Meaning of Existence. Pythagorean Hylozoics.

Chapter 1:
In Ancient Greece
My first touch with anything that could definitely be called Theosophy was in the year 504 b.c., when I had the wonderful honour and pleasure of visiting the great philosopher Pythagoras. I had taken birth in one of the families of the Eupatridæ at Athens—a family in fairly good circumstances and offering favourable opportunities for progress. This visit was the most important event in my youth, and it came about in this manner. A relation of mine offered to take me, along with a brother a year or two younger, for a voyage in a ship of which he was part owner. It was a trading voyage among the Greek islands and over to the Asiatic shore, and with the leisurely methods of those days it occupied nearly a year, during which we visited many places and saw not only much beautiful scenery but many marvellous temples adorned with exquisite sculpture.
Among other islands we called at Samos, and it was there that we found the great Pythagoras, who was then a man of advanced age and very near his death. Some historians have thought that this sage perished when his school at Krotona was wrecked by popular prejudice; others, recognizing that he survived that catastrophe, believe that he died much later at Metapontum. Neither of these ideas seems to be correct; when very old, he left his schools in Magna Græcia, and returned to his patrimony in Samos to end his days where he had begun them, and so it happened that we had this very great privilege of seeing him in the course of our voyage.
His principal disciple at that time was Kleineas (now the Master Djwal Kul); and Kleineas was exceedingly kind to us, and patiently answered all our eager questions, explaining to us the system of the Pythagorean philosophy. We were at once most strongly attracted towards the teaching expounded to us, and were anxious to join the school. Kleineas told us that a branch of it would presently be opened in Athens; and meantime he gave us much instruction in ethics, in the doctrine of reincarnation and the mystery of numbers. All too soon our vessel was ready for sea (it had fortunately required refitting) and we had regretfully to take leave of Pythagoras and Kleineas. To our great and awed delight, when we called to bid him adieu, the aged philosopher blessed us and said with marked emphasis: “πάλιν συναντήσομεθα—we shall meet again.” Within a year or two we heard of his death, and so we often wondered in what sense he could have meant those words; but when in this present incarnation I had for the first time the privilege of meeting the Master Kuthumi, He recalled to my memory that scene of long ago, and said: “Did I not tell you that we should meet again?”
Soon after the death of Pythagoras, Kleineas fulfilled his promise to come and establish a school of the philosophy in Athens, and naturally my brother and I were among his first pupils. Large numbers were attracted by his teaching, and the philosophy took a very high place in the thought of the time. Except for what was actually necessary for the management of the family estate, I devoted practically the whole of my time to the study and teaching of this philosophy, and indeed succeeded to the position of Kleineas when he passed away.
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Chapter IX
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Unexpected Development
It should be understood that in those days I possessed no clairvoyant faculty, nor had I ever regarded myself as at all sensitive. I remember that I had a conviction that a man must be born with some psychic powers and with a sensitive body before he could do anything in the way of that kind of development, so that I had never thought of progress of that sort as possible for me in this incarnation, but had some hope that if I worked as well as I knew how in this life I might be born next time with vehicles more suitable to that particular line of advancement.
One day, however, when the Master Kuthumi honoured me with a visit, He asked me whether I had ever attempted a certain kind of meditation connected with the development of the mysterious power called kundalini. I had of course heard of that power, but knew very little about it, and at any rate supposed it to be absolutely out of reach for Western people. However, He recommended me to make a few efforts along certain lines, which He pledged me not to divulge to anyone else except with His direct authorization, and told me that He would Himself watch over those efforts to see that no danger should ensue.
Naturally I took the hint, and worked away steadily, and I think I may say intensely, at that particular kind of meditation day after day. I must admit that it was very hard work and sometimes distinctly painful, but of course I persevered, and in due course began to achieve the results that I had been led to expect. Certain channels had to be opened and certain partitions broken down; I was told that forty days was a fair estimate of the average time required if the effort was really energetic and persevering. I worked at it for forty-two days, and seemed to myself to be on the brink of the final victory, when the Master Himself intervened and performed the final act of breaking through which completed the process, and enabled me thereafter to use astral sight while still retaining full consciousness in the physical body—which is equivalent to saying that the astral consciousness and memory became continuous whether the physical body was awake or asleep. I was given to understand that my own effort would have enabled me to break through in twenty-four hours longer, but that the Master interfered because He wished to employ me at once in a certain piece of work.
Psychic Training
It must not for a moment be supposed, however, that the attainment of this particular power was the end of the occult training. On the contrary, it proved to be only the beginning of a year of the hardest work that I have ever known. It will be understood that I lived there in the octagonal room by the river-side alone for many long hours every day, and practically secure from any interruption except at the meal-times which I have mentioned. Several Masters were so gracious as to visit me during that period and to offer me various hints; but it was the Master Djwal Kul who gave most of the necessary instruction. It may be that He was moved to this act of kindness because of my close association with Him in my last life, when I studied under Him in the Pythagorean school which He established in Athens, and even had the honour of managing it after His death. I know not how to thank Him for the enormous amount of care and trouble which He took in my psychic education; patiently and over and over again He would make a vivid thought-form, and say to me: “What do you see?” And when I described it to the best of my ability, would come again and again the comment: “No, no, you are not seeing true; you are not seeing all; dig deeper into yourself, use your mental vision as well as your astral; press just a little further, a little higher.”
This process often had to be many times repeated before my mentor was satisfied. The pupil has to be tested in all sorts of ways and under all conceivable conditions; indeed, towards the end of the tuition sportive nature-spirits are specially called in and ordered in every way possible to endeavour to confuse or mislead the seer. Unquestionably it is hard work, and the strain which it imposes is, I suppose, about as great as a human being can safely endure; but the result achieved is assuredly far more than worth while, for it leads directly up to the union of the lower and the higher self and produces an utter certainty of knowledge based upon experience which no future happenings can ever shake.
On the physical plane our great pandit Swami T. Subba Rao often did me the honour of driving over to the Headquarters in order to take part in the instruction and testing, and I feel that I can never be grateful enough for all the help that these two great people gave me at this critical stage of my life. When once the way has thus been opened there is no end to the possibility of unfoldment, and I think I may say without any fear of exaggeration that no day has passed in the forty-five years since then in which I have not learnt some new fact. The yoga of the Initiate consists, as does all other yoga, of a steady upward pressure towards union with the Divine at ever higher and higher levels; one has to work the consciousness steadily onward from sub-plane to sub-plane of the buddhic world and then afterwards through the nirvanic; and even beyond all that, other and uncounted worlds are still to be conquered, for the Power, the Wisdom and the Love of the Infinite are as some great mine of jewels, into which one may probe ever more and more deeply without exhausting its capacity; nay, rather, they constitute a shoreless sea into which our dewdrop slips and yet is not lost therein, but feels rather as though it had absorbed the whole ocean into itself.
Thus would I live—yet now
Not I, but He
In all His Power and Love
Henceforth alive in me.
Here then I must end this fragment of autobiography, for this is “How Theosophy came to me”—first through our great founder Madame Blavatsky on the physical plane, and then more fully and on the higher levels through other members of the Great White Brotherhood to which she introduced me. May all my brethren find in Theosophy the peace and happiness which I have found!
Peace to all Beings