Theosophy - The Religion of Theosophy - by Bhagavan Das - Adyar Pamphlets No. 3
Adyar
Pamphlets No.3
THE RELIGION OF THEOSOPHY
by Bhagavan Das
A paper contributed to the Convention of Religions
held in Allahabad, India,
on the 9th, 10th and 11th of January 1911
The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras. India
May 1911
The duty assigned to me, in this Convention of Religions, and appropriately at
its very end, is to place before you a brief statement of the Religion of Theosophy
- which includes and sums up all religions.
We have met together under the aegis
of the British Government today - representatives of many creeds and races;
and our common medium of communication is the English language. This language
- the language of a people who, in the modern world, have approached nearest
perhaps of all nations, though very far from attaining yet, to that due balancing
of the intellectual, the militant and the industrial [or Brâhmana, Kshattriya
and Vaishya] vocations, types and aspects of individual men and collective
Society which makes a healthy and happy social organisation - this language
is spoken today by about 125 millions of human beings, and is understood
by probably 25 millions more in all parts of the world, especially amongst
the thoughtful and educated of all nations. Hence it is perhaps the [Page
2] best
medium for the spreading of ideas over the wide surface of the earth at
the present time. Hence, apparently were the epoch-making works of Madame
H. P. Blavatsky, herself a Russian by birth, written in the English language.
And hence I shall discuss the Religion of Theosophy in the terms of that
rich-worded language, which is likely to be true and full of meaning .in
the etymologies of all its important words, because developed by the guiding
genius and containing within it the spirit of a people who, being the product
of the mixing’s of almost all the sub-divisions of the
Ãryan Race, are perhaps the most many-sided in mind, and who are
comparatively well-balanced and just and righteous in themselves, on the
whole. With the help of that language I shall endeavour to show to you,
though all too cursorily, that the Religion of Theosophy is that Universal
Religion which runs through all special religions and includes them all,
even as the solar energy runs through all the endless forms and marvellous
manifestations of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, X-rays, N-rays, etc.,
on our earth, and includes them all; even as the genus runs through and
encloses all individuals; even as humanity is present in and enfolds all
human beings however much any of them may regard themselves as
separate, and strive to cut themselves off from any others.[Page
3]
The word Religion, by Latin
derivation, means something which binds. And Religion is essentially that
something which binds together the hearts of all men, without distinction
of race, creed, caste, colour, or sex; binds them all to each other with
the golden thread of Universal Brotherhood; binds them to the heart of
that Universal God who is the very Principle of Life, of Consciousness,
of Being, in every thing and all things. It is that which binds the heartsof
men to all ideals; which makes them
believe in the now non-existent future; which compels them to work
for the good of distant generations yet unborn, for the helping of the inhabitantsof
far countries never visited, for the realization of aims in a far-off age
and place not at all visible to the fleshly eye of the present worker.
It is that which makes the unbeliever by profession an unconscious believer
by action, despite himself and despite all logic and consistency. All effort,
all aspiration, for the distant, the future, the unknown — be the
striving political or industrial, social or scientific, artistic or philanthropic,
or even personal and selfish — is essentially religious. In all such
striving, the element of the hope of success, of the faith in one's possibilities,
of the belief in the continuance of the present into the future — be
that future an hour distant or a million years — is the element[Page
4] of true Religion. It is
the conscious or unconscious recognition of the fact that the spirit of
man extends beyond the present moment, extends from the past through the
present into the future, and that if it extends even a moment before and
a moment after, then and therefore, for the same reason, whatever it be,
it necessarily extends immortally throughout the eternity of time and the
infinity of space, and embraces all things and beings, however much the
bodies of men conflict and perish.
Wherever we have a common
feeling, wherever we have esprit de corps
however narrow, there we have the very spirit of Religion though restricted,
there we have, however limited, the manifestation of the Unity of the Self,
the Supreme Spirit, which alone binds together many selves into one, and
makes of disjointed parts an organic whole.
The connotation of
the Samskrt word Dharma is the same:
"That which sustains
and upholds all the worlds, that which maintains itself, that which is held
close and fast by the wise and the virtuous, that which binds and holds together
all the children of the Universal God, that which is the Supreme Spirit Itself' — that
is Dharma."
Sympathy,
fellow-feeling, love, the sensing of common Self of all in all — which
is the one [Page
5] bond
that binds and holds together individuals, families, tribes, nations, races,
even as hate is the one sharp-edged instrument that sunders and scatters
them apart — this love of all living
things is of the very essence of Religion. Such Universal Love is the first
and the last manifestation of God, the Universal and Immortal Self. It
is this which triumphs eternally over Death and Hate and Evil. All association,
all co-operation of any kind, within whatsoever limits, is the product
of this Fellow-feeling, this Common-feeling, this One-feeling.
The
Hindû seeks to regenerate and aggrandize the Hindû people. The
Musalmãn labours for the cause of Pan-Islãmism. The Christian
strives to maintain undiminished the supremacy of the Christian nations. The
member of the Hebrew race thinks only of the children of Israel and longs
to restore the departed glories of Zion. The Buddhist, the Jain, the Sikh,
the Pãrsi, each works for the people who bear the name of his religion.
