Spirituality-Religions
Theosophical
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I beg the reader, laying aside all prejudice or preconceived opinion, and neither believing nor disbelieving what he reads, to simply try it-that is to test it in his own person to what degree he can influence his will, or bring about subsequent states of mind, by the very easy processes laid down. If I could hope that all opinion of my book would be uttered only by those who had thus put it to the test, I should be well assured as to its future.
Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in Britain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight, and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian priest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world.
THOUGH for the most part entirely unconscious of it, man passes the whole of his life in the midst of a vast and populous unseen world. During sleep or in trance, when the insistent physical senses are for the time in abeyance, this other world is to some extent open to him, and he will sometimes bring back from those conditions more or less vague memories of what he has seen and heard there.
No man should regard the subject of religion as decided for him until he has read The Golden Bough. The Golden Bough is one of those books that unmake history.
The origin of all religions, and the ignorance which is the root of the God-idea, having been dealt with in Part I. of this Text-Book, it now becomes our duty to investigate the evidences of the origin and of the growth of Christianity, to examine its morality and its dogmas, to study the history of its supposed founder, to trace out its symbols and its ceremonies; in fine, to show cause for its utter rejection by the Freethinker.
Must religion and morals go together? Can one be taught without the other? It is a practical question for educationists, and France tried to answer it in the dreariest little cut and dry kind of catechism ever given to boys to make them long to be wicked. But apart from education, the question of the bedrock on which morals rest, the foundation on which a moral edifice can be built that will stand secure against the storms of life-that is a question of perennial interest, and it must be answered by each of us, if we would have a test of Right and Wrong, would know why Right is Right, why Wrong is Wrong.
It is our earnest hope-as it is our belief-that this little book will serve as a striking moral lesson to every reader, making him realise the nature and power of his thoughts, acting as a stimulus to the noble, a curb on the base. With this belief and hope we send it on its way.
Let us, first of all, ask ourselves, looking at the world around us, what it is that the history of the world signifies. When we read history, what does the history tell us? It seems to be a moving panorama of people and events, but it is really only a dance of shadows; the people are shadows, not realities, the kings and statesmen, the ministers and armies; and the events the battles and revolutions, the rises and falls of states are the most shadowlike dance of all.
It remains to be seen-not how far, but rather how soon the scientific world at large will accept the conclusions of this volume as a definite contribution to science, blending the science of the laboratory with that variety that has hitherto been called occult.
IT is a true saying, and one experienced and proved by us all, that we rise to higher things on the stepping stones of our dead selves.
Those who have learned a little of the Ancient Wisdom know the illumination, the peace, the joy, the strength, its lessons have brought into their lives. That this book may win some to use its teachings, and to prove for themselves their value, is the prayer with which it is sent forth into the world.