ich ever
urge us on to greater heights. The law of Karma affirms the
relationship between cause and effect, and teaches that "as a man sows,
so shall he also reap"--and consequently, the better our thoughts and
actions now, the greater our advancement in the next life.

It is in the teachings of the divine Krishna that we find the original
source of the greater part of modern Theosophy. His precepts are full
of consolation for restless minds, and have the power to reconcile us
not only to death, but to life.

In the vast store-house of the world's legends there is none more
beautiful than that of the immaculate maiden Devaki, who in a divine
ecstasy, amid strains of celestial music, brought forth the child of
Mahadeva, Sun of Suns, in perfect serenity and bliss; while the story
of Krishna's life, his dangers and temptations, his virtues and his
beauty, his wisdom and his final supreme initiation, has provided the
Hindu world with conceptions of a grandeur, originality and depth
rarely met with elsewhere. To this well of wisdom came Plato and
Pythagoras, and drew from it the chief ingredients of their
philosophies; and here, too, we receive from the lips of Krishna,
thirty centuries before the birth of Christ, the first faint
intimations of the immortality of the soul.

He taught his disciples that man, living upon earth, is triple in
essence, possessing spirit, mind and body. When he succeeds in
harmonising the two first, he attains the state of _Sattva_, and
rejoices in wisdom and peace. When he succeeds in harmonising mind and
body only, he is in the state of _Raja_, which is unstable and
dangerous. When the body preponderates, he is in the state of _Tamas_,
"that bindeth by heedlessness, indolence and sloth." Man's lot depends
therefore on the correlation of these three states. When he dies in
the state of _Sattva_, his soul rises to regions of the utmost purity
and bliss, and comprehends all mysteries, in close communion with the
Most High. This is true immortality. But those who have not escaped
from _Raja_ and _Tamas_ must return to earth and reincarnate in mortal
bodies.

In later years Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice-Greatest One, further
developed these principles, adding to them the mystical treasures of
Egyptian wisdom. It has been said by Lactance that "Hermes, one knows
not how, succeeded in discovering nearly all the truth." During the
first few centuries of the Christian era his works e