J. D. Buck

“ Nothing on earth transcends in importance this basic, universal, and eternal antithesis. It marks and monuments, in all time, the Parting of the Ways between Good and Evil; between Liberty and Despotism; between Light and Darkness; between Evolution and Devolution; between “Modernism” and Paganism; between Civilization and the Dark Ages; between the “Sermon on the Mount”—the Beatitudes, and the Spanish Roman Vatican Inquisition!
And this “antithesis,” this issue, is as imminent, as active, as burning in America to-day, as it is in Spain. It only faces different ways. ”

“ Look at the profusion, the prodigality, the beneficence of Nature, Flowers and Fruit, Beauty and Bloom and Fragrance everywhere. Where there is no eye to see, no hand to pluck, Mother Nature delights in profusion, seemingly because she is made that way and cannot help it. And yet, in this little Rose-garden of ours—the Human Soul -we tramp down the flowers, plant loathsome weeds and poisons that kill and degrade and besot us, set up the tables of the money-changers, drive out the doves of Hesperides, and turn the temple into a shambles for wild beasts. ”

“ We must realize that the human body, the organism of man, with all its faculties, capacities and powers, is but an instrument of the Individual Intelligence; and that every experience in life, every 38 episode in our career, is like a day’s work; perfecting the instrument for more and better work, if used rightly; till we advance from height to height of being; to larger and still larger and more glorious fields of work and experience.
There would seem to be no limit to this evolution, this upward and onward journey of the human soul. ”

“ The obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they are bound to conform.
To be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify what he teaches. ”

“ And in the study of the history of the human mind, and the study of ourselves, of our true selves, India occupies a place second to no other country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only. ”

“ The “sign of the Master” is at once recognized by one already prepared to receive and to understand it. The soul that really desires truth and wisdom above all things, has thereby developed the power to recognize it.
This is the discrimination referred to. It is not what someone else tells you, or what another claims. It is what you discern and recognize, and the teaching and the life are in perfect harmony, like chords in music; and they strike a harmonic chord in you, that may be first a surprise, and soon a great joy and a bright light. ”

“ If the whole nature of man is built and operated under law; if he is, as he seems to be, an aggregate of all substances, an epitome of all principles and processes; then it follows that to understand these laws, processes and correspondences, is to become master of them and of life.
Wonderful as have been the discoveries in nature’s finer forces and in applied science, all that science has discovered or invented, or art has devised, is like children’s toys, when compared with the subtle and marvelous mechanism of man’s organism. ”

“ Rome to-day no more represents the religion of Jesus than the Brahmans of to-day represent that of Christna, or Buddha, or the religion of the Vedas.
Nothing is so amazing to-day as that the intelligence of the present age fails to recognize this fact.
All of these religions of the past have adapted their teaching to the multitude through parable and allegory. Nothing in literature can be found more beautiful and inspiring, and at the same time comprehensible to the commonest intelligence, than Christna’s “Parable of the Fisherman.” ”

“ Health means harmony, concord, rhythm between every part, and the power of the one individual intelligence to use it all, to act or refrain from action, and to hold and maintain through all, repose, equilibrium, and self-mastery.
The physical body we know to be a thing of sense and time. We know its beginning, its gestation, its entrance and exit on this material plane. Its secrets are all involved in the subtle relations it bears to the soul that inhabits, unifies, and utilizes it. ”

“ In the coming Illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all opportunity, endeavor, or achievement.
In the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of.
We might call this new age “the Woman’s Avatar,” without doing violence to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred Hymns of the Vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul of man, the worship of Divinity, by both men and women, opened a new heaven on this old earth. ”

“ Music and art, in the highest sense, through consonant vibrations in us, open the doors and windows of the soul, put us in touch and tune with the Infinite, and then, the real harmony begins. We live for the time in another world and return 36 with a sigh and recover the bated breath, as though we had seen a vision beyond words. Music is an agent, a talisman, a means to an end. ”

“ These beautiful and inspiring essays by the Beloved Elder Brother are now printed in book form, for ready reference, and will prove to be quite as interesting and helpful to the beginner in Natural Science, as they are useful to instructors and regularly admitted students.
They unfold in simple language a wealth of spiritual light that leads at once to a most searching soul—analysis and readjustment of the entire intelligence to the Constructive Principle in Nature. Every page breathes the very inmost meaning and spirit of the educational work of the Great School. ”

“ It is difficult for the average churchman, or theologian, to apprehend and remember, that a fact, in nature or in life, is one thing; and that the interpretation, or explanation put upon that fact, by any man, or body of men, is another thing entirely. Here is where Belief, Dogma, and Heresy come in. As soon as one denies the interpretation, he is accused of denying the fact, no matter how illogical or absurd the interpretation may be, on the one hand, or how openly he admits the fact as the basis of his own conclusions, on the other. ”

