Nations – Their Rise and Fall

This world is designed with many divisions by the Architect. There is a partition separating each division, and hovering over each there is a deva whose mission it is to instil into the minds of those devoted to Truth the consciousness of the spirit, that clarifying nectar which brings the properties of matter within the mind vehicle. This results in a composite unity of expression. Its manifestation is similar to brushing away ashes from the fire in order to allow the flame to spring up and blaze.

The earth is dear to these devic overlords of nature. They radiate their love to all living beings and growing things—to the flower as well as to the beast of the field. They desire that men shall know happiness, and that the lion and lamb shall become friends. It is these great beings, the “watchmen on the hills,” who inform the Yogis when one of the intermittent manifestations of God’s bounty is to be expected within their territory.

Nations are born, spring up, and die. Greece took two hundred and fifty years to attain to her supreme moment of culture—culture such as has not appeared since on this earth. Then the tide turned and the height of the next wave was not until the time of Constantine the Great.

When a nation seeks right direction from God, nature unfolds her bounty and man becomes great in thought and deed, for then beauty and truth are worshipped, and the devas smile.

When man assumes a one-pointed direction of mind, he separates himself from the debris and larva of discordant thinking and assumes the final essence of his true nature. It is, then, the part of the deva to vibrate these properties of mind stuff matter, so that the real finer and truer properties of mind are ensouled by the spirit which broods over the lower world. To the Yogi this one-pointedness is the emergence from darkness (ignorance) into a preparation to bring in the light and intelligence of the spirit. A hierarchal being of a devic nature watches over those minds which seek union with the spirit, and manifests in man’s higher self, but seldom penetrates into his objective lower nature.

There are devas who act as guardians of countries, nations, and peoples, and watch over their aspirations for right government. When crime and corruption creep in they attract elemental nature’s scourge: then famine, flood, and pestilence appear, and continue until man tries to think for himself and find out the truth. When man seeks to know the cause of crime and its punishment, he asks why “the rich man gains in a day what the steadfast poor man toils for over a long period of time,” and he learns why the “strong man’s arm becomes weak in battle.”

The criminal classes are similar to a pack of wolves entering a forbidden country, carrying destruction in their wake. These are souls incarnated from the animal world into ours through magic and misunderstanding of the laws of nature, and they prey upon all who oppose their activities. They are after loot and the gratification of their lower desires, at the expense of the labor and toil of honest men, who seek to provide better conditions for their children than those which their early environment had given them. These men are known to the initiated as the “freemen of the earth.” These freemen are seemingly in chains today. They are chained to the machine, to the pay check, and to the taskmasters above them. They are economic slaves, when all men should be free, and know God.

A great many professions are filled with these predatory animal souls. Among doctors and lawyers we find some who say that if disease and crime were prevented, they would starve. Oh, that Galen and Solon might reincarnate, in order to purify these two great professions! Our lawyers and our doctors should be in a position where their livelihood would be guaranteed by the State, so that their labor would be for the good of the community. For the sake of justice, and the health of the nations, doctors and lawyers should be paid according to their merit. So also with artists. Whistler once said: “Poor artists! In the strength of my youth, I was too poor to hire models and to pay for my materials! What wonderful things I could have painted then! Now I have plenty of this world’s goods, but I am too weak to work!” The ignorant knows not the powerful concentration that the great artists put in their work. Sargent, the painter, once said, turning to the thirty-two pictures in an exhibition: “Every brush stroke has cost me a drop of blood. I do not wish to paint any more pictures now, for I want to rest.”

Both Sargent and Orpen died of overwork and exhaustion, yet the mysterious energy of some criminals has equalled in destructiveness all that these great painters have done for the ennoblement of the human mind. I once asked a criminal why he carried on his profession and he said that he did not want to do it, but that something within him forced him to do so.

Often those engaged in international espionage enter it more for the sake of adventure than from a sense of loyalty and devotion to their country. They will tell you, “We like the game of diamond cut diamond, and steel cut steel.”

Like attracts like, and if man has hatred and malice in his heart towards his fellow men he attracts souls of the underworld, and ushers them out of that dark world into his own world of being. He thus gives them the opportunity to incarnate through his vehicle into his sphere of consciousness. This type of incarnation can also be brought about by the ignorant use of magic, and the result is always a destroyer. One never finds creative artists, craftsmen, or geniuses among them.

Observe that the followers of Mohammed pillaged Persia, they destroyed the beautiful works of the creative artists. Later they tried to perfect their own art by imitating the creative Persians, but imitation is not creation. This was again demonstrated when the attempt of Lord Leighton and Alma Tadema to imitate Greek art in England, with English models, failed.

When diseased atoms of these submerged souls permeate our earth, a militant force is engendered by their ideal that “might is right,” but when warlords are born, who seek to oppose civilization’s ideals of security, the closing chapters of a nation are being written. Such dictators are dethroned when Truth (intelligence) prevails. In China great warlords have sought to exterminate the castes of intelligence, but in the end intelligence always survived. A Chinese adept once told me that the warlords have often swept over his country, but that the caste of intelligence always won. Among Chinese adepts the military castes are looked upon with so much disdain that when a son enlists, his family hold a council and declare him dead to them forever.

We must not forget that man has two natures within him, the ‘white’ atom in the heart, and the ‘black’ atom at the base of the spine, and it depends upon the man’s aspirations as to which atom rules, the higher, or the lower self. By giving away to lust and the desires of the flesh the ‘black’ atom becomes powerful and seeks to overthrow the higher law within. In Yoga practice the student tries to balance the good and evil natures within him. This being done, he opens a path within himself to God Realization, and is able to distinguish between the true and the false—the good and the evil in man. He sees the ‘caste mark’ which every man wears upon his brow, and learns an occult law of which many possess the secret; that softness is greater than strength. This is taught by those initiated in the mysteries of life and death.

To seek knowledge is to illuminate the intelligence and to perfect the heart; it is to interest by the true, to move by the beautiful, and to persuade by the good. By his great devotion to nature, the Yogi perceives the light of Truth, and once having touched this divine flame, his whole being undergoes a change towards perfection. He becomes conscious of the essence of the world about him, so that his eyes perceive in all things the activity of the spirit. Henceforth he ennobles whatever he touches, for he sees in nature the perfection of the spirit—the handiwork of God. Illusion, which formerly surrounded him, disappears as he stands in the presence of “The Infinite—The Great Reality.” This is the goal of the freeman, for in truth and beauty is everything that he needs to know. Truth is like a flaming sword. If you oppose it, it cuts you. If you accept it, it is placed within your hand, and then begins the lesson of its use. While a nation makes use of the flaming sword of truth, it blazes forth as a meteor, and naught can stand against it. But when it sinks into a greedy despotism, balancing sordid benefit against universal rights, it shatters its pillars of protection and the end is delayed only until the universal law of karma is fulfilled.