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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1298
requirements of the rulers, and the observance of primitive social duties,
was about all there was to it.
But gradually there appears an awakening sense of responsibility
regarding a future state depending upon the present, in place of the return
to Life by Metempsychosis that had been the original future life. The idea
of and Inexorable Law of Karma crept into the field of religious thought,
coming doubtless from the teachers who dealt out the old truths in tiny
bits, easily assimilated by the people. Then came the talk of Samsara, or the
Cycle of Existences that was not a thing of joy, but an evil thing occurring to
the race, placed upon it in some mysterious way. Life began to be regarded
as “a barren vale between the peaks of two eternities” filled with pain, and
grief, and woe, and from which escape was most desirable. Thus entered
that sad, pessimistic minor note that has ever stayed with the Hindus, in
their philosophical and religious thought, and which was so different from
their former Paganism, which resembled the Greek conception of life and
existence—death and re-birth. Some strong teacher had directed the Hindu
face toward the Pessimistic side of the shield, and it was so fascinated and
horrified by the sight that it was unable to withdraw its eyes, and failed to
perceive the reverse side of Truth, which showed the aspect of Optimism.
Students have suspected that some foreign influence caused this sudden
change of the race-thought, but others have attributed it to some great
teacher unloosing some hitherto concealed fragment of the Secret Doctrine
of the Fathers, to a race not yet quite ready to receive it, nor to understand
it in its true relations.
It was not the Idea of Metempsychosis that so changed the race-nature
of these early people, who had always believed in Re-birth, but the undue
emphasis laid upon the Law of Karma, that oppressed them. Samsara was
pictured to them as a terrible cosmic mechanism, resulting from Ignorance
or Mistake of some kind on the part of The-Powers-That-Be, and into the
wheels of which the race was caught and entangled almost beyond the
possibility of escape. Particularly was this the case with the idea of the