Theosophy - Vegetarianism in the Light of Theosophy by Annie Besant
Adyar
Pamphlets No.
27
VEGETARIANISM
IN THE LIGHT OF THEOSOPHY
by ANNIE
BESANT
Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India
First
printed: May, 1913
Second Edition: November, 1919
Third Edition:
April, 1932
THE
title of the lecture that I am to deliver to you tonight shows you,
I think, the limitations which I practically impose upon both the
subjects mentioned in it, so defining the limits of what I have to
say. I am to speak to you on "Vegetarianism in the Light of
Theosophy''. Now, it is certain that you may argue for the
vegetarian theory and practice from very many points of view. You may
take it from the standpoint of physical health; you may take it
along the physiological and chemical lines; you might make a very
strong argument in its favour from the connection between it and the
use, or rather the disuse, of strong liquor, because the use of
alcohol and the use of meat are very closely connected with each
other, and are very apt to vary together in the same individual; or
you might take it from other standpoints, familiar, probably, to many
of you, in the arguments that you road in vegetarian journals and
hear from vegetarian speakers. So again with Theosophy. If I were
going to deal [Page 2] with
it by itself, I should be giving an impression of its meaning and
doctrines, tracing for you, perhaps, the course of its history,
advancing arguments as to the reasonableness of its general teaching,
as to the value of its philosophy to man. But I am going to take the
two subjects in relation to each other, and that relation means that
I am going to try to bring to some of you, who very likely are
already vegetarians, arguments along a line of thought that may be
less familiar to you than those with which vegetarianism is generally
supported. And I am going also to try to show to those of you who are
not vegetarians that, from the Theosophical standpoint, there are
arguments to be adduced, other than those which deal with the
nourishment of the body, with chemical or physiological questions, or
even with its bearing on the drink traffic a line of thought
entirely different from these, and valuable perhaps especially
because of its difference; just as you might bring up fresh
reinforcements to an army that is already struggling against
considerable odds.
The vegetarianism that I am going to argue about
tonight is that which will be familiar to all of you as the
abstinence from all those kinds of food which imply the slaying of
the animal, or cruelty inflicted upon the animal. I am not going to
take up any special line of argument, such as those which may divide
one vegetarian party from the other. I am not going to argue [Page 3]
about
cereals, nor about fruits, nor about the variety of diets which form
so much of the discussion at the present time. I am going to take the
broad line of abstinence from all kinds of animal food, and I am
going to try to show the reasons for such abstinence which may be
drawn from the teachings of Theosophy, which may be endorsed by that
view of the world and of men which is known under this name.
I
ought to say before putting the argument that, while I believe the
argument I put to be perfectly sound from the standpoint of
Theosophy, I have no right to pledge the Theosophical Society as a
whole to the acceptance of that argument, for, as many of you know,
we do not require from persons who enter the Theosophical Society
their acceptance of the doctrines which are known under the general
name of Theosophy. We only ask them to accept the doctrine of
universal brotherhood, and to search after truth in the cooperative
spirit, as it were, rather than in the competitive. That is, we
require from our members that they shall not attack aggressively the
religions or other views of their neighbours, but that they shall
show the same respect to others as they expect others will show to
them in the expression of their opinions. With that one obligation we
are content. We do not try to force Theosophical views on those who
enter. Those of us who believe them to be true have faith in the
force of truth itself, and therefore we leave [Page
4] our
members perfectly free to accept or to reject them. That being so,
you will understand that in speaking I am not committing the Society.
The views that I speak are drawn from the Philosophy which may or may
not he held by any individual member of our union.
Now,
the first line of argument to which I am going to ask your attention
regarding vegetarianism in the light of Theosophy, is this:
Theosophy regards man as part of a great line of evolution; it
regards man's place in the world as a link in a mighty chain, a chain
which has its first link in manifestation in the divine life itself,
which comes down, link after link, through great hierarchies or
classes of evolving spiritual intelligences, which, coming downwards
in this fashion from its divine origin through spiritual entities,
then involves itself in the manifestation that we know as our own
world; that this world, which is but the expression of the divine
thought, is penetrated through and through with this divine life;
that everything that we call law is the expression of this divine
nature; that all study of manifestation of law is the study of this
divine mind in nature; so that the world is to be looked on, not as
essentially matter and force, as from the standpoint of materialistic
science, but essentially as life and consciousness involving itself
for purposes of manifestation in that which we recognise as matter
and as force. [Page
4]
Then,
starting with this idea and tracing what we may call this involution
of life to its lowest point, we come to the mineral kingdom; from
that to the life working upwards again, as it were, in an ascending
cycle instead of a descending matter becoming more and more
ductile under the force of this now evolving life, becoming more and
more plastic until from the mineral is evolved the vegetable.
