part in the bringing down of the darkness.

One element, however, perhaps less often alluded to, may be mentioned here. Pleasure and pain, connected with the emotions and passions, belong to the astral world and are experienced through the astral body ; conse- quently a very large amount of karma belongs,
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by its very nature, to the astral plane, and is there exhausted. Bad karma can, therefore, be largely worked out by suffering, apart from events ; the suffering v^hich normally accom- panies misfortunes, disasters of every description on the physical plane, has its habitat on the astral, and we suffer on the astral while we are passing through our troubles on the physical. Now this astral suffering can be disjoined from the physical events with which it is normally associated, and can be passed through apart from those events. In the quickening of karma this result is largely brought about, and some of the darkness experienced by the aspirant is due to this cause ; he is working out his bad karma by enduring the suffering that belongs to events not yet ripe for manifestation on the physical plane ; and if he observes his own life, he will find that, later on, he passes through events that would ordinarily be regarded as of the most distressing character with a calmness and indifference that surprise himself. The fact is that he has already borne the suffering nor- mally attached to them, and he meets on the physical plane the mere shells and semblances, the empty forms, which are all that remain when the astral consciousness that normally vivifies these forms has been withdrawn. (Stu-
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124 The Spiritual Life.
dents may be remlndeci - though the subject is too large a one to be entered on here - that man's consciousness is astral, at the present stage of evolution.) The aspirant may therefore comfort himself when an apparently causeless gloom descends upon him with the knowledge that he is exhausting some of his karmic habili- ties, and that the payment of karmic debts is never demanded twice.
Secondly, the aspirant is seeking to purify and ultimately to destroy the personality. Pleasures increase and intensify the life of the personality, while pains diminish it. His own deliberate will has offered the personality as a sacrifice to the Lord of the Burning-ground, and if the sacrifice be accepted, the flame falls and devours it. What cause for sorrow is here ? But the fire, as it burns up the dross of personality, setting free the pure gold of the life, must needs bring keen suffering to the life which is thus rapidly purged from elements that have for millenniums formed part of its being, mingling with all its activities. And here comes in the peril which makes spiritual darkness so fatal. Can the aspirant hold out while the dark fire burns up that which seems to be his very life ? Can he bear the strain, live through the dark- ness, and be found, when it lifts, still at his
Spiritual Darkness. 125
post, weary and worn-out, perchance, but there ? U he can, then a great peace will succeed the darkness, and in the peace he shall hear the song of life. New strength will flow in upon him, and he will be conscious of a deeper vision, of a firmer grasp on truth ; the darkness will prove but the mother of light, and he will have learned in it priceless lessons that will stand him in good stead in future trials. Alas ! but too often courage breaks and endurance fails, and the darkness proves to be the darkness of a temporary tomb, and perhaps for the re- mainder of the incarnation, brings " ruin to many a noble soul that has not yet acquired strength enough to endure.
Thirdly, the darkness is often a glamour thrown over the aspirant by the destructive forces that play in the world. To the process of evolution destruction is as necessary as con- struction, disintegration as integration. That which apparently delays really strengthens, as death is but an aspect of birth. The occultist knows that every force in nature represents the working of an invisible Intelligence, and that this is as true of the destructive as of the con- structive forces. And he knows that the destructive Intelligences - the Dark Powers, as they are often called - set themselves to beguile,
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entrap, and bewilder the aspirant the moment he has made sufficient progress beyond ordinary humanity to draw their attention, and render himself worthy of attack. Endeavouring to delay the higher evolution and to prolong the sovereignty of matter, they regard as their natural enemy anyone who steps out of the normal path and seeks to lead the spiritual life. These are the "powers of nature," so often mentioned in mystic books, who strive to hold back the aspiring soul. Their most favourite device of all, perhaps, is to cause discourage- ment and, if possible, to drive to despair, by enveloping the soul in darkness, and by making him feel forsaken and alone. Theirs the touch which gives the peculiar poignancy to the isola- tion ; the thoughts that whisper of despair are but the echoes of their mockery. As progress is made on the Path, all the powers of nature must gradually be faced and conquered, and the facing and the conquering must be done alone. Alone ? ah ! not alone in reality ; what shall separate us from the One Life which is our very Self, or from the love of the Masters who watch every step of the combatant ? but alone so far as the intellect is concerned, which feels the " 1 " as standing unaided and forlorn.
When we study the life of the accepted
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disciple, we find at work in it the causes which we have seen in the life of the aspirant, but a new cause also arises, which, as he advances, ever plays a more and more promment part in his experience. As the shackles of his own karma fall off him, he becomes free to bear part of ** the heavy karma of the world," and he also begins to face the greater destructive forces for the world's sake, standing between them and humanity and drawing on to himself as much as is practicable of their energies. The sin and the sorrow of the world, its pathetic ignorance, press upon him, and until he reaches the strong peace which has its sure root in perfect know- ledge, he cannot escape, from time to time, the gloom which comes down upon him, as though the whole world's sorrow crushed his heart, and made it bleed at every pore with " help- less pity " for the blindness that breeds misery and the ignorance which is sin. Nor dare he strive to shake off this feeling of sorrow, since, by virtue of the more and more realised unity of his life with that of all men, his sorrow is theirs, and he shares by it in their karma and quickens their evolution. But he gradually learns to bear it with a peaceful satisfaction, deepening into a sense of profound inner joy, until the crushing power of it diminishes and
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finally disappears, and only an all-abounding compassion remains, so that the very sorrow becomes dearer than all that the world calls joy, and the gloom is but a tender twilight, fairer and sweeter than the brilliance of the noonday sun.
Sharper and keener is the suffering that he faces when he " turns his back on the light and goes down alone into the darkness to meet and overcome the Powers of Evil." This is the work of the world's Saviours, and the hour comes for the disciple when this solemn and glorious duty devolves on him. He is trained for its more arduous struggles by gradually learning to draw into himself inharmonious and disruptive forces, so that they exhaust themselves in him, often tearing and rending him in the process, and are then sent forth, harmonised and rhythmical, forces for building up instead of forces that destroy. Disciples are the crucibles of nature, wherein compounds that are mis- chievous are dissociated, and are recombined into compounds that promote the general good. As the seething compounds break up with explosive violence, the sensitive human crucible quivers under the terrible strain, and little wonder that, at times, it breaks, unable to endure. By such discipline, long-continued, the disciple
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strengthens his power, and becomes fit to bear heavier burdens, fit to bear the gloom of the awful darkness In which he feels himself forsaken of God and man, in which he seems flung to the Dark Powers that they may work their will upon him, in which life is only torture, and the anodyne of loss of consciousness is craved. Then comes the subtle alluring temptation : " come down from the cross " ; and he knows that nothing holds him stretched thereon save the nails of his own fixed purpose and indomi- table will ; at any moment he can bid the torment cease, if he be willing to escape at the cost of the world he has sacrificed himself to help. If he escape, the world must suffer; if he can bear the agony, the burden of humanity is a little lifted. " He saved others ; himself he cannot save." The gibe of the unbeliever is the life-law of the Christ.
But at last, even this hope that was sustaining his fortitude is rent away from him, and the darkness of despair enfolds him, whispering that all the anguish is in vain, that he is beaten, overpowered, and all his hoped-for service to the world is but the " baseless vision of a dream." Never again shall he serve his Master in joyful obedience; never again shall weary souls be gladdened by the light he bears; he
130 The Spiritual Life.
has taught others to tread the Path, but has himself fallen from it ; he has preached on everlasting love, and behold ! love itself has abandoned him and leaves him to smk into the abyss. Can he hold out through this? can he still bless the good, while evil triumphs over him ? can he be content to perish, if that be his karma ? can he still rejoice that the world shall be saved though he bear no part in the saving, and joy that love shall triumph though he be outcast from its embrace ? If he cannot, then the darkness has stifled him, and the world has for a while lost a helper. If he can - then, with that uttermost surrender of the separated self, the darkness lifts ; the eternal Self wells up within him ; the Face of his Master shines out and he knows that He has been there all the time; in a moment of clear spiritual vision, he sees through the rent veil the Holy of Holies, where abides " The Heart of Silence, the Hidden God," and the pinions of the white peace enfold him. Then brief rest in the calm stillness of the silent sealed cave; the coming forth into a new and larger life, with deeper wisdom, firmer faith, stronger love; the greater power to serve humanity, the strength to endure still heavier strain. Above all he has learned something of the power of illusion, has caught a
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glimpse of the nature of Maya, and has that to help him in all future darkness, the realised knowledge that it cannot wreck unless he him- self yields to its delusive force. Such is the priceless fruit of spiritual darkness, and by such strain and such struggle the man evolves the God.
The Meaning and the Method of the Spiritual Life.
An jirticle in the " Theosophical Review," in January, 1906.
f N considering the meaning and the method of *■ the spiritual life, it is well to begin by defining the meaning of the term *' spiritual," for on that there exists a good deal of uncer- tainty among religious people. We constantly hear people speaking of " spirit " and " soul " as though they were interchangeable terms. Man has " a body and soul," or " a body and spirit," they say, as though the two words " spirit " and " soul " had no definite and distinct meaning ; and naturally if the words " spirit " and " soul " are not clearly understood, the term " spiritual life " must necessarily remain confused. But the Theosophist, in dealing with man, divides him in a definite and scientific way both as regards his consciousness and as regards the vehicles through which that consciousness manifests, and he restricts the use of the word *' spirit " to that Divine in man that manifests on the highest planes of the universe, and that is distinguished by its consciousness of unity.
Its Meaning and Method. 133
Unity is the keynote of spirit, for below the spiritual realm all is division. When we pass from the spiritual into the mtellectual we at once find ourselves in the midst of separation.
Dealing with our own intellectual nature, to which the word " soul " ought to be restricted, we at once notice that it is, as is often said, the very principle of separateness. In the growth of our intellectual nature we become more and more conscious of the separateness of the "I. It is this which is sometimes called the " I-ness " in man. It is this which gives rise to all our ideas as to separate existence, separate property, separate gains and losses ; it is just as much a part of the man as spirit, only a different part, and it is the very antithesis of the spiritual nature. For where the intellect sees "I" and " mine " the spirit sees unity, non- separateness ; where the intellect strives to develop itself and assert itself as separate, the spirit sees itself in all things and regards all forms as equally its own.
It is on the spiritual nature that turn all the great mysteries of the religions of the world, for it is a mystery to the ordinary man, this depth of unity in the very centre of his being, which regards all around it as part of itself, and thinks of nothing as separately its own.
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That which is called in the Christian religion the "'Atonement" belongs entirely to the spiritual nature, and can never be intelhgible so long as the man thmks of himself as a separate intellect, an mtelligence apart from others. For the very essence of the Atone- ment lies in the fact that the spiritual nature, being everywhere one, can pour itself out mto one form or another ; it is because this fact of the spiritual nature has not been understood, and only the separation of the intellect has been seen, that men, in dealing with that great spiritual doctrine, changed it into a legal sub- stitution of one individual for other individuals, instead of recognising that the Atonement is wrought by the all-pervading spirit, which, by identity of nature, can pour itself into any form at will.
Hence we are to think of the spirit as that part of man's nature in which the sense of unity resides, the part in which primarily he is one with God, and secondarily one with all that lives throughout the universe. A very old Upanishat begins with the statement that all this world is God-inveiled, and going on then to speak of the man who knows that vast, per- vading, all-embracing unity, it bursts into a cry of exultation : " What then becomes of sorrow,
Its Meaning and Method. 135
what then becomes of delusion, for him who has known the unity ? " That sense of a one- ness at the heart of things is the testimony of the spiritual consciousness, and only as that is realised is it possible that the spiritual life shall manifest. The technical names - by which we, as Theosophists, mark out the spirit - matter not at all. They are drawn from the Samskrit, which for millennia has been in the habit of having definite names for every stage of human and other consciousness ; but this one mark of unity is the one on which we may rest as the sign of the spiritual nature. And so again it is written in an old Eastern book, that " the man who sees the One Self in everything, and all things in the Self, he seeth, verily, he seeth." And all else is blindness. The sense of separa- tion, while necessary for evolution is fundament- ally a mistake. The separateness is only like the branch that grows out of a trunk, and the unity of the life of the tree passes into every branch and makes them all a one-ness ; and it is the consciousness of that one-ness which is the consciousness of the spirit.
Now in Christendom the sense of one-ness has been personified in the Christ ; the first stage - where there is still the Christ and the Father - is where the walls Eire blended, " not
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my will but thine be done " ; the second stage is where the sense of unity is felt : "I and my Father are one." In that manifestation of the spiritual life we have the ideal which underlies the deepest inspiration of the Christian sacred writings, and it is only as " the Christ is born in man," to use the Christian symbol, that the truly spiritual life begins. This is very strongly pointed out in some of the Epistles. S. Paul, writing to Christians and not to the profane or heathen - to those who have been baptised, who are recognised members of the Church, in a day when membership was more difficult to gain than it is in these later times - says to them : "Ye are not spiritual : ye are carnal." And the reason he gives for regarding them as carnal and not spiritual is : "I hear that there be divisions among you " ; for where the spiritual life is dominant, harmony, and not division is to be found. And the second great stage of the spiritual life is also marked out in the Christian scriptures, as in all the other great world-scrip- tures, when it is said that, when the end cometh, all that has been gathered up in the Christ, the Son, is gathered up yet further into the Father, and " God shall be all in all." Even that partial separation of Son and Father vanishes, and the unity is supreme. So that whether we
Its Meaning and Method. 137
read the Upanishats, the ^hagavad Gila, or the Christian ^ea; 'Testament, we find our- selves in exactly the same atmosphere as regards the meaning, the nature of the spiritual life ; it is that which knows the one-ness, that in which unity IS complete.
Now this is possible for men, despite all the separation of the intellect and of the various bodies which bar us out the one from the other, because in the heart of our nature we are Divine. That is the great reality on which all the beauty and power of human life depend. And it is no small thing whether, in the ordinary thought of a people, they rest upon the idea that they are Divine, or have been deluded into the idea that they are by nature sinful, miserable and degraded. Nothing is so fatal to progress, nothing so discouraging to the growth of the inner nature, as the continual repetition of that which is not true : that man fundamentally and essentially is wicked, instead of being Divine. It is a poison at the very heart of his life ; it stamps him with a brand which it is hard indeed for him to throw off ; and if we want to win even the lowest and most degraded to a sense of inner dignity, which will enable them to climb out of the mud in which they are plunged up to the dignity of a Divine human nature, we
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must never hesitate to preach to them their essential Divinity, and that in the heart of them they are righteous and not foul. For it is just in proportion as we do that, that there will be within them the faint stirrings of the spirit, so overlaid that they are not conscious of it in their ordinary life ; and if there is one duty of the preacher of religion more vital than another, it is that all who hear him shall feel within them- selves the stirring of the Divine.
Looking thus at every man as Divine at heart, we begin to ask: If that be the meaning of spirit and spiritual life, what is the method for its unfolding ? The first step is that which has just been mentioned, to get people to believe in it, to throw aside all that has been said about the heart of man being " desperately wicked ; " to throw aside all that is said about original sin. There is no original sin save ignorance, and into that we are all born, and we have slowly to grow out of it by experience, which gives us wisdom. That is the starting point, as the conscious sense of unity is the crown. And the method of spiritual life is that which enables the life to show itself forth in reality as it ever is in essence. The inner Divinity of man, that is the inspiring thought which we want to spread through all the Churches of the West, which
Its Meaning and Method. 139
too long have been clouded by a doctrine exactly the reverse. When man once believes himself Divine, he will seek to justify his inner nature.
Now the method of the spiritual life in the fullest sense cannot, 1 frankly admit, be applied to the least developed amongst us ; for them the very first lesson is that ancient lesson: "Cease to do evil." in one of my favourite Upanishats, when it speaks of the steps whereby a man may search after and find the Self, the God within him, the first step, it is said, is to " cease to do evil." That is the first step towards the spiritual hfe, the foundation which a man must lay. The second step is active: to do the right. These are two commonplaces which we hear on every side, but they are no less true because common- place, and they are necessary everywhere and must be repeated until the evil is forsaken and the good embraced. Without the accomplish- ment of these, the spiritual life cannot be begun. And then, as to the later steps, it is written that no man who is slothful, no man who is un- intelligent, no man who is lacking in devotion, can find the Self. And again it is said that : " The Self is not found by knowledge nor by devotion, but by knowledge wedded to devo- tion." These are the two wings that lift the man up into the spiritual world.
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To fill up these broad outlines which are set to guide us to the narrow ancient Path, we may find a mass of details in the various scriptures of the world, but what is specially needed just now, is the way in which people living in the world, bound by domestic ties, and ties of occupation of every sort, how these people may have a method by which the spiritual life may be gained, by which progress in real spirituahty may be secured. It is true that in all the different religions of the world there has been a certain inclination to draw a line of division between the life of the world and the life of the spirit ; that line of division, which is real, is, however, very often misunderstood and mis- represented, and is thought to consist in circum- stance, whereas it consists in attitude - a profound difference, and one of the most vital import to us. Owing to the mistake that it is a difference of circumstances which makes the life of the world and the life of the spirit, men and women in all ages have left the world in order to find the Divine. They have gone out into desert and jungle and cave, into mountain and solitary plain, imagining that by giving up what they called " the world," the life of the spirit might be secured. And yet if God be all-pervading and everywhere. He must be in the market-
Its Meaning and Method. 141
place as much as in the desert, in the house of commerce as much as in the jungle, in the law- court as much as in the solitary mountain, in the haunts of men as well as in the lonely places. And although it be true that the weaker souls can more easily sense the all-pervading life where the jangle of humanity is not around them, that is a sign of weakness and not a sign of spirituality. It is not the strong, the heroic, the warrior, who asks for solitude in his seeking for the spiritual life.
Yet in the many lives that men lead in their slow climbing to perfection the hfe of the solitary has its place, and often a man or woman for a life will go aside into some lonely place and dwell there solitary. But that is never the last and crowning life, it is never the life in which the Christ walks the earth. Such a lite is sometimes led for preparation, for the breaking off of ties which the man is not strong enough otherwise to break. He runs away because he cannot battle, he evades because he cannot face. And in the days of the weakness of the man, of his childhood, that is often a wise policy ; and for any one over whom temptations have still strong power it is good advice to avoid them. But the true hero of the spiritual life avoids no place and shuns no person ; he is not afraid of
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polluting his garments, for he has woven them of stuff that cannot be soiled. In the earlier days sometimes flight is wise, but it should be recognised as what it is - weakness, and not strength. And those who live the solitary life are men who will return again to lead the life of the world, and having learned detachment m the solitary places will keep that power of de- tachment when they return to the ordinary life of men. Liberation, the freeing of the spirit, that conscious life of union with God which is the mark of the man become Divine, that last conquest is won m the world, it is not won in the jungle and the desert.
in this world the spiritual life is gradually to be won, and by means of this world the lessons of the spirit are to be learned - but on one con- dition. This condition embraces two stages : first, the man does all that ought to be done because it is duty. He recognises, as the spiritual life is dawning in him, that all his actions are to be performed, not because he wants them to bring him some particular result, but because it is his duty to perform them - easily said, but how hard to accomplish ! The man need change nothing in his life to become a spiritual man, but he must change his attitude to life ; he must cease to ask anything from it ;
Its Meanin:^ and Method. 143
he must give to it everything he does, because it is his duty. Now that conception of life is the first great step towards the recognition of the unity. If there be only one great life, if each of us is only an expression of that life, then all our activity is simply the working of that Life within us, and the results of that working are reaped by the common Life and not by the separated self. This is what is meant by the ancient phrase : " give up working for fruit " - the fruit is the ordinary result of action. This advice is only for those who will to lead the spiritual life, for it is not well for people to give up working for the fruit of action until the more potent motive has arisen within them, that spurs them into activity without the prize coming to the personal self. Activity we must have at all hazards ; it is the way of evolu- tion. Without activity the man does not evolve ; without effort and struggle he floats in one of the backwaters of life, and makes no progress along the river. Activity is the law of progress ; as a man exercises- himself, new life flows into him, and for that reason it is written that the slothful man may never find the Self. The slothful, the inactive man has not even begun to turn his face to the spiritual life. The motive for action for the ordinary man is quite properly
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the enjoyment of the fruit. This is God's way of leading the world along the path of evolu- tion. He puts prizes before men. They strive after the prizes, and as they strive they develop their powers. And when they seize the prize, it crumbles to pieces in their hands - always. If we look at human life, we see how con- tinually this is repeated. A man desires money ; he gains it, millions are his ; and in the midst of his millions a deadly discontent invades him, and a weariness of the wealth that he is not able to use. A man strives for fame and wins it ; and then he calls it : "A voice going by, to be lost on an endless sea." He strives for power, and when he has striven for it all his life and holds it, power palls upon him, and the wearied statesman throws down office, weary and disappointed. The same sequence is ever repeated. These are the toys by holding out which the Father of all induces His children to exert themselves, and He Himself hides within the toy in order to win them ; for there is no beauty and no attraction anywhere save the life of God. But when the toy is grasped the life leaves it, and it crumbles to pieces in the hand, and the man is disappointed. For the value lay in the struggle and not in the possession, in the putting forth of powers to obtain, and not in the
Its Meaning and Method. 145
idleness thai wails on victory. And so man evolves, and until these delights have lost their power to attract, il is well that they shall continue to nerve men to effort and struggle. But when the spirit begins to stir and to seek its own manifestation, then the prizes lose their attractive power, and the man sees duty as motive instead of fruit. And then he works for duty's sake, as part of the One Great Life, and he works with all the energy of the man who works for fruit, perhaps even with more. The man who can work unwearying at some great scheme for human good and then, after years of labour, see the whole of it crumbling to pieces before him, and remain content, that man has gone far along the road of the spiritual life. Does it seem impossible ? No. Not when we understand the Life, and have felt the Unity ; for in that consciousness no effort for human good is wasted, no work for human good fails of its perfect end. The form matters nothing ; a form in which the work is embodied may crumble, but the life remains.
And in order to make it very clear that such a motive may animate men even outside the spiritual life, we may consider how sometimes in some great campaign of battle it is realised that success and failure are words that change
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iheir meaning, when a vast host struggles for a single end. Sometimes a small band of soldiers will be sent to achieve a hopeless, an impossible task. Sometimes to a commanding officer may come an order which he knows it impossible to obey: "Carry such-and-such a place" - perhaps a hillside, bristling with cannon, and he knows that before he can gain the top of that hill his regiment will be decimated, and, if he presses on, annihilated. Does it make any difference to the loyal soldier who trusts his general and leads his men ? No. The man does not hesitate when the impossible task is put before him ; he regards it only as a proof of the confidence of his commander, that he knows him strong enough to fight and inevitably fail. And after the last man dies, and only the corpses remain, have they failed ? It looks so to those who have only seen that little part of the struggle ; but while they held the attention of the enemy, other movements had been made unnoticed which rendered victory secure, and when a grateful nation raises the monument of thanks to those who have conquered, the names of those who have failed in order to make the victory of their comrades possible will hold a place of honour in the roll of glory, and of the nation's gratitude. And so with the spiritual
Its Meaning and Method. 147
man. He knows ihe plan cannot fail. Me knows the combat must in the end be crowned with victory, and what matters it to him, who has known the One-ness, that his little part is stamped by the world as failure, when it has made possible the victory of the great plan for human redemption, which is the real end for which he worked ? He was not working to make success here, to found some great institution there, he was working for the redemption of humanity. And his part of the work may have its form shattered ; it matters not, the life advances and succeeds.
That is what is meant by working for duty. It makes all life comparatively easy. It makes it calm, strong, impartial, and undaunted ; for the man does not cling to anything he does. When he has done it, he has no more concern with it. Let it go for success or failure as the world counts them, for he knows the Life within is ever going onwards to its goal. And it is the secret of peace in work, because thdse who work for success are always troubled, always anxious, always counting their forces, reckoning their chances and possibilities ; but the man who cares nothing for success but only for duty, he works with the strength of divinity, and his aim is always sure.
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That is the first great step, and in order to be able to take it there is one secret that we must remember: we must do everything as though the Great Power were doing it through us. That is the secret of what is called "inaction in the midst of action." If a man of the world would become truly spiritual, that is the thought that he must put behind all his work. The counsel, the judge, the solicitor, what must be the motive m each man's heart if m these ordinary affairs of life he would learn the secret of the spirit ? He must regard him- self simply as an incarnation of Divine Justice. " What," a man says, " in the midst of law as we know it ? " Yes, even there, imperfect as it is, full of wrongs as it may be, it is the Justice of God striving to make itself supreme on earth ; and the man who would be a spiritual man in the profession of the law must think of himself as an incarnation of the Divine Justice, and always have at the heart of his thought : " I am the Divine hand of Justice in the world, and as that I follow law." And so in all else. Take Commerce. Commerce is one of the ways by which the world lives — a part of the Divine activity. The man m Com- merce must think of himself as part of that circulating stream of life by which nations are
Its Meaning and Method. )49
drawn together. Fie is the Divine Merchant in the world, and in him Divine activity must find hands and feet. And all who take part in the ruhng and guidance of the nation, they also are representatives of the Divine Lawgiver, and only do their work aright as they realise that they incarnate His life in that aspect towards His world. I know how strange this sounds when we think of the strife of parties, and of the pettniess of politicians ; but the degradation of man does not touch the reality of the Divine Presence, and in every ruler, or fragment of a ruler, the Divine Lawgiver is seeking to incar- nate Himself in order that the nation may have a national life, noble, happy, and pure. And if only a few men in every walk of life strove thus to lead the spiritual life ; if, casting aside all fruits of individual action, they thought of themselves as only incarnations of the many aspects of the Divine activity in the world, how then would the life of the world be made beautiful and sublime !
And so in the life of the home. The head of the household, the husband, incarnates God in his relation of supporter and helper of the life of His universe. So much has this been seen in older days, that the Logos of the universe, God manifest, is said in one old
1 50 The Spiritual Life.
Hindu book to be the Great Householder. And so should every husband think of himself as incarnating the Divine Householder, whose wife and children exist not for his comfort or delight, but in order that he may show out the Divine as perfect man, as husband and father. And so also the wife and mother should think of herself as the incarnation of the other side of Nature, the side of matter, the nourisher, and show out the ceaseless providing of Nature for all her children's needs. As the great Father and Mother of all protect and nourish their world, so are the parents to the children in the home where the spiritual life is beginning to grow. Thus might all life be made fair ; and every man and woman who begins to show the spiritual life becomes a benediction in the home and in the world.
The second great step that men may take, when duty is done for duty's sake, is that which adds joy to duty — the fulfilment of the Law of Sacrifice ; that noblest, highest, view of life, which sees one's self not as the Divine Life merely m activity in the world, but as the Divine Life that sacrifices Itself that all may live. For it is written that the dawn of the universe is an act of sacrifice, and the support of the universe is the continual sacrifice of the
Its Meaning and Method. 151
all-pervading Spirit that animates the whole. And when that mighty sacrifice is realised as the life of the universe, what joy more full and passionate than to throw oneself into the sacri- fice and have a share in it, however small, to be part of the sacrificial life by which the worlds evolve. Well might it be said by those who see life, and realise what it means : *' Where, then, is sorrow, where, then, delusion, when once the Onc-ness has been seen ? " That is the secret of the joy of the spiritual man. Losing everything outside, he wins everything within.
I have often said, and it remains true ever, that while the life of the form consists in taking, the life of the spirit consists in giving, and it is that which made the Christ, as the type of the Spiritual Giver, declare : " It is more blessed to give than to receive." For, truly, those who know the joy of giving have no hankerings after the joy of receiving ; they know the upwelling spring of joy unfailing that arises within the heart as the Life pours out. For if the Divine Life could flow into us and we keep it within ourselves, it would become even as the mountain-stream becomes if it be caught in some place whence it may not issue, and gradually grows stagnant, sluggish, dead ; but the life
152 The Spiritual Life.
through which the Divine Life pours unceasing knows no stagnation and no weariness, and the more it outpours the more it receives. Let us not, then, be afraid to give. The more we give the fuller shall be our life. Let us not be deluded by the world of separateness, where everything grows less as we give it. If 1 had gold my store would lessen with every coin that 1 gave away ; but that is not so with the things of the spirit ; the more we give, the more we have ; each act of gift makes us a larger reservoir. Thus we need have no fear of be- coming empty, dry, exhausted ; for all life is behind us, and its springs are one with us ; once we know the life is not ours, once we realise that we are part of a mighty unity, then comes the real joy of living, then the true blessedness of the life that knows its own eternity. All the small pleasures of the world which once were so attractive fade away in the glory of the true living, and we know that those great words are true : " He who loseth his life shall find it unto life eternal."
Theosophy and Ethics.
An Address iiiven at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893.
T N the part of the Syllabus that we are con- * siderlng this afternoon, we have to conclude the discussion opened by our Indian brother, tracing on from step to step the meaning of Altruism, the growth of morality, the sanction, the motive of ethics, and the identity of moral teaching in every great religion in the world. That we have chosen as a final presentment in this Congress of our philosophy, for all philosophy has its right ending in ethics and in conduct, which is of the most vital importance to men and women in their daily life.
First of all, then, we have the word Altruism, " incumbent," it is said, " because of man's common origin, common training, common destiny," and so on. And it is true that in the earliest stages of moral life, altruism must be the goal that we set before ourselves. The service of others is what we should strive to perfect. But sometimes it has also seemed to me that altruism is itself but a stage of progress rather
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than the goal. That as long as service is consciously service of others, that is, of others separated from our own self, that there is still incompleteness in the ethics, there is still lack of spirituality in the soul.
Some of you may remember that exquisite Persian poem in which the lover, seeking his beloved, finds closed against him the door of her chamber, and knocks, pleading for admission. From within the closed room sounds a voice asking " Who asks for admission ? " And believing that his love was the best claim that could be given for his entry, he answered, " It is thy beloved that knocks." But there was silence within the room and the door remained closed against the suppliant. Out into the world he went and learned deeper lessons of life, and of love; and coming back once more to the closed door, he struck thereon and asked for entry. Again the voice came, '* Who is it that knocks ? " But the answer this time was other than at first. No longer " Thy beloved " came the words, but, " It is thyself that knocks," and then the door unclosed, he passed the threshold. For all true love has its root in unity, and there again it is not twain but one. So it would seem that in the highest ethic this is the true note that we should strike, inasmuch as for our best
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beloved there Is no such thing as service regarded as altruistic, because the deepest joy and the highest pleasure come in serving that which is in very truth the better self of each ; so as we grow in spiritual life and understand the true oneness of humanity, we shall find in that humanity the best beloved. We shall serve our higher self in serving it, and thus once more we come back to that from which we started, the Invisible, the One and the All.
And Altruism, glorious as it is in the lower stages of morality - Altruism itself - is lost in the Supreme Oneness of the human soul, in the absolute indivisibility of the Spirit in Man. While, however, we are still consciously separate. Altruism may rightly be regarded as the Law of Life, based on a common origin in the Divine, based in the common training, the pilgrimage which every soul of man must tread, based also in common experience, in that life after life where we have to learn every lesson, acquire all knowledge, share the various possibilities of human lot, and build out of common material a sublime character. In that life our destiny is one, the perfection of a divine humanity ; one in origin, one in training, one in destiny, what shall avail to separate Man from Man and to build up walls of division between brothers ?
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Thus this Unity is the foundation of our brotherhood, as Brotherhood is the word that includes all our ethics. For it is in the law of Love that all true conduct has its root. As long as external law is needed, that law is the measure of our imperfection ; it is only when no law is wanted, when the nature expressing itself spontaneously is one with the divine law, it is only then that humanity is perfected and hberty and law become one for evermore.
Here again is the sanction of right ethics, found in this fact of brotherhood everywhere discoverable in nature. All our European World discussing ethical systems to-day, is askmg for some categorical imperative which shall announce duty and right to man. Take what systems you will in our German Schools of Philosophy, the system of Kant in Germany or any of the many schools of ethics being gradually built by our English-speaking people - every- where you will find the question propounded, What is the Imperative ? What is the Ought? What is the Thou Shalt, which is to be the training in human life ?
" It is not possible," say some schools, and you may find this expressed very clearly and well in one of the well-known books of Professor Sedgwick in dealing with the question of Ought
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- we are face to face with a difficulty as to why we ought. Can we gel any further than a conditional imperative ? Can we go beyond the statement to Men, If you want to reach such a goal, such-and-such is the path you should pursue ?
To take his own illustration, you may say to a pupil, " If you want to paint and be a great artist, you must hold your brush in such fashion ; you must train your eye by such-and-such rules ; you must gradually gain the knowledge which underlies form, and by these many steps you shall at last reach your goal."
Is morality the same in this sense as Art or Science ? Is it always to depend upon an If, so that if Man refuses the goal he shall reject right conduct and stand lawless in a universe of law ? If that be so, it seems to me that progress will be very slow amongst men, for you would have them first to evolve the conscience, and it is the very training of the conscience for which right ethics is needed. You would be walking constantly in a vicious circle having no point of starting. You would be endeavouring to use a lever with an absent fulcrum, and so find no vantage point to which your force could be applied. It is the categorical imperative we need, not the conditional. Not " If Thou wilt
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be perfect, do this or that," but, " Thou shalt be perfect, and the Law of Life is Thus,"
And is it not true that Nature speaks in such fashion ? Is it not true that from the lips of Nature, physical, we will say, there sounds ever the categorical imperative ? Man, ignorant and foolish, unknowing the laws that surround him, desires to follow the promptings of his own untrained will, driven perhaps by the desires of the lower nature and hearing in them the voice that allures and compels. From the lips of Nature drop sternly the words, " Thou shalt." Answers the will of Man able to choose, " 1 will not." And then there falls upon the silence but the two words, " Then suffer."
Such is the way in which physical nature teaches the inviolability of law. Man, following his own untrained will, strives to follow it, be a fence of physical law around him or not. He dashes himself against the iron wall he cannot break, and the pain of the bruising, the anguish of the mutilation, teaches him that law is inviolable and unchangeable, that it must be obeyed or the disobedient will perish in the struggle.
Is Nature different on her different planes ? Does she speak clearly, as well in the moral and in the spiritual world as in the physical ? Yea,
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for all nature is one. The expression of the one divine will is nature, and until you can change the divine v^ill no law that is the expression of that will can be altered ; and, therefore, in morals as much as in physics, this imperative, this categorical imperative, is hers. But un- happily, it has not been undisputed ; unhappily, men have thought they could play with morals where they would never dream of playing with physical necessity. They have thought that they could sow one seed and reap another, when they were sowing virtue and vice instead of the mere corn or oats. And they have wondered and they have not understood when each seed is ripened after its own nature, and the moral seed has ripened according to law, and given a corrupt society and degraded humanity and a soul stupefied and drugged by sense.
Does such teaching seem stern and cold ? Does it seem as though Man m a remorseless universe, found in the wheels of destiny rolling round him no place of refuge, no harbour in which he might escape ? Does he feel that these wheels moving round him crush him, that law is iron, and destiny cannot be escaped ? My brothers, ill do you read the Universe if to you law seems cruel, if to you death may seem soulless. Law is but the will of the divine, and
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the divine who desires your happiness. Law is but the expression of the perfect, and only in perfection can joy and peace be found. Lose sight of this will for a moment, of those wheels that seem to crush you, for though the wheels roll on unchanging, the very heart of the universe is love. Therefore it is that some of us who have caught glimpses of this unity, who have seen that love and justice are one, and that injustice and cruelty would be identical, there- fore it is sometimes that, looking at the universe, we feel that while the law is changeless it lifts us instead of crushing us. And has not your own Emerson taught you the same lesson ? Can you remember in one of those marvellous essays of his he taught the great truth that Nature only looks cruel while we oppose her ; she is our strongest helper when we join ourselves to her. For every law that crushes you while you oppose it lifts you when you are united to it. Every force that is against you while you are lawless, is on your side when you make yourself one with law. He tells you to hitch your waggon on to a star, for then the waggon shall move with all the force of the planet above you ; and is it not a greater destiny even to suffer until we learn the law, than to escape it and remain in ignorance when the law is that
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which brings us ultimately to triumph ? Nature is conquered by obedience, and the divme is found in a unity of justice and of love.
Brotherhood, then, in its full meaning, is a law in nature. Stress has more than once been laid on this in our meetings, but not too much stress has thereon been laid. For it is the very object, the desire, of our work that brotherhood shall become practical in society, and it will never become practical until men understand that it is a law, and not only an aspiration. It is a common experience that when men have dis- covered a law of nature, they no longer fight against it. They at once accommodate them- selves to the new knowledge. They at once adapt themselves to the newly-understood con- ditions, and in that very way have preached brotherhood. And yet brotherhood is but so little known in our Western World ! Is it not possible that men have disobeyed, not because they do not recognise the beauty of the ideal, but because they have not understood its absolute necessity, and the failure of every effort that goes against the universal law in life.
Brothers in our bodies by that interaction of physical molecules of which our Brother Judge has already spoken ; brothers in our minds by that interaction of mental images and mental
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pictures whereby every one of us is constantly affecting his brothers. In our spirits, above all, and on every' plane of life, brotherhood exists as fact.
And it must be remembered, in dealing with this brotherhood, that the word is meant to imply everything that it means m what we call the closest relationships of daily life. We are apt to make a distinction between brethren in churches and those outside. We should follow in that which we preach of, if it is that real brotherhood of love that we desire amongst men. Sometimes it is said that by ceasing to love the nearest we shall grow to love impersonal humanity. It is not so. The life of love is a growth upward, an expansion ever widening, growing out from the family to the city, from the city to the state ; from the nation to humanity. It does not begin by dwarfing the love of the home. It starts there and it carries on all the passions - the passion and the pity that the mother feels for the child of her own body, and extends that love to embrace every child and son of man - not by cooling down love, but by strengthening and widening it out.
Thus is brotherhood to grow and the race to become practically, as it is essentially, one. For it is these relationships that teach the wider
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possibility, and so, in the Book of the Golden Precepts, one of the most exquisite gifts that we have received from the East through H. P. Blavatsky, we are told, " Follow the wheel of life ; follow the wheel of duty to race and kin " ; as those duties are properly dis- charged we become worthy of the wider work. The heart widens out because it is never closed against any. And at the very beginning of the path, the first step the disciple is bidden to take is to make his heart respond to every cry of nature, so that, as the heart-string quivers under the touch, he, as string, shall quiver to every cry of need that comes from his brother's lips. But if we confine our love to those with whom nature has put us, it is lower love. The lower love is selfish, exclusive, taking from the outside to give to the personally beloved, and careless for the wants of others provided one's own is satisfied. I mean one's own in the family, not one's own personally. That is not true love. It is a form only of selfishness, and when you find in our teaching that such love is to be destroyed, it means that love must be purified of every taint of personality, and so we must grow ever upward, widening as we grow, because the love that we are to give to our brother man is to be measured by his want of
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it, and not by any of the lesser ties of per- sonality that may bind us to him or may be absent between him and us. The measure of want - that is the measure of giving. The agony that cries for help - that is the claim that we have to answer. And so our teachers train us to discharge the nearest duty so that we may carry on the strength of that to the wider duty, and thus make our love to man as the love of husband to wife, as the love of brother to sister, finding in the pain but joy in the sacrifice, because the happiness of the beloved is deeper than the momentary pain of that which is given to us.
Thus, then we learn, as it were, the sanction, the motive, that which nature tells us as regards this human brotherhood, and from that we step onward to deal with those who are not yet quite touched with that light of reality which makes the appeal to the divine m man the mightiest of impulses.
For as man develops he answers to nobler and nobler impulses, and at first, very often, the method of the teacher must be the method of Nature, which allows men to learn by pain the reality that I was speaking of with regard to the law. And so by Karma we scent another sanction for right ethics ; so we teach
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men that selfishness can but breed sorrow and evil, can have no other offspring than misery. if they will not learn by love they must learn by pain. H they will not learn by longing lor God, they must learn by experience of the evil ; and if that real tree of life which is in every human heart does not sufficiently attract them to the eating of its fruit, the tree of Life Eternal whose fruits are but of love and duty, then they must eat of the tree of knowledge of evil as well as of good, so that if, to quote one of the sweetest of our English poets - " if Goodness lead him not, then Weariness may toss him to my breast." For that is the voice of the Spirit crying in the world, crying to all that has gone out from it to come back. If its voice does not attract, then suffering must be used for a lime to drive. Back the wanderer must come ; the exile cannot remain abroad ; his seat is empty in the home, it waits for his return, and if he will not come by love, then by starving on the husks that are fit food for swine he must learn the lesson. And the unrest of the transitory, the dissatisfaction of the temporal - that shall turn his steps once more homeward till he come near enough to be drawn by love and no longer by pain.
