Practical Theosophy
By
C Jinarajadasa
First Published 1918
Based on lectures delivered in
Contents
I
Introductory
II Theosophy in the Home
III Theosophy
in School and College
IV Theosophy in Business
V Theosophy in Science
VI
Theosophy in Art
VII Theosophy in the State
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
THE value of Theosophy as a philosophy of conduct lies in the
fact that Theosophy approaches us every hour of the day and in every occupation
that is ours. While it contains universal truths relating to the profoundest
problems of existence, at the same time it tells us luminous truths about the
little things of our daily lives. Once a man has grasped Theosophical
principles, even if only
intellectually, they will
never leave him. They are as inseparably woven into the fabric of all life as
the truths of evolution are woven into the fabric of Nature. A man may refuse
to live up to them, but he cannot separate himself from them; they dog his
footsteps in the home, in his business, in his amusements; they make a running
commentary on all that he sees and hears.
There are three fundamental Theosophical truths which transform a
man's attitude to life when he begins to apply them. They are
:
1. Man is
an immortal soul who grows through the ages into an ideal of
perfection.
2. The growth
of the soul is by learning to cooperate with God's Plan which is Evolution.
3. Man
learns to co-operate with God's Plan by learning first how to help his fellow
men.
The first truth tells us that man is a soul and not the body;
that the body is merely an instrument used by the soul, and discarded, as at
death, when no longer fit for the soul's purposes. It also tells us of
Reincarnation or the process of repeated births on earth, by which method a
soul grows by experiences life after life, slowly growing thereby into wisdom
and strength and beauty.
The second truth tells us that the purpose of life is not
contemplation but action, and that each action of a man's life should be so
guided by understanding that it fits in harmoniously with the Divine Plan of
Evolution. The more a soul co-operates with the Divine Plan, the happier, wiser
and more
glorious he
becomes.
The third: truth tells us that each man is bound by invisible
bonds to all his fellow men; that they rise and fall with him and he with them;
that only as he helps the whole of which he is a part, does he really help
himself. Love of one's fellow men and altruism in the highest form are
therefore the essentials
of growth.
These fundamental truths are applicable to every occasion of
life, and the Theosophist is he who applies them. Let us see how they can be
applied in various departments of human activity.
CHAPTER II
THEOSOPHY IN THE HOME
WHAT is the family, in the light of these Theosophical truths ? It is a meeting-place of souls to help each other
towards perfection, No individual in a family comes there by mere chance. The
elders and the youngers, the masters and the
servants, the guests, even the domestic animals, are in a family because each
is to help and to be helped. There is no such thing as chance in the Divine Plan;
each individual in the family comes and goes, is a member of it for a long or a
short time, because he can co-operate to further the welfare of all the other
members of the family. He has a definite role in the family, and his growth as
a soul is by playing that role to the fullness of his capacity. The home is a
place for growth, and the ideal home is where the conditions are such as enable
each individual member of it to grow swiftest towards his perfection.
There are several aspects of life in the home, and each is
affected by the principles of Theosophy, What has Theosophy to say concerning
the relation of parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, host
and guest ?
First let us take the relation of parent and child. The child has
a dual nature, first as a soul and second as a body. It is only the body which
the parents provide; the soul of the child lives his life independently, and
takes charge of the body provided for him because he hopes to evolve through
it. It is only as regards the body of the child that the parents are the
elders; but the child, as
a soul, is the
equal of the parents, and sometimes is wiser, more capable, and more evolved
than they.
Therefore the child does not belong to the parents; they are only
guardians of his body, so long as the soul cannot fully direct the body during
its infancy and youth. The phrase "my child" gives no right over the
destiny of the child; it gives only the privilege of helping in the evolution
of a brother soul. As
the parents
evolve by learning to help their fellow men, one such is sent to them as their
child.
During the years of infancy, the parent's duty is to help the
soul of the child to take control of his body so as to do his work. That soul
comes with many experiences of past lives; he is preparing himself for a vast
work in the distant future. He takes birth in a particular family because its
environment is both what he deserves and that ]from
which he can get the experiences he
needs for his
growth. The duty of the parents is to help the child to those experiences.
This is to be done first by surrounding the child with all that
makes for a healthy life; it is the duty of parents to know the rules of
hygiene and sanitation, so that the physical conditions for the child may be as
perfect as possible. Next the parents must provide an emotional and mental
atmosphere that helps the child. The soul of the child is not perfect; he comes
from his past lives where he has been both good and evil; tendencies of both
are in him as he takes his new birth. But the parents can help the child's
growth by recalling to his memory in his early years only the good and helpful
experiences and not the evil and vicious. It is true that the soul must
eradicate the evil in himself only by his own action;
but others can make it easier for him, especially when he begins a new life as
a child, by throwing their weight on the side of his good rather than of his
evil.
Therefore the parents must understand the invisible power of
thought and feeling, how a thought of anger, whether expressed or not
expressed, waters the hidden seeds of anger which the child has brought from
his past lives, and how equally thoughts of love and affection starve out the
germs of evil while they feed the germs of good. A soul ]
with both good and evil in him can start his new experiment with life as a good
child rather than as a bad one, if the parents will foster in themselves their
good thoughts and feelings rather than the evil.
While the duty of parents is to surround children with all that
tends to goodness and beauty, the failure of a child to be good under those
circumstances is not necessarily due to the parents. The soul of the child may
find the seeds of evil in himself too strong for
control; the parents can but attempt to guide him, but if he will not be guided
he must go his own way. The soul will learn through his mistakes, and through
the suffering resulting to him and to others from them. If the parents do their
duty, they have done all the Divine Plan expects of them; they cannot make or
unmake the nature of a soul, for the soul himself must work out his salvation.
A mistake is not the calamity that it appears to be when we know that the soul
has not one life only within which to set right his error, but several lives.
The Divine Plan gives the soul as many opportunities as he needs, till he
finally grows into strength and virtue.
Therefore no parent need blame himself, if he has done his duty,
because his child does not respond to ideals of virtue. The opportunities that
the child refuses
to take will come to him again, though only after he has been taught by pain to
grasp them. What the ]parents must always do under
these
circumstances is not to
think of the soul by his failures, and so increase his weaknesses, but to think
of the soul by his virtues, and so strengthen them.
In the training of children, one important question is how to
make a child do the right thing and not the wrong. Unfortunately, civilization
hitherto has believed that some kind of corporal punishment is inevitable as a
part of the method. While parents have the duty of training a child, they have
no right
whatsoever to force
him ; the excuse that punishment is good for a child is not really borne out in
the light of the fullest facts. It is true that in early years the child body
is very largely an animal intelligence overshadowed by the soul nature, and
that many of a child's activities have little or no direct
association with the soul; it is not the soul that eats and
drinks, is pettish or obstinate, or is made happy with toys, or laughs when
tickled. This animal side of the child does indeed often require curbing; but
any kind of outward pressure by corporal punishment, while it may achieve the
intended result, brings about also a certain coarsening of the child's vehicles
which makes them
more
obstructive to the spiritualising influences of the
Ego.
The higher nature of the child, represented by his latent
emotions and thoughts, has in childhood ]great sensitiveness; if proper care is
taken, a fine and happy emotional nature and an open and intuitive mentality
can result for the child as he grows up. Harsh treatment of any kind coarsens
his finer vehicles, however much it may temporarily check the crudities of the
physical; and repeated shocks of this kind finally coarsen and deaden that
higher sensitiveness which should be prominent in all men and women as a normal
characteristic of human beings. The man who is thankful that he was made to be good
by punishment does not realize how much better he might have become, had a more
rational system of training been understood by those who had his young vehicles
in their charge.
When parents and educationists realize that all the experiences
of life have not to be condensed into one brief lifetime; that the soul has an
eternity of growth before him ; that he has the right to make his own
experiments in life, so long as he does not hinder the growth of others; that
each individual alone is responsible for the good or evil that he may do; that
others are responsible for him only as they are his brothers and fellow men ;
then we shall have a saner outlook upon this matter of child welfare and
training, and there will be little difficulty in arranging methods of child
discipline which will curb the child's animal nature in ways that ]are not
derogatory to his higher nature as a soul.
When we come to the relation in the family as between husband and
wife, Theosophy tells us that they are both equal in the responsibilities and privileges
which they have in life. What has brought them together in this family
relationship is a series of duties and privileges which is called the Law
of Karma, or the
Law of Action and Reaction. They do not meet for the first time in their age
long existence, they have met many times before and have "made Karma"
between themselves; they have also " made Karma
" with certain other souls who may come to them as their children and
dependants. It is this karma, which they owe to each other and to those that
shall surround them in the home, that brings two souls
together as husband and wife.
