The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Annie Besant
Annie
Besant
(1847
-1933)
Materialism Undermined by Science
A Lecture delivered in 1895 in Calcutta
It
is now fourteen months, my Brothers, since last I stood amongst you when I
came to
acquaintance of, as I may say, the
that there may be found in her laws and in her
religious thoughts. Leaving your
capita city I travelled
northwards and westwards and visited several parts of
turned towards
back to
being born; and from that far-off distant Isle, near
to the South Pole, come
back once more to the Motherland amongst you again
to bring you once more a
message of the Eternal Verities of Spirituality,
to speak amongst you once again
the Eternal Truths which from ancient times have
come down.
For
whether it be in India or Europe or Australia there is one mighty Spiritual
Truth to be proclaimed, the one thing needed for the soul of man, and that is
the knowledge of its wanderings after the Spirit, the knowledge of the Will of
the Supreme. And whether in the lands of the West and South or whether under
the fire of the tropical sun man is still demanding spiritual knowledge, is
still struggling after spiritual life, still hoping for the same spiritual
unity. To whatever
land we may go, through whatever country we may
pass, we have still Humanity as "the great orphan" crying for the
Spirit, striving after Light, after spiritual
unity, striving to find in the many esoteric
religions the one Spiritual Truth
which alone can satisfy the soul. And if I come back
to you here and take up
again the message which in this land has clothed
itself in the ancient forms of
Hindu
religion from ancient times, it is not because
where human souls need it, it is not because
spirit of man is crying out for the Light, but it is
because in this land there
is more hope of a spiritual revival, and if a
spiritual revival here there
maybe, then it will pour outwards to all the four
corners of the world. For
spirituality is more easily awakened
in
The
spiritual heart here is only sleeping, whereas in some other lands it has
scarcely yet come to the birth; for you must remember that in this land is the
birthplace of every religion, and that from India, outwards, religions have
made their way.
Therefore
it is that the soul of our mother
of the world, and therefore it is that the
Materialism of India is so fatal. For
it is here alone that lies the hope that man has
of looking for spiritual life:
for, in truth, unless the life of the Spirit come
in this land, by reviving
here, then the hope is baseless that spirituality is
to spread over the world.
And
I may say to you, ere glancing for a moment over the subjects with which I
am to deal, upon this visit, that in travelling through the length and breadth
of
people: that in the South of India you have more
pronounced and outward
orthodoxy, you have the more defined observances
of ancient ceremonies and
ancient rites, that on the surface of the
people, as it were, you see more of
the outer signs of Hinduism and more exactitude in
the discharge of the various
religious duties.
That
is a characteristic of the Southern people; that is a marked attribute amongst
their various communities. Far away in the Punjab, there you may find certain
traits of manhood, of strength, of courage, which if they shall rise to the
Spirit surely would give us great help, would give us an enormous
reinforcement; for that race would move with force and energy, only perhaps
slow to take action. In Bengal there is, as I have noticed, much outward sign
of western influence, much of the surface of the people taking up western thought
and western customs; but in the heart of Bengal there still remain, more than
elsewhere, gleams of the ancient spirituality, so that, just as in spiritual matters
India is the heart of the world, so is Bengal the heart of India and may save
India as a whole for all Humanity. And therefore in speaking to you in the ten
days which lie before me, I have chosen subject after subject which should all point to the one object--and that is the
revival of spirituality and the spread of the ancient Hindu religion in the
hearts of its children, who are bound to it by ancestral ties.
If
you cannot revive spiritually in
life, is still the most ancient religion the world
has ever known, sublime in
its Philosophy and magnificent in its Literature.
So that if this shall again
become a living thing, India shall herself live; and
with the revival all the
sleeping truths of other religions shall look
again towards their Indian mother,
and make her once again the spiritual teacher of
the world.
And
now I am going to speak to you upon materialism; I am not going to deal now with
a definite religious question, with definite religious teachings, with
mighty doctrines in Philosophy, in Spiritual
knowledge, which later on I shall
hope to unfold before you. There is one thing that
is eating the heart out of
India, and that is modern materialism. There is one
thing which is poisoning the
mind of India, and that is the kind of science which
is the teacher of
materialism and works against Spirituality in the
mind. How should I be able to
tell you of the moral regeneration of India unless
first I can strike at that
which is piercing her heart and sucking out her very
lifeblood. So--as I have
been trained in the science of the West, trained in
the knowledge of the
physical
Universe which is so much used to make men believe that nothing but the physical
remains--I take for my first subject this undermining of materialism by science,
and I attack it with the weapons that were once used to build it up.
