Theosophical
Society President
Practical
Theosophy
By
C
Jinarajadasa
First
Published 1918
Based
on lectures delivered in Chicago U.S.A., in 1910,
and
subsequently at the Annual Convention
of the
Burma Section in 1914.
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.
(1)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 Athens,
but in modern days there is so little of clear understanding of what
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 Oxford and Cambridge have 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 America and elsewhere, we have manifestly great
capacity together with much selfishness and lust for power; but they are
building up more efficient ideas of business, and so are helping in the Divine
Plan. As for their selfishness, that will be purified out of them through
suffering in future lives; and when after that purification they gain a true
perspective of life, they will have with them the strong virtues which 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 Darwin's theories
are profoundly modified today by the facts of Mendelism. "When modern
science began, it was Bacon's intention that the first hypotheses, however
absolute they seemed to be in their agreement with facts, should be nothing
more than what he called "First Vintages"; but it is the tendency of
the scientist to come to finalties when he observes his facts, and to presume
that because finalities are useful for the practical purposes of experiment and
life, therefore they must be accepted as the fundamental verities.
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 isthe 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, 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 Junior Commonwealths and
Reformatories which are proving their efficiency in the case of juvenile
offenders. We are beginning to treat the criminal as if he were indeed still a
man; only a little further development
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 World State. Through all the
states in the world 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.
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