Often this karma brings with it the blossoming of affections and
sympathies; in such a case we have the ideal marriage. But it may well happen
that, after two people have been brought together, the karma between them
produces phases of unhappiness. In both conditions, it is the Divine Purpose
that they shall get to know each other in their Divine natures, and discover
their common work, which
is indeed a
part of the great Divine work. For while souls can discover each other through
love, yet if they will not through love, life forces them to discover through
hate; for hate that repels in the beginning attracts in the end. Men and women
discover these mysteries of life outside the marital
relationship; but
nevertheless that relationship has been planned as one mode of discovery. No
relation gives such great opportunities for the discovery of another's self and
also of one's own self as this; and the man or woman
who uses these opportunities, when karma gives them, thereby grows in
spirituality and comes nearer the discovery of the great Self of God and all
humanity.
When this high spiritual purpose is recognized as underlying
family life, family responsibilities and privileges appear in a new light; the
trivial duties of the home have shining through them the light of Eternity. The
birth of children or their loss, the anxieties and cares of tending them and
training them, the joys and the sorrows which they give, are all so many
experiences leading to the great Discovery. The family is not a meeting-place
of simple travellers who meet for a few brief years,
and then go their separate ways in eternity; it is far more a theatre or
concert hall where a drama or a composition is being rehearsed, so that all the
individuals may learn to perform their parts with beauty and dignity for the
delight of man and of God.
Not dissimilar too is the relation in the home between master and
servant. Usually where this relation exists, the servant is less evolved than
the master; he therefore appears in the family in order that he may be helped
to grow by an elder soul. We may engage a servant, but his coming to us is not
a matter of chance; we may pay him wages, but our "
karmic link" does not cease with the money which we give him. The
servant is the master’s brother soul; he is usually the younger brother, but
the monetary contract between them should never be allowed to make less real
the great fact they are brothers.
Servants come to us to be shown a higher ideal in life than they
would normally be aware of, were they not brought into association with their
masters. Neatness, method, conscientiousness, generosity, courtesy, fine behaviour and culture are examples of conduct which the
master has to place before the
consciousness of his
younger brother, the servant; but while we present to him our example, we must
not ask of him, since he is our younger brother, our standard of achievement.
It is our duty as masters to be patient and understanding while we call out the
best from our servants through a spirit of
willing
co-operation. Many a virtue can be learned as a servant which, in a later life
of larger opportunities, will lead to great actions; and those of us who are 1]masters, but who have not yet learned such virtues, will
need to return to life as servants to learn them.
Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince,
For gentle worthiness and merit won ;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags,
For things done and undone.
The domestic animals who form a part of the family are not such
unimportant members of it as people usually imagine. The Divine Life that is in
man is in the animal too; but it is at an earlier stage and therefore less
evolved. But it is to evolve to a higher through contact with man. Man's duty
to his domestic animals is to soften their savage nature and implant in them
manlike attributes
of thought
and affection and devotion. Therefore, while the animal gives us its strength
in service, we must use it purposely to train it towards humanity, for the
animal will some day grow to man. If we bring out a dog's intelligence by our
training, it should not be used to strengthen his animal attributes, as when we
train our dogs to hunt. A domestic cat may be "a good mouser," but it
is not
for that
reason that God has guided him into the family. If we train horses, it certainly
should not be to develop speed for racing or hunting ;
the service they give us should be rewarded by bringing out of them qualities
that more contribute to their evolution towards humanity than speed. The general
principle with regard to our relation to our domestic animals is
that they are definitely sent to us to have their animal attributes of savagery
as far as possible weaned out of them and human attributes implanted in their
stead, for what is animal today will some day be man, as man today will some
day be a God ; and he serves evolution best who helps
the Divine Life to move swiftly on its upward way.
CHAPTER III
THEOSOPHY IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
THERE are just now in the educational world many attempts at
reforms;
all who have
the practical duty of teaching and helping in the building of the
character of
children are aware how unsatisfactory are the existing theories and
methods. The drift
of these various reforms is clearly evident when we approach
the problem of
education from the standpoint of Theosophy. The existing theories start with
the supposition that the child is an intelligence which began at
birth, and that,
when he comes to school, his mind is a tabula rasa;
necessarily, therefore,
the aim of education is to give the child a knowledge
which he does
not possess and to mould a character which is yet unformed.
These theories are still accepted as true, in spite of the fact that
every one who has had to teach boys and girls, and every parent who has had to
bring them up,
knows by
practical experience that children have definite characters, as well as
definite aptitudes,
from their earliest infancy.
From the Theosophical standpoint, the first fact that, has always
to be kept in
mind with
regard to a child is that he is an immortal soul, and that his
appearance as a boy
or girl is in order that the qualities latent in that soul
may unfold
themselves through experience. The second fact is that the visible
world is only
one part of a larger world in which the child lives, and that all
the time the
child is being affected for good or evil not only by what he sees
and hears, but
also by the invisible atmosphere of the thoughts and feelings of
others. As an
immortal soul, the child has already had many experiences of life,
and his
present appearance as a child is only one of many similar appearances in
past ages. He
has, therefore, known much about life, and has already gained a
certain amount of
experience of what to do and what not to do. This knowledge,
however, is
largely dormant, so far as the child's brain is concerned.
The true aim, therefore, of education is twofold: first, to call
out this latent
knowledge in the
child; he must be made quickly to rediscover such principles of conduct as, in
his past lives, he has tested and found were valid for him; and
that form of
education is the best which enables the soul, working through the
child's brain, to
come swiftest to a remembrance of his past successes and
failures. The
second aim in education is to bring the child 1 as quickly
as possible
to a synthetic view of life; for no man or woman begins to be
educated until he
or she sees life from some central standpoint. In the general
activities of life,
we are apt to miss the mark, because we permit divisions
between our mental
and emotional and moral worlds; and when we thus exist in
compartments, the
resultant of our energies is always less forceful than it
might be if we
lived as a whole. Therefore education must, from the beginning,
instill into the
child the sense of a whole in life and since he has already
come to some
degree of synthesis through his experiences in past lives, the
educationist should aim
at bringing the recollection of this synthesis swiftly,
and at
developing it to embrace a yet larger horizon.
This work of enabling a soul, through his child body, to come to
his old
synthesis, has to be
done in three stages, those of the Kindergarten, the
School, and the College; we shall now see what Theosophy has to
say concerning education in each of these stages.
The child is not merely the little physical body which we see; he
is also an
astral body of
emotions and a mental body of ideas. All the three vehicles,
mental, astral
and physical, make up the child; and all three are sensitive and
require training
and co-ordination. Each vehicle has a certain vitality of its
own, quite
apart from the commanding general 1vitality of the soul of
the child; and
each has a rudimentary consciousness with likes and dislikes
which are not
necessarily those of the soul of the child. These subconscious
streams of
consciousness are pronounced during child life, and they have to be
kept within
their proper bounds while the soul uses the vehicles which give rise
to them.
Sometimes some of these subconscious elements may be quite contrary to the
nature of the child; the. physical body of the child
may be extremely boisterous or lethargic, because of the physical heredity of
the parents, but this need not mean, necessarily, that the soul lacks either
serenity or
strength. Exactly
similarly, each child's astral and mind body have energies of
their own to
start with, quite apart from the energy of the soul of the child
who uses the
vehicles. Therefore, the principal aim in the Kindergarten stage of
education is to
enable the child to get control of his vehicles; the brain needs
to be
developed by muscular movements, the emotional nature by feelings, and the mental
by thoughts.
The work in the Kindergarten, as we all know, trains the child's
body in method
and order and
rhythm, and trains his brain centres to recognise the
concepts of
colour, shape,
weight, temperature, and so on. The deftness of hand taught in
Kindergarten work reacts on the emotional and, 1mental nature of
the
child, and such
training is very necessary, so as to enable the soul to come
more swiftly to
his synthesis. But we have to recognise that the
child's
character is influenced
not only by the objects he handles and by the shapes he
sees, but also
by innumerably invisible influences; the lines and angles and
curves of the
room in which he works, the colour of walls, and the shapes of the
physical objects
surrounding him in his Kindergarten room, all invisibly help or
hinder him; every
line in the objects around him, every shade of colour, every
tone he hears
has its influence on his mental and emotional natures; we can help
children or hinder
them by the objects which surround them in their Kindergarten
life. Modern
Kindergarten methods have recognised the value of the
handling of
various objects by
the child; but they have yet to recognise that the
objects
themselves are
continually, though invisibly, handling the child, and that they
are moulding him in the right way or warping him in the wrong.
The influence of the teacher upon the child, when viewed theosophically, is far
more than
educationists now realise; for the child is
influenced not only by the
visible teacher
but also by that part of the teacher's nature which is
invisible. A sharp
word or a bright smile from a teacher has, we know, visible
effects; exactly
similar, but far more powerful, is 1the effect of the
thought of the
teacher. The true teacher must be equipped in educational methods not only
intellectually but also emotionally; and in the Kindergarten specially
is this essential, since the child's delicate astral and mental vehicles are
extremely sensitive
to the thoughts and feelings of the teacher. Without love
for children
and a keen interest in their ways no one has a right to be a
teacher; and this
general principle is most important in the Kindergarten, where
children are given
over to the teacher almost body and soul.
Many improvements have yet to be made in the Kindergarten, but
the general
principle underlying
them all is that, while the child's three vehicles are
plastic, it is the
duty of the teacher to bring to bear upon them not only the
visible but also
the invisible influences, so as to bring down into the child's
brain as quickly
as possible the fuller nature of the soul.
After the child gains a certain amount of control of his vehicles
in the
Kindergarten, in the next stage at school he has to gain the
sense of Law. His
emotions are
therefore now, to be more fully worked upon. Now the child is born with an
emotional nature which he has developed through many lives; the teacher has not
therefore an altogether plastic or inchoate emotional nature to work upon. He
can only modify it, eradicating any twists or warps which exist in it, and
strengthening what is beautiful. What has to be given to the child
— or usually, as a matter of fact,
reawakened in him — is a deep capacity for
feeling, with, at
the same time, a serenity while he feels, .
This can largely be achieved by working with the child's physical
body; Herein
lies the value
of gymnastics, especially all gymnastics, which have in them some
sense of rhythm.
Wherever a rhythm can be developed in physical action, as in
the dance or
in eurhythmies, there is a clear emotional reaction and the child's
invisible emotional
body is steadied and gains a sense of law and order; and
this reacts on
the mental nature so as to attune it to the thought of law. This
effect is
specially heightened where the rhythmic movements are performed by
many children
in common; it is as if while they all work together they become
units of an
invisible rhythmic movement, which imposes upon them a great law of beauty and
order in action.
The sense of law and beauty is also greatly developed by training
the child in
poetry and music;
this training does not mean that the child must be made to
write poetry or
to compose music — unless indeed he has a special aptitude for
either within him
— but that he shall be given both music and poetry as his
emotional food.
Every child from earliest years should know some poetry and some music suited
to his capacity; but we must take the greatest care that
the
word-phrases or musical phrases are really suitable. For just as physical
dirt may infect
the sensitive body of the child, so too can the emotional land
mental natures be
infected by harmful poetry and crude music. Nursery rhymes,
with their
usual jumble of thoughts and images which have little relation to
life, are in
this respect distinctly harmful; perhaps presently our poets will
give us great
poems for little children to take the place of the nursery rhymes
which are taught
them now. If we could, in our modern civilisation,
abolish the
ugly noises of
the streets, and the ugly pictures on hoardings, as well as the
use of phrases
in language distorted from their true meaning, we should not need
to complain
of unruly children; unruliness is a malady of the emotional nature,
but the germs
of it are not so much in the children as in the outer world which
surrounds them in
our modern civilizations.
The mental nature of the child has to be trained by making it
strictly true to
fact; and this
is exceedingly difficult in these days, because so many of the
words we use do
not signify what they are meant to signify. Words having
definite, accepted
meanings are often used for purposes of exaggeration or as
slang, and these
things confuse the sensitive mental nature of the child.
Therefore the greatest care has to be taken that children only
hear
words which are
true, that is, words which have some clear and precise relation
to the thing
signified. The mental nature of the child is extremely active and
difficult to hold
along definite lines; therefore clear descriptions of things
must be given
to him and also expected from him. This mental accuracy in his
education will
enable his dormant mentality to express itself more fully as the
years pass;
accuracy of thought and description is necessary for the highest of
reasons, which is
to bring down to the child's brain his consciousness as a soul
who has
already thought accurately about such experiences as have been his in
his past
lives.
Needless to say the child's mind has to be trained by stories.
The mind is one
of the finest
architectural implements that we have; the mind's nature is to
build. We must,
therefore, give it suitable material at the varying stages of
its growth,
and in early years show the mind what makes for beauty in building.
Here comes in the use of fairy stories, and especially of myths;
myths have in
them an
intrinsic beauty of structure, and the child's mind is trained to high
imaginative faculty by
teaching him the great romances of the visible and
invisible worlds.
A necessary element in education is to give the child, even in
his earliest
years, some
definite synthesis upon which to found his imagination; and for
this religion
is fundamentally necessary. A religion need not mean
definite dogmas of
a theological kind; what the child needs to start with is
some great
universal thought embodying in it a universal feeling. Every religion
has many such
suitable thoughts, even for a child's mind, and it is perfectly
possible to
surround children with a beautiful religious atmosphere. Each child
should be taught
morning and evening to recollect himself as a soul by some
simple prayer of
dedication ; one such, greatly in use among the children of
Theosophists, is this simple prayer of the "Golden Chain " :
I am a link in the Golden Chain of Love that
stretches around the world,
and must keep my
link bright and strong.
So I will try to be kind and gentle to every
living thing I meet,
and to protect and
help all who are weaker than myself.
And I will try to think pure and beautiful
thoughts, to speak pure and
beautiful words,
and to do pure and
beautiful actions.
May every link in the Golden Chain become
bright and strong.
In this beautiful prayer the child's imagination can easily grasp
its symbolism,
while the prayer
has within it the great thought of a larger unit of life than
the child
himself. A work yet waiting to be done for education is to write
textbooks and story-books
for children which present to them the
universal life of
humanity, while fascinating their imagination at the same
time; we could
make of children great philosophers, if only we realised
that
philosophy is not a
matter of definite systems or schools, but of thoughts and
feelings and aims
which the best of humanity have all in common.
One further important element in the child's education should be
the teaching
given to him
through tending plants and animals; these lower orders of creation
should be near
the child's life constantly, so that he may remember himself as
one linked in
a great chain of life, and realise that his nobility
grows as he
serves not only
those above him but also those below. And apart from this, each
flower or tree or
animal radiates its own influence, and we can utilise
these
invisible aids to
hasten the child's growth in thought and feeling.
When the time comes for a boy or girl to go to College, we may
take for granted
that the
vehicles — physical, astral and mental — have been disciplined to some
extent and are
fairly under control. Therefore now begins a period when the soul
can definitely
impress on the brain his inner attitude to life, in order to
train his
vehicles for the work in life which he plans to do. Unfortunately, in
present-day
Universities, the training given is deficient, because the teaching
is so
exceedingly academical and has little relation to the
practical
problems of life as
seen by the soul. The most useful part in many ways, of
University life is not the instruction received from the
professors, but that
received from the
students, in games and in social intercourse. The usual result
of College
education as it exists now is very well described in these lines :
A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of
life.
When Theosophical ideas prevail in Universities, it will be recognised that the
teaching given must
definitely aim at making clear to the student his own
problems as a soul.
He has come to life to do a work, and the preliminary years
of child and
youth have been spent in building his vehicle; now he is free to
survey his past
and look into the future, in order to make clear to himself what
he is and
what is his work. The help to be given to him is by presenting such
aspects of culture
as awaken within him his ancient synthesis. All through his
education in
Kindergarten and School this has been one of its aims; but while
the synthesis
there was mainly felt emotionally, during College it should be
recognised
intellectually.
The synthesis is to be brought before him by arranging the
experiences of the
geniuses of the
past and of the present in such a manner
that their
general impression
is to strengthen in him his innate enthusiasm for his own
special work as a
soul. If any man or woman finishes College without having
found within
himself or herself a deep enthusiasm for a work, the University has
failed in its aim
so far as he or she is concerned. It is the function of a
University to show us what are the objects
worth pursuing in life, not, as now,
merely to equip
us for a profession. This was indeed the aim of University life
in
life is, that
in the University the professors themselves are confused as to the
great problems
of existence, and hence their enthusiasms run primarily on
intellectual and
academic lines. It is well known that
a strong
atmosphere of their own, but that atmosphere is more of a crystallised
past than of a
living present or an absorbing future.
A true University should so train a man that through all his work
in life, after
he leaves the
University, there shines a serene radiance as of an immortal doing
a work in
time; and this is the real basis of any culture worth the name. It has
been said that
the function of a University is to turn out gentlemen and
scholars; the work
of the University, from the Theosophical standpoint, should
be to make of
men immortals and servers. It is in the University that
the highest
ideals of life should be reflected with beauty and serenity; and the
greatest ideal of
life to be taught to men in such a place in modern days should
be the joy of
fellowship in working together with all men and nations in one
definite work for
the welfare of humanity. Of the many perfections which a
University can give to a man or woman, that which is most needed
today is to
make him or her
a Knight of Service, just as of old with King Arthur's band, one
of that
Goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds
record.
Those of us who have gained what modern
Universities have to give, know how much we owe to them; but we cannot help
confessing that while they equipped us in some fashion mentally, they did not
equip us to understand the problem of life which confronted us when we left
College. We have had to unlearn, slowly and painfully, many of the lessons of
the past, and learn many strange and difficult lessons of whose existence our
professors told us nothing. If all this could be radically changed, and the
University be made definitely a place where to us, as souls, our soul's work is
pointed out, and also how, as we do that work, there is all round us the
background of Eternity, what could not University life be as an essential part
in the life of every man and woman ! As things are
now, many a
man and woman who has had no College education is a nobler Soul and a greater
Server than those who have had their years in a University. All this will
surely change when the fundamental principles of Theosophy permeate
education, and our
professors profess above all things the great truths which
reveal to men
their Divine nature, and how that nature is developed through
human service.