Now
it is fair to ask in the beginning why it is that religion and science
should appear to be in opposition. Why is it that
science should seem to play
into the hands of materialism? Why is it that as
science has advanced, Religion
has found itself pressed backward and backward so that
men begin to make excuses for spiritual truths and talk apologetically of
religion? Why is it that men
advocating spiritual truth are afraid of being
called superstitious? Let us see
whether there is no explanation why science at
the outset should help
materialism and the reason also why, as science has
advanced, it begins to
undermine the same materialism and to destroy that
which it has helped to
establish?
You
may remember Bacon, a great philosopher of the 17th Century,
speaking on this very point used the following
phrase:--that a little learning
inclineth men to atheism, but
deeper knowledge brings them back to religion. It
is a true statement. Look for a moment at religion
and science, and you will see
why that should be the fact, and why one should be
against the other. A man who is a spiritual man--a religious teacher--regards
the universe from the
standpoint of the Spirit from which everything is
seen as coming from the One.
When
he stands, as it were, in the centre, and he looks from the centre to the
circumference, he stands at the point
whence the force proceeds, and he judges
of the force from that point of radiation and he sees
it as one in its
multitudinous workings, and knows the
force is One; he sees it in its many
divergencies, and he recognises it as one and the same thing throughout.
Standing
in the centre, in the Spirit, and looking outwards to the universe, he
judges everything from the standpoint of the Divine
Unity and sees every
separate phenomenon, not as separate from the One
but as the external expression of the one and the only Life. But science looks
at the thing from the surface.
It
goes to the circumference of the universe and it sees a multiplicity of
phenomena. It studies these separated things and
studies them one by one. It
takes up a manifestation and judges it; it judges it
apart; it looks at the
many, not at the One; it looks at the diversity, not
at the Unity, and sees
everything from outside and not from within: it
sees the external difference and
the superficial portion while it sees not the One
from which every thing
proceeds. You may imagine, to take a figure, that
you stand where there is a
white light--say an electric light sending out rays
from a single point; imagine
three tubes going out from this centre and rays of
light travelling down each
and passing through a glass of a different colour set in each tube; if you look
from the point where the electric light is you would
see the white light
striking outward as a light which was one; but if
you went to the far end of the
tubes you would there see that the light was of three
different colours, as red
and blue and yellow, appearing as if the light was
of three kinds not one,
because in their separation unity would be
entirely lost. See how that works in
the Universe. You have your three great gunas or attributes through which, as it
were, the light comes as through three different
glasses, and the one Divine
Spirit
comes down into manifestation; and it is not only the three gunas
that
you have but these intermingling one with another,
and breaking in a thousand
different channels.
Then
how great must be the differences at the circumference! But how it would lessen
the difficulty if men could only see the processes, and know how those results
were brought about; if they went further, and if travelling
onward they found the divergences greatly diminish, see then how thus going
forward, they may come, as it were, near to the one, and reconciliation between
Religion and Science may arise. Religion shows everything from the point of the
Spirit and proclaims the unity. Scientists show everything from the point of
view of diversity and proclaim that, as if in opposition, to the world. But Plato
says of the man who can discern the one in the many, that that man he
regards as a God; the work of the true spiritual
teacher is to show the one
under the multiplicity, to make man see the fact of
unity underneath diversity,
and as science goes forward she also may be used
once more to help us, because in passing out of the physical into the
super-physical and mental, she is going nearer to Unity.
And
now let me turn to my science and give you the proofs of this. First let me
refer you, though I need not dwell upon the point, to
the remarkable position
taken by Huxley in his latest writings, which were
new when I was with you last
year, but which remain unchanged, uncontradicted, as the latest proclamation of
the great teacher of Agnosticism as the latest
proclamation of its exponent in
European Science. Two great points he
made, or rather three. First--and I only
mention these briefly, because I dealt with them
last year--first he pointed out
that the evolution of virtue in man was directly in
conflict with the evolution
of the physical world: that when man evolved
compassion, and tenderness and
gentleness and self-sacrifice, when he learnt to
use his strength for service
instead of self-assertion--he was flying right
in the face of the laws by which
progress had been made in the physical Universe.
