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Page 1 of 21904 · PDF PAGE 81
…e no rupes!’ howled the necromancer. ‘Get up, fool!’ roared the God. ‘I have got Perdu R’ Abu elected M aha Brahm a.’ ‘Oh Lord, have you really ?’ said the wizard, looking a little 1 The world of black magic. 2 Heaven. 3 The highest heaven of the Hindu. “Forml-ess place of Brahma” is its name. less glum. ‘Ay !’ cried Ganesha impas- sively, ‘let Æ on follow Æ on down the vaulted and echoing corridors of Eternity : pile Mahakalpa upon Mahakalpa until an Asankhya1 of Crores 2 have passed away ; and Maha Brahm a will still sit lone and meditate upo…
1904 · PDF PAGE 100
…ion ? “ ‘I’ am an illusion, externally. In reality , the true ‘I’ am the Infinite, and if the illusionary ‘I’ could only realise Who ‘I’ really am, how very happy we should all be !” And here we have Karma, rebirth, all the mighty laws of nature o perat- ing nowhere in nothing ! There is no room for worship or for m orality in the Advaitist sy stem. All the specious pleas of the Bhagavad-Gita, and the ethical works of Western Advaitist philosophers, are more or less consciously confusion of thought. But no subtlety can turn the practical argume…
1904 · PDF PAGE 82
…uld have thought it was all so simple ? ’ The God cleared his throat, and rather diffidently, even shamefacedly, went on : “ ‘But what I really wished to know was about my incarnation. How is it I have so suddenly risen from change and death to the unchangeable ?’ “ ‘Child !’ answered Gautama, ‘your facts are wrong—you can hardly expect to make 1 Feet. 2 This astonishing piece of bombastic drivel is verbatim from a note by S. L. M athers to the “Kabbalah Unveiled.” correct deductions.’ ‘Yes, y ou can, if only your logical methods are unsound. T…
1904 · PDF PAGE 121
…l value alike require for the word as applied to the Buddhist goal. See Chidders, Pali Dictionary, sub voce Nibbana.] The explanation is really as follows : only by this term Nirvana can we foreshadow to you the reality ; for even as the Dawn of Dhyana is indescribable in language, à fortiori Nirvana is so. To give an example, for that something of the sort is necessary I freely admit, to defend so apparently mystical a s tatement, I m ay give the following from my own experience. In a certain meditation one day I re- corded: “I wa s (a) consci…
1904 · PDF PAGE 34
…gic’s intellectual prism The spiritual Syllogism. We know what fools (only) call Divine and Supernatural And what they name material Are really one, not two, the line By which divide they and define Being a shadowy sort of test ; A verbal lusus at the best, At worst a wicked lie devised To bind men’s thoughts ; but we must work With our own instruments, nor shirk Discarding what we erstwhile prized ; Should we perceive it disagree With the first-born necessity. I come to tell you why I shun The sight of men, the life and fun You know I can enjo…
1904 · PDF PAGE 101
…e Qabalists explain the “ First Cause” 1 by the phras e: “ From 0 to 1, as the circle opening out into the line.” The Christian dogma is really identical, for both conceive of a previous and eternally existing God, though the Qabalists hedge by describing this latent Deity as “ Not.” Later com - mentators, notably the illustrious 2 M ac- Gregor-Mathers, have explained this Not as “negatively-existing.” Profound as is my respect for the intellectual and spiritual attainments of him whom I am proud to have been perm itted to call m y m aster,2 I …
1904 · PDF PAGE 105
… sm all the little circle becomes, its relation with the big circle is still finite. But even allowing for a moment that the Absolute is really attainable, is the nothingness of the finity related to it really identical with that attained directly by the Buddhist Arahat? This, consistently with 1 The Swami Vive Ananda, M adame Horos, for whose histor y consult the Criminal Law Reports.
1904 · PDF PAGE 104
…ve inertia determines; to this Law there is no exception but the doubtful one of Free- will ; the Law of Destiny itself is form ally and really identical with it.2 1 Causality is itself a secondary , and in its limitation as applied to volition, an inconceiv- able idea. H. Spencer, op. cit. T his con- sideration alone should add gr eat weight to the agnostic, and à fortiori to the Buddhist, position. 2 See H. Spencer, “ First Principles,” “ The Knowable,” for a fair summary of the facts under- lying this gener alisation; which indeed he comes w…
1904 · PDF PAGE 117
…ion is sufficient to cause one class of people to see a blue pig where none existed, and another to deny or suspect the blue pig when it really appeared, though the latter alternative is unlikely . The con- scious phenomenon, and the bliss, is of so stupendous and well-defined a nature that I cannot imagine any preconceived idea power- ful enough to diminish it appreciably. But for the sake of the former class I hold my tongue.1 I trust it is now perfectly clear, if m y statements are accepted—and I can only 1 On the advisibility of so doing I …
1904 · PDF PAGE 62
…erself on July 5, 1869. Her last letter to Madame J—— S—— is one of the tenderest and most pathetic ever written. She seems to have been really loved by George, in his w ild, infidel fashion : “All Night” and “Victory,” among others, are obviously in- spired by her beauty ; and her devotion to him, the abasement of soul, the prostitution of body, she underwent for and with him, is one of the noblest stories life has known. She seems to have dived with him, yet ever trying to raise his soul from the quagmire ; if God is just at all, she shall st…
1904 · PDF PAGE 4
… to seem too interested. “Ah, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The nam e really is ‘Ascension Day and Pentecost; with some Prose Essay s and an Epilogue,’ just as the title is ‘The Sword of Song’ y ou know, just in the sam e way, just in the sam e way, just in the same way . . .” Alice put her fingers in her ears and gave a little scream . “ Oh, dear me! That’s * This passage is a parody on one in “Alice through the Looking-Glass.” harder than ever!” s he s aid to hers elf, and the…
1904 · PDF PAGE 119
… it, to con- centrate it, to obs erve more accurately—has this source of possible error been sufficiently recognised?—what its testimony really is. Experience has taught me, so far as I h ave been able to go, that Reason and Conscious- ness have met together; Apprehension and Analysis have kissed one another. The re- conciliation (in fact, rem ember, and not in words) is at least so nearly perfect that I can confidently predict that a further pursuit of the (empirically-indicated) path will surely lead to a still further and higher unity. The r…
1904 · PDF PAGE 107
…xists only by virtue of the thinker’s thought.1 In y et one other way is magic a capital training ground for the Arahat. True symbols do really awake those macrocosmic forces of which they are the eidola, and it is possible in this m anner very largely to increase the magical “potential” to borrow a term from electrical science. Of course, there are bad and invalid pro- cesses, which tend rather to disperse or to excite the mind-stuff than to control it; these we must discard. But there is a true magical ceremonial, the central Arcanum alike of…
1904 · PDF PAGE 80
…s iii., and cut down the tree, and all the Nats perished. “Jehjaour heard and trembled. Perdu’ R Abu was only three years old. VIII. “It really seemed as if fate was agains t him. Poor Jehjaour ! In despair he cried to his partner, ‘O Ganesha, in the world of Gods only we shall be safe. Let him be born as a flute-girl before Indra’s throne !’ ‘Difficult is the task,’ replied the alarm ed deity, ‘but I will use all m y influence. I 1 The Gover nment, in th e intersts of Bud- dhists themselves, r eserves all gr ound within 50 feet of a dagoba. Th…
1904 · PDF PAGE 102
…t reach a state in which this 0 is absolute. Not only must we get rid of all subjects, but of all predi- cates. By 0 (in mathematics) we really mean 0 n, where n is the final term of a natural scale of dimensions, categories, or predicates. Our Cos mic Egg, then, from which the pres ent univers e arose, was Nothingness, extended in no categories, or graphically, 0 0. This expression is in its present form meaningless. Let us dis- cover its value by a sim ple m athematical process! 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 = = ⎡ ⎣⎢ ⎤ ⎦⎥ − Multiply by1 = n n Then 0 0 0 …
1904 · PDF PAGE 111
… I eat r eally in or der to check change, or to m aintain m y ego- consciousness? Change I desire, for my present condition is sorrow. I really desire the im- possible; completely to retain m y present egoity with all its conditions reversed.—A. C. 2 For an able and luminous exposition of “The Four Noble T ruths” I r efer the r eader to the pam phlet bearing that title by by old friend Bikkhu Ananda Maitriya, published by the Buddhasasana Samagama, 1 Pagoda Road, Rangoon.—A. C. This is the Buddhist assertion. What does Science say? (a) Huxley, …
1904 · PDF PAGE 112
…ng to Theism , the ex- istence of evil forces them to the Fichtean position that “the Ego posits the Non-Ego,” and we learn that nothing really exists after all but Brahm. They then distinguish between Jivatma, the soul-conditioned, and Paramatma, the s oul free; the former being the basis of our normal consciousness; the latter of the Nirvikalpa-Samadhi conscious- 1 The Buddhist position may be interpreted as agnostic in this matter, these ar guments being directed against, and destructive of , the unwarranted assumptions of the Hindus; but no…
1904 · PDF PAGE 110
…uctive against any such structur e. But I am surely in danger of becom ing r idiculous in writing thus to the scientific wo rld. Wh at I really wish to show is that one ned not look for all the Buddhist fancy dishes to the per il of the scientific digestion. And by a backhanded str oke I wish to im press as deeply as possible upon my Buddhist friends that too m uch zeal for the accidentals of our religion will surely result in the overwhelm ing of its essentials in the tide of justly scornful or justly casuistic criti- cism.—A. C. the beads of …
1904 · PDF PAGE 106
AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 99 my former attitude, I feel constrained to deny. The consciousness of the Absolute- wala1 is really extended infinitely rather than diminished infinitely, as he will h imself assure you. True, Hegel say s: “Pure being is pure nothing !” and it is true that the infinite heat and cold, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, and all the other pairs of opposites,2 cancel one another out: yet I feel rather afraid of this Absolute ! May be i ts joy and sorrow are represented in phases, just as 0 0 and finity are phas es of an iden…
1904 · PDF PAGE 103
…ave done is to represent the con- version as a change, rather than as m erely another way of expressi ng the same thing. And “change” is really not my meaning either; for change, to our minds, involves the idea of tim e. But the whole thing is inconceivable—to ratiocination, though not to thought. Note well too that if I say “Absence-of-books is not on the table,” I cannot convert it only “All books are on the table” but only to “some books are on the table.” The proposition is an “I” and not an “A” proposition. It is the Advaita blunder to mak…