Theosophy - Is Belief in the Masters- Superstitious or Harmful?
Adyar
Pamphlets No. 101
Is
Belief in the Masters
Superstitious
or Harmful? by Annie Besant
Reprinted
from The Theosophist, Vol XXXV, December 1913
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India
May 1919
[Page
1] AMONG the saddest pages
of human history are those pages on which are written the stories of
religious controversies, of religious persecutions, of religious wars.
Look back, far back in history, and you will find many such pages in
the past; and for the most part those controversies arise not over the
deep, essential, and spiritual truths of religion, not about those vital
facts on which human souls are fed and human conduct is based. More often
they come from subsidiary questions, and most of the bitterness which
we find in them is due to comparatively trivial differences of opinion.
There are, however, certain facts, common to all religions, which from
time to time are challenged by materialists, sceptics, unbelievers of
every kind; there are certain points common to all religions, round which
from time to time controversy arises; and while it is not worth while
to add to the turmoil of battle where unimportant and trivial matters
are concerned, it may be worth while, when some general truth is attacked
under a special[Page
2] form, to draw the attention of
the thoughtful to the importance of that truth, and to defend it from attack,
leveled perhaps at a special conception, but none the less in reality undermining
the central thought of all the religions of the world. Violent State persecution
has for the most part passed away in civilised lands; and yet almost all civilised
countries, I am sorry to say, still find it necessary to defend by the laws of
the land, feelings which would be outraged by attack, beliefs which,
because sacred and holy to many, might stir the passions of men in
defence when ruthlessly and thoughtlessly assailed. Even in England,
where one religion for the most part rules, there have been limits set to the
controversies allowed on religious subjects. Argument, respectful and
thoughtful, that is now everywhere in England permitted; but ridicule,
assault, attack, causing pain to the holiest feelings of humanity, that, even
in free England, is punished by the law of the land. Here in India where
many religions live side by side, the law is very much sterner on this
question. Quite lately in Burma, for instance, a Burman monk was arrested
because he had attacked Christian missionaries, and thereby outraged
Christian feeling.
I believe that human
nature is fundamentally good and not evil, and that where pain is given it
is given thoughtlessly for the most part and not deliberately. Because I
would fain, if I can, make you realize a little of how religious feelings
may be pained and outraged by things that are said in thoughtlessness, I
would ask you to substitute the name Theosophy[Page
3]
for your own Faith, whatever
it may be and the name Master for
the name holiest to you, in the Faith which you profess. I would ask the
Christians amongst you to think how you would feel if the divine name of
your Teacher, the Lord Jesus, were assailed as the Masters are assailed,
I would ask those of you who are Musalmans to think how you would
feel if ridicule and outrage and insult were poured out on the name of your
great Prophet, Muhammad. I would ask you who are Buddhists to think how you
would feel, if similar treatment were meted out to the Lord Buddha; and
you who are Hindûs to ask yourselves how you would feel if the sacred
name of Shrî Krshna took the place which has been occupied by the name Masters.
I know that this substitution cannot be, for the law would not permit it.
If that were done in any Indian paper, at once the Government would step
in and stop it. I ask you, is it generous, to say nothing of justice, because
people are in a minority, to allow their holiest feelings to be ridiculed
and outraged with impunity ? Because they are known to be peaceable and law-abiding,
it is thought safe to allow them to be vilified and insulted. And I would
appeal to all that is best in you, most generous and most noble, to set
your faces against a line of attack that in every great city in the land
has outraged the feelings of some of the noblest of your citizens; for there
is no one great city in India where some of the leading citizens are not
Theosophists, men who are respected for their knowledge, venerated for
the nobility of their lives, leaders in [Page
4] every good work for their
religion and their country. It is not alone in Madras that we are represented
by such men as Dr. S. Subramania Iyer, who is seated here. There is no
one great city in India where such men are not among us, and is it right,
is it generous, whether you agree with them or not, to pour outrage and
insult upon them ? I leave it to you to judge, for it is not we who
are hurt by such attack. There was a time in the Roman Empire, at the beginning
of the present era, when Christianity was persecuted, when Christians were
spoken of with insult, when monstrous crimes were imputed to them, when
they were charged with practicing immorality at their sacred feasts,
and with being worshiper of an ass's head. That did not rebound on Christianity
to injure it, but it reacted on the ancient Paganism to destroy it. And
that is what always happens, for truth cannot be killed by persecution;
it is the persecutor who always, in the end, is slain.