CHAPTER IV
THEOSOPHY IN BUSINESS
THERE is an idea largely prevalent in the world among religious
people
that business activities
are incompatible with a truly religious life. This has
been due to the
peculiar conception of life which certain exponents of religion
have given to
their followers. We know how today people think of "
religious "
interest and "
secular " interests, and there is a tacit recognition that they
must be
opposed, or, if not actually in opposition, at least mutually exclusive.
This conception arises from an exaggeration in religions of the
thought of the
Transcendence of God; the Creator, having once created His world,
is thought of as living in some sphere removed in space from that world, and as
merely
supervising it.
In this religious conception, man, as the creature of God, has
only the duty of pleasing his Maker so as to make secure his own salvation. I
well remember a sermon which I heard once in a Christian Church on the duty of
man to God; this duty was described as composed of the three virtues of
humility, gratitude and obedience. The preacher insisted upon the subservience
of the soul of man to God as a pre-requisite to a religious life.
It was evident that according to him the ordinary activities of
life in the
home, in
business, and in amusements, counted for very little with God, and that
man was judged
according to certain theological virtues which he had or had not
acquired. This
extreme Christian conception of the old problems of man's
everyday life is
very vividly summed up, in the verse of a hymn which was sung
by the
congregation on this particular day of the sermon; the verse is this :
I am going home in the good old way,
I have served the world with its worthless
pay,
For its hopes are vain and its gains are
loss,
And I glory now in the blood-stained Cross.
Here we have very clearly the thought that the multifarious
activities of the
world have no
special use in the spiritual growth of man, and that what we gain
of capacity
and growth outside the strictly religious sphere is but "worthless
pay". Wherever
in a religion we have the idea of renunciation and asceticism,
there usually
develops this idea of the uselessness of life in the world.
The natural consequence of the division of life into secular and
religious is
the creation
of two moralities which have often little relation to each
other; the
religious man will consider that it is perfectly legitimate to be
selfish, savage
and unspiritual in his business dealings with a fellow man, whom
he will try
to love as a "neighbour” in his religious
relation towards him; a
deeply religious
man, both tender-hearted and kind in one part of his nature,
yet will
possess another part of savagery and resentment, and will see no reason
why this
latter phase of himself should be modified at the cost of business
gain. A
fraudulent but pious milkman, who will water his milk on weekdays with
perfect
nonchalance, will do it on Sunday too, with his pious Sunday face, and
then go to
church and revel in his religion !
Now Theosophy abolishes these two moralities in the world of
business, by
showing that the
business world is as much a part of God's world as temples and churches. It is
One Life which is manifesting through all the activities of men, and all the
activities which have been developed in civilisation
are necessary in the Divine Plan.
God's plan for the salvation of humanity works not only through
individual men, but also through men as groups. Men's natures must be grown
emotionally, mentally and spiritually, and one cause of this growth is their
collective activity in various organisations. In the
collective life of humanity, various types of divine agents are required to
carry out His purpose; the ruler and the lawgiver, the fighter, the teacher,
the priest, the healer, the artist, are all required to play their roles as
actors in the Divine Drama of life; but not less of a divine actor is the
business man.
Now the man to whom business is one of his principal obligations
comes as a soul into life with as much a spiritual purpose as the man who is
the priest; that
purpose is to
equip himself as a soul for activities everywhere and in all time.
He does not come to gain wealth or ease, but capacity; his Soul
is put into a
business life,
rather than into one of religion or art, because he can learn
such soul
qualities as he next requires for his growth more swiftly in the
business world than
any other sphere. The sterling virtues which are learned in
business are
fundamentally spiritual; no man can be a successful business man
unless he is one-pointed
unless he is quick to respond to opportunities, unless
he grows in
imagination. These are not " secular"
virtues because they are
developed in what we
hold to be secular activities; they are capacities which
are built into
the life of the soul. Certainly we find that a large number of
business men,
highly endowed with these qualities, are selfish, cruel and hard,
but this does
not mean that the virtues are useless, because the possessors of
them lack other
virtues. When we remember that a man lives many lives, and that
once he acquires a capacity he never loses it, we shall then
understand how, after a business man has developed these virtues in one life
(even though it has meant the development at the same time of selfishness), in
a future life, when his vision is cleared and he begins to be altruistic, he
will still have this marked ability when he turns to his work in altruism.
In the evolution of humanity, the faculties of all men, good and
bad, are used;
"blindly the wicked work the righteous
will of heaven". The world's lands are,
habitable today only
because a few pioneers originally went out into the deserts
and forests
and made them habitable; they may have gone out purely for selfish
purposes, but
nevertheless they were used as the agents of a Divine Plan. Men
may go out as pioneers into new lands to gain wealth for
themselves; but we know that such a life requires heroism, sacrifice,
doggedness, strength, and these virtues become permanent acquisitions of the
soul. In the same way, today, in the "trust magnates" and "beef
barons" of
they developed
through their greed and selfishness, and they will then be far
more efficient
on the side of good than many another who may have been good and pious but had
acquired little capacity.
The practical message of Theosophy to the business man is that he
should
identify himself
with the higher possibilities and motives in business, and not
with the lower.
What the former are, we can see if we look at the various stages
of
development in business capacity which men show. In the earliest stage of
commercial life, we
have mere greed, and the man is all the time thinking of his
private interests
and gloating over them as his particular possessions. In the
second stage, the element of greed is mastered by the mental
element of business routine, and the individual becomes practically the slave
of business, busying himself continually with all kinds of activities in
business, not always because of the profits involved, but largely because these
activities give him the sense of vitality and reality.
In the third stage of growth, the business man is conscious of
himself as the great master of capacity, and is far more conscious of this
power as he exercises it than of the gain it brings; he is often most unselfish
about individuals and most ascetic in his private life, though of course he
will manifest the acme of selfishness in his utter one-pointedness
in the exercise of this power. But then will inevitably come the last stage,
when, in the exercise of his master-capacity, he sees what are the honourable lines of activity for him as a guardian of
divine energies.
The Theosophical business man should always aim at idealism in
his profession;
and this is
quite compatible, even today, in spite of all the obstacles in his
way. The first
characteristic of this idealism should be the holding of a high
conception of his
business as a noble contribution to human welfare, and with
this a keen
desire to bring it to a high state of perfection. He will,
therefore, be
thoroughly efficient not only in his own line, but he will try to
join with
others in associations, so as to uphold the ideal. Much has yet to be
done in
bringing business men together into organizations, not merely for
private interests,
as in Trusts, but to discuss the fundamentally efficient
principles involved
in business. Into the hands of business men the Divine Plan
entrusts the
development of one aspect of the world's work, and it is their duty
to see that
their work is done with as little waste of time and energy as
possible. Something
has been done so far in standardising tools and
machinery;
much more needs
to be done along this line, so that there may be throughout the
world facilities
for the mutual development of inventions and processes. It is
from the business men of the world today
that we expect the practical
carrying out of the
great ideals of Internationalism; while religious teachers
may expound
Universal Brotherhood, the practical foundations for it must be laid by the
business men of the world.
The Theosophical business man must always remember that the
world's development is part of a great Plan, and "big men" in all
departments of life are employed to carry out the Divine work. For instance,
just now there are great changes taking place in the business world in bringing
about great combinations; we know how ruthless such Trusts are and how they
push to the wall the small merchant.
Yet we see at the same time the slow transformation of material
development from the work of a few for their own gain to the work of a great
national department for the welfare of all. It is because of the plans of
business development laid down by such combinations that one day, where
spirituality and not greed controls such Trusts, we
shall be able utterly to abolish poverty. Every invention that has made life
easier for men is a realization of the thought of
God, and an
inventor is not less a God's priest than is a priest of religion.
All men are channels of one great Divine Force, and as it runs
through them they
retain it for
themselves, some more and some less; and most do not
understand the duty
they have of transmuting that Force into the least little
activity of life.
If the business man were to recognize this principle, he would
then realize how
much of a builder he is in the divine edifice of human life.
Did not Christ say : "I must be
about my Father's business ? " The great Father
lives
mysteriously in our world — as ruler and lawgiver, healer and priest; but
He lives, too, strange as it may seen,
as the "business man". This is the high
aspect of business which Theosophy shows, and the man or woman,
whose Dharma or Duty is business, can bring a high spirituality to all work in
shop and in office, in factory and in counting-house, doing all as a part of
“my Father's
business ",
CHAPTER V
THEOSOPHY IN SCIENCE
THEOSOPHY stands foremost among the religious philosophies of the
world today in
the wholehearted acceptance of the facts of modern science. More than this,
Theosophy so continually appeals to observation and reason that an inquirer
into Theosophy, who has had any preliminary scientific training, finds himself thoroughly at home in the Theosophical method. This
is not necessarily because the conclusions of science and Theosophy are the
same, but because both are the result of a certain method of inquiry. We owe
the modern scientific method largely to the work of Francis Bacon; it was he
who laid such emphasis on the need of careful obervation,
of methodical grouping of facts, and of rising from particular ideas about them
to general concepts of natural law.
This method of induction has enabled the modern scientist to
discover great fundamental natural laws, and the practical application of the
discoveries of science has been to revolutionise
civilization.
The facts which have so far been considered by the modern
scientist tell us of a
vast mechanical
process in Nature, and, within her an inexplicable tendency to
transformation which is
called Evolution; and this tendency, ever at work,
brings into being
the myriads of forms in the mineral, vegetable and animal
kingdoms. The facts
observed show us a great ladder of life, which stretches
without a break
from the speck of dust to the greatest human genius.
Of course it is recognized that this process, which has created
the human
intelligence, must not
be judged in its sole relation to man, for man is only
one species
out of myriads. Now, if we consider what science says about man,
then, so far as
the generally accepted facts of modern science tell us, man, as
an individual
of his type, is merely a material form and the forces playing
through that form.
When that material form disintegrates, nothing remains of him
except what
slight change he has caused, in the trend of the evolutionary
process, by any
attempts he may have made to modify his environment away from savagery and
towards civilization.
Theosophy has no doubts to cast upon scientific facts, nor as to
their complete
authority to solve
the problems of life. There are, however, certain weaknesses
inherent in modern
science which make the present scientific conclusions only of
partial value.The first of these is the over-hasty generalization
which characterises the inductive method in practice;
theoretically, the
conclusions drawn from
a group of facts should be recognized as warranted only so long as no
contradictory facts present themselves; in practice, however, the tendency is
for the scientist, when his hypothesis seems to explain his facts,
to take for
granted that there are not other facts which might question his
deductions.
There is hence an authoritative conclusion in scientific theories
which is really unscientific. A striking instance of his weakness in scientific
method is illustrated by the geological theories as to the age of the world,
which was stated conclusively not so many decades ago to be only a few hundred
thousand years. But one sole fact, in itself of no greater consequence in
evolution than any other fact, the nature of Radium, has largely modified all
these geological theories; and scientists now feel warranted in assuming that
the earth's age should be counted by millions of years instead of by hundreds
of thousands.
A second example is the way that theories of heredity were
accepted for decades as absolutely conclusive, in the light of the assumption
that acquired characteristics were transmitted; this assumption was accepted as
a truth mainly because the facts so far gathered did not contradict such a
hypothesis. But a few facts discovered in the crossing of peas, considered sotrivial as not to deserve notice for several years, have
imposed on the old theories an entirely new adjustment to facts, and
A second weakness in science is due more to the individual
scientist and less to
the method,
and this is exemplified in the general tendency, still shown by
scientists, to ignore
those facts which tend to prove a psychic or spiritual
nature in man.
Scientists, owing to an unscientific bias, have erected barriers
to truth in
this matter as cramping to human progress as any that theologies
have ever made.
Even today, the small band of scientists who have scientifically
examined such facts
about man's spiritual nature as are within the range of
modern science,
meet with an unscientific hostility when they announce the
results of their
investigations, largely because those results condemn the
dogmatism of past
scientific conclusion.
A third and a more fundamental weakness of science, so far as
practical life is
concerned, is that
science cannot give, by her very nature, a real philosophy of
life. Every day
that passes adds to the old stock of facts, and so
many
specialised branches of
science now appear, that today we cannot "see the wood for the
trees". There are so many facts being discovered, that every scientific
"law" must be held merely tentatively, if we are to be strictly
scientific; one new fact — as Radium — may mean a profound modification of the
"law". Science can legitimately only describe a process, and not a
direction; not having all the facts, she cannot scientifically presume any kind
of a resultant diagonal.
Science can, therefore, never give a philosophy, but she can give
the
indispensable facts for
one.
Theosophy, dealing as it does continually with the facts of the
Universe, is but
a
continuation of science; the difference, however, is that Theosophy has a
larger group of
facts to go upon, and also shows in what way an individual can
discover for
himself that final diagonal of life which is the true philosophy of
conduct. The facts
of Theosophy have been gathered in precisely the same way as the geologist or
physicist gathers his facts, that is, by a carefully trained
faculty of
observation, leading to induction and deduction, and tested
repeatedly by every
new fact. In Theosophy there is the tradition of
an Ancient
Wisdom, carefully built up by this method by mighty scientific
Intelligences, who are called the Masters of the Wisdom; it is
their scientific
knowledge which is
stated in modern Theosophy.
The principal point in which this ancient science differs from
the modern is in the conclusion, in the light of facts discovered by the
ancient scientists, that the evolutionary process
consists in a dual development of life and of form. Every object consists of
the form it appears to be, and a life which holds the matter in that form, but
is capable of independent existence at the dissolution of the form. This life
may seem scarcely to have the characteristics of life, as in a piece of
mineral, or it may show the first germs of what we call life, as in the fungus.
Just as science shows a magnificent ladder of the evolution of form, so
Theosophy shows a similar ladder of the evolution of life and consciousness,
from that of the atom to that of the Creator of the Universe. The Masters of
the Wisdom have also brought within the range of scientific observation the
invisible worlds, upon the fringes of which some modern scientists are now
beginning to come in some of their experiments.
Moreover Theosophy can give that which modern science cannot give
legitimately, and that is a proof of the final consummation of evolution, which
is
the
transformation of the human individual consciousness, by a process of
rebirth and
growth, into a consciousness showing the attributes of Divinity. The
immortality of the
soul and its steady growth into greater life need not always
be mere
speculations, because Theosophy points out how an individual can know these
things for himself.
The method of discovery of these "final causes" follows
logically from the
highest ideals of
modern science, which inculcate a pure, impersonal observation
and thinking.
Theosophy carries this high scientific thought concerning nature
into a vaster
realm, presenting to the intelligence the greater ranges of facts
of the
invisible worlds. The high training of the imagination which Theosophy
gives, guided as
it is by a perfect altruism, evokes then within the
individual's
consciousness a new faculty greater than mind, and this new faculty
can know the
final causes. When the perfect scientist, or the true Theosophist,
has "
cast out the self" in his observation of life, his mind develops a
luminous quality
which makes it the mirror which reflects a greater faculty than
the mind
itself. This new faculty, which is nearest described, though only
partly, by the
word Intuition, is acquired by no external means, but is born
within a man's
own inner nature; it gives him then the sole criterion of Truth,
for beyond any
doubt of the most criticalmind, he is able to know
Truth at first hand for himself. In thus
continuing the scientific training of
the mind till the
mind itself is transcended, Theosophy fills up the inevitable
gaps in the
scientific method, since it gives that final criterion directly to
each
individual, for the lack of which science is unable to give a valid
philosophy of life
and conduct.
The great value of science in human evolution is due not only to
the practical
changes that the
discovery of natural law effects in civilization, but also to
the spiritual
training that each individual gains by being taught to be
scientific in his
observation of the world around him. There is no one who can
do without
the scientific method, till at least he gains sufficient serenity and
purity of mind to
discover the higher process of intuition within him; the more
are the facts
of nature, to be observed by him impersonally and purely, which
are brought
into the consciousness of man, the more is he helped to realize the
higher nature
within him. This is why the scientific method is a necessary part
of the
highest human training and of spiritual growth.
Theosophy applied to science means that scientific facts are
considered not
mainly for their
utilitarian value to add to man's comforts, but primarily
because their
understanding shows man the true harmony of the larger whole of
which he is but
a part. There is no greater strength or
dignity
possible to man
than from his realization of a Divine Mind at work in all the
manifestations of nature;
for when that Divine Mind is seen, then it is seen as
the Good, the
True and the Beautiful; and when that Divine Mind is reverenced,
then man
himself grows in wisdom, strength and beauty. Only slight changes are
needed, in the
present groupings of scientific facts, to show to man's
intelligence the
wonderful design that is woven in nature to make a perfection
and harmony cognisable alike by the eye and the brain. The study of
nature's
forms, under the
guidance of Theosophical scientists, can be worked out, even
for little
children, so as to train the mind to reverence all manifestations of
life, whether
in stone or plant or animal. Specially would emphasis
be laid on
the geometry
of nature, according to which electrons are built into atoms, and
atoms into
elements, and elements into the forms of the mineral, vegetable and
animal kingdoms;
not chemical forces alone would be studied, but chemical shapes too. The
Platonic solids, with their development from the tetrahedron into the icosahedron, would be studied as the "
axes of growth " of all forms. Science would then give the alphabet
of rhythm and beauty, learning which, men would know how to find beauty
everywhere in every object of all the worlds, visible and invisible. A pure
intellect is the glory of science, and the pure
in mind take
conscious delight in the Good, the True and the Beautiful, which
mirrors itself in
their minds.
Every child should be taught to observe the life of nature around
him; he should
be guided to
take a keen interest in such facts of nature as are within the
range of his
experiences, and his elders should carefully lead him on stage by
stage in his
discoveries and in his thinking till, even with his child's
limitations, he
develops something of the faculty of impersonal observation. He
will then
develop, if not a keen interest in nature, at least a deep respect for
her ways. This
faculty, which he develops through a scientific training, will
affect his whole
mentality, enabling him to come more quickly than without such
training to truth
in all the departments of life in which he will engage. His
moral nature
will manifest greater justice because he will be less passionate in
his judgment;
he will be less affected by hearsay and opinion and popular
prejudice because of
the growing instinct in him to be on guard against the mere
presentations of facts, when
such presentations are not real but illusory. There
would be less of
malice and hatred, gossip and prejudice in the world, if men in
their childhood
were to be trained in the rudiments of scientific thinking;
these moral
failings become impossible when the cause of them, which
is false
thought, is removed.
The message of Theosophy to science is to bring out her real
strength as an aid
to the
discovery of truth. For that which science deals with, the facts of
nature, are
expressions of a great Divine Life; and he who can come in the true
scientific spirit
before a fact comes indeed before God Himself. For a fact,
when clearly
conceived, is a fragment of the great Reality in which is all that
men need for
their growth and happiness. The truer the Theosophist, the more
scientific he is,
just as the truer the scientist is to his ideal method, the
more of a
Theosophist he is, in fact though not in name.
CHAPTER VI
THEOSOPHY IN ART
THE place of Art in life grows in significance each day as men
develop
greater faculties
of thought and feeling. The higher the civilisation
the more
powerful is the
influence of art in it; and the capacity for artistic conception
and expression
in a man becomes in many ways the standard of his evolutionary
achievement. Why this
is so we shall see, when we examine what art is from the
standpoint of
Theosophy.
Now all our living leads to action; even in deep meditation a man
is acting, and
acting in reality
far more vigorously than when he disturbs merely the
equilibrium of
physical nature. Each action is the final issue of a series of
forces either
mental or emotional. When an action originates in thought,
that
action is wise
and just where thought has dealt with realities and not
falsities; where the
thought has been grounded in truth, and is four-square to
the facts of
nature, the action is right and productive of good to the
individual and to the
whole. It is the function of science to produce right
action by
purifying the mind and by training it to be true to reality.
The function of art, on the other hand, is to induce right action
through right
feeling; and since
art has shown itself to be in many ways a synthesis of man's
highest
self-expression, it is obvious that in our human feelings there are
ranges of emotion
by means of which we can come to truth swifter than by any
exercise of even
the most discriminating mind. Man in his emotional nature is
near to the
brute in some of his desires; yet there are within him certain
emotions which
unbar hidden reservoirs of power which makes him absolute master of
circumstance. It is with these finer emotions that art is concerned.
The keen sensibility to the beauty of a sunset synthesises in a moment our past
experiences of life
and states them to our emotions in vast, sweeping
generalisations; a phrase
of music in a particular mood may give us the glimpse
of a heaven
hoped for or lost; the beauty of a human face may lead us whither
all the
philosophies lead as they seek eternal verities. And these finalities,
which are stated
to us by the highest developments of the intellect, are given
to us
equally, and sometimes more profoundly and more truly, by our
feelings.
An understanding of Theosophy explains the process of that right
feeling which
is necessary
for art. Feeling, looked at from within the man, is a mood; but
looked at from
without, is the setting in movement of a finer vehicle, called
the astral
body. Upon the purity of material, delicacy of structure, and
pliability of the astral
body, depend the nature of a man's feelings, and
therefore his
capacity for art. Theosophy applied to art deals primarily with
the
purification and the training of the feelings.
Since the astral body is dependent for its sensations so largely
upon impacts
which reach it
through the physical body, the purification of the physical body
becomes the first
essential. According to the kind of food eaten is the kind of
body; if the
diet contains flesh of any animal, the body acquires a gross
texture which
reacts on the texture of the astral body, the vehicle of feeling;
when the food
is pure and refined, the finer texture of the physical body
induces purity and
delicacy in the astral. It is true that hitherto some of the
greatest artists
have had, from the Theosophical standpoint, gross bodies, and
yet they have
been creators of art; but this only means that they would have
achieved still
more, had not something of their creative force been lost in its
transmission through a
coarsened physical vehicle. In spite of the over-riding
by will of
nature's laws, the general law remains that the purer is
the physical
body the greater is the sensibility to feeling, and hence the
greater the
capacity for art.
Next, the feelings must be trained to be pure, that is, they must
be
irresponsive to what
conduces to impurity and keenly sensitive to what harbours,
purity. Here at once the question arises : What is,
purity ? Leaving aside the question of what purity is as a moral virtue, purity
in the domain of art means a correct appreciation of Beauty. What the Ideal
Beauty is, which is the
unchanging standard,
we need not for the moment consider; for there is already
in the world
some knowledge of that Ideal Beauty, and for the practical purposes of life there
is no difficulty in distinguishing the beautiful front the
commonplace or the
ugly. What is important to realise is that, for
artistic
development, there
must be a continuous communion with Beauty and a definite
avoidance of what is
the not-beautiful.. We little realise how the lines
in the
objects that
surround us in the home and in the streets affect our astral bodies
and so our
emotional nature; discords of colour and sound, impurities of line
and form: give
a warp to our natures which adds to our moral weaknesses and
debilitates our mental
strength.
Men find it difficult to be virtuous largely because so much
ugliness surrounds them; just as bacteria in the dust and the air, and parasites
of various kinds, induce many a disease and diminish the physical vitality of
men, so invisibly, but not the less harmfully, hosts of emotional bacteria, the
ugly lines and forms and colours and sounds, infect our feelings and induce in
them a chronic moral ill-health which saps the vitality of the soul.
Civilisation has not
yet awakened to the gravity of this hidden contagion; it is taking place all
the time, though we are little; aware of it because we are "used" to
it. But it is never the soul's nature to be " used " to ugliness and
evil; the inner constraint shows itself in outer fractiousness; and, just as a
baby's peevishness is to be traced to some hurt produced in his little body by
improper feeding or by some annoyance like a pin sticking into him, so it is
with men's tendencies to evil; the visible and invisible uglinesses
in life are responsible for the crimes of men sometimes far more than their own
criminal propensities.
Since every object around us affects invisibly our capacity for
feeling, either
by hardening
and coarsening or by making it more sensitive and profound, a
practical
understanding of the place of art in life means a thorough
reconstruction of the
environment of each man. Specially is that
reconstruction
necessary in the
case of children, whose astral bodies during their childhood
and youth are
sensitive to outer influences far more than are the astral bodies
of grown-up
people. Every object that surrounds children from the moment of birth should
have some touch of beauty; the lines and curves and colours of walls and
ceilings and furniture should definitely be aimed to influence the child's
feelings; ungainly street hoardings and palings, ugly plots of ground and
discordant sounds should all be banished from our towns for the sake of the
children, if not for our own sakes. We insist on sanitation to preserve the
health of the physical body; why should we not equally insist on a moral
sanitation to safeguard the health and sensitiveness of our finer vehicles ?
Purity of feeling is thus one element of right feeling; a second
element is
sympathy. No
feeling is right feeling unless in it there is reflected the larger
world of men's griefs and joys; each feeling, if it is to develop the
higher
sensitiveness which produces
art, must enshrine in ,it in miniature the similar
feelings of all
humanity. There is no such thing as "art for art's sake", if by
that phrase is
meant that there exists a world of art and beauty irrespective of
its relation
to the world of men. The highest art, consciously or unconsciously,
had its roots
in men's hearts, though its boughs may lift up their flowers to
heaven; the most
abstractly musical phrase of a symphony of Beethoven has yet
its reflex in
our human feelings. The more the artist's feelings widen out in
their sympathy withmen's sufferings and hopes and dreams, the vaster
is his art
horizon, and the more universally understood his artistic creation.
Hence it follows that the artist must train his sympathies by
observation, by
meditation, by
travel, by practical service; while he purposely uses his
purified feelings
as the tools of his art, yet must those feelings be supported
by a broad
and purified intellect. There could be no greater boon to an artist
than Theosophy,
which teaches him what are the universal feelings of men, and
what is that
"God's Plan for men", the contemplation of which is a perennial
source of wisdom
and purification.
While the purely artistic development is possible by temperament
to only a few,
there is no man
or woman or child born who has not some distinct capacity for
artistic feeling
and expression. Every effort should be made to rouse in the
child the
dormant tendency to appreciate beauty; not only should he be
surrounded by
beautiful objects, he should also be taught how to produce
beautiful things.
The energies of his physical body should be taught the meaning
of rhythm
through the dance; his eye and brain should be trained by drawing. He
should be taught
what are pure tones of sound in speech and in singing, and his
imagination should be
trained through poetry and through abstract music. Just as
it is the
duty of parents to see that children
have healthy bodies,
not less is it
their duty to see that their children have refined tastes too. By
placing before the
sensitive feelings and unspoiled natures of children none but
what is in the
best of taste, and only what is best artistically, an immense
impetus is given
to the unfolding of the Divine Spirit in man. For art is less a
faculty of the
soul than an element of its inmost structure. Just as, in the
evolutionary process,
the senselessness of the stone gives way to the
sensitiveness of the
plant, and the vague feeling of the plant gives way to the
surging passions
of the animal, and the animal's inchoate thoughts give way in
the next grade
to man's coherent thinking, so too man's power of understanding
through the mind
is to be made subordinate to knowledge by the Intuition. In
most men this
intuition is dormant, or only dimly sensed; the next stage in
human evolution
is to understand life in the full light of the intuition.
Therefore it is that artistic development becomes supremely
necessary for all
men; it
enables them to do their life's work by a swifter and completer process
- that of the intuition - than thought
can provide them.
It is true that the loftiest thought, by its utter impersonality
and when suffused by a desire for service, touches the realm of the intuition; the
great philosophers especially reveal the same insight into life's problems
which the pure intuition
reveals when
reflected in art. But it is far easier to make men pure and
sympathetic in feeling
than impersonal in thought; therefore, while science and
philosophy are
essential for human culture, that culture is more swiftly
developed by
appealing to the artistic instincts of men.
When, by surrounding men with beauty, and by training them to
respond to it,
their intuitions
are aroused, they discover a higher and a more lasting truth
than science
can reveal to them. The great advantage of the vision of truth by
the intuition
is that it is always synthetic; each truth of life discovered by
the intuition
is linked to the totality of truth, and man can proceed in his
further
discoveries along a road that has no break nor divergence. The drift of
things is seen
clearer, and from a more central point, by the intuition than by
the highest
purely mental process.
There is scarce any such humanitarian influence in life as art,
if its inner
force is
understood and consciously used. Each feeling which art gives rise to
is like the
segment of a circle of universal feeling in which the feelings of
all the rest
of humanity too are like segments. Each artistic creation — not the
mere
imaginative fancy or tour de force, but the real creation which is as a
window into a
Divine World of Ideas — links the creator to all men; it at-ones
him with
humanity.
A soul capable during life of only one work of art, either in the
thought world
or in the
emotional realm, has yet linked all humanity with him to that measure
of the
artistic capacity in him; while a great poet or painter or sculptor or
musician becomes
like an eternal priest of humanity, linking man ever to God.
This at-one-ing quality of art is a
force which is as yet but dimly understood
by man; when civilisation everywhere is instinctively artistic, then
un-charitableness and enmity
must utterly vanish, since to love art is to love
that Totality of
which each of us is but an infinitesimal fraction.
Lastly, there is through artistic development a discovery that
utterly
revolutionises the life
of the discoverer. True art, as already explained, is
born where
there is purity of feeling and sympathy; and when art becomes
creative there
results a lofty impersonality. The result achieved of "casting
out the
self" by scientific thought is also achieved by the artist while he
creates; all great
artists concur that at the supreme moments of inspiration all
thought and sense
of their little selves are swept away. When the little self of
the artist is
thus swept away, there steps into his life for the moment a larger
Self, an indescribable Personality. It is the
discovery of this Personality, who
is master of
his craft and infallible in his wisdom, which is the great
event in the
artist's life.
It is the artist's "salvation", that realisation of man's eternal safety and of his imperishable
nature which religions try to give through ecstatic contemplation. Perhaps it
is only at a few moments of his creative life that the artist makes the great
discovery; but each moment of discovery is as a milestone in his unending
artistic career, and to have even for once known that Personality is
thenceforth to see all life with "larger, other eyes" than are
possessed by men.
The artists who have this vision are "not of an age but for
all time," and an
Ideal World hovers round them, shedding its many-hued gleams on
the drab events of this mortal world. That world is always around us, though
only the great artists can tell us what it is in its grandeur and totality. Yet
each man can
gain a glimpse
of it, in so far as he trains his feelings to be pure and
radiating with
understanding and sympathy. A child with his integrity of heart
and innocency of hands, may gain a glimpse of that world,
becoming for the time truly an artist; gleams of it are seen in the colour of
the clouds, in the blue
of the sea
and in the roar of the waves. The mountain ranges mirror it, and in
every lake and
pool, and in the fields at eventide, and in forest, and in
thicket, that
world looks into our hearts and minds. The face of friend and
beloved is a
mirror of it; the harmonies of music tell us ofit
with an almost maddening insistence. The great Reality, in which our immortal
natures are rooted, is not far away, to be realised
perhaps - who knows ? — only
after death; it is here, and now, the source of every solace as it is too the
cause of all pining and death. And Art has the key to open the door to it, to
all who seek that door.
CHAPTER VII
THEOSOPHY IN THE STATE
EVERY great body of ethical teaching has stood or fallen
according to
its effect on
men as they form organised states. Since a man is a
unit of a
social organisation, the value which any ethical teaching may have
for the
individual is
inseparable from its application to the community of which he is a
part. Just as
an understanding of certain simple truths of Theosophy modifies a
man's conception
of himself, so too the conception of what constitutes the true
state, when
viewed in the light of Theosophy, profoundly modifies a man's
attitude to his
life among his fellow men.
For what is the modern state today ? In
the main it is very little different
from the pack which
we find among the higher vertebrates, like jackals and
wolves. As the
aim of the pack is to protect itself against a common enemy, and
to get more
easily food for itself, so the chief aim of the modern state is to
protect itself
against aggression and to increase its means of
sustenance.
The morality of the pack rules the state today; any individual
who diminishes the power of the state's resistance or of its aggression, or who
lessens the quantity of food, is regarded as the enemy of the state. Hence our
attitude to the law-breaker and to the poor; the criminal is looked upon as one
who has lost his right of citizenship, and he is punished more to deter others
from crime than with the intention of redeeming him; we do not inquire into
what made him commit the crime and who is responsible for the environment which
made his criminality possible.
The poor man is considered a failure in life, a part of the
refuse of civilisation, and we do not inquire how far
the state itself is responsible for the causes of his poverty. Armies and
navies are part and parcel of modern civilisation,
and woe indeed to that state which should refuse to imitate all the other
states and not equip itself to be efficient in destruction. In our ordinary
conceptions of the state, in most peoples minds, the
individual is largely regarded as an animal to be curbed for the good of the
state, and the neighbouring states are regarded as
rivals against whose enmity the state must ever be on the watch. How radically
different is the Theosophist's conception of the state will be seen when we
apply Theosophical truths to the problems of the state.
There are two fundamental facts about the true state, and they
are: first, that
the State is a
Brotherhood of Souls, and secondly that the State is an
expression of the
Divine Life of God. Let us see how the state appears in the
light of these
two truths.
The State is a Brotherhood of Souls. The individuals who compose
the state are
Souls, immortal egos in earthly bodies; they are the members of
the state in
order to evolve
to an ideal of perfection. As souls, and as all partaking of one
Divine Nature, all within the state are brothers; whether rich or
poor, cultured
or ignorant,
law-abiding or law-breaking, all are brothers, and nothing one soul
does can modify
that fact of nature. The educated or the proud may refuse to see an identity of
nature with the ignorant and the lowly; the weak and the
criminally minded may
show more the attributes of the brute than of the God. Yet is there in high and
low alike the one nature of the Divine Life, and nothing a
man does can
weaken the bond of brotherhood between him and all the others.
But this Brotherhood of all souls is like the relation of
brotherhood within a
family; brothers
are not all of the same age, though they are of the same
parents. So too,
among the souls who compose a state, there are elder souls and
younger souls; it
is just this difference of spiritual age and
capacity which
makes possible the functions of the real state. The age of the
soul is seen in
the response to ideals of altruism and co-operation; he is the
elder soul who
springs forward to help in the welfare of others, and that soul
is the
younger who thinks of self-interest first and follows its needs in
preference to
self-sacrifice on behalf of others.
The divisions which we now have in a state's life of rank and of
wealth are no true distinctions which divide the elder souls from the younger
souls; one man born into a high class or caste may yet be a very young soul,
while another whose birth is ignoble, according to the world's conventions, may
be far advanced as a soul.
There being in each state elder souls and younger souls, the Law
of Brotherhood
requires that the
elder shall be more self-sacrificing, on behalf of the
younger, than the
younger should be towards the elder. Since life through long
ages has given
more to the elder souls than to the younger, more is required
from the elder,
both of self-sacrifice and of responsibility.
