The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul

CHAPTER IX

HERO WORSHIP AND FOLKLORE

The history of every people, of all time, and of every religion of which we have any record, reveals a similar origin, course, and destiny.

We of the present day have the advantage of these records upon which to institute comparisons, ascertain relations, and draw conclusions.

True, the partisans and postulants of all these religions at the present day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute comparisons and draw general conclusions.

Any attempt to persuade them of their error would be useless.

The essentials of their religion will not be called in question, but on the other hand, they will find that it is impossible to escape from the habitual and universal tendencies in which they are involved.

However veritable may have been the original revelations, the tendencies and habits of weaving around them the traditions and superstitions of folklore seem to have been inevitable and universal.

It is the province of Science to ascertain the facts in any given case, to institute comparisons, and to draw deductions and generalizations dispassionately and relentlessly.

It is thus that every tradition, superstition, creed, dogma, and revelation comes under review, and is placed on trial.

True science has no preconceived notion, no foregone conclusion. Each subject examined must tell its own story and in its own way, and stand or fall measured by intrinsic evidence and revealed fact.

To this tribunal every episode in the life of man and the history of the human race must at last come.

What are the facts? What do they reveal and signify?

To most religionists this method and aim of science seem as relentless and dogmatic as their own creed or dogmas.

It is a sifting and discriminative process, that, while relentless, is in the end eminently Just, and in the end will be found to be the revealer of all that is essential and true in religion itself.

In itself, science is not and never can be a religion.

It is a method only, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions in all their essentials, and places them in their true light.

Religion per se is an essential element in the nature and life of man and of the human race.

Science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in its search for truth.

Religion is vital, essential, basic. It is born of the relation which inheres in the kinship of the individual intelligence to the Universal Spirit of Nature and of all life.

Science is the intelligent and rational use of the mental powers of man.

Religion is intuitional, spiritual perception, involving the heart, the affections. Man aspires, worships, adores, and by the light of Faith or intuitive conviction, recognizes that which he cannot explain and cannot get rid of if he tries.

Science is the just weight and measure of things seen, and of the natural causes of phenomena.

Religion – the evidence of things unseen. Religion, as a fact, can never be explained away by Science.

The so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is materialism and nescience.

Superstition is the false interpretation of religion, and folklore and tradition are the accretions that gather around the foundations and original revelations of religion, and lead at last to obscuration and the need of a new revelation.

Each genuine new “revelation” is but the rehabilitation of the primeval religion in which accretions, false interpretations, and dogmatic assertions are cast aside.

Religion represents man’s endeavor to apprehend and interpret the unseen; that “something more” and “something beyond” the visible, the sensuous, and the tangible.

It is this conscious awareness of something more and something beyond the visible and the tangible, that furnishes man with a conception of God and of the human soul. This is a natural intuition, inseparable from the awareness of self. It lies at the foundation like man’s self-conscious identity, and can neither be explained nor explained away.

Here lies the root of all religions. The imagery of man’s imagination, in his effort to apprehend the unseen, and to formulate the unknown, gives rise to myths, allegory, tradition, folklore, and in the end, to superstition, creed, and dogma.

Then come priestcraft, oppression, persecution. The death of religion, the deification of the revealer or Avatar, and the substitution of the priesthood as of divine authority, in place of the revealer or the revelation.

Jove, Orpheus, Jehovah, and at last Jesus, are enthroned beyond the clouds, and priest or church assume the earthly prerogative, speak in their place, assume dogmatic authority, promise heaven and happiness for obedience, and dire penalties for disobedience, and resort to persecution to maintain their authority.

The traditions, mythologies, and folklore of all the past have thus arisen. The creeds and dogmas of the present constitute the effort of man to assume exclusive dominion, and to exercise divine authority over the masses of mankind. It is only another form of the ambition of individuals for wealth, fame or power, lifting them to a “class” above the toiling, suffering, and sorrowing masses.

