A Guide to Yoga

2008-02-04T01:46:00.001-08:00

Observers, unconnected with Occultism, have noted certain laws which
seem to regulate the rise and fall of nations--the procession of ruling
races.

They do not understand the law of Metempsychosis that alone
gives the key to the problem, but nevertheless they have not failed to
record the existence of the laws themselves. In order to show that
these laws are recognized by persons who are not at all influenced by
the Occult Teachings, we take the liberty of quoting from Draper's
"History of the Intellectual Development of Europe."

Dr. Draper writes as follows: "We are, as we often say, the creatures
of circumstances. In that expression there is a higher philosophy than
might at first appear. From this more accurate point of view we should
therefore consider the course of these events, recognizing the
principle that the affairs of men pass forward in a determinate way,
expanding and unfolding themselves.

And hence we see that the things of
which we have spoken as if they were matters of choice, were in reality
forced upon their apparent authors by the necessity of the times. But
in truth they should be considered as the presentation of a certain
phase of life which nations in their onward course sooner or later
assume.

To the individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of
action, an appropriate gravity of demeanor, belonging to the mature
period of life, change from the wanton willfulness of youth, which may
be ushered in, or its beginnings marked by many accidental incidents;
in one perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of
fortune, in a third by ill-health.

We are correct enough in imputing to such trials the change of character;
but we never deceive ourselves by supposing that it would have failed to take
place had these incidents not occurred.

There runs an irresistible destiny in the midst of these
vicissitudes. There are analogies between the life of a nation, and
that of an individual, who, though he may be in one respect the maker
of his own fortunes, for happiness or for misery, for good or for evil,
though he remains here or goes there as his inclinations prompt, though
he does this or abstains from that as he chooses, is nevertheless held
fast by an inexorable fate--a fate which brought him into the world
involuntarily, so far as he was concerned, which presses him forward
through a definite career, the stages of which are absolutely
invariable,--infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, with all
their characteristic actions and passions,--and which removes him from
the scene at the appointed time, in most cases against his will.

So also is it with nations; the voluntary is only the outward semblance,
covering but hardly hiding the predetermined. Over the events of life
we may have control, but none whatever over the law of its progress.
There is a geometry that applies to nations an equation of their curve
of advance. That no mortal man can touch."

This remarkable passage, just quoted, shows how the close observers of
history note the rise and fall of the tides of human race progress,
although ignorant of the real underlying causing energy or force. A
study of the Occult Teachings alone gives one the hidden secret of
human actions and throws the bright light of Truth upon the dark
corners of phenomena.