Thus, then, we have the foundation which
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deals with facts as sanction for righteousness, and thus Re-incarnation once more comes in in order to show us that only by right living can progress be made, that if selfishness is to be eradicated unselfish acts must be performed, selfish thoughts must be destroyed, for in re- incarnation it is thought which moulds the char- acter, and none can mould the character towards evil and thus discover tendencies to good. Thus we remove arbitrariness from the moral world b)^ knowledge of self. Knowledge has removed it from the physical. Thus we take away all the doubt and the hope that springs from the doubt, that we may escape the results of our own actions and creep into unearned bliss by some side door of vicarious atonement, where we have not laboured and where we have not wrought. We learn that each must walk on his own feet - that each man must grow by his own effort. Though brother souls must help him, he must also help himself. For Truth does not need invertebrate people saved by the goodness of another. Truth needs men and women strong to stand in the strength they have acquired for themselves, strong that by their example the still weaker may be inspired, and gradually each one may show himself divine.
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But all this is not new. There is nothing new save the words that clothe it, nothing new save the garment that is woven round it. We have had all this as our priceless heritage for millions of years, and yet we have not recognised our treasure. Every great teacher of Religion has taught what here I feebly repeat to-day. Every great one who has come into the world in order to strike the key-note of morality has spoken the same language, has uttered the same thought.
Turn to the scriptures of the world and see how one moral nutriment is found in all. Will you go to China, Lao-tze will teach you the law of love, and teach you the very doctrine familiar in your own creed ; for Lao-tze, speak- ing six hundred years before Christ was born, laid down that law of curing evil by good. Yes, we have not yet learned the only law of Peace. " The untruthful," he said, " I will meet with truth, as I meet the truthful also. I will meet the liberal with liberality, I will meet the illiberal with liberality also. The faithful I will meet with faith, the unfaithful I will meet with faith also. I will cure the miser by gener- osity, I will cure the liar by truth."
So, as from the lips of a Chinese teacher, there drops from those of a great Hindu sage
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exactly the same thought, when in the tenfold system of duties Mano put forgiveness of in- juries as the vital law of the progress of the soul. So, six centuries before Christ, the Buddha repeated the lesson - " To him that causelessly injures me 1 will return the protection of my ungrudging love. The more evil comes from him the more good shall flow from me." Exactly the same lesson flows from the lips of the great Jewish teacher when in the Sermon on the Mount he bids his disciples " Love your enemies, bless ihem that curse you, do good to them that hate you, that you may be the children of your Father in Heaven, who sendeth his sunlight on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain alike on the just and on the unjust." The Voice is one, whether from Jew or Buddhist, whether from Hindu or Chinaman, the words are well-nigh one, the spirit is iden- tical. What want we, then, of new morality, while the old remains unfulfilled ? Why ask for new teaching when the old is so high above our accomplishment to-day ? it may be that amongst far-off generations, when the growth of Man has been perfected, it may be that in some future cycle of evolution, some morality un- dreamed of to-day, some ethic more noble, more sublime, more pure, may come from the
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lips of some God to man. We are not ready for such teachmg, we are not yet prepared for such Instruction, Enough for us the ancient law of love, for until we have fulfilled that, no other horizon can open before our eyes.
And so, at this last of our sessional meetings, we close with that with which we started, the law of a divine life that brings all things with it, the law of a divme love that is the guiding light of man.
Born of the spirit, we go towards the Spirit. Born of the divine love, we live until that love is perfected in us, and when that love is made perfect, what lips of Man may syllable, what brain of Man may conceive, what further heights of beauty, what further depths of joy, what further possibilities of illimitable expansion, lie before those souls whose life is one with the divine. Bound to the feet of divinity, they last as long as it. Boundless as deity itself, no limitations can check the spirit that lives in man. (Applause.)
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The Supreme Duty.
Jln jJddress given at the T^arliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893.
1 SPEAK to-night on the supreme duty. I proclaim to-night the universal law of life ; for only by service is fulness of life made possible, to the service of man the whole of the universe to-day is yoked. For under the name of man, man past, present, and future, man evolving up to the divine man, eternal, immortal, indestructible, that is the service to which every individual should be pledged, that the object of life, that the fashion of evolution ; and I shall try to put for you to-night in few words some- thing of the elements of this service, something of its meaning m daily hfe, as well as some- thing of the heights whereto the daily practice may at length conduct the human soul, for poor indeed is that religion which cannot teach the men and women of the world the duty of daily life, and yield to them inspiration which shall aid them in their upward climbing to the light. Great is philosophy which moulds the minds of men, great is science which gives light of knowledge to the world ; but greater than all is religion which teaches man his duty, which
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inspires man with slrenglh lo accomplish il ; greatest of all is that knowledge of the human soul which makes daily service the path of progress and finds in the lowest work the steps that lead to the highest achievement.
According to the philosophy which we stand here to represent, we have in the universe and in man various planes of bemg, sevenfold m their full enumeration. A briefer classification will serve me for the hints which alone I can throw out to-night. Let us take the plane of the physical man and see what on that plane the service of man may connote. First of all, the service of man implies what was called by the Buddha right livelihood, that is, right fashion of gaining ordinary life, honest way of gaining the means of ordinary existence. Not a liveli- hood based on the compelled service of others, not a livelihood which takes everything and gives nothing back, not a livelihood which stretches out its hands to grasp and closes its fists when gift is asked instead of gain. Right livelihood implies honesty of living, and honesty implies that you give as much as you take, that you render back more than you receive, that you measure your work by your power of service, not by your power of compulsion. That the stronger your brain the greater your
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duty to help, that the higher your position the more imperative the cry to bend that position to the service of human need. Right livelihood is based on justice. Right livelihood is made beautiful by love, and if there is to be a reckon- ing between the giving and the taking, then let the scale of giving w^eigh the heavier, and give to man far more than you take from him.
But on the material plane more is asked of you than the discharge of this part of duty, right livelihood, that injures none and serves all. You have also a duty of right living that touches on the plane of the body, by which I include to-night the whole of the transitory part of man, and right living means the recognition of the influence that you brmg to bear upon the world by the whole of your lower nature as well as by the higher. It implies the understanding of the duty that the body of each bears to the bodies of all, for you cannot separate your bodies from the bodies amidst which you live, since constant interchange is going on between them. Tiny lives that build up you to-day help to build up another to-morrow, and so the constant interaction and interweaving of these physical molecules proceed. What use do you make of your body ? Do you say " It is mine. I can do with it as I will. Shall not a man do as he
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will with his own ? " Even so. But there is nothing a man has that is his own, for all belongs to that greater man, the aggregate humanity, and the fragments have no rights that go against the claim of service to the whole. So that you are responsible for the use that you make of your bodies. If when these tiny lives come into your charge you poison them with alcohol, you render them coarse and gross with over-luxurious living and send them out into the community of which you form a part, and send them out to other men and women and children, they sow there the seeds of the vices they have learned from you, of the gluttony, of the in- temperance, the impurity of living that you have stamped on them while they remained as part of your own body. You have no right to do it. No excuse can bear you guiltless of the crime. There are drunkards amongst us. Granted they are responsible for their crime, but also every human being is responsible for them who helps to spread the poison in a community which is focalized in those miserable creatures. And so every atom that you send out alcohol- poisoned from yourself helps to make drunken- ness more permanent, helps to make its grip tighter upon the victims already in its grasp, and you are guilty of your brother's degradation if
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you do not supply pure atoms of physical life to build up others who in very truth are one with yourself.
And so you have something of what service of man means on this lower plane, and another service that you, above all, richer people in this land and in others, could set an example of, so that others from your voluntary action may learn to follow in the same path, you should simplify the physical hfe, you should lessen the physical wants, you should think less of luxury and more of the higher life, less labour wasted to minister to the artificial wants of the body, and more time for the souls of men to grow less encum- bered with the anxieties of life. If you take such teaching to the poor, true as the teaching is, one hardly dares to put it to them on whom the iron yoke of poverty presses, and who find in so much of physical suffering one of the miseries of their life. You should set the example, because with you it is voluntary action. You should set the ideal of plain living and high thinking instead of the ideal of senseless luxury, of gross materialistic living on every side. Can you blame the poor that they think so much of earthly pleasure, that they desire so passionately material ease ? Can you blame them if in every civilised country discontent is
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growing, threats are filling the air, when you set the ideal which they copy in their desire, and when you, by the material pleasure of your lives, tell them that man's aim and object is but the joy of the sense, is but the pleasure of the moment ? This also is your duty in the service of man on a material plane, so that, lessening the wants of the body, he may learn to feed the soul, and making the outer hfe more nobly simple may give his energies rather to that which is permanent and which endures.
But not only on the physical, the lowest plane, is the service of man to be sought. We rise to the mental plane, and there too must man be served far more efficaciously than he can be served on the physical plane. Do you say that at least I cannot do service on the mental plane ? That the mental plane is all very well for the great thinker that publishes some work that revolutionizes thought ? That it is all very well for the speaker who reaches thousands where I can reach but units ? It is not so. The great thinker, be he writer or be he speaker, has not such enormous over-plus of impulse as you, judging by the outer appearance, may imagine. True, his work is great, but has it never struck you in what lies the power of the speaker, whence comes the strength with
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which he moves a crowd ? It does not He in himself ; it lies not m his own power, but in the power he is able to evoke from the men and women he addresses, from the human hearts he wakes. It is their energy and not his in the tide of his speech. The orator is but the tongue that syllables out the thoughts in the hearts of the people ; they are not able to speak them, they are not able to articulate them. The thoughts are there, and when some tongue puts them into speech, when the other inarticulate sense takes the force of the spoken word, then they think it is oratory. It is their own hearts that move them, and it is this voice, inarticulate in the people, which from the lips of the speaker makes the power that rings from land to land.
But that is not all. Every one of you in your daily thinking, every one of you has thoughts that you pour out to the world. You are making the possibilities of the morrow, you are making or marring the potencies of to-day. Even as you think, the thought burning in your brain becomes a living force for good or for evil in the mental atmosphere just as far as the vitality and the strength that are in it may be able to carry it on in its work of this world of mind. There is no woman, however weak.
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there is no man however obscure, who has not in the soul within him one of the creative forces of the world. As he thinks, thoughts from him go out to mould the thoughts and lives of other men. As he thinks thoughts of love and gentleness, the whole reservoir of love in the world is filled to overflowing ; and as he con- tributes to them, so every day is formed that public opinion which is the moulder of men s ideas more than sometimes we are apt to dream. So that in this everyone has share, so that in this all men and women have their part. Your thought-power makes you creative Gods in the world, and it is thus that the future is builded, it is thus that the race climbs upward to the divine.
Not alone in the physical nor alone in the mental sphere is this constant service of man to be sought ; but of the service of the spiritual sphere, no words of platform oratory can fitly describe its nature or its sacredness. That is the work that is done in silence, without sound of spoken word, of clatter of human endeavour. That work lies above us and around us, and we must have learned the perfection of the service in the lower ere we dare aspire to climb where the spiritual work is done. What, then, is the outcome of such suggestion, what the effect in
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life of such philosophy applied to the life of each as it is made or met in the world to-day ? Surely it is that we should think nobly. Surely it is that our ideals should be lofty. Surely it is that in our daily life we should ever strike the highest keynote, and then strive to attune the livmg to the keynote that at our noblest we have struck. According to the ideal the will is lifted. In the old phrase, the man becomes that which he worships. Let us see, then, that our ideals be lofty. Let us see that what we worship shall have in it the power that shall transform us into the image of the perfect man ; that shall transmute us into the perfect gold of which humanity shall finally consist. If you would help in that evolution, if you would bear your share in that great labour, then let your ideal be truth ; truth in every thought and act of life. Think true, otherwise you will act falsely. Let nothing of duplicity, nothing of insincerity, nothing of falsehood soil the inner sanctuary of your life, for if that be pure your actions will be spotless, and the radiance of the eternal truth shall make your lives strong and noble. Not only be true, but also be pure, for out of purity comes the vision of the divine, and only the pure in heart, as said the Christ, shall see God. That is true. In whatever phase you put it, that is
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true, whatever words describe It. Only the pure in heart shall have the beatific vision, for that which is itself absolute purity must be shared in by the worshipper ere it can be seen.
And then add to these ideals of truth and of purity one that is lacking in our modern life, the ideal of reverence for what Is noble, of adoration for that which is higher than one's self. Modern life is becoming petty because we are not strong enough to reverence. Modern life IS becoming base, sordid, and vulgar because men fear that they will sink if they bow their heads to that which is greater than they are themselves. 1 tell you that worship of that which is higher than yourself raises you, it does not degrade you. That the feeling of reverence is a feeling that lifts you up, it does not take you down. We have talked so much about rights that we have forgotten that which is greater than a man's right with himself. It is the power of seeing what is nobler than he has dreamed of, and bowing in the very dust before it till it permeates his life and makes him like itself. Only those who are weak are afraid to obey ; only those who are feeble are afraid of humility. Democrats we are in our modern phrase, and with the world of to-day as we have it democracy in the external world is the best
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fashion of carrying on the outer life. But if it were possible that as in the days of old in Egypt and India the very gods themselves wandered the earth as men, and taught the people the higher truth, trained the people in the higher life, conveyed to the people the higher know- ledge, would we claim that we were their equals, and that we should be degraded by sitting at their feet to learn ? And if you could weave into your modern life that feelmg of reverence for that which is purest, noblest, grandest ; for wisdom, for strength, for purity, till the passion of your reverence should bring the qualities into your own life ~ Oh, then your future as a nation would be secure. Then your future as a people would be glorious, and you men and women of America, creators of the future, will you not rise to the divine possibilities which every one of you has hidden in his own heart? Why go only to the lower when the stars are above you ? Why go only to the dust when the sun sends down his beams that on those beams you may rise to his very heart? Yours is the future, for you are making it to-day, and as you build the temple of your nation, as you hope that in the days to come it shall rise nobly amongst the peoples of the earth and stand as pioneer of true life, of true greatness, lay you the foundations
The Supreme Duty. 181
strong to-day. No building can stand whose foundations are rotten, no nation can endure whose foundations are not divine. You have the power. Yours is the choice, and as you exercise it the America of centuries to come will bless you for your living or will condemn you for your failure ; for you are the creators of the world, and as you will so it shall be. (Applause.)
The Use of Evil.
(jl Lecture hy Jlnnie Besani, delivered in India in 1894 or 1895.)
IWIY BROTHERS,— I am to speak to you ^^ ^ this evening on a problem which has tasked the intellect of man for thousands and thousands of years, and which is still discussed to-day, as though it had never been considered before, with as much energy and eagerness and with as much interest. That it remains un- solved still is shown by the continuance of the discussion and by this unwearied turnmg to it of the mind of man. Man seems instinctively to imagine that this problem is one which would teach lessons of value and importance, if it could be understood, and that behind the ** Mystery of Evil " there is hidden some price- less truth.
I do not pretend that I am going to solve this immemorial problem, but 1 hope to lay before you certain considerations which may throw light upon it, if you apply yourselves to thinking over them. And in order that you
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may carry them more easily in your mmds I divide the subject under four heads : -
1 . The Origin of Evil.
2. The Relativity of Evil.
3. The Use of Evil.
4. The Ending of Evil.
Under these four heads I hope to show you that evil is a necessary part of manifestation, a necessary condition of manifestation, and origi- nates v/ith manifestation. That also it does not exist absolutely, in and by itself, but is relative, relative in that it exists in relations betwreen things and not in the things themselves, and also because it varies w^ith time, w^ith succession of events, and with the progress of the universe. Then I hope to show you the purposes it subserves, the uses it fulfils, and, lastly, how we may escape from it, how we may, by the use of evil, break the bonds that tie us to the wheel of birth and death ; how although living in the world, we may live in it without generating Karma, and so, to use a well-known phrase, may burn up Karma in the fire of Knowledge. Following these divisions under which 1 shall arrange the details, 1 may be able to give to your minds, the minds of the rising and educated youth of India, ideas that may be worthy of your consideration, in order
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that you may not simply listen for an hour, but, taking them at leisure, may have materials to work upon after you have left this hall.
Now^ let us consider the origm of evil. Realise, to begin with, that no universe can come into manifestation at all, that no manifes- tation can occur, that no multiplicity can become, that no diversity can appear, unless there be limitation. That is the first point that 1 wish to make clear to your minds. The one exist- ence, spoken of sometimes as Brahman, that existence is absolute and undivided ; no attri- butes are there, no qualities are there. There is unity, no diversity ; there is unity, no multi- plicity. It is " the One without a second. So that, when for a moment you try even to think this Existence, in the very thinking by which you must separate yourself from It, by which you as a mind endeavour to consider some thing which is thought of and is not the thinker, by that very effort of thought you in- troduce duality into that which you are trying to realise as unity ; and when there is separa- tion between the thinker and thought, which is implied in the effort, there is diversity, — not Brahman as One in whom there is no duality, in whom there is no separated Being, in whom there is neither thinker nor thought. Thought
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implies perception and an object of perception ; but Brahman is absolute unity, absolute identity. We speak of thought where thought cannot exist. It is unconditioned, therefore unintelli- gible ; unconditioned, therefore without limita- tion. And, therefore, truly is it written, '^hat is neither conscious nor unconscious — albeit there is some deeper essence which when con- ditioned becomes consciousness, because con- sciousness implies duality, consciousness implies something which is conscious, and something of which it is conscious. That is, at least duality is implied the very moment the word conscious- ness is used, so that in that absolute unity, where there is identity and not diversity, where there is but the secondless One, there is no possibility of thinking, because there is absence of conditions, there is absence of limitation. But the very moment the universe has, as it were, to come into being, then there must be conditions, there must be limitation. Limita- tion is a condition of manifestation, for the very moment you arrive at the point of manifestation, a circumference must be drawn from the central point, the circle of a universe ; without that thought is lost in the absolute one-ness, the identity. Within that circle thought may be exercised, and the very word " manifestation
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implies at once this limitation. Manifestation, by a law of mind, at once Implies its antithesis, the absence of manifestation. To anything which you may think comes the opposite, for the opposite is implied in the very act of defining. " A " implies " not- A." Therefore we are compelled to formulate " absence of manifestation," and yet cannot truly be said to think it. But, as I have just said, manifesta- tion must imply limitation. There is limitation in the very existence of a universe ; it is con- ditioned, and as soon as you think of the matter you at once begin to understand that a universe implies limitation, and that only by a process of limitation can a universe come into being ; con- ditions self-imposed within the Infinite One-ness that can be recognised as the boundary that limits thought. Well, when that is thought and understood, the next step is very simple. Having diversity, having limitation, there is at once imperfection implied. The perfect is un- limited ; the limited, imperfect. So imperfection must be the result of limitation. In the totality you may find perfection ; in the whole, but not in the parts. The very moment you have parts, multiplicity, various bodies ; each body separately considered is imperfect, because it is less than the whole. The very fact that it is a
The Use of Evil. 187
part proves that it is imperfect ; a fragment cannot be perfect ; only the whole can have perfection predicated of it. So that we have here a second step. The first is the fact of manifestation implying limitation, and thus hmi- tation making a diversity of objects ; the second is that separate bodies must be imperfect, in that each is less than the whole of which only perfection can be declared.
Notice now the links of the argument. Notice that the very fact of a universe implies this im- perfection ; that if you object to imperfection you must object to manifestation. If you object to limitation, you must object to there being anything which can be thought of, of which consciousness can be predicated, anything save that absolute unity, utterly incomprehensible to thought. So that we have this solid ground to start from, that the existence itself of the universe by the very fact of limitation, implies imperfection in the limited, and that every object being necessarily limited, is also neces- sarily imperfect, being less than the whole. Now when that is realised, you have your origin of imperfection, of what is called evil. Thus imperfection is co-eternal with the universe. Limited, imperfection is a necessary condition, so that whenever there comes a universe into
o 2
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existence, imperfection must come into existence at the same time. The fact of manifestation is the origin of imperfection.