Now I will not answer
abuse by abuse; I believe that pain inflicted is inflicted, for the most
part, ignorantly and thoughtlessly; I believe in that great excuse spoken
by the Christ when His enemies slew Him: “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do”. I would try to explain our
beliefs rather than strike back at our assailants, and it is because of that,
that I come among you this afternoon, simply to lay before you something
of what I believe and know of the Masters of the Wisdom. Then you may
judge, after listening to our side of the question, how far such belief is
either superstitious as regards religion, or [Page
5] harmful to the State or
the community in which such a belief may prevail.
And first, in order to make quite clear what I mean,
I may define the word
Master. For it is a term which has been specially adopted by us who
are Theosophists to indicate a certain definite status in Occultism. Master;
is an English equivalent for the name Jîvanmukta, the liberated Spirit,
more familiar here. We mean a man who has become perfect; it is not equivalent
to the Hindû Avatãra, nor to the Christian Divine Incarnation — a
coming down of God in human form; but it indicates, on the contrary, a slow
climbing up by man in life after life, until the God within him has become
manifest and shines out through a perfect humanity to the world; a man
who through hundreds of past lives has struggled and has fought; a man
who, having reached a high point in human evolution, has then placed his
feet on the Path, of which later I shall have something to say; who has
trodden that Path of Holiness step by step; who has passed Initiation after
Initiation; and who has finally reached human perfection, but remains in
touch with the world of men, in order to help others to tread the path which
He has trodden, and to reach the perfection which He has reached. That is
what the Theosophist means when he speaks of a Master. A perfect Man
in whom the Divine Spirit is unfolded.
If you realize that
that is the thought underlying the word, you will recognize at once that
there is nothing in it repellent in any way, or possibly harmful. I ought
perhaps to say that no member of the [Page
6] Society
is asked to believe in the existence of these Masters. We do not expect that
anyone joining us shall affirm belief in the existence of these perfect Men.
But at the same time I am bound to say that where that belief is strong,
there the Society goes forward, and where it is weak, there the Society is
of little effect. For so inspiring is the conception, so ennobling is the idea,
so truly does it make one realize that what man has done man can do, that the
very thought uplifts. For these are not Gods of a different nature from ourselves,
who have done what we cannot do; but They are bone of our bone, flesh
of our flesh, human with our humanity, having lived on earth as we are
living today. Out of the imperfection They have climbed, step by step, with
toil and struggle and anguish, and now have reached the liberation which
opens to Them the gateway of Nirvãna — of that which the Christian
would call final Salvation. — They have turned back from its threshold
for the helping of Their weaker brethren, in order that they too may find
the Peace, that their weakness may be aided by the strength which These have
achieved. That is meant by the name Master .
And
now to explain the rest of the title. I will take superstitious to
mean — for
the time, it is not a full definition — a belief which is not founded
upon reason. The fuller explanation would be: “A belief which, being irrational,
takes the unessential as the essentialâ€. But the absence of a rational basis
for a belief may serve as a fair working definition of a superstition. The
man does not know why he believes [Page
7] it;
he has no evidence for it; neither by the testimony of his senses nor by
the logic of his reason is he able to justify his belief. My duty, is, then,
to answer the question: “Is belief in the
Masters a superstition?â€
There
are two ways in which you may regard this idea of Masters, one general and one
particular. Both are important in the forming of your judgment. In the first
place — the
general — we seek to discover whether
there are in the history of the world, Men who have fulfilled the conception
which I have just sketched to you. Men who have become perfect and yet
have remained in touch with man. Now if we look at the history of the great
religions, we shall find mention made of such Men in every sacred
literature, Men who embody divine perfection in a human form. You cannot
read any of the ancient books of the Hindûs without finding the mention
of Men who had reached liberation, who were what is called Jîvanmuktas;
Their stories shine out from page after page, history is full of Them. If you
read the Rãmãyana and the Mahãbhãrata,
or even later books, you find Them. In the Purãnas you constantly see
mention of the presence of such Men, who, from time to time, at Their own will
and not at the command of anyone else, manifest Themselves as Men among men.