“ No teacher of the real science of psychology can ever transmit or transfer his knowledge to another. All he can do is to describe the methods, and steps, by which he acquired it, and assist the student in acquiring it for himself in the same way, or under the same processes and laws.
We have only to reflect on the ordinary experiences of life, to realize that this is a universal principle and rule. In the deeper science of the soul, and the higher life, instead of this law being relaxed, it becomes all the more binding. ”

“ The bond of unity and that of diversity have one common root in humanity. What we need for larger knowledge is, I think, a recognition of the breadth and sweep of human experience. To stop either ignoring or quibbling over one-half of all our actual experience.
The inner world of thought and being is really the habitat of the soul, while the physical body, like the diving-bell, enables us to explore and gain experience on another plane which otherwise must remain to us forever unknown. ”

“ And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should point to India. ”

“ Bearing in mind, therefore, that owing to many causes a nation may descend to barbarism or disappear entirely, we shall find everywhere the fragments and decay of the old belief no less than the dawn of the new. A noble creed, or a philosophical concept of a highly advanced race, may exist as a transformed and degrading superstition with a race, or a fragment of a people, undergoing degeneracy.
Every religion known to man has gone through just this transformation. The tendency is innate and inevitable and no civilization or religion has ever yet been able long to resist it. ”

“ The pitiable byplay and claptrap of “Affinities” so often seen and heard nowadays, where all previous obligations are ignored, and personal responsibilities set at naught, only serve to emphasize the real law of harmony and constructive evolution, by showing what it is not.
The Great Work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human associations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of the Human Soul.
This is indeed——
Death is neither the end nor the beginning. ”

“ What we need is a real science of life, and this should involve the whole mental and psychical realm, and lead ultimately to a knowledge of the human soul.
Recognized facts in common experience only need be appealed to, though different values will have to be placed upon some of these facts as their importance is made plain.
We begin with the fact of consciousness. What it is, we do not know. What it means and does, we know very largely and broadly. In itself, it is purely passive. It never acts. Like space, it is the “all container.” It is the background, the theatre of our intelligence. ”

“ Its day of recognition is just now at the dawn, and the most pressing problems concerning the real nature, the spiritual possibilities, and the eternal destiny of the soul of man, are pressing and burning questions to-day.
That these problems do not wait solution by modern physical science and physio-psychology, but await only the understanding and acceptance of every earnest and intelligent student, is easily demonstrated. It challenges the world to-day, as it has not done before for many millenniums, and the issues are to be tried out to a scientific demonstration. ”

“ To one who for half a century has studied these personal and social problems, and witnessed the rise and fall of many of these cults, from the Fox Sisters and Spiritualism, to Braid and Hypnotism, while Priestcraft and Popery, like Tennyson’s brook, “go on forever,” it all seems pitiful that mankind must pay so dearly for freedom, enlightenment, and knowledge.
And yet, when the real teacher comes, the rabble so long exploited cry, “Away with him,” “Crucify him.” ”

“ It is an effort to enthrone Truth; to remove the barriers to the rights of conscience, the shackles of reason, private judgment and Individual 214 Responsibility, and to free the soul of man from all the fetters of ignorance, superstition, and fear, in order that he may be “first a man,” “then a Master,” and at length on a higher plane of being, something more than man has yet realized, or ever dreamed. ”

“ The great majority in all time, through ignorance or recklessness, seem to have misused them.
Hence sickness, disease, deformity, and degradation.
It is a wonderful thing—this Law of Normal Use—from which health, harmony, comfort, joy, growth, and development result, while misuse and abuse degrade and destroy.
Divinity seems to have put within the grasp of man’s Intelligence (if he chooses and wills) an almost infinite range in power, variety and application, of that subtle and basic Principle of affinity, balance and equilibrium, that unites the atoms in a molecule, or a chemical substance ”

“ It may theorize, but never dogmatize, and it must demonstrate at every step. Facts must not only support the theorem, but demonstrate the conclusions as inevitable, and the basis of all such actual demonstration must be a verifiable individual experience, with formulated laws and processes for its repetition, just as in physical science, in chemistry, and mathematics. Nothing less than this on any plane or in any department of investigation can enable the individual to declare “I Know.”
Demonstration is the sign manual of knowledge; Dogmatism the arrogance of ignorance. ”

“ The Brain is a center of consciousness with avenues of perception and impulse and departments that by aggregation, separation or association, enable the Individual Intelligence to determine the relation in time, or duration, force and orderly relation of perceptions, desires, motives, actions (or thoughts and feelings) as to sequence or results.
This whole conscious realm is the Mind. It is the inner chamber of the Soul. It is in no sense an entity. The actor, the real entity, is the Individual Intelligence. ”