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A Collection of Lectures on Theosophy and Archaic Religions, Delivered in India and Ceylon
A Collection of Lectures on Theosophy and Archaic Religions Delivered in India and Ceylon Author:Henry Steel Olcott General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Original Publisher: A. T. Rajier Subjects: Theosophy Religion / Theosophy Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial... more » access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE LIFE OF BUDDHA AND ITS LESSORS. Delivered at the Kanty Town Hall, Ceylon, on the llth June 1880, The thoughtful Student, in scanning the religions history of the human race has one fact continually forced upon his notice, viz., that there is an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, w6 find the saintlike man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death; and the victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to mediate with God f of the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile trial of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualized their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly incarnations and not mortal like other men. This process of enhemerization, as it is called, or the making of men " !/ into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful incidents, to fit it t...« less