Nãrada, the great
Rshi, visits the Kings of ancient India, to enquire as to the welfare of their
kingdoms, the discharge of their royal duties. Many names will spring to
your memories, those of Yãjñavalkya and of many another. You
have there Men [Page
8] who
had reached liberation, some of whom take pupils, guiding them on the Path
to liberation, mingling from, time to time in human affairs, more and more
rarely in later days right down the great stream of Indian History, so long
as she was really great, you find these living Men manifesting, giving counsel,
instruction, and reproof. Unless Hindûism, as
a whole, be a superstition, These, whom we call Masters, have existed and
continue to exist.
The same is true of the great religion founded by
the Lord Buddha. He, with His disciples, the Arhats, bore testimony in the
world of His day to the reality of the Path and the truth of liberation; if
you go to Burma now, you will find the Burmans believing that among Those who
were His disciples there are still some who, instead of leaving the earth as
They have the right to do, are remaining upon earth in order to guide and to
instruct; and when I asked a, Burman how you can attract the attention of such
an One, if you desire to tread the Path of Holiness, I was told in answer that
They see the man in whose heart the flame of love is lighted, and that They
reveal Themselves to him and teach him. Moreover, all Buddhists believe in
the present existence of the Bodhisattva, the Supreme Teacher, the next
Buddha, and they look for His coming to the world as the Lord Gautama
came twenty-five centuries ago. Unless Buddhism be a superstition, These,
whom we call Masters, have existed and continue to exist.
In Zoroastrianism you
find the testimony to one mighty Teacher, whom it calls the Prophet, the [Page
9] Founder
of the Faith, it was Zarathushtra, the divine Man, who laid the basis of
that ancient and mighty religion. And if you come, still further down the stream
of time, to Christianity, you find there the conception of Jesus, Perfect
Man as well as very God. And those who believe in Him think that He is living
in a physical human body, for how does the article of the Church run ? “Christ
did truly arise again from death, and took again His body, with flesh, bones,
and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature; wherewith He
ascended into heaven, and there sitteths until He return to judge all men at
the last dayâ€. The Christian falls into heresy, if he denies the continued
existence of the physical body of His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The prophet
Muhammad was Man among men, and I do not know how far in popular
Muhaminadanism the Muslims regard their Prophet as still within the reach
of human cry; but among the Sûfis, tracing their teaching down from
Ali, the beloved son-in-law of the Prophet, there is certainly the belief
in the existence of Teachers who may be reached by the earnest and the
devoted, and they acknowledge also the existence of the same Path which
is believed in by the Hindû and the Buddhist, the Path by which men
may become divine, may reach perfection. I ought also to mention that the
“Roman Catholics, among Christians, teach the existence of that same
Path, by treading which sainthood is attained.
The only difference between the Theosophist and any one of you is,
that we believe in the great a [Page 10] Prophets of all religions, while
some of you believe in your own Prophet, and deny Those of the religions
to, which you do not belong. But it is surely no great fault in us that we
honor and respect all divine Men without exception. Every Faith has at its
heart, at its core, the belief in such a Being, the life of such a Man.
Now,
of the existence of all these great Teachers in the past, with the exception
of the Lord Buddha and the Lord Muhammad, there is very little evidence
which would be called historical, proving that They existed. The historical
evidence for the existence of the Christ — I do not challenge it,
because I know that He lived — is very, very small, and anyone who has
studied Christian history is well aware that contemporary evidence to His
existence is lacking. His Church and His Faith, prove Him to have existed,
far more effectively than any document which could be brought forward as
evidence for His life on earth. And the same is true as regards the Hindû
Rshis. There is nothing that the Western scholar would accept as evidence
for the historical existence of Those. And that is worth remembering, for
though it in no sense disproves Their existence, it thrusts you back upon
the deeper testimony of religious consciousness and of unbroken tradition.
There lies your only proof that They were and are. And any blow that you
may strike at the belief of others rebounds upon yourselves, for the very
existence of your Rshis, of your Christ, is far more open, in many ways, to
challenge. Only the materialists and the unbelievers will triumph, if a fatal
blow can be [Page
11] struck at the belief of
God manifest in the human form, the just Man made perfect, the Master.
I do not know if objection will be made by any
believer in any religion to the testimony of those who speak from their own
experience, a testimony which is, to me, far stronger than that which can be
found in any literature which Western scholars may rend into pieces, which
to me is far surer and far loftier than the authority of any priest or preacher.
This testimony is the love that pours out to Them from millions of human hearts.