There are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold, and exercise the spirit of the Master, and sink self in the service of man, and but for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by mankind long before.

The organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps mankind in the name and in the spirit of the Master.

This is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every Avatar, of Christna, and all the Buddhas, the Saviors and Redeemers of history.

The orthodox Christian of to-day, whether Catholic or Protestant, will be likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own religion. Whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own religion as nowhere else in history.

The histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace.

The beginnings, history, and progress of the Christian religion are comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily demonstrable.

Not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere in evidence.

This fact, however, by no means ends the controversy.

Traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity. Nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance, superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses.

Their adherents often believe and assume that they have discovered final truths, essential and unalterable verities. They undertake to support and to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a “thus sayeth the Lord.”

“There it is, down in black and white.” No further evidence is required.

To question such authority is to be damned. To believe, accept, and to conform, is to be saved.

Difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the original revelation. Hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare.

Notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of thorough investigation and of criticism.

The so-called “higher criticism” had already discovered errors in translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a “revised edition” of the sacred books, while under the name “Pragmatism,” certain metaphysical writers and accredited teachers have undertaken to determine essential meanings and interpretations, and to submit religious revelations, creeds, dogmas, and theologies to critical analysis.

How far this analysis has gone, and how little of the original interpretation actually remains, only they are aware who keep abreast of current thought, and who with open mind care more for the simple truth than for custom, tradition, theologies, and the folklore of the past.

Dogmatic theological authority is completely undermined, and its days are numbered.1

With the masses there is the habitual unrest, the feeling of uncertainty, the social upheaval, with the inevitable tendency to confusion and anarchy. A new religion is already in the formative stage, a new Avatar inevitable.

It is to be less a repudiation than a revision and rehabilitation of the old religion.

People everywhere are looking for the new revelation, for the coming of Christos, for the new Avatar, and few are aware that he is already here.

It should be borne strictly in mind that in every instance in the past, the advent of the Avatar has been unattended by signs and wonders, has come upon the stage of human action in the most commonplace way, and that myth, miracle, and folklore have followed as time went on.

To the people of his time Jesus was the “son of the carpenter,” whose family was obscure. He came “eating with publicans and sinners.”

Jesus, the demigod of to-day, was unknown and undreamed of in Galilee. Philo Judæus seems never to have heard of him.

What and who Jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable, and yet this gulf has already been bridged and passed.

The new Avatar has for its mission the rehabilitation of Jesus as he actually existed, divested of all myth and miracle, while the mission for which he came, and the doctrines for which he lived and died are to be completely restored to mankind in their purity.

The old Hindoos would call this transformation a “reincarnation of Vishnu,” a “new Avatar.”

It will mean Jesus the divine Man, the master, Christos, restored to the heart of Humanity from the mysticism and miracle of monks and theologies, from the superstitions and folklore of the multitude.

This means a reconstruction and a restatement of the religion of Jesus.

Jesus remaining what he actually was and is, it will be the province of Natural Science to explain and to demonstrate by natural and spiritual law, how, without mystery or miracle, Jesus became the Master Christos and so remains to-day.

Natural Science is not the invention of man, more than is the law of gravitation, the law of equilibrium, or the binomial theorem. Man may discover these laws from the phenomena of Nature, and demonstrate their existence and mode of operation like any others.

It is a question of dispassionate and intelligent apprehension and demonstration.

All actual progress of man up to the present time lies along these lines. Beyond this all is conjecture and guess-work. Natural Science, however, is far more than modern physical science so-called. It includes physical, mental, moral, and spiritual science.

Its methods everywhere and at all times are the same.

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.

It is impossible to make these radical distinctions too clear and specific.

When this method of Natural Science is applied to the investigation of religions, tradition is separated from fact, dogma from demonstration, miracle from natural law, mythology and folklore are found to be the fabric woven by the imagination of mankind around the receding revelations, deifying their authors, and mingling fact with fable, till the originals become unrecognizable.

