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ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT

A BROAD OUTLINE OF THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES

BY
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[OCCULTUS]

SECOND POINT LOMA EDITION

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA
1910


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

[Illustration: Logo]

THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
Point Loma, California


DEDICATED TO

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

WITH LOVE

AND GRATITUDE

BY

THE AUTHOR




TO THE READER


Echoes from the Orient was written by Mr. Judge sixteen years ago (1890)
as a series of papers for a well known periodical. The author wrote
under the name of "_Occultus_," as it was intended that his personality
should be hidden until the series was completed. The value of these
papers as a popular presentation of Theosophical teaching was at once
seen and led to their publication in book form. As Mr. Judge wrote in
his "Antecedent Words" to the earlier edition:

"The restrictions upon the treatment of the subject growing out of the
popular character of the paper in which they were published precluded
the detail and elaboration that would have been possible in a
philosophical or religious periodical. No pretense is made that the
subject of Theosophy as understood in the Orient has been exhaustively
treated, for, believing that millions of years have been devoted by the
sages who are the guardians of Theosophical truth to its investigation,
I think no one writer could do more than to repeat some of the echoes
reaching his ears."

The reader should remember that the scope and influence of the
Theosophical Movement have since that time (1890) greatly expanded, the
work of THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY now reaching
nearly every country in the world.

Point Loma, California, 1906




ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT.




I.


What appears to the Western mind to be a very strange superstition
prevails in India about wonderful persons who are said to be of immense
age, and who keep themselves secluded in places not accessible to the
ordinary traveler. So long has this been current in India that the name
applied to these beings is well known in the Sanskrit language:
"Mahâtma," a compound of two words, _maha_, great, and _âtma_, soul. The
belief in the existence of such persons is not confined to the ignorant,
but is shared by the educated of all castes. The lower classes look upon
the Mahâtmas as a sort of gods, and think most of their wonderful powers
and great age. The pundits, or learned class, and educated Hindus in
general, have a different view; they say that Mahâtmas are men or souls
with unlimited knowledge of natural laws and of man's history and
development. They claim also that the Mahâtmas--or Rishees, as they
sometimes call them--have preserved the knowledge of all natural laws
for ages, not only by tradition among their disciples, but also by
actual records and in libraries existing somewhere in the many
underground temples and passages in India. Some believers assert that
there are also stores of books and records in secluded parts all over
that part of Thibet which is not known to Europeans, access to them
being possible only for the Mahâtmas and Adepts.

The credence given to such a universal theory grows out of an old Indian
doctrine that man is a spiritual being--a soul, in other words--and
that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth in
order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated
experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the
dwelling-place of a Mahâtma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that
particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind. The perfected men
are said to know the truth about the genesis of worlds and systems, as
well as the development of man upon this and other planets.

Were such doctrines held only in India, it would be natural to pass the
subject by with this brief mention. But when it is found that a large
body of people in America and Europe hold the same beliefs, it is
interesting to note such an un-Western development of thought. The
Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875, with the avowed
object of forming a nucleus for a Universal Brotherhood, and its
founders state that they believe the Indian Mahâtmas directed them to
establish such a society. Since its foundation it has