Modern Kings and Popes cannot rival this; no conqueror in history is crowned
with fame so undying, no physical benefactor with love so immortal. Who shines
out as the object of adoration so profound, so lasting, as the Lord Buddha,
as Srî Krshna, as the Lord Christ ? That is practically impregnable,
even though the scholars may deny the historical proof of Their existence.
They live in the hearts of men; They are no dream.
But you may say: “That is all very well as a
general principle. We will even go further, and admit, as you have elsewhere
argued, that it is logical that some men should have advanced very far, have
climbed very high during the immense time through which humanity has existed;
we do not deny that some figures shine out in history as mighty Rulers, as
mighty Teachers; moreover reason admits the possibility, since humanity has
been living on earth for so many million yearsâ€.
But you may say there
is a difference between you and Theosophists, Theosophists believe that such [Page
12] Men
are still living, and that the Path to perfection is still open. As to these
ideas, most religious people apparently hesitate to affirm their belief.
In some far-off heaven, perhaps, but not at hand, not living upon earth, not
men as we are men, though higher, grander, more perfect, than we are I admit
the difference. We, who are believers in the Masters, believe in the reality
of the Divinity of the human Spirit, climbing today as he climbed in ages
past, showing out and unfolding now his Divinity, as in the past he unfolded
that same Divinity among our ancestors and forefathers. That is true. But do
you declare that the divine Spirit no longer lives in man, or that his divine
strength is weaker ? We believe that men today may climb as men in the past
have climbed; we believe that the Christ spoke no impossible thing when He
said to the disciples round Him: “Be ye also perfect, even as your Father
in heaven is perfect. “Do Christians believe that to be a possibility ? If
so, they admit the possibility of the existence of Masters in the flesh today.
If they do not believe it, they brand their Lord as giving them a command impossible
of fulfilment. Surely it must be sad to hold so exquisite an ideal and at
the same moment to deny it, to declare it to be impossible, a dream never
to be fulfilled.
Turning to particular
evidence, you say: “What evidence have you of Their
present existence?†There is far more evidence available for any of you of
the existence of the Masters whom we speak of as behind the
Theosophical Society, than there is [Page
13] for the existence of any great
religious Teacher of the past, who is reverenced by those who follow Him.
That is the point to which I next wish to bring you. The others are far away
in the past, and we cannot cross-examine the witnesses. But the witnesses
to this are among you at the present time, or have only lately passed
through death, leaving their testimony behind them. Some are still living
among you, as I say, and their testimony is open for any one of you to
investigate for yourself. Let us quietly look into it.
Now there are four
ways in which one may come into touch with a person at a distance. Firstly
by traveling; then the physical body of the one comes face to face with the
physical body of the other. That, to most people, would be the most satisfactory
of all, and that we have. Secondly, a person at a distance may go in the
subtle body, to a place where another is in full waking consciousness, and
there may materialize himself, so as to be visible to ordinary eyesight.
That evidence we have. Thirdly, there is testimony which may be given by
anyone whose inner eyes have been opened — who is clairvoyant — and
who, living in the physical body and in full waking consciousness, can see
a man in what we call his astral form. That was very much challenged and
thrown aside by almost every one in the early days of Madame Blavatsky, but
now many of our scientific men affirm it, and very few are prepared to deny
the possibility of it. There is so great a weight of evidence with regard
to its possibility, [Page
14] that it may
fall into the third class of evidence; the observer is waking and in the
physical body, and the observed is in the subtle body. That evidence we
have. Then there comes the fourth possibility, for those who have
developed the power of leaving the physical body at will, without loss of
consciousness; they can go to the places at which the Masters live, in the
various countries of the world, and see the Masters in Their physical bodies
while they themselves are in the subtle body. That evidence we have.
There are thus
four classes of evidence: (1) where both are present in one place; (2)
where a materialization of the one visible to the physical sight of the other
is present; (3) where the clairvoyant observer is in the physical body and
the observed is in the subtle body; and (4) where the observed is in the
subtle body, and the observer is in the physical body. Now we have a mass
of evidence of all these four classes. A good many of the people who give
it are still living and available, so that they can be directly questioned
and judged by ordinary canons of evidence. The two who first gave evidence
of all the four classes — Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott — passed
away, but have left their testimony. On Madame Blavatsky's name I pause
for a moment, because of the insults of those who did not know her, who
accused her of chicanery and fraud; but we who knew her and still know,
we bear our testimony that no nobler, wiser, man or woman has
lived in the present generation upon earth. The insults, the mud, which
fanatics and sceptics throw upon her memory, [Page
15] disgrace only the
throwers. Evidence of the possibility of the facts she alleged has been
accumulating since she passed away. Those who have looked into the
evidence against her know how weak it is.