Romance and superstition become substitutes for simple Faith, moral law, and social Justice.

To question or to repudiate the dogmas of superstition becomes a “mortal sin,” even when the most plain and specific moral or ethical obligations are entirely subverted or reversed by dogmatic authority.

It is thus that the original revelation is subverted and at last overthrown.

From first to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be “sacred and divine,” and to question it, “sacrilege” and “profanation of holy things.” Thus, that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children of men, becomes at last a “millstone about the neck,” a “burden grievous to be borne.”

Then comes protest, repudiation, reform, and usually a new revelation, embodying the primitive faith, and adapting it to modern times and conditions.

This is, in brief, the history of the Avatars of Ancient India, the Buddhas and the Zoroasters of later centuries; of the Greek Orpheus; of the legends and folklore clustering around many of the sages of Israel, and though in a less miraculous fashion, of Confucius and Laotse. But most patent of all does this principle apply to the founder of the Christian religion, because less ancient and more readily verifiable.

Though no new Avatar is yet recognized, the spirit of modern science does not hesitate to repudiate myth, miracle, and superstition, and to insist on fact and natural law.

CHAPTER X

CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE

The devout and conscientious believers in the Christian Religion of to-day often view with sorrow and alarm the encroachments of modern science.

Unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. Once admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of Religion would remain. To shift to other and more ancient faiths can never be considered at all, for the “higher criticism” and “pragmatism” have left them all in even a worse plight.

It seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its elimination from the life of man.

The intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form have already been considered.

This point is often overlooked or ignored by the Iconoclasts.

Their position would seem to be, “Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must.”

Neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense constructive, but more largely destructive. The really spiritual element in all religions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of.

Modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore and superstition to true religion. It should be recognized and granted once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science, has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of Religion.

It is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena.

Here and there an advanced scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, ignores tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the border of actual or implied nihilism.

This smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a “tramp” or a “vagabond,” like Paracelsus, “reading the leaves of the book of Nature,” laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yet knowing, and “becoming a light to man forever.”

The consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church regarding revelation and the basic dogmas of the Christian Religion, and which his “Holiness” of the Vatican designates as “Modernism,” reveal, not only the “signs of the times,” but show indisputably that modern education has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated the old restraints to free thought and modern progress.

Orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the chairs.

Bright young men and women, the advanced students of the schools of to-day, who are to become the leaders of thought and the teachers of to-morrow, find little restraint and no formative element in the creeds and dogmas that in the past have been so much in evidence, and so constraining. Intensity of feeling has given place to breadth and inclusiveness, and under the name of “Comparative Religions,” ancient faiths and modern, are classified, and studied like fossils in the different ages of the past.

The “crusader impulse” has rather settled down in each individual breast, as the master passion, to do, to dare, and to become something more and better than the individual, or than the past has hitherto known. Such a general period of intellectual activity, with so few restraints, history nowhere else records, and the world has never before known.

Here lie the elements, the impulses, and the formative stage of the new Avatar.

At this stage of our discussion it is of exceeding interest and importance to bear in mind one great fact. The average intelligent student of to-day may take this fact tentatively, reserving final judgment till accumulative evidence becomes satisfactory and conclusive.

No one who is dominated by shallow incredulity, and who attempts to close this door contemptuously, will ever arrive at the real truth. The judgment of such individuals is simply worthless, notwithstanding the smug conceit of their own opinions.

The important fact referred to, is the demonstrated existence, all through the ages, of the so-called Mysteries.

Their existence is beyond all question. What they concealed and taught is sometimes difficult to determine.

There were also the genuine and the spurious Mysteries, and a fair appreciation of their origin, purpose, methods, and genius, as illustrated by Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and nearly every great sage of antiquity, leaves no possible doubt that in these “Secret Orders” were preserved the loftiest and the most profound mental and spiritual achievements of all previous human history.