The same is the case with countries and nationalities. The Englishman, the
German, the Frenchman, the American, the Russian, the Japanese, each
feels surges of pride and satisfaction in thinking of the great deeds
recorded in the history of his particular nation, but not so of any other.
Why
is this so ? Why is it that simply because I am named a Hindû in
this present [Page
6] life,
another person also bearing the name of Hindû, who lives two thousand
miles away from me, near Cape Comorin or Peshãwar, and whom I have
never seen and never am likely to see, excites my concern in his troubles
more readily, more deeply, more sincerely, than my brother of Islãm
or Christianity who is my next-door neighbour, and with whom I am brought
into contact daily in various ways ? Why should I take far more trouble
to provide for the well-being of my great-great-grandson whom I shall never
see, than for the comfort of this my neighbour but belonging to another
creed ? What solid and substantial reason can be given for such doings
? Is it not a mere sentiment, an illusory feeling, an empty name, an airy
nothing, a mere imagination and self-imposed hallucination — that
my interests are the same as those of these unknown persons ? He who runs
may read that, in the great conflicts of religions, it is not the physical
persons that are inimical primarily. For any one follower of any one religion
can become a convert in a moment to any other, practically even if not
nominally in one or two cases. It is the Ideas and Ideals that
are in conflict. ' My way of thinkingand living is the best and should be followed by all, and must
prevail' — all
mere imagination, idea, ideal. And yet these airy nothings, these mere
sentiments [Page
7] and imaginations, cause
wars and revolutions and overturn existing kingdoms, or discover and
conquer new countries and build great civilizations and found new empires;
depopulate and spread ruin over flourishing lands, or develop glorious
new arts and sciences in them.
Therefore are these
sentiments far more necessary to attend to than the so-called substantial
things of life, even as the invisible air is more necessary to the living
organism than solid food. They reign at the birth of life and at its decay
and death also. They all, in their growing gradation of familism, parochialism,
tribalism, provincialism, patriotism, nationalism, are but the manifestations
of the feeling of the Common Self in larger and larger circles. And they
are thus powerful in their operation, because they
are all in growing degree embodiments of the Unity of the Omnipotent
Spirit. And in the conflicts of religions, that religion will thrive most which
best helps forward inclusiveness, and that religion must decay most which
most fosters mutual separation and narrow-minded sectarianism and
exclusiveness.
Whatsoever that Self
identifies itself with, one interest or a thousand, one body or a thousand,
whatsoever it makes mine by act of imagination, that
becomes near and dear; whatever it dissociates itself from, whatever it
regards as [Page
8] other, as foreign, as strange,
that becomes distant and disagreeable. Brothers born of the same father and
mother will slay each other for a trifle which may happen to come between and
separate them. Utter strangers, from the ends of the world, will meet and marry
as man and woman and become all in all to each other. Are not both phases the
veriest tricks of the imagination, mine and thine, mine and
not mine' ? Verily, as the scriptures declare, nothing is dear except for
the sake of the Self. And as the circumference of the individual self expands
with growth of intellect and imagination, so more and more things and beings
are enclosed within it. The man begins with identification of himself with
(that is to say, love of) his own body, and goes on step by step to love
of family, of townsfolk, of countrymen, of race, of fellow-religionists.
Each one of these indicates one step in the growth and evolution of the
soul. But the process is far from complete when it has arrived at the stage
of patriotism and nationalism, Pan-Hindûism or pan-Islãmism
or pan-Christianism, or pan-whites, or pan-yellows, or pan-browns, or pan-blacks,
or pan-reds. The synthesis of the Self is not yet perfect. The member of
any one race, the follower of any one creed, sees and feels himself in
the members of that race only, in the followers of [Page
9] that
creed only. But a higher integration of these differentiated units
is possible. It is possible to see and feel the Self in all men, whatsoever
their creed or colour. And if a common country, a common language,
a common script, a common colour of skin, a common idea, make such strong
bonds, how much stronger the bond that a Common Self, a Common Life,
should make between man and man! When that is done, when the Universal
Spirit of all men is recognized and realized by all men, then will we
have reached the stage of Humanism, the federation of all the nations.
Of this stage the glorious Sûfi
sang:
Vedas,
Avestã, Bible, Al-Qurãn,
Temple,
Pagoda, Church and Kaãbã-stone —
All these and more
my heart can tolerate
Since my Religion
now is Love alone !
A
yet further reach remains — the state in which the soul recognizes
its identity not only with all human life but with all lives whatever,
above as well as below the human stage. Of that state of the soul it has
been said that :
Seeking nothing,
he gains all;
Foregoing
self, the Universe grows " I".
That is the
ultimate stage of Religion, the culmination, by upward gradation, of all
smaller degrees of fellow-feeling in the Great Feeling [Page
10] of
the Common Life and Universal Consciousness in which all worlds and world-inhabitants
live and move and have their being, the Great Feeling which different religions,
speaking the same thing in different languages, have termed Moksha or Nirvãna
or Beatitude or Salvation or Merãj.
Such is the finality
of all Religions. But we, who are met together in this Convention of Religions
today are, I take it, striving to induce ourselves and our brothers to step
into the penultimate stage, into that Humanism which will enfold within its
patriarchal arms all smaller "isms" attached to
special creeds, countries and races, and give equal share to each in the
good things of life, equal place to each within its world-wide home, equal
tolerance, nay, active affection, to each, letting each gain its goal and
expand finally into the Ultimate along its own way in the distances of time.
Of great
good augury, therefore, I believe, are such Conventions of Religions; the highest
syntheses of all the many co-operative activities of the workers of today; the
most hopeful sprouts of the seed of that all-inclusive Universal Brotherhood
which is the very Religion of Theosophy, as embodied in the first and most important
of the three objects of the [Page
11] Theosophical Society, viz.
To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction
of race, creed, caste, colour or sex.
And it needs no proof
that this general principle of love and sympathy, of charity and humanity,
of universal good-will and harmlessness, of aspiration and effort for the
ever-growing welfare of all, is present in all religions.
But beside this general
principle, there are some other features, more detailed aspects of that same
principle, which also may be seen to be common to all religions and in which
we may discern the real ground-plan of Comparative Religion.
Psychologists
are agreed that the individualized consciousness has three aspects. Some
call them intellect, feeling and volition. Some prefer the names thought,
emotion and conation. Others call them cognition, desire and action. Others,
imagination, will and self-assertion. Others, wisdom, will and activity.
Others, wisdom, love and will, reversing the use of the words will and
love, but meaning the same facts. Still others use other words. But there
is a fairly general agreement as to the essential three facts or aspects
involved: named in Samskrt jñanam, ichchhã and kriyã,
by common consent of all seers. And as these are the aspects of
Consciousness in its individualized form, so in [Page
12] its Universal form it
shows forth the same as Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence.
Men, as they show forth more of the one or the other of these aspects fall
into one of three classes, men of thought, men of art, and men of action.
And every Religion, being an embodiment of the feeling of that Common
Consciousness, shows forth these three aspects also. It is true that,
commonly, the word religion brings up the idea of a spiritual aspiration,
a Godward emotion, a divine desire, a superphysical art; whereas
metaphysics or philosophy may be said to represent the knowledge-side of
the same, and concrete science the active industrial application; yet in
its wider and fuller sense Religion comprehends all these. In this sense,
we may say that every religion tells its followers: (a) What to think (or
believe); (5) What to desire (or feel); (c) What to do. And Theosophy enables
us to see that the essential teachings of every religion in respect of each
of these vital questions, are practically the same.
(a) Every religion
includes within itself a body of doctrine more or less definitely formulated,
a mass of knowledge more or less precisely expounded, relating to the whence,
the whither, the how and the why of the visible and invisible worlds, and
of the human and other life inhabiting these; and this part is its answer
to [Page
13] the
question: " What to think of
all this world-process". (b] Every religion again has, as an integral part,
a system of ethics or morality, which is its answer to the question: " What
to feel or wish for or towards our fellow-creatures". (c) And finally every
religion has a more or less elaborate code of sacraments and a general
social polity, which is its answer to the question: "What to do to purify
and elevate and make ever richer and more beautiful the individual as well
as the aggregate physical and spiritual life of human beings".
These
are the three ways, of Knowledge, of Devotion, and of Works, which belong
to each and every religion and they are not separable from each
other, any more than the three aspects of Consciousness. They are only
distinguishable from one another, and all always necessarily co-exist
and interweave, all making but One Threefold Path which must be trodden
by every soul in its passage from the great deep to the great deep of the
ineffable bliss and peace of the Divine Life. The dangers of trying to
separate the three portions of this triune path and follow any one only
and wholly abandon the other two are very great. Mere knowledge, reasoning,
argument, science, unvivified by the living warmth of love, remains
essentially incomplete and erroneous and leads [Page
14] ultimately
to that deadly lack of interest, that stony coldness of heart, which is
a taste of the isolation of Avîchi, the motionless imprisonment of
the writhing jinn in the sealed bottles of Solomon. Excessive Devotion,
unbalanced, unadjusted, unguided by Reason, always leads, as history shows
a thousand times, to unnatural perversions of emotion, to sex-corruption,
hysterics, spiritism, unctuous cant, hypocrisy, nervous diseases of mind
and body of all kinds; for love must move either upwards or downwards,
and when, in the course of its spirals, it returns from the upward direction
and cannot find the consecrated ways of wedlock in its fleshward journey,
it perforce finds tortuous and evil ways for its expression, even as a
healthy stream of water dammed back from its normal course between its
natural banks, and not provided with healthier and more serviceable irrigation-channels,
overflows the neighbouring lands in harmful ways. Even so, Action uninspired
by unselfish Love, unguided by Wisdom, becomes either aimless and
meaningless mummery and superstition and ritualism, or positive vice and
crime, a fever of restlessness and ruthless ambitions. Therefore all
religions which are at all complete show forth all three sides; they inspire
Action with selfless Devotion, and guide both by Wisdom.[Page
15]
Under
the sub-division of Knowledge, every religion teaches the existence of
One Supreme Spirit, One Self-dependent all-pervading Life, binding together
all beings in mutual relationships of duty and dependence. The nature of
this Universal Spirit, hidden in the heart of every living thing, and yet
also patently manifest in all things, is described in almost the same terms
in the crowning teachings of every religion, the Vedãnta of Hindûism,
the Rahasya teachings of the Buddha and the Jina to their Arhat disciples,
the Gnosis of the Christians, the Tasawwuf of Islãm. Its conclusive
evidence as well as closest and most primary manifestation is
Consciousness, the immediate consciousness of every living being,
Consciousness which proves all things else and which is proved by nothing
else than itself. Of It has been declared: "Har che bînî bi-dãn
ki mazhar-i-û-st", "Whatsoever thou beholdest know to be but a manifestation
of That".