Let me take
one illustration. I have seen the testimony of Dr. Hodgson in the S. P.
R.'s Report. But had he had any serious experience in psychical matters when
he came out to Adyar ? Did he not, later in life, with his riper judgment,
admit as possible and real, a mass of phenomena such as he denied in the
crude days of his youth, when he set himself to investigate the psychical
phenomena at Adyar ? I met him before he died, after he had gathered much
experience, after he had investigated such phenomena for years, and had
experimented with Mrs. Piper and others; he then told me honestly
enough: “If I had known then what I know now, I would never have
issued the Report as sent outâ€. Madame Blavatsky came into
conflict with the materialism of the day, and she broke it with her lion's
strength, and on her devoted head have fallen all the insults, while the beliefs
that she asserted are now becoming the beliefs of the scientific world. Colonel
Olcott was never accused of fraud; he was said to have been hypnotized, psychologized,
a very usual form of accusation, and one which it is practically impossible
wholly to rebut. His testimony was clear and strong: that in America he had
seen his Master with his own physical eyes, and had received from Him His turban,
which he always treasured; that here in India he had seen Him many times,
and he placed some [Page
16] of these occasions on record
in the Old DiaryLeaves; one, of which he tells us, was that time when the Master Morya
visited his bungalow in Bombay in the flesh, coming in full daylight and
on horseback; Master Koot Hoomi he also met at Lahore in His physical body.
He saw Them often with his physical eyes — for he was not
clairvoyant — when They materialized. The late Subba Rao and Mr.
Leadbeater, in their physical bodies, visited the Nilgiri Master in His
physical body in His own home, and the latter met physically the Master
Razoki in Europe, the Master being also in the physical body. The
testimony is clear; hallucination does not explain it, nor is there any
sign of hypnotization. But you may say that, after all, Colonel Olcott was
dominated by this idea, was prepossessed by it. He was not dominated by
it in New York, when he did not believe, but was convinced by his own
eyes. What about Pandit Bhavani Shankar, who is still living, still available,
who writes: “I have seen the latter (my venerated Gurudeva, K. H.), my
Master, in His physical body and recognized Himâ€. Take, if you prefer it,
the testimony of an Englishman, Mr. Brown, who has said, in print, that
he saw the same Master in Lahore, “in His own physical bodyâ€. Damodar has
left on record that he saw in His physical body at Lahore the same Master
whom he had seen in astral form at Adyar; and also that he met Him in
Jammu, and was in an ãshrama for some days where he met several
Masters. Mr. Mohini Chatterji says that he met the same Master in the
Madras Presidency, [Page
17] Mr. S. Ramaswamier and Mr.
R. Kesava Pillai, Inspector of Police, also saw Masters in the physical body
near Sikkim. I am quoting from statements mostly made close to the time of
the seeing, available for any of you. Can a little of such evidence be brought
to sustain the existence of any great religious Teacher in the past ?
Can you say that
all these men are deliberately deceiving the people around them ? But why
? A man who deceives has an object in deceiving — money fame, credit,
or some such thing. But by confessing that he has stood face to face with
a living Master he receives only scorn, contempt and insult. Why should a
man go out of his way in order to gain such a reward ? And there are others
similarly, whose records are, some of them, given in the little book of mine
called Madame Blavatsky and theMasters of the Wisdom, wherein you may read first-hand testimony of
those who, in their physical bodies, have seen the Masters in their physical
bodies, face to face, and who in their physical bodies saw the Masters in the
subtle. Mr. Ross Scott, the late Judicial Commissioner of Oudh, sitting in
the shadow of a veranda at Adyar, when the library was in full light, saw the
figure of the Master, apparently a living physical man, walking to a table,
whereon a letter was subsequently found. Numbers of people now living amongst
you have seen similar things; you can ask them, question them. Government officials
many of them, reasonable men, respected in the community to which they belong.
What [Page
18] right have you to brand
them all as liars or unconscious deceivers? Their testimony would hang a
man. You would send a man to jail for life on the testimony of one or two
of them. If you refuse that same testimony when it is not a matter of criminal
law, but a matter which your prejudices prevent you from believing, then
we have the right to say you do not wish to know, you have made up your
minds that such things cannot be. But the evidence is there.
Take the second kind of evidence: those who in waking
consciousness have seen Them materialized. Very many bear witness to that,
and the evidence is in print for all to read. Many again in waking consciousness
have seen Them clairvoyantly. I myself have seen Them in both these
ways. I was never accused of falsehood until a Madras Paper began its
persecution of me. Throughout my long public life that accusation has
never been made. I do not appear to be particularly hallucinated, for I am
able to keep on its lines an International Society, that has its
representatives in nearly every civilized country of the world. If I am a
hysterical, emotional, or hypnotized person, I am concealing it very
cleverly. And, despite the afore-mentioned Paper I think I may claim to be
believed when I speak. Now I have seen these two Masters while wide-awake in
my physical consciousness, They sufficiently densifying Their bodies for me
to see Them with my physical eyes. In the early days I could not see, as I
can see now, subtle forms of matter, for it was just after I came into the
Theosophical Society. And yet, in 1889, in Fontainebleau, [Page
19] I
saw the Master, clear, definite in form. I knew Him not. At the time I was
only impressed with the splendor of His appearance; but when next day I
described what I had seen to H.P.B., she at once recognized the description,
as I myself later recognized its accuracy when I grew familiar with that
great Teacher. So on many occasions, I have seen others of the White Lodge,
over and over again, in houses in other lands, as well as in Their own ãshramas,
to which I have learnt to go in the subtle body. You may do the same, if
you will pay the price. Many others, men and women of different nations,
Western as well as Eastern, who have developed the power to see, the power
to know, bear similar testimony. Are all these reputable men and women, respected
and honored in the various circles in which they move, to be branded as
deceivers, or as hallucinated, because they bear testimony to a fact which
they know to be true. After all, you take testimony on any point, provided
it be not that of the existence of a perfect Man. You have not been to Central
Africa, and yet you are willing to take the testimony of people who have
been there. Many of you have not seen the King-Emperor, but you believe those
who have seen him, and you do not ask that he should be produced for your
amusement at a particular place, in order to convince you that such a person
exists. Still more is that the case when you are dealing with experiences
of your own, which are not always subjective but also objective. How many
Christian Saints have borne testimony that they have seen [Page
20] their Master, the Lord Jesus
How many Yogis in this land bear witness that they know their Teachers,
have been in Their presence, have learned from Their lips ? You must take
up the attitude of Lombroso, that all religious experiences are
hallucinations and madness, if you deny; and then you rob humanity of all
that is fairest in its experience, of all that is oldest in its life on earth.
Both generally and particularly, the evidence is overwhelmingly strong from
every religion. From each religion, from a large number of educated men
and women, who bear testimony to the existence today of Those whom
we call the Masters. Moreover there is a growing body of scientific
testimony to the fact of materialization. Apart from Sir William Crookes,
early in the field, you have Alfred R. Wallace, you have the sceptic
Lombroso, just mentioned, converted by his own experiments; you have
Gurney, Myers, hosts of witnesses. To deny this possibility now, is merely
to prove that you are ignorant. The denial is no longer a cautious
scepticism; it is deliberate prejudice and wilful obstinacy.
But it may be said:
even if there be evidence that the Masters exist, is it not dangerous, mischievous,
and harmful to believe in Them. How, and in what way ? I said I would speak
of the Path by which they have become Masters, the Path which some of us
are treading today and which you may tread, if you will. Now it is recognized
at least in four great living religions of the world — Hindûism,
Buddhism, amongst the Sûfis in Islãm and among
the Roman Catholics in Christianity — that there is a Path of swift evolution
whereby man, [Page
21] the
man of the world, may become a Saint, may reach to perfection. The Roman
Catholic Church has a discipline, clear, definite, and precise, through which
it leads those who have a true vocation for he religious life; the Path of
Purgation or Purification; of Illumination — where divine knowledge
illumines the mind; of Union — where
the man becomes one with God. That is the Christian view. The Buddhist
and the Hindû give the same account of the Path, and it is marked out
in definite stages. The names are different, but the meaning of each name
is closely similar. You may read of it in the writings of Shrî Shankaracharya,
you may read of it in the Buddhist Scriptures, wherein you have the record
of a great Teacher's instructions. It is said that when a man through many,
many births has fixed his heart and mind on reaching perfection, that in
one birth he comes to the point where he is within measurable distance of
that perfection, and the lives that lie before him are limited in number.
In order that he may approach that Path and pass through its stages there
are certain conditions laid down. These are the conditions necessary to make
a man fit to learn the Vedãnta, to become the Adhikãri, the
man ready for instruction. Probably, you all know these qualifications, four
in number; and you can say if the practice, the evolution, of these can be
harmful to anyone. The first is Discrimination between the real and the unreal,
the fleeting and the eternal; surely no harm can be done by trying to develop
this. The second is Dispassion, the conquest of the [Page
22] lower
nature, the transmutation of the lower desires into the higher, until at
last no desire is left but that of doing the Divine Will. Then come the
six mental jewels: control of mind, control of body, speech and action,
endurance, tolerance, cheerfulness, faith. There does not seem to be anything
harmful in these. Lastly, there is eagerness for Union, love of God and man.
Hindûs
and Buddhists are entirely at one in prescribing these as qualifications
for admission to the Path, and they are sometimes called the Probationary
Path. They are virtues of which every religion is in favor. They are more
precisely laid down in the Eastern religions than in the Western, as definite
qualifications, which must be developed to some extent, before the Path
itself can be entered. But the Path of Purification, of the Roman Catholic,
is the same as this Probationary Path. Even if there were no Path, if it
were only a beautiful dream, yet the men who developed these qualifications
would be better citizens and better members of the community than those
in whom they were not developed. Surely there can be nothing harmful in
preparatory teaching of that kind, which, we say, leads to a knowledge
of the Masters.
The second and third stages of the Roman Catholic
are covered by the five Initiations of the Hindu and Buddhist. The first of
these is the Parivrãjaka — the homeless man — according
to the Hindûs. For he is
seeking for his home in a higher region, and earth has no longer power to
hold him. The Buddhists call it the Srotãpatti, and speak of the new
Initiate [Page
23] as “he who has entered
the streamâ€, of
which the other shore is Masterhood. In that he may stay for seven lives;
before he leaves it, he must cast wholly off the fetters which are
doubt, superstition, and the sense of separateness. Surely again, there,
is nothing harmful. And then, when those are wholly thrown aside, the second
Initiation comes, Kutîchaka, “he who builds a hut for he becomes
the builder of his subtle bodies, and makes them capable of activity in the
higher planes of existence”. The Buddhist calls him the Sakrdãgamin,
he who takes but one more compulsory birth. Then the third, the Hamsa, “I
am Heâ€, called by the Buddhists the Anãgamin, “he who receives
(compulsory) birth no moreâ€. Herein he casts off all passion of every
kind, utterly and for ever, and all possibility of anger, even the
subtlest and most refined. There, again, there is nothing harmful, even
if you do not believe. And the striving after these is the treading of the
Path. Then he becomes the Parmahamsa, “above the Iâ€, or what the
Buddhists call the Arhat, the venerable. He is on the verge of
union, compulsory rebirth for him is over, and when he has cast off the
fetters which still clog his feet, the last traces of desire for any special
life in the form or the formless worlds, when he has thrown away pride, when
he cannot be disturbed or shaken, when ignorance falls off from him as a
veil, then he has reached human perfection, and then, and then only, can
he present himself for the fifth great Initiation, that which makes the
Master, the Jîvanmukta, the liberated Spirit, the perfect Man. He
is [Page
24] crowned with knowledge, he
reaches the last goal that can be reached by man, and he becomes the Immortal,
the Free, the Master of life and death, the Man who has become divine, a
Savior of the world. By the trending of that Path is the Master made.
I ask you
to judge what in it there is, that can be harmful to any human being, what
in that teaching, known to the most ancient Faiths and believed in practically by
ourselves, can harm any country in which we happen to be citizens?' That
is what we are trying to do; that is the goal we are endeavoring to reach;
and if, amidst the storm of detraction we remain peaceful and happy, it is
because, to some extent, we have acquired some of the qualifications which
are demanded by the ideal towards which we strive.
I
am Irish by birth and temperament, with the hot temper of my native land.
When I was a freethinker and a politician, I was not the most peaceable
of human beings, but struck hard with pen and tongue when struck. If I
am not mingling in these newspaper controversies in Madras and Bombay,
it is because in so doing I should only embitter strife, and I may not
use the weapons of untruth and misrepresentation used by my antagonists.
I have the right to defend the Society, but I would fain try first to exhaust
enmity by forbearance, rather than give reviling for reviling, or railing
for railing. “Without the use of very plain speech, which would hurt the
feelings of my assailants, no effective answer is possible. Let us try
if good life and silence will [Page
25] avail
against vituperation and slander. I believe that truth wins by life, rather
than by talk; and I, who know how to use both tongue and pen in defence
of aught that I believe to be good, I would not, if I can avoid it, speak one
word to injure one human heart, nor reply with one bitter sentence to all
the bitterness that has been heaped on that which I love more than life. For
the world is so built that victory in the long run lies with truth and not
with falsehood. You may attack, slander, abuse, you may impute motives and
say cruel things, without investigation into whether they be true or not. There
are two ways of answering an attack: to fling back mud for the mud that is
thrown, or to follow the example of the great Teachers of the world and realize
that “hatred ceases not by hatred, but
hatred ceases by loveâ€. And so this afternoon I have tried only to explain
our position, and to show you why we believe, and what the effect of such
belief must be upon conduct. I ask you, if you will, to ask yourselves
whether there is anything in that belief which is not noble and worthy, which
is not likely to inspire to noble living and to help men to strive towards
all that is best and purest in humanity. We do not do you any harm, we
Theosophists; I may go farther and say that we have done you much of
good. Before Theosophy was heard of in India, Zoroastrianism, Hindûism
and Buddhism were despised and looked down upon by the Western
world. Even Government admits that Theosophy has had a great share in
the revival of Hindûism; but I will tell you where [Page
26] we do sometimes
make enemies. We are against the rigid, literal interpretation of dogmas
that cause bitterness and controversy in the modern world. We speak for
liberty, tolerance, width of view, the striking off of modern excrescences
upon the ancient Faiths, and we show how their noblest promises are
possible of realization today. Contrast the India of today with the India
of 1880, and you will measure something of the change that the teaching of
the Ancient Wisdom has brought in your land. And so, we ask that you will
at least give us credit for good intentions, that you will realize that
we are doing our best, even if, not knowing us, you think many ill things
of us. All through the world's history, leaders of a new religious movement
have been attacked and reviled, and yet in the long run they are recognized
as light-bringers to the world. If only I could share with any one of you,
who misunderstand us, the strength and the joy, the power and the serenity
that come from the knowledge that the Masters are, that we are not
orphans in a world bereft of God, that we do not cry out and have no answer,
that we are not deserted in a desert, without a guide, without a friend.
I bear you witness, I who know, that what your Scriptures tell you is
true;
that there is a subtle body of the Spirit that can leave the physical,
and know what in the physical body it cannot know; this is what your teachers
have taught you and you have forgotten. If you believed Hindûism — you
do not really believe it or you would not laugh at us who do believe it — then
you would know that its glories are true and possible [Page
27] for you to realize, that
all the greatest things that religion has promised, are promises of Truth
and are not lies, that men can climb the Path, can scale
the mountain. If you do not agree with us, at least let us go our own way,
doing our work, striving to help, to comfort and to console. We cannot
keep to ourselves the truth we know, but we never attack the Faith of
another man. We cannot remain silent where we are bidden to speak, but
we speak gently and persuasively, and we blame none if they do not believe.
And so, friends, whether you agree with us or not, take at least this
thought from me, who know the existence of the Masters to be truth and
light and life; if it be true, no attacks upon it can prevent the spreading
of the truth; if it be a dream and false, it will perish by its own falsehood.
In the days of the childhood of Christianity a wise Jewish Judge once
spoke a word of wisdom. The teachers of Christianity were brought before
him as disturbers of the peace, as madmen stirring up the commonwealth.
“Refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this counsel or this
work be of men, it will come to naught. But if it be of God, ye cannot
overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God”.
I repeat to you in
the twentieth century those words spoken in the first. The fire of time tries
every work and will burn up the stubble; only the pure gold will remain.
We are content to stand that test. We are willing to face the world with
our message, and to be, as our forerunners were, despised, rejected of men.
Some of you will believe, for your hearts will [Page
28]
answer to the message; some of
you will answer, for your own past will voice itself in heart and brain.
For you who do not believe, and are angry because we believe where you do
not, on you may there be the blessing of the Peace which is incarnated in
the Masters, and may the Light come to you from other lips and in other ways,
although from us you may despise it and reject it.