Introductory Note
The
paper that follows, in a revised and enlarged form, was read by
Bro Bhavavân Dâs,
as President of the Kâshi Tattwa Sabhâ Lodge of Benares, in speaking
to the following Resolution, on the occasion of the celebration of the Foundation-Day
of the T.S., on 17th
November 1911.
“Resolved that this joint meeting of the Kâshi Tattwa Sabhâ and the C.H.C. Lodges heartily
renews on this auspicious occasion its unalterable loyalty to the great principle
of Universal Brotherhood which has carried and will carry the Society safe
through stress and storm
during the past and during the future; that it renders reverent homage to Col
Olcott and Madame H. P. Blavatsky, whose names are ever dear to every Theosophist
and whose
work is ever present in the position the Society has won in the world; and finally
that it sends to the present President of the T.S. its unwavering faith
in her leadership under the
guiding banner of that great principle, and its profound sense of the inestimable
value of
her services and of her life”.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters
If you will suffer me gladly, as the Christian scriptures recommend you to do, then I will
venture to say something to you of what seems to me to be the significance of the
Resolution that we have passed today.
This is the Foundation Day of the Theosophical Society. It was born in New York thirty-six
years ago. It came over to India four years later. Kind fortune, i.e., karma and samskâra,
led me to enter it twenty-seven years ago. I have some memories, therefore,
of its earlier years. And I will, since I have been asked to say something
on this occasion, give you my
interpretation of the Resolution in the light of that earlier history.
The
principle of Universal Brotherhood is referred to in the Resolution both
at the beginning and at the end. It is indeed the Alpha and the Omega of
Theosophy. It is the soul of the first and foremost object of the T.S.
The Masters, who gave to H.P.Blavatsky and H.S.Olcott the three well-known
objects of the T.S., and not only one, of course gave them all for a good
scientific reason. This I have elsewhere endeavoured to indicate [See The
Religion of Theosophy. Adyar Pamphlet No 3.] — the reason, namely,
that they correspond to the three ultimate factors of all consciousness
and therefore of all the many religions which Theosophy seeks to harmonize.
Yet at various times in the history of the Society, when this fact was
somewhat lost sight of, the validity and usefulness of the second and third
objects have been disputed. The third especially was at one time almost
discarded. But the first has never been disputed. It has always been recognized
as the one and the only true guiding star of the Society. And only by honestly
endeavouring to keep it steadily in sight have the helmsmen and the oarsmen
of the ship of the T.S. been able so far to steer it comparatively safe,
through stress and storm. They have not always been able to avoid minor
mistakes and consequent shocks and hurts and painful losses. These may
be said to have been inevitable in the hurry and bustle and excitement
of each difficult time. Yet it may also be said justly that each difficult
time was itself the result of the temporary veiling of their eyes from
that true star and the turning of them towards some lesser light, some
pseudo star; some will-o’-the-wisp of the nature of a mere mortal.
It
is good and useful to go back to the origins from time to time for fresh
inspiration, for laying in a new store of pure and fresh waters from
the springs of life. And this, the Foundation Day of the T.S., is naturally
particularly appropriate for the purpose. And I, therefore, on this day
invite your attention to the fact that this principle of Universal Brotherhood,
the recognition of which all the workers of the Society, prominent or
unprominent,
each in his own way and degree, are seeking to secure from the various
peoples of the earth — this principle is an Impersonal Principle,
and not a personal fact.
As soon as we ask ourselves what is the source, the basis, the support of Universal
Brotherhood, so soon do we find ourselves driven perforce to something which is not a
person, to Something which includes all persons, high and low, great and small, brilliant
and commonplace.
Each one of us may believe, nay, probably, must believe, in some one or other person or
personage, as more helpful to his soul and body than any other. But every one of us
cannot but believe more in this Impersonal Principle, if he is consciously sincere and
consistent member of the Society of which the first object is the spread of the recognition
of Universal Brotherhood.
Any
one of us may reject, nay, probably, must reject, some particular person
or some particular opinion. But this Impersonal Principle, which lies
behind Universal Brotherhood
and alone justifies recognition of it, he cannot but believe in, however dimly,
howbeit sub-consciously. He cannot reject it consciously and yet remain
really and deliberately a member of the T.S. Obviously, this is true
only of Universal Brotherhood — not of any
lesser, any restricted, limited, separatist brotherhoods. The source of such — and the world
is full of them — is of course a person, always; the emphasizing of a person and the deriving
of life and activity solely from him is the time-old and natural method of
separating and establishing a restricted and exclusive family out of Universal
Brotherhood,
and this
method may well be followed by any one to whom such a result seems desirable.
Polarization round centres is the recognized method of the cleavage of cells. But the
source and the support of Universal Brotherhood can only be something which
is Universal, not personal. Diffusion and pervasion of the vital fluid of the
Universal
Religion
of Impersonal or All-personal Âtman to the outmost periphery of the human race, is the
way of its true growth as an ever-more-completely-united whole.
Because of the Impersonality and therefore all-inclusiveness of this its nourishing and
supporting Principle, has it been found possible at all to carry the T.S. without entire
destruction through disputes such as have completely wrecked other bodies not guided by
the same guide. In this Impersonal Principle, and in it alone, is the seed of all reconciliation
and permanent tolerance and harmony and unification.
In
personalities, on the other hand, in shibboleths and rallying-cries and
the excessive pushing forward of personal names, there has always thriven
through
all time past, and will
continue to flourish through all time to come, the seed of challenge and counter-challenge,
of division and dispute and strife between man and brother-man, the seed of
dissensions and suspicions and criminations and recriminations, of charges
and counter-charges
of adulation and traducement, of blind worship and mad criticism, of
disloyalty to truth and
disloyalty to person. In the past history of the T.S., whenever there has been
a ‘shaking’ of the very foundations of the T.S. which has been left behind sad cracks and
gaps in the
superstructure, it has always been
due to an exaggeration of the person above the Impersonal Principle. Religious
wars have ever been wars for personal names. I am not
aware of any war for the Impersonal. The followers of the cult of the Impersonal
have been plentifully called tiresome bores, imbeciles, talkers of unmeaning
words, lifeless
dullards — but they have never provoked wars and battles so far as I have heard. But of
course I may be mistaken. None can say they have compassed all history, and
I can say it least of all. Yet this is undoubted that there has been much bloodshed
in the names of
the Christ, the Prophet, even the Buddha and the Jina, to say nothing of smaller
names.
Because
of this, I humbly think, the ship of Theosophy — Âtma-vidyâ,
Brahma-vidyâ, the
Science of the Self, the Science of the Eternal and Infinite, as ever diligently
explained by H.P.Blavatsky and H.S.Olcott — was launched upon the
troubled waters of modern civilization, when that civilization had grown
to be able to supply to that ship the steam-power which alone could enable
it to circumnavigate the earth; and it was launched without a proper
name, but with only a general and descriptive one, to slowly usher in
the epoch
of buddhi and humanism and Universal Brotherhood, and bid a gradual farewell
to the epoch of manas and individualism and separatist religious names
and forms.
Material
science, working by stream and rail and wire and the printing press,
has over-shot its mark of individualism and linked up the countries and
religions
of the world — though the
linking up is painful and discordant because of the wrong spirit pervading it — and
has thus made the world-wide spread of the message of Universal Brotherhood,
which is the essence of Theosophy, not only necessary but also possible and almost
easy too. Without it such spread would be obviously impossible. It remains for
the T.S. by remaining true to that message, to return the unconscious and unwilling
kindness of material science consciously, by spiritualizing that science and
helping to spread it broadcast in beneficial and not harmful forms; by converting
the linking chains — at present of hard iron — that bind
together the races of men, into ornaments of soft gold worn eagerly by each to
please the eyes of all the others. And the only alchemy that can change the iron
of the age into gold is the replacement more and more of the person by the Impersonal.
This also is the only alchemy which can solve effectively in each individual
case those endless doubts and soul-tortures, ‘Am I losing my soul or am
I being saved?’ ‘Am I in the clutches of the Devil, or
am I in the embrace of the Christ?’ ‘Am I being subtly led to Avichi
by those of the Left Hand, or gently guided to Nirvâna by those of the
Right Hand?’ All these disappear finally,
when, and only when, we fix our gaze upon the Impersonal.
I
would therefore reiterate what I said before, that while every member of
the T.S. may very well believe in any given person, he ought to believe
more in That which is beyond all
persons, And this is indeed the world-old teaching that has been given by all
the recognized great Teachers of the past, and presumably will be given
by all the Teachers
of the future. None has asked his followers to worship him beyond the Âtman. All have
asked their followers to seek for the Âtman within each. But the followers have often
shamed their leaders and often led those leaders (or their names) and themselves
into dissensions, ever unconsciously mistaking the subtle self-displaying wish
to appear
devoted to the teacher for the wish to devote themselves to the cause advocated by the
teacher. The Avadâna-kalpa-latâ of Kshemendra, a Buddhist work, tells of a great fight
between a band of Shramanas, followers of the Buddha, and a band of Kshapanas,
followers of the Jina, during the very lifetime of those two great Teachers, each a strenuous
preacher of uttermost harmlessness and peace!
One
of the precious books of Theosophy, a veritable little scripture in its
way, Light on the
Path, fallen somewhat into neglect, perhaps, latterly, says: “Nothing
that is embodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out
of the Eternal, can aid you”; and
obviously the Eternal is the Impersonal. To multiply quotations from the ancient
writings to the same effect would be an endless task.
It
is plain that there have been many teachers in the past, indeed countless,
so some of the scriptures say, and there will be as many in the future.
But the Teaching has ever been and must ever be one and the same: “Seek
the Âtman”, “Find the Âtman”, “Know
Thyself”.
That is the End. These, the teachers, are the means; the means to wipe away the
dust of degenerate ages which settles down upon, and hides from time to time,
the glory of that eternal self-same Teaching; the means to put more vitality
into the dimmed eyes of men that cannot clearly see the Infinite Light; indispensably
necessary means to progress, worthy of all honour and reverence, in their respective
degrees, — but in no case to
supersede that Final Goal, which should never be lost of. To shut it out of sight
consciously, after having gained even the faintest and most purely intellectual
glimpse of it — this is the only and the greatest possible disloyalty to
any genuine teacher of Âtma-Vidyâ. If this disloyalty is avoided,
all other minor loyalties are sure to be fulfilled in most due measure. Not to
have seen that Final Goal yet, may be quite natural and even proper, for those
not yet ready to enter the T.S., the younger brothers, as they have been called.
For such there are many preparatory associations, orders, leagues, by working
in which, perhaps, they may soon attain the needed majority that is required
by the rules of the T.S., literally and metaphorically. But for those that are
in the T.S. to forget it, for them to place the person above the Impersonal — were
to endanger the well-being of the whole Society, were to throw doubt upon the
whole world-wide movement now in progress, under many names and not only one,
for unity and federation and co-operation in all departments of human life. On
the other hand, to honour the person as below and after the Impersonal — nay,
not only one person but many persons, each reverencing his own elder most but
ever assiduously bearing in mind that other elders rightly claim the reverence
of others — this is a source of much health and strength and inspiration
to good work, for the young and the old alike.
The Bhagavad-Gîtâ (Chapter
XII) tells us that the easier preliminary ways, of leaning on another,
are to be placed only before those who are not yet capable of taking
up the harder tasks; and that more difficult work should be expected from
the older and stronger, the work of standing on their own feet.
Indeed,
it may well be said that the elder brothers perform their duty loyally
to their trust only when, in leading on the younger brothers up the steps
of the ladder, they miss no
occasion, indeed diligently take every occasion, to bring home to the minds
of
the youngers, that the ladder is only the means to reaching the top of
the tower and not to be
made a dwelling-place, that the person is only a means to the Impersonal and
any one
individual only a guide to the Universal Âtman. Also we have to remember that this present
and latest advent of Theosophy is by way of reaction against and correction
of the great growth of scientific materialism. And he who would enter into
Theosophy
through the
Theosophical Society, may safely be presumed to have recapitulated in his own
individual mind the movement of thought in the racial mind and to have become
able to think critically
about scientific materialism; and that implies readiness to think About the
Impersonal, albeit
dimly at first. To believe in a person more than in the Impersonal, after this stage, is indeed
to stunt the growth of the soul; for that growth is undisputedly from other-reliance to Self-reliance.
To every earnest soul there comes, by a psycho-physical law, generally in the third
septenate of the years of its bodily envelope, i.e., between the fourteenth and the twenty-first years, a yearning to understand the meaning of life and death, joy and sorrow, virtue
and sin, to understand the origin and end of all the infinite movement around.
This
is the age of the soul’s adolescence, in the body as well as in the
spirit. In this difficult time, the soul has to adjust itself anew toward
the material envelope as well as towards the Higher Self. It recapitulates
in this important septenate, the racial experience of the third Root-Race.
Shall it run wholly matter-wards — like the bears and the monkeys
of the Râmâyana? Shall it run wholly spirit-wards — like the
Haryashvas and the Shabalâshvas
of the Bhâgavata? High exaltations, deep depressions, ecstasies
of joy, agonies of despair, wild romance, fairy imagination, chivalry, knight-errantry,
gross blunders, noble dreams — all is summed up in the one word: youth! And
underneath all runs the current of a deep melancholy, the sadness that is inseparable
from spring — is life worth living, is all
the trouble worth while? Religious conversions, and alas! even more often, per-versions;
noble ambitions and resolutions, and, more often, vicious degenerations and
sex-crimes, at our present stage of evolution and in the existing conditions
of life — are
most observable at this period of life. The call of the flesh is one the soul;
and, by necessary undercurrent of re-action, the call of the spirit also. The
glamour and bloom of youth and of the senses, in one’s own body and in
the bodies of others, attract irresistibly; the Eternal Consciousness recognizes
the inevitable ending in dust and ashes. And the soul rushes frenziedly, now
towards the upper pole of the human magnet — renunciation, wisdom, the
knowledge and love of the All; now towards the lower pole — selfish pursuit,
cleverness, the love of the lower, smaller, self and sex, ahankâra. he
elders of our race, the Manus, Rshis and Prajâpatis, have found and
prescribed sweet reconciliation (only the best possible in the circumstances)
for spirit and matter, for upward striving and downward drag, in holy wedlock
and in the joyous pain of daily sacrifice for family and friends and dependents,
the daily five yajñas — whereby the wheel of Brahman
is kept turning. But in order that the reconciliation be effected in the fullest
and most perfect measure possible, it is indispensable that that travail,
the war in Hamlet’s young
soul — typical of all young souls — of to be or not to be — be
allayed; that all doubts and questions be solved satisfactorily.
And
the very first question that such a soul puts to itself is: “What
is the final cause and meaning of all this meaningless, causeless, ruthless
turmoil and tyranny that we call the Universe”. This is the first
question to be asked and also the last to be answered. But it can be answered
only if the seed of the yearning is carefully tended and nursed to bud
and blossom and fruit. If the counsellor sought by the yearner tells him,
on the other hand, thoughtlessly: “Be more modest, try to understand
only what is within your reach, you are too young, take a personal guru
to worship , obey unreasoningly and follow, etc.”, then
indeed he does a grievous wrong, although unconsciously; he deprives the earnest
soul of its birth-right, he misleads it away to a false contentment with
the mess of pottage, makes it lose its chance for this life, gives it
only the finite when it might have had the Infinite.
After the third septenate of years, as Manu says, the chances of gaining the inner vision
of the Universal are very small.
Small
worldly ambitions, the mastering of minor departments of knowledge, the
gaining of passing objects — require so much time, concentration
and effort. Can the secret of the Universe, the secret of immortality — and
immortality is the unshakeable conviction of
immortality, the realization of it as the inalienable right of the Spirit
in every living thing—can this be gained by dilettante dawdling, or by
playing with mortal idols, or even by whole-hearted worship of that which is
palpably not immortal? The principle of infinity lies hid in every self-reproducing
seed and germ of life. The glamour and romance of youth, the fairy moonlight
with which all its surroundings are washed and painted — have
all come from within itself; youth itself has put these upon others and
then fallen down in prostrate worship before them. They are the faint reflections
and shadows of this principle of infinity — Brahman — beginning to
stir within itself, which it credits away to others. At the human stage, more
and more, this principle tends to turn upon itself rather than outwards upon
the lesser things of name and form. And then appears that supreme and virgin
passioning of the soul, called vairâgya, which is the necessary condition
of the espousal of the small self by the Great Self. As the Upanishats say,
the Âtman
unveils itself only to the soul which It Itself espouseth, and none is so espoused
which yearns not strongly, whole-heartedly, with undivided power of passion,
for that great consummation. The soul, which fritters itself away in smaller
interests; which spends the ‘infinite’ power within it, in
the painting with glamour and beauty bloom, and the enveloping with its best
love and reverence of lesser objects, personal idols and ideals, however subtly
poetized and refined and elevated; the soul which directs not its concentrated
longing towards the Infinite, hiding within itself — that soul loses its
chance for this life — of course there are other lives.
It
is not quite well, yet it is not quite ill, if the glorious romance of
youth leads into sanctified marriage of the household life — which
is the most important and most honoured of all lives, plane after plane — without having
first secured the Infinite. It is not ill, because it means only that
the soul is not quite ready for the Infinite yet. But it is ill, it is
very
sad indeed, if that romantic search should lead to neither, but to hollow
imitations thereof. Theosophy, more essentially than charity which is
only one of its fruits, begins at home. The Theosophy, which leads to
no home,
which helps no home, which breaks up any home, is not Theosophy, but
something masquerading in the stolen garb of Theosophy. Virtues and good
qualities
should be educed and cultivated for their own sake, or for the sake of
the living fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and spouses and
natural relations and friends — at least as much as for any comparative
outsider. At least such is the teaching of Manu. And in this reference
may be considered the dangers of the premature arousing of a highly emotional
and exalté condition in the young with regard to persons
outside of the natural home. It is likely to interfere with their due intellectual
growth and to produce other most unfortunate consequences besides — consequences
well-known to all students and observers of the past and current history
of personal religions and sects. For a high surge of even devotional
emotion, if not kept steadily directed upwards, by matured knowledge,
experience
and wisdom, irresistibly runs downwards to the lower pole of the human
magnet and breeds the most unhappy sex-degenerations.
But
if the original yearning for the Infinite is carefully fostered and guided
and the Impersonal ever kept before the eyes of the aspirant — the Bhagavad-Gîtâ is
a manual of the Impersonal and is studied by so many of our members — then
indeed the seed will proceed to its natural blooming and fruiting first,
in the intellectual vision of the Infinite and Impersonal, then in Its
fuller ethical assimilation, and finally in Its greater and greater practical
realization.
And
this thought gives us some clue to periodical differences in the methods of
the Teaching, while its substance remains unchanged. Two thousand
years ago, Jesus Christ is reported to have cried: “Suffer the little
children to come unto Me”. Today, Âtma-Vidyâ,
which is the Teacher of all teachers has directed them to cry through the Theosophical
Society“. Induce the grown-ups to gather round Me; and induce them
by means of these three objects of the T.S., wherein is the seed of all religions
and of Universal Religion, the seed of (1) all Ethics; (2) all Knowledge; (3)
all Yoga-powers; by means of the deliberate cultivation of Universal Brotherhood,
the study of the origins and innermost truths common to all religions, the
deliberate investigation of the powers latent in the being, the Self, the Âtman of each which is, indeed, the Âtman, of all”.
It has been thought by some members now and then that a more precise set of beliefs, in
the nature of a person-cult, is likely to be more suitable and effective. It no doubt might be
so, for some minds and for any special purposes those members may have in view. But
so far as the Theosophical ideal is concerned, I humbly believe that the very
amorphousness of the objects of the T.S. is the guarantee of its vital elasticity and growth,
and that a precise definition into a cut-and-dry credo would mean its ossification and death.
For I conceive the mission of the T.S. to be not to usher in a new personal religion, but (1)
to harmonize, (2) to rationalize, and (3) to broaden the existing religions by means of the
pursuit of its three objects respectively, and gradually to enable them, of their own free-will
and intelligent consent, to merge into the Eternal Universal Religion, in the persons of the
most advanced of each religion first, and then of the less advanced by means of those.
If
these three obviously impersonal, yet unquestionable and indefeasible
objects are steadily pursued in the right spirit (and the General and Sectional
councils and office-bearers should make it their duty to carefully think
out the ways and means of such steady pursuit), then surely the personal
and formal elements — which, and which alone, are the
separative and discord-breeding factors in any given religion — will be
gradually subordinated into their proper place; then the common Soul portions,
the essential principles, of all the living religions will be enabled to coalesce
into one Scientific Religion of spirit-matter; and then will all the special
religions and families of mankind merge into one great family inspired by Âtma-Vidyâ or
Theosophy, the three parts or thirds of which are (a) a Universal Love and
Brotherliness and tolerant Helpfulness towards all, (b) a Universal Metaphysic
of the Laws
of Consciousness, and (c) a Universal Practical Science of the transformations
of matter under the stress of that Consciousness, i.e., Yoga-Shâstra
proper, superphysical Science, or ‘Occultism’ as it is currently
called for want of a better word.
If
these views are at all just, it follows that any over-accentuation of
a person, within the T.S., is very likely to sin against the first object,
even though unwittingly. One of the most important practical benefits
of
the membership of the T.S. is that it brings a person into contact with
the followers of other creeds on terms not only of mutual tolerance but
of respect and sympathy for the faiths of each other. And as each member
necessarily has relations and friends outside the T.S., this tolerance
and respect and sympathy for different faiths gradually spread from him
to these others; and so in a small and slow and quiet but sure way is
helped on the work of bringing about peace and good-will between the different
religions. But the prime condition of success along these lines is that every
member should carefully avoid all excess, all vehemence, all emotional
violence, in the pushing of his own views, especially as regards the
spiritual
and religious super-eminence of any persons, and yet more emphatically
of persons still in the flesh. Each and every member of the T.S. has, no
doubt, a perfect right to his views and, it would seem, to advocate them
also, but this should be done in a mild way and only so far as he can do
so without hurting the feelings of any other brother within the T.S. As
to where reasonable advocacy ends and fanaticism begins, where mutual benefit
by exchange of knowledge ends and mutual harm by self-assertion begins — that
cannot be laid down in precise words and must be left to the tact, good
sense, and observation of the actual effects on each other’s feelings,
of the members concerned. But one thing is fairly clear—any very
impassioned advocacy of any particular view and especially of any person-cult
is very likely to tread on the toes of others by the inevitable implication
and challenge that other persons honoured by others are not deserving
of the same honour as one’s own ideal. Too loud and proof-less assertion
of the overwhelming merits of any one individual, unavoidably, by a psychological
law, provokes comparisons; and comparisons are ever proverbially ‘odious,’ ‘invidious,’ pregnant
with evil consequences. And hence all such excessive advocacy is likely
to retard the work of establishing peace and goodwill amongst the various
living religions.
Holding
such views, it seems to me natural to invite your attention repeatedly
to the significance of the first object of the T.S. to which we have
all subscribed, and which we have referred to in the Resolution passed
today.
So far, the leaders of the T.S. have whole-heartedly subscribed to this
significance. Our present beloved President has ever made it her proud
and noble claim that through many mistakes and wanderings she has ever
been a follower of the beacon-light of Truth as something irrespective
of persons. She has recommended that same attitude to all her hearers
and readers, and she has told us that the last and the deepest Truth that
she
has succeeded in finding is the Truth embodied in Theosophy and the T.S.
with their first and foremost object of Universal Brotherhood based on
the implied Impersonal Principle of the Universal Âtman. And I feel
that we do right to express our loyal adherence to that Principle, in
sending our greetings by this Resolution, today, to her as the successor
of H.P.Blavatsky
and H.S.Olcott The early history of the T.S., the earlier bands of its
workers who bore the brunt of its vicissitudes when times were far harder
for it than they are now, even those two principal names of H.P.Blavatsky
and H.S.Olcott are now naturally becoming somewhat obscure to the vision
of the new generation of members, amidst the rush and pressure of current
affairs. But we know from history that a present which forgets the past
will itself be short-lived in the memory of the future. And we do right
today, therefore, in our Resolution especially to remember H.S.Olcott
the story of whose great lecturing tours in India with their accompaniment
of magnetic healing of the halt, the maimed, the paralyzed and the blind
will read some day like a chapter from the Bible; and to remember H.P.B.
whose physical and superphysical siddhis were proved, as none others
have been proved since, to the most confirmed, habitual and lifelong
scoffers
and sceptics, converting them into famous workers for the T.S., and whose
stores of occult knowledge, as embodied in The Secret Doctrine — many
portions of which, we are informed, are the direct work of various Masters
themselves — continue
to form the inexhaustible pabulum of subsequent workers.
Such are the few thoughts
that occur to me on this, the Foundation Day of the T.S. It seems to me that
the highest loyalty and devotion we can show to the Founders of the T.S. is devotion
and loyalty to the Principle to which they were devoted and loyal, the Impersonal
Principle which underlies that Universal Brotherhood for the recognition of which
they worked their life long.
And,
indeed, is it or is it not true that Âtma-Vidyâ, God-Wisdom, Theosophy, is the End; and
all possible teachers of it, of the past, the present, and the future, but the means to it? And
if it is so, then should not all of us, and even more especially the office-bearers
of the T.S. take unceasing care that we do not, wittingly or un-wittingly, help
to make the End the
means, and the means the End?
All
the scriptures of all the nations of all times and all climes repeat
the one teaching ‘Seek
and find the God within’. ‘None else compels’, ‘Within
yourselves deliverance must be found’, ‘None other than Thou can
help Thee’, ‘Thou art that’, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is
within you’.
Uplift
the Âtman by the Âtman and degrade it not; the self is the only enemy of the Self,
and the Self its only real brother, helper, friend.
Bhagavad-Gîtâ (vi—5)
The
lost religions of Assyria, Chaldaea, Egypt, Mexico, Peru said it.
The living religions of the Manu, the Zoroaster, the Buddha, the Jina,
the Âchârya Shankara, the Christ, the
Prophet say it. The sages and philosophers from Socrates to Fichte, Hegel and
Schopenhauer, but ring changes on the same. In India, the latest great teachers
of both Hindû and Musalmân have nothing else to say. We may
perhaps quote from some of these, not so well-known as the scriptures
amongst the learned, yet verily standing for the scriptures to the unlearned
in
India.
The
much studied Sâadi says: