise religion as helper and not as enemy.
In fact, speaking from the same chair from which
Tyndall had uttered his famous phrase that '4n
matter he saw the promise and potency of every
form of life," his successor, Sir William Crookes, a
member of our own Theosophical Society, declared,
reversing those words of his predecessor, that *' In
life I see the promise and potency of all forms of
matter."

Such is the great change. Let us now examine
in detail. The fundamental difference between
ancient and modern science is that ancient science
studies the world from the standpoint of life which
is evolving, while modern science studies the world
by observing the forms through which that life is
manifesting. The first studies life, and sees in
forms the expressions of life. The second studies
forms, and tries, by the process of induction, to find
out if there be an underlying principle by which the

Ancient and Modern Science. 13

multiplicity of forms may be explained. The first
works from above downwards, the second from below
upwards, and in that very fact is the promise of a
meeting place where the two will join hand in hand.
But this fundamental difference carries with it very
important results. If we are to study the world
from the standpoint of forms, our study will be
almost endless in its multiplicity. Think of a tree ;
the one trunk through which the life is pouring,
innumerable leaves in which that life is ultimately
expressed ; it is an image of the tree of life, that
great Ashvattha, the tree of which we have heard,
whose roots are in the heavens and whose branches
spread out over the earth. If we are to study it
where its trunk is, the trunk of life, we have the
unity of purpose and can trace why we have multi-
plicity of forms ; but if we are to start at the parts
where the leaves are growing, leaf by leaf we must
examine, every difference of outline we must record,
each little variety in shape we must carefully note
and study. Science studies the leaves in modern
days — the old science studied the life. There is the
fundamental difference. There is also the reason of
the difference of methods by which the study must
be carried on. What is the method of modern
science ? The use of clear observation, keen judg-
ment, power of placing like things together, and

14 Evolution of Life and Form.

seeing the differences that divide the classes of the
like from the classes of the unlike. But in order
that this may be done, inasmuch as nature is infinite
both in the vast and in the minute, man demands,
to supplement his limited senses, instruments and
apparatus of the most exquisite and delicate
character ; so that it has been even said that the
progress of science is the progress of the exquisite
nature of the apparatus which science uses, and
scientific men will devise a more delicate balance,
a more dainty way of adjustment, instrument after
instrument, until perfection seems well-nigh to be
reached ; the modern man of science, to carry on
his researches, demands a vast array of apparatus
that he must use for his work, for according to the
delicacy of his apparatus is the extent of his obser-
vation of the forms to which his attention is directed.
But the man of science of the ancient type does
not ask for instruments ; he is not studying the
evolution of forms; he has to study life, not form ;
and for such study he must evolve himself, the life
that is within him, for only life can measure life,
only life can respond to the vibrations of the living ;
his work is to unfold himself, to bring out of the
depths of his own nature the divine powers that lie
hidden therein, not in the senses but in the Self.
His investigations can only be carried on by means

Ancient and Modern Science, 15

of these powers, and only as he develops the divine
within him will he be able to understand and
measure the divine without him. Now this is only-
possible because, in essence, the natures of God
and man are identical. This sounds a bold
statement, but it is the fundamental truth of all
religions. Need I quote to you the famous saying,
''Thou art That"? Shall I take an equivalent
phrase from the Hebrew Scripture, accepted by
the whole Christian world : " God created
man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him " ? The teaching is identical as
all great truths are identical in the various reli-
gions ; but what does it mean ? God is manifest in
His universe. Would you understand His work,
you must develop the God within yourself, else
will He for ever be veiled from your eyes. Not
by the eyes of sense may you behold Him, not
by the vision of intellect may you see that Form,
invisible even to the intelligence. Only as the Self
that is God is unfolded within you, will the Self
that is the God without you manifest to you the full
glory of His life. That is the ancient starting point.
Thus what the man of old had to do, if indeed he
were to be a man of science, was to become divine ;
he was to be a saint before he could be a sage.
No man could be wise until he was pure, for how

1 6 Evolution of Life and Form.

should impure eyes behold the Pure? There is
the hall-mark of the man of science of the ancient
days : he is developed within before he can be learned
without. But from the modern man of science
is not demanded this condition. He must indeed
lead a life that is self-restrained, orderly, and fairly
clean ; were he to yield to the riot of the senses, his
intelligence would become clouded. He must have
keen power of observation, balanced strength of
judgment, strong patience, unwearied industry, clear
insight for differences and similarities. All these
are demanded from him, if he is to be great, and
these are among the noblest powers of intelligence.
But all he asks of religion is to leave him alone. Of
old, religion opened the gateway to science ; now-
a-days science asks nothing from religion save to
stand aside. That is the difficulty in our way. We
have to show that life cannot be understood until
the student lives that which he seeks. That even the
understanding of forms is very imperfect until the
life expressed through them is recognised and
partially understood. That fundamental difference
of method then, will cover the whole field, and will
enable us to comprehend the difference of the results.
Now let us try to understand more clearly why it
was that the ancient man of science was taught that
the first step to true knowledge, or wisdom, was the

Ancient aud Modern Science. 17

unfolding of the Self. What is life or consciousness
— for the two terms are synonymous ? It is the power
to answer to vibrations, the power to respond — that
is consciousness. Evolution is the unfolding of a
continually increasing power to respond. The whole
universe is full of the vibrations of Ishvara, of
God. He sustains and moves the whole. Con-
sciousness is the power in us to answer to those
vibrations. All powers lie hidden within us as the
oak tree lies hidden in the acorn. But it is in the
process of evolution that the sapling slowly grows
out of the seed. In Eternity, in the Now, all is
existent, perfect ; in Time only is there succession,
the unfolding of one thing after another. In the
changeless Point everything is present : Space is
biit the field for diverse sequences. Hence Time
and Space are the basic illusions, and are yet the
fundamental conditions of thinking. Keep, I pray
you, that definition of consciousness in mind, for it
will govern the remainder of our study.

The Self in man, being in the image of God, is
triple as the Self, the Divine, is triple. I need not
stop to argue this. You know it from that great
literature which lies at the foundation of all Hindu
Philosophy. Whether you speak in abstract terms
and say with the Upanishad that Brahman is three-
fold, whether you speak of Him as Sat-chit-ananda,

B

1 8 Evolution oj Life and Form,

or whether, instead of using philosophical, abstract
terms, you say He is manifest as Ishvara in the
Trimurti as Mahadeva, Vishnu and Brahma, it
matters not. You may take the concrete form or
the abstract, the fundamental idea is the same : that
the Divine Self in manifestation is triple, and there-
fore in every great religion God is spoken of as a
Trinity. If this were not so, the relationship
between God and man would remain for ever un-
intelligible, for man shows a triplicity as he evolves.
The human reflection of that triple Divine Self is
the triple Self in man.

One by one are the Divine aspects unfolded as
manifestation proceeds. The lowest, if I may dare
to use such a term, is the aspect which is first
brought into activity for the building of the universe.
So also in man the intelligence awakens and becomes
active, the lowest aspect of the human Self. That
is the reflection of Brahma, of the Universal Mind,
the creative energy from which all comes forth ;
and you may find in yourselves, as you evolve, that
creative faculty of imagination which, working at
present in subtle matter, will, when man is per-
fect, work in grosser matter as well; for the
imaginative power in man is the reflection of the
power that in God created the universe. Brahma
meditated, and all forms came forth ; and in the

Ancient and Modern Science. 19

creative power of mind lies every possibility of form.
So in man is later evolved the next aspect, that of
A'nanda, where unity is recognised instead of
diversity. Chit, in man, is the intelligence that
kftows^ that separates and divides and analyses, and
it has to do with the multiplicity of forms and with
their inter-relations ; A'nanda is the wisdom that
realises the unity of all things, and that accom-
plishes union, thus finding the joy that lies at the
very heart of life ; last of all in human evolution, is
developed the third and highest aspect of Deity,
Self-Existence, the Unity that lies beyond union, and
this can be developed in man only because man is
one with the Eternal in his nature. By this evolution,
in ages to come, through the countless kalpas that
lie in front, Ishvara after Ishvara arises, each as the
fruitage of a universe, to carry on still more mightily
the will of the '' One without a second," and to mani-
fest something of that perfection to the whole of the
then manifested nature. Such, very roughly, is the
course of human evolution into divinity, and this
is carried on by races succeeding one another ; as
we come to the higher Root-races of man, to those
that we speak of as the Fifth, in which we are, the
Sixth, that shall succeed us, and the Seventh that
finishes this cycle of human evolution, we learn that
the characteristic of each of these three Root-races

20 Evolution of Life aftd Form.

is that each gradually develops that aspect of God
which belongs to it in the due sequence of evolution.
The Fifth is developing the aspect of Chit, Intelli-
gence, the mind is being evolved, and all the pro-
gress of modern science, so marked in our own days»
is but part of the fruitage of that evolution, of that
growth of intelligence which looks on the outer
world as not itself — as the Not-Self — and seeks to
study and understand it. The characteristic attri-
butes belonging to the evolution of the two following
races are even now to be reached by special methods,
by individuals who are willing to take the pains to
make the required sacrifices. That which we know
as Yoga is the method by which evolution is quick-
ened in the individual, and all the powers of the
Self, up to the threshold of divinity, may by it be
brought into manifestation in the man of the present.
That is why Yoga training was necessary for the
ancient scientist ; he must develop in himself the
three aspects of God, if he were to understand them
as manifested in the universe around him.

Now, at our own stage of evolution, it is specially
the life of Brahma — or the Brahmi aspect of God —
with which the human mind is coming into touch,
because the mind in man is the reflection of the uni-
versal mind in Kosmos. That life is the life that is
the force in the atom, that vivifies every atom, nay>

Ancient and Modern Science. 21

that brings the atom into existence, as we shall see,
and remains during the whole of the growth of the
universe as the fundamental life that keeps those
atoms as active particles building up innumerable
forms. Only as the life of Brahma, the aspect of
Brahma, is developed in the human Self will man
be able to study the workings of that life in the
atomic forms that are filled by it ; and it is very
significant that some of the greatest problems of
modern science are now turning on the nature of
the atom, and that scientists are asking, what
is it? Is it matter or force? Is it a particle or
a vortex? Never will that question be answered
with certainty until man has developed in himself
the power to respond to the life that thrills in the
atom, until, developing intelligence within himself
to the fullest point, he is able to answer by that
intelligence to the vibrations of the atomic life
outside him. We have defined consciousness as the
power to answer to vibrations, and if man is to
measure life, if he is to know the underlying
causes of phenomena, he must develop in himself
the power to respond to that life outside him ; and
in the perfection of human intelligence — the reflec-
tion of the Brahma aspect of God — lies the only
possibility of solution for this much debated pro-
blem in science. I said it was significant, for

22 Evolution of Life and Form.

this problem belongs to the Fifth race, and the
Western world is at present peopled largely by the
fifth sub-race of the great Fifth. Thus it takes to
the very highest point the concrete mind of man,
that marvellous activity of the intellect, that swift
and yet patient study, bringing about the achieve-
ments that modern science is performing. All
these are a testimony of the truth of the ancient
teaching that sub-race after sub-race arises, each one
with its own work to do, and we should look on
the work of each sub-division of humanity as good
in itself: each should not be regarded as an
isolated and hostile expression, but as part of the
Divine manifestation, expressing that portion
which it is destined to express.

Looking thus, then, on the problem of the life that
exists in the atom, we find that in order to under-
stand it, we must develop the pure intellect in man ;
but to understand the life that clothes itself in
organic forms, to unravel the secrets which will
explain to us why one is formed thus and another
thus, the next great aspect of the Self must be
developed within us — that of the all-pervading life
of Vishnu, that sustains the world as the mighty
supporter of everything, the basis, the foundation of
,the whole. There alone is unifying energy and
there the root from which all divisions have arisen ;

Ancient and Modem Science. 23

only as we realise this aspect of unifying energy in
the Self will the secrets of organised forms in nature
unravel themselves before our eyes. This work is
that of the Sixth Root-race, and those who would
ante-date their evolution must develop Sixth-race
powers in themselves by Yoga. Remains one
mightier problem, subtlest and most difficult of all,
that of the life of the human spirit, of man evolving
into God. The mysteries of that life may only be
understood when the human Self, which comes forth
from the Father of all — from the mighty One who
is sometimes the Destroyer, sometimes the Creator,
but always the Regenerator, the name that includes
them both, Mahadeva, the mighty God who is Sat,
Existence — has developed the aspect of Sat, of pure
Existence, thus becoming the triple Unity, a I/Ogos,
an Ishvara. That is the work of the Seventh Root-
race, and when that is accomplished, then only will
the final problems of the human spirit lie open
before our gaze.

The scientific man of antiquity, then, began by
that self-attention, unfolding in himself one by one
all those potentialities under a suitable Guru, passing
from step to step till he reached the highest, and
ever worshipping the Mahaguru, the Guru of the
universe. Having unfolded his highest powers, he
began to study life, life in its outpouring, not life in

24 Evolution of Life and Form,

its manifold and veiled manifestations in the lower
worlds. Hence the lofty point at which he started,
no less than the arising of Ishvara enveloped in
Maya.

What is Ishvara ? What is Maya ? There is the
first great problem. Let us reverently address our-
selves to it. The philosophers of India have answer-
ed these questions in diiferent ways, each one contain-
ing part of the eternal truth. Ishvara is that
mighty centre of consciousness that exists un-
changed in the bosom of the One Existence. There
are innumerable such Centres of Consciousness, of
which you may remember your own Svami Subba
Rao wrote as existing in the bosom of the One
Bxistence. Ishvara in manifestation is like a lamp,
a light enclosed in a shade. Ishvara, enveloped in
M^y^, brings forth a universe and is enclosed, as it
were, in the universe of which He is the Light.
Breaking the shade, the light shines forth in every
direction. Dissolving the universe. He still
remains. The centre remains, but the circumfer-
ence that circumscribed it is gone. So is that
mighty centre when the universe vanishes; He
alone remains, holding His centre unshaken in the
very act of merging in, expanding into, the Infinite,
the Absolute, the Super-Consciousness, the One.
Let us think of Him as an eternal centre of self-

UN/VERSITY

OF

Ancient ajid Modern Sctenttt^LlFOP^

\^

consciousness, able to merge in super-consciousness
and to again limit Himself to self-consciousness.

What, then, is Maya? Mayi is prepared in
every case by the merging in Ishvara of the whole
of the universe which is come to its ending. As
one loka rolls up and merges in the one above it,
all forms in the loka thus merged disappear, but
the consciousness that ensouled those forms does not
vanish ; a modification of consciousness remains, a
modification expressing itself by a vibratory power
— ^not a vibration, but a power to vibrate in a
particular way ; and though the form vanishes as
the loka is merged in the one above it — because the
matter disappears, being disintegrated into finer
matter — in consciousness there remains the power
to vibrate in the way in which it had vibrated in the
grosser matter, and power persists although the forms
caused by such vibrations disappear, for lack of
material sufficiently coarse to respond to such vibra-
tions. As one region passes into the next, this process
is repeated over and over and over again, and loka
after loka vanishes. The forms are gone, the vibra-
tions are gone, only the modifications in conscious-
ness capable of giving rise to similar vibrations
remain until finally, when Ishvara — whose con-
sciousness was the one consciousness in the universe,
whose life was the one life, who supported every

26 Evolution of Life and Form,

form, who made the possibility of every separated
existence — gathers up His universe into Himself
ere He merges Himself in the One, everything has
vanished that we know as form, nothing remains
save the centre of consciousness. There remains
in Ishvara the power of vibrating in particular
fashions, resulting from the evolution of His uni-
verse, in endless multiplicity of vibrations ; when
He merges Himself in the One Existence all has
vanished as form, but powers remain in these subtle
modifications, preserved in that unchangeable
centre in the mightiness of the One Life. Is that
only a dream ?

There was a great teacher, Vasishtha. He taught
Rama, as you will remember, and in the record
of his teaching there are hints on some of the
mysteries of life. If you keep what I have now
said in mind, if I have succeeded by the clumsy
words which are all that the human tongue can
utter on these great problems, in clarifying at all
your thoughts, then just listen to that same thought
as expressed by Suryadeva, when he was speaking
of the same thing — the ending and the new
beginning of a universe. We have only to add
to what I have already said, that when Ishvara
arises in order that a new universe may be formed,
He throws His life into these modifications that had

Ancient and Modern Science. 27

apparently disappeared, and the Maya in which
He arises, enveloped and circumscribed, is His own
re-vivified memory, which can never be separated
from Himself; He draws in His consciousness,
under the impulse of the Great Breath, limiting it
to self-consciousness, and turning His attention to
the contents of that self-consciousness, its powers
start into activity, and that is Maya. So it is written :
"Thereafter, Thou, O Lord, intent on [maintain-
ing] the reign of night, fixed within the Self,
having indrawn that order of things, [or universe.]

To-day, Thou hast awakened, and art most

joyfully desirous of again throwing out [manifest-
ing] the universe in mighty gradations [hierachies
of beings]." \Yoga Vdsishtha^ Ixxxvii, 7, 8.] These
nights and days are the " Nights and Days of
Brahma," the inbreathing and outbreathing of the
One Existence, and Maya is this indrawn " order
of things " that remains fixed through the Night,
and starts forth as Ishvara awakens at the coming
of Day. That is Maya; and if you take up the
definitions given in the different schools, you will
find that this includes and illumines every one of
them, that it shows you what is meant by illusion,
and explains to you what is implied in dreaming.
The joyful throwing out into manifestation of all
the powers that are remembered by Ishvara the

28 Evolution of Life and Form.

moment His attention is turned to His own Self,
that memory-prompted '' desire " which arises in the
bosom of the Eternal, is the root of the coming
universe. Now this thought will prove to you the
key of much ancient teaching. You have, in the
Universal Mind full of ideas which are not yet
•concreted into phenomena, the world of ideas of
Plato, the invisible world of the Hebrew Kabbalah ;
in every great teaching you find the same thought
expressed. If, instead of being fettered by words,
as for the most part we are, and if, instead of
repeating phrases that carry with them no idea in
the mind of the repeater, we would try to read the
thought that underlies the words, we should find
the Hindu philosphy in every modern philosophy
that is worthy of the name, and see the traces of
ancient India in Greece and in Rome, in Germany
and in the England of to-day.

What is the next stage ? The lyife-Breath goes
forth. Ishvara, the Centre of all, enveloped in
Maya sends forth His breath ; as that vibrating
breath falls on the enveloping Maya, Maya becomes
Prakriti, or Matter — rather, perhaps, Mulaprakriti,
the root of matter. As that breath, with its triple
vibratory force falls on this matter, it throws it into
three modifications, or "attributes" — Tamas, inertia,
or better, stability; Rajas, activity, vigour ; Sattva,

Ancient and Modern Science. 29

a difficult word to translate : I am inclined to trans-
late it as Harmony ; for this reason, that wherever
there is pleasure, Sattva is present. Without har-
mony no pleasure can anywhere exist. All
pleasure is due to harmonious vibration, and that
quality of harmonious inter-related vibrations is
the quality that Sattva gives to matter. These
three fundamental qualities of matter — answering
to three fundamental modifications in the con-
sciousness of Ishvara — inertia, activity, and har-
mony, these are the famous three Gunas without
which Prakriti cannot manifest. Fundamental,
essential, and unchangeable, they are present in
every particle in the manifested universe, and
according to their combinations is the nature of
each particle.

Then comes the seven-fold division. In a moment
I will tell you why we speak of it as seven-fold in-
stead of five-fold, which is the more familiar division
to you. The seven- fold division, what is this ? Here
is matter with its three Gunas, now ready to receive
another impulse from the Life-Breath ; that breath
comes forth from Brahma, for Ishvara has unfolded
His triple nature into its three aspects, and it comes
forth in seven great waves. Each one modifies mat-
ter, and evolves and ensouls those that follow it.
The first two are absolutely beyond our knowings

30 Evolution of Life and Form.

and belong not to our present stages of evolution
at all ; therefore they are ordinarily left out, and
only the five that make up the evolution of our
universe are spoken of in the sacred books. Here
an d there the seven are mentioned, but only rarely.
You may remember the seven tongues of fire, for
instance, and one or two other similar phrases.
But generally five-fold is Prana, the five-fold
evolving life. First, in every case, is a modification
of consciousness sent forth as a power by Ishvara.
Turn to the Vishnu Purdna and you will see
exactly the stage that I am pointing out to you in
more modern phrases. Ishvara Himself, as Brahma,
sends forth a power, due to a modification of His
consciousness, called in the Vishnu Purdna a
Tanmatra. In the English translation the word
rudiment is used. You remember the rudiments
of sound, of touch, of colour, and so on. All these
rudiments are the tanmatras. These tanmatras are
the powers due to modifications in consciousness or
life, without which no modification in matter can
be. The consciousness first, then the form. The
first great vibration that goes forth is the vibration
that gives rise to what we speak of here as sound —
all our terms being drawn from the lowest, or
physical, manifestations; the form that it brings
into manifestation is A'kasha, the mighty element

Ancient and Modern Science. 31

of Bther; not tlie ether of modern science, of
course, although that is its physical representative.
Then into that the next tanmatra, the next power
due to a modification of consciousness, is sent forth ;
the A'kasha, with the primary vibration within it,
receives the second vibration sent out by Ishvara,
and this, pervading the matter around it, brings
about the next modification of matter, the element
Vayu, or Air. Vayu, permeated, ensouled and envel-
oped in A'kasha, receives a fresh impulse from Ish-
vara, the third tanmatra, or power resulting from a
modification of consciousness ; this tanmtoa, work-
ing on Vayu, produces the modification of matter
called the element Agni, or Fire, and this fire-mat-
ter is permeated, ensouled, and enveloped in Vayu,
as Vayu in A'kasha. A similar process brings into
manifestation the elements Apas and Prithivi. The
'* magnetic field " of an atom is composed of all the
tanmatras and elements above it. Try to realise
this process if you can, though I know the concep-
tion is difficult. What has occurred ? A modification
of life or consciousness in Ishvara, manifested as a
power, a vibration ; everything depends on vibration ;
ancient and modern science speak alike on this.
The universe is made up of vibrations, the vibra-
tions which are the modifications of the Divine out-
pouring of life. These clothe themselves in funda-

32 Evolution oj Life and Form,

mental forms of matter, out of which all multiplicity
is developed. These modifications in matter, these
great, or primary, elements are also called tattvas.
Tanmatras, then, are the powers sent out by
modifications of consciousness, and these are awk-
wardly translated by the word rudiments ; we have
next the modifications in matter, the great elements,
the primary elements, or tattvas. The first of the
tattvas is called A'kasha; then Vayu, then Agni, then
Apas, then Prithivi, the five following one after
the other ; the keynote of this evolution is that the
modification of the previous higher tattva is
reproduced within the lower, pervades it and ex-
pands outside it. If you will take the Vishnu
Purdna, the second chapter, and read over again
the evolution of the five tattvas, you will find that
the Sanskrit word which is used comes from a
root which means to pervade as well as to enclose,
giving the idea of permeation as well as of expand-
ing around to form an envelope. And you must
understand that the central life of each tattva is
the preceding tattva with its tanmatra ; that, with
the new tanmatra, makes up the life ; and the
outer form is the new tattva that by that productive
action comes into existence.

Now leaving that, for I cannot go into further
details, let me just say to you one word about the

Ancient and Modern Science. 33

seven and the five, because that has been a source
of great dispute between some of our Hindu Pandits
and some of our Theosophists. In the universe,
taken as a whole, seven-fold is the life of Ishvara.
Beyond the tattva that we know as A'kasha, there
is that tattva which has been called Anupadaka,
and beyond that A'ditattva, the first. Those are
far beyond our knowing ; we cannot think so far.
For our life-evolution, the five mark the limit ;
and only the five, therefore, as a rule, are given in
the books which are to be studied to show you how
to evolve.

Rapidly we must pass onward, then, to these
tattvas as, modifying themselves by aggregations,
and by disintegrations and re-combinations of these,
they make innumerable forms. The fundamental
conception is that there are as many basic forms of
atoms in the universe as there are tattvas. The
tattva of ancient science is the atom of modern
science, but modern science makes the mistake of
supposing that there is only one fundamental atom.
The truth is that modern science is only seeking to
get hold of the Prithivi Tattva, the lowest, or
physical, atom, and it has not yet recognized
even the existence of the four (or six) higher
atoms that stretch beyond. These atoms form
the regions of the universe. All that is physical

c

34 Evolution of Life and Form.

is made up from the Prithivi Tattva. Not only
is this so, but within the limits of this physical
region, correspondences of all the higher six
atomic forms are reproduced. The sub-divisions
of the physical region, due to combinations of the
Prithivi Tattva, show forth the characteristics of the
great regions which make up the universe ; so that
we have here in our solid, liquid, gas, three ethers
and atoms, correspondences of the six higher tattvas,
but we have them all in their Prithivi form ; they
are the modifications of Prithivi, reproducing on a
lower plane the great primary elements. We might
call them Prithivi A'ditattva, Prithivi Anupadha-
katattva, Prithivi A'kashatattva, Prithivi Vayu-
tattva, Prithivi Agnitattva, Prithivi Apastattva,
Prithivi Prithivitattva. Above the region of
Prithivi comes the great realm of Apas, with similar
sub-divisions, all of the Apastattva, and so again
another seven above that in the higher realm of
Agni, and above that the same in the still higher
realm of Vayu, and above that again in the A'k^sha,
and then the highest two unknown realms. When
you remember that all these regions interpenetrate
the one the other, you will gain some glimpse of a
complexity dizzying to think of, the vast com-
plexity of the universe in which the One Life is
working. Yet that complexity is simplified by thus

Ancient and Modern Science, 35

working downwards, and there is the line of the
study of the ancient science. Working out from
this originally simple life into the endless multi-
plicity of forms, we may trace the One among the
many, and see the Self in all things, and all things
in Him.

At the ending of a universe, the tattvas merge
in each other by disintegration ; Prithivi Tattva,
having disintegrated into atoms, these atoms are
themselves broken up, and the tanmatra that formed
them, being no longer able to express itself for lack
of suitable material, ceases to be a power, and
remains only represented by a modification in con-
sciousness— a permanent possibility. Thus Apas
Tattva becomes the lowest manifestation, and, by a
repetition of the above process, ceases to exist. In
like fashion each successively vanishes. Hence,
Mah^deva is represented as saying in the Shivdgama :
'' The universe proceeded from the tattvas ; it goes
on through the tattvas ; it vanishes into the tattvas."

Such is the grandiose conception of the kosmos
given by the science of antiquity ; one life, pulsing
into innumerable vibrations, and these throwing
matter into forms. On this was based the Pytha-
gorean system of numbers; on this mathematics
and music were founded; on this the *' Great
Science," or Magic, of long-perished nations was

36 Evolution of Life and Form.

built up. That science only survives in its purity
in the Great White Brotherhood, but its traces
may yet be seen in the scriptures and the religions
of the world.

We take up modern science, and pass into a
different atmosphere. Now phenomena are to be
studied, forms are to occupy our attention. But as
we look at modern science we find that it is begin-
ning to transcend the study of forms ; we find the
efforts of its greatest men are turned to seek unity
amid diversity. Do not think that, in speaking of
modern science as studying forms, I am indifierent
to the mighty achievements that it has made, or
that I would say one word in derogation of the
ability of the leading men of science, and the price-
less value of the work that they are doing for
humanity. Their achievements during the present
century are achievements that are worthy of the
very deepest respect, not only for the '* sublime
patience of the investigator," of which William
Kingdon Clifford so rightly spoke, but also for the
self-abnegation with which many of them have
given their lives to follow truth, to study in the
innermost recesses of the phenomena of nature what
secrets she has hidden, what may be underneath
the "Veil of Isis." I do not, then, speak a word
against modern science, but I point out to you this

OF TH

OF

A7icie7it and Modem Scieyice^^'^^'tL} fq

fact, that the greatest work of science has been the
generalisations that have been suggested in the
attempt to reach simplicity, to reduce multiplicity
to unity. How far has science gone from that
generally accepted view of the materialistic school
of thirty years ago, that the universe is made up of
an indefinite number of atoms, the atoms being our
chemical elements ! A phrase from one of the
most famous of the then leading men of science, Dr.
Irudwig Buchner, will mark the greatness of the
change : he declared that the carbon atom will
always remain a carbon atom, and has been a
carbon atom from all eternity ; that the hydrogen
atom from all eternity has been a hydrogen atom,
and to all eternity a hydrogen atom it will remain ;
for atoms with their properties are indestructible,
and are therefore eternal. What man of science
would dare to allege that to-day, knowing that he
would be laughed to scorn by all his scientific
brethren ; who would say that these atoms are
eternally of the same nature as they have till now
been made out to be? What is science in fact,
doing as to the atom? It is finding in what is
called the atom a composite body, a compound,
not an element. This discovery is chiefly due to
the researches of Sir William Crookes, who is
guided in his investigations by a deeper philosophy

1

38 Evolution of Life and Form.

of the universe than is common among scientists.
It is gradually finding out that these atoms are
things that are built up gradually, and that the
qualities of atoms are not fixed, but are properties
that change with every difference of conditions.
Late investigations have shown that when chemical
bodies are submitted to extraordinary conditions
of cold — such cold as makes the air into a liquid
and solidifies hydrogen and oxygen — they suffer
the destruction of their supposedly permanent pro-
perties. It is proved that, as these conditions are
changed, and as lower and lower ranges of temper-
ature are brought to bear upon these chemical
elements, one by one their eternal properties dis-
appear, and they lie there changed in their activities,
and lose the characteristic traits which enabled
them to be discovered as parts of the moving
world. Downward and downward falls the tem-
perature, property after property disappears, until
science asks, bewildered, what will happen when we
reach the absolute zero, what will then become of
the properties of matter, what will remain of the
characteristics of the elements ? Is there not but
one Matter, and are not all chemical elements but
modifications, aggregations, of this one ultimate
matter? Similarly with Force, modern science
has made the magnificent generalisation that all

Ancient and Modern Science. 39

the forces that we know are modifications of one
Force, and are identical in their essential nature ;
that heat, and light, and all the various forces
around us, electricity, magnetism and the rest,
that all these are but vibrations of varying lengths
and activities in a subtle medium, and that they
may be transmuted the one into the other. They
are not fundamentally dififerent, but are one and
the same in their root. But if this be so, if there
be but one Matter, if there be but one Force, then
science is now tending towards unity ; and as
that unity is traced or aimed at, science will have
to pass out of the grosser realm of dense matter
into the realm of forces working in subtle media ;
and we find this wondrous change that, whereas in
old days the existence of force was argued for
inductively, by studying the changes in matter, now
science is beginning to posit the existence of force
and to question whether matter is anything more
than the action of force. Instead of regarding an
atom as a solid indivisible particle, the tendency
is to regard it as a vortex of energy, a centre of
force. One writer even goes so far as to suggest
that an atom is a source " through which an invi-
sible fluid is pouring into three-dimensional space. '^
Other atoms, "anti-atoms," maybe '* sinks" through
which ^the fluid pours out. If these unite, may

40 Evolution of Life and Form,

not inertia be neutralised as well as gravity ? May-
there not be potential matter, and may there not be
such in space, without any of the attributes which
characterise matter, but ready ,to be vivified and form
a system of worlds ? Here we have H. P. B.'s atoms
and laya centres, put forward tentatively as a scien-
tific problem. Science is mounting into the invisi-
ble world and is trying to measure and to weigh that
which therein it finds. Now this tendency to unity
is the testimony to the One that underlies all
manifestation ; only one Force, only one Matter ;
endless diversity of forces, transmutable into each
other ; endless diversity of forms, which break up
again to recombine ; only one Force under all
forces, one Matter under all forms. It is seen
that the very fact of harmony and of evolution
points to a root unity, and that eternally independent
self-moving particles would only perpetuate a
chaos.

As science travels along this most hopeful line,
we find great changes are arising in the nature of
the studies that are being carried on, and we have
that wonderful theory of Sir William Crookes of
the genesis of the elements. He takes protyle as a
starting-point, which is really Vayu in its form on
this physical plane — Prithivi Vayu — and out of
that builds one atom after another, making all the

Ancient and Modern Seience. 41

chemical elements to be bodies aggregated together
by the action of a positive and a negative force.
I^et me just remind you of this, because some
amongst you go so eagerly after modern science
and despise your own literature. If you had read
your Vishnu Purdna^ with your brain, and not
merely with your eyes through modern spectacles,
you might have learnt that theory of Sir William
Crookes long, long before he gave it. He has
drawn a picture, and the picture shows an immov-
able axis, and around it a spiral coil, and at points
in that coil are atoms of the chemical elements,
generated by that coil which represents a swing-
ing and cooling force. That spiral is in the great
ocean of protyle, or primeval matter, and, as that
spiral goes round and round the immovable axis,
it generates chemical elements one after another,
and so brings into existence the materials out of
which the world is to be formed. That is the
dry scientific statement summarised from his own
address. But I have read in an ancient book of a
mountain — which is the emblem of stability, of an
axis round which everything is to revolve — thrown
into a mighty ocean ; and I have read of a great
serpent turned round that mountain in spiral coils ;
on the one side the Suras are pulling and on the
other side the Asuras are equally busy. Between the

42 Evolution of Life and Form.

two — the positive and negative of modern science
— evolution is started and the serpent spiral begins
to turn and turn round that axis. They call the
axis Mount Mandara, and they call the spiral coil
the serpent Vasuki while the axis rests on Hari as
a pivot; they call the positive and the negative
forces the Gods and Demons'; and their churning of
the ocean gives rise to the materials of the universe.
Aye ! That is from the seer, who, looking at the
ocean of matter, described pictorially what the eyes
of the spirit beheld there ; while the other is the
dry scientific statement of the modern thinker, who
works out his magnificent generalisation as the
result of his study of the forms. The seer and the
scientist have met.

I shall show you, when I come to deal with life,
that modern science is coming towards our view of
life. I shall give you, from the latest declarations
of our modern scientific teachers, points which will
vshow you how they are climbing towards the ancient
view which is found in our sacred books ; and I will
now finish this first part of our subject this morning
by one plea addressed to all of you, which I would
pray you to think over at your leisure.

There is but One Life, the Life of God, within
everything in His universe. No life save His life,
no consciousness save His consciousness, no thought

Ancient and Modem Science. 43.

save His thought. This is our glory ; for inasmuch
as we are in His image, we can answer to the vibra-
tions of His thinking, and can reproduce in our
minds that which He has initiated in order that we
may be evolved. In all the different parts of this
universe, different lines of evolution are going on ;
the sun is doing part of it, the vegetable world
another part, the animal world another, the world
of man another ; but in the world of man there is
more diversity, because there Self-consciousness is
arising. The final image of the Supreme on earth
is man ; in man alone is the highest life ; the
others are climbing towards it, but in them it has
not yet evolved. Therefore in man there is more
difference ; therefore in man, for the time, more
separation ; therefore in man the great danger of
antagonism that the lower kingdoms know not,
because they are not sufficiently evolved. Then
comes the conflict : I take my own poor reflection
of one tiny bit of thought of Ishvara, and I say :
" This is Ishvara Himself," and not my poor
thought of Him ; ** Worship this as I see it," that
is, " Worship me instead of Ishvara, and my
thought of Him instead of Him." So man after
man puts up his idea of God as God, and we see
all the world divided into many forms of thought and
of worship. Then a man imagines that his brother

44 Evolution of Life and Form.

men are worshipping other Gods, and he becomes
anxious and troubled, not realising that Gods are
many because we are worshipping our own thoughts
of God instead of God, our own limited representa-
tions instead of the Universal Self. Nay more —
I, perhaps, not only say to you that you must
worship my conception of God instead of your own,
that my knowledge is the limit of manifestation,
that my small fancies make up the universe instead
of the infinite diversity that alone can represent
His might ; but perhaps I go further and say :
*' If you do not worship my idea of God, you are
outcaste, you are alien, you belong to a different
faith, you belong to a different creed ; stand out-
side ; for I am orthodox, you are heretic and
blasphemous your faith." So speaks religion
after religion, fanatic after fanatic ; so one man
after another makes his own reflection the God
of the universe, and hence antagonises his brethren,
whose representations of the divine image are as
necessary to its completeness as his own.

That is what I ask you to realise. God cannot
be expressed wholly in you or in me, in our miser-
able limitations, in our poverty of thought, in our
wretchedness of impudent assumption. He can only
be even partially expressed by all the worlds to-
gether ; His whole universe is His mirror, and every

Ancient and Modern Science. 45,

fragment in the universe gives back to Him, in part
His own perfections. Is it not nobler, greater, more
glorious, to be a fragment of a perfect whole,
making a part of the whole unity itself, subserving
it in mirroring Ishvara, than to be shut in with our
own fragment of a looking glass, trying vainly to
make it perfectly reflect the whole, and refusing
any partial reflection of the perfect in our brethren
on every side ? That is the thought which these
lectures will embody, and they will fail in their
purpose if they do not carry it home to your minds.
For Ishvara, who is Existence and Intelligence,
is also A'nanda, Joy, Bliss inexpressible, and that
Bliss is only realized when union is consciously
accomplished, when the whole is known as one.
May I but help you to see the Self in all things :
what better service may man do for man ?

[second lecture.]
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE GODS.

My Brothers : — Those of you who are familiar
with your own sacred literature will know how
great a part is played therein by those spiritual
Intelligences who are spoken of as the Devas, or
Gods. As I said yesterday, the existence, the pre-
sence, and the working of these Intelligences in the
administration of nature, in the carrying out of the
will of Ishvara, are recognised in every great faith
that the world has known. The Hindu speaks of
them sometimes as Suras, sometimes as Devas ; the
Hebrew, the Christian, the Mussulman, speak of
them as Angels and Archangels, making the dis-
tinction between the higher and the lower; the
Zoroastrian also recognises their work, speaking of
them as Feristhas ; and so, in each of the great
religions, we find the presence of these workers in
the Kosmos recognised, and we see their functions
defined. Now it is exceedingly important, especially
perhaps for the Hindu, to understand how wide is the

46

Functions of the Gods. 47

area of their working, how general their functions,
for no subject perhaps is more often made a subject
for attack by those who desire to injure the ancient
religion of India, than the actions of the Gods as
detailed in the sacred books. You will continually
find that those actions are being misunderstood or
mis-represented. The mis-representation, one may
always hope, is not deliberate and conscious. It
is due to the general materialism of the age. It is
due to the fact that men who believe in a religion
nominally do not realise the eflfect of that religion in
their consciousness. So that while a man may say
that he believes in Angels and Archangels and so
on, he leads his life as though they did not exist.
Among our Christian brothers there is considerable
diflference of opinion with regard to these Angels. In
the different sections of the great Christian commu-
nity, the vast majority of those that profess Christian-
ity— making up the old Greek Church, sometimes
called the Eastern Christian Church, and those who
are numbered in the Roman Communion, the
Roman Catholic Church, the two ancient Churches
which have preserved an unbroken antiquity and
an unbroken tradition from the time of Christ and
His Apostles — have maintained and maintain,
uninjured and complete, the ancient belief in the
ministry of angels. They really lead their lives as

48 Evolution of Life and Form,

recognising the part that is played in the world by
the angelic hosts, and not only do they regard the
Archangels as the great rulers of animated nature —
the seven chief Archangels taking the place of the
seven Gods in other faiths — but they also recognise
the lower host of angels as concerned continually
in administering natural laws, in guiding human
evolution ; and indeed they go so far as to say that
every individual man is in special charge of a
guardian angel, who ministers to him from the
cradle to the grave, who tries to help him in
danger, to advise him in temptation, to protect him
in peril, to ward oflf all the evils levelled against
him, and who, helping him through the gateway
of death, accompanies him on the other side through
the invisible world, until he surrenders up his
charge into the hands of Christ Himself. The
Protestant communities, however, breaking off as
they did, roughly and abruptly, from the ancient
tradition, full of occult truth, have lost, among
many other valuable things, this real belief in the
work of the angels. Most members of the
Protestant communities, while they acknowledge
the existence of the angels and vaguely regard them
as " ministers of God," have no very definite idea of
the part that they play in the world. They do not
address them, as do the Roman Catholics and the

Functions of the Gods,

Greeks . They do not pay them reverence and homage
day by day, or look on them as helpers, as intelligen-
ces superior to themselves, always willing to render
assistance. Practically the angels have passed out
of their lives, so far as any conscious realisation of
their presence is concerned; and I cannot help
thinking that the loss is a very serious loss when you
are dealing with spiritual evolution ; the whole idea
of the Supreme tends to become degraded and
anthropomorphised when the intermediate agents
are forgotten, and when every petty concern of
human life is, as it were, thrown directly under
the immediate superintendence of the Supreme.
We must not, of course, in recognising the work-
ing of the Gods, or the Devas, as I shall call
them for the rest of the lecture, lose sight of the
unity of the Supreme Deity. We do not, in
Hinduism, deny or ignore the existence of Ish-
vara because we recognise the hosts of the Devas ;
we do not cloud our belief in the One because
we recognise the innumerable hosts of the minis-
ters of His will; there is nothing more against
the unity of God in the recognition of the hosts
of the Devas, than there is in recognising the
diversity of men, yet it is not pretended that
we are clouding the unity of the Divine Existence
when we recognise the hosts of individuals who

50 Evolution of Life and Form.

make up the whole of humanity. It is mere
prejudice or ignorance that makes any one think
that because the Hindu recognises the action of
the Devas, therefore he has lost his belief in the
One Existence beyond even Ishvara Himself, in the
fundamental unity that underlies diversity. What
he does is, that instead of regarding the world as
superintended by an extra-kosmic God, separated
as it were from His universe, with a mighty gulf
existing between Him and it, he sees in Ishvara
the manifestation of the one I^ife that pervades
and sustains all, he sees in Ishvara the one Root
out of which all separated existences spring;
and he sees, stretching between himself and that
Supreme, innumerable hosts of Intelligences, step
after step, rank after rank, and he looks to climbing
up that celestial ladder until he also stands at its
very top ; for he knows that he also is divine, al-
though as yet in an early stage of evolution, and
he recognises the more highly evolved divinity
above him, as he recognises the divinity in the stone
beneath his feet, in everything that exists in this
universe of God.

With that beginning, so that our study may not
lead to a misconception, let us pass on to ask
what are the functions of these Devas, of these
Intelligences, who work in the world. You will

Functio7is of the Gods. 51

at once realise that the functions must be very
different, according to the grade of the Devas that
we may happen to be studying. Through the
whole of the Kosmos they are working. Some
are very lofty, some are very little evolved above the
level of humanity. One great difference there is
between us and them, that whatever may be the
grade of their mental, emotional, and spiritual life,
they do not, normally, use a physical body. That
is a clear mark or line of separation. The
being functioning as man, while spiritual, intel-
lectual and emotional, uses a physical body, in
order to carry on the activities connected with the
physical world. All the hosts of Devas are without
that physical covering or vehicle ; they normally
use as their vehicle a body which belongs to the
particular region in the universe in which their
normal activities lie. Suppose, for instance, that a
Deva belongs essentially to the spiritual world, he
will normally use a spiritual body ; if he wants to
function on the manasic plane, he will create for
himself a temporary manasic body, drawing together
for this purpose the matter of that plane and holding
it as his vehicle during the period of his functioning
thereupon ; if he wants to function in the kamic re-
gion, he will draw together the material of that re-
gion and make of it for himself a temporary body ;

52 Evolution of Life and Foftn.

if he wants to function visibly in the world of man,
he will draw round himself the matter of the physi-
cal plane, and make for himself a body suitable to
the immediate purpose that he has in view. So
with every other grade. The Devas of the manasic
world use normally the manasic body, and create
the kamic or physical body as they may want a tem-
porary vehicle. Those of the karmic region use the
karmic body normally, and create a physical vehicle
when they require it. Thus, in every case, the Deva's
ordinary body is composed of the matter of the
region of the universe to which he belongs ; but he
has always the power to create any vehicle that he
needs for carrying out any purpose with which he is
charged. This will perhaps suggest to you one
reason for the great variety of forms which a single
God may assume. Those whose inner sight is deve-
loped, who can see in the regions which to ordinary
men are invisible, say that the Gods use many forms.
And some of their forms have come down tradition-
ally, described originally perhaps by a great Rishi,
preserved by his disciples, then thrown into some
form of earth, or stone, or metal, painted or sculp-
tured as the case may be ; then such an image of the
God is handed down generation after generation,
and represents that Deva under that particular form
to his worshippers. We find many forms for one

Functions of the Gods. 53

Deva, just because of the fact that the God makes
the form he wants for the particular work he has upon
hand, and that none of those forms bind him. They
are merely transitory vehicles created for a definite
purpose. Some of these forms are indeed relatively
permanent, partly because of the worship which is
addressed to them. For the Deva will often graci-
ously use a particular form in order to meet the
thought of his worshippers. Suppose for instance,
taking a lofty example, that Shri Krishna willed
to reveal Himself to some Bhakta of His, in order
that that devotee might have the joy of consciously
realising the presence of his lyord. He then most
certainly would clothe Himself in the form which
that Bhakta was in the habit of worshipping and
which drew up the deepest emotions of his heart.
For these forms are taken for the very purpose of
stimulating devotion, for the very object of attract-
ing the heart by presenting the illimitable Deity in
some conditioned form which the concrete mind of
man is able more or less to grasp, to understand, to
admire and to worship. You cannot love the void
of space. You cannot fix your heart on the depths
of infinity ; you deceive yourself if, with your limited
intelligence, untrained even in the lowest forms
of Yoga, you think that you can realise Brahman,
the Supreme. Too often when we speak of That,

54 Evolution of Life and Form.

no real thought responds to our speaking ; the lips
speak, not the intelligence or the heart. Step by
step we have to climb from the manifested to the
unmanifested, and, in His compassionate love, God
veils Himself in forms of beauty to attract the
human heart, in order that the human heart may
rise adoringly to His Feet, and that some portion of
His life, pouring down thereinto, may enable the
Self of the worshipper to realise even partially its
unity with Him.

The Devas, then, in their many ranks and divi-
sions, perform functions according to their grade.
Speaking generally, their work in the world is to
guide evolution according to the design of Ishvara.
That really sums up their functions, although we
are going to study them in detail. I say nothing of
the vast functions of the higher Devas that lie
beyond our knowing, beyond the teaching that
Rishis have given. I deal only with those lower
functions that are concerned with our world, and
with the solar system of which our world is part.
Taking that limitation, suitable to our ignorance, we
can study some of the functions of the Gods within
the limits of our solar system.

Speaking generally, as I said, that function is to
guide evolution, to adapt, to correlate, to carry out
the living will of the Supreme, and to carry out that

Functions of the Gods. 55

will by bringing together in time and space all the
agents and conditions necessary for carrying it out.
There is only one supreme Will that guides the
universe, and that Will points steadily to progress,
to the goal set forth for the universe, the goal to-
wards which it is evolving. Unchangeable, stable,
perpetual, that Will knows no swerving ; to use a
Christian phrase, " there is no shadow of turning "
in that immutable Will. The universe rolls along
the road traced out by the Divine Will. It cannot
be diverted from that road ; it cannot change its
path ; that is the law of the universe, the law on
which we rest with faith unshakable. But in the
working out of the law in this universe where men
are evolving — men in whom is the germ of that
same sovereign and imperial Will of God, man
being made in the Divine image and containing
within himself the germ of the Divine powers — in
this universe, as man evolves, wills also evolve
which are separate, personal, individual. All the
confusion in the world of man is due to this evolu-
tion of the separated wills that do not recognise
their root in God, but try to follow their own diverse
ways, and want to move after their own separated
fashions ; so that in the world of man, as nowhere
else in nature, you have discord instead of harmony,
clash instead of peace, struggle and war instead of

56 Evolution of Life and Form.

tranquillity. The world of minerals obeys the com-
pulsion of the law ; the world of vegetables obeys
the compulsion of the law ; the world of animals
obeys the compulsion of the law ; but when man
arises, man in whom the Supreme is to be developed
after he has climbed through the lower stages, in
man there awakens the germ of the will, and the
separated wills bring about the discord which will
yet end in something greater and richer than the
harmony of the stones, of the vegetables, of the
animals. For when human evolution is over,
millions of separated wills will join in one mighty
chord of harmonious union, and that union of the
wills that voluntarily give themselves is mightier
in its powers, more beautiful in its expression, than
compelled obedience can ever be. The music that
humanity sends up to God, in all its varied melody,
is a far more perfect expression of Divinity than
can be drawn from the monochord that we find in
the lower kingdoms of nature ; but you will readily
understand that when these warring wills arise,
something, some one, is wanted in order to adapt,
to correlate, to bring about equilibrium among the
contending forces, so that the one purpose may be
steadily subserved. Let me take a concrete illus-
tration. Suppose I had here a ball which I want
to move. That ball can be moved along a straight

Functions of the Gods. 57

line in innumerable ways. I might give it a single
impulse in the direction in which I want it to
move; and it would move straight on in that
direction following my primary impulse. So would
the universe move if it contained only minerals,
vegetables and animals, if there were no clashing
wills within it, if it were within the iron grip of
compulsion, which never in any fashion could be
resisted. But I can equally well drive my ball
along that straight line, if I know enough of
physics, by correlating different and opposed forces.
I may send two forces against it at a particular
angle, and if my angle be properly measured ac-
cording to the strength of the forces, then the ball
will travel along the same line by the interaction of
the two forces as well as by the impact of the one ;
and I may bring three, or four, or five, or a million
forces, to bear upon that ball, and still it will move
along that one definite line, if only the forces are
calculated and balanced so that their resultant shall
always be a force along that straight line. That
balancing is one of the functions of the Gods. They
take these warring wills, these different directions
that are being impressed, as it were, on the rolling
world that is going along the road of evolution ;
they balance, adapt, and correlate them, and thus
always keep the world travelling along the straight

58 Evolution of Life arid Form.

line, always bringing about the same resultant, the
accomplishment of the Will of the Supreme ;
without them, these wills of ours would work
infinite confusion, and the world would never com-
plete its evolution, would never roll upwards to
its place at the Feet of God.

We find the Gods discharging other functions
which subserve the same purpose. They mould the
forms in which the growing life is to express itself.
Evolution depends upon the growing power of the
unfolding life, but it needs forms whereby that
growth shall be carried on. These forms are
moulded by the Devas, so that the life, which
breaks by expansion its containing form that is
out- worn, may have another form into which to go
fitted for the capacity that was evolved in the form
it has out-grown. We shall find also that they
break up forms as well as build them ; being always
fixed on the one object of serving the evolution of
the life. Then again they act as teachers, as
guides, as councillors, to those that have gone
beyond the normal evolution, that are the first
fruits of the human race. Not acting as teachers
directly to the masses, they take the more advanced
human beings in charge, directly instruct them,
test them and try them, as presently we shall see.
So that while the general purpose is the helping

Functions of the Gods. 59

forward of evolution, this help is rendered in a
million ways, according to the needs of the time.

Now, in the past, this working of the Gods was
recognised, and the sacred books are full of it.
They showed themselves continually among men,
they carried on their work, as it were, in the full
blaze of day. But now no longer do they show
themselves to men at large, and many have forgotten
even their existence, and very many people, even in
India, materialised by the thought in which they
have been trained, are half ashamed to say that they
believe in the existence and the working of the
Devas. The unbelief makes no diflference, save to
those who disbelieve. The working of the Gods
remains ever the same. They are ever busy in
carrying out the Supreme Will. Only they do not
show themselves, and to those alone who recognise
their existence and their work will they manifest
themselves. If in the old days they showed them-
selves as they do not now, it was because men then
had reverence and love and were willing to bow
down to those who were wiser and greater than
themselves ; because then democracy was not
reigning ; because then the ignorant did not think
themselves equal to the learned, nor did man deem
himself equal to the Gods. In those days, because
they could help they came to the helping ; but they

6o Evolution of Life and Form.

will never come visibly again to earth until men
have learnt to reverence once more what is above
them, and to understand their place in the Kosmos,
to worship as well as to command. The Gods work
all the same. They are not deprived of their func-
tions by our folly, by our conceit, by our ignorance.
Only they work unseen, and we forfeit the sweet
comfort of their visible presence, the strength and
joy of the old heroic days, the dignity of conscious
companionship with the Immortals, the ever-renewed
assurance of super-physical life. Not one death
that happens on our earth, but a God has struck
away that body whose work is over; not one
'' natural catastrophe," but a God has guided it to
the happening ; not one help given to a man in need,
but a God is the agent behind the visible helper ;
not one answer to the cry of man in his distress,
that is not the response of a God to human sorrow.
Everywhere they are working. Everywhere they
are bringing about what we see as dead mechanical
nature. Every phenomenon is the veil of a God,
and there is nothing done in which an Intelligence
does not take part.

Seven are the great Gods below the Trinity,
below the Trimurti. Every religion, again, ac-
knowledges these Seven. The Christian speaks
of the " Seven Spirits that are before the throne of

Functions of the Gods. 6i

God." The Zoroastrian tells us of the seven
Ameshaspendas who rule the world. The Chaldean
spoke of the seven great Gods. Five only are
working and two are concealed, for the universe is
in process of evolution and only five stages of it
have been reached. Therefore only with regard to
five can we definitely speak as to working. The
two concealed are beyond our knowing ; they are
related to future stages of the evolution of the
Kosmos. But the five we will now consider. Their
names in connection with their functions you know
well enough. They are connected with the tattvas
of which we were speaking yesterday — the I^ord of
A'kasha, Indra ; the Lord of Air, Vayu ; the Lord of
Fire, Agni; the Lord of Water, Varuna; the
Lord of Earth, sometimes called Kshiti (vari-
ous names are used for him) ; each of these
great Gods has what we may call one region
marked out for his working. The matter of that
region is the matter in which he works ; but in addi-
tion to that, each one is represented in the realms of
the others by a sub-division on which his impres-
sion is especially made. These are the great kosmic
planes that I have spoken of, marked off from
each other by the tattvas. But if we come down to
the physical plane, dealing only with Prithivi Tattva,
we shall then find that that is also seven-fold in di-

62 Evvlution of Life and Form.

vision and that we have physical solid, physical earth
or Prithivi, physical water or Apas, physical fire or
Agni, physical air or Vayu,physical ether or A'kasha.
Each of these great Gods works on each plane
through the medium that corresponds to the region
which belongs to him in the Kosmos as a whole.
How often we see those correspondences as it were
printed in physical nature. We have light with its
seven sub-divisions as seen in the solar spectrums
showing the seven colours, and the scale with its
seven notes. Colours and notes alike result from
vibrations, and are determined by the number of
vibrations occurring in a unit of time. As the uni-
verse is built by vibrations, colour and sound are fac-
tors of the universe at large, and every region is said
to have its own colour ; the God of that region has
his colour — dependent on his vibratory force — which
he imprints on the region over which he rules ; so
that if a Rishi looks at the solar system from a
higher plane, he not only hears the seven funda-
mental notes of music, making '^the harmony of
the spheres," but he sees a gorgeous display of
colours, as the sphere of every great Deva with his
own colour interpenetrates the others, yielding an
iridescent splendour of interfering radiances, the
marvellous ^'rainbow that is round the throne of
God." Such mystic expressions, have lost their

Functions of the Gods. 63

meaning for the majority, because the sight of those
who wrote them is but little developed in these
days, and few are they who can see as the seer saw
of old.

Each of these great Gods has under him a host
of subordinate Gods who carry out his decrees.
The constitution of an ordinary state will give you
a very good picture of the government of the solar
system. We have at the head an Emperor or an
Empress ; then the officers who represent that su-
preme authority in separate divisions of the realm ;
there is the one central authority over the whole,
and the officers who wield it in different areas of
the Empire. Then these officers are graded in
rank, and we have higher and subordinate Minis-
ters, Judges, Magistrates, in descending order, each
with a smaller and smaller district to administer,
the functions of each becoming more limited as you
descend the official ladder ; and each responsible to
his official superior. That is really a very good
picture of the government of the solar system ; the
head of all is Ishvara Himself ; His Viceroys are
the great Gods, each with his own vast area over
which he rules, and each with his official hierarchy
under him, until you come down to the lowest
Devas, who carry on the work in the limited area
of a village of the solar system.

64 Evolution of Life and Form.

Such is the outline, then, of the functions. The
next thing to grasp is, that, when we see on this
plane in which our consciousness is working — the
physical plane — any one of these fundamental
forms of manifestation, we should try to realise
the presence of the God behind the material pheno-
menon. Not a fire that burns upon the earth,
whether the fire of the volcanic mountain, whether
the fire ranging through the vast forest, whether
the fire burning on the household hearth, or on the
sacrificial altar, that is not Agni in manifestation,
with the possibility of his powers coming into
visibility. They were not dreamers, they who bade
you of old keep safe the fire, the household fire
which husband and wife at the bridal kindled, and
which, when the life of the married was over in the
home, they still carried out into the forest; they
carried with them the fire, and it took with them
the presence of the God, who through the house-
hold life had blessed, had guided, had given
prosperity and made the final withdrawal from the
household life possible and desirable. That is one
of the many truths which modern India is losing.

But when these things were believed in, and the
ceremonies connected with them were carried on,
then nature worked in a definite order, and there
were not the same continual irregularities that we

Functions of the Gods. 65

have in our modern days. By that harmonious
working between man and the Gods, nature answer-
ed to man as man answered to nature ; while man
did his duty, nature in her turn did her duty also ;
the failure of rain, the failure of crops, the failure
of sunshine, the presence of plague, or of any other
form of human misery, was seen as having its root
in the failure of humanity ; and man turned duti-
fully to that which he had neglected, and thus
readjusted the balance which his irregularity had
displaced. Let us try and see, as an example, one
concrete working in what we call natural evolution.
We will turn to the great God Varuna. He works
through water ; every manifestation of water is his,
whether on the physical or on any other plane, in
any of the forms that it may take, for what we call
" water" is naturally the lowest, coarsest manifesta-
tion, his physical body, as it were. He works with
it in nature in endless ways — to dissolve, to combine,
to dissociate. When we take the greater workings,
how very grand is the conception we may gain of
the might of the God. Come back with me, far
back, into the past, ere humanity had taken form ;
there see the world as it then was ; see how, as
fire and water, Agni and Varuna are working on
every material to fit the world to be the birthplace
of the yet unborn humanity. See how Varuna is

66 Evolution of Life and Form.

working in order to prepare what is wanted of moun-
tain and of valley, of river and of plain ; see the
might of his work as well as that of his brother
Agni, in apparent clash but really in harmony ; fire
and water meet, explode, and toss up a mountain-
chain where before there was none ; see how he
gathers snow on the mountain peaks, and gradually
fills with masses of this snow, frozen into ice, the
mountain ravines made by the combined volcanic
action ; see how the slow ploughing begins ; plough-
ing, ploughing and ploughing again, as the
mighty God works onward in the form of glaciers,
grinding his furrow through the earth, and prepar-
ing for the future ; see, ages later, how the channel
cut out by the glacier is filled by the tumbling
cataracts from melted snow, and a turbulent torrent
rolls downwards, and against its resistless waves
nothing is able to stand ; the valley dug out by the
plough of the ice is filled with water, and from it
the soil is gradually deposited, which in the future
will make fertile land for crops in order that man
may live. Then Varuna binds his waters into a
narrower and narrower channel, until there is moun-
tain range and valley and a river flowing through
it : and he carries his river downwards and pours it
into the sea and his brother Agni draws it up again
to form the clouds. There has come by that mighty

OF THf- \

UNfVERSP-v '

OF

Fu7ictions of the Gods. 67

action, destructive as it seems in appearance, the
building of the plain and the valley where men shall
live and love, where children shall be playing,
where horses shall graze, where corn shall grow
and ripen in the sunshine, and where, on the peace-
ful banks of the river, men shall worship the God
who made possible their happy life.

We talk about the " cruelty of nature." I^et us
try and understand what this cruelty means. The
world now is inhabited. Crowds of men are here,
and lo ! the river, that made the habitation of the
valley possible and keeps it fruitful, now overflows
its banks and the mighty flood sweeps away village
and town, men, women, children, and cattle, and
only desolation is left behind. What is this? Is
this horror a divine working ? What is this that
Varuna has done ? Varuna is working for evolution.
His thought is not fixed on the forms in which the
life is cabined, but on the life that is evolving with-
in them, which can make for itself new forms.
When those men are swept away, it is only the
breaking of the forms that happens ; the life up-
springs uninjured and set free ; for the body is the
prison-house of the evolving life, and if the prison
doors were never thrown open, we should be in jail
all our lives and make no progress for the future.
The God to whom form is nothing and life every-

68 Evolution oj Life and Form,

thing, to whom form is but a changing, convenient
vehicle, and the life that moulds the form is the
one thing that is worthy of thought, he strikes
away the form when its purpose is completed ; to
him such destruction is the act of mightiest charity ;
it is the deed most helpful to evolution. We err,
my brothers, when we look on death with eyes
that are full of tears, with hearts that are breaking.
Death is he who brings us to a higher birth, and
who sets free the imprisoned soul ; it is the libera-
tion of the bird confined within the limits of a
cage, enabling it to soar upwards into the heavens,
singing, as it goes, with joy at the freedom it has
recovered. Does that seem strange ? Let us take
an illustration from the Mahdhhdrata : —

There was a council among the Gods in Svarga,
how some of them would take incarnation upon
earth for the sake of helping men at a great crisis
in the world's history. Great men were needed,
and the question arose whether some of the Gods
were willing to bind themselves within the limits
of human form, in order to give special help to
human progress ; among those who were needed
for the work that was coming was the son of Soma
Deva, Varchas, as he was called, and the Gods
desired that this Deva should be born on earth.
Soma Deva hesitated. He was not willingf that

Functions of the Gods. 69

his son should leave him and the heavenly life, and
although he finally consented that he should be
born as Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, it was only
on the condition that he should live but for sixteen
years, and be killed in the great battle of Kuruk-
shetra. You say, what a strange view of life !
What an extraordinary condition for love to make,
that this youth should die at the age of sixteen, in
the very flower of his dawning manhood, should die
a death of violence. Yet that was the will of the
one who loved him best, for heaven sees with differ-
ent eyes from earth. Soma saw the life, and cared
not for the form ; to a God the form is a prison,
death is the gaoler that liberates ; hence the con-
dition was made that only for sixteen years might
the divine youth live a human life, and then " my
son of mighty arms shall come back to me," and that
from a battle field, dying gloriously in the midst of
the fight.

Do you know that sometimes the swamping of
a civilisation by a natural convulsion — such as the
going down of Atlantis below the waves of the
ocean that we now call the Atlantic, the wiping out
of the whole nation or race — is the best proof of
love that the Supreme Ishvara through His inter-
mediate agents can show to the lives therein em-
bodied. For there are stages in the world's story

70 Evolution of Life and Form.

where man is so passionately set on a line of action
that is against his real progress, when he so deter-
minately sets his desires on objects that hold him
back and delay his evolution, that the only mercy
that the Gods can show him is to break his form ixi
pieces, and give him as it were a new start for the
evolving of himself — the life. Sometimes I have
felt, as I have gone through some of the miseries
of our great cities in the West, when, in the
pursuance of my duty, I have gone with breaking
heart through the slums of eastern and southern
lyondon, or through those of Glasgow, or
Edinburgh, or Sheffield, as I have noted the types
of men and women around me, as I have seen the
human almost veiled by the brute, and humanity
degraded well-nigh beyond possibility of recogni-
tion, that no appeal for help was fitting save one
that would set free that imprisoned life. I have
felt that nothing save the destruction of the forms
could give any hope for those imprisoned within
them ; that for those men and women, as they were,
degraded, brutal, drunken, profligate, their very
forms with the impress of the animal, the best
mercy that God could show them would be an
earthquake that would swallow the whole great
city and set free the lives pent hopeless within
it. For not one life would be lost, not one life

Functions of the Gods. 71

would pass away, but they would be set free to go
into somewhat less unplastic forms and give scope
for that divine working towards evolution, which is
in extreme cases only possible when the forms, forms
of evil, are gone. We speak sometimes of the training
of children being easier than that of grown-up
people, because they are more plastic. So also the
Gods want oftentimes the child-ego in the plastic
form instead of in the prison-house grown rigid by
age ; and they therefore break that environment in
order that the young life may grow.

Another great function of the Gods is the dealing
with the karma of nations, " collective karma," as it
is sometimes called. Suppose a nation is acting in its
collective capacity — I am not now thinking of the
individuals brought into it by their individual karma
but of the nation acting as a unit — and suppose it
commits a crime against another nation. There has
been one working of karma so tremendous during the
last year, that I will take it as an illustration — Spain.
Some centuries ago Spain was at the summit of her
power ; mighty was she among the western nations.
There was sent to her, in order to help her forward,
the gift of new knowledge. It came truly in a some-
what unacceptable guise, for it came from Arabia,
with the stamp of Muhammed upon it ; it was
brought by the children of Islam ; they brought

72 Evolution of Life and Form.

the light of science with them, and, as they estab-
lished themselves in southern Spain, they gave
that light to Spain. Universities were established.
I^arge classes were formed. From every part of Eu-
rope men come crowding to the Schools of Cordova,
and there they learnt the beginnings of the Science
that has since grown into so mighty a tree in western
lands. What did Spain do ? Spain called up against
these Moors, and against the Hebrews — who also
were learned in the learning of the East — the fright-
ful weapons of the Inquisition, the stake, the rack,
the dungeon, the torture of exile. Who can count
the hundreds of thousands driven out from home,
the broken families, the miseries, the poverty and
starvation intolerable, which marked the expulsion
of the Jews and of the Moors from Spain? Still her
karma of success was not complete. Across the
Atlantic ocean she sped, Italy lending one of her
sons for the glory of the Spanish Empire. In the
wake of the ships of Columbus there followed the
ships of the conquerors of America, full of Spanish
soldiers. I cannot dwell on the story of the conquest
of Mexico, and the still more terrible conquest of
Peru; I have no time to wring your hearts, as I
might, with the tale of the destruction of a great
civilisation, of the killing out of the last exquisite
traces in Peru of one of the most perfect civilisations

Funciiofis of the Gods. 73

that our world has ever known, of the crushing of the
gentle Indian race there by chains, by imprison-
ment, shut out from the glorious Sun whose children
their Incas were. Too gentle to struggle, accustomed
only to a life of flowers, of music, and of sunshine,
they were crammed into caves that they were made
to dig in ancient cliffs, dying by thousands upon
thousands in the digging out of the gold and silver
which their Spanish conquerors demanded, until the
very name of the ancient nation perished, and only a
few scattered Peruvian Indians remained to repre-
sent what was one of the fairest civilisations of the
world. Such was the karma made by Spain in
the days of her glory, and the horror of her conquests
sank into the oblivion of the past. But do the Gods
forget ? Nay, their memory is perfect. They are
the administrators of the divine law, and give the
harvest to the sowers. From the very country which
they outraged, from the very land that they con-
quered, a new nation springs up as the centuries go
on to take up the old struggle between the two
hemispheres, and to-day we have seen America and
Spain closing again in the death-grip, but the scale
of balance is now weighed down on the other side,
and America becomes the karmic agent for working
out the woes of the Aztecs and the Peruvians, and
for driving from the western hemisphere the nation

74 Evolution of Life and Form.

that there outraged humanity in the centuries gone
by. Thus the Gods are needed to bring nations
together to balance up these accounts between the
races, and so to restore equilibrium once again.
Thus they work, using men as their agents, and
they bring about these national results. Partly
they do it by bringing to birth, at a particular
time, men whose individual karma fits them to be
the agents of the collective karma of the nation.
What was more striking in the Spanish war which
has just closed, than the absolute incapacity
shown by the men who were the rulers of Spain?
Whence came they? They were men who in the
past by their individual karma had fitted them-
selves for the sorry fate of incapable rulers, and
they were guided by the Gods to take birth in the
families which give rulers to Spain, in order that,
by their weakness and ineptitude, by their
cowardice and their want of foresight, they might
serve as men to lead their nation to destruction, the
fitting instruments for the working out of Spain's
evil karma. See also how at the fit time great men
arise to lead a nation to victory. These men are
also chosen by the Gods beforehand because of
their individual karma, and they are brought to
birth in the place and at the time when they are
wanted for the working out of the collective karma

Functions of the Gods. 75

of a nation. Not by chance is a man brought into
the world, not by the compulsion of a dead law, or
of a blind necessity ; the Gods are working here
with an intelligence that foresees and guides, and
they choose for the accomplishment of their ends
the men whose own karma fits them to be their
agents for the work in hand, and then guide them
to take birth at the place where that karma can
subserve the collective karma of their people.

This also is true in a much more limited way
with regard to the working of individual karma.
Sometimes you must have wondered how, with all
the interfering activities of men, the karmic law
could work out with undeviating justice ; it is
because the Gods are guiding the working. You
see somewhere a man who is starving and if you
misunderstand karma — as too many of you do, to
the shame of India, in a land where this teaching
is of immemorial antiquity — you turn aside from
that starving man and say that it is his karma to
starve and perish ; in those hardened hearts of yours
you use the will of God as a cover for your own
selfishness, for your indifference and your lack of
love. That man's karma to starve? Aye, and
therefore he is starving! But if a Deva guides
you to the place where your brother is starving, it
is because he would make you the agent of his

76 Evolution of Life and Form.

beneficence to that man whose evil karma of the
present moment has been exhausted by his suffer-
ing; the Deva thus says to you: ''Man, your
brother man is starving, give him the relief it is his
karma to receive, and be my agent in carrying out
the law." But if you refuse the God, if, blinded by
ignorance or indifference, you turn aside and will
not carry his message to your brother, he will not
for that be thwarted, he will find some other agent,
or, as a last resource, he will do it himself by some
act that may seem miraculous in the eyes of the
blind, for the purpose of the God may not be
blocked ; but for those who have refused to act as
his agents, who have refused to act as his
messengers, they have made for themselves the
karma of being left unassisted when the hour of
their own need shall strike in the future. For the
administrators of the good law forget not; every
debt is collected, every creditor is paid in full.
But you may say that it does not follow that a
man's karma is exhausted when you meet him;
true, but that is not your business, it is the business
of the guiding God, and he will frustrate the physical
aid if the karma be still evil. If you have that
opportunity given you of making good karma, you
have all the merit of your willingness to act, you
have all the virtue of your readiness to sacrifice ; ^

Functions of the Gods. 77

but if it is not yet his time to be relieved, you will
not find the object of your charity ; by circumstances,
as you will say, he will have been taken outside
your reach. lycave you the Gods to do the work
of the Gods, the administration of the law ; do you
that charity, that love and compassion, which it is
ever their will that man should show to man. We
cannot break the law; we cannot change their
purpose ; but we have the choice of co- working or
refusing, and on that our individual karma depends.

Then we find further that Devas bring people
together and carry them apart, always for the work-
ing out of their individual karmas ; that men are
guided to places and positions at definite times,
according to those circumstances which, by their
karma, they must meet.

Now men are related especially to one or other
of the great Gods, by the constitution of their
bodies visible and invisible. That gives them a
special afiinity for ore Deva rather than for another.
For instance, the lower hosts of Devas who, we will
say, belong to Agni, build into a man^s invisible
and visible bodies, the kind of matter in which that
God normally works. That gives the man a rela-
tionship to that particular God. Every man is
connected with a special manifestation of God, to
whom by his constitution and evolution he should

78 Evolutiofi of Life and Form.

turn. Unhappily ignorance has so widely taken
the place of knowledge, that it is difficult for a man
to discover to which Deva he is thus related. I
have not time to work that out but you will see
how thoroughly it supports the ancient idea that
men rightly worshipped different manifestations of
the Divine, and profited by such worship.

But we must hurry on with this outline, for we
have yet to deal with the more highly evolved
souls, and on your understanding this last part of
our subject will depend your power to defend our
sacred literature when it is attacked by those who
do not understand it. Therefore I will ask you to
follow it carefully, and you can apply the principles
that I will illustrate by special stories in a hundred
other cases.

The Devas, in their relationship to the more
advanced human lives, have that function of teaching
that I have alluded to, and also the function of
testing and trying them, to see how far they are
worthy and reliable, testing all their weak points in
order that those weak points may be gotten rid of,
trying them, where there is a germ of vice still
remaining, in order that that germ of vice may be
eradicated. Let us try to realise the nature of that
working. Suppose we see a man who has made
great progress. He is approaching the end of his

Functions of the Gods. 79

births. In that man there is some germ of evil still
remaining that has not been brought out yet into
manifestation by the working of karma. He is
going to be liberated, but he cannot be liberated
while that germ remains. What shall be done with
him ? That germ of evil must be hastened to its
ripening. It must be made to grow more quickly
than otherwise it would grow. It must be gotten
rid of, at any cost of pain, of anguish, and of
temporary degradation, and the God will take such
action as will ripen that germ and bring it to fruit-
age ; so that, the man acting as he would act when
that germ had been ripened by evolution, may
suffer the results which would follow from the error,
and by such suffering may get rid of that evil in
his nature, which would otherwise have prevented
him from attaining liberation.

Let me give you a story for each of these to make
the action clear. You see that a man is strong ;
well and good ; but that strength must be tested to
see if there be a flaw anywhere ; if there is a rope
on which the life of a man is going to depend, he
holding it and descending a precipice, that rope
must be pulled and tested to see if there be any
weak point in it which might break when the
man's body is hanging upon it, so that he would
fall. There may be a flaw in the rope, and not till

8o Evolution of Life and Form.

it has been tested will the man risk his life upon
it. How much less then will the Deva risk the
progress of an advanced man on a virtue not strong
enough to bear every strain ? He will test it with
every possibility of strain, until it has proved itself
strong enough to bear the weight which it may be
called upon to hold up. We will take our stories
from the Mahdhhdrata^ which you all know, or ought
to know. Arjuna was seeking to get divine weapons ;
he was to be a great leader in a battle still in the
future. We are at the time of the thirteen years^
exile, and you may remember that he spent many
of these years in the search for these weapons.
During his search, he sought Maheshvara, who
had promised to give him His own weapon, and
he performed many austerities in order that he
/ might come pure into the presence of God. One
day as he was performing worship, a wild boar came
along; at the same time a hunter appeared, a
hunter of a very low caste, a hunter of the hills.
Now you remember that Arjuna was a Kshattriya,
and he accordingly caught up his bow to shoot at
the wild boar ; the hunter also raised his bow to
shoot at the wild boar. Two arrows went from the
two sides and the boar was struck dead. Arjuna
was very angry at the interference of this low-caste
hunter, and cried : '' How dare you shoot at the

Functions of the Gods. 8i

wild boar which was mine?" and he began to
quarrel and to threaten to slay him. Said the hunter :
'*If you wish to fight, fight"; at that, Arjuna
showered his arrows on the hunter but they all fell
off from him. The hunter, laughing, said : '^ Ex-
cellent ! Excellent ! go on ! go on ! " ; and Arjuna
hurled at him weapon after weapon, but everything
failed. Arrows fell off him, everything broke
against him — trees, rocks, everything ; he remained
untouched and uninjured, until at last He showed
Himself as Mahadeva, and praised the man who
had held his own against the God. Thus He tried
Arj Una's strength ; could he be sent to Kurukshetra
with celestial weapons if his strength were too
little for the fight? Try him against the Divine
potency, limited in order to be faced and fought ;
when his courage is found to be dauntless and his
strength sufficient, then send him to Kurukshetra,.
tried and proved, able to lead his men to victory.

Take another case, more difficult. Yudhishthira
is sad at heart ; he is struggling, has failed, and is in
danger. Drona is there, leading the hosts of his.
enemies, and he has been driven by him from the
battle-field. No one is able to stand against Drona ;
every one flies before the face of that mighty warrior ;
he turns back every attack. What can be done ?
Yudhishthira is in despair. Is he to be conquered ?'

82 Evolution oj Life and Form.

A stainless king was this son of Pandu, one of the
noblest and most blameless figures that ancient
literature paints ; but with a strain of weakness in
him which in critical times would sometimes show
a too great readiness to yield, too little of the
Kshattriya's power of standing alone against any
force that might be brought to bear against him ;
a little germ of weakness was there, that had in it
the possibility of a fatal fall. Shri Krishna is
there, the great Avatara, and Bhima comes rushing
up from the battle-field saying that he has slain an
elephant, whose name is the same as the name of
the son of Drona. If Drona hear that his son Ash-
vatthama is dead, he will drop his weapons, he will
let go his enemy ; no further will he fight when his
beloved is gone. *' I told him that Ashvatthama was
dead, but he would not believe me ; he sent me to
you saying that Yudhishthira is a devotee of truth,
he will not tell a lie for the sovereignty of the three
worlds. If he says Ashvatthama is dead, I will
believe." Terrible is the strain ; mighty the force
brought to bear against the man who has a weak-
ness in him ; and Shri Krishna, standing by him,
watching him steadfastly, advises him to utter that
which is not true. God advises this almost blame-
less man to tell a lie ? How strange the scene !
Yudhishthira, yielding to Shri Krishna, tells the

Fu7ictio7is of the Gods. 83

falsehood, and Drona lets fall his weapons and is
killed. If the story stopped there, we might well
be puzzled. If Yudhishthira's life was no further
told, we might well ask : what is this that we have
studied ? But when we remember that one of the
great functions of the Teacher, the Gurudeva, is to
bring out any weakness inherent in His pupil,
because otherwise that weakness will keep the man
tied, and he will not be fit to be liberated, we pause
and read on. When that lie was spoken, the chariot
of Yudhishthira sank downwards to the ground, no
longer able to support itself, truth having been vio-
lated. And as years went on, the bitterness of that
memory of a falsehood remained ; the sorrow of
the slaying of the preceptor by a lie ate deep into
the heart of the king ; he never recovered from it,
he never got rid of its effect ; over and over again,
he breaks from his repose in anguish ; ** I have
slain my Guru." The sorrow worked and the shame,
till the anguish purified that noble soul from the
last stain of weakness; and when the Great
Journey is over, when wife and brothers lie dead
behind him and he utters not a word of protest
against the death of his beloved, when he stands
ready to ascend to heaven, when only one living
creature remains with him, the dog who had
followed after him faithfully through all his wander-

84 Evolution of Life and Form.

ings since lie left his capital, when that dog remain-
ed his sole companion, trusting his master's love
faithfully unto death, then comes down a mighty
God and stands beside him. ^' Your time has come .
mount on my celestial chariot, and ascend in your
body unto the heaven where you have won the
right to sit and reign." Will he now yield to the
invitation of the God ? He said : " This dog is here ;
he has trusted to my protection and I cannot leave
him alone ; I must take him with me." The God
answered : ^' Dogs have no place in heaven ; dogs
are unclean, no place for them is there ; you have
left your dead brothers behind, and your wife when
she perished ; why should you remain still with this
dog?" ''They are all dead," he answered ''for
the dead, the living can do nothing. This creature
is still living and has sought my protection ; I will
not abandon him." " Nay," the God said, " be not
so foolish ; leave the dog there." But Yudhishthira
stood firm ; he was strong enough to stand against
the God, and to show righteousness and fidelity to
the poor brute that had placed his love in him;
unless he might take the dog with him, he would
stay on the earth and do his duty. Such lesson had he
learnt from his fall; such is the result of the working
of Shri Krishna on his evolution. We can see this
same working throughout the whole of that struggle.

Functions of the Gods. 85

Trace Shri Krishna through the pages of the Mahd-
bhdrata^ and you will find that He never deviates from
one steady purpose — to bring the great struggle to a
foreseen ending, where justice shall triumph and the
Kshattriyas of India shall disappear; He was at once
destroying injustice and preparing for the future of
India, breaking down the iron wall of her warring
caste that ringed her around with safety. There is
a particular aim in everything that He does, and
you will see that His purpose is immovable, if you
study carefully. He is working towards its accom-
plishment the whole way through. Look at the
way in which He steps in when His strength or pro-
tection is needed ; see how He tries to stimulate the
P^ndavas to do their duty, and only takes their place
when they fail. See the case where Shri Krishna
having promised that he would do no battle, Arjuna
falters before the face of Bhishma and has no heart
to strike ; you remember how sad was the struggle.
Arjuna was not able to strike harshly at Bhishma,
the greatest of all men and all warriors, perfect in
Dharma, the grandsire and the teacher of all.
*'How can I slay him ?" insisted Arjuna; "I re-
member when as a child soiled with dust, I climbed
on to his knees and throwing my arms around him
called him * Father,' and he said to me, ' I am thy
father's father.' How can I bring myself to slay

86 Evolution of Life and Form.

him ? " And you will remember how Shri Krishna
Himself told him not to shrink, 'bade him slay
him.' Hard was the task ; Arjuna's memory was
too strong for him ; he only fought in appearance
with restrained might, not with vigour, until at
last Shri Krishna saw that He must stimu-
late this man to do his duty, and to fight, though
it were against his old teacher himself; He
throws down the reins of His horses, takes the
whip, and leaps down from the chariot, and with
the whip He rushes through the brunt of the battle
to attack Bhishma Himself. Ah ! that sight is hard
for Arjuna; it appeals to him as Kshattriya, and
duty is remembered instead of emotion ; throwing
his arms round Shri Krishna to stop him he says,
" Go back ! Go back ! and drive me yet again, and I
will do my duty even to the slaying of Bhishma."
Now what does that mean ? It means that the purpose
of the God will be accomplished, whether or not a
man is found to do it ; that evolution will proceed,
no matter who may falter or who may hinder ; that
while evolution will go on under the Will of God,
individual progress depends on individual co-
operation with that Will; that God evolves His agents
by setting them to His work, and that their progress
depends on the extent to which they are able to
receive the impulse that He imparts. Only one

Fu7ictions of the Gods, 87

other case I will take to show you how Shri Krishna
worked when the force was too great for Arjuna to
meet, when He saw Arjuna could do nothing with
all the valour at his command, that no force of
appeal, no stimulus, could enable him to defend
himself. One weapon was thrown that might not
err in its aim, one weapon a celestial weapon that
He had given as a boon, when He waked from His
thousand years of sleep. That weapon was cast
against Arjuna. Arjuna could not avert it. Alone
of all the weapons in earth and heaven, that weapon
must go to its ending, and Arjuna would have been
slain in the midst of the battle. • What can be done?
He could not cut it with the arrows from Gandiva,
he could not use against it any of the mighty
weapons that the Gods had given him. This was the
weapon of the Supreme, which nothing was able to
oppose. Shri Krishna then, at that last moment,
as the weapon flies straight at the breast of the
warrior throws Himself in front, and, as it strikes
His bosom, it knows its Master and is changed into
a garland of flowers. So also with the chariot on
which He drove. He bade Arjuna first get down.
He bade him take his weapons, and until Arjuna
had left it, Shri Krishna stood there immovable.
He would not stir ; and the moment He left it the
whole chariot burst into flames, for only His presence

88 Evolution of Life and Form.

had kept it together, He who was the lyord of fire,
as well as the Lord of all else. You see, my brothers,
how fruitful is the study of this subject, when you
are dealing with the sacred literature ; how you may
be able to explain it to men of your own faith,
and defend it against the attacks of men of other
creeds. Do not defend it with bitter words, do not
defend it with harsh language, do not defend it
with wrath in your mind, and indignation making
your tpngue poisonous ; but remember that where
ignorance attacks, it is the duty of knowledge to
defend ; and that when that which ignorance
attacks is the spiritual food of millions, every man
of knowledge should spring forward to defend it,
lest the ignorant of that faith should swerve, when
they see the truths in their books assailed by those
who do not understand.

That then is the outcome of this lecture. I ask
you to remember that in every stage of your life,
Gods are around you. No karma that you make,
that they will not remember ; no appeal that you
utter, that they will not answer. If for a moment
no answer seems to come, or if sorrow that you
shrink from falls upon you, remember that the hand
of love allows it thus to fall, and that in bearing
that sorrow bravely, you are swiftly working out
your own deliverance. You are to be men, not

Functions of the Gods. 89

children, in the future; men-sons of the living
Ishvara whose image you are, and not babies that
He must for ever carry in His arms. He asks from
you the strength of men to help the Gods. He is
evolving you as the agents for His future universe.
You may delay, if you will. You may lose time, if
you will. Kalpa after Kalpa, you may remain at a
low stage. If so you choose. He will not force your
will ; but your wisdom lies in letting His Will work
in you to your swift and perfect evolution, that you
may have the joy of carrying out that Will in other
worlds, of consciously being His agents under
other conditions ; for men are Gods in the making,
and we are preparing to discharge the functions of
the Gods.

[third lecture.]
EVOLUTION OF LIFE.

My Brothers, — We have reached a point in our
study from which we may begin to trace the Evolu-
tion of Life in our own system ; that evolution takes
place on the various planets, but it is similar in its
general outline, though modified in its details on the
different globes. We shall chiefly confine ourselves
to our own world and our own humanity ; at the
outset we shall be obliged to go somewhat further
afield, but for the greater part of our study we may
confine ourselves to the evolution of life on our
earth. Now we are seeking in our study to find a
common ground of agreement on which co-operation
may arise between peoples of different faiths and of
different schools of thought. If we are trying to
find a meeting-place for western and for eastern
Science, if we are seeking in the light of Religion
to understand some of the mysteries of life, it is
right and fitting that we should remember that no
one religion has a monopoly of truth, and that any

go

Evolution of Life. 91

one who is seeking to expound the truth should be
able to fortify his position from the different relig-
ions of the world, and to show that on all great^
essential, and fundamental truths they speak with
a single voice, they teach an identical lesson.
Therefore in dealing with my subject this morning^
I shall, as before, draw your attention on the main
points where challenge might arise to the consensus
of religious opinion, to the definite statements of the
world's Teachers; so that the tendency towards
unity, on which the future evolution of life de-
pends, may be helped to develop amongst us. And
there is a special reason for that just now. We shall
see, as we trace out the evolution of life, that we are
in the very crisis of the intellectual evolution, and
we shall find that the characteristic of that stage
of evolution is division and separation, and the
placing of the individual apart from, and somewhat
in conflict with, other individuals. And we shall
find that the next stage in the evolution of life is
the seeking for union amid the individualised
units ; that the next divine aspect that man has to
develop in the Self within him is the aspect of
union and not the aspect of diversity ; and it is of
importance that those who are seeking the light,
those who are striving to co-operate with nature by
understanding her hidden ways, should realise the

92 Evolution of Life a?id Form.

next step of evolution as well as the present, in
order that they may co-operate with nature by them-
selves taking that step, thus quickening the possi-
bility of similar taking for all mankind.

Now with regard to life in its relation to forms,
a change at the present time is coming over the
thought of western Science. I pause on this for a
moment in order to substantiate that assertion, for
it is important in the search for the means of do'aw-
ing together the two kinds of science, ancient and
modern, to notice how much the position of the
leading scientists of the West has been modified
with regard to life and form during the last ten
years. I take as a declaration on this subject of
life, issued some years ago, the article on Biology
in the last edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica^
written, as all the articles in that CyclopcBdia are
written, by a prominent man in the scientific world.
In dealing then with life, the writer of the article
in question distinctly states that *' a mass of living
protoplasm is simply a molecular machine of great
complexity, the total results of the working of
which, or its vital phenomena, depend, on the one
hand, upon its construction, and on the other, upon
the energy supplied to it ; and to speak of ' vitality '
as anything but the name of a series of operations
is as if any one should talk of the ' horologity ' of

Evolution of Life, 9j

a clock." That is to say, that to regard life as
being in any sense a common existing principle, as
anything more than a mere succession of phenomena
in connection with a particular apparatus of matter,
is as foolish and unreasonable as if, looking at a
clock, you should separate its going property from
the mechanism of the clock itself. A purely
mechanical view of nature is thus taken, and life-
processes are regarded as being due to the unstable
equilibrium of protoplasm ; the series of these life-
processes is brought about merely by mechanical
and chemical changes, the actions called vital being
thus mechanical in their character. But at the
last meeting of the British Association, the Presi-
dent of the Chemical Section — chemistry having
been the very science to lead the scientific world
towards materialism in this respect — has taken up
an entirely different standpoint, a point that brings
the question into a line with ancient thinking, and
that starts the investigations of western Science
along a road w^hereon the most fruitful results are
likely to be encountered. Dr. Japp, the President
of that Section, compares the action of life to the
action of an operator who is deliberately working
with a purpose, using knowledge and will in order
to bring about a definite result. ''The operator,"
he says, '* exercises a guiding power which is akin,.

94 Evolution of Life cmd Form.

in its results, to that of the living organism," and,
going on to explain in very technical language the
ground on which this view is based, he concludes
by saying : ^^ Every purely mechanical explanation
of the phenomenon must necessarily fail. I see no
escape from the conclusion that at the moment
when life first arose a directive force came into play
— a force precisely of the same character as that
which enables the intelligent operator, by the
exercise of his will, to select one crystallised
enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite."
That is the declaration : that with the arising of
life there is an arising of consciousness which ex-
ercises a directive force in nature, as we see it exer-
cising a directive force in the choice exercised by men.
Put those two statements side by side, see the entire
reversal of the attitude, and then you will be able
to measure to some extent the change that has
come over western thinking — the recognition of life
as identical with consciousness, a position which
has ever been taken in the hoary Science of the
Bast.

Now let me, before going into details, suggest
to you the path that we are to follow. From the
One Existence, that One without a second, arises,
as we saw in our first study — Ishvara, God in His
creative and manifested aspect, Ishvara clothed in

Evolutio7i of Life. 95

Maya, out of which a new universe is to be builded.
Threefold we found Him to be in His manifesta-
tion, threefold in the aspect that He showed forth ;
so that a Trimurti, or Trinity, is the aspect towards
this universe of the manifested God ; His working
will show this triple character, and the evolution of
life is threefold, whether we study it in nature or in
man. I know the thought that arises in many of
you, accustomed to the broad statements in eastern
literature. You think of the building, the sustain-
ing, and the disappearing of a universe. Perfect,
you say, is the One Existence, infinite, unchange-
able ; perfect in the ending is the universe, as per-
fect in the beginning ; why then this long evolution
of life with all its struggles, with all its imperfections
gradually and slowly transcended. Why from the
perfect should the imperfect come forth ? Why
should it be trained into perfection, and then return
into that perfection whence it came ? That question
is based on a fundamental misunderstanding which
it is necessary to correct ; a misunderstanding which
never could have risen amongst you if the Scrip-
tures had been read in the light of the Yoga-deve-
loped consciousness, and if the broad outline which
is presented had been followed out carefully in
thought so that its stages might be marked. You
will remember how it is written in the Chhdn-

96 Evolution of Life and Form.

dhogyopa7ttshad that the One willed to multiply ;
and the moment you grasp the idea of multipli-
cation, if you think of what it means instead of
merely repeating the word, you will realise that
multiplication must necessarily mean division and
therefore limitation, and that limitation necessarily
implies imperfection. But having gone so far, you
would then have proceeded to ask : By what words
is the universe described, and what idea is hidden
beneath the words ? And you would find that when
God is spoken of as a Fire, the universe is not spoken
of as a Fire, but as a spark, and the lives of men are
described as millions of sparks that come from the
illimitable Fire. Not only is that word "spark"
used, showing you the limitation that comes with
manifestation, giving you the idea that the spark,
fed by suitable fuel is to be developed into the like-
ness of the Flame whence it came ; but as the spark
is of the same nature as the flame, so we are told
''Thou art That," the Self in man is identical in
nature with the Self that gave it birth. You will
remember another word which is constantly used to
describe alike the universe as a whole, and also the
parts of which it is composed — the word germ or seed.
Let me ask you to turn to the Bhagavad Gitd^ so
familiar to every student amongst you, and to listen
for a moment to the words chosen by Shri Krishna

Evolufio7i of Life. 97

when He desires to convey the idea of the nature of
the universe, and its relation to the Supreme
What does He say ?

Mama yonir Mahad Brahma tasmin garbham
dadimyaham.

Sambhavasarva bhutanam tato bhavati Bharata
'' I place the germ in the womb of Mahad Brahma.'*
What do these words imply ? for the whole
turns on our understanding of that word '* germ.'*
Mahad Brahma is the matter of the universe,
vivified by Brahman in His third aspect — that
which Theosophists call the Third Logos, which in
the Trim^rti is spoken of as Brahma. Looking on
Brahman as the One^ Mahad Brahma is the third
aspect of His revealing, which vivifies and makes
atomic the matter of the universe, the womb of the
seed of the Eternal Life. In that, brought into
manifestation by Brahma, or the Third Logos, the
Second, the generating Father, Vishnu, places that
germ of life that therein it may develop ; not Him-
self in all the might of His Deity, not Himself in the
force of His unfolded powers, but the seed of His
life — capable of evolution, containing everything
within it potentially, but showing forth nothing in
manifestation at the beginning of the universe.
True, the child is the father revived ; true, the child
is the same as the father. None the less, the life

G

98 Evolution of Life and Form.

which the father gives is the seed containing the
power of development, and the universe is but the seed
of Deity, with every power involved within it, and
capable by its evolution of becoming the image of the
Supreme : none the less is every power germinal, not
developed, potential, not actual ; only at the ending
will that seed, grown into perfect manhood, show
forth the image of its generating Sire, and give a new
Ishvara to the future from whom further universes
may evolve. That is the answer to the question :
Why this long evolution ? It is this evolution that
we are to trace from the germ to the perfect, life
given as germ to grow to the God.

lyct us look first at the matter in which this life is
to be clothed — not in detail, that is to-morrow's work
— but just as to the principle involved in the evolu-
tion of the matter through which the life is to express
itself. We heard the first day about tattvas. We
found that they were modifications of Prakriti, the
primary matter, brought out one after the other as
the regions of the universe were builded. All that
we need for our purpose this morning is to remem-
ber that five of these are concerned with the present
evolution, that the highest of these is the A'kasha in
the highest sense of the term, then Vayu, then Agni,
then Apas, then Prithivi ; all these are kosmic and
they represent vast planes in the universe, but have

\\BHa

OF

EvoluHo7i of Life, ^S^^forn)^

their correspondences in the physical globe — ether,
air, fire, water, earth, these being only the reflections
in miniature of their great prototypes in the system
at large. The only other thing we need to remem-
ber this morning with regard to matter, is that the
whole of these are animated by the life of the third
aspect of God. Here is a point where we may pause
for a moment and look at other religions, and we
shall find that they all tell us exactly the same.
Not only do we find in Hinduism, in such a book
as the Vishnu Purdna that the Divine creation
was from Mahat — the third manifestation — that
these great tattvas were evolved by modifications
from the principle of individuality which is the
characteristic of that aspect ; but if we turn to the
Hebrew teachings we shall find that it is distinctly
stated that the " Spirit of God," the third aspect,
or Wisdom, moved on the face of the waters.
Translating the symbol of water we have matter ;
it is so used in every great religious scripture,
and when it is said that the Spirit of God
moved on the face of the waters, we have the pic-
ture of a brooding life, brooding over and perme-
ating the ocean of primeval matter, giving to it
the life that will enable it to serve as the womb
for a higher life ; the divine energy that thus vivifies
matter comes from the third Person of the Christian

icx) Evolution of Life and Form.

Trinity. That Hebrew statement dominates the
whole of Christendom, inasmuch as the Christian
Churches take the older part of their scriptures from
the hands of the Hebrew people ; and in quoting
that, I am not quoting it only as an authority from
the Hebrews but as including the authority of the
whole of Christendom, bound by that Hebrew teach-
ing. I might show you, did time permit, that other
great Teachers have spoken in the same sense ; the
outcome being that the matter in which evolution
is to take place — of which our world of organisms,
including our own bodies, is to be formed — that
matter is permeated by the Divine life, and the
aspect of Divine life that permeates it is that of the
third manifestation of God. That is the funda-
mental reason why Brahma is no longer worshipped.
That is why no temples are raised to Him and why
worshippers do not throng to His shrines. His
work was dominant in the earlier stages of the
universe, but is now overshadowed by the working
of another aspect of the mighty God, Vishnu as
Preserver, as Sustainer, and as Organiser. He is
the life which is active in all organisms ; and the
life which animates the atoms of matter having
been given and partially evolved, the continuing
aspect of that work is hidden at the present stage
of the universe; the main evolution of life that

Evolution of Life, loi

is now occurring is carried on and directed by other
aspects of God.

Sometimes in theosophical literature, that vivifi-
cation and building up of matter is spoken of
as the work of the first great life-wave in the
solar system ; as a wave rolling forth so does
the life of God go forth for the building of the
atoms whereof the system is to be composed.
The critical point is this : that the life is veiled
over and over again in a five-fold involution;
we find it said that Prana five-fold divides itself,
for five are the types of the atoms, five are the great
divisions of the materials, and in each successive
type, the previous type permeates and encloses it,
as we found we could read in the Vishnu Purdna^
dealing with the building up of the tattvas. (It will
be remembered that the types are really seven, but
that two are concealed.) One important result
comes from this which I will deal with more fully
to-morrow, that the form — being built up from
matter containing within it this involved and con-
cealed life — has the power of unfolding to the
highest possibility of the life thus concealed.
Sheath after sheath is made in order that sheath
after sheath may be brought into activity as a
vehicle of the Self, and that five-fold ensheathing
for the human Self is wrought in order that it

I02 Evolution of Life and Form.

may have a vehicle capable of responding to every
vibration that it sets up or that it receives. As
the vibrations become subtler and subtler in their
character, sheath after sheath becomes active and
responsive, and enables the life to function exter-
nally by means of the sheath. I^et us however turn
— for that will be fully worked out to-morrow — to
the next great life- wave with which we are con-
cerned ; it is the life of the second aspect of Deity,
spoken of in Hinduism as the life of Vishnu, spoken
of in Christianity as the life of the Son of God by
whom all things were made. As that life outpours
into the universe prepared to receive it, as that life
begins to draw together the matter which, vivified
by the first out-pouring, is now ready to respond
to the vibrations of the life that organises and sus-
tains, vibrations are sent out by this Divine I^ife
into the higher regions of the universe, beginning
the task of drawing the matter together into forms.
The earliest stages of these are the ante-types of
what shall be in evolution — not such forms as we
speak of in the lower world, concrete objects which
can give rise to concrete ideas, but that which dimly
we are trying to reach in the mind to-day, when
we abstract from a great class of concrete objects
its uniting quality, its common characteristic, and
formulate this apart from the objects themselves.

Evolution of Life, 103

I have sometimes taken the triangle as the very
simplest image which thought can form. You
ma}' have triangles of any size, you may have
triangles of almost any shape, provided only three
lines are used, and those lines are right lines, or
unbent. What is the governing characteristic of
the triangle ? That its three angles, formed by the
meeting of enclosing sides, must be equal to two
right angles. Now supposing that you have the
power of brain, the power of abstraction, to
take ten, twenty or thirty concrete triangles and
hold them in the mind as though you were looking
at them in outer form, to create their mental images
so that every form is present in your mind, you
directing your attention to them all at the same time,
then — if out of these many concrete objects that have
the particular properties in common of the three
right lines that enclose and the sum of the three
angles equalling two right angles — if you can draw
out the idea of that common property, separated
from every concrete triangle, and make it an object
in consciousness, then you will have risen from the
concrete to the abstract, and will have some idea of
what is meant by an archetype in the higher world.
The earliest actions of the Deity in evolving a
system are of this nature; He generates certain
types or archetypes, and by the sub-division and

I04 Evolution of Life and Form.

multiplication of these the whole universe of con-
crete objects is formed; each one of them is capable
of generating innumerable forms that reproduce
its own characteristic amid endless diversities of
subsidiary properties.

It is not without interest that some of our scien-
tific men have tried to find unity amidst diversity,
and to discover the types of the animal kingdom
amid the innumerable diversities of the separated
animal forms. One of the most famous of those
men, Sir Richard Owen, tried to formulate an
archetype which should represent every fundamen-
tal characteristic of the vertebrate, like no particular
vertebrate but showing forth the qualities present
in every vertebrate ; he worked this out from a study
of vertebrates, setting aside the characteristics in
which they differ and synthesising into a single
form the qualities possessed by all. The reverse
process is what really occurred; the archetype
which came forth from the Divine Mind generated
in the world of matter myriad difierent types in
each of which it is itself expressed. That gleam of
genius which illuminated the mind of the modern
scientist is interesting as a ray from the conception
of creative action given in our sacred literature ;
and you will find, if you study carefully, that the
earliest forms are not concrete objects but genera-

Evolution of Life. 105

live powers, and that these coming forth from God
make models for the future types, each type being
related to its ante-type, each concrete object to its
abstract idea. Thus also the Greeks taught, Pytha-
goras and Socrates and Plato ; thus also many of
the Hebrews taught, the doctors of the Kabala;
and both the Greek Philosopher and Hebrew
Kabalist have declared that the visible world of
objects could never have come into existence had
not the invisible world of Ideas preceded it, so that
the objects repeated in multitude what an Idea
presented in unity. That Idea thus coming forth
from God and drawing to itself forms in subtle
matter, produces the types of forms that are gradu-
ally to be worked out in evolution ; and those of you
who have studied the Secret Doctrine of Madame
Blavatsky may remember that the archetypal world
is therein spoken of as the first which is created,
and as that on which the whole of the evolution of
denser worlds depends. It is made of the A'k^sha
which contains within itself the possibility of all
forms as we are told, and these Ideas are drawn
forth and reproduced in greater detail by the
Builder on the A'kashic correspondences of Agni.
Life is evolved by the modifications in consciousness
which Ishvara brings about; the modification in
the consciousness of Ishvara preceding the mould-

io6 Evolutio7i of Life and Form.

ing of the matter. As that life- wave descends into
denser and denser matter, it draws together more
and more separate forms, that become denser in
their nature, until at last, through kingdom after
kingdom, it comes down to the mineral forms,
where life is most restricted in its operations, where
consciousness is most limited in its scope. This is
the process of the involution of life in matter, the
descending arc. From this lowest point the life
ascends, revealing more and more of its powers,
and ordinary western " evolution " begins here, the
earlier process being ignored.

How did that Divine life and consciousness, in the
first upward stage of evolution, evolve in the germinal
life the power to respond ? The life within the stone
has the capacity to respond, but in a very limited
fashion, partly owing to its germinal nature, partly
owing to the rigidity of its surrounding vehicle ;
therefore the brooding life of Vishnu, nourishing
this germ, at once stimulates it by impacts from with-
out and gradually modifies the rigidity so as to make
progress possible. Ivong, long remains the life im-
bedded in this rigid material, working from within
outwards, as all life works, playing upon and thus
softening the rigidity, and slowly giving the form
more plasticity in response ; we can sum up the
whole of the working of the life, as the receiving of

Evolution of Life. 107

vibrations from matter without and the answering
of vibrations from itself within. Notice in the ear-
liest stages how tremendous are the impacts ; if you
go back to the time when the world knew not hu-
manity, how gigantic are the operations of nature
showing herself in her mineral forms ; earthquakes,
eruptions, crushing and grinding of materials, dis-
integration and reconstruction, all on the mightiest
and most gigantic scale ; under all that, the life,
trying to make the matter more plastic and able to
answer more readily ; and inasmuch as there is life,
there is consciousness, i.e,^ the power to respond, that
power is developed within it, stimulated by the brood-
ing life of Ishvara. He dwellin g within, and envelop-
ing and permeating all objects, makes the seed of
life extend and grow by his nourishing warmth,
that it may become finally an independent centre.
We see the life within the stone beginning to vibrate
more actively as these tremendous blows come upon
it from without ; and mass is thrown against mass,,
and mountain is piled upon mountain, until at last
these mineral materials gain larger power of trans-
mitting impulses to the life within; the impulse
coming through more strongly because of the lessened
opposition [from the form, the life responds more
actively and begins to evolve, developing more
definitely the power of response. As this process is re-

io8 Evolution of Life and Fo?m.

peated over and over again, the life within the minerals
vibrates with ever increasing rapidity, and the
matter yields to it with ever greater readiness, until
.a stage of plasticity is reached at which the begin-
nings of the vegetable world can be brought into
existence. Between mineral and plant in the lowest
stages no definite dividing line can be drawn by
science. So general is this absence of dividing lines
in nature that a separate kingdom has been recog-
nised as including low types of both vegetable and
animal, and between the vegetable and mineral
kingdoms a class is recognised in which the rigid
•crystal which belongs to the mineral kingdom
has become the plastic crystalloid that belongs to
the vegetable; maintaining the outline of the mineral
form, but showing the plasticity of the vegetable,
and thus yielding far more readily to the
moulding influences of the life within. The
life thus encased in more plastic material re-
ceives vibrations from without more easily and
responds more strongly, until in the ascent that it
is beginning to make, it adds the early beginnings
of a power of consciousness that in the mineral was
not present. We call it sensation : the power of feel-
ing pleasure and pain, the power of responding to
the outside impact by a feeling within the life.
After the life in the mineral has developed the power

Evolution of Life, 109^

of response, then the next stage in evolution is that
the response takes on the sensations of pleasure and
pain, appearing as that within the life which res-
ponds severally to harmonious or discordant impact
from without. As the life develops this power
of sensation, progress becomes more rapid. The
animal kingdom is gradually builded and the power
of sensation is the great characteristic which is de-
veloped through that kingdom, until — the animal
forms having been rendered plastic through many
ages by the impulse of life, and the life having
formed and strengthened the power of responding
by pleasure and pain to harmonious and discordant
vibrations — the next stage is ready to be taken, the
building of the vehicle for man.

That outer body in which man is to dwell re-
sembles closely in its nature, in some of its funda-
mental characteristics, the animal bodies which the
life had vivified before man was called into exist-
ence. ** Out of the dust of the ground," says the:
Hebrew scripture, God formed the body of man, a
symbolic way of saying that out of the material that,
had made the lowest forms of life, was also to be
made the outer coating of that vessel, into which a
new flood of Divine life was to be outpoured, form-
ing the human Self, or Spirit. We learn, when
we study occultism, that this third outpouring

no Evolution of Life and Form.

of Divine life comes neither from the Third, nor
from the Second, but from the First lyOgos, there-
fore called Mahadeva, the Great God, the Supreme.
From Him comes the third impulse which is to
complete evolution, the third outpouring of life,
that only accomplishes its final evolution in this
age by methods of Yoga; therefore is He often
represented as the great Yogi, the great Guru, under
whose instructions the latest stages of evolution are
to be carried out. When that life-force comes down,
and the human Self is sent forth to occupy its
tabernacle, the ancient process is again repeated,
and it is only the germ of the highest life that is
given and not the completed life. Round it are
vehicles that are able to respond, round it are vehi-
cles that have the power of developing more highly,
that are already capable of sending in vibrations
arousing feeling in the life that they enclose, and
now — enwrapped by the life of Vishnu — this germ
of the Divine Self begins to stir and live as man.

At first there comes from it very little response to
the life that is transmitted, very little answer to that
which is outside ; but what are the characteristics
of this infant Self, this spark of the Eternal Fire ?
Triple in aspect is the life in man as it is triple in
the Deity, and its characteristics are the same. Sat,
Chit, Ananda. We speak thus of Brahman, and

Evolution of Life. in

if we study the human Self we shall find these
three aspects present also in that human Self; and
the first to develop in man, as in the Kosmos, is
Chit or knowledge. All the earliest stages of human
evolution have to do with the evolution of Intelli-
gence ; it is that with which we are now concerned,
as we climb this mighty ladder. We are evolving
intelligence or intellect, and if we trace its stages
from the earliest germs as they appear in the
primeval races of the humanity of our globe, and
as fostered in those races by the Great Ones who
came to us as Teachers from other worlds, we shall
find that the dawning intellect in man was but
very slightly responsive to anything that came to it
from without, and that at first every effort of the
intelligence was stimulated by the promptings of
the animal nature, by the sting of desire, by the
passions which belong to the animal part of man.
Consider a savage. When is a savage active?
Only when some animal desire awakens within him.
If he is hungry, yes, then he will begin to think,
^' where can I find food ? " If he is thirsty, he will
ask, "where shall I find liquid?" Any animal
prompting that arises within him, his dawning
mind applies itself to satisfy ; and the germ of mind
is stimulated by the promptings of animal desire.
In that stage he knows not right from wrong;

112 Evolution 0/ Life and Form.

riglit and wrong for him have no existence ; hunger
and thirst, sexual desire, and the need for sleep,
these are the things that make up his life and that
move his dawning consciousness ; these only are
strong enough to stir it into activity ; it cannot yet
initiate activity from within. But as these play
upon it, life after life, birth after birth, century after
century, in successive incarnations of this germinal
but growing life, as these vibrations continually
arouse, awaken the life of the intelligence, which is
the third aspect of the Self, these repeated vibra-
tions, repeated over and over and over again a
thousand times, by that very repetition bring about
an internal tendency to repeat it again without a
fresh stimulus from outside ; and we find in the next
stage of the evolution of intelligence, still in the
savage, that the savage does not wait for hunger
in order to search for food, but that the memory
of hunger and the memory of food are enough to
send him out, before the hunger strikes him,
in search of the meal that to-morrow he will re-
quire to satisfy the needs of the body. But what
a change is there if we consider it, small as it is
in appearance. The man is no longer stimulated
by an outer impulse coming from the animal
nature; he is stimulated by a mental image, a
connected picture of the painful state of the body

Evolution of Life. 113

wanting food and of the food which is able to change
that state into one of pleasure ; that is, he is now
able to form mental images, and these stimulate him
into activity. How great the change ! No less than
a change of the centre of consciousness from the ani-
mal to the human, one of the most significant changes
in the evolving life. Now, for the first time, he
does not wait to be pushed from without. He begins
action from within, and the body obeys the impulse
that comes from the centre, instead of the impact that
strikes the centre from without. Now evolution be-
comes more rapid, for as this great change, one of the
hardest of changes, is made, the intellect in man
begins to cognise itself, and Self-consciousness
begins to arise. Separation is recognised between
its own centre, that thinks, and the things outside
that make it think ; the '^ I " and the '' Not-I " arise,
and the centre begins to shape itself and to be
capable of growth.

How shall the growth go on ? By conflict. This
is the characteristic of the intellect. It has to make
the ^'I" a strong centre, a separate centre, other-
wise no further evolution is possible. You may say
that this looks like going downwards ; nay, it is the
germ of a new centre of life in which Divinity it-
self shall unfold when evolution is complete. There
must be a clearly defined centre of consciousness,

H

114 Evolution oj Life and Form.

else how shall it work onward to perfection ? And
that centre grows by struggle. All strength comes
by struggle of one kind or another. If you want
your arms to become strong, it is no good to lie on a
sofa and leave the muscles to grow merely by the
nourishment that you give them. They want more
than nourishment, they want exercise ; and it is the
law of all growth of form that the life must be
drawn into the form, for only then can the form ex-
pand and become capable of receiving a further
impulse of life ; if the muscles are to grow, the cells
that compose them must be stretched by exercise,
and the life must flow into the expanded cell ;
only then does it become capable of multiplication,
so that there may be many cells where before
there was only one. The difference between the
weak man and the strong man, the man who is
feeble and the man who is athletic, is the difference
brought about by exercise and struggle, by pulling
against resistance, by taking up a weight and
whirling it round and making the muscles strain
against the weight. That is a picture of the way
in which all life is working for development of form ;
the impulse of life leads to the exercise of the form,
the exercise makes it plastic and increases the form,
through which the life is thus enabled to flow more
largely. That is as true in the mental world as in

Evolution of Life. 115

the physical world ; for the mental world is also a
world of phenomena. It is not the One ; its cha-
racteristic is diversity, each being standing by him-
self, and regarding other things as separate. I know
an object. How ? By its differences from some ob-
jects and its likenesses to others ; otherwise I could
not know it. You cannot think of unity until you
have seen variety; you cannot recognise likeness
until you have seen unlikeness. The characteristic
of intellectual evolution is the discrimination of
differences followed by the recognition of likenesses ;
thus the intellect recognises object after object, each
of them by its own characteristic marks. Analysis
precedes synthesis. Differences are seen before an
underlying unity is recognised.

As this intelligence develops, we find the recog-
nition of the Self and the Not-Self giving rise to
struggle all over the world, social struggle as well as
mental struggle. In every civilisation in which the
intellect is developing from its earlier stages, you
must have struggle without in order to stimulate the
evolution within ; it is a necessary stage, although
it be a passing one, and it need not distress us, who
see its end, in a world guided by the Gods. All
the stages through which a nation passes are neces-
sary for its growth, and need not be condemned
merely because of their being limited and imperfect.

ii6 Evolutio7i of Life and Form.

In practical politics condemnation is useful as a
stimulus, as one of the agents for bringing about
the evolutionary changes, but the philosopher should
understand, and, understanding, he cannot con-
demn. The worst struggle that we may see, the
most terrible poverty, the most shocking misery, the
strife of man against man and nation against nation
— all these are working out the Divine purpose,
and are bringing us towards a richer unity than
without them we could possibly attain.

Let me take one instance which seems to be the
most hopeless of all — the instance of war. What
can be more inhuman than war, what more brutal
and more terrible, stirring the angriest passions of
man and making him like a wild beast in his rage ?
Aye, but that is not all. Let us look at the life
within a soldier which has been evolved by this
terrible discipline without. What is that life learn-
ing as its vehicles are plunged into strife, into blood-
shed, into mutilation, into death? It is learning
lessons that without that stern experience it could
not learn, without which its evolution would be
checked and be unable to proceed; it is learn-
ing that there is something greater than the
body, something greater than the physical exist-
ence, something higher, more noble, more com-
pelling, than the guarding of the physical vehicle

Evolution of Life. 117

from injury and even from death ; and the poorest
soldier who goes out on a campaign, who goes
through hardship after hardship, who finds him-
self frozen with cold or burnt up with heat, who
plunges through frozen river or toils across sandy-
desert, who learns to preserve discipline and sub-
mission under hardship, who learns to keep cheerful
under difficulty, so that his comrades may not be
depressed, who is moved, not by the thought of the
body which is suffering, but by the great ideal of
the military renown of his regiment, and the safety
of the country which he is serving, who is learning
thus to sacrifice himself for an ideal, is developing
thereby qualities invaluable in lives to come. Need
I say this to you, who know the place of the Kshat-
triya in human evolution? Did Manu when he
described these different castes demarcate a caste
that had not its place in the evolution of life, that
had not something to teach ? Was not a man kept
in the Kshattriya vehicle until he had learned that
life was not dependent on the body, that life was to
be held at the service of the ideal, at the service of
the mother-land that gave him birth, of the king
who ruled him, and who to him stood, as to every
Hindu the king should stand, as an Avatara of God ?
He learned that when that king called him to the
battle-field, he had to give his body to mutilation

ii8 Evolution of Life and Form.

and to death, because the life that was in him recog-
nised the service of the ideal as evolving the real
life, and the body as a mere garment to be thrown
aside when duty called ? Without that training,
no Brahmana could be ; no man could come into
the caste of the Brahmana, save as he had gone
through that discipline in the ranks of the Kshat-
triya ; because until he had learned that life was
everything and form nothing — and that is the lesson
which war teaches when it is rightly understood —
until that lesson was learned, he was not prepared
for the far harder evolution of the life, which is to
master the lesson of unity beneath diversity, of
love beneath antagonism, of being the friend of
every creature and the foe of none.

When the intelligence has developed, when it has
reached a fairly high standpoint, the germs of the
next aspect of Deity begin to show themselves in
man ; and that aspect is A'nanda, Joy or Bliss. But
in what does A'nanda really consist? It is in
the drawing together of separated objects and uni-
ting them into one. That is the essence of Bliss,
that the very core and heart of the next stage of
evolution. In the old days of Hinduism, this was
called the life of the Brahmana, when the Brahmana
was really a Brahmana and had no further birth
before him on the wheel of births and deaths. In

Evolution of Life. 119

the Christian symbology it is called the Christ stage,
that of Divine Sonship, and you will find in a great
prayer of Jesus, called the Christ, that in praying
for His disciples He asked that " they may be one in
me," in union with each other and Himself. There is
a grander unity yet, the unity between the Son and
Father, a unity of nature not a union of the erst-
separated ; but before that unity can be reached, man
must have realised the union with his brother men,
must see humanity as united, and not as separate;
that is, he must have changed his centre of conscious-
ness— that responds to the impacts from without —
from the vehicles in which the intellect and the feel-
ings were developed to the life itself, which is one and
the same in all. No longer is he to think himself
as separate, inasmuch as the "I," the separated self,
is now to be transcended, is to be merged in the
uniting aspect of the Deity, the Vishnu or the
Christ. That is to be developed as the life of man,
with all its wonderful beauty and power, with its
unifying force. Therefore did Shri Krishna come
as an Avatara to this Eastern world to show forth
the life of lyove ; for the life of A'nanda, or Bliss, is
ever the life of Love, and by Love alone may we
evolve it within ourselves. The aspect of God that
is Bliss shows itself as Love ; and in word and in
action, in simile and in parable, did the

I20 Evolutio7i of Life and Form.

Beloved and the Lover of man reveal that
Divine aspect to the longing hearts of his Bhaktas.
That was His special work, to show out the Love
power of God; and only as that is developed
within us can the life take on this lofty unfold-
ment that knits all selves in the One Self, that sees
all lives in Him. Now, in evolution, the Self knows
itself as the Life, and is no longer deluded by the
ignorance that made it identify itself with the Form ;
it is life which realises itself as Life. When this
stage is reached by the evolving life, the man who
was separated becomes Humanity, and is one of the
Saviours of the world. There is nothing apart from
him, nothing separate to him. He stands in the
very Life itself, and sheds his light in every direc-
tion into whatever Upadhi, or vessel, may be in
need of it ; wherever there is want or cry for his
aid, thereto flow his powers. As the sun shines
forth inheaven,and may shine unto a million houses,
the only condition of his rays entering being that
the houses shall lay themselves open to the sunshine,
sp is the man who has become the second aspect of
Deity, in whom that perfection of Divine Sonship is
revealed. Man, as the Son of God in Heaven, is
above all the distinctions that you find on Earth.
He sends down his rays into the waiting hearts of
men, and the only condition necessary for his en-

Evolution of Life. 121

trance, the one thing that ensures his coming,
is that his brother will open his heart to receive
him. For he will not break his way in, he will only
come where he is welcome. Thus this great life of
God shows itself forth now in the man who has
become the Saviour, the Son, the Initiate, as a
deep compassionate love for all. Every man
who reaches that stage is a new force for the
uplifting of humanity. Every man who develops
that aspect of life is one more wing with which to
lift everything upwards. If a man be weak, his
life can go to him to strengthen him ; if a man be
sorrowful, his life can go to him to make him glad J
if a man be sinful, his life can go to him to make
him pure from sin. To all men he says : ^' Where-
ever a man is there will I meet him, and there will
I accept him." That is Shri Krishna in manifesta-
tion, that the love that shines forth from the bliss
aspect of the Human Self.

One step remains, the last, of evolution for this
rapidly perfecting life. Again I take up my
Christian symbol and venture the quotation : — " As
Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they
also may be one in Us." The Son becomes in fact
what ,he has ever been potentially, one with the
Father. He enters into the mighty realm of Self-
Being, where God, in the Christian phrase, is

122 Evolution of Life and Form.

" all-in-all." Do not let the narrower presentations
of Christianity that here meet you blind you to
these fundamental identities of the deeper and more
spiritual Christianity with our own ancient faith.
Shall these pettinesses, or even outer divergencies,
separate those whom the living Spirit would unite ?
We learn, as we study the Hindu Scriptures, that
man after having reached the second stage rises by
Yoga, until he attains the last, and becomes one
with the Deity Himself in full power of eternal
Self-Being. It was because your own Svami T.
Subba Rao knew this occult truth, which too many
know not, that he spoke, as I before mentioned, of
the innumerable Centres, or Logoi, in the One, every
one of which could be the beginning of a new uni-
verse, of a new out-pouring of life. The building
of those Centres is a purpose of lyife-evolution.
The building them up stage by stage is done as the
life passes from form to form ; and end or ending
there is none in the infinite series of the future. What
that life holds for us we cannot tell ; how should we
imagine that far off land, those distant reaches?
But this we know : that no will of the Eternal is
ever frustrate, no purpose of the Eternal lacks its
fruit or misses its goal ; and if our eyes fail us in
the dazzle of the light wherein we see our unity
with the Eternal Father — that unity that transcends

Evolution of Life. 123

our dreaming, when we shall know ourselves to be
one with Him — it is enough that at last the evolu-
tion of all lives leads into that unimaginable splen-
dour, known only to Ishvara Himself, who pours out
His life that we may know it also. And Mahadeva
shall return to It with all the centres that His life
has brought into existence, with all the new lives
and joys that His imprisonment in His universe
has made. That is enough for us to give us the
hope — hope, do I say ? it is too feeble a word — the
joy inexpressible and the certainty which are found-
ed on the very lyife of God ; for is He not the Truth,
the Foundation of the Universe ? And when we
enter into Sat we shall know the future as we see
the past, for we shall be not only immortal but
Eternal.

[fourth lecture.]
EVOLUTION OF FORM.

My Brothers, — We are now to concentrate our
attention on the phenomenal side of the universe,
that is, on the varied appearances that surround us,
whether those appearances be visible to the physical
eyes or not ; for we must remember that the prin-
ciple of form is to be found in every stage of the
manifested universe, and that when the phrase
^^ the formless world " is used, the word " formless "
is only true in relation to the worlds below the one
so spoken of. All higher worlds are *' formless"
regarded from below, that is, regarded by the organs
of perception which are fitted for exercise in the
lower world ; but if a person has developed the capa-
city to respond to the vibrations in any given world
of manifestation, then that world to him is a world
of form and not of formlessness. Everywhere
manifestation implies form, however subtle may be
the matter which composes it ; and you may re-
member that it is said in the Vishnu Purdna that
the one characteristic of matter which is always

124

Evolution of Form. 125

present is extension, that is, the capacity of taking
form, of being shaped in a definite way.

Now before we take up the details of evolution,
there are one or two great principles that I want to
ask you to keep in mind ; for we shall never be able
to understand the complexity of detail, if we take it
as a series of isolated details ; we need to classify
these under certain fundamental principles and then,
those principles being clear in the mind, we can
easily, as it were, pack every detail into its appro-
priate pigeon-hole in our thought. I shall not
trouble you this morning at all with that threefold
division of the evolving life with which we dealt
yesterday. We can, for our work now, treat life as a
unit, speaking of the Divine Life as Ishvara, and of
the reflection of that life in man as the Self. We will
keep these two terms to avoid confusion : Ishvara
as the Divine Life which is the source of evolution ;
the Self as the human life which is gradually evolv-
ing. And we need these two distinguishing names,
without going into any of the sub-divisions that we
dealt with yesterday in connection with life, in order
that we may be able to see how forms are shaped,
and to which principle, if I may say so, we are to
refer the special modifications.

The next thing that we must realise is the respec-
tive functions of these sources of life ; one working

126 Evolution of Life and Form.

through the whole kosmos, and therefore coming to
man as a part of that kosmos, the other working in
man as an individual through the early stages and
transcending individuality at the close. The great
life of Ishvara as it rolls outwards, building the uni-
verse of forms, expresses itself, as we have seen, by
a certain series of vibrations, and every modification
in the form is the result of an impulse coming by
way of vibrations from the ensouling life. Now the
point that strikes us most in this manifestation of
Ishvara, as we study it, is the unutterable patience
of it. We are impatient for results. He never. We
are impatient for results, because, limited by time,
we crave ^to see the outcome of our action ; He
being the eternal is unspeakably patient, set upon
perfection and careless of the time which that per-
fection may take in evolving. For the evolution of
forms this patience is absolutely necessary ; when
we come to think, we see that any impatience in the
evolution of forms would mean the over-rapid
breaking up of the forms. The form is compara-
tively rigid as compared with the life. If the life
vibrates too rapidly for the form which it is evolving,
the form will shatter under the stress of those vibra-
tions. L^et me give you a very common illustration
to show you what I mean ; a tube of glass, or an
ordinary lamp-glass if you like, has a certain note

Evolution of Form. 127

to which it vibrates ; and if that note be sung near
the lamp-glass, you will hear the note sound out
independently from the lamp-glass, as though the
lamp-glass were singing ; the glass has vibrated in
answer to the vibrations of the sound sung to it, it
having the capacity of that vibration in it, and thus
it reproduces the note. If you increase the force of
that note, if you continue vibration after vibration,
beyond the point at which the glass is able to res-
pond, your glass will shiver into pieces, shivered by
the force of the effort to respond to vibrations be-
yond its limit of rigidity. I only take that as an
illustration, as a picture ; it is true in every world
of form ; and if Ishvara were to send forth vibra-
tions too swift, too subtle for the form which He is
ensouling to respond to, that form would be
shivered into pieces, and its evolution would
be stopped ; nature would have again to begin
to build a similar form in order to again reach
the point which it had already reached. This
patience of Ishvara is the thing that strikes us
first as we study the evolution of forms. How slow
are the changes, how gradual the modifications,
what thousands of successive forms are worked in,
how wellnigh imperceptible are the changes in their
minuteness, although so great when we look at them
in the mass ; that is one great principle to bear in
mind.

128 Evolution of Life and Form.

Another great principle is the double and parallel
action of Ishvara and of the evolving Self, f shvara
is present in the Self of man that is formed within
Him. Every evolutionary impulse in the earliest
stages comes directly from the life of f shvara,
and as He moulds the form without, He gradually
strengthens the centre that He is building up
within. His object is to make that centre the
image of Himself, self-sustaining; but enormous
reaches of time are needed for the building ; as He
shapes the forms. He builds the centre ; and as He
builds that centre, and it becomes more and more
active, answering to the vibrations that He trans-
mits to it from the outer world, it begins to take
on a little action of its own and to send out vibra-
tions, as we may say, on its own account. As this
double action goes on within the form, more and
more does that evolving centre begin to control the
form within which it is developed. As this power
of control develops and increases, He withdraws
more and more of His directive energy as Ishvara;
the energy drawn from Him is now beginning to
work ^^^5^-independently in the separated centre
that He has been building, until at last that centre
reflects Himself, and is able to be self-existent by
the very life that it has drawn from Him. If this
conception be a little abstract, let me give it again

Evolution of Form. 129

in a concrete form. There is one sj^mbol that the
sages have used over and over again, in order to
express this wonder of the brooding life of Ishvara
making an image of Himself and giving to that
image the possibility of independent life. It is the
symbol of the mother and the child within the
womb. As the life of the mother passes into the
child that is building within her, transmitting to
that new form all the nourishment which is necessary
for its growing life, the whole life of the child is
dependent on the mother and the life-streams that
nourish it are drawn from her own life. The
building goes on, and on, and on, till the new centre
of life has grown strong, but not until that centre
can hold itself together amid the vibrations of the
outer universe, is the new form with its ensouling
life sent forth on its own independent course. So
does the brooding mother-life of Ishvara envelope
the children of His love, and so does He nourish
them, building them within Himself as the ages
pass, until they are able to hold their own centres
in the illimitable life of the One, the Supreme.
That is another principle which you have to re-
member throughout the details of the evolution of
form.

One other that has two divisions and then the
statement of our main principles will be sufficiently

130 Evolution oj Life and Form.

complete. There are three aspects, we recollect,
which the evolving Self has to unfold. We must
add to this a comprehension of the nature of these
aspects, when externalised ; for we did not yester-
day, for lack of time, glance quite precisely at the
characteristic outer mark of each aspect of life. As
these aspects modify the evolution of form, the
form cannot be understood unless its relations to
the aspects of life be realised. We have, as we
know, to show forth Knowledge, Bliss, and Being.
These will come out as powers into the world of
form as evolution reaches its later stages, and the
form will be able to express those powers of the
evolving life. Knowledge, showing forth through
form, has as its power Intelligence ; Bliss, shown
forth through form, has as its power lyove ; Being,
shown forth through form, has as its power Exist-
ence ; so that the fundamental aspects may be said
severally to manifest as the powers of intelligence,
of love, of existence. Otherwise put, the nature of
intelligence is knowledge, the nature of love is
bliss, the nature of existence is being. The in-
telligence, love and existence of our worlds are the
manifested Knowledge, the manifested Bliss, and
the manifested Being of the Self. That is the out-
ward aspect of the Self as the other is the inner
aspect, and these characteristic natures seek their

Evolution of Form.

expression in form. This expression is sought cos-
mically and individually, alike by the life of Ishvara
and the life of the Self. Cosmically they make the
planes of the manifested universe, the five planes
on which we are evolving. That which manifests
as existence, the power of Being, has as its form the
Akasha of the higher realm^; that which manifests
as love, the power of Bliss, has as its form of mat-
ter Vayu ; that which manifests as intelligence,
the power of Knowledge, has as its material Agni.
These are the three fundamental manifestations in
form. The other two are reflections : That which
is love, reflecting itself in the lower form of matter
— the denser matter of Varuna — takes on the aspect
of desire and passion, and becomes kama. That
which is existence, reflecting itself on the yet grosser
form of Prithivi, shows forth what we call objective
reality. See how the planes correspond, the one
with the other. Try and make a picture of a
mountain reflected in a lake ; and if you have that
in your mind, you will follow exactly the way the
reflection takes place. There is no reflection of
intelligence because it is the central quality ; the
intelligence is the centre of the five, two are above
it and two are below it. It is the central region,
the pivot on which the whole has to turn. If you
look above to the higher regions, we find love and

132 Evolution of Life and Form.

existence showing themselves forth as the powers
of Bliss and Being. That is as it were, the moun-
tain. Now look at your reflection in the lake ; the
middle part of the mountain is reflected half-way
down in the water. The shore is the dividing line
between object and image, and represents the in-
telligence; below that, half-way down, will come
the reflection of love showing itself as emotion and
desire ; then we see the highest peak reflected in
the deepest depth of the lake, the existence above,
the power of the real Being, reflected below in the
plane of physical matter as that illusor^^ existence
which man calls real. Try and keep that picture,
for the principle of reflection from above to below
is one of the keys to understanding both above and
below. It helps you to see why emotional love
passes into devotion, and how, in the passing from
emotion into the higher love which is devotion, it
passes from the kamic plane to the buddhic, where
bliss is the distinguishing characteristic ; and you
will understand why action, the most illusory of
things, has to us the sense of reality. It gives
that peculiarly definite sense of reality to us because
it is the reflection of the real, of the existence of
vhich it is the lower form.

Now these are the principles. I^et us try to carry
them out in our evolutionary study ; for if you hold

Evolution of Form. 133

firm to the principles, the study of detail, of forms,
will seem less confusing, less complex and less diffi-
cult ; you will not lose your way among the trees,
when once you have looked down on the forest as
a whole ; that is a simile I once heard from Pro-
fessor Huxley, as illustrating principles and details,
and it is a suggestive one.

We begin then the detailed evolution of form ; it
is like a great circle traced downwards and upwards.
There is a great difference between the downward
arc, the one-half of the circle, and the upward arc,
the other half of the circle. In the one case, coming
downwards, Ishvara imparts qualities and attributes ;
in the other half, going upwards. He builds the
qualities and attributes into vehicles. These are the
two great differences between the downward and up-
ward arcs. In the downward, matter takes up qua-
lities ; in the upward, matter is formed into vehicles,
or sheaths, or bodies, whatever may be the term we
prefer. A process of specialisation goes on, up to a
certain point. After a time the specialised materials
are drawn together and combined into a vehicle, an
organised unity, serving as a tabernacle for the Self.
First comes differentiation, and the first step to that
is to impart qualities to matter. Let me remind
you, as the subject is so difficult a one, what is
meant by tattvas, the fundamental forms of matter,

134 Evolution of Life and Form.

and recall once more that passage in the Vishnu
Purdna where their evolution is described, and
where it is stated that the tanmatra of sound pro-
duces A'kasha ; that is, a modification of the con-
sciousness of Ishvara produces the form of matter
that we call the atom of A'kasha ; that atom has a
mere film of subtlest matter for its envelope, and
the vibrating life of Ishvara for the force within.
Then we are told that A'kasha generates another
tanmatra which is touch, and that, enveloped, per-
meated by A'kasha, produces the film of denser
matter which is called Vayu, the two tanmatras and
the A'kasha being the generating force.

This goes on through the whole of the five
stages, so that when we get down to the physical
plane, we find an atom showing a wall of denser
matter, within it the involved life and without it
the magnetic field, made up of the higher tanmatras
and their atomic sheaths. The Prithivi atom hence
consists of its own tanmatra plus the matter and the
life of Apas ; the matter and life of Agni ; the
matter and life of Vayu; the matter and life of
A'kasha : so that on the physical plane, the physi-
cal atom is a mass of five interpenetrating spheres
in which is present as life the whole of the matter
and the life of the worlds above it, the envelope, or
wall, of the physical atom alone showing forth any

Evolution oj Form. 135

characteristics of the physical worid — a fact inex-
pressibly important for evolution. For, each of
those sheaths or koshas — as the student of
Vedanta calls them, and there is no better word
— every one of them is latent in and around the
physical atom ; and in the upward evolution, every
one of them becomes active and strong as evolution
proceeds, sheath after sheath being vitalised. How
could these koshas, or sheaths, of ours learn to res-
pond to the vibrations of the evolving life, unless
every one of them was latently present in us,
waiting to be brought into activity ? The root of
that possibility lies in the atom itself, with all its
interpenetrating spheres of life and matter, the
sheaths that are within it and around it. That is
not the only thing which we understand; as this
conception grows clear, we understand a phrase
that had often puzzled us in the old days, that *'the
spirit is senseless on the plane of matter." What
does that mean ? The spirit, the very essence of
consciousness, senseless and helpless on the plane
of matter ! Why ? Because if you take spirit as
pure spirit, the intermediate sheaths are not there
by which the matter-vibrations are able to reach it,
and without these sheaths it is unable to receive
and respond to the vibrations of physical matter. It
remains unconscious of their very existence, there

136 Evolution of Life and Form.

being no bridge by which they can pass over and
affect that life. This is really a perfectly simple
statement of Madame Blavatsky's, but it is one that
I have heard challenged over and over again as
entirely meaningless, as conveying no idea, for how
could consciousness be unconscious in any region ?
A little more knowledge would make us less rapid
in our condemnation of our betters. That idea,
then, we will take to help us in the first conception
of how evolution can take place.

Now let us look how, in the downward arc that
we spoke of, Ishvara is imparting qualities. Accord-
ing to the nature of the vibrations that He sends
and of the matter that answers to them will be the
quality imparted. As to the idea that difference
of vibrations implies a difference of manifestation,
let me buttress myself on the great reputation of
Sir William Crookes. He issued, two or three years
ago, I don^t remember the exact date, in 1896 I
think, a table of vibrations, confined of course to
the physical world ; a very interesting table, giving
a series of classified vibrations and pointing out
which were known to science, and gave rise to what
we call sound, light, electricity, and so on, the
difference of vibratory frequency, and the subtlety
of the matter in which the vibration was set up,
giving rise to a particular impression, received and
answered by a sensation in us.

Evolution of Form, 137

That is the principle which I am now applying
to our system as a whole. According to the
density of the matter will be the rapidity of the
vibrations which that matter is capable of express-
ing ; Ishvara sends out vibrations, and the manasic
matter, we will say, is thrown into corresponding
vibrations or waves of a frequency identical with
those of the life-impulse sent out from Him, so far
as it is capable of responding, a limit being set by
its fineness on the one side and by its density on
the other. Its limit of fineness is the atom of the
plane. Its limit of density is the coarsest aggrega-
tion of these atoms in the densest solid of the plane.
If we take the physical plane for a moment, we have
solid, liquid, gas, ether, finer ether, finest ether, and
atoms. The lower five are related to the five senses
in man as they are at present developed on the phy-
sical plane. These five correspond to the sense-
organs and the senses that work through them, as
is suggested in the names of the tanmatras. The
Solid is related to the sense of Smell ; I^iquid to
the sense of Taste ; Fire to the sense of Sight ; Air
to the sense of Touch ; and A'kasha to the sense of
Sound. Now these are not stated in the order given
hy the western scientist, but I have no time to go
into the reason for the difference and to show you
where his outer observation fails, because he is not

138 Evolution of Life and Form,

able to trace beyond the limits of his senses into a
finer working ; in dealing with our Vayu and
A'kasha, he classes them together, and his air is
our Agni. These senses and their evolution belong
to the upward arc. Coming downwards, Ishvara
only gives the power to matter to respond to these
particular vibrations, and these vibrations are con-
nected on the physical plane with the sub-divisions
that I have just mentioned, the different sub-divi-
sions of matter, solid, liquid, gas, and so on,
corresponding in the sense-organs to the senses.

Coming downwards, beginning on the mental
plane with Intelligence — missing the two higher
ones of Existence and lyove — He sends out vibra-
tions to make the matter of the mental plane
answer, and the vibrations with which that matter
answers, that is, a certain range of vibrations, are
called mental or intelligent. You may say. Why ?
Just for the same reason that in Sir William Crookes*
tables definite names are given to the different
classes of vibrations, which produce sound, light,
etc., names are given in order to express a certain
limit of vibratory force ; within one set of limits the
vibrations affect the ether, give ^' light," and the
eye receives them. Similarly, vibrations that fall
between certain limits of vibratory frequency affect
the matter of the third plane, and when they are

Evolution of Form. 139

received by an organ fitted to focus them in a centre,
thus giving rise to self-consciousness, we call that
organ Mind, and the action through that Mind, In-
telligence. The mere name is as arbitrary as any
other name, and we class these under mental, just
as a certain range of etheric vibrations is classed as
light, is received by an organ fitted to focus them
that we call the eye, and the action through that
eye is vision. If we are to talk at all, we must have
names to describe different classes of phenomena,
and we use the word mental or intelligent to
describe the range of vibrations working in the
particular kind of matter of which, in the upward
evolution, an organ is builded that we call the
Mind. So, again, to the vibrations that He sends
out into the next coarser form of matter, called
Apas, or astral, we give the name Sensory. He
imparts to them the quality of responding to pleasure
and pain, and as He makes this downward sweep
He brings into renewed existence on each plane
Devas, or beings which have as their characteristic
manifestation the quality of their own plane ; thus
the Devas of the mental plane have the quality of
intelligence as their chief peculiarity, and the
Devas of the next lower plane have as their chief
quality feeling, or the power of sensation, and those
of the lowest plane have as their chief quality action,

140 Evolutio7i of Life and Form.

activity. Bach Deva class shows out specially the
quality of its plane, and inasmuch as these Devas
draw into their own bodies the matter of the plane
in which they live, they help on its evolution ; for
they draw it in, use it and thus develop it, and
throw it out again into the general reservoir, just
as man draws in physical matter, uses it in his body,
and again throws it out into the physical world.
As that process goes on and on and on through the
ages, the whole of that kind of matter we call
mental passes through the bodies of these Devas,
takes on to itself the habit of responding readily to
the vibrations of intelligence, and thus becomes
ready for building into the mental body of man.
The matter of the astral plane is builded into the
bodies of the Devas of that plane until it takes up
this habit of more and more definitely responding
to pleasure and pain, when impacts are made on it,
and thus can be used for the building up of the
sensory bodies of the lower world. On each plane
this downward sweep brings into activity these
classes of Devas, making the intermediate links
which are to work in the building of forms. The
essence of the building of forms by a Deva is that
he builds them of the matter of which his own
body is composed. Prepared by that earlier evolu-
tion, qualities being developed in the downward

Evolution of Form. 141

K

sweep of the life of Ishvara, matter is, in the upward
arc, gathered into definite forms, the bodies of plant,
animal and man : thns definite vehicles are made,
by which the highest consciousness can communi-
cate with, and receive vibrations from, the lowest
world.

lyct us now, having taken this very rapid sweep
downwards, begin to climb upwards. Bach kind of
matter is now seen to possess certain qualities.
Every physical atom has a number of sheaths inter-
penetrating and surrounding it, the sheath of astral
matter with its power of responding to sensation,
the sheath of mental matter with its power of
responding to intelligence, as well as the sheaths,
if they may be called so, of the two higher. Love
and Existence, that will not be brought into activity
for a long, long time. All is there. Ishvara now
begins the great stage of brooding action that I
spoke of, the building up of a centre, and it is His
first work to build physical forms out of this pre-
pared material, all the Devas of the physical plane
being ready to act as His agents, working under
His impulse and under the direction of the lyord of
the Devas of the physical plane. All these innu-
merable intermediate agents are wanted; for innu-
merable are to be the forms, and every one of them
has to be builded.

142 Evolution of Life and Form.

The building of the physical bodies begins with
the formation of the minerals. As a mineral body
is formed, perhaps some crystal, the crystal of an
element or a salt, a definite form is built up by a
Deva of the physical plane. He takes up the
material of his own body and such material of the
physical plane as is of similar nature to himself,
and he begins shaping these crystalline forms. He
builds them on the lines of the life-energy sent out
by Ishvara Himself, those lines which Science calls
the axes of the crystal, " imaginary " lines ; *' imag-
inary " — aye ; but they are from the creative
imagination of Ishvara, that is far more potent than
the lower matter in which He builds. That lower
matter follows the creative imagination of the I^ord,
and these imaginary lines govern the shaping of
that crystal that is builded by the Deva. Tyndall
believed not in the working of the Devas, yet
when he was lecturing on crystals to a popular
audience in Manchester he declared that as he
pictured to himself the building of a crystal, he
found himself imagining tiny architects at work,
placing every atom with exact precision, with all
the intelligence and skill of a human architect, em-
ployed in making a building. Tyndall was speak-
ing better than he knew. His [imagination was
answering to the truth more keenly than he realised.