Of It the Upanishats say: "Sarvam khalu idam Brahma", " Tat-twam asi",
"Aham Brahm-ãsmi", "All this is Brahman", "Thou art That", "I am That
also". Of It the great Teachers Shams Tabrez and Mansur declared: " Haq
tu î" and "An-ul Haq”, "Thou art God, the One Truth and Reality",
and "I
am That same". The great Islãmic kalemã of faith, "La ilãh'
Iillãh' ", There [Page
16]
is no other God, no other true
Being; or Creator, than the One God", is a declaration of the existence
of the same One and Supreme Spirit, whose name is That (or rather, That-ness,
in Samskrt Tat or Tattvam, which, as a friend learned in Arabic said
is the literal meaning of the word Allãh). The
Christian teaching also is that man is the living " temple of God " and
that "I and my Father are one".
This universal belief
in the existence of an Eternal Spirit pervading all things goes with the
belief in the obvious appearance of an ever changing and passing material
or objective world, in relation with which the Spirit puts on the triple
aspect of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Such a triplicity of mere aspect would
not be denied even in Islãm which,
otherwise, in its insistence on the secondless Unity of the Supreme Spirit,
and the repudiation and negation of all other-than-God, lã-ilãh,
anãtmã,
Not-Self, is as clear and emphatic as Advaita Vedãnta.
Another belief common
to all religions is the belief in other worlds than this; in other states
of individual consciousness than the waking one; in other kinds of experience
than those brought to us by the five physical senses. And most of us are
beginning to realize today that within the infinite powers and possibilities
of the Spirit, there might be as much variety in these invisible [Page
17] and superphysical worlds
as in the visible one; or rather, indeed, far greater variety, for the
known is infinitely less than the unknown, and yet, also, that which is visible
to the eye of flesh every minute all around us is so very great a miracle
that nothing else can possibly be greater ever and anywhere. The growth
of forest-giants from tiny specks of seeds, the ever-blowing winds, the ocean-tides,
the whole vast ball of the earth whirling round itself and round the sun
in empty space with
inconceivable velocity, the sun itself with all its planets rushing round
some other vaster sun, the countless orbs of heaven shining as points of
stronger light in an ocean of milder light — un-understandable yet
plainly visible to the naked eye of flesh on every starlit night — all
these are greater miracles
than, or at least equal miracles with, endless grades and shades of
subtlety and density of matter.
Yet
another common item of belief is the existence of different grades of spiritual
beings dwelling in and governing these different worlds, even as men and
animals live in this, all within and under the Absolute Nature and Law
and sway of the One Supreme Spirit which lives and moves in all, Devas
of high and low degree, Farohars, Elohim, Angels, Cherubs, Seraphs, Sprites,
Fairies, Farishtãs, Jinns, Parîs, etc.— are the names,
given by Hindû, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Pãrsi, [Page
18] Hebrew,
Christian, Musalmãn, to these same spirits, some benevolent, some
malevolent to humanity. All religions also believe, more or less clearly
in special manifestations of the Supreme Principle of Consciousness, distinguishable
within but not separable from the general manifestations of life, like
a mountain amidst hills, like a sun amidst lesser lights. These special
manifestations are stated in the scriptures of those religions which deal
with the subject at length, to be perpetually appearing, and in all kingdoms
and on all planes of matter, below as well as above the human and the
physical. In the human kingdom, the various religions call them by various
names, Avatãras, Ãveshas, Amshas, Kalãs, Buddhas,
Jînas,
Tirthankaras, Zardushtas, Sons of God, Rasûls, Messengers, Nabîs,
Prophets, Saints, Sages, Seers, Poets, Kavis, Rshis, Imãms, Messiahs,
Bãbs, Heroes,
Geniuses, etc, etc. Each name has its own special significance of function
and degree. The general principle underlying these special manifestations
is that the Universal Self appears in them in an intenser form than in
others, on special occasions, for special purposes of teaching, of adjusting
and chastening of, and leading on by inspiring love. But the difference
between the special and general manifestations is ever one of degree only,
for it is literally true than all living things are the children
of God, are Spirit of the same Spirit [Page
19] and flesh of the same
flesh, are Avatãras,
descents of Spirit into Matter, are compounded of the self-same
Spirit and Matter. Looked at thus, the fact of Avatãras becomes
divested of all sensational mystery and wonder-working and is seen
to be only one of the facts of nature, and a fact which is much less
overwhelmingly astonishing, if at all, than the daily marvels of sunrise
and sunset. A homely illustration may perhaps make plain ‘the
mode of operation' of the Principle of Consciousness in such manifestations.
In the case of a human individual, when a thorn pierces his foot, while
the general vital-consciousness pervading and upholding the whole of
his body is by no means wholly drawn away from all the other parts
but continues to nourish them, yet there is a special concentration
of it at the point where the thorn is rankling, and another corresponding
concentration in the hand which, guided by (the Principle of) knowledge
(Vishnu), travels to that point to remove the cause of the pain. Even
so, in the life of a nation, a race, a group-soul, when Sin, Evil,
Adharma, Prati-nãrãyana, the spirit of Negation
of the Self, Satan, Kãma-Krodha, the Matter-ward tendency, Egoism,
becomes excessive, then some soul embodying in an especial degree the
principle of Virtue and Goodness and Love, Nãrãyana,
Vishnu, etc., appears to apply the [Page
20]
remedy. Avatãras
come to show the way, to erect a standard, to set an example, to
be imitated with effort and striving; they do not come in order to
be blindly worshiped. Indeed, many have had occasion expressly to
forbid such blind worship of themselves, as tending to retard the
Realisation of the Great Self which is the end, Avatãras being
but means.
Finally all Religions
teach, more or less distinctly, that the human soul, being a portion of the
Divine Being, has emanated from it and will go back to it some day, after
passing through various experiences of good and ill, virtues and joys, sins
and sufferings, in various worlds. Detailed teachings on this periodical
descent and re-ascent of Spirit, and the laws governing this evolution and
involution of soul and body, through various stages and kingdoms of nature,
in birth after birth, are to be found in the mystic traditions and teachings
of every great religion, though sometimes preserved secret as Ilm-i-sînã,
in the hearts and memories of teachers and
disciples, and not always published broadcast in the earlier days of the
religion to the masses not yet ready to receive them for lack of the needed
intellectual growth. But the main law governing all this evolution is accepted
unanimously by all religions to be the Law of moral and psychical as well
as physical Causation [Page
21] or Action and Re-action:
As ye sow, thus shall ye reap; Sãzã and Jãza virtue
is rewarded in the end, and vice punished; the wages of merit are joys,
the wages of sin, suffering.
These,
in very brief outline, may be said to be the chapters of faith common to
that part of the book of any and every religion which deals with the question: "What
to think ? "
Another
part thereof, dealing with the question: " What to feel ?" is even
more obviously common to all. All religions teach us to feel love for all — in
the shape of reverence towards those who are older and greater than we,
and in the highest degree for our own Inmost Spirit, the Supreme Self; in
the shape of sympathy and affection for those who are equal to us; in the
shape of tenderness and pity to those who are younger and weaker and
smaller. All other virtues flow from these. And morality, the spirit of Loving
Righteousness, is the very heart of Religion, as knowledge is its head, and
performance of duty its limbs.
Without this spirit
of Loving Righteousness, Religion were like a body without a heart, dead
and putrefying and spreading corruption all round.
A
high civilisation, being but an aspect of a high religion, is made up of
the same three factors. It is built up (a) of great stores of [Page
22] knowledge, of
all kinds of science, physical and superphysical; (b) of active industries
and energetic enterprises; and even more vitally important than these;
(c) of high morals and purity in art. Genuine civilisation and high culture
might perhaps be reached with the help of scrupulous morality and fine (as
distinguished from vile) art, which always subserves the highest and the
noblest desires and emotions of love and devotion and patriotism and
heroic courage, even without much science and without much mercantile
and mechanical enterprise, as witness the classic days of Greece. But
without these and even with much science and machinery, we can only
have results like those-attending the sudden finding of a heavy nugget
of gold by a rude miner, viz drunken carousals - and shootings. Without
this inmost spirit of religion, without high-minded and spiritual earnestness
and purity of character, without benevolence and charitableness and
philanthropy, no nation can attain to genuine civilisation, but at most
only to that great display of brass and iron and silver and gold which history
associates with barbaricsplendour, be the forms taken those
of helmet and bread-plate and lance and sword, or be they guns and cannon
and armoured trains and iron-bound men-of-war. [Page
23]
Indeed, the whole of
history, the whole of political science, is but a perpetual illustration
of the truths and principles of moral psychology. Pride goeth before
a fall, in the nation as well as the individual, for the plain reason
that arrogance estranges friends and creates enemies. Honesty is the
best policy, for nations as well as individuals, because honesty is born
of that sympathy which feels the Divine Life in all, and therefore instinctively
wishes to do to another as it would be done by, and sympathy produces
sympathy and converts enemies into friends. Frankness is the deepest
diplomacy, for individuals as well as nations, because frankness inspires
equal frankness and confidence in the long run, and where there is confidence
there is no further room or need for that endeavour to circumvent, which
is the currently understood meaning of the world diplomacy. They who
promote strife between others, be they individuals or races, thinking
to benefit themselves by the policy of divide and rule, generally
find themselves unable later on to control the evil spirit of strife
when once fully aroused, and come in for blows from both sides impartially;
or find that that spirit so diligently invoked by them has ultimately
invaded and taken lodgment within their own families and homes and created
unquenchable internal dissensions.[Page
24]
Hatred
ceaseth never by hatred, between men as between nations, though it may
possibly be driven underground temporarily by superior might and so compelled
to bide its time — but it ceaseth wholly and only by
love. Righteousness must prevail in the end between men and between
nations, because it makes all loving to each other, and in such a condition
of things only is permanence, and not in intrigues and diplomacies. Blessed
are the peacemakers only, who studiously promote peace and love all
round, amongst all, within their own homes, as well as within and between
all other homes; only theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and not of heaven
only but of this earth also, and permanently.
To
take an illustration at random from the papers of the day and the country
we are gathered in, the new Viceroy of India shows a just appreciation
of the fact that a true and righteous psychology is the very foundation
of all successful politics and beneficent administration, when he opens
his first Council meeting with the expression of the "hope and belief
that a frank expression of opinion will assist all to understand each
other and appreciate one another's point of view", and trusts that
the deliberations of the Council will be animated by a spirit of mutual
concession and courtesy." And all other great and genuine and high-minded [Page
25] statesmen, all the world
over, are also engaged with all their might in promoting cordiality and removing
distrust between the
nations, and between the classes within each nation; in restraining the
smart and supercilious word which it is so pleasant to one's pride to utter,
but which flings men and nations into lifelong bitterness and deadly feuds;
and in encouraging the kindly and agreeable speech which makes men
agree with each other. Truly what cometh out of the mouth is far more
immediately important than what goeth in (though the latter cannot by any
means be neglected), for the fate of nations as of men. And diligent
appreciation of each other is far more useful, far more paying,
in the common phrase, than depreciation. Thus only may the evil aspects
of the spirit of unrest that is now moving over the whole face of the earth
be allayed, and its good aspects brought to a just fruition.
Whatever, then, promotes
moral and friendly relations between single individuals or between collective
bodies of such is of the very essence of universal as well as special Religion,
by whatever name it may be called; for it enables men to realize in life
the Common Self of all.
Far
more necessary than all else is it to promote this Fellow-feeling. This
is why the [Page
26] Scriptures
of all times and all nations teach continuously:
"God is Love", "Love your neighbour as yourself”, " Achieve humility
of heart and earnest righteousness of spirit, and all things else will
be added unto you". This is why they all say " Faith moves mountains", faith
in each other, faith in the potency of co-operation, faith in ourselves,
faith in the Divine Spirit surging in all. The nations, the races, the religions,
that seek to promote unity or harmony as between their own constituents,
sub-races and sects, while fostering contempt of and aggression against other
nations, races, religions as such, indiscriminately — will never succeed
in bringing about the wished-for harmony within their own limits. It is
not possible to heat red-hot the half of an iron bar and keep the other
half cool at the same time. We cannot foster evil emotions towards foreigners or
natives, whites, or blacks, browns, or yellows,
and at the same time permanently develop good emotions towards those within
the same fold as ourselves. Universal Brotherhood and Religion must pervade
all peoples before any one of them can be really happy.
The word Religion has
indeed fallen on evil days. That noblest of all words, full of the sense
of all-pervading, all-embracing Divine Life and Love, has been so befouled
by associations of unhappy priestcraft and bigoted narrow-minded-ness [Page
27] and
cruelty that many good men and true, full of the very spirit of Religion,
shrink from acknowledging it even to themselves. Even so has that other
noble word Loyalty, expressive of the manifestation of the spirit of Religion
in action, been so befouled by self-seekers and false flatterers on the
one hand and the arrogant claimers of blind obedience on the other, that
the men most truly loyal, loyal to Truth, to Science, to Reason, to Art,
loyal " to
their King as to their conscience and to their conscience as to their King",
are ashamed to avow and profess it. But because the gold has become bespattered
with mud, we cannot throw it away. We must make it clean and bright as
ever before. We must endeavour to restore Religion to its pristine purity
and large-heartedness.
For
to do so, and to spread this Religion of Love and Universal Brotherhood,
is indeed to do the work of all sovereigns, all statesmen, all diplomatists
and politicians and administrators, put together, and to do it far better
than they are doing it today. For this is indeed to water the roots; while
they are mostly only washing the leaves at best. And this is why the great
Teachers and Founders of religions loom so much larger in the instinctive
consciousness of humanity than the other kinds of workers, and are accorded
divine honours, and regarded pre-eminently as [Page
28]
incarnations of the Divine Spirit,
special manifestations and messengers of the God of all nations and all
religions, while even the greatest men of thought, men of art, and men
of action are regarded as but minor characters in the drama of human history.
