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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 gained members in
all countries, including people of wealth as well as those in moderate
circumstances, and the highly cultured also. Within its ranks there
flourish beliefs in the Mahâtmas of India and in Reïncarnation and its
twin doctrine, Karma. This last holds that no power, human or divine,
can save one from the consequences of acts performed, and that in this
life we are experiencing the results due to us for all acts and thoughts
which were ours in the preceding incarnation.

This has brought out a large body of literature in books and magazines
published in the United States, England, India, and elsewhere.
Newspapers are published in the interest of the new-old cult in the
vernacular of Hindûstan and also in old Ceylon. Even Japan has its
periodicals devoted to the same end, and to ignore so wide-spread a
movement would bespeak ignorance of the factors at work in our
development. When such an eminent authority as the great French savant,
Emile Burnouf, says that the Theosophical movement must be counted as
one of the three great religious influences in the world to-day, there
is no need of an excuse for presenting its features in detail to readers
imbued with the civilization of the West.




II.


In my former paper I merely hinted at the two principal doctrines
promulgated by the Theosophical Society; it is well now to notice the
fact that the Society itself was organized amid a shout of laughter,
which at intervals ever since has been repeated. Very soon after it
launched forth it found a new member in a Bavarian gentleman, Baron
Henry Louis de Palm, who not long thereafter died and obligingly left
his body to be cremated.

The funeral was held at Masonic Hall, New York city, and attracted
widespread attention from both press and public. It was Theosophical in
its character, and while conducted with befitting dignity in view of the
solemnity of the occasion, was along distinctly original lines. All this
of course, drew forth satire from the press, but served the purpose of
gaining some attention for the young Society. Its history since then has
been remarkable, and it is safe to say that no other similar body in
this century has drawn to itself so much consideration, stirred up such
a thinking among people on mystical subjects, and grown so rapidly amid
the loudest derision and against the fiercest opposition, within the
short space of fifteen years.

While the press has been sneering and enemies have been plotting, the
workers in the Society have established centers all over the world, and
are to-day engaged persistently in sending out Theosophical literature
into every nook and corner of the United States. A glance at the
Theosophical map shows a line of Branches of the Society dotting a strip
of this country which reaches from the city of New York to the Pacific
Coast; at either end this belt spreads out to take in Boston and New
Orleans in the East and San Francisco and San Diego in the West; while
near the middle of the continent there is another accumulation of
centers. This is claimed to be strictly and mystically Theosophical,
because at each end of the magic line of effort and at its central point
there is an accumulation of nucleï. It is a fact that the branches of
the Society in America are rapidly running up into the first hundred.
For some little time there existed in Washington a Branch of the Society
called the Gnostic, but it never engaged in any active work. After it
had been once incontinently dissolved by its president, who thereafter
withdrew, leaving the presidency in the hands of another, the governing
body of the American Theosophists formally dischartered the Gnostic, and
its members joined other Branches. There is, however, to-day a
Washington Branch named boldly after the much lauded and belittled Mme.
H. P. Blavatsky, while the Theosophical map shows an accumulation of
influences in Washington that point to an additional Branch, and inquiry
in official quarters discloses the fact that the matter is already
mooted.

The Theosophical map of which I have spoken is a curiosity, an anomaly
in the nineteenth century. Few of the members are allowed to see it; but
those who are say that it is a register of the actual state, day by day,
of the whole United States Section--a sort of weather map, with areas of
pressure and Theosophical humidity in all directions. Where a Branch is
well founded and in good condition, the spot or sensitive surface shows
clearness and fixity. In certain places which are in a formative
condition there is another appearance symptomatic of a vortex that may
soon bring forth a Branch; while, wherever the principle of
disintegration has crept into an existing organization, there the
formerly bright and fixed spots grow cloudy. By means of this map, those
who are managing the real growth of the movement can tell how it is
going and aid it intelligently. Of course all this sounds ridiculous in
our age; but, whether true or false, there are many Theosophists who
believe it. A similar arrangement would be desirable in other branches
of our civilization.

The grand theories of the Theosophists regarding evolution, human races,
religions and general civilization, as well as the future state of man
and the various planets he inhabits, should engage our more serious
attention; and of these I propose to speak at another time.




III.


The first Echo from the burnished and mysterious East which reverberated
from these pages sounded the note of Universal Brotherhood. Among the
men of this day such an idea is generally accepted as vague and utopian,
but one which it will do no harm to subscribe to; they therefore quickly
assent, and as quickly nullify the profession by action in the opposite
direction. For the civilization of to-day, and especially of the United
States, is an attempt to accentuate and glorify the individual. The
oft-repeated declaration that any born citizen may aspire to occupy the
highest office in the gift of the nation is proof of this, and the
Mahâtmas who guard the truth through the ages while nations are
decaying, assert that the reaction is sure to come in a relapse into the
worst forms of anarchy. The only way to prevent such a relapse is for
men to really practice the Universal Brotherhood they are willing to
accept with the tongue. These exalted beings further say that all men
are--as a scientific and dynamic fact--united, whether they admit it or
not; and that each nation suffers, on the moral as well as the physical
plane, from the faults of all other nations, and receives benefit from
the others also even against its will. This is due to the existence of
an imponderable, tenuous medium which interpenetrates the entire globe,
and in which all the acts