Theosophy - The God without and the God within by C.Jinarajadasa
Adyar
Pamphlets - No. 139
THE
GOD WITHOUT AND THE GOD WITHIN
BY
C. JINARAJADASA
July
1930
Theosophical
Publishing House Adyar, Chennai (Madras) India
WHEN the doctrine of Evolution
received an impetus with the work of Darwin, two great deductions were made which
affected profoundly our conception of man. The first was the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest. This presumed a struggle for existence in nature, and
since that struggle is obvious to all, the doctrine of survival was easily accepted.
The law of competition seemed absolute everywhere in nature; in plant and in
animal, it is that individual who adapts himself best to his environment who
survives. It appeared therefore logical that only the individual who struggles
every moment of time to adapt himself to his environment survives, and so proves
himself to be the fittest.
But
the idea that the individual must spend all his energies in a perpetual
watchfulness to crush his competitors was modified by a second deduction
from the same facts regarding evolution. It was pointed out by Herbert
Spencer that Nature does not spend all her energies only on a fierce
competition to survive; she spends some of her energies in modes which
appear to have no relation to survival. The two instincts to find
food and to satisfy sexual cravings are very prominent in all animals,
and certainly they are primary activities in the struggle for existence.
But no less prominent is a third instinct, which is for play. When
the appetites for food and for sex are satisfied, Nature still has
a residuum of energy, and this she expresses in play.
There
are then three instincts - for food, for sex, and for play - which
characterise animals. They characterise men also,
though their manifestations undergo
subtle transformations. As human societies organise themselves for
communal life, the brutalities of the perpetual struggle
for existence
become softened bit by bit; not all the hours of the day are necessary
to find food, because, by a pooling of labour, energy
is saved, and
so there is time free for other purposes. Similarly, the violent
forms of the sex instinct are curbed in civilisation,
and a sense for propriety
modifies the natural instincts of the brute.
It
is when communities are highly organised, that is, when they use less
and less energy to find food, and when they steadily refine the expressions
of the sex instinct, that an increasing amount of their energy is
devoted to play.
This
play too undergoes transformation. Two children playing are not different
from two puppies playing; the same energy of Nature manifests through
them. But this energy has undergone a transformation when a spectator
looks at a play. A play of his mind replaces the play of muscle and
limb; but fundamentally it is the same instinct in Nature to play.
So everything which is creative in civilisation, like poetry, music,
sculpture, the dance, are but sublimations of the primordial instinct
for play.
Sometimes
this instinct for play undergoes a degeneration, as in gambling, whether
with cards or dice, or with stocks and shares; it is also the play
instinct which manifests in such degenerate forms as society chatter
and spiteful gossip. Perhaps it is more true that it is not the play
instinct which manifests as criticism or gossip, but rather the instinct
to kill a rival; as Kipling remarks, there is little difference between
the men of the Neolithic age and men of to-day ; they killed with
the spear, we try to stab with the tongue or the pen.
I
have taken you into the field of Biology in order
to draw attention
to three fundamental modes of the natural energies which operate
in man—to satisfy the craving for food, the craving for sex expression
and the craving for play. But there is a fourth mode
of expression
of which evolutionary science has so far taken no account, though
that mode is basic in the understanding of man both
in Hinduism and
Buddhism. This is the craving in man to understand. It is
that fundamental instinct in men, to understand what they are and
what is their environment,
which is implied in the term Moksha. You are well aware that Moksha
is the third in the triplicity of Artha, Râga, and Moksha. Artha
is
the desire for possessions, and he who possesses wealth need never
starve; Râga is desire in every form, from that fiercely sexual
to
that of mere personal vanity. Moksha means Liberation, and an innate
desire in man for Liberation is postulated both in Hinduism and
Buddhism,
as residing at the root of human nature.
Such
a conception, that man is not merely the brute, whose savageries are
slowly being refined by social organisation, but also the angel, a
Divine Spark, imbedded and imprisoned in matter, but ever seeking
his release, is utterly foreign to the Darwinian theories of evolution.
Nevertheless, that conception is absolutely necessary, as I hope to
show, if we are to profess a theory of life which is not only in accord
with Nature's facts, but is also full of inspiration for our daily
lives.
It
is obvious that all men are not bothering their heads
about understanding
what life is; the vast majority take life as it comes, and it is
only a small number who ask questions. Yet the fact
that the desire
to understand is deeply rooted in us all is evinced by the existence
of religions. Even the savage has a religion. Today
we can prove
that his religion is based on an ignorance of Nature's facts and
laws. But this does not annul the fact that the savage
with his religion
tries to understand, and therewith to state a solution. Certainly,
when we look around us, the many do not feel that
they are surrounded
by puzzles and mysteries; the few of us here present today are indeed
only a few. But why are we only a few ?
Perhaps
the reason is that the vast majority of mankind are
still being pushed
hither and thither, as pawns in a game, by Nature's primary forces
which underlie the instincts of survival and of play.
It is only a
few at a time who throw off the thralldom to these two instincts;
then it is that the third instinct, that for Liberation,
begins to affect them. Sometimes, a calamity of some
kind is necessary to
make us sensitive to the voice within which bids us enquire and understand;
sometimes, our awareness begins only when old age
begins, and the
clamours of the body die down. Undoubtedly it is only the few who
respond to the call, "Arise, awake, seek out the Great Ones,
and get understanding";but those few are nevertheless as "the
first fruits of them that slept". Some day, as evolution advances,
the many too will arise and awake and get understanding,
as the few do today.
When
the man who desires to understand himself and his environment looks
about him for explanations, he finds solutions offered to him in religion,
philosophy and science. Those of religion are offered to him as revelations;
they are authoritative, and each religion declares that its solution
is the final. The philosophers too pronounce their solutions as final,
though they do not invest them as do the religions with divine sanctions.
Science offers her solutions too, but the critical scientist knows
that every solution offered by science is only tentative. From among
these contradictory solutions, the seeker has to find truth, and the
problem is not an easy one.
Theosophy
here enters on the scene to help the inquirer. There has always existed
in the world, if not openly then in secret gatherings, a tradition
as to truth. Distinct and apart from the orthodox revelation of religion,
each religion has had, at some time or other, a secret tradition,
which attempts to formulate other truths than those proclaimed to
the masses. Theosophy is a compilation of these hidden truths, and
the study of them gives to many a clearer understanding of life's
problems, and therefore a more intimate realisation where the final
solution is to be found.
When
we analyse the various solutions offered, especially
in religions,
those solutions fall into two groups. One group asserts that the
key to the whole problem is God. Man must discover
the supreme fact that
God exists, the Author of all things, and their final Abode. Exoteric
Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Mohammedanism
all proclaim
the existence of a Creator; they assert that all human problems can
be solved only with the recognition that man depends
upon God. Until
the soul discovers that he is dependent upon God, until he turns
to his Maker in humility and adoration, not only can
there be no peace,
there is also no real understanding. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of Wisdom" ,says Christianity, and in one form or another
this same thought appears in all the theistic religions. In some,
it is less the fear of the Lord and more the love of the Lord ; but
all of them asseverate that no problem of man can be understood,
unless
man starts with the recognition that he is dependent upon a Godhead
external to him, and whom he must worship and serve. " Seek the
God without" is the message of those religions which teach the
existence of a Creator.
But
there is another group of solutions which equally
offer to teach man
the one true way to peace and understanding. These solutions are
found in esoteric Hinduism, in Buddhism, and in Confucianism
and Taoism.
In the Upanishads, especially in the older ones, their principal
doctrine of Atman proclaims the existence of God,
but He is not a Personal
God whose nature is in some manner different from that of man. The
most vital of all truths in esoteric Hinduism is that
God and man
are one and not two. "THAT art thou, 0 Shvetaketu", is the ever insistent
teaching of the Upanishads. It is only in the discovery of the God
within that the way is found to solve all problems; this is the
clear teaching of esoteric Hinduism.
When
we approach Buddhism, it is once again the path to
the God within
which is its characteristic, though the Buddha never proclaimed the
existence of God. Neither did He deny God's existence;
for to the
Buddhist, the problem whether God exists or not has no relation to
the problem of man's suffering. The way within is
the sole discovery,
necessary to solve all problems, and so the Buddha's message to all
men was, " Work out your salvation with diligence".
In
a similar manner, Confucianism builds an ethical system
which ignores
God. It is only as a man strives to be perfect, to be the " superior
man", by embodying in himself all that is best in the moral code
of his ancestors, that man achieves his goal of perfect peace and
freedom.
It
is this same doctrine of the God within that we have
once again proclaimed
to-day by Krishnamurti. He never uses the word God, and the conception
of a Personal God, an extra-cosmic God, a Deity who
is in some manner
different from man, is alien to his thought. He proclaims the existence
of an absolute Perfection, but he terms this "the Beloved", and
he ever insists that Liberation means to become one
with "the
Beloved". To "see the Goal", to be "one with Life", " to enter
the Kingdom of Happiness" are phrases which ho uses to describe
the summum
bonum for all men ; and those familiar with the Upanishads
realise that the ancient teaching of the Atman proclaimed of old
by the Rishis
to the few as a " Rahasya", as a "Secret", is now being proclaimed
by Krishnamurti today to the whole world.
Are
these two groups of solutions, one which proclaims the God without,
and the other the God within, contradictory one of the other? It
would certainly appear so. If in man, if in all men, the Perfect
Godhead
exists even now in His perfection, as the Upanishads teach,
what has an evolutionary process of births and deaths to do with
the souls
liberation ? What is the use of the gathering of experience, the
acquirement of virtues, the performing of duties and the aspiring
after ideals,
if the goal of them all, which is to become one with God, Is already
accomplished ?
There
is no use whatsoever in the world process, asserts
boldly the Sankhya
philosophy; and the same reply is given by the Advaita or Pure Vedanta.
The wheel of births and deaths, the climbing from
imperfection to
perfection, all these are purely Maya, an illusion which envelops
us. Let us but tear aside the stifling folds of the
illusion which
enwraps us, and we shall swiftly find ourselves once again as our
true self, the Atman, the Godhead who never descended
from his pure
and perfect serenity and happiness into an imperfect evolutionary
world. The only God who exists is in man himself,
say the Upanishads
; and they go so far as to assert that the Divine Nature is all
things, not merely in all things. God is not in the stone
as a Divine Immanence, but is the stone itself - this
is the esoteric teaching of Hinduism.
In
the light of these teachings, which proclaim everything
a Mâyâ, except
the eternal and unchanging Spirit, there is no practical value to
the soul in the process of evolution. Why the soul
ever allows himself
to be entangled in it is a mystery which is not explained ; what
forces all souls to put on the mantle of matter is
a problem to which no
solution is offered in the Vedanta. It is quite clear, when one arrives
at the logical conclusion from the premisses of esoteric
Hinduism,
that there is no such thing as evolution or progress, so far at least
as the soul is concerned. The soul is always Atman,
and needs only
to step outside the illusion which hypnotises it to believe that
it is not Atman at all. Ever the serene spirit, pure
Sat, Chit and Ananda,
it is the power of Mâyâ which deludes the soul to regard itself
as an evolving soul who is struggling to pay his debts
to Karma.
The
insistence by Krishnamurti that Liberation or Perfection is possible,
even now, to every individual, however ignorant or however primitive
and simple-minded, almost leads one to imagine that he too, like the
Upanishads and the Vedanta, ignores the bonds of helpfulness and compassion
which in the minds of the humanitarian bind all men in a common destiny.
In the doctrine of the pure Vedanta, man's sole duty is to himself
; he has but one work, which is to tear the veil of illusion. Such
ideals as Brotherhood and Social Service are mere sentiment, compared
to the supreme task before each soul of Liberation.
It
is true that charity is enjoined on all, but such
teachings are a
compromise offered to our limited human nature. Men suffer - and
so need charity - only because they insist on being bound on the
wheel of birth and death; to shod tears over a soul who prefers
to remain
bound is sheer sentimentality. What he needs is not sympathy but
to be led towards illumination so that he discovers that he is not
bound.
Similarly
in Buddhism, where the sole task is to escape from
the "wheel", the
doctrine of compassion seems illogical. It is Avidya
or ignorance
which drives a soul to drink deep at the well of sensation; and though
intense compassion is inculcated as a virtue, no
clue is given how
compassion can help in the acquisition of wisdom. In the list of
virtues, with which the Buddha is described in one
of the most famous of Buddhist
verses, compassion is not mentioned. He is called "that Blessed
One, Exalted, Omniscient, Endowed with knowledge
and virtue, Auspicious,
Knower of worlds, a Guide incomparable for the training of individuals,
Teacher of Gods and humans, Enlightened and Holy". But not a
word about Him as full of pity for all mankind.
Yet Buddhist tradition
asserts that so great was His compassion even as long ago as in the
dispensation of the Buddha Dipankara - the fourth
in the list of twenty-eight Buddhas which closes
with the Buddha Gautama - that
He determined to tread the long and painful road
to Buddhahood in order to lead men
to Liberation. Buddhism however does insist that compassion is necessary,
as in some way stilling the craving to live, which
is at the root
of misery. But both in the Vedanta and in Buddhism, the emphasis
laid upon understanding, contemplation and withdrawal
as requisite for
Liberation has led to an overemphasis upon individual salvation,
to such an extent indeed as to lead sometimes to
an ignoring of the collective
betterment of mankind.
Krishnamurti's
teachings, at first sight, would also appear to ignore
collective
salvation, because he is so insistent upon what be terms the "direct
path". He insists that there is no need for any organisation of
spiritual effort into such gradations as of teacher and pupil
- the one to instruct, the other to learn, the science which teaches
where is the "Way".
Since within each man resides the power to see "the Goal", no external
aid is necessary, if only the seeker will believe that he can come
to the Goal unaided. Above all, his insistent declaration that "the
individual problem is the world problem" is being construed as a
warning to desist from activities which hide their meddlesome and
wasteful
nature under the guise of philanthropy and service. But though Krishnamurti
calls upon us to go the direct road, and to seek no other God but
the God within, it is very clear that the thought of the Liberation
of the soul is not dissociated in his mind from that of the service
of all men. While in one sentence he sternly challenges: "What
have you, with your phrases, with your labels, with your books,
achieved
?", in the sentences immediately following, he tells us what we should
have done.
"How many people have you made happy, not in the passing things,
but in the ways of the Eternal ?"
"
Have you given the Happiness that lasts, the Happiness that is never
failing, the Happiness that cannot he dimmed by a passing cloud
?"
"
In what way have you created a protecting wall, so that people shall
not slip into pitfalls ?"
"
How far have you built a railing along that deep river into which
every human being is liable to fall ?"
"
How far have you helped these people who want to climb ?"
"
How far has it been your ambition to lead someone to that Kingdom
of Happiness, that garden where there is unchanging light, unchanging
beauty ?"
"
But, if you are all these things, have you saved one from sorrow
?"
"Have
any of you given me happiness - ' me' the ordinary
person ?"
"Have
any of you given me the nourishment of heaven when
I was hungry
?"
"Have
any of you felt so deeply that you could throw yourself
into the
place of the person who is suffering ?"
"What
have you produced, what have you brought forth ?"
"In
what manner have you brought forth that precious jewel, so that
it shall shine and guide the whole world ? "
These
words of Krishnamurti show that his gospel is not
a gospel of isolation.
While he challenges us as to our ways of service, he insists that
he who is truly intent on Liberation is equally bent
on service. He
tells us that when we shall enter the Kingdom of Happiness that then
"you will lose the identity of your separate self; and there you
will create new worlds, new kingdoms, new abodes for others". Again
he insists,
And
because I really love,
I want you to love ;
Because I really feel,
I want you to feel;
Because I hold every thing dear,
I want you to hold all things dear;
Because I want to protect,
You should protect.
And this is the only life worth living,
And the only happiness worth possessing.
When,
in another address, he asks us to "open the gate of your hearts
that you may enter into Liberation", he makes clear that the individual
who liberates himself can have but one motive, which is to "become
in yourselves the true redeemers of mankind, so that you will go
out
and show to the people that are in sorrow and pain that their salvation,
their happiness, their Liberation, lies within themselves".
It
is this inseparableness of Liberation and Service
which has ever been
the theme of Theosophy as a code of ethics. Modern Theosophy has
used less the word "Liberation" and more the word "Perfection",
but the thought is the same. The value of the study of
Theosophy lies
in that each student can construct for himself a frame work of the
world's events of the past, the present and the future,
into which
he can set in an appropriate setting whatsoever he examines of events
in the domains of religion and science, philosophy
and art, philanthropy
and world development. Thus it is that, with the aid of Theosophy,
we can synthesise truth after truth out of the contradictions
between
those religions and cults which proclaim the God without, and the
philosophies and sciences which proclaim the God within.
And the way
of that synthesis is as follows.
The
first great truth which must never for one instant
be obscured or
forgotten is that the Divine Nature resides in man. Call that Divine
Nature by any name we will - God, Atman, the Christ,
Sammâsambodhi,
the Perfect Wisdom - its totality resides in man. In the wickedest
sinner that Godhead resides in the inmost heart
of his being, with as perfect
a fulness of the Godhead as in the heart of the greatest of saints.
Brahmana and Pariah are equally divine; and the
Brahmana who spurns
the Pariah but spurns the Godhead dwelling in his own self. This
is the supreme truth of Theosophy, which, as applied
to daily conduct,
is the soul and essence of Brotherhood. To find the God within is
the sole task of life; for when that Godhead is
found in stone and
in plant, in sinner as in saint, all life's processes are linked
into one meaning, which ever guides to happiness
and peace.
But
there is a second truth which is less easy to understand
; it is,
that the Divine Nature is as if imprisoned in man, and not utterly
free to manifest in freedom all its perfections. That
Divine Nature
abides equally in the sinner as in the saint. Yet there is a difference
as the Divine Nature energises or operates in the
encasement which
holds it. When the Hindu Sâdhu intent on God saw the British
soldier coming to bayonet him, and said, " Even thou art He !",
he truly saw the Divine Nature in all things, even in his
assassin. But yet
surely there was a difference as that Divine Nature energised in
the heart of the Sâdhu and in the heart of the soldier
? We can, if we
will, say with the Upanishad, "If slayer thinks he slays, if slain
thinks he is slain, both these know naught; THIS slays
not, nor is
slain"; but we are also forced by our moral conscience to say that
the Sadhu did good and the soldier did evil. But since both Sâdhu
and soldier are, in their inmost natures, God, how can the one indivisible
Divine Nature be at one and the same time good and evil ?
Unless
we adopt the solution of a Mâyâ, which makes the
Divine Nature appear
other than it truly is, there is only one other line of solution,
so far as I know. That solution is what Theosophy
offers - that
the world process, even if it enshrines a Mâyâ,
is of use to the Divine
Nature, in enabling it to release Itself from Its imprisonment.
Strangely
enough, this conception, that the world process is
a releasing of
perfection from an imprisonment, is suggested by modern Biology.
As the Mendelian theory of heredity came to the front,
one of its leaders,
Bateson, said at the meeting of British Association in 1914 that
Shakespeare lived in a pinhead of protoplasm. All
that we know as the genius of
Shakespeare existed in the first speck of protoplasm; but it existed
there as if imprisoned. Now, without a particular
arrangement of Mendelian
"factors" in the first cell which was the embryo of Shakespeare,
his creative ability could not manifest; therefore rearrangement
after
rearrangement had taken place of the "factors" in every one of the
myriads of cells which were the successive progenitors of that one
zygote or embryo cell which finally became Shakespeare.
An
evolutionary process stretching over millions of years
was necessary
for this continuous rearrangement of " factors", which was needed
to bring about just that one grouping of factors which alone could
produce Shakespeare. Yet, all the time, in the first speck of protoplasm,
which somehow arose by a chance juxtaposition of certain colloidal
substances, Shakespeare was sleeping, waiting to be awakened. The
God within, Shakespeare, was there in the protoplasm; but the God
without, that is, all Nature's processes which we term evolution,
was also necessary in order to make Shakespeare dynamic and creative.
It
is this conception which Theosophy gives - that there is a God
without, a process of evolution in a foreordained
Divine Plan, calling to a
God within, the Divine Nature of the soul—which enables us to harmonise
all the contradictory theories of the religions among themselves,
and of modern science which stands opposed to all religions. From
the moment we accept that the Divine Nature in man, the God within,
is imprisoned at the beginning of time, our next problem is to understand
what is the process of his release. The answer can be summed up
in
one word - Life. It is Life, in all its forms, in all its kingdoms
visible and invisible, Life manifesting from eternity to eternity;
it is this Life which ever strives to create, and to destroy in order
to create again, that is the instrument of release of the imprisoned
Godhead.
The
long process of the release of Divinity by Life is
the theme of all
Theosophical study. That study describes the details of the process,
using special technical terms - a "jargon" if you like - such
as Life and Form, Karma, Reincarnation, Root and Sub-races,
Principles, Planes,
Rays, Discipleship, Initiation, Adeptship, and others. But all such
terms are like the terms of any other study like
Chemistry or Botany.
They serve to arrange into categories those facts which must be examined
in order to come to a broad grasp of the subject.
True,
Life's activities can be watched with the eye of the
poet or artist,
and not with the eye of the analytical observer like the Theosophist.
Then no "jargon" of technical terms is required; then it is
that we have such a description of Life as Krishnamurti
gives in his poems.[The
Search, pp. 9 -12. ]
I
have been a wanderer long
In this world of transient things.
I have known the passing pleasures thereof.
As the rainbow is beautiful,
But soon vanishes into nothingness,
So have I known,
From the very foundation of the world,
The passing away of all things
Beautiful, joyous and pleasurable.
In
search of the eternal
I lost myself in the fleeting.
All things have I tasted in search of Truth.
In
bygone ages
Have I known the pleasures of the transient world -
The tender mother with her children,
The arrogant and the free,
The beggar that wanders the face of the earth,
The contentment of the wealthy,
The woman of enticements,
The beautiful and the ugly,
The man of authority, the man of power,
The man of consequence, the bestower and the guardian,
The oppressed and the oppressor,
The liberator and the tyrant,
The man of great possessions,
The man of renunciation, the sannyasi,
The man of activity and the man of dreams.
The arrogant priest in gorgeous robes and the humble worshipper,
The
poet, the artist and the creator.
At all the altars of the world have I worshipped,
All religions have known me,
Many ceremonies have I performed,
In the pomp of the world have I rejoiced,
In the battles of defeat and victory have I fought,
The despiser and the despised,
The man acquainted with grief
And agonies of many sorrows,
The man of pleasure and abundance.
In
the secret recesses of my heart have I danced,
Many births and deaths have I known,
In all these fleeting realms have I wandered,
In passing ecstasies, certain of their endurance,
And yet I never found that eternal Kingdom of Happiness.
But
why must the soul thus wander from life to life, urged
on by the God-given
instinct for Liberation, and yet miss time after time the entrance
to the true path ? There are indeed some philosophies,
like that of
Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Muhammedanism, which insist that
the soul does not so wander, and that within the brief
period of one
life the ultimate goal of Liberation or Redemption can be achieved.
For this, an utter subservience to the will of God
is necessary ;
a perfect life so subservient to God gains the recompense of an eternal
heaven. But such a solution, which denies to Life
its repeated transformations
by Reincarnation, brings in its train a host of problems which are
difficult of solution. The doctrine of a perfection
which must be
achieved in one life-time promptly raises question after question,
such as, why God permits evil to exist, why if He
is good some souls
must be condemned to perdition, why if He is omnipotent He does not
arrange for all to be born in an environment favourable
to the building
of their character towards perfection.
I
cannot myself think of any scheme of things which
is just - and
here I can speak for all Theosophists - unless Reincarnation
is a part of that scheme. It is far easier for me
to believe that God's love
and compassion are real, just because Reincarnation is a fact, than
to believe that there is no Reincarnation, and yet
that God expects
all in one life-time to understand His will and to co-operate with
it.
I
said a while ago, Why must the soul wander from life to life, missing
the entrance to the true path ? But in reality that question of mine
is not based on fact. For, the moment we realise that Life is a dual
process, that of the God without knocking at the door of the God within,
then every experience is an entrance on the path. It is this which
Theosophy makes clear.
The
intricate scheme describing the soul's evolution and unfoldment which
is found in theosophical text-books can easily be swept aside by saying
that in order to be good and noble, it is not necessary to have experience
after experience. For goodness is innate in man, because the God within
resides in man. Whence then the need to struggle in order to be good,
when goodness is of the very nature of the soul ?
Here
each of us must determine what line of thought he
will follow; no
one, least of all a Theosophist, desires to impose a particular creed
as the one and only solution. I can only say, speaking
for most Theosophists,
that every scrap of reason disappears from the universe if evolution
is considered unnecessary. On the other hand, a most
inspiring sweet
reasonableness is clearly seen in the world process, when we admit
that evolution by experience is the way to Liberation.
William James
once defined experience as "becoming expert by experiment". If we
accept Life as the laboratory for the soul's experiments in order
to be liberated, then, the environment which surrounds the soul
in its many migrations begins to have a meaning.
Like
as the dull uncut diamond dug from the bowels of the
earth, so is
the God within before experience moulds him; but like as the cut
diamond flashing all the colours of the rainbow, so
is the God within when
he has undergone experience after experience which the God without
sends him. This is Life, deep calling unto deep. Within
our inmost
nature is "the Way, the Truth and the Life"; within ourselves
are all the Kingdoms - the Kingdom of Happiness of Krishnamurti,
the Kingdom of Heaven of the Christ, and the Kingdom of the Law
of the
Buddha. But it is only when a Buddha, or a Christ, or a Krishnamurti
reveals the Kingdom in which Hewells, that then we are aware that
we too are God, and that every possible Kingdom dwells within us
also.
Deep
calling unto deep, Godhead calling to Godhead, this is the solution
of the mystery of misery dogging at the heels of joy, of death ever
the shadow of life. But life and death, joy and misery, the friend
and the enemy, are not contrasted opposites; they are the one and
the same Godhead, both equally divine when we understand.
So
experience, coming with the message of the God without, knocks at
the doors of the soul, the God within. When the soul's dwelling place
is the savage, then experience brings hatreds and battles, in order
to call out from the God within his hidden attributes of courage and
decision. When the soul passes to dwell as the civilised man, then
experience knocks to release the virtues of industry and efficiency,
of learning and judgment, of comradeship and self-sacrifice. As child,
as youth, as maid, as man, as woman, as husband and father, as wife
and mother, at each stage some hidden capacity within the soul is
released, at the bidding of the environment and of the experiences
which it brings.
So,
in the long pilgrimage of the soul to discover himself as the
God,
each, religion comes to him in turn to teach one word of the Mantram
with which the God without created the world. Science reveals
the
framework of that creation, Art the joy which it conceals, and Philosophy
the inspiration which it brings. No fact in life, no event anywhere
in the world but has a meaning for the soul; that meaning is that
the God without ever calls to the God within to be one.
This
is the lesson which we all have to learn. And it is
difficult, because
the trend of our thinking and feeling is to make a duality of what
we are, contrasted with what we are not. It is far
easier to divide
the world into what " I like" and what "I do not like" than to
be beyond both like and dislike, and to contemplate the world as
it
is, irrespective of its relation to oneself. It is far easier to
divide life into good and evil than to see life just as it is, and
place
no labels whatsoever on it. It is only as we "cast out the self "
and see things "as they are", and so pass on to see "the things-in-themselves",
the Archetypes of Plato, that for the first time we gain a glimpse
of our true self.
It
is such a glimpse of the truth that reveals to man
that the suffering
which crushes him is only himself at work, purifying himself. The
moment we enter a world of duality and say, when we
suffer, that it
is God who sends us suffering, suffering does not end. For then suffering,
as it discharges its force, creates new force to issue
later in new
suffering.
But when we refuse to accept any duality, and say either, "It is
Life releasing Life", - or "It is I the God without releasing myself
the God within", then for the first time peace enters the
heart.
It
is then that we shall know that Liberation is not an event at the
end of time, but a continuous happening which steadily brings nearer
and nearer the God without to the God within. When once these two
poles of Being commence to approach each other, Liberation has begun.
Thenceforth 'the time factor is within the soul, and is the soul's
agent, not the soul's master. Less important is when the soul shall
achieve Mukti or Nirvana, and more important the fact that the soul
shall know, and never cease from rejoicing, that the twain are becoming
one. This is the most direct of all paths, and none can prevent the
swiftness of the union except the soul himself.
This
truth is our Ariadne's thread in the maze of life. And we shall learn
this truth in myriads of ways, according as we have eyes to see, and
ears to hear. Thus speaks Light on the
Path.
Inquire
of the earth, the air and the water, of
the secrets they hold for you.
Inquire of the Holy Ones of the earth of the secrets
they hold for you.
Inquire of the inmost, the One, of its final secret,
which it holds for you through the
ages.
And
as we attempt to understand the meaning of it all,
none can help us
or guide. When Krishnamurti says that no Guru or teacher is needed
for the soul who is intent on Liberation, he is only
uttering once
again what other teachers have said before him. "THAT art thou" is
the axiom of esoteric Hinduism, and the Upanishads which proclaim
this teaching have not insisted on any need of a Guru in order to
achieve the Unity. You know the immemorial tradition in India -
first the student, then the householder, then the hermit, lastly
the
sannyasi,
the " renouncer" of ceremonies and creeds, who goes out alone into
the world, without a Guru, to find the Unity directly for himself.
So too, during the forty-five years of service rendered by the Lord
Buddha, never once did He put Himself as a Guru whose aid was necessary
in order to enter on the Path. His last charge to His Sangha or Order
was to emphasise the "individual uniqueness" of each who treads
the Way. As He lay dying, He said: " It may be, Ananda, that
some of you will think. 'The word of the Teacher is a thing of
the past;
we have now no Teacher.' But that, Ananda, is not the correct view.
The Doctrine and Discipline, Ananda, which I have taught and enjoined
upon you is to be your teacher when I am gone."And His last words
were", And now, O monks, I take my leave of you ; all the constituents
of being are transitory; work out your salvation with diligence".
It
is never the Guru who says "Guru is Brahma, Guru is Vishnu, Guru
is Maheshvara"; that is the phrase invented by the
Sishya or pupil. No Guru has claimed to be what the pupil
in his gratitude asserts
of his teacher.
tvam
eva mata ca pita tvam eva,
tvam eva bandhuscha sakha tvam eva;
tvam eva vidya dravinam tvam eva,
tvam eva sarvam mama deva deva.
Thou
art verily my mother, Thou art the father indeed, my friend also art
Thou, and companion as well. Thou indeed art my learning and possessions,
Thou art my all in all, O God of Gods.
But
all this is what the disciple says as to the Guru,
but not what the
Guru says concerning himself. What, then, does the Guru say ? We
have that in what the Guru of H. P. Blavatsky, H.
S. Olcott and Annie Besant
once said concerning Himself, and these are His words: "I am as
I was, and as I was and am, so am I likely always to be - the slave
of my duty to the Lodge and mankind; not only taught, but desirous
to
subordinate every preference for individuals to a love for the human
race"' That even a Guru himself, even when liberated, is still striving
for a yet larger love for the human race is shown in the words of
the same Master: "The mark of the adept is kept at [Shamballa]
not at Simla, and I try to keep up to it." It is His brother, the
Master K.H., who has described Him as a man as stern for himself,
as severe for his shortcomings, as he is indulgent for the defects
of other people, not in words but in the innermost feelings
of his
heart".
And
I desire here to give my testimony that the Master
whom I have followed
this life for the last forty-one years has never been to me a "crutch" on
which I could lean in any one of my weaknesses. Never once has he
made my path easier for me, nor helped me to climb over stiles
and obstacles; never once has he prevented me from committing mistakes
due to my stupidity or selfishness. But he has ever been to me what
a lighthouse is to a ship in a stormy sea - a flashing blinding beam
cleaving the dark of the storm clouds to show that the harbour is
not far away, and so not to despair but to take courage. If I offer
Him all my love and service, it is because He is the living symbol
of what I hope to become someday ; if I bend the knee before Him
in gratitude and utmost reverence, it is because He is to me the
glorious
promise that I too shall some day love all mankind with the wondrous
intensity of love with which He loves all men to-day. He is the
God
without rousing the God within me to be aware of my destiny, which
is to strive through the ages to establish a Kingdom of Joy for
all
men.
I
close this dissertation on the theme of the God without and the God
within by reading to you two extracts from the Upanishads, one describing
the God without, and the other the God within.
THE
GOD WITHOUT
[Shvetâshvatara Upanishad.(Mead's translation). ]
This
God, in sooth, in all the quarters is long, long ago,
indeed, he
had his birth, he verily is
now within the germ. He has been born, he will be born; behind
all
who have birth he stands, with face on every side.
He
hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath
faces, arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with
wings, he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.
Whose
faces, heads and necks, are those of all, who lieth in the secret
place of every soul, spread o'er the universe is He, the Lord. Therefore
as all-pervader, He's benign.
Blue
fly, green bird, and red-eyed beast, the cloud that bears the lightning
in its womb, the seasons, and the seas, art thou. In omnipresent power
thou hast thy home, whence all the worlds are born.
Eternal
of eternals, the consciousness which every being's
consciousness contains,
who, one, of many the desires dispenses - knowing that cause, the
God to be approached by sacred science and holy art, the mortal
from all
bonds is free.
I
know this mighty Man, sun-like, beyond the darkness; Him and Him
only knowing, one crosseth over death ; no other path at all is to
go.
THE
GOD WITHIN
[Kenn, Taittiriya, Mundaka and Mândûkya Upanishads]
What
no word can reveal, what revealeth the word, that know as Brahman
indeed, not this which I they worship below.
What
none thinks with the mind, but what thinks-out the mind, that
know
thou as Brahman indeed, not this which thy worship below.
What
none sees with the eye, whereby seeing is seen, that know thou as
Brahman indeed, not this which they worship below
Who
knows this thus, indeed, destroying sin, in endless highest heaven-world
he stands immovable, immovable he stands.
From
whom the whole world comes, to whom indeed it goes
again, by whom
this is supported surely too -to Him, the Self that knows, all honour
be !
Truth,
wisdom, endless, Brahm,
Source of all bliss, immortal, shining forth,
Peaceful, benign, and secondless !
Om
! Peace, Peace, Peace! Om !
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