The re-purification of the human race, time after time, from the gathered
dust of decay and degeneracy, by the founding of a new religion — new
in name and form and language only, but eternally old in underlying truth — by
a new messenger of God, a more concentrated and more powerful manifestation
of the Divine Consciousness — has always been followed by a great
uprush of material progress and prosperity and the foundation of a new
civilisation, of revived and renascent and transformed thought, action
and art — only
because the religious Spirit of Love has made that co-operation possible
without which great civilizations are not possible. The significance of
the current conflicts between religions, i.e., between various ideals
of life, various ways of living, of thinking, feeling and behaving — is
also but this, as said before, that by means of such conflicting ideals,
the human racial consciousness is making experiments, and endeavouring
to find out which is the best and the fittest for the time, place and circumstance;
and the fittest, which will survive in the struggle, will necessarily be
that which most promotes [Page
29] co-operation and love
and sympathy, and most eradicates all exclusiveness and strife-making
pride of too rigid caste and mutual dislike and contempt and separation.
We
may see thus that the Vedãnta, the Gnosis, the Tasawwuf — which
teach that the Spirit in all is one and the same, and that therefore men
should and ultimately must love each other — are not the vain visions
of idle dreamers, but the most practical of all practical politics. And the
answer of all religions to the question: "What to feel ?" is: "Feel love
for all and for each living creature, love in its many forms and modifications,
each suited to its own corresponding situation in life; and behave to all and
each accordingly".
And this is the second
part of the book of every religion; and it is called Ethics.
The
third part is the answer to the question " What to do ?" It may be
named the " Part of special Rites and Ceremonies and Sacraments, and
special directions for the conduct of life, individual and collective."
These, in their detail,
differ in the various religions, given to different peoples living in different
countries, and differing more or less in their psycho-physical requirements.
They differ as much, and in the same way, as clothes and foods differ with
different lands and seasons and states of health and personal needs and
individual [Page
30] temperaments. They are
of no greater, but also of no less, consequence than these. Some clothes
are necessary to the civilized man; but it is not absolutely necessary
that they should be of any one particular cut and pattern; while a healthy
body is absolutely necessary within all kinds of clothes. Even so, while
Loving Wisdom is absolutely necessary for all, any particular sacrament or
ceremonial or form of courtesy is not absolutely necessary for any one,
though some is indispensable.
And so, even here,
amidst the varying details of ritual, we may discern certain general principles
underlying all schemes. Each Religion has a set of sacraments, some fewer,
some more numerous, which may be divided into: (i) antenatal, (ii) post-natal,
and (iii) post-mortem; connected with the three main events of life, viz.,
birth, marriage and death. The purpose of all these is to purify and consecrate
the grosser and subtler bodies, inhabited by the soul, in such a manner as
to make its life here and hereafter higher, richer and nobler, and enable
it to attain to ever greater and greater perfection and communion with God
and Nature.
Each Religion has also
some other rites and ceremonies, whereby communion with the inhabitants of
other and invisible worlds may be obtained for various purposes.[Page
31]
Each also, to a greater
or lesser extent, lays down some directions in the nature of laws of social
and domestic polity, assigning various rights and duties, functions and
vocations, to different men, of different temperaments, and in different
stages of life. All this department of dharma duties, is essentially relative
to time, place and circumstance.
This
assignment of occupation and organization of society was, presumably, in
most cases originally based explicitly or implicitly, on living and elastic
data of psychical and physical characteristics, developed by spontaneous
variation as well as careful
selection and cultivation in accordance with the laws of that evolution which
includes both heredity and
origination of new species. But, in most cases also, the original idea has
degenerated, by the lapse of time, from the old just balance and golden
mean, into either the one extreme of a lifeless, ossified, birth ridden, "touch-and-I-die"
caste or into the other extreme of chaos-making, organization-destroying lawlessness,
and general levelling down of all by the wilfulness of the least qualified.
But
the restoration of the knowledge of essential truths, and of fellow-feeling,
of Love and of Wisdom — of which restoration, Conventions like
these give high assurance — will surely correct the errors of dual extremism
in due course on [Page
32] this point also, and bring
back again that well-balanced and well-planned social organization which
is the golden mean between excessive regimentation on the one hand and disorder
and mob-rule and lawlessness on the other, and whereby each human being
will be given the fullest chance of developing the potentialities of good
that are within, acquired by birth and heredity or by spontaneous
variation, and of occupying thereafter his right place in the Social Household
of the Human Family.
With this we may close
our brief review of the three Parts of every religion and of the Universal
Religion of Theosophy.
The three objects of
the Theosophical Society correspond with these also.
To
the Part of Knowledge, the jñãna-kãnda, corresponds
the second object, viz: "To encourage the study of Comparative Religion,
Philosophy and Science", whereby the truths common to all religions will be
discovered. This is the object which is directly subserved by Conventions
and Parliaments of Religions like this, where men of different faiths have
the best opportunities of learning the common as well as the special
features of the various creeds as presented by their most sympathetic and
most liberal-minded exponents.