He was following the law of
self-sacrifice as against the law of
self-assertion. Why is it that man can thus
set himself against the cosmos? It is because he is
approaching the spiritual
region; it is because he has begun to develop the
essential nature of the
divinity itself: for the life of God is in giving
and not in taking: the life of
God
is in pouring out and not in grasping; and as man feels the life of the
Spirit
in him against the life of the animal, he grows Divinely
strong. And when
you find men of science admitting that the
evolution of virtue is by the law of
self-sacrifice, you may perhaps begin
to admit the possibilities of what is said
in some of the sacred scriptures, that Creation
always begins with Sacrifice.
You
may remember that--I am quoting to you, leaving out only the first great
word--"the dawn is the head of
the sacrificial horse, of the horse which arose
out of the water, the water which the commentary
says represents Paramatma."
All
creation is Sacrifice. The source or dawn is the sacrifice, and everywhere the
soul that would develop must live a life of
sacrifice, because as the Upanishad
says to you, a sacrifice of the Godhead was made in
order that the world might
exist. Sacrifice is the first condition in order that
the Universe may be, and
that man might be evolved to be one with Himself.
The
second point made by Huxley seems taken from the sacred books of
pervades the whole. Man can set himself against
the external world, for "Thou
art Brahman," and when that is realised by man all else becomes subject to his
will. And the third belief that Huxley has thought
fit to declare is that the
working of consciousness in the higher cannot be
understood by the lower.
There
is nothing against the analogy of nature in supposing that there are grades of intelligence
rising above men. There may be other intelligences higher and
higher and higher, reaching further and further far
above the noblest
intelligence of man. And there is
nothing, he says, to make it impossible that
there should be in the universe, above these
grades--a Single Intelligence. But
what is that? Nothing but what has been proclaimed
in the Scriptures, Isvar, the
Lord,
the Logos, the Word of which all things were made. So that you may see
how, on these lines, science in the mouth of one of
its greatest teachers is
undermining materialism.
Now
let me go a little further. Let us see, not from the mouth of the teacher,
but from the facts themselves, how changes are
going on. Physical facts are
being discovered which show that underneath the
material mind must be at work.
Underlying
the physical, intelligence must be active; .underlying a particle of
what was once called dead matter, a metal, a crystal
or a stone, there is a
moving life--there is a ruling intelligence. First let
me say--and the force of
the argument may excuse repetition of it--that if
you take a crystal, you find
it grow along geometrical lines, with absolute
definiteness of angles, as though
a compass were used to trace it, and these lines
make geometrical figures. So
that Plato's phrase "God geometrises"
is seen to be true even in the animal
kingdom.
Then
again when from the mineral you go to the vegetable where life is
more active, where there seems to be less
regularity, where there seems at first
less of order, you will find in reality that even in
its multiplicity there is
order, that in the vegetable as well there is the
same immutable law. If you
take the branch of a tree, you may study the way the
leaves are set, and you
will find every leaf in a definite place, both as
regards the leaves lower down
and higher up. So that the leaves of the tree are
developed on a geometrical
plan. More than that. Since
I last stood here to speak to you, a series of
investigations has been made into the
way that metals behave under exercise.
Every
engineer and other employer of machinery has noticed that when metal is
used, where there are bars and wheels and other
parts making up the machine,
that with the use of the machine, what is called
"fatigue" occurs. The metal
gets tired. But what does this mean? It has been
observed that, after a certain
amount of exercise, the machine will not work well. It
works like a tired horse
or a tired man; it stumbles and cannot carry on
the work. What shall be done?
Let
it rest.
It
does not want improvement, as every part is perfect; it does not
want repair--there is nothing in it which is broken;
it only needs to rest; and
if it is allowed to rest it recovers from its
fatigue, without a single thing
being done to it, and it goes on to work as well as
ever, showing that rest has
given back its energies and that, just as a tired
animal reposes, so also the
"dead" metal may repose. This shows that even in a metal
there is life--for a
dead thing cannot get tired, a dead thing cannot
lose its energies, a dead thing
cannot be restored by rest. These are all signs of a
living body; where there is
fatigue and recovery of energies by rest, there
is life existing, however hidden
it may be under the form which conceals it from
our eyes.
And
now for a moment turn to Chemistry. I took first that point of the metals
because it is a point which on thinking over you will find exceedingly plain
and intelligible. But turn now to Chemistry. One great argument which
materialists used to take from Chemistry was this: that as advances were made
in what was called organic Chemistry, or the Chemistry of living things, it was
shown that the separation made between organic and inorganic Chemistry was artificial.
As a matter of fact, they said there was no fundamental difference and both
organic and inorganic Chemistry were on the same lines; therefore they thought
that the
introduction of life as a thing
separate and apart from chemical agencies must
be given up. That argument was very much
strengthened by chemists in the
laboratory making certain things which before had
been found only as products of vegetables and animals and which had been
regarded therefore as the outcome of living energy.
These
things were said to be things which could only be produced by living organisations. During the present century, however, a large
number of
these bodies have been made by chemists, and they
have succeeded here in
breaking down the barriers between the organic
and the inorganic; and the result
was that at once it was said, "you see life is
only, after all, the result of
chemical
energy, and not an outcome from the supreme source, but only something in
connection with the chemical energy; you were under a mistake in supposing those
things were always found as products of living things, and therefore there is
not needed to explain them a source of life from which all living things proceeded.
See how the chemist has proved you out of court; see how he has made that which
you said could only come from life." Thus apparently was one of the arguments
knocked down which seemed to prove the life of the world as coming from the
life which was Eternal and Supreme.
But
Chemistry, in the course of these very investigations, going along the lines
called organic, has given us an argument stronger than the one attacked. It
places within our reach arguments far stronger, far more potent than the one
which it destroyed; for it shows that in the organic the atom is not only, as I
told you last year, formed by the action of electrical currents out of primary
matter, but it shows further that the atom here progresses; that the atom in
the animal kingdom is not at all the same as the atom of the vegetable in its
combining power. It shows that the change is not a change of material
attributes, but a change of inner life, of internal differentiations--the atom
changes within itself, as all living things do; for one of the great signs of
life used to be said to be this power of
adaptation from within.
Take
an atom in the mineral kingdom such as carbon. All its combinations are simple, all its combinations are one by one. This fourfold atom
can join with others in definite and simple combinations, but when it passes
forward, having gone through the mineral kingdom, then by an inner evolution,
it changes its combining power and unites with itself to form a number of
compounds, forming closed rings, so as to make complicated combinations never
found in the mineral kingdom.
Taking
the old story of evolution as laid down thousands of years ago, not in the
modern but in the ancient forms, we learn that this
atom is part of the Universal life, that it is not dead matter but a living
thing, that atoms are minute lives which go to build up external forms. We are
able now to bring arguments from Chemistry to show that there is atomic
evolution in the universe, that the progress of life which we see around us is
no dream of the ancient Rishis but a reality. The scientists
look only at the form and not at the inner life; but as you study the atom, you
realise that this increased power of combination
means evolving life within it. Not only is that seen, but it is also now admitted
that life cannot be regarded as an outcome of chemical agency. It is admitted
that life shows certain specific energies which differentiate it from
electrical and chemical
affinities, and you may get the ,phenomena of
living things among the energies
which science is unable to trace to their source.
Once it was thought that life
might be explained as the outcome of chemical and
electrical agencies, but now
it is admitted to be something more. Science now
admits that although they are
correlated with the life, they are not the life
itself, and although they
accompany the phenomena they cannot be regarded as
their sources. So that from the chemistry which was the greatest hope of the
materialist, we may now obtain arguments for its
undermining.
Pass
from that to electricity and see how here, in the latest discoveries, are
arguments that may help our works. It is not only
that science has proved that
whenever thought is present, electricity is also
present, interesting as that
is, as showing the close relationship between
them; but we are also told that
there may be a development of an organ in the brain
of man which will take
cognizance of electric vibration directly and not
indirectly. Let me show you
what I mean. You see the light here because the
light makes vibrations, and
these vibrations strike on the organ we call the eye.
The eye is so put together
in its minute parts, that these vibrate in
response to the vibrations of the
ether; so that whenever these vibrations are present,
certain particles in the
eye vibrate in response and give to us the
sensation which we call light. Now
these vibrations are within narrow limits; there are
vibrations in the ether
wider and narrower in wave-length than those which we
call light, and to these
our eyes do not answer. Therefore if they alone are
present, we are in darkness;
we cannot see. So again suppose we had developed
the organ which is necessary to respond to the electric vibration, while we had
not the organ of sight.
Then
this room would be dark to us, though filled with the vibrations we now call light.
Then the consciousness could not perceive the light. But if we had
developed instead of the eye another class of
organs which answered to the
electric vibrations, and suppose a large electric
machine were fixed at one end
of the hall, and a strong electric current sent
through the hall, we should be
able to perceive because the organ in us would
vibrate in answer to the electric
current, and the current would reach our
consciousness through this organ. The
consciousness is helpless without an
organ that receives from without, and only
the body can receive and transfer vibrations to the
inner intelligence. That has
been very clearly pointed out, and to take a
striking illustration used by
Professor
Crookes: suppose we had no eyes to see the light, and
suppose we had an inner organ which answered to electricity. This air would be
opaque and we could not see through it, while a silver wire going through the
air would be
transparent, would be like a tube going through a
solid mass. Though you would
be able to perceive along the silver wire, because
silver is a good conductor of
electricity,you would perceive the air
as a solid round the silver which would
look like a hole.
Do
you see how rational the illusory theory can become when you learn a little
more science? Do you see how matter is no longer the thing which it was, a
solid material, but by a change in the organ of consciousness, what is solid
today may be permeable to-morrow? And thus the idea is largely right that
regards matter as an illusion; for what we call matter is only a generalisation of the impressions received by consciousness
by way of the senses. It is the translation in consciousness of the unknown
something which works upon us. In fact, what we call matter is but a reflection
in the consciousness of an aspect of the Supreme Unknowable Unity, just as the
Spirit is the reflection of the other aspect of the same Unknowable Unity.
Thus
science is bringing us back to this part of the ancient teachings, and if a
materialist comes to you and says that matter cannot pass from matter, just
throw into his mind for him to think over, some of these later facts.
Pass
I from that to another closely allied point--that of thought-transference.
Thought-transference
is now being acknowledged, though for a long time science was very doubtful as
to its acceptance, and if you spoke to a man about it he
most likely regarded you as a crank, or even called
you a fraud, for it was
easier to call you a fraud than to admit that he was
ignorant. There are men for
whom it is impossible to say "I do not
know," but anybody can say "you are a
fraud." The ignorant who are not able to
understand, people who are most
self-opinionated nearly always call out
"fraud," when confronted with the
unintelligible. Look now at
thought-transference. Thought is a form-producing
force; when Brahma thought, worlds appeared. In the
ancient books it was always taken to be granted that action is an effect of the
mind. But it has been asked contemptuously of the writers of these books, what
did they know about modern science? What did they know compared to our advancement?
For we are supposed to know everything nearly in this 19th century! Yet, after
all, the old writers have become justified by the facts. The old teachers have
been justified by the later investigations.
And
some of the best of the younger scientists in
Oliver
Lodge speaking two years ago, said he was sure of thought-transference,
but it was alleged that matter might be moved by
the action of the will without
material contact, and of that he was not yet
convinced. But within the last few
months Mr. Lodge has himself carried on a number of
experiments which have
convinced him, he says, beyond the possibility of
doubt, that an article may be
moved from one place to another without physical
contact at all; that bodies can
be
moved or suspended in the air without the means of physical support, and that he
himself has taken part in experiments which have been carefully arranged by himself
and other scientific men and they have proved that it is possible and it
may be done over and over again. The experiments
carried on included therein the taking of small articles and without physical
contact passing them from one part of a room to another.
The
conditions under which these things were done were very rigid. They were
carried on in a small island where there were no persons living except the
lighthouse-keeper and his family. It was a very little island, a mere rock. Mr.
Lodge and two or three others got the owner's consent to make their experiments
there. They brought with them what is called a medium who
belonged to the South of Europe, who could not
talk the language of the
inhabitants of the island, so that she could not
communicate even with the
family on the island, she being an absolute stranger
never having been there
before. They took her into a room with themselves
only, with locked door, and
there they performed the experiments in which these
phenomena were produced.
They
kept the reporter outside in the balcony so, that he could not be within
sight of what was occurring. The reporter was put
outside with a closed shutter
between him and the people in the room. He was
to write down what he heard, but he was not able to see what happened.
Mr.
Lodge said he was himself absolutely convinced; he said he could not as yet
explain it, but he thought it possible there might be a kind of expansion of
vital energies by which a person, under certain conditions, could affect a body
outside his physical reach. Just as one body can touch another by the exercise
of physical energies, so can it draw others towards it.
But he is not yet prepared to say how that energy is exercised. That this was,
he knows; how it was, he has not yet satisfied himself. But if he were to read
some of the ancient books, he could easily find out. He might find that a man
does not consist only of what is called the food-sheath or our physical body,
but that men have other sheaths in which consciousness may work, without the
limitations which are attached to the
physical body. When it is working within there,
it can also exercise its power,
just as much as it can in the physical body, and may
lift an object from one
place to another by working with a law of nature in
which other forces are
concerned. The sheath used is what the
Theosophists speak of as the "astral"
body which can be utilised
for the production of these phenomena, and though it was said to be a fraud
when Madame Blavatsky brought an article from one side of a room to another,
yet nearly four years after her death you have Mr. Lodge going into the
subject, and asserting after a scientifically rigid repetition of
the facts that the thing could be done, thus
justifying a statement as possible
which had been hastily dismissed as a fraud.
I
might speak of many other cases of these latest investigations, and show you
how they are undermining the materialistic idea. I
may turn to Hypnotism, and
remind you that last year I remarked that it was
becoming a public danger--the
power of influencing another, the power recognised by science, which one man had of imposing his
thoughts on another. I saw that before long nations would be face to face with
crimes which they would not know how to deal with. I said to you that unless
the exercise of these powers were very carefully guarded, so
that men who were unworthy should not be allowed to
grasp these hidden powers of nature, there would be great danger to society in
making safe particular classes of crime.
Since
last year that prophecy of mine has proved itself true, and in certain cases
both in France and the United States of America crimes were found to have been
worked by the hypnotiser, and the courts have not
been able to deal
with them, and verdicts of acquittal have been given
on the ground that the
criminals were not responsible for their actions,
that being thrown into the
hypnotised state, they could not
justly be called to account by the law for the
crime which they had committed. So that you have this
result justifying the
ancient practice of the East in withholding
dangerous knowledge of occult
forces, and showing that society in the West is face
to face with the peril of
men who commit crimes but who cannot be held
responsible for them, because
committing them under the influence of those who
suggest them.
What
is to be the outcome of these arguments? What is to be the outcome of these later
investigations in Chemistry, electricity, thought-transference, Hypnotism, the
moving of bodies and the like? To what are these new lines of investigation tending?
They tend to show you that the old doctrine is true, that everything is the
outcome of mind, that the Supreme Mind is, as it were, behind every phenomenon,
that matter is regulated in conformity with the dictates of mind, that it is
the truth that thought-forces take for in particular manifestations,
and so the Universe is only an expression of the
Divine Will. And inasmuch as
the
mind generates thoughts, and inasmuch as the Supreme and human minds are one in
their essence, therefore the mind of man, in its higher manifestations shares in
the powers of Supreme mind, and can control matter, can move matter, can model
matter, shape matter, and make itself visible in the envelope of thought, and
so communicate with other minds without any attempt to speak or hear at all.
So
that you begin to understand that the saying of the Purana
as to creation is
not a dream, but that it is from the Supreme Will
that forms emanate and build
the Universe. And you may understand that this
power of the Supreme is more
manifest in the power of the mind than in the
powers of the body, and that true
activity is shown not in running about from place
to place, held in the bonds of
physical facts, but in quiet thinking, in the use
of the imagination and the
will. Therefore the Yogi sitting apart, with body
absolutely still, with eyes
closed, and mouth not communicating with other men, if
he be a Yogi indeed, a
Yogi
in heart not only in dress, he has an inner life, a spiritual life, he may
do more than the man of action by his thoughts, by
his meditations, by the
forces which are going out from him. On these more
than on the work of
politicians may turn the life of the nation.
Nor
is this work only for the Yogi. Every one of you is sending out thoughts
that, passing into the astral atmosphere, will take
form, and thence affect the
lives of men and in their totality the nation's
future. If only every one of you
would give one brief quarter of an hour's thought
each morning to the future of
India,
and send out earnest wishes for her welfare, hopes for her revival,
aspirations for her spiritual greatness, believe me
you would make a force that
would raise the nation and would mould her future.
Your thoughts would gather
together, modelling, as
it were, an ideal India that should take shape in the
external world; your prayers would gather
together and ascend to the Feet of
Mahadeva, whence would flow forth a regenerating
energy that would manifest
itself in teachers, in leaders, in guides of the
people, who could move the
hearts of men and unite them into one mighty Unity.
Such is your power over the
future, such the service you may render India; for in
thought is the power of
the Supreme, and it is man's because "Thou art
Brahman."
The Theosophical Society,