By the natural order of events, the direction of a state's
affairs will fall
inevitably on the
elder souls. It does not matter whether the power in a state
is administered
by a monarchy, oligarchy or democracy, because when the state
begins to perform
its true functions, the direction of its affairs is by
an
aristocracy, by the best souls, that is, the elder and the more capable
souls. These
best souls may call themselves democrats or republicans, and may
hold their
power in trust from the masses, but the fact remains the same that
the guidance
of the state is entrusted by the younger souls into the hands of
the elder
souls. Till the day comes in the far-off future when each soul will
himself, as the
Divine Lawgiver, be a law unto himself, the direction of the
state must come
into the hands of a few, whom we call the rulers or
administrators.
The great principle to guide them in their administration is that
in all the
state's affairs
the principle of Brotherhood shall dominate in all things. This
will mean the
clear recognition that any preventible suffering or
ignorance or
backwardness of even
one citizen is to the detriment of the welfare of all the
citizens; that
since the destiny of each is inseparable from the destiny of all,
as rises one so rise all, and as falls one so fall all; that
there must be no
shadow of
exploitation of one man by another, of one class or caste by another.
Since, too, all men are souls and, even the least developed, Gods
in the making,
it becomes
the duty of the administrator in all laws and institutions
continually to appeal
to the hidden Divinity in man. In existent states, the
attempt is first
and foremost to curb the remnant of the brute in man, utterly
forgetting the power in him of co-operation on the side of
good, if
only the God in
him were to be appealed to.
When there comes in the state the recognition of this hidden God
in a man, a
complete revolution
will take place in our attitude to and in our treatment of
the criminal.
First and foremost, whatever he does, he is our brother. He is a
younger brother
truly to those of us who are the elders and give implicit and
willing obedience to
the laws of the state; but though he fall a thousand times,
he is our
brother even after the thousandth time. The problem of crime then
turns first upon
the understanding of the causes which contribute to crime, and
secondly of the
means of the proper building of the character of the law-breaker
which will make
failure impossible again for him.
The contributory causes to crime are physical and mental. Of the
physical, want
of health is
the great cause; it may be due to malnutrition or to bad housing
conditions or to
disease, but where an individual lacks health of body, due to
any one of
these causes, part of the responsibility of the crime rests upon the
state's
administrators and upon all who have appointed them by their suffrages.
The mental contributory causes are both of the individual and of
the community.
The individual has in him a weakness of character brought from
his past lives, a
weakness
strengthened by an unfavourable environment, instead
of, as
it should be,
atrophied by a favourable one; to the strength of his
own failing,
the individual
is responsible for his crime. But the strength of his own innate
failing may not
necessarily be the full strength evidenced in the crime;
sometimes much of
the strength required for committing the crime was given to
the criminal
by others.
Thus, for instance, when a weak-willed, undeveloped man in a fit
of drunkenness commits a murder, we should see, were we to analyse
fully all the hidden causes, that there was added to his fury and anger an
additional power of hatred from outside. Some outwardly law-abiding citizen may
have willed with hate to kill an opponent but have refrained, because of the
consequences to him of the crime; but though he refrained from the act, he did
not refrain from the powerful thought of murder. His thought, launched into the
atmosphere, flies to the weak-willed, drunken man, whose will alone would not
be sufficient to impel him to murder, and fastens upon him at the time of
anger, and discharges its full force through him, and so commits vicariously a
murder through him. In each criminal act of every criminal all of us have a
share; it is the thoughts of malice and hatred of the seemingly law-abiding
citizens that as much contribute to crime as the innate weakness of the
criminals themselves. Crime committed by a few is caused by all, and the final
doer of the act is not alone responsible for the act, but also each and every
one who impelled him to that act.
Next follows the consideration of the cure of the criminal. Since
the criminal
is
fundamentally diseased, and since all have contributed, some more and some
less, to his
disease, the cure must not have the slightest thought of punishment
about it. On the
contrary, it must be guided by the thought of atonement. It was
the state's
function as guardian of every citizen to see that in his environment
everything which
could foster the seed of evil in the weak-willed man or woman
had been
removed; if he or she commits a crime, it is a proof that the state had
betrayed the trust
imposed upon it by the Divine Law. We, as citizens of the
state, must cure
the disease of the law-breaker, not by our hatred, as now when
we imprison
and punish him, but by our Brotherhood. We do not punish the
consumptive, but try
to cure him with the best treatment we can give, sparing
him none of
the state's resources to save his life. Similar must be our attitude
to the
law-breaker, who is our brother.
If only we could realise our
Brotherhood with each citizen in the state, we
should discover
dozens of new modes of curing crime. Already our growing sense of humanity has
discovered alternatives to banishment in goal in the
system of
Probation adopted in many countries for first-offenders, and in the
Juvenile Courts and
is needed on
our part, and we shall know him as ever our brother. Then a full
tide of wisdom
will be ours to solve many of the problems which baffle us today
as we try to
improve the lives of our fellow men.
If all our laws could be so framed as to reveal that the
sacrosanct ideas of the
state are not of
rights to property but of preserving Brotherhood; that men are
not regarded
as brutes, whose animality is taken for granted, but
rather as the
sons of God,
whose divine nature is continually expected to reveal itself in
response to ideals
of integrity and virtue and Brotherhood; that he who refuses
to co-operate
with the state is not regarded by the state as less a citizen and
a brother
but the more to be tended and cherished because of his weakness; if
this conception
of the state could be taught to every child and reverenced by
every man and
woman; then indeed would crime diminish generation after
generation and the
joys of co-operation replace the bitternesses of
competition,
and for the
first time would appear on earth a true state. Some day there will
be everywhere
on earth these true states, for it is the Divine Plan
that men shall
come to realise that a state is a Brotherhood of
Souls.
The State is an expression of the Divine Life of God. Stage by
stage in an
ascending ladder of life,
the Nature of God as the Immanence reveals itself in
stone and plant,
in invertebrate and vertebrate; each stage reveals more of His
life by greater
complexity of the organism, bringing about on the side of the
Form many units built up into a whole, and on the side of the
Life, a new
expression of life
higher than the separate lives of its component parts. So too
is there
taking place with men, and through men, a fashioning of new vehicles
for the life
of God. At one stage it is God the Man; at a later stage it is God
the Family,
and dimly we see in the family more of the possibilities of life for
each member of
it, and by realising these possibilities we feel a
new call to
sacrifice and
idealism - for the Family. The man, as the unit of a family, finds
that his Divine
Life is surrounded by a larger, more mystically beautiful
radiance, which
envelops him as the nutrient matter surrounds the nucleus in the
cell.
Then comes the later stage still, when another and a more
glorious wave of
Divine Life descends on men, and out of families builds a State,
fashioning out
of units a
new and a larger whole. Thence appear new possibilities of
life for each
within the state. A new sphere of Divine Life surrounds the souls
who make the
state, feeding them with new hopes and dreams with which to live,
even as the
mother nourishes within her womb the child and feeds its young life
with her own
blood.
Could but citizens know of this brooding Life which is the
essence of the state,
then would they
joyfully build for it the perfect vehicle out of themselves and
their homes and
their cities. Ugliness would vanish, to be replaced by beautiful
dwellings and
stately cities; disease and misery would be as an evil dream, and
poverty and
bitterness and strife could nevermore mar the serene and joyous life
of the state.
In each citizen's face would then be seen something of the glory
of the state;
the artisan who toils as for the state would have a beauty of
bearing all his own;
the artist and dreamer would reveal a beauty all his own,
other than the
beauty he discovers and proclaims. For, as man seeks God, so God seeks man; as
man through slow passage of time rises from the savage to be the civilised man, from the solitary, self-seeking man to be
the unit of a family, and then of a state, so God descends to man first as the
man's conscience and his hopes and dreams of immortality, then as the family,
and then as the state.
For the true state is a revelation of God, and it is because that
revelation is yet to come that man strives to change his environment from good
to better, from better to best. Through barbarities and savageries, through
selfish greeds, through fratricidal wars, the world's
states are changing age by age, and men rise from the brute to the God; they
change because God the State calls for His habitation. It is this knowledge of
God the State which Theosophy reveals to all who desire to understand, what is the future that awaits men.
When men understand what makes the true state, then
will come a fuller
revelation still of
God as the
then will
manifest a larger purpose than men have ever dreamed of before; each
state will grow
into new, beauteous achievements because over all the states
broods the mighty
power of God's Plan fulfilled at last. None will ask which is
the better
state, for where God's hands have touched, there is perfection. Shall
a man,
seeing that miracle of God, a sunset, ask whether the rose is lovelier
than the blue
or the gold, or ask that the sunset be of one colour alone ? So
shall the world
be some day, when the Wisdom of God "mightily and sweetly
ordereth all
things". To this Day of all humanity the world's states are
tending, and they
will reach their goal at last because it is God's Plan that
they shall.
Wisdom in planning, confidence in endeavour,
and a joyous outlook night and day to all things in life are his who thus sees
God's world and man's world
illumined by Theosophy.
History
of the Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society,