To
the Part of Action, or Karma-Kãnda, belongs the third object, viz: "To
investigate the [Page
33] unexplained
laws of nature and the powers latent in man" — whereby the bounds
of knowledge will be pushed back further, communication established with
what is now invisible and beyond reach, the meaning and purpose of the
various systems of ritual become clear, and the life of the physical be
rendered richer, purer, finer, by elevation to the superphysical.
To
the Part of Love and Devotion or Bhakti-kãnda, to which all high and
real Art corresponds and is subservient, belongs that first and most
important object, to spread of the conscious feeling of Universal
Brotherhood, or in the words of the latest published statements: "To form
the nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of
race, creed, sex, caste or colour."
It
may be added here that the Theosophical Society — which now counts
over 20,000 members, living in all parts of the world, under some 30
different governments (or if Colonial governments and States be counted
separately, then over 100) and grouped into nearly 800 active Lodges in 18
different Sections — is a Society which "is composed of students, belonging
to any religion in the world or to none, who are united by their approval of
these three objects, by their wish to remove religious antagonisms, and to
draw together men of good will, whatsoever their [Page
34] religious
opinions, and by their desire to study religious truths and to share the
results of their studies with others. Their bond of union is not the profession
of a common belief, but a common search and aspiration for Truth. They
hold that Truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity of
life, by devotion to high ideals, and they regard Truth as a prize to be
striven for, not as a dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that
belief should be the result of individual study or intuition and not its
antecedent, and should rest on knowledge, not on assertion". So free is the
Society on this point that many of its members keep a perfectly open mind
and suspended judgment even with regard to the views that are now generally
known to form part of what is called Theosophy. And in this sense Theosophy
must be clearly distinguished from the Theosophical Society.
But
the majority of the members believe that Theosophy is the body of truths
which forms the basis of all religions and which cannot be claimed as the
exclusive possession of any; that "it restores to the world the Science
of the Spirit, teaching man to know the Spirit as himself, and the mind and
body as his servants; and that it illuminates the Scriptures and doctrines
of religions by unveiling their hidden meanings, and thus justifying them
at the bar of intelligence, as they [Page
35] are
ever justified in the eyes of intuition".
It inspires Knowledge with Universal Love and Devotion and Brotherliness,
it guides and steadily controls Love by Wisdom, and it brings these two
together to their just fruit in benevolent Action.
The Council of the T.
S. has in the press, even now, under the Editorship of Mrs. Annie Besant,
the President of the T. S., a Universal Text-Book of Religion and Morals,
modeled on the Text-Book of Hindûism published by the Central Hindû
College of Benares, and therefore divided into three parts which may be
distinguished in every complete religion. This paper may fittingly close
with a quotation from its introduction.
" In
modern days, the ease and swiftness of communication between the countries
of the world no longer permits any religion to remain isolated and unaffected
by its neighbours. Thought is more and more becoming international, cosmopolitan,
and each religion is enriching itself by contact with others, giving and
receiving fruitful ideas. Nor is this interchange confined wholly within
the circle of living religions. Antiquarian and archaeological researches
have brought to light pictorial, sculptural, and literary relics of religions
now dead, belonging to vanished nations and perished civilizations; scholarship
has gathered and classified these, and has established on [Page
36] an impregnable basis of facts
the truth of the fundamental Unity of Religions. There are fundamental
doctrines, symbols, rites, precepts, which are common to all, while the lesser
variants are innumerable. It thus becomes possible to separate the essential
from the non-essential, the permanent from the transitory, the universal
from the local, and to find quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnbus.
When this is done, we have remaining a fundamental religious and moral teaching
which may fearlessly be given to the young, on the testimony of the
religious consciousness of Humanity, as the expression of facts concerning
God, Man, and the Universe, borne witness to by the elect of
Humanity — the loftiest and purest human beings who have appeared
in our Race — and mentioned also in living religions under the names
of Vedãnta,
Rahasya, Gnosis, Tasawwuf, etc., as being capable of reverification by
all who reach a certain spiritual stage of evolution . . . Nothing taught
in history or science in our schools is endorsed by Teachers so august,
and so far apart in time and space to the ordinary view; if we are justified
in teaching anything to our children which they cannot verify for themselves,
we are justified in teaching them these facts of religion and this moral
law”.
Conventions like
this help on this work of the separating out of the essential from the [Page
37] non-essential, of the giving
of fundamental religious and moral teaching to the young, and of showing
to the world that all men are brothers and that religions unite and do
not divide, if interpreted and followed as they ought to be.
And so we end where
we began. There is a Universal Religion, and it is that which binds together
the hearts of all men, and it is the Religion of Love which knows that the
Self-same Spirit lives and moves in all, which therefore extends sympathy
to all, and therefore also lives the life of duty, of self-denial and of
continual self-sacrifice and helpfulness to others. And it is of this Universal
Religion that the Buddha proclaimed the great mandate: