the subjective state, prepared to imbibe real knowledge from the latent omniscience of their own sixth principles, and to reincarnate in due time with impulses in the same direction. Nothing can produce more disastrous effects on human progress as regards the destiny of individuals, than the very prevalent notion that one religion, followed out in a pious spirit, is as good as another, and that if such and such doctrines are perhaps absurd when you look into them, the great majority of good people will never think of their absurdity, but will recite them in a blamelessly devoted attitude of mind. One religion is by no means as good as another, even if all were productive of equally blameless lives. But I prefer to avoid all criticism of specific faiths, leaving this volume a simple and inoffensive statement of the real inner doctrines of the one great religion of the world which-presenting as it does in its external aspects a bloodless and innocent record-has thus been really productive of blameless lives throughout its whole existence. Moreover, it would not be by a servile acceptance even of its doctrines that the development of true spirituality is to be cultivated. It is by the disposition to seek truth, to test and examine all which presents itself as claiming belief, that the great result is to be brought about. In the East, such a resolution in the highest degree leads to chelaship, to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, by the development of inner faculties by means of which it may be cognized with certainty. In the West, the realm of intellect, as the world is mapped out at present, truth unfortunately can only be pursued and hunted out

with the help of many words and much wrangling and disputation. But at all events it may be hunted, and, if it is not finally captured, the chase on the part of the hunters will have engendered instincts that will propagate themselves and lead to results hereafter.

CHAPTER XI.

THE UNIVERSE.

In all Oriental literature bearing on the constitution of the cosmos, frequent reference is made to the days and the nights of Brahma; the inbreathings and the outbreathings of the creative principle, the periods of manvantara,* and the periods of pralaya. This idea runs into various Eastern mythologies, but in its symbolical aspects we need not follow it here. The process in Nature to which it refers is of course the alternate succession of activity and repose that is observable at every step of the great ascent from the infinitely small to the infinitely great. Man has a manvantara and pralaya every four-and-twenty hours, his periods of waking and sleeping; vegetation follows the same rule from year to year as it subsides and revives with the seasons. The world too has its manvantaras and pralayas, when the tide-wave of humanity approaches its shore, runs through the evolution of its seven races, and ebbs away again, and such a manvantara has been treated by most exoteric religions as the whole cycle of eternity.

The major manvantara of our planetary chain is that which comes to an end when the last Dhyan

* As transliterated into English, this word may be written either manwantara or manvantara; and the proper pronunciation is something between the two, with the accent on the second syllable.

Chohan of the seventh round of perfected humanity passes into Nirvana, And the expression has thus to be regarded as one of considerable elasticity. It may be said indeed to have infinite elasticity, and that is one explanation of the confusion which has reigned in all treatises on Eastern religions in their popular aspects. All the root-words transferred to popular literature from the secret doctrine have a seven-fold significance at least, for the initiate, while the uninitiated reader, naturally supposing that one word means one thing, and trying always to clear up its meaning by collating its various applications, and striking an average, gets into the most hopeless embarrassment.

The planetary chain with which we are concerned is not the only one which has our sun as its centre. As there are other planets besides the Earth in our chain, so there are other chains besides this in our solar system. There are seven such, and there comes a time when all these go into pralaya together. This is spoken of as a solar pralaya, and within the interval between two such pralayas, the vast solar manvantara covers seven pralayas and manvantaras of our-and each other planetary chain. Thought is baffled, say even the adepts, in speculating as to how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great cosmic night in which the whole universe, in its collective enormity, obeys what is manifestly the universal law of activity and repose, and with all its myriad systems passes itself into pralaya. But even that tremendous result, says esoteric science, must surely come.

After the pralaya of a single planetary chain there is no necessity for a recommencement of evolutionary activity absolutely de novo, There is

only a resumption of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms, which at the end of the last corresponding manvantara had reached only a partial development, are not destroyed. Their life or vital energy passes through a night, or period of rest; they also have, so to speak, a Nirvana of their own, as why should they not, these foetal and infant entities? They are all like ourselves, begotten of the one element. As we have our Dhyan Chohans, so have they in their several kingdoms, elemental guardians, and are as well taken care of in the mass as humanity is in the mass, The one element not only fills space and is space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.

When, however, the hour of the solar pralaya strikes, though the process of man's advance on his last seventh round is precisely the same as usual, each planet, instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible, as he quits it in turn, is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh round of the seventh planetary chain manvantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet, after the exit of man, merely the maya of once living and existing forms. every step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs, as he moves on from globe to globe the planet left behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in due time, they are nevertheless liberated,

With