If there were no other evidence in existence at the present day except the traditions, landmarks, ritual, and Genius of Freemasonry, a careful and intelligent study of that Ancient Order would be sufficient.

Whether one Mason in a thousand to-day apprehends and realizes this fact, has nothing whatever to do with the real question. The evidence is there, and the indifference or superficial intelligence of numbers cannot alter it.

CHAPTER XI

CONCEPTIONS AND PORTENTS OF AN AVATAR

The conflict between Science and Religion has been thoroughly thrashed out during the last half century, and the “reign of law,” and orderly, and progressive evolution, have made for themselves a habitation and a name that nothing is likely to overthrow.

It is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate cause, not en bloc, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. Action and reaction are definite mathematical processes. The parallelogram of force tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new processes under universal law.

The “special creation” theory – everything made out of nothing by a personal God – is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word “coincidence,” as though it really explained anything.

“The rational order that pervades the universe,” as Prof. Huxley defined the concept and aim of scientific discovery, has steadily gained ascendancy, until it dominates and measures individual intelligence.

The criticism is still occasionally made that this means Pantheism, overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of the gods and the deification of the powers of Nature.

This was true in the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Hindoo mythologies. Back of the many, and beyond the transient and contending divinities, was the One, postulated, but unknown and changeless.

Every religion known to man, with the advancing civilization of a people, copied, modified, adopted, and adapted the mythology and folklore of some pre-existing religion and people. This is readily demonstrable with the Hebrew, Greek, and later Christian dispensations, notwithstanding the most strenuous and persistent determination to deny, disprove, and destroy the ancient records.

It is embodied in the etymology of the very names of heroes, gods, and demigods. A new language arising with any people de novo can nowhere be found.

Phonetics and picturegraphs, the various alphabets and glyphs, are mixed and modified, but never invented nor altogether changed.

Complicated as they may be, it is thus that philology, ethnology, theology, and anthropology constitute a consistent whole, the mythology and folklore of mankind. This reveals the practical unity and solidarity of the human race.

The tradition and prophecy among the ancient Hebrews of the coming of the Messiah, the portents that heralded, and the signs and wonders that preceded or accompanied his appearance, are merely translations or adaptations from previous eras, Buddhas, or Avatars.

Whether Christian or non-Christian, the object of the advent is always identical.

The light of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, or Advent of the God-man.

God incarnates himself as the son of Mary, and Jesus says, “I am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness.”

Christna says, “Though I am unborn, and my nature is eternal, and I am the Lord also of all creatures, yet taking control of my nature-form, I am born by my illusive power. For whenever piety decays, O son of Bharata, and impiety is in the ascendant, then I produce myself. For the protection of good men, for the destruction of evildoers, for the re-establishment of piety, I am born from age to age.” (Bhagavadgita.)

The historical Buddha taught that he was only one of a long series of Buddhas, who appear at intervals in the world, and who all teach the same system. After the death of each Buddha his religion flourishes for a time and then decays, till at last it is completely forgotten and wickedness and violence rule the earth. The names of twenty-four of these Buddhas who appeared previous to Gautama have been handed down to us, just as the “second coming of Christ” is believed in and referred to among the Christians.

Even the Mohammedan Koran refers to this succession of prophets and messengers of Allah. The same is true of the Parsis.

“I have said that I first of all chose Abad, and after him I sent thirteen prophets in succession, all called Abad. By these fourteen prophets the world enjoyed prosperity.”

“Tradition informs us that when these auspicious prophets and their successors behold evil to prevail among mankind, they invariably withdraw from among them – as they could not endure to behold or hear wickedness.”

This is precisely what happened to Egypt after the ambitious priesthood had gained the ascendency. The Master Builders retired.

Bonwick says (“Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought”): “What is commonly called the Christ idea of humanity, thus appears to have been the hope and consolation of the ancient Egyptians so many thousand years ago.”

That which thus appears and disappears, dies out and is born again, is the spiritual light in the soul of man.