Evolutio7i of Form. 143

For it is the privilege of the man of genius who
loves truth as Tyndall did — who was willing to
break up every fetter of dogma rather than be a
traitor to his conception of truth — to unconsciously
intuit the truth that he seeks, so that his words
give out a higher meaning than he dreamed of.
Tyndall was wise in recommending what he called
the scientific flight of the imagination, for that
power of imagination is a most useful thing. Never
clip the wings of your imagination when you are
employed in your scientific work ; for it may
often give you glimpses of truths that without its
aid you would never find. Thus the Devas work
and build crystals, and those crystals have some
remarkable properties. Professor Japp tells us that
some crystals turn a polarised beam of light in a
particular way ; and he declares that in some of
these forms there is a power which is directive and
somewhat akin to the intelligence of man. Truly
is it akin to human intelligence, inasmuch as it is the
parent of human intelligence, the latter being the
child that is developing the parental powers. This
building goes on through stages on which we must
not tarry, through the whole of the mineral world,
gradually giving to matter the power to change shape
between larger and larger limits without losing cohe-
sion. This is what is called plasticity, the power of

144 Evolution of Life and Form.

changing shape without disintegration. Matter also
gains that which science speaks of as elasticity. Now
what is elasticity ? Not, as people generally think
the mere power of elongation, calling a thing elas-
tic that can be pulled out like a piece of India-
rubber. An elastic body in the popular sense
is not an elastic body from the scientific point of
view, and, strange as it may sound, glass is much
more elastic than India-rubber. Yet the glass does
not elongate and is brittle. The proper definition
of elasticity is the power of recovering the original
form after distortion, and matter gradually acquires
this power. As life develops, the equilibrium of
the compounds that make up the form becomes
more and more unstable, while at the same time the
general cohesion of the form increases ; when we
come to the higher forms, such as the body of man,
we find a power of maintaining the central position
greater than we find in any other form, together
with an increased plasticity and elasticity ; so that a
man can adapt himself to the cold of the polar re-
gions, and to the heat of the tropics and of the equa-
torial zone, without losing his body, in a way
that no lower animal can match, that is, he has
the power of adapting his physical body to surround-
ing conditions to a greater extent than is the case
with any other form. Coming back to the mineral

Evolution of Form. 145

kingdom we left, let us take the next stage ; Ishvara
can now expand and modify His material a little more
than was originally possible without breaking it up.
He begins the moulding of the vegetable kingdom,
and there also he sets axes of growth, as *' imagin-
ary " and as real in their controlling force as in the
crystal , though they are not always quite as easy
to trace, they are nevertheless there. All the vege-
table matter is built in according to these axes, and
the natural classification of plants is largely deter-
mined by the numerical relations of the'parts ; thus
the law of number shapes the form. As the matter
becomes more plastic and yields more readily to the
indwelling life, the higher members of that king-
dom begin to show the dawning of sensation.
That is due to the beginning of the vivification of the
next sheath above the physical, composed of
what we call astral matter, that which goes to make
part of the manomaya kosha of the Vedantin. We
see in that a growing susceptibility, an increas-
ing sensory power, very slight in the vegetable
world, but still present, and developed much more
largely where the vegetable has a long experience
of separated life. Take for instance a tree that has
endured for centuries, and let me just trace the
stages in which the dawning sensation is found, and
even a dawn, though I hardly venture to use the

K

146 Evolution of Life and Form.

word, a dawn of mental quality. That life in the
tree responds to the vibrations received from outside,
of cold and heat, of wind and rain, of sunshine and
storm, and as the physical sheath is built up and
developed by the action of the Devas working upon
it, the etheric matter in it is continually thrown into
vibration by the changes in temperature, light, and
electrical conditions. The vibrations in the ethers
that enter into the physical body are passed on to
the atomic sub-plane, and as the atoms of the physi-
cal plane have their spirals made of the coarsest
matter of the plane of Apas, or astral matter, a slight
quivering is caused in that coarsest matter of the
astral plane, and that sets up a little movement in
the tree, responded to by the indwelling life by
sensation, a massive and general feeling of pleasure
or pain.

Have you never walked through a forest, and
felt as though all nature were enjoying the sunshine?
This sensation of pleasure is shown still more
strikingly when the hot season comes to its ending,
and the first rains fall on the thirsty ground, and the
well-nigh withering vegetation sends out a conscious
thrill of joy and life renewed. The very trees and
bushes rejoice as the rain comes down upon them
with its message of life and of hope. At such
moments we recognise that the vegetable world is

Evolution of Form. 147

sensitive, although the sensation be widespread,
that which is called massive in character.

Forgive me if for a moment I here digress,
to say that this fact is one of the reasons why we
owe a duty to the vegetable world, not needlessly
to cause sensations of dawning suffering. We
live too carelessly, my brothers, in this world
which is all-living, where there is no atom that is
dead, and especially is this sad here in India,
where once there was so strong a reverence for
life. That is now, alas, beginning to pass away.
You are forgetting that all life is Ishvara, that ac-
cording to the stage of His lower self-evolution is
the power of response that is given to the form. In
the old days, I remember how, when man took his
food, he met the food with gracious greeting because
it was sacrificing its life in order to build, through
that sacrifice, his own. Though it did not possess
the higher powers of sensation as we find them in
the animal, but only the lesser sensation powers of
the vegetable world, still, even then, he met it with
reverence, as a sacrifice which was being made to
him, and took it with gratitude and with love ; that
lower life was yielding itself up to him for his up-
building. But to-day, so lost is that gentle grace in
many of our Hindu people, that they not only dis-
regard the sacrificed lives of the vegetable kingdom

148 Evolution of Life and Form.

but also those of the far more sentient forms which
Ishvara has developed in the animal kingdom of His
world. We find men who wear the outer shape of
the Hindu, who have his colour, his form, his face,
who boast themselves of their descent from antiquity,
who hold themselves therefore in thought above the
western nations, forgetting the life of the Self in
this sentient creation, and nourishing their bodies
with the bodies of their lower brethren, without
showing any sense of the sacrifice made, or feeling
even a passing gratitude for the life which is given
for them.

I^et us come back to the tracing of our forms.
Ishvara, brooding over the evolving forms, con-
tinues His patient work — patient, that the form may
never be broken by an overstrain, but may be slowly
developed into a vehicle of the life that ensouls it.
In every form He lives, evolving it, but He limits
with illimitable patience His manifestation of life
to the poor capacities of the form, that it may grow
and not be destroyed. Do you remember an old
story of the ancient days, in which most of you
would be ashamed to acknowledge belief, for are
you not graduates and men of western knowledge ?
Though descendants from the old time, you have
naught to do with it, but I, who was trained in the
West, I have no feeling of shame in acknowledging

Evolution of Form. 149

my belief in the strange things that come down to
us from the times when truth was less veiled than it
is now. So I dare to recall the story to you, although
you may think that it is but a fable or legend.
There was a boy who believed in Vishnu or Hari,
in whom his father believed not, Prahlada he was
named ; and that boy went through many trials, but
in all his faith in the Supreme defended him ; at
last his father, scoffing, said, turning to a pillar in
his room : *' You tell me that Hari is everywhere:
is He in that pillar ? " '* O Hari, Hari ! " cried the
boy, and forth from the pillar in the form of a lyion
burst an avatara of Vishnu and the pillar was
shivered into pieces. Truly is He everywhere, in
every particle of matter ; there is no one particle
from which He cannot come forth in all the might
of His Godhood, in all the majesty of His Deity.
But He will not, because if He did, the form could
not bear that revealing, and would shiver into pieces
as the God appeared. A profound truth, even if
you regard the story as an allegory, a truth which
teaches us what evolution means.

Thus Ishvara worked on age after age and seon
after seon, with that marvellous patience of which I
spoke, until matter was made sufficiently plastic to
build it into the form in which His highest life was
to begin its development, the form of man ; building

150 Evolution of Life and Form.

tliat form, He begins also to strengthen very mucli
the centre which the form is for a while to protect.
I^et me say in passing one thing that I have omitted,
that whenever a form has reached its highest possi-
ble point, its limit of expansion. He breaks it, in order
that, in a new form better adapted, the ensouling
life may continue to grow ; for He knows when to
break as well as when to hold ; He knows when
to destroy as well as when to preserve ; and the
moment that the limit of a form has been reached,
and its matter can yield no further. He bursts the
form asunder, that its materials may recombine
themselves, under the impulse of life, into a more
plastic organism, and that the life may thus gain
further evolution, ensouling a higher form more
fitted for the expression of its increasing powers.
We call this breaking of the form death, and we
fear and shrink from it, and if people talk to us of
death, in the flush of our life, it comes as a jar and
a shock. But, as I told you in the beginning, you
may see very plainly that death is that beneficent
aspect of Ishvara, which breaks a form that has
become a prison, in order to give the life a new form
in which it may continue to grow ; He breaks the
rigid form when it can develop no further, and
gives the life the plastic form of a baby, that may
be shaped more easily by the moulding forces of

Evolution of Form, 151

the life within it, yielding itself to every impulse
from within. It seems then, that when we see
things rightly, we should hail death as birth rather
than as death. For looked at from the side of life,
every death is a being born into the higher possi-
bilities of a new shape that will adapt itself to the
growing life.

When man begins his long pilgrimage, a form
is ready for his ensouling, prepared to receive and
to respond to the impulses which come to it from
the physical, astral and — to a small extent — from
the mental planes. His physical atoms are consi-
derably evolved, the sensory sheath is working
actively, and there is a very imperfect lower mental
sheath ; these have been built up through the evo-
lution of the animal realm. Do not fall into the
mistake of the western way of thinking, and say
that man descends from the animal ; that is not
true. It is only a fragment of truth half seen and
thereby distorted. What is true is this : that the
matter of his lower vehicles has been prepared by
evolving through the stages of the elemental,
mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in order
that it may be builded into the form of man ; that
in previous kalpas forms had been evolved that might
fairly be described as half-ape, half-human, that
were never occupied by the triple Self, and that

152 Evolution of Life and Form,

therefore belonged to the animal, not to the human
kingdom ; that in the present cycle the human
form evolved, as a foetus evolves, passing rapidly
through the lower stages on the way to the human,
as in pre-natal life, and it therefore has stamped
upon it the stages through which it has passed.
I have been going over, roughly and swiftly,
those stages through which the matter of which
the body is composed has gone in the past, and
you will see that the true theory of evolution is
different from the somewhat crude view that there
is a regular succession of births from the animal
into the man. The matter has been made plastic
in the animal, but man in his form is the
result of a higher working ; the germ of his life can
never develop into the animal, but only into the
human, because more has been infolded into it, and
that germ must unfold along a line which is that of
direct human growth. Remembering that, to pre-
vent a possible misconception, we turn to the human
centre that is now definitely formed. We speak of
its encircling form as the causal body, or Karana
Sharira, the form by which the Self is limited;
the Karana Sharira is not the Self, remember, but
is the containing vehicle of the triple Self, and the
organ of one aspect of that Self, the aspect of
knowledge, shown forth as intelligence. This

Evoluiio7i of Form. 153

sheath is important, being relatively of a permanent
nature, and it goes on from birth to birth ; death can-
not touch it, birth cannot modify it ; it is the trea-
sure-house or receptacle of all the qualities acquired
by experience through human evolution, and passes
through the whole cycle of re-incarnations ; it is the
special human characteristic. The form begins to
adapt itself more and more to the life, and here
comes in a growing difficulty. The characteristic
of the life of man is the life of the intellect ; this the
specifically human part of evolution ; but the life of
sensation is far more vivid and tumultuous in the
beginning, and the earlier stages of form are adapted
to answer to these impulses. You may ask, why not
give the man at once a mental body only, in which
to work out his evolution, why must he struggle
through the evolution of this body of sensation?
Because, if he misses that stage, he will not be able
to make up the links which are necessary for the
continuity of his consciousness. At a later time
the perfect man is conscious on all planes from
Nirvana downward to the physical, from the physi-
cal upwards to Nirvana. On every plane in un-
broken continuity of consciousness the Jivanmukta
lives and works. There is no link lacking. If,
then, the man does not establish, in the building
of his body of sensation, certain centres or, as

154 Evolution of Life and Form.

they are called, chakras — that drawing into centres
which is the work of the upward arc, as giving
qualities is the work of the downward arc — if he
does not draw the powers of sensation into definite
centres in the sheath of his astral body, he will
not have the links which he requires to receive
impacts from the astral plane, and through which
he can send out thrills of consciousness in order to
impress it, rule it and guide it. That is why there
is so much delay in the savage condition, where the
life of sensation is supreme ; these astral chakras are
being builded up as centres of the senses, and they
are built firm and strong ; the outer organs, the eye,
the ear, the nose, the tongue, the skin, these are
merely the necessary organs in the physical body
for the expression of consciousness through these
chakras.

If we take, for a moment, a swift survey of the evo-
lution of forms, we shall find that the building of
organs follows the exercise of life -functions ; in the
earliest forms there are no organs, but the functions
of life are present and active ; the creature breathes
and assimilates, circulation goes on ; but there are
no organs for digestion, no organs for breathing, no
organs for circulation ; the whole body does every-
thing. But as evolution proceeds and definite organs
are formed in the physical body, in the nervous

Evolution of Form. 155

system, and as later, in the astral body, chakras or
astral centres of sensation are formed — as this goes
on, we find a more specialised being developed
with definite organs. Always the organ comes
after the function, and through the organ the
function expresses itself more and more perfectly.
That is a fundamental principle. And do not
forget that in this you are on what is thought the
safer ground of western science. You do not find
an organ appearing before the development of its
function. You always find the life-impulse first,
and then the moulding of the matter into a shape
which enables that impulse to express itself more
perfectly. If we trace evolution from the amoeba
upwards we find differentiation and specialisation
becoming more marked the whole way through,
yet man himself turns round, and with the very
brain which has been formed under the vibrations
of intelligence he reverses the whole process, and
asserts that thought is produced by the brain ; but
every organ is formed as the organ of a function,
it is produced by life, and is not its creator.

This process goes on until the necessary organs
are made and the nervous system is linked to the
chakras in the astral body, chiefly through what is
called the sympathetic system. There are certain
nervous cells of a peculiar kind in that system, of

156 Evolution of Life and Form.

-which, modern science does not say much, beyond
giving you the forms and contents, and these are the
links between consciousness in the physical body
and in the sensory body. Then come the chakras
already spoken of as the centres for the working of
consciousness in the astral body. A similar process
goes on in the mental body under the action of
thought-impulses, and there we have also an organ-
ised body able to respond to different kinds of
thought, and thus to serve consciousness as its organ
for expression in the mental world. As we grow
mentally we build our organs for consciousness.

Coming to this building of form practically, we
learn that we organise the body of sensation to
higher purposes by checking the life-impulse as it
runs out to the object of the senses. These objects
gradually turn away from the abstemious dweller in
the body, it is written, and as the lower world
ceases to attract, the higher world begins to use the
form for nobler ends. If we desire to increase
mental power, we must practise steady thinking,
and check the rovings of intelligence over the phe-
nomenal world. As a matter of fact, many people
never really think at all; what they call their
thoughts are nothing more than the reflections of
other people's thoughts to which their consciousness
responds ; their minds are looking-glasses, not pro-

Evolution of Form, 157

ductive organisms ; most men's minds, I fear, are
looking-glasses reflecting objects that are before
them, and contemplating these reflections a man
says to himself : " See ! how I am thinking ! "when he
is only repeating the thoughts of others. Now we
are not to be mere looking-glasses ; when the objects
of the outer world give rise to images, the mind is
to work on them, analyse, re-arrange, combine;
thinking is the work of the mind itself on the
mental images supplied through sensation, the
working on the materials which have been gradually
gathered by experience. As soon might you call a
loose heap of bricks that you see in the compound of
a house, a building, as call the reflection of other
people's thoughts, your thinking. That is only the
material for thought. Thinking is the work of
the architect, of the builder that builds these
bricks into a definite edifice, and until we have
built up thoughts in our minds, we have no
right to arrogate to ourselves the name of thinkers.
Practise then this independent thinking ; it is hard ;
you will not know how hard until you try it.
Never let pass a day without reading something that
gives you material for thought. No matter if the
book be not religious ; if it be only intellectual, that
will make you stronger in intellect. Even leaving
spirituality aside with its nobler possibilities, take

158 Evolution of Life and Form,

some great book worthy of being thought over, not
a newspaper, not a sensational novel, not a child's
book, but a book — an original book, on a real topic ;
what Charles Lamb called a book. Read, but do not
read much, perhaps not more than a dozen or twenty
lines ; think these lines over and over and over for at
least thrice as long as you have taken to read them
slowly. Do that every day regularly, and do not miss
it. You find time for your dinner ; why, if you can find
time to feed your body and to talk, can you not find
time to feed your mind ? Then your mind would
grow. If you do that as an experiment, say for three
months only, never missing a day — for if you miss
a day, you will slip back and lose the value of the
automatic action of your mind — do that for three
months as an experiment, as a scientific man makes
an experiment, and thus train yourselves for three
months in power of close attention and thought, and at
the end of the three months, you will be startled to
find how much these powers have grown. When you
have put yourself through this experiment, then you
will not want a lecturer to tell you about the value
of such self-discipline, for you yourself will have
proved it to be good. Take one faculty after another
to train ; train your reasoning faculty, your memory,
your power of comparison and contrast. Take up
a faculty, just as any one takes up a study that he is

Evolution of Form. 159

working at, and work at it until you are an artist
in that particular faculty.

That is how form is builded, when the human
Self is beginning to co-operate with the work of
Ishvara, when the centre is beginning to take the
control of its vehicles. It rationalises its workings,
and builds and modifies them step by step. When
this has been done for many lives, then comes the
life for Yoga ; then the man may be taught how to
make more rapid progress, and how to vivify the
inner and subtler sheaths of his being by certain
practices, that will be taught him the moment he is
ready — but that will never be taught him until he is
ready, nay though he range the world over in search
of a Guru, or live the life of an ascetic in the cave
or in the jungle. That is not enough, so long as
his desire is unconquered, so long as his mind is
still restless. When the senses are dominated, when
the mind is controlled, and not before — but then,
as certainly as before there will not be the coming —
a Guru will appear who will take that man by the
hand and lead him along the path that is narrow as
the edge of a razor, that may only be trodden by the
controlled in sense and by the steady in mind, for
the fall either to the one side or to the other means
delay for many a birth to come. Then is developed
that aspect of Bliss which shows itself outwardly

i6o Evolution of Life and Form,

as love ; a faint reflection of that bliss is felt in many
stages of meditation, and 'joy lias birth within you,
wells up within you, enwraps you fold by fold, until
you in yogic trance reach the true A'nanda, which
is the essence of beauty, and makes you quiver
under its subtle vibrations of ineffable delight. And
later, later still, at a stage that you may reach, when
all is purified through long evolution, there comes
the rising into the highest, where the subtlest
matter becomes the vehicle of that developed centre,
now no longer a circumference restraining and
necessary, but an obedient vehicle which will serve
when it is wanted and fall away when wanted it is
not. As it is written that in the A'kasha there is
every possibility of form, so the life that has
reached Self-existence is a being that garbs itself
in any form by gathering the A'kasha around it.
Thus it may develop vehicle after vehicle until the
whole of the human series is builded for use, but
none of them is prison for limitation ; then we say
that the man is a Jivanmukta, He is free, and all
matter has become His servant, to use when He
has need of it, to cast aside when He needs it not ;
every region of the world is His to use, no region
of the world is its own to bind Him ; He is liberated,
and as the liberated Self He may, if He will, still
work for His brother men, remaining, as Shri Shan-

Evolution 0/ Form, i6i

karach^rya taught us, until the end of His age,
in order to lift humanity more rapidly on its upward
climb. Thus are formed Those who are the co-work-
ers of Ishvara in the helping of humanity, who,
having gone through all suffering, throw every-
thing they have gained at the feet of the Lord,
who turn back to the world, never again to
be bound by it, but still responding to the com-
passion which is the very life of Ishvara Himself.
As long as Ishvara wills to remain in manifestation,
so long does He whose will is one with that of
Ishvara, will also to remain. He has nothing to
gain, nothing to learn, nothing to take that any
world can give Him; but He stands beside His
Lord as an organ of the expression of the highest
life, existing no longer for anything that He takes,
but as the channel of the life of God. That is the
prize of our calling, that the goal on which our
hearts are fixed.

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