But when we go on to deal with what is called evil, we find something more m our thoughts than this necessary imperfection of separated bodies ; although the essence of im- perfection is in the very existence of the uni- verse, that which we call evil lies in the degree of imperfection, and in its relation to the rest. But in the very words " good and evil " rela- tivity is fundamentally implied, the " pairs of opposites " necessary to thought ; the word " good " is not fairly to be predicated of any thing until the idea of evil is recognised - the " not-good ; " for good and evil are correlative terms, and the one can only be distinguished as being the opposite of the other which is im- plicitly present in the mind at the same time. It is a fundamental law of mmd that thought must work by difference, discriminating the difference, technically, between " A " and " not- A " ; "A" representing the individual thing which is thought of, and " not- A " every- thing else which is excluded from that individual thing, so that if you say " good " you separate the good from that from which it is distinguished, - the " not-good ": and without this separation
The Use of Evil. 189
no idea of good can be present in the mind, for we realise " good " only by contrast with that which is *' not-good " and which is distinguished from it. In the absence of that distinguishment there would be nothing which we could call " good." " Good " and " not-good, " then, are a pair of opposites, and one is only possible by the existence of the other. Similarly you may take another pair of opposites. Compare light with darkness. Light would have no meaning to you in thought if it were not for darkness or no-light. Light is only cognisable by thought because of no-hght. Light-giving bodies can be recognised in thought, because all bodies do not give light ; and this is so much the case that the presence of non-light-giving bodies is necessary for realisation of light. Astronomers tell us, startling as seems the statement, that the depths of space are dark, not light, although they are full of the vibrations of the ether which on the earth we recognise as light. Why ? Because there are vast spaces of the mighty universe where there are no light-reflecting bodies, them- selves non-luminous ; and in the absence of these dark ones light cannot be thrown back, reflected ; hence space which is full of the vibrations of ether is absolutely dark, because of the absence of those bodies which
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are the reflectors of light, themselves being dark.
Take still further an extension of the same thought. Evil does not exist in and by itself, as we may Judge from the phenomena around us ; evil, like good, lies in the relationship between one thing and another ; it is relative, not absolute. What we speak of as evil in one place may be not evil in another ; for evolution implies this changing character, and what is good at one stage may be evil at another. Presently I will take certain things which we say are evil, and shew you that the evil does not reside in the things but in the relationships between them and certain other things, and that it is in the relationship alone that what we call evil resides. Let me take an illustration to shew you what 1 mean. You may have a violently vibrating body, vibrating without touching any other body ; vibrating in- wards and outwards, which would do no harm, which would cause no pain, and the result of that active motion of the body would not be anything which you would recognise as evil. But place in contact with that violently vibrating body another body, and it will produce what we call a pleasure or a pain - that is if the second body has got the power of response, the
The Use of Evil. 191
power of answering to that which is outside, and of feeling the vibration to which it answers. By coming into contact with the body which is violently vibrating, and by receiving the blow, what we call the sensation of pain might arise. Now pain is regarded as part of the evil of the universe ; pain is regarded as one of those things which are the results of what is called evil. But as a matter of fact, pain is the result of contact between two things which separately are innocuous, and arises from the inter-relation of those things which in their separate aspects are not individually pain-producing, but only imperfect, each by itself. When coming into relation with each other, they, as it were, work against each other, then there comes out what we regard as evil, and the nature of the result will depend upon the relation between the two, not even upon the inherent imperfections of each that 1 spoke of, but on their relations to each other.
Now that leads me to point out to you that as evolution proceeds, that which we call evil must necessarily be developed more and more. As evolution proceeds, the result of the evolu- tion is to bring into conscious existence higher and higher types of organisations, higher and higher types of living things, which enter into
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more and more complicated relationships with others which surround them, and in these organisations there is developed more and more of this power of response. There is developed also the memory of response ; there is developed not only memory but the power of placing things side by side, that is of comparison, and then of considering the results of the comparison and drawing therefrom volitions. And then there is the experience gradually gathered which illumines the developing consciousness, enables it to recognise certain things as things found to be against progress, to be against the higher evolution, certain things which retard evolution, certain things which check it, which tend to bring about disintegration instead of higher in- tegration. Now what means evolution ? It is merely the building together of higher and more complicated organizations that express with ever greater and greater perfection the Life that is Divine, the Life that in the universe is seeking manifestation. When we speak of manifesta- tions as higher or lower, we really mean they express more or less of the Divine. We call them higher and lower merely as they manifest qualities, which tend towards the lessening of separateness and the developing of unity, that is which lead away from the pole of matter and
The Use of Evil. 193
lead towards the pole of Spirit. The grosser side of manifestations of the One Life is that which we describe as matter. Now there are two poles m manifestation the form side or that of matter on the one hand, and the life side or that of Spirit on the other. They are the two opposite aspects of the one Eternal Life, and the process of evolution consists in that life in its dual aspects going outwards to cause diversity, and when the limit of diversity is reached, drawing inwards to reintegrate the diverse separated units into a mighty and enriched unity. The outward-going life seeks diversity and may be said therefore to tend to the pole of matter ; the inward-going life seeks unity, and may be said therefore to tend to the pole of Spirit. Here is a truth that the thoughtful should ponder over, if we take good to mean all that is working in harmony with the Great Law, and evil to mean all that is working against it, then qualities now regarded, and rightly regarded, as evil - selfishness, desire for material gain, etc. - would have been good during the " descent into matter," as only by these could diversity be obtained, whereas now they are evil as retarding the process of integra- tion, as checking the inward-flowing tide of life towards the pole of Spirit. Thus again we
194 The Spiritual Life.
realise the relativity of evil, and understand that a quality v^hich at one time w^as good, as sub- serving the progress of the universe, becomes evil when it should have been left behind in the sweep of evolution, and when persisting into a stage higher than that to which it belonged, it retards the progress which once it had accelerated.
Evolution, on its returning path, is unfolding the life-side of nature, and is making, as it were, matter more and more plastic, more and more delicate, more and more complicated in its organisation, until by its very complexity its equilibrium is so unstable that it takes very easily shapes of various kinds under impulses from within and becomes a mere graceful gar- ment in which life is expressed, until, finally, matter is nothing more than the subtle form which expresses life by limiting it, and it changes form with every impulse from the life, and takes on new shapes with the different impulses of the out-going and in-coming life ; and this is evolution. When man begins to understand what evolution means, he then regards every- thing which helps towards evolution as being on the lines of harmony with the purposes of the universe, and therefore with being now on the side of greater and greater integration, of the
The Use of Evil. 195
building together of a complicated unity. Then he names "good" all that works in that direc- tion, and calls " evil " all the tendencies v^hich persist from the stage of evolution in v^hich greater diversity was sought. Realising that evolution is now the process of building together the separated objects into a perfect unity, he calls "good" everything which tends directly to harmony, which tends towards aggregation, which tends towards the unfolding of the higher unity, which tends towards the expres- sion of the Divine life, with ever increasing and increasing perfection; and he calls "evil" every thing which checks that aggregation and which introduces the earlier forms into the present and retards the passing on to what is relatively perfect and relatively higher.
Now suppose we carried that thought out, what would we find ? We should find that that which in the past caused evolution and was not evil, becomes evil when it persists in the evolution of the higher organisation and so retards its growth. For instance, in the mineral kingdom you have minerals and stones hurled about by some volcanic eruption ; you see that eruption, with its shivering of certain bodies, with its tremendous evolution of gases, accom- panied by explosions, and then with the rebound
196 The Spiritual Life.
of the separate materials making a desert where before was a fertile plain, and you say : " See, this is evil." Yet wiser minds, on the contrary, regard it as part of the regenerative processes of nature by which, by disintegration and col- lision, new combinations are rendered possible, the face of the earth is changed, mountain ranges are thrown up, rivers and channels are created, and by means of this violent destructive agency new continents are built, homes for higher forms of life are rendered possible in the course of the evolution. Let us pause for a moment and contemplate the way in which a continent is built. Let us watch the tremendous action of those volcanic forces, and at one place see a mountain range flung up ; then let us watch the formation of mighty glaciers, great masses of ice, and see them presently begin to grind their way down the mountain-side into the plain which lies below ; see their resistless course, ploughing out their way, and listen as they go on, smashing, grinding, shivering, tossing up masses which fall again rebounding ; watch the processes of that world of struggle, of strife, of noise, of disturbance, of difficulty, and see the marshalling of those energies which seem to be working for ruin and for nothing else. But as centuries go on, and still you are watching.
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you find that where there was a grinding glacier there Is now a new channel, a channel which has been dug out of the mountain side and through the plains by Its giant action, and as you watch you find water collecting in this channel and gradually more and more flowing into it, until where there was the destructive action of the ice there is a great river full of life-giving water ; and as the water flows down through the plain vegetation springs up on the banks, and great cities are building, food can be grown for keeping up the life of man, trees are growing luxuriantly, and human homes are seen, and happiness on every side. But what would have been man's lot without that previous evolution ? We can see that unless the dis- turbing agency had had full sway in these earlier growths of life you would never have had the later ; so you cannot call that evil. There is nothing evil in Itself, for these are simple destructive and attractive forces at work, and the Being who is the source of all life, the great One, the Lord, is known sometimes as the Destroyer and sometimes as the Regener- ator, for, until the lower is destroyed the higher cannot be born, and every death is but the lower aspect of a higher birth.
But if we turn to man, to those who have
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been gradually evolved, those human beings who have begun to reason, w^ho have begun to remember, to compare, and therefore to judge and to understand - when amongst them there appears a disturbmg agency, which lies at the root of all the angry passions of man, then man having evolved to a stage at which the infliction of pain on others is against his evolution towards the Divine Love, we call that infliction of pain a " Crime." Why for instance do we call a murder an evil act ? We call it an evil because the murderer is there reverting to a previous stage in evolution that he ought to have out- grown ; as a man he should have evolved towards a higher life of harmony, but he is giving way to an inclination which will bring about the retardation of growth, and which at the stage which he has reached is harmful. At the point of evolution he should have reached, he ought to be one of the forces evolving towards the Divine Harmony and not one of the forces which are retarding that evolution, and rendering it slower of accomplishment.
I am going to deal with the use of this retarding agency. Let us now take a man who begins to understand that in the sphere of thought and action he can place himself either upon the side of progress or upon the side of
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retardation ; who realises his place in the uni- verse, who realises the true working of nature, and who may deliberately set himself either on the side of the evolving life, or upon the side of the forces which are retarding evolution, which are holding it back, which are against progress, which are not in harmony with it. Such a man has to choose with which side he shall identify himself. He may choose to identify himself with the side which is progressing on to the gods or he may choose to identify himself with the side which is retarding that evolution. His choice is in his own hands. He must realise that if he chooses the side which retards evolution he has chosen destruction, by identify- ing himself with the disintegrating agency ; whereas if he chooses harmony with evolving life, he has chosen continuation, because he has identified himself with that which is the law of progress, and the fact of his identification with that law will give to him the permanence which results from harmony. You may say, why should identification with the retarding forces lead to destruction ? The answer is this : because the Divine Life going on and causing evolution returns to unity, and everything which harmonises with its mighty course is carried onwards without waste of energy ; whereas
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everything which sets itself against it, and causes friction and retardation, wears itself out by the very friction which it causes. It is one of the laws of motion that a moving body continues to move if not opposed, but if friction is generated by its coming mto contact with another body it will gradually come to a stand- still ; wherever there is friction there is this expenditure of energy, and this friction trans- mutes moving energy into another form, such as heat, and the energy is dissipated ; continued friction causes the dissipation of the form which is subject to it. It is not that the energy is annihilated ; it is not that the energy is de- stroyed ; that cannot be. It is that the form is destroyed which comes into contact with that in which the opposite force is manifested. The form perishes because the opposition breaks it into pieces, or rather it breaks itself into pieces against the opposing force, but the energy per- sists because it is part of one eternal life. But you may say, why this retarding force ? Why should there be in evolution this action of retardation ? Why should there be in evolution something which opposes? How can it come ? If everything is from the One, how can it develop ?
First, because the condition of any diversity
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is the manifestation of the opposing poles of Spirit and matter, of light and darkness, that 1 spoke of in the beginning ; and, secondly, because for the development of all positive qual- ities, it is necessary that they should be exercised against opposition. Without opposition no de- velopment is possible ; v^ithout opposition no grov^th is possible. All growth and develop- ment result from the exercise of energy against some thing which opposes. Think for a moment and you will see how true this statement is. You have muscles in your arms ; if you want to develop the strength of the muscles, how are you to do it ? By exercising them, by stimu- lating them, not by keeping them still. You know there are some people who practise a particular form of asceticism, who extend the arm and keep it rigid, so that muscular contrac- tion cannot take place. What is the result ? After a time the arm becomes fixed in that position, it becomes rigid, the muscles lose the power of contraction ; they are no longer the channels of living energy ; in fact, there is stagnation, absence of effort, absence of mus- cular contraction, of pulling against resistant forces ; the result is to throw the arm back- wards, as it were, into a lower form of living thing, to which motion as a whole does not
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belong, and the arm becomes as rigid as a stone or a piece of wood ; it has lost the muscular power for want of exercise, because it has re- mained quiet and stagnant, and therefore the power of motion has disappeared. But if a man wants to develop his muscles what does he do ? He takes a club which has weight, he takes a dumb-bell which has weight, he lakes any object which has weight, and then sets muscle against weight and pulls against it, whirls it round, but always puts the muscle against the opposing force in the weight. He lifts it from the ground ; and the weight tries to drag him down and he tries to drag it up. The effect of this conflict is the development of muscular energy, the development of force in the muscle. Muscularity is drawn out and developed by working against the opposing weight ; it becomes stronger and becomes able to overcome opposing forces, and so the muscle grows and develops the more the more it is exercised, and becomes more powerful than before. This development arises entirely be- cause it has been used in opposing weight, and by exercise has overcome the opposition ; from this it has gathered life and strength, for as the muscle increases its capacity for holding life, life flows into it, and ever the strength we
The Use of Evil. 203
can draw from the surrounding Divine life is limited only by our capacity to receive and hold.
There is the use of evil. The life that is in you cannot manifest its higher capacities unless you are placed under conditions in which you can develop yourselves by struggling against opposition. Evil is, as it were, the weight opposing the muscle, and as you develop the body by struggling against the opposing external weight, so do you develop the moral character by struggling against evil which is the opposite of every virtue. Every virtue has its oppo- site evil. Truth and falsehood, courage and cowardice, compassion and hatred, humility and pride. All these things are pairs of opposites. How can you develop truth save by struggling against the false, save by realising that in the world around you there is falsehood on every side of you ? What can you do when you realise the force of this, save contradict it and place yourself in opposition to it, and yourself be true ? Never let a false word escape your lips ; never let a false thought find habitation in your brain, never let a false action disfigure your conduct, and the result of the recognition of falsehood will be to develop in you the neces- sary power for truth. As you struggle against
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the tendency to falseness, there is developed in you the increasing power to be true. Now what is Truth ? Truth is Brahman : Truth is life : Truth is the essence of what we call the Divine Life ; and we reach it by struggling against falsehood, developing, as it were, the virtue which is the receptacle of the Divine Life, and as you enlarge it and increase it by your struggling against falsehood - as the muscle grows larger by practice against the weight - you are making your character a receptacle for the Divine Life, that Divine Life which shall flow in in ever-increasing volume and give you greater power. Thus you are developing those qualities of Truth which without opposition you could never have evolved, and which, in pro- portion to the energies evolved by your efforts against falsehood, will purify your nature from falsity, and render true the life which you are developing. So also with every other virtue. Courage is developed in the presence, not in the absence, of an object which you fear. If there were no objects which gave rise to the sensation of fear, then courage could never be evolved. But the presence of these objects that give the sensation of fear increases the experience of the Soul and gradually evolves courage. Have you ever noticed in an infant, that that which at
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first was terrifying to it, that which was an object of terror to it when first seen, gradually loses its terrifying quality as it becomes more and more familiar ? See how timid a little child is ; see how he sees even in a strange face an object which terrifies him. How shall that child lose that timidity and become brave in the face of men ? Not by shutting him up in a room where he will never sec anybody. If you keep him in a room where there is no strange face the child has no fear. Fear is generated by letting him face unknown objects, and presently he begins to understand them, until out of constant experiences fear is eliminated, and strength and courage take its place.
And so I might take virtue after virtue to shew that they grow only in the face of opposi- tion, and that in the result of these opposing forces lies the value of this retarding energy : there is the value of the evolution of evil which acts as a weight against the effort towards per- fection and thereby develops the strength which checks the desire for these forms which are doomed to destruction ; for the men who choose to ally themselves with that which is doomed to destruction, must share the fate of those forms they have selected for their own. But the energy which is necessary for evolution towards
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the condition of perfection would be absent without evil, and the presence of evil in the universe makes it possible for good to grow and for perfection to triumph.
Nor must we forget as a fundamental use of evil the evolution of the power to discriminate between good and evil, and thus of volition, of choice. How should we distinguish Truth save by discerning it as different from that which is not true ? How should we learn its value if we did not find from experience the destructive effects of falsehood, in man and in society. " A " is only brought into consciousness by the presence of " not-A" and the latter is necessary to the definition of the former in the mind. So our mind would remain a blank as regards Truth, we could not realise it, cognise it, define it, save as distinguishing it by its differences from not-Truth. And so with each virtue, with good in its totality. Only by recognition of evil can we know good. And to recognition of evil, experience of evil is necessary.
Useful also is evil as a scourge that drives us to good. For as evil is discordance with the evolving forces of the Divine Life in manifesta- tion, it must result in pain. Pain verily is discordant vibration. Therefore evil inevitably brings suffering as a result, not by an arbitrary
The Use of Evil. 207
penalty but by an inherent necessity. And suffering gives rise to a feeling of repulsion towards the cause of suffering, and so drives man aw^ay from the side of nature which in- harmoniously and tumultuously is plunging into disintegration, and carrying with it the person- alities who elect to identify themselves therewith. In the mighty stream of Divine Life that circles as a universe all men are carried along ; but one current whirls downwards all monstrous and disorderly growths, that they may be dis- integrated into the rough materials for a new building, while the other current carries onwards all that are moulding themselves into orderly expressions, and that by making themselves vehicles of the Law share its permanence as an essential manifestation of the One Reality. 1 said, when dealing with pain, that 1 would show you how it was possible that this evil which we see around us and recognise as evil might gradually lose over us its retarding power as the God m us evolves outwardly and fills us v/ith strength. Remember that the line along which I have been leading you will enable you to look with understanding and, therefore, with absolute charity on all the forms of evil which surround you ; you will see in them inevitable imperfections ; if you see the human Soul
208 The Spiritual Life.
struggling in corruption and in evil, you will not feel anger nor intolerance, nor hatred, but you will know that this Soul, just because of the evil with which it is struggling, will gradually gain strength and become triumphant over it. So that at last you will understand how the Divine is in everything, in good as in evil, that Shri Krishna is the vice of the gambler as well as the purity of the righteous, and our universe will become full of hope ; for you will recog- nise that the whole is working towards per- fection, and that good and evil are the two forces which co-operate to liberate the Soul, the one by drawing it upwards, the other by shattering everything to which it clings and which IS not God.
But the point to which I wish to lead you is that as you gradually recognise these facts you will see that the aim of the in- dividual self is to become perfectly at one with the inward-going stream of Divine Life ; this is the beginning of understanding, the beginning of the realisation of the meaning of the universe, and you will begin to utihse what seems to be evil in order that you may get rid of everything which binds you down to the transitory side of nature, and so take pain as a real helper. Pain is said to be an evil. Pain
The Use of Evil. 209
is not pleasant, but it is not an evil ; it is desir- able and not undesirable, for it is a condition of gaining perfection, and v^^ithout it perfection cannot be. And why ? For this reason : that development must become conscious, that is, there must be a gradual development of thought w^ithin us. But by what process can this be secured ? When we go outward towards an object which attracts us we at first seek only satisfaction. But in the external there is no permanent satisfaction ; in the external which attracts the deluded Soul of man there is nothing that can give permanent satisfaction to the Soul. The Soul has been compared to a charioteer, standing in the chariot of the body, and using the mind as the reins to curb the horses of the senses ; when the galloping horses of the senses carry the Soul away to the objects of desire, how shall the Soul learn that these objects are not truly desirable ? How shall it lose the desire which goes out to these things which can never satisfy ? And how shall it learn to turn inward to the centre, and seek for Brahman alone ? It can only be led to turn towards its desires when it finds that everything which is not Brahman passes away, and in the passing away gives pain. You desire the grati- fication of the senses. How shall that desire be
210 The Spiritual Life.
eliminated ? Only by discovering that the pleasure they yield is very transitory, that if it is follov/ed too far it brings about disgust and suffering and pain, and that therefore the free- dom and the wisdom of man lie in getting rid of the desire for sense-pleasures, if having been attracted by the sensation of taste because it is pleasant, we find that to gratify it to the utmost brings disgust, then we begin to see that it will be wiser to choose an object which has more per- manence than the gratification of taste. Then the root of desire is pulled up and can send out these lower shoots no more. But you can never convince men that this is so unless they have tried the following of the objects of the lower desires and have found the results which flow from them. Argument would not do it, reasoning would not do it ; but when men have had the experience, when men have gratified their taste to the full, when they have become gluttonous, presently they will find that they have made their bodies miserable, their lives one long suffering, that diseases result from the gratification they have experienced, that the gratification brings pain as a result ; then they will no longer desire to gratify themselves in that way, and the root of desire will be cut away ; or rather the process of cutting it away
The Use of Evil. 21 1
will have begun, for the process is a long one. And that is the only way desire can be finally extirpated. You can only get nd of it by gradually realising through experience the know- ledge that the gratification of all desire which is not going upwards is a womb of pain, and brings forth woe as a child. Nothing but this experience can get rid of desire ; not by outward compulsion but inward will must the destruction of desire take place, and this is wrought by pain. Hence is pain, miscalled an evil, one of the greatest blessings bestowed upon man, in order to turn him from the tran- sitory and fix him upon the eternal ; for only by pain can he possibly learn, only out of disgust with the world will arise those inward aspirations which shall at last be gratified in the vision of '^rulh THoine.
