The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909Besant, Annie
Religion
The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909
Besant, Annie
Theosophy; Theosophy -- Study and teaching
Let me pause a moment to say one word of explanation, to meet a
difficulty that may readily rise in the minds of the more scholarly
amongst you who have looked back to these past tales. You find the same
name appearing from time to time along the same tradition. That has ever
been so in the past. The name of the great teacher himself has been
taken up by his successors, who renewed his teaching and carried on the
tradition that he left; and so in the vast spaces of time that have
elapsed since that Hermes first appeared in the second root-race of the
Aryans, others took up the tradition, carried on the teaching, and the
name was ever repeated. It is the eastern way. No disciple dreams of
teaching there under his own name; it is under the name of his Master
that he gives his wisdom to the world; and that not to conceal, but
because it is held that to the teacher the credit belongs of that which
the pupil may be able to expound, and so, in humility, in veneration, in
gratitude to the mightiest, those who follow Him write under the name
that they worship, and so hand on His wisdom, although in generations
much later than Himself. It causes much of confusion, much of difficulty
when the people with the western historical sense go turning over these
ancient writings and applying their own canons of interpretation to
people who were ancient long before those canons were invented. What is
called the historical sense is a very different thing in the East from
that in the West. Historical sense here means a sequence of names, dates,
persons, and that is what is regarded as important; in the East it means
the God unfolding in the various types of humanity that may appear; and
that which they are interested in is not a special individual who has
written this, that, or the other, but the teaching, the tradition, handed
on from age to age, and ever marked out from the first Revealer, the name
of Him who gave the knowledge to mankind. I do not want to dispute which
is the better way. I only mark the difference that you may realise that
in the likeness of the name there is no attempt to deceive the reader,
but only to mark the line of the tradition.
In the second sub-race, then, appeared Hermes. Ages rolled on. The third
sub-race was to be born; the emigration to found that sub-race rolled
westwards into Persia. Once more the “Wisdom-Truth” led the emigration.
To that people he was known as Zarathustra, more often called among us
Zoroaster. Fourteen of those are known in the old story of Persia, but
the first, the eldest of them all, He alone was that one Supreme Teacher,
coming down to His disciples, building the policy of Persia, handing down
to those who came after Him the tradition that went by His name; and
every great high-priest of that religion worthy to bear the mantle of the
great One, he also is known in history as Zoroaster; and, as I have just
said, some fourteen of those are named.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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