Do not misunderstand me, for misunder- standing on this matter is very easy but very dangerous. The stage of the full gratification of desire that I have been speaking of is the stage of the Soul's childhood, ere yet the memory of the Soul recalling past suffering following on gratification, translates itself as the voice of con- science, and warns the lower nature of the peril of yielding to desire. When once experi- ence has been sufficient to bring about such
212 The Spiritual Life.
warning from the Soul, then it is madness to disregard it and gratify desire in its despite. Full gratification of desire belongs to the stage where the outer attraction is yielded to without a pause, without a doubt, without a question, and is followed by no regret, by no shame, by no remorse. The rising of any question in the mind as to the propriety or the wisdom of gratifying the desire, shews that the memory of the Soul contains a record of suffering follow- ing on similar gratification in the past ; otherwise no question could arise. If the man yields, against the warning, the pain of remorse will be added to the pain of satiety, and thus only pro- gressive lessons are learned ; until at last he realises that his wisdom lies in refusing to pur- chase future pain by temporary pleasure. And then he begins to starve out the desires by refusal to feed them, while by dwelling on the pains that gratification brings he cuts at their root with the axe of knowledge, wrought out of experience. All average men, all but the lowest and most brutish, have reached the stage when the voice of conscience is heard, and should therefore begin to consciously co-operate with the upward tendency out of the mire of materi- ality into the spiritual life.
How then can we break our bonds ? The
The Use of Evil. 213
real answer is suggested in that law which I have been shewing to you. The bonds are broken by these inevitable experiences which life after life teach the Soul the nature of the universe into which it has come. But desire is a binding force, and as long as there is desire so long must men come back to birth. The desire for good will draw it back as well as the desire for evil, the desire for religious happiness will draw it back, as well as the desire for earthly Joys ; the desire for the praise of men, for love, for knowledge even. A Soul may desire results of a high and noble character ; still there is a desire for results, and this must bind it to places where the results are to be found. Therefore in order to get rid of Karma we must get rid of desire. Not cease from action - that is unnecessary, but act without desire - making every effort which is necessary, yet indifferent to the result. This is the famihar lesson given by Shn Krishna, this the essence of all truth. It is renunciation of desire, not of action, which makes the real Sannyasi, which makes the renunciator, which makes the Yogi, a real Yogi - not one only in the wearing of yellow garments and ashes - but a Yogi who has broken all the bonds of desire, and not simply one who is an outward renunciator. For
214 The Spiritual Life.
the man of action who performs every action because it is his duty, and remains indifferent to the fruits thereof, that man in the world is the servant of God ; he is one who performs every action, - not for what it brings him but because it fills up something lacking which ought to be done in the world in which he lives as an agent of God. A man who realises that the wheel of life must turn, and who takes part in the turning of the wheel, not for what the turning of the wheel may bring to him, but in order that the Divine life may circle in its course, - he plays his part in working without attachment, without desire, and turns the wheel whether it brings him pleasure or pain, whether it brings him praise or blame, fame or ignominy. Divine knowledge or ignorance - anything the wheel may bring him. He only perceives that it is his duty to co-operate with God while mani- festation persists and he therefore identifies himself with the God from Whom the turning of the wheel proceeds. He is then one with Shri Krishna who declared that He had nothing to obtain in Heavens or on earth, but that if He stopped acting all would stop. And there- fore the devotee who acts, not in order that he may get anything but in order that the Divine purpose may be fulfilled, he works by way of
The Use of Evil. 215
sacrifice ; he offers all his actions as sacrifices to God and remains indifferent to the fruits of the sacrifice, for they lie at the feet of God and not m the heart of the devotee. Such a man makes no Karma, for such a man has no desire ; such a man creates no links which bind him to earth, such a man is spiritually free, although around him actions may spring up on every side. Thus is it when a man is born into the sphere of knowledge ; thus is it when a man is born into the sphere of devotion ; and the life of such a man is as an altar, and burning upon that altar is the flame of devotion and of knowledge. Every action is cast into the fire and is con- sumed therein, rising up as the smoke of a sacrifice and leaving behind on the altar nothing save the fuel of knowledge and the fire of love.
Such then imperfectly sketched - for the subject is too vast - are the lines along which you may study the ancient problem, and which may make more clear to you the reason why pain and imperfection exist ; we have seen that evil originates in limitation, we have seen that evil is a but relative thing, and how what we call evil is often only a veil of evil and beneath it a future good. We have seen how actions of men, when they dxe developed become evil,
216 The Spiritual Life.
which In a lower organisation would not at all be evil ; how as man proceeds onward and onward, he can use evil for his own perfecting ; how man tries to escape from pam and to pur- sue pleasure ; how desire remains in his heart, and brings him back to earth, and he goes for- ward and forward, purifying desire, identifying himself with the Divine Actor in the universe ; then how no further actions have bindmg force upon him ; how such a man is free from evil, and free from all those bonds which tie the Souls of men ; and finally how he becomes an altar from which the smoke of sacrifice goes up continually to the Eternal. This indeed the life which alone is worth the living, this indeed the road along which lies peace and calm. This is realised by the true Yogi alone. Compare this with the life of the man who clings to the world full of dissatisfaction, full of discontent. Look at the men and women around you ; look at their faces ; see how they are full of anxiety and of desire, of trouble and injustice ; and see how men's hearts are pierced by pain and laid desolate by catastrophies, by miseries, by hopes and by fears ; how they are tossed about and flung from side to side, and too often brought to ruin !
And then realise that Brahman is bliss.
The Use of Evil. 217
Bliss, but how ? Bliss, because there is unity ; bliss, because there is an absence of desire ; bliss, because there is knowledge of permanence, which nothing that is transient can disturb. So shall the despairing human Soul find hope, if it is fixed on Brahman ; so shall the disturbed human soul find peace. Who can deny that to the Soul that knows its source, that has found the Self ? Thou art Brahman. There is nothing which can shake that ; there is nothing which can undo that ; there is nothing which can change that. It is fixed indissolubly upon the changeless, upon the Eternal Truth. It has nothing in it of earth, that it should ever pass away. The body is not the Soul ; disease may mar it, accident may injure it, death may strike it away, but the Soul remains unchanged. The lower mind you may destroy, but there is no real loss ; changed may be the individual circumstances, but the " I " is changeless. Separ- ation between bodies may come, but the inner unity remains unbroken, and so any outer change must fail to drive to misery or to despair. Such a Soul stands as a rock m the midst of warring, surging billows. The waves of mis- fortune boil up around it, they may dash up against it, but only to be shattered into foam against its sides, and fall in snowy wreaths to
Q
218 The Spiritual Life.
decorate its base, and thus render it more beautiful than it was before. So is it with the Soul which identifies itself with the One ; so is it with the Soul which by knowledge and devotion has removed everything which is fleeting, and has founded itself on that which is Divine. That is the goal ; the goal which may be reached by you all, and the reaching of that goal is the USE OF EVIL IN THE UNIVERSE.
Man's Quest for God.
Jln JJrlicle in the " TJheosophical T^evieTV " in "December, 1897.
MAN has for ages fashioned theories about God, theories ranging from the fetich of the savage to the loftiest dream of the mystic, the profoundest conception of the philosopher. Omitting fetichism, we may class the theories of living interest under Monotheism and Pan- theism, including under the first the " Theism " of modern thought, and under the latter the scien- tific Polytheism of the great Eastern religions.
In the West, of late years, many of the more thoughtful and highly-educated people - repelled by the crude Theism of the masses and by the unintelligent theories of the divine Existence presented by popular Christianity - have taken refuge in agnosticism, a confession of intellectual despair. Feeling that knowledge about God was unattainable, that " no thorough- fare " was written above every path along which humanity was groping after God, these people, truthful and sincere, thoughtful and candid, have preferred the modesty of silence to the
0 2
220 The Spiritual Life.
insolence of disbelief. They elected to starve the heart rather than to stifle the intellect, and consoled themselves with the undeniable facts of this w^orld for what they considered as the unverifiable fancies about another. But the in- eradicable longings of the human heart for the knowledge of God will sooner or later over- throw any edifice of agnosticism that the intellect can rear, and agnosticism can never be more than the temporary refuge of the wearied intel- lect, where it may gather strength and courage to start on another stage of the eternal quest.
The popular Christian conceptions of God are dominated by the ideas inherited from exoteric Hebraism, by the crude anthropo- morphism of its published scriptures. The Jehovah, or Jahveh, of the Hebrews, imaged as a " man of war," with human passions and superhuman powers, walking in the garden, coming down from heaven to look at a tower, descending to a mountain to proclaim his law, demanding the slaughter of countless animals in sacrifice, declaring himself to be jealous, angry, revengeful, remembering offences generation after generation - this deity of an undeveloped race has been largely instrumental in forming the God-idea of the uneducated in Christendom.
The contact of the Hebrews with Chaldean
Man's Quest for God. 221
thought added dignity and grandeur to their idea of God, and their post- Babylonian writings show a nobler view of the divine Being. The God of the prophets, as of the later Isaiah and of Micah, is a grandiose and inspiring concep- tion, a Power that makes for righteousness. This remodelled thought about God was softened into the ideal of a perfect man of superhuman greatness, the Father and Lover of men, in the later rabbinical teachings and in the Jewish- Christian scriptures. The limitations were re- moved while the ideal humanity was left, power remained without cruelty and justice without severity. But in Christian theology such as we find in Tertullian, and less nakedly in other Fathers of the Church, the savagery of the earlier Hebrews reappears, and the gracious lineaments of " the Father " vanish under the fierce mask of Jahveh, again the vengeful God whelming his foes under fire-floods. None the less the nobler conception remained as an en- couragement and inspiration, gradually becoming focussed in the person of the Son, the Divine Man, supreme m tenderness and compassion. From the troublous times of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enough emerged to satisfy the heart but not enough to content the intellect ; the conception of God was left vague, hazy,
222 The Spiritual Life.
and somewhat terrifying, while the object pre- sented for adoration, on which all love was lavished, was the Son, self -sacrificed, redeeming, surrendering power to pity - a figure that drew all hearts, that satisfied all aspirations, the Man divine enough for worship, the God human enough for love.
Among ourselves, uprising from the Unitarian school of Christians, there is a somewhat curious but most instructive sect, that of modern Theism, represented by Theodore Parker, Francis New- man, Frances Power Cobbe, and Charles Voysey. These assert and worship " the Father," purging away from that conception all that is harsh, unlovely, stern, in the view of popular Christianity, adorning it with all the heart-compelling attributes of the perfect man, turning, in fact, the second Person of the orthodox Trinity into the first, and investing ' this now wholly divine Figure with all the far- reaching qualities of deity. The Trinity dis- appears, the Unmanifested is ignored, and a vast superhuman personal God is regarded as at once the Father of spirits and the all- sustaining, self-existent Life, beyond whom, embracing and pervading all, naught else exists. He is at once the " One without a second, and the personal Lover and Friend of man.
Man's Quest for God. 22}
If all the harsher traits were expunged from the God of Muhammed, and the fierce wrath were replaced with an immeasurable compassion, then, for the unity and personality of the Supreme, Theism and Islam might hnk hands.
Says Theodore Parker: "The mode of man's finite being is of necessity a receiving : of God's infinite being, of necessity a giving. You cannot conceive of any finite thing existing without God, the infinite ground and basis thereof ; nor of God existing without something. God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its neces- sitating cause ; a world, the necessary logical condition of God, his necessitated consequence. . . . It is the idea of God as infinite - perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, holy - absolute being, with no limitation. . . . His Here con- terminous with the all of space. His Now coeval with the all of time." {Ten Sermons on Religion,
pp.^338, 339, 341.)
" The Soul contemplates God as a being who unites all these various modes of action, as manifested in truth, in right, and in love. It apprehends him, not merely as absolute truth, absolute right, and absolute love alone, but as all these unified into one complete and perfect being, the Infinite God. He is the absolute object of the soul, and corresponds thereto, as
224 The Spiritual Life.
truth to the mind, as justice to the conscience, as love to the heart." {Ihid, p. 9.)
As intellect developed and knowledge in- creased, science began to undermine the popular theory about God, and to see inconsistencies in the loftier thought. The widening out of the universe, the opening of immeasurable depths of space, the glimpses of far suns which dwarfed our own to rushhght, the whirling infinities of innumerable systems, the gold-dust sprinkled afar that was found to be galaxies of stars - each star a sun, each sun the centre of its circling worlds - the faint mist-wreaths that turned out to be uncounted hordes of luminaries on the edges of new fields of being, the un- plumbed profundities of living things in ever- diminishing minuteness presented by our own globe, the infinities of life on the one hand too small for scanning, the infinities of life on the other hand too vast for measuring - from all this the brain staggered back, dizzied and con- founded, overturning, as it reeled against it, the idol of an extracosmic God. Jean Paul Richter's dream became a reality, and void pealed back to void, orb tossed back to orb, the mournful cry, " Children, you have no Father." But when the intellect was crushed beneath immen- sities, the soul uprose in indomitable and admir-
Man's Quest for God. 225
able audacity, Hinging out into the seeming void its ineradicable belief in the Life whence it sprang, to find the void a plenum, Deity immanent throughout " empty " space.
Then Pantheism unveiled its all-alluring beauties, and the intercosmic God shone forth dispelling all the clouds of doubt and fear, and turning into gardens of delight the erstwhile desert sands. Had it come in its native garb, it would have won all to itself, but to intellectual Europe the most generally recognised exponent of this theory was Spinoza, and while his strong thought fascinated and compelled the intelli- gence, presented - as it often was by opponents - without the ethic based on it, it left the spirit starving and the heart a-cold. The idea got abroad that " Pantheism " was a chill and stern philosophy, that its God was unconscious, inac- cessible - the "Father" had disappeared. "God is a being absolutely infinite ; a substance con- sisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses His eternal and infinite essence." (Ethics, Bk. I. Definition 6.) Of these attributes man knows but two, extension and mind or will. Mr. Froude in his Slwrt Studies from which the quotation from Spinoza is borrowed - says, summarising Spi- noza's views, that God " is not a personal
226 The Spirifual Life.
being, existing apart from the universe ; but Himself in His own reality, He is expressed in the universe, w^hich is His living garment." (P. 360.) All things exist as He w^illed them to be, evil is not positive, there is " an infinite gradation in created things," " all in their way obedient." Two things in Spinoza have repelled the emotional - his steady logical de- structive analysis and calm acceptance of its results, and his theory of necessitarianism. The latter has been held fatal to morals, the former to devotion. Yet Spinoza was so far from being incapable of strenuous devotion that he was described by his enemies as "a God- intoxicated man," and his lofty, serene virtue and calm acquiescence in the law of life as he saw it were in themselves evidences of the fine fibre of his soul.
Western thought is swinging between Pan- theism and a more or less coherent Theism ; at one time the thinker is driven to accept the one infinite, self-existent Substance, impersonal, all- pervasive, and his emotions are chilled and paralysed ; at another he expands in love and devotion to a consciously touched Father, and is checked by the logical contradictions in which he finds himself entangled. The compulsion of the intellect, the longings of the heart come out
Man's Quest for God. 227
strongly m the poet who voiced so often the restless mentahty of his age : -
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and
the plains - Are not these. O Soul, the Vision of Him who
reigns ? . . .
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ?
Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why ; For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel " 1 am I " ? . . .
Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with
Spirit can meet - Closer IS He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet.
(Tennyson's " Works," p. 277. Kegan Paul & Co. ed.)
In all Western forms of Pantheism there is a common lack - the lack of the great ladder of beings stretching from the grain of dust to the loftiest spirit. All apparently end with man, and see in him the highest expression of God, while man, feeling his own littleness in the immensity of the God-pervaded universe, stretches out groping hands to find his elder brothers, the outcome of evolution in past eternities, in other realms of space. If none such exist, if an immeasurable past has brought
228 The Spiritual Life.
as fruit no mighty beings, far above his pigmy growth as he above the mote in the sun-ray, must not all universes be but an ebb and flovs^ of the ocean, in which he is but a bubble in the foam of a breaking wave ? He sees him- self within measurable distance of his end, for why should his world bear a harvest for eternity when other like worlds have gone down into the past and no fruit of them remains ? The failure of the dead universes to produce con- tinuing lives, exhibiting loftier powers, appears to prophesy for him an evolution equally limited, and to presage his approaching doom. Chilled by the dank vapours of annihilation he flies back into the warmer regions of faith, and submits to any outrage on reason rather than stifle the ever-recurring conviction, " Not all of me shall die.
Here steps forward to his rescue Eastern Pantheism, satisfying alike to head and heart, impregnable intellectually as that of Spinoza, but solving the problems of life as no philosopher can do who reduces intelligent beings to the narrow compass of man and the lower kingdoms of nature. Other worlds in disappearing have left the lives evolved by their aid, and beings greater than man, intelligences deeper, wider, loftier, crowd the realms of space, soaring to
Man's Quest for God. 229
unimaginable grandeur, angels of worlds, Gods of countless systems, rismg ever higher, with consciousness expanded to embrace vaster areas, offering countless objects for worship, extending lovmg hands to help, the Fathers and Mothers of the systems that roll m space - all that heart can long for, all that aspiration can soar to, all that reason can demand. Through each pours out the One Life, in each is expressed some marvel of the else unintelligible Glory ; They reveal part of That which eludes all grasping in totality ; some so mighty and so vast that They sustain a universe, some so individually tender that a child, unafraid, might nestle on Their breast.
In Eastern I^antheism the One and the Many are distinguished in thought, while the funda- mental unity - the Many being but rays of the One, manifested centres of consciousness, chan- nels of the One, each in His measure - is never left out of sight. " He verily is all the Gods." " They call Him Indra, Mitlra, Var- una, and Agni." *' He who is Brahma, who is Indra and Prajapati, is all these Gods." {Brihadaranyakopanishad, quotations from the Shruti, in Commentary on the Fourth Brah- mana, chap, i.) The Gods truly live as separate intelligences, but they no more mar the divine
230 The Spiritual Life.
unity than does the existence of men as separate intelligences. Polytheism adds to the philosophy of Pantheism the religious element needed for spiritual evolution, but Gods and men, as well as all other parts of the universe, live and move and have their being in the One. That is the One v^ithout a second, incognisable, mfinite, the causeless Cause of Being. "It is beyond the range and reach of thought - in the words of the Mandukya, ' unthinkable and unspeak- able.' " C^he Secret Doctrine, i. 42.) As salt in water, as butter in milk, the One Life is in all, invisible to eye, but immanent in all. The symbol of That to our conditioned intelli- gence is the supernal Trinity, Brahman in His threefold aspect, God in manifestation, the highest point to which our thought can soar. He is the One Self, and veils himself in innu- merable forms, amid which the " Seven Spirits" take the loftiest place, and below Them many divine Beings, grouped in threes and sevens, according to their functions in any given depart- ment of the kosmos, and in many other group- ings, familiar in world-scriptures, and reducible to the same fundamental complex units. ^ A
* Thus in a seven the one is placed in the centre and six are round it ; this doubled, the centres coinciding, gives twelve round the one ; hence all multiples of twelve. Again, the three taken as a centre with the seven round it yield the ten, the decade (our
Man's Quest for God. 231
three and a seven form the Rulers, It would seem, in many systems of our kosmos. Below These are vast hierarchies of graduated mtelli- gences, guidmg the kosmic order, supermtendmg its various departments, Gods of the seven great Elements, the permutations and combmations of which make up the material side of nature - the three gunas (qualities) and the seven tattvas (elements) composing this material side as the three Logoi and the seven Spirits compose the life or energy side.
When we think of the Logos as the Self of all, we think of Him as One, as the Lord of the world and of men. The highest LoGOS, we have heard, is One who has climbed the ladder of Being until He can hold His centre of consciousness. Himself unparalysed, fully conscious, amid the mighty vibrations of the Great Life. Coming into manifestation He limits Himself to be the channel of that One Life to a universe ; He has been man in an in- calculable past, and has risen through every phase of superhuman being to the highest level
system perfected at its close), and out of this arise multiples of ten. Or, this central three being regarded as a unit, eight represents the one and seven, and multiples of eight result. Further groupings appear when each of these threes or sixes, or sevens, is taken as as double, positive-negalive, male-female, etc. But this number system in all its ramifications is loo big to deal with here.
232 The Spiritual Life.
of conditioned existence. Hence He can con- dition Himself at any point of such existence. When for some gracious purpose He thus takes on the human condition and Is born Into one of His worlds, we call him an Avatara, a God- man. He lives again on some globe as man, but the glory of Deity lightens through Him, and He Is Emmanuel, God-wlth-us. To such a one, or to any spiritual Intelligence, men of all grades of head and heart can turn in worship, in love, in trust ; from all such beings, men can ask for aid, counsel or guidance. For a very lowly-developed type of man an intelligence of a comparatively low grade may be the most effective " God " ; the untrained brain cannot grasp the vast idea of an Intracosmlc God, all- pervasive, all-sustaining ; the concept bewilders the Intellect and chills the heart. Yet without love and trust and worship the spiritual nature cannot awake, cannot develop ; it is not the object of worship but the attitude of the worshipper that rouses the emotions which stimulate spiritual growth. God is the life of every object, and it is He that is worshipped in each, not the outer form that is His veil. He is the all-attractive charm, the all-alluring power, and as the mind and heart of the worshipper expand and rise, form after form breaks away
Man's Quest for God. 233
from Him, each successive form showing more of His radiant lovehness, until He stands as manifest Lord of all, and the devotee made one with Him becomes one with the Supreme.
Limited as we are at present, every concep- tion of God we form is limited, inadequate, even grotesque in its imperfection. Well may we try in gentlest reverence to improve and purify conceptions lower and cruder than our own, recognising that our own must be equally low and crude in the sight of those beyond us, however inspiring they may be to us at our less developed stage. Let us worship the highest we can dream in our purest moments, and strive to live the beauty we adore. Worship and life reveal God above us, because they waken the powers of God within us. Man becomes that which he worships and loves, and when the twain become one in Nirvana the Quest is over, the spark has become the Flame.
Discipleship.
Jln Jirticle in the " Theosophical %eview " for July, 1906.
MUCH has been said and written on the Qualifications for Discipleship, as they are set down in Eastern Scriptures ; they are laid down therein as the ideal according to which the aspirant should try to shape his life, and are intended to help a candidate for dis- cipleship by pointing to the direction in which he should turn his efforts. Among the Eastern peoples, Hindus and Buddhists, to whom they were given, they have always been so regarded, and men have taken them as guides in self- culture, as pupils may strive to copy, to the best of their ability, the perfect statue set up in the midst of the class for study. As these qualifications have become known m the Western world through theosophical literature, they have been used in a somewhat different spirit, as a basis for the criticism of others rather than as rules for self-education. Frederic Denison Maurice spoke once of people who " used the bread of life as stones to cast at their enemies," and the spirit which thus uses information is
Discipleship. 235
not uncommon among us. It may be open to question whether Those who have spread through the world much information that once was kept secret, may not occasionally have felt a twinge of doubt as to the wisdom of pouring forth teaching liable to so much misuse.
Our great Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has suffered much at the hands of those who use the qualifications for discipleship as missiles for attack, instead of as buoys to mark out the channel. It has been asked - as in the Vahan last year - why a person who smoked, who lost her temper, who was lacking in self-control, should have been a disciple, while - this was not said but implied - many eminently respect- able people, with all the family virtues, who never outrage conventionalities, and are models of deportment, are not considered worthy of that title. It may not be useless to try to solve the puzzle.
Those who have read carefully the unpub- lished letters from Those whom we call the Masters must have been sometimes struck with surprise over the opinions therein expressed, so different is Their envisagement of people and things from the current appreciations in the world. They look at many things that to us seem important with utter indifference, and lay
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stress on matters that we overlook. So sur- prising are sometimes the judgments passed that they teach the readers a great lesson of caution in the formation of opinions about others, and make one realise the wisdom of the Teacher who said : " Judge not, that ye be not judged." A judgment which has not before it all the facts, which knows nothing of the causes from which actions spring, which regards superficial appearances and not underlying motives, is a judgment which is worthless, and, in the eyes of Those who judge with knowledge, condemns the judge rather than the victim. Eminently is this true as regards the judgments passed on H. P. Blavatsky, and it may be worth while to consider what is connoted by the words "disciple" and "initiate," and why she should have held the position of a disciple and an initiate, despite the criticisms showered upon her.
Let us define our terms. A " disciple " is the name given, in the occult schools, to those who, being on the probationary path, are recog- nised by some Master as attached to Himself. The term asserts a fact, not a particular moral stage, and does not carry with it a necessary implication of the highest moral elevation. This comes out strongly in the traditional story of
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Jesus and His disciples ; they quarrelled with each other about precedence, they ran away when their Master was attacked, one of them denied Him with oaths, and later on showed much duplicity. The truth is that discipleship implies a past tie between Master and disciple, and a Master may recognise that tie, growing out of past relationship, with one who has still much to achieve ; the disciple may have many and serious faults of character, may by no means - though his face be turned to the Light - have exhausted all the heavy karma of the past, may be facing many a difficulty, fighting on many a battlefield with the legions of the past against him. The word " disciple " does not necessarily imply initiation, nor saintship ; it only asserts a position and a tie — that the person is on the probationary path, and is recognised by a Master as His.
Among the people who occupy that position in the world to-day are many types. For those who are perplexed regarding them it is well that the law should be recalled, that a man is what he desires and thinks, not what he does. What he desires and thinks shapes his future ; what he does is the outcome of his past. Actions are the least important part of a man's life, from the occult standpoint - a hard doctrine to many.
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but true. Certainly there is a karma connected with action ; the past evil desire and thought, which are made manifest m an evil act in the present, have had their evil fruit in the shaping of tendencies and character, and the act itself is expiated in the suffering and disrepute it entails ; the remaining karma of the action grows out of its effect on others, and this reacts later in un- favourable circumstance. Action, in the wide sense of the term, is composed of desire, thought and activity ; the desire generates thought ; the thought generates activity ; the activity does not generate directly but only indirectly. Hence the man's desires and thoughts are the most vital elements in the formation of the judgment passed on the man. What he desires, what he thinks, that he IS ; what he does, that he WAS. It follows that a man with past heavy karma may, if he become a disciple, expedite the mani- festation of that karma, and its fruitage in the outer world may be of actions that do not bring him credit in the eyes of his world. From the occult standpoint such a man is to be helped to the utmost, so that he may be able to pass through the awful strain, the bearing of which successfully means triumph, the succumbing to which means failure.
Moreover, in passing right judgments on
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actions, not only must we know the actor's past, in which the roots of the actions are struck, but we must know the immediate past, that which immediately preceded the action. Sometimes a wrong action is done, but it has been preceded by a desperate struggle, in which every ounce of strength has been put forth in resistance, and only after complete exhaustion has the action supervened. From outside we see only the failure, not the struggle. But the struggler has profited by the efforts that preceded the failure ; he is the stronger, the nobler, the better, and has developed the forces which will enable him to overcome the difficulty when it next presents itself, perchance even without a struggle. In the eyes of Those who see the whole, and not only a fragment, that man condemned by his fellows as fallen has really risen, for he has won as the fruit of his combat the strength which assures him of victory.
This disciple stands on the probationary path; he is a candidate for initiation. He comes under conditions different from those that sur- round men in the outer world ; he is recognised as pledged to the service of Light, and hence is also recognised as an opponent of the power of Darkness. His joys will be keener, his suffer- ings sharper, than those experienced without.
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He has called down the fire from heaven ; well for him if he shrinks not from its scorching. And well too for him, if, like the Red Indian at the torture-stake, he can face an unsympa- thetic world with a serene face, however sharply the fire may burn.
What of the famous qualifications for initia- tion which he must now seek to make his own ? They are not asked for in perfection, but some possession of them there must be ere the portal may swing open to admit him. In the judgment passed on him, which opens or bars the gate- way, the whole man is taken into account. With some, so greatly are other qualities devel- oped, that but a small modicum of those specially demanded weighs down the scale. With others, more average in general type, high development of these is demanded. It is, so to speak, a general stature that is expected, and the stature is made up in many ways. A candidate may be of great intelligence, of splendid courage, of rare self-sacrifice, of spot- less purity, and bringing such dower with him may lack somewhat in the special qualifications. Something of them, indeed, he must have. If he have no sense of the difference between the real and unreal ; if he be passionately addicted to the joys of the world ; if he have no control
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over tongue or thought, no endurance, no faith, no liberality, no wish for freedom, he could not enter. The completion of the qualities may be left for the other side, if the beginnings are seen ; but the initiate must fill up the full tale, and the more there is lacking the more will there be to be done.
It is not well to minimise the urgency of the demand, for these qualities must be reached some time, and far better now than later. Every weakness that remains in the initiated disciple, who has entered the path, affords a point of vantage to the Dark Powers, who are ever seeking for crevices in the armour of the cham- pions of the Light. No earnestness is too great in urging the uninitiated disciple to acquire these qualities ; no effort is too great on his part to compass their achieving. For there is something of pathos in the case of a hero-soul who has " taken the kingdom of heaven by violence " and has to pause to give a life- time to the building up of the lesser perfections which in the past he neglected to acquire.
Though the mills of God grind slowly Yet they grind exceeding small ;
Though He stands and waits with patience With exactness grinds He all.
The lofty initiate who has left some iminor
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parts of human perfection unbuilded must be born into the world of men to lead a life in which these also shall be perfected. And if any chance to meet such a one in the flesh he would do wisely to learn from his best rather than to use his worst as his excuse for his own shortcomings, making it a justification for his own faults that he shares them with an initiate.
Pre-eminently is this true of the criticisms levelled against H. P. Blavatsky. " She smoked." But smoking is not the sin against the Holy Ghost. The use of it to depreciate a great teacher is a far worse crime than smoking, which, at the worst, is only a habit disagreeable to a small minority.
" She had a bad temper." So have a good many of her critics, without a thousandth part of the excuse she well might have pleaded. Few could bear for a week the strain under which she lived year after year, wnth the dark forces storming round her, striving to break her down, because the breaking down meant a check to the great spiritual movement which she led. In the position she was bidden to hold the nervous strain and tension were so great, the cruel shafts of criticism and unkindness were rendered so stinging by the subtle craft of the Brothers of the Shadow, that she judged
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it better at times to relieve the body by an explosion, and to let the jangled nerves express themselves in irritability, than to hold the body in strict subjection and let it break under the strain. At all hazards she had to live, with strained nerves and failmg bram, till the hour struck for her release. It is ill done to criticise such a one, who suffered that we might profit.
" She lacked self-control." Outside some- times, for the reasons above given, but never inside. Never was she shaken within, however stormy without. It may be said that such statement will be used as an excuse for ill- temper in ordinary people. Let them stand where she stood, i.e., become extraordmary people, and then they may fairly claim the same excuse.
H. P. Blavatsky was one of those who are so great, so priceless, that their qualities out- weigh a thousandfold the temporary imperfec- tions of their nature. Her dauntless courage, her heroic fortitude, her endurance in bearing physical and mental pain, her measureless devotion to the Master whom she served - these splendid qualities, united to great psychic capacities, and the strong body with nerves of steel that she laid on the altar of sacrifice, made all else as dust in the balance. Well
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might her Master joy in such a warrior, even if not free from every imperfection. But where a person has no heroism, little devotion, and but small tendency to self-sacrifice, a strong manifestation of the special qualifications may well be demanded to counterbalance the defi- ciencies. Man worships the sun as a luminary and not for his spots. In the sunlight of H. P. Blavatsky's heroic figure, the spots are not the things that catch the eye of wisdom. But these spots do not raise to her level those who are nearly all spots, with little gleams of light. It is ill done in these days of small virtues and small vices to criticise harshly the few great ones who may come into our world.
Often, with S. Catherine of Siena, have I felt that intense love for some one even but a little higher than ourselves is one of the best methods for training ourselves into that lofty love of the Supreme Self which burns up all imperfections as with fire. Hero-worship may have its dangers, but they are less perilous, less obstructive of the spiritual life, than the cold criticism of the self-righteous, directed con- stantly to depreciation of others. And still 1 hold with Bruno, the hero-worshipper, that it is better to try greatly and fail, than not to try at all.
The Perfect Man.
Jin Article in the " Theosophical Review " in April, 1905.
'T'HERE is a stage in human evolution which '*' immediately precedes the goal of human effort, and when this stage is passed through man, as man, has nothing more to accomplish. He has become perfect ; his human career is over. The great religions bestow on this Perfect Man different names, but, whatever the name, the same idea is beneath it ; He is Mithra, Osiris, Krishna, Buddha, Christ - but He ever symbolises the Man made perfect. He does not belong to a single religion, a single nation, a single human family ; He is not stifled in the wrappings of a single creed ; everywhere He is the most noble, the most perfect ideal. Every religion proclaims Him ; all creeds have in Him their justification ; He is the ideal towards which every belief strives, and each religion fulfils effectively its mission according to the clearness with which it illumines, and the precision with which it teaches the road where- by He may be reached. The name of Christ,
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used for the Perfect Man, throughout Christen- dom is the name of a state, more than the name of man ; " Christ in you, the hope of glory," is the Christian teacher's thought. Men, in the long course of evolution, reach the Christ state, for all accomplish in time the centuried pilgrim- age, and He with whom the name is specially connected in western lands is one of the " Sons of God" who have reached the final goal of humanity. The word has ever carried the connotation of a state ; it is " the anomted. Each must reach the state : " Look within thee ; thou art Buddha." " Till the Christ be formed in you."
As he who would become a musical artist should listen to the masterpieces of music, as he should steep himself in the melodies of the master-artists, so should we, the children born of humanity, lift up our eyes and our hearts, in ever-renewed contemplation, to the mountains, on which dwell the Perfect Men of our race. What we are. They were ; what They are, we shall be. All the sons of men can do what a Son of Man has accomplished, and we see in Them the pledge of our own triumph ; the development of like divinity in us is but a question of evolution.
1 have sometimes divided interior evolution
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Into sub-moral, moral, and super-moral ; sub- moral, wherein the distinctions between right and wrong are not seen, and man follows his desires, without question, without scruple ; moral, wherein right and wrong are seen, become ever more defined and mclusive, and obedience to law is striven after ; super-moral, wherein external law is transcended, because the divine nature rules its vehicles. In the moral condition, law is recognised as a legitimate barrier, a salutary restraint ; " Do this " ; " Avoid that " ; the man struggles to obey, and there is a constant combat between the higher and the lower natures. In the super- moral state the divine life in man finds its natural expression without external direction ; he loves, not because he ought to love, but because he is love. He acts, to quote the noble words of a Christian Initiate, "not after the law of a carnal commandment, but by the power of an endless life." Morality is transcended when all the powers of the man turn to the Good as the magnetised needle turns to the north ; when divinity in man seeks ever the best for all. There is no more combat, for the victory is won; the Christ has reached His perfect stature only when He has become the Christ triumphant, Master of life and death.
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This stage of the Christ-life, the Buddha-life, is entered by the first of the great Initiations, in which the Initiate is " the little child," some- times the " babe," sometimes the " little child, three years old." The man must " regain the child-state he hath lost " ; he must " become a little child " in order to " enter the kingdom." Passing through that portal, he is born into the Christ-life, and, treading the " way of the Cross," he passes onwards through the succes- sive gateways on the Path ; at the end, he is definitely liberated from the life of limitations, of bondage, he dies to time to live in eternity, and he becomes conscious of himself as life rather than as form.
There is no doubt that in early Christianity this stage of evolution was definitely recoghised as before every individual Christian. The anxiety expressed by S. Paul that Christ might be born in his converts bears sufficient testimony to this fact, leaving aside other passages that might be quoted ; even if this verse stood alone it would suffice to show that in the Christian ideal the Christ-stage was regarded as an inner condition, the final period of evolution for every believer. And it is well that Christians should recognise this, and not regard the life of the disciple, ending in the Perfect Man, as an exotic,
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planted in western soil, but native only in far eastern lands. This ideal is part of all true and spiritual Christianity, and the birth of the Christ in each Christian soul is the object of Christian teaching. The very object of religion is to bring about this birth, and if it could be that this mystic teaching could slip out of Christianity, that faith could no longer raise to divinity those who practise it.
The first of the great Initiations is the birth of the Christ, of the Buddha, in the human consciousness, the transcending of the {-consciousness, the falling away of limitations. As is well known to all students, there are four degrees of development covered by the Christ- stage, between the thoroughly good man and the triumphant Master. Each of these degrees is entered by an Initiation, and during these degrees of evolution consciousness is to expand, to grow, to reach the limits possible within the restrictions imposed by the human body. In the first of these, the change experienced is the awakening of consciousness in the spiritual world, in the world where consciousness identifies itself with the life, and ceases to identify itself with the forms in which the life may at the moment be imprisoned. The characteristic of this awakening is a feeling of sudden expansion,
s
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and of widening out beyond the habitual limits of the life, the recognition of a Self, divine and puissant, which is life, not form ; joy, not sor- row ; the feeling of a marvellous peace, passing all of which the world can dream. With the falling away of limitations comes an increased intensity of life, as though life flowed in from every side rejoicing over the barriers removed, so vivid a feeling of reality that all life in a form seems as death, and earthly light as darkness. It is an expansion so marvellous in its nature, that consciousness feels as though it had never known itself before, for all it had regarded as consciousness is as unconsciousness in the presence of this upwelling life. Self-consciousness, which commenced to germinate in child -humanity, which has developed, grown, expanded ever within the limitations of form, thinking itself separate, feeling ever "I," speaking ever of " me " and " mine " - this Self-consciousness suddenly feels all selves as Self, all forms as common property. He sees that limitations were necessary for the building of a centre of Self- hood in which Self-identity might persist, and at the same time he feels that the form is only an instrument he uses while he himself, the living consciousness, is one in all that lives. He knows the full meaning of the oft-spoken phrase
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the " unity of humanity," and feels what it is to hve in all that lives and moves, and this con- sciousness is accompanied with an immense joy, that joy of life which even in its faint reflections upon earth is one of the keenest ecstacies known to man. The unity is not only seen by the intellect, but it is felt as satisfying the yearning for union which all know who have loved ; it is a unity felt from within, not seen from without ; it is not a conception but a life.
In many pages of old, but ever on the same lines, has the birth of the Christ in man been figured. And yet how all words shaped for the world of forms fail to image forth the world of life.
But the child must grow into the perfect man, and there is much to do, much weariness to face, many sufferings to endure, many com- bats to wage, many obstacles to overcome, ere the Christ born m the feebleness of infancy may reach the stature of the Perfect Man. There is the life of labour among his brother- men ; there is the facing of ridicule and sus- picion ; there is the dehvery of a despised message ; there is the agony of desertion, and the passion of the cross, and the darkness of the tomb. All these He before him in the path on which he has entered.
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By continual practice, the disciple must learn to assimilate the consciousness of others, and to centre his own consciousness in life, not in form, so that he may pass beyond the " heresy of separateness," which makes him regard others as different from himself. He has to expand his consciousness by daily practice, until its normal state is that which he temporarily ex- perienced at his first Initiation. To this end he will endeavour in his everyday life to identify his consciousness with the consciousness of those with whom he comes into contact day by day ; he will strive to feel as they feel, to think as they think, to rejoice as they rejoice, to suffer as they suffer. Gradually he must develop a perfect sympathy, a sympathy which can vibrate in harmony with every string of the human lyre. Gradually he must learn to answer, as if it were his own, to every sensation of another, however high he may be or however low. Gradually by constant practice he must identify himself with others in all the varied circumstances of their different lives. He must learn the lesson of joy and the lesson of tears, and this is only possible when he has transcended the separated self, when he no longer asks aught for himself, but understands that he must henceforth live in life alone.
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His first sharp struggle Is to put aside all that up to this point has been for him life, con- sciousness, reality, and walk forth alone, naked, no longer identifying himself with any form. He has to learn the law of life, by which alone the inner divinity can manifest, the law which is the antithesis of his past. The law of form is taking ; the law of life is giving. Life grows by pouring itself out through form, fed by the inexhaustible source of life at the heart of the universe ; the more the life pours itself out the greater the inflow from within. It seems at first to the young Christ as though all his life were leaving him, as though his hands were left empty after outpouring their gifts on a thankless world ; only when the lower nature has been definitely sacrificed is the eternal life experienced, and that which seemed the death of being is found to be a birth into a fuller life.
Thus consciousness develops, until the first stage of the path is trodden, and the disciple sees before him the second Portal of Initiation, symbolised in the Christian Scriptures as the Baptism of the Christ. At this, as he descends into the waters of the world's sorrows, the river that every Saviour of men must be baptised in, a new flood of divine life is poured out upon him ; his consciousness realises itself as the Son,
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in whom the life of the Father finds fit expres- sion. He feels the hfe of the Monad, his Father in Heaven, flowing into his conscious- ness, and realises that he is one, not with men only, but also with his heavenly Father, and that he lives on earth only to be the expression of the Father's will. His manifested organism. Henceforth is his ministry to men the most patent fact in his life. He is the Son, to whom men should listen, because from him the hidden life flows forth, and he has become a channel through which that hidden life can reach the outer world. He is the priest of the Mystery God, who has entered within the veil, and comes forth with the glory shining from his face, which is the reflection of the light m the sanctuary.
It is there that he begins that work of love symbolised in the outer ministry by his willing- ness to heal and to relieve ; round him press the souls seeking light and life, attracted by his inner force and by the divine life manifested in the accredited Son of the Father. Hungry souls come to him, and he gives them bread ; souls suffering from the disease of sin come, and he heals them by his living word ; souls blinded by ignorance come, and he illuminates them by wisdom. It is one of the signs of a Christ in
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his ministry, that the abandoned and the poor, the desperate and the degraded, come to him without the sense of separation. They feel a welcoming sympathy and not a repellmg ; for kindness radiates from his person, and the love that understands Hows out around him. Truly the Ignorant know not that he Is an evolving Christ, but they feel a power that raises, a life which vitalises, and m his atmos- phere they Inbreathe new strength, new hope.
The third Portal Is before him, which admits him to another stage of his progress, and he has a brief moment of peace, of glory, of Illumina- tion, symbolised In Christian writings by the Transfiguration. It Is a pause In his life, a brief cessation of his active service, a journey to the Mountain whereon broods the peace of heaven, and there - side by side with some who have recognised his evolving divinity - that divinity shines forth for a moment in its transcendent beauty. During this lull in the combat he sees his future ; a series of pictures unrolls before his eyes ; he beholds the sufferings which he before him, the solitude of Gethsemane, the agony of Calvary. Thenceforth his face is set steadfastly towards Jerusalem, towards the darkness he is to enter for the love of mankind. He understands that ere he can reach the
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perfect realisation of unity he must experience the quintessence of sohtude. Hitherto, while conscious of the growing life, it has seemed to him to come to him from without ; now he is to realise that its centre is withm him ; in soli- tude of heart he must experience the true unity of the Father and the Son, an interior and not an outer unity, and then the loss even of the Father's Face ; and for this all external contact with men, and even with God, must be cut off, that within his own Spirit he may find the One. As the dark hour approaches he is more and more appalled by the failure of the human sympathies on which he has been wont to rely during the past years of life and service, and when, in the critical moment of his need, he looks around for comfort and sees his friends wrapt in indifferent slumber, it seems to him that all human ties are broken, that all human love is a mockery, all human faith a betrayal ; he is flung back upon himself to learn that only the tie with his Father in heaven remains, that all embodied aid is useless. It has been said that in this hour of solitude the soul is filled with bitterness, and that rarely a soul passes over this gulf of voidness without a cry of anguish ; it is then that bursts forth the agonised reproach : " Couldst thou not watch with me
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one hour ? " - but no human hand may clasp another in that Gethsemane of desolation.
When this darkness of human desertion is overpast, then, despite the shrinking of the human nature from the cup, comes the deeper darkness of the hour when a gulf seems to open between the Father and the Son, between the life embodied and the life infinite. The Father, who was yet realised in Gethsemane when all human friends were slumbering, is veiled in the passion of the Cross. It is the bitterest of all the ordeals of the Initiate, when even the con- sciousness of the life of sonship is lost, and the hour of the hoped-for triumph becomes that of the deepest ignominy. He sees his enemies exultant around him ; he sees himself abandoned by his friends and his lovers ; he feels the divine support crumble away beneath his feet ; and he drinks to the last drop the cup of soli- tude, of isolation, no contact with man or God bridging the void in which hangs his helpless soul. Then from the heart that feels itself deserted even by the Father rings out the cry : " My God ! my God ! why hast Thou forsaken me ?
Why this last proof, this last ordeal, this most cruel of all illusions ? Illusion, for the dying Christ is nearest of all to the divine Heart.
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Because the Son must know himself to be one with the Father he seeks, must find God not only within him but as his innermost self ; only when he knows that the eternal is himself and he the eternal, is he beyond the possibility of the sense of separation. Then, and then only, can he perfectly help his race, and become a conscious part of the uplifting energy.
The Christ triumphant, the Christ of the Resurrection and Ascension, has felt the bitter- ness of death, has known all human suffering, and has risen above it by the power of his own divinity. What now can trouble his peace, or check his outstretched hand of help ? During his evolution he learned to receive into himself the currents of human troubles and to send them forth again as currents of peace and joy. Within the circle of his then activity, this was his work, to transmute forces of discord into forces of harmony. Now he must do it for the world, for the humanity out of which he has flowered. The Christs and their disciples, each in the measure of his evolution, thus pro- tect and help the world, and far bitterer would be the struggles, far more desperate the combats of humanity, were it not for the presence of these in its midst, whose hands bear up " the heavy karma of the world."
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Even those who are at the earliest stage of the Path become lifting forces in evolution, as in truth are all who unselfishly work for others, though these more deliberately and continuously. But the Christ triumphant does completely what others do at varying stages of imperfection, and therefore is he called a " Saviour," and this characteristic in him is perfect. He saves, not by substituting himself for us, but by sharing with us his life. He is wise, and all men are the wiser for his wisdom, for his life flows into all men's veins and pulses in all men's hearts. He is not tied to a form, nor separate from any. He is the Ideal Man, the Perfect Man ; each human being is a cell in his body, and each cell is nourished by his life.
Surely it had not been worth while to suffer the Cross and to tread the Path that leads thereto, simply to win a little earlier his own hberation, to be at rest a little sooner. The cost would have been too heavy for such a gain, the strife too bitter for such a prize. Nay, but in his triumph humanity is exalted, and the path trodden by all feet is rendered a little shorter. The evolution of the whole race is accelerated ; the pilgrimage of each is made less long. This was the thought that inspired him in the violence of the combat, that sustained his strength, that
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softened the pangs of loss. Not one being, however feeble, however degraded, however ignorant, however sinful, who is not a little nearer to the light when a Son of the Highest has finished his course. How the speed of evolution will be quickened as more and more of these Sons rise triumphant, and enter into conscious life eternal ! How swiftly will turn the wheel which lifts man into divinity as more and more men become consciously divine !
Herein lies the stimulus for each of us who, in our noblest moments, have felt the attraction of the life poured out for love of men. Let us think of the sufferings of the world that knows not why it suffers ; of the misery, the despair of men who know not why they live, and why they die ; who, day after day, year after year, see sufferings fall upon themselves and others and understand not their reason ; who fight with desperate courage, or who furiously revolt, against conditions they cannot comprehend or justify. Let us think of the agony bom of blindness, of the darkness in which they grope, without hope, without aspiration, without know- ledge of the true life, and of the beauty beyond the veil. Let us think of the millions of our brothers in the darkness, and then of the uplift- ing energies born of our sufferings, our struggles
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and our sacrifices. We can raise them a step towards the light, alleviate their pains, diminish their ignorance, abridge their journey towards the knowledge which is light and life. Who of us that knows even a little that will not give himself for these who know naught ?
We know by the Law immutable, by Truth unswerving, by the endless Life of God, that all divinity is within us, and that though it be now but little evolved, all is there of infinite capacity, available for the uplifting of the world. Surely then there is not one, able to feel the pulsing of the divine Life, that is not attracted by the hope to help and bless. And if this Life be felt, however feebly, for however brief a time, it is because in the heart there is the first thrill of that which will unfold as the Christ-life, because the time approaches for the birth of the Christ-babe, because in such a one humanity is seeking to flower.
The Future that Awaits Us.
Jln Jiddress given before the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society on November 25th, 1895.
'T'O- NIGHT I propose to speak to you on "*" human evolution, leading you onwards to the future that lies before the race, and en- deavouring to guide you step by step - though the steps will be somewhat long ones - up the staircase which, through the ages, the race will climb. In order to do this intelligibly I must carry your thoughts backwards for a few moments over ground that will be familiar to you as students of our sublime philosophy, and I may run over it hastily because it is famihar, though the glance over it is necessary as a pre- liminary reminder even for those who already know the facts, in order that we may have the whole great scheme before us from the begin- ning to the end of the Manvantara.
Think then for a moment, so far as thought be possible of that high region, of the beginning of a universe, when from the great LoGOS from Whom the universe proceeded there issued that Breath which comes forth but once in a Manvantara and once returns - the mighty Life-
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Breath in which all systems, all worlds, all individuals, live, breathe, and exists. Let there be in your minds for a moment a picture of that vast cycle of evolution — evolution as yet unaccomplished, evolution existing in the thought of the Logos but not in the facts of the manifestation. Then, running swiftly onwards from that beginning, place before your minds another picture, that of the making of the planes of a universe, region after region : how the energy of the Logos flashing forth pours Itself out as Atma, the one Self, into a universe yet to be, to make plane after plane in sevenfold order ; Itself the energy, the first spirit ; and the first matter but Its own outer aspect, the ring within which It limits Itself for the purpose of manifestation ; then this energy passing out- wards enfolded in that first matter as in a garment, and its outer aspect again forming a new phase of matter, that of the second plane, so that the energy of the second plane is the first energy plus first-plane matter, and round this the fresh differentiation of the matter of the second plane is wrapped ; and so the energy of the third plane is the first energy plus first and second-plane matter, and the outer limit becomes third-plane matter ; and so on, making region after region until the seven (the root- number
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of this universe) are complete, all differentiations of the One - all Atma, but Atma modifying itself in manifestation ; then, touching the limiting surface of the sphere - the self-ordained ring Pass-not - the great Life- wave rushes back upon itself, drawing in from circumference to centre, and having touched the outermost limit, the lowest world of matter, it begins to unfold what erstwhile it infolded. Having thus brought into objective existence the spirit-matter of each plane, it begins to use this as material, and to build that spirit-matter into various organisations and forms of living things who are to be vehicles of consciousness in this universe, to be ultimately fit to form the living temples of the undiffer- entiated Atma as it streams forth as the energy of the Logos ; the unfolding energy climbs from mineral to vegetable, from vegetable to animal, and so upwards to animal man. Still in mmd imaging this vast aeonian succession, see how in these bodies over which the undifferentiated Atma itself is brooding there are unfolding one by one the successive types of spirit-matter which had been infolded during the descent, and how, going upwards to the animal and yet further to animal man (with whom we are concerned), there unfold gradually within the coarser matter of his physical body these subtler,
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less dense types of spirit- matter which belong to the different planes formed by the mfoldmg of the Life. At last the moment comes when man is to begin to be - not merely animal man, but man himself ; when this upward-climbing, unfolding energy reaches the point at which it is possible for it to stretch upwards to the ever- hving Fire that flashes downwards from above, the life below reaching up to the life above, till they meet and man is born. Let me aid our halting thoughts with a simile drawn from every-day experience : you know the way in which the electric arc is formed, the blazing light of the electric lamp ; two carbon poles - one positive, the other negative come ever nearer and nearer to each other ; all still is deirkness, but m the darkness they are coming closer and closer, till at last they are so near each other that the resistance of the air is over- come, the current springs from pole to pole, the electric arc is formed, and light blazes out. That electric arc may not inaptly serve us as a symbol of the sudden formation of the individual, the real man, born when what we may call the negative current of Atma reaching upwards and the positive current of Atma reaching down- wards rush together and meet, and man comes into existence, to live through the measureless
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ages of eternity. All this will be just enough to remind you of what lies behind us in the past, of facts already fanmiliar, but which must be clearly in your minds if you are to see the future that awaits us, the future which I am to try to sketch.
This great Life- Breath then is sweeping on and man is beginning to be, and that wave is the wave of evolution, the law by which all must live, the progress by which all is carried onwards - man as well as the planet on which he lives, the universe and all worlds that are therein ; all that goes with its current is carried onward and upward, all that sets itself against it is cast downward as wreckage, to be worked up again in some far-off future in which all missed possibilities shall be realised. We may think of man now as the individual beginning his upward climbing, and coming up to the place at which we stand to-day. In order to make a difficult subject a little clearer, let me ask you to image in your minds the three great kinds of activities m which mankind pro- gresses. I could fancy them as a mighty three- sided pyramid, with upward - pointing apex piercing heaven, each side of the pyramid typifying one of the three great activities of the universe ; one side would be power, another
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wisdom, another love, and within these all minor activities would group themselves, all possibilities would be included. On the sides you may see figured many lines that seem parallel but are really convergent, the varied lines of progress, mental, moral, spiritual, along which the race is to evolve. And if you think of this pyramid as made of great blocks, each block a great stage of progress symbolising one of the regions of the universe, then at the base we should have the physical world, and work- ing there all the powers and energies of man that are manifested as physical consciousness in the physical body, and are there gradually evolving the three sides of his nature - power, wisdom, and love. Next above it, the second great block symbolising the astral plane, another great region to be occupied by human conscious- ness ; above that the plane of Manas - the devachanic plane, the region of the mind itself ; above that a region nobler yet and loftier, that of Buddhi or spiritual intuition, the plane of Samadhi, sometimes called Sushupti ; above that again the plane of Atma, Nirvana, the crown, enfolding all, within all. To think of this picture may help us as we pass from step to step - from block to block for we have to trace mankind rising from stage to stage, and
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to understand in what the evolution of man consists.
It consists in expanding consciousness, con- sciousness beginning at the very base of our pyramid as a mere thread of living light ; it expands as it mounts from region to region, w^idening out and taking in more and more ; at last the thread has become a cone of fire, and it rises to the very apex and joins the ocean of Living Fire in which all light and all life reside.
Expansion of consciousness is the note of human evolution, and as it expands, taking more and more within its limits, mankind thus rising will increase in power, wisdom, and love. Not that the three can really be disjoined, save for clearness of explanation, for love is but the out- ward expression of wisdom, and power its effectual agent ; still, the separate consideration of each may help to systematise our thinking, and that is not without advantage in a subject so complex and so difficult.
Taking the race as a whole, we may say that its self-conscious life is in the body on the physical plane ; man himself as before defined may indeed be said to have come down from higher regions into his physical encasement, but those regions are not yet subdued by his con- sciousness, and in them mankind at large cannot
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at present be said to live m self-conscious activity. Man inhabits them, but his conscious- ness in them is the consciousness of a babe, not yet awake. Still, that mistake may not arise, let me say that though it is true that mankind as a whole has not risen above the conscious- ness on the physical plane, there are even now some who have risen above it, and are able to work on other planes ; and these are an ever- increasing number. In all that I may say of the future, I shall speak of nothing that is not known at least to one or two among us, who have gained a partial realisation of the future of the race, who know at least something of these different planes which in the future all mankind shall know perfectly and possess fully.
In glancing over the physical region, how do Its activities group themselves on the three sides of our pyramid ? Upon the side of love we have the service of those above us and the help and compassion we extend to those around us and below ; upon the side of wisdom we have all that which is not yet wisdom but is only knowledge, yet knowledge that will become wisdom when it is transmuted ; all scientific thought, all philosophical thought, all artistic thought these are the great lines along which thought IS ascending on the side of wisdom.
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On the side oi power we have government, rule, the organisation of society, and that creative power that even now resides in man, though as yet he knows it not.
As the world is just now It strikes us as strange, almost as startling, that on each of these sides man seems to be reaching the limits of the physical, continually coming to walls he is unable to overleap ; with a successful past behind him, no doubt, yet seemmg as though his progress in the physical were over, and something else must be found if success is to continue. If we look at the region of love which has religion for one of its lines of growth - the service of those above us - we see that during the last fifty years the great religions of the world have been pushed backward by the advancing tide of sceptical intelligence, so that they are now in a position of extreme difficulty, even those who love them most feeling a doubt at the back of their minds as to whether they are on the right road. It is recognised that in the great domain of religion faith has too much taken the place of knowledge, hope too much the place of certainty, and authority too much ihe place of vision. The result of this is that, go to what country you may, take what religion you please, you find the great mass
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of the people sunk In superstition, a prey to terrors of every kind, terror of the unknown future in front of them, a future terror- filled because unknown. Where among the masses there is not superstition there is atheism, eating away ideals. And in addition to this religious degradation of the crowd there is a class of more highly educated people, sceptical at heart and in life if not always in phrase, but often sceptical in phrase as well ; challenging all religion because they know that its mere exotic pre- sentation cannot be intelligently held as true in fact - challenging all and not yet finding hope beneath the challenge, hope of a truth that may be realised though they feel the ground giving way beneath their feet. If we turn to the other line on the side of love - its aspect to those around us and below us, its helpful activity and compassion - we see a few brave hearts well-nigh overwhelmed, despairing before the mass of human misery which they are incompetent to meet or heal ; poverty heart-breaking as to the body, ignorance more heart-breaking as to the mind, so that those who are lovers of mankind scarce know from what direction effective aid may come.
On the side of wisdom, also, dead walls meet our gaze on each ascending line. Science,
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which has done so much and accomphshed so many triumphs, is apparently reaching its limit in the exquisite delicacy and accuracy of its physical apparatus, and yet there come pouring into the laboratories energies too subtle for its measures to gauge, substances too rare for its balances to weigh. Science on every side is groping after new methods. In medicine it finds itself blind, the doctor unable to diagnose disease for lack of clearness of vision, unable to trace definitely the action of his drugs, merely experimenting, and ever hoping that out of experiments some certain knowledge may emerge. In physical science materialism is breaking down, with its theories of the universe proved to be inadequate, while idealism is not ready to take its place, to speak clearly and to explain intelligibly. In the greatest of idealistic systems, the Vedanta of India, as it is now taught, we find intellect devoted to useless hair- splitting instead of profound thinking, a subtle deterioration of character, and modes and habits of thought which undermine morals ; men becoming careless of conduct in life and of difference between right and wrong, self-hyp- notised by an unintelligent repetition of the profound truth "Thou art That." In East and West alike blindness and gropings, a vague
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craving that knows only that It has lost its ideals and that where ideals are not there no truth can be.
And power ; what shall we say of the human activities that play on the side of power ? Society at war within itself, class against class, sex against sex ; kings with no authority to control, who no longer reign, who have no responsibility, to whom has been left the social power to do evil while the governing power to do good has been wrested from them ; the power torn from them placed in the hands of a many-millioned ignorance, in some vague hope that this will be pulling in so many directions that no very harmful movement will occur ; and as a result moral and physical deterioration visible everywhere, poverty and misery well- nigh invincible, with no wisdom that is able to guide, no power that ventures to control. Men look dimly backward and fearfully forward, wondering when a social cataclysm will occur, and some dream sadly of the days when there were kings who were Initiates and who gathered the nations under the safe shelter of their thrones, where knowledge and power grew into mighty life and realised a true society. And what of the power of creation ? but, as 1 said, that is now unknown, and it is useless to speak of it.
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Well, let us glance forwards, and see how mankind shall advance to greater peace, security and happiness on this physical plane. All the changes that will come into the physical plane in the future will come from the workmg down- wards of the higher powers that will then be generally evolved in man. We can now picture to ourselves the nearest step, that into the second region - the mounting of mankind to the second great stage of our pyramid ; mankind will become self-conscious on the astral plane, conquering the astral realm, and will thus find itself in a new world. Here man will take to himself new powers, adopt new methods, with new vistas opening before him, new poten- tialities blossoming forth on every side. It is the race that is rising, not merely stray individuals that are outstripping their fellows. Let us try to realise this next stage in human progress, when the majority of mankind will have ex- panded from self-consciousness in the physical to self-consciousness in the astral world ; let us see how along the lines that we have considered in the physical world mankind will evolve and grow. For what is this astral world, and what do we mean by the expanding of consciousness to embrace this second region in the universe ?
First, there is expansion of sense-power. The
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astral senses, while still distinguishable from each other - for we are not beyond these walls of separation in the astral world - are not so limited as the physical ; astral vision sees behind, before and around, it sees every side of an object and pierces through it; the senses acquire fresh subtlety and acuteness and refine- ment, and from every direction wider knowledge pours in through these wider windows of the soul ; the keener, stronger senses pierce through and make of none effect the obstacles that hindered man when his consciousness could only work through the physical body.
Taking up the activities on the side of love, and first the service of those above us, we find that when man passes into the astral world he will see there as phenomena which he can investigate much that he only dreamed of, or took on faith, when restricted to the physical world. And there are great truths, great realities, mighty intelligences with whom he will first come into touch in this astral world - only touching the fringe and not yet under- standing the nature - only a far-off touch, but still it will make them real to him, and no longer only matters of faith. As this unknown world opens up before the awakened vision of man, as it is now open only to the few, he will
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find that he is not only able to see with far- reaching vision, not only able to use astral senses in the physical body, but that he can leave the physical body w^henever it is an incon- venience or a hindrance, and can use his astral body to travel through the astral world. Then there will come within the compass of his possibilities communication with the great intel- ligences who may there be reached when the limits of the physical are overstepped. And we shall find that religion will take to itself new life, for the very basis of scepticism will be struck away when mankind can see and investi- gate phenomena now wrongly deemed super- natural, and when men come again into direct touch with beings whose very existence is now denied. So also must superstition disappear when men can range at will the world beyond the grave ; that which is no longer the unknown will no longer be a land of terrors, and men's fears will no more be played upon by those who seek to subjugate them through dread of the unseen world. All men will know that world, all will understand its phenomena, mar- vellous now, but then to be familiar, then to enter into daily life. What we call death will be practically shorn of its sorrows, for man will be able to live in the astral world, to mingle
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with those who have altogether shaken off for a time the limitations of the physical body ; the astral world will have come within the compass of the ordmary life, and the division caused by death will be swept away. The contact with the greater Ones, the teaching that then will be thrown open to the world, the possibilities of reaching them - space having no longer power to divide in view of the swiftness of passage that belongs to that subtler region - these will place within the reach of all opportunities of knowledge that to-day come only to the very few, knowledge that will change the whole aspect of life, and open up before the mind of man his still diviner possibihties. There too men will meet the great teachers of the past, and will know that they are not dreams but living men - that all that has been taught of them as noblest is verily true, while all that the ignorance of men has done to obscure them will fade away in that brighter light, in the clearer vision of that purer day. And when from the line of religion we turn to that of help to those around us and compassion to those below, what will not mankind be able to accomplish when a majority can do what only a minute minority can do now grasp the astral forces and use them constantly both in the physical and the astral
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worlds ? In the physical world a man will be able to aid others, to protect others by con- sciously sending forces from the astral to effect his purpose, thinking a useful thought and clothing it in elemental essence, thus creating an artificial elemental which he can direct to the helping of the weaker, the safeguarding of the unprotected, the warding-off of danger, forming a continual shield for anyone to whom it is sent. All this will be within the easy reach of those who are the vanguard of human evolution, and the most backward will be aided by those who have advanced further, all these powers coming within the reach of the majority of men. Help to all who need it in the astral world will also be given, help to all the souls of the backward ones who, on casting off the physical body, enter for the first time a world that is new to them ; for all mankind will not be equal then any more than they are equal now. The great majority will be working self-consciously on the astral plane, but there will still be vast numbers whose consciousness will not have risen to it ; the majority will be available from which to draw helpers to guide, comfort and direct all the more ignorant souls who have cast off the garment of the physical body, to do the work that only the few do now. There are great
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opportunities upon that plane to-day, for even now comfort may be brought to the souls that go thither helpless, hurried into that region full of fear ; their terrors may be soothed, their minds enlightened, and in the future this blessed work will lie open to mankind for all who reach these higher possibilities of man along the Ime of compassion.
Another blessing that will come to the world, working down from the astral to the physi al plane, will be along the line of the education of the children. How will education be changed when the astral senses are awakened, when the minds of children lie open before their parents and teachers, when their characters are plainly limned in colour and form as they are to astral vision, when all their evil tendencies are recognised in the germ in childhood and are starved, while all the good are helped and strengthened, en- couraged to the blossoming ! The education of children in the future - which, after all, is not so far away - will be one that will make their pro- gress a thousandfold swifter than it is to-day. What might not be done for the children of the present, if they were trained by those who possess astral vision - if all seeds of vice were starved, if all seeds of good were encouraged into blossoming ? Instead of seeing them grow
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up mere copies of the elder people around them, we should see them growing up as a verily new generation, unfolding the possibilities that even now are within. Alas for the igno- rance that encourages the evil and discourages the good, for the blindness that is as a bandage on the eyes of our people, so that they are unable to see and therefore to guide the young! When we turn from the side of love to that of wisdom, we find that with the expansion of consciousness on the astral plane a complete change must occur. The methods of science will be altered, the old methods that already are beginning to be outworn will be cast aside in favour of keener and subtler tools, all scien- tific men using these better instruments of the astral senses in order to study and understand the pheomena of the physical as well as those of the astral world. I have only time to indicate a few of the new methods that will then come into common use, but a brief indica- tion will show you how wide is their scope ; and I trust that your President, who is so well able to do it, will ere long deal with this subject in detail in a way that I cannot do, touching it but in passing. Take medical science, and imagine the difference in certainty and pre- cision when the doctor diagnoses by vision and
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traces the action of his drugs by astral sight ; neither the physician nor the surgeon will be shut out by the surface of things as they are to-day, but every doctor will see exactly what is at fault and will apply his remedies accordingly.
Or take the methods of chemistry. The chemist will no longer theorise, but will see ; his " atoms " will no longer be possible abstrac- tions but things that can be easily examined and traced ; ^ all combinations will be studied with astral vision, stage after stage watched and followed ; he will test, dissociate, combine, rearrange, all with the certainty that comes from vision, and he will manipulate his materials by the new forces at his command. In psychology how changed will be the methods when the mind lies before the psychologist as an open book ; instead of speculating on mind in animals, drawing inferences from their actions, guessing at their motives, he will see the way in which the animal is thinking, the strange world that dawns on the animal intelligence - a world so different from our own because the standpoint from which it is seen is so different. Then indeed will man be able to deal effectively with
* See the article on "Occult Chemistry" in "Lucifer," November, 1895, reprinted as a pamphlet, 6d.
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the animal mind, training the dawning intell gence, guiding its advance with clear and competent knowledge. Thought will be studied as it is sent from mind to mind, and psychology will no longer be a jumble of words, a grouping of unenlightened ideas ; the whole will fall into order, will be gradually understood and mastered, for the psychologist will then know in what the mind of man consists, and will begin to under- stand the method of its working and the possibilities of its unfolding powers.
Think too of philosophy. There will no longer be any possibility even of discussion as to its basis in view of the wider knowledge, of powers before uncredited, of matter with poten- tialities unimagined, matter found to be so much subtler than had been thought possible, but still ever acting as a garment for the life. Then will be supplied what is now lacking in idealism - the understanding of the relationship between force and matter as the two aspects of the One, between life and the garment in which life is clothed. Man will comprehend further how matter is subject to the life, how it assumes the form that thought commands, how the creative power is able to function, though this will be grasped far more fully in the regions beyond.
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Consider also writing of history. How different that will be in a world where all the astral records lie open to be read, when history can no longer be written from one side or the other, to support a theory or to bolster up some view of the writer, but when those who are historians will throw themselves back mto the past, will live and move among the scenes which they depict ! When history is told it will be told from the astral records, the living scenes, and they who tell it will live as it were in the period, and trace events step by step with the men and women of the time. And all this with the certainty of observation - reverified at will by different students - neither guess nor inference necessary, but patient looking and faithful recording ; just as we live and move among our fellows to-day will the historian live and move in the world we call the past, a world living and present to those who know how to tread their way therein.
Again, how different will art be in those days that are coming different even from the merely mechanical standpoint. So many more colours will then delight the eye, brilliant and vivid of hue, translucent, exquisite and soft ; such varieties of changing forms in the astral world, so much more to delineate, to reproduce -
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for even down In the physical world the canvas of the painter will glow with the beauties of the astral. And when the musician writes some great symphony or marvellous sonata, he will not only breathe forth sounds to charm the ears of men, but colours will flash out as the notes fall sweetly, and every symphony will be a dazzling series of colours as well as of sounds, with a beauty that is now undreamed of, with a perfection and a delicacy which as yet man cannot know.
From the side of wisdom let us pass to the side of power. Society will then be replaced on its ancient basis, with better materials for its builders' hands. All the different functions of a perfectly ordered State will be discharged by those who are fitted for each by their natural evolution. Then all men's auras will be visible to those who guide the State, and according to the knowledge and the power and the benevo- lence visible to the astral sight will be the duty each is called on to discharge. Each man has around him in his aura the dehneation of his character and of his powers, marking the func- tions which he is best suited to perform, so that each man will then be sent to his rightful place ; a feeling that justice is done will make men harmonious, each knowing that he is doing that
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for which he is fitted, that power which sees gives him his rank and marks out the region of his activity. Most, indeed, seeing for them- selves, will endorse the justice of the ruling authority, and those who cannot see will be kept in check by the overwhelming public opinion. Then knowledge will rule ignorance, and power will shield and guide impotence, and men will laugh at the insane idea that the multiplication of ignorance is wisdom. In those days as youths are growing into manhood their paths in life will be selected, marked out clearly by the colour, fineness and size of their auras, which will show - as they show now to those whose eyes are opened - the range their facul- ties can cover and the powers they have within them for development. Then work will be joy, as all work is joy when it is fitted to the powers of the worker ; the labour, the pain, of work come when it frustrates powers which we possess, when the work is not fitted to the capacity ; when man shall be ever doing that for which his faculties are best suited, then will there be harmony and content in society instead of discontent and threats of revolution.
In those days how different also will be the law, especially as to criminal jurisprudence ; as soon as astral sight becomes a power, common to
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even a strong minority, there must be an entire change in the national dealing with evil and evil- doers. If men now possessed astral sight it would not be possible for them to do many of the things that are done by nations and by society at the present time. It would not be possible that nation should fling itself against nation in war, for then they would perceive the misery and disturbance brought into the astral world by the souls hurled thereinto in terror and in wrath. And there could be no such thing as capital punishment among men who could trace the after-life of man and who knew that every murderer set free by execution can injure society more effectually than when he is bound within the body. Then, too, man will take up his duty towards the animal kingdom around him as well as towards his own brethren of the human race. Men with astral vision could not act towards animals as blind men now act, and in a civilised world there will be no slaughter-houses, no butchers' shops, with their terrible surroundings of loathsome elemental crea- tures, and of astral forms of animals driven out from their physical bodies in fear and horror, to send back upon the world a wave of terror that separates animals from men. For as man slays these helpless creatures they send back into
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the world which they left vibrations of distrust a.nd hatred of men, affecting the animals living upon the earth and bringing about the *' instinc- tive " repulsion which so largely marks the attitude of the animal-world towards man. In those days the crime called " sport " will no longer disgrace mankind, staining with innocent blood the hands that should be pure. Men will cease to be the chief agents who bring misery into the world, and when once they see what they are doing these evils will be swept away for evermore.
Thus as man rises in self-consciousness to the astral world, there will come about wonder- ful changes that will alter the whole face of society, and will make the earth far fairer, love, wisdom and power having been developed along the lines which we have considered, and along many another that time permits us not to follow.
Another stage arises now before our eyes - the devachanic world, the region of the mind Itself ; and the time will come when mankind shall rise into that loftier consciousness, shall be able to function in the devachanic body and use the devachanic senses. How shall I tell of the possibilities of that wondrous world, of all its marvels and its glories, its flashing colours and
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its melodious sounds, its intense life and radiant light ? Save in its own language how shall any idea of it be given ? for there they speak in colour and in music, in living forms of light resplendent. Here we speak and hear but clumsy phrases, word-symbols expressing only a fragment of such thought as we can formulate through the brain. But there no halting, arti- culated speech is needed, for there mmd speaks direct to mind, and matter is so subtle that every thought at once takes form. If we pass into the devachanic world and think, the images of the thought spring up all around us, flashing, glorious in colours vivid and exquisite beyond all telling, delicate hues shading into one another in swift changeful succession, inexpressibly, fascinatingly fair. The more beautifully the thinker is thinking, the fairer are the forms that surround him, the greater and the purer his ideas the more exquisite are the shapes that body them- selves forth as the radiant offspring of his mind. All that he thinks is there before him ; he thinks of a friend and the image of his friend smiles upon him - of a place and it lies stretched at his feet ; space cannot divide, for mind is not limited by space ; time is beginning to yield, and past, present and future begin to melt into the now ; not wholly so yet in the lower
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devachanlc regions, though we feel there the beginning of the blending which is perfected in loftier spheres. When friend speaks to friend they speak in form and colour and music, and the world around them is the richer for their outpouring as its wondrous matter follows the thrilling vibrations of their thought. Thus all the region of Devachan is ever radiant with changing colours of which earth knows nothing, musical with tones that physical ears cannot hear ; mere living is bliss ineffable where nothing evil or inharmonious can disturb. No note of discord can pass into that world, for thought which cannot frame itself in harmony and beauty can there find no expression ; each changing form seems fairer than the last, each tone fuller, sweeter, richer than the one before it. If all here had the devachanic senses awakened and functioning, then ere words could fall from my slow hps the whole room would seem full of music and colour and form, the exquisite vesture of thought, and every sense at once would be stimulated and delighted, for all senses are there but one.
If we ask more closely as to the activities that belong to Devachan, and how man will function in that lofty region when he becomes self-conscious there, again we must look to
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experience for the answer - the experience of those who have outrun their fellows and are already familiar with many of its powers and its possibilities. Service there takes on a new aspect, for as mind touches mmd the lesser comes into direct contact with the Great Ones - so far as the lesser can touch the greater - and the knowledge they impart is so full, so rich, that as it is studied new possibilities seem always to be welling up within it, and what is told is not a hundredth part of that which is placed within reach ; it seems to encircle and penetrate the mind till the man is plunged into a sea of wisdom and knowledge which permeates him through and through. There again compassion expands, rejoicing in the new channels which it finds for its outward flowing. The man on the devachanic plane reaches downwards to all planes, sending down the forces that belong to those higher regions to strengthen and illumate the minds of men, affecting them by masses instead of one by one, affecting numbers by far- reaching thoughts, helping them to see truth as true, and Impressing on the inner mind that which the outer brain is unable to comprehend. Thus part of the help given to those who are aided consists in the working on the inner or higher mind, suggesting a new idea, a scientific
The Future that Awaits Us. 291
*' discovery," a missing link of knowledge, and this higher mind grasping the presented truth works it down into its own lower nature, so that this innermost conviction overpowers all logic and all the slow processes of reasonmg, illuminating the lower mind, makmg compre- hensible the thought, dominating the will, until all the lower nature is enlightened by the ray from its higher Self, That is part of the help rendered to men by those who have reached the devachanic region, and it will be rendered more and more fully to the backward of the race as larger numbers learn to function on the devachanic plane. Here are possibilities that as yet are hardly dreamed of, the training of thought to reach heights unimagined, the making of mighty elementals and the sending them forth to aid into the world of men, the guiding of minds groping after truth, the breathing of loftiest inspirations into those who have fitted themselves to receive them. As thought takes form and the forces of devachanic life are thrown into it, such a form becomes a most potent agent, and thus one worker can aid myriads of his fellow-men.
Wisdom is so different on that level that it is scarcely possible to give even a glimpse of its methods and its workings. It is not the observa-
292 The Spiritual Life.
lion of bodies but the understanding of essences, not the observation of effects but the under- standing of causes, so that wisdom there sees and hears and knows, and deals with the causes of things instead of with results, with the things themselves instead of with their appearances. Mankind will have vision reaching forward into the future, creating causes which will be worked out in following centuries. Help in evolution will then pour in from every side, for the majority instead of hindering will forward, instead of making obstacles, will lift the backward over them, for they will understand the Divine Law and become co-workers with it . in the progress of the world.
See how the sides of the pyramid seem to be approaching each other as we climb upwards, and love and wisdom are blending their activi- ties. So also with power. From what has been said is seen the kind of power that then will be in the world, and how it will quicken evolution. For to have power on the devachanic plane is to be a fuller expression of the Good Law, a deeper channel for its mighty current; perfect execution is guided by perfectly rational- ised obedience, while each is the Law in action and is therefore overwhelming in strength. We go so slowly now from century to century, from
The Future that Awaits Us. 293
millennium to millennium, that if we look back millions of years we see the human race still climbing on its way. But then the progress will be enormously swifter, obstacles will be a memory of the past, and all forces will be working consciously towards a fulfilment that is divine.
Even still higher mankind must rise. Beyond the glorious devachanic world opens yet another more glorious, the region of Samadhi, where a few of our race can function, though it is utterly unknown to the vast majority. It is a region where thought entirely changes its character and exists no longer as what is called thought on the lower planes ; where consciousness has lost many of its limitations and acquires a new and strange expansion ; where consciousness knows itself to be still itself, and yet has widened out to know other selves as one with it, so that it also includes the consciousness of others ; it lives, breathes, feels, with others, identifying itself with others, yet knowing its own centre; em- bracing others and being one with them, and yet at the same time being itself. No words can express it ; to be known it must be experienced. This great expansion gives a hitherto unknown unity ; the divisions of earth are lost, for we are Hearing the centre and looking outwards, thus
294 The Spiritual Life.
feeling the oneness, instead of dwelling on the circumference and seeing the multiplicity. Then all that has been felt of service to those above us and compassion to those below us takes a new aspect, foreshadowmg a yet more perfect unity - the unity of those who are higher and, just because they are higher, who realise their oneness with all below, seeing mankind In the unity of Its spiritual nature Instead of In the diversity of Its material manifestations. Then outflows that compassion that sees Itself and knows Itself in every human soul, that under- stands all and therefore is able to help all, that feels with all and therefore is able to raise all, that in the worst and most degraded still realises the possibilities that to it are actualities, seeing in every man what he is in reality, not what he is in appearance, seeing him as he will be (as we should say) in the future, as he eternally is in the eyes of those who know. There In- comprehensible problems find simple solution, and things that seem unknowable come within the limits of the knowable ; man, rising higher and higher, finds wisdom more far-reaching, power mightier, love more all-embracing, till even to the freed spirit it seems as though there could be no higher climbing, no greater possi- bilities to be realised. Then before it unfolds
The Future that Awaits Us. 295
a yet mightier world which dwarfs all that wenl before. One other range Is still within the limit of human vision within the reach, I dare not say of human thought, but to some extent of human apprehension, where Nirvana binds up all these glories of humanity, and where its possibilities are seen and realised and are no longer mere lovely dreams. Life beyond all fancy of living, activity in wisdom and power and love beyond men's wildest imaginations, mighty hierarchies of spiritual intelligences, each seeming vaster and more wonderful than the one before. What here seems life is but as death compared with that life, our sight is but blindness and our wisdom but folly. Flumanity ! what has it to do in such a region, what place has man in such a world as that ? And then - sweeping as it were from the very heart of it all - from the LoGOS who is its Life and Light - comes the knowledge that this is the goal of man's pilgrimage, that this is man's true home, that this is the world to which he really belongs, whence have come all the gleams of hght that have shown upon him in his weary journey. Then it comes into the dazzled consciousness that man has been living, and experiencing, and climbing from the physical to the astral, from the astral to the devachanlc,
2% The Spiritual Life.
from the devachanlc to the samadhic, from the samadhlc to the nirvanic for this end : that he might at last find himself in the LoGOS whence he came, that he might know his consciousness as the reflection of That, a ray from That. The end of this mighty evolution - the end of this stage of it, for final end there is none - the end of this stage is that each should be in his turn the new LoGOS of a new universe, the perfect reduplication of the Light whence he came, to carry that Light to other worlds, to build from it another universe. That which awaits man is that mighty growth into the God, when he shall be the source of new life to others, and bring to other universes the light which he himself contams.
But what words can tell of that vision, what thought even flashing from mmd to mind may hope to give the faintest image of that which shall be ? Faint and imperfect the sketch must be - how faint and how imperfect only those can know before whose eyes have been unrolled the vast reaches of the untrodden vistas of those unborn years. Faint and imperfect, truly ; yet still a sketch, however dim, of the future which awaits us - still a ray, however shadowy, of the glory that shall be revealed.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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