Then, as, working in the vegetable kingdom, matter becomes yet more
plastic and therefore better able to express the life and
consciousness which are working within it, you come to the evolution
of the animal kingdom, with its more highly differentiated energies,
with its growing complexity of organisation, with its increased power
for feeling pleasure and pain, and, above all, with the increase of
individualisation, these creatures becoming more and more of the type
of individuals, becoming more and more separated, as it were, in
their consciousness, beginning to show the germs of higher
consciousness; this primary life, that lives in all, being able to
express itself more completely in this more highly organised nervous
system, and being, as it were, trained in that by more responses to
the contacts from the external universe. Then, still climbing
upwards, it finds a far, far higher manifestation in the human form,
and that human form is animated by the Soul and by the Spirit the
Soul which through the body manifests itself as mind, and the Spirit
which [Page
6] by
the evolution of the Soul gradually comes into manifestation in this
external universe.
Thus
man, by virtue of this Soul that becomes self-conscious, by virtue of
this higher evolution the highest which exists in material form
in our world is, as it were, the highest expression of this
evolving life; he ought, therefore, also to be the most perfect
expression of this continually growing manifestation of law. Because
of the will which develops itself in man, which has the power of
choice, which is able to say "I will", or "I will not",
which separates itself from the lower forms of living creatures by
this very power of self-conscious determination, which, just because
it is near the expression of the divine, shows those marks of
thought, of spontaneous action, which are characteristics of the
supreme life evolving itself in matter just because of all that,
man has a double possibility, a greater responsibility, a higher or a
more degraded destiny. He has this power of choice. That law which in
lower forms of life is impressed on the form and which the form
obeys, as it were, by way of compulsion; the law which in the
mineral world leaves no choice to the mineral atoms; which, in the
vegetable world again, is a compulsory law, developing it along
certain definite lines, without, as far as we are able to judge, much
power of resistance; which in the animal speaks as instinct, which
the animal obeys, and obeys continually; [Page
7] that
law, as we follow the general order, when it comes to deal with man,
finds a change.
Man
is the disorderly element in nature; man it is who, although he has
higher possibilities, sets up discord in this realm of law; man it
is who, just by virtue of his developed will, has the power of
setting himself against law and holding his own, as it were, for a
while against it. In the long run the law will crush him. Always when
he sets himself against it, the law justifies itself by the pain
which it inflicts; he cannot really break it, but he can cause
disorder, he can cause disharmony, he can, by this will of his,
refuse to follow out the highest and the best, and deliberately
choose the lower and the worse road. And just because of that power
the power of choice he has higher possibilities than lie before
the mineral, the vegetable, or the animal world. For it is a higher
type of harmony to put oneself consciously into union with the law
than it is to be simply an apparatus moved by it without the volition
that consciously chooses the higher; and therefore man is in this
position: he may fall lower than the brute, but ho can also rise
infinitely higher. Therefore, the responsibility comes upon him to be
the trainer of the lower nature, the educator of the lower nature,
the gradual moulder, as it were, of the world into higher forms of
being and nobler types of life. And man, wherever he goes, should be
the friend of all, the helper of all, the lover of all, expressing
his [Page
8] nature
that is love in his daily life, and bringing to every lower creature
not only the control that may be used to educate, but the love also
that may be used to lift that lower creature in the scale of being.
Apply
then that principle of man's place in the world, vicegerent in a very
real sense, ruler and monarch of the world, but with the power of
being either a bad monarch or a good, and responsible to the whole of
the universe for the use that he makes of the power. Take then man in
relation to the lower animals from this standpoint. Clearly, if we
are to look at him in this position, slaying them for his own
gratification is at once placed out of court. He is not to go amongst
the happy creatures of the woods, and bring there the misery of fear,
of terror, of horror, by carrying destruction wherever he goes; he
is not to arm himself with hook and with gun, and with other weapons
which he is able to make, remember, only by virtue of the mind which
is developed within him. Prostituting those higher powers of mind to
make himself the more deadly enemy of the other sentient creatures
that share the world with him, he uses the mind, that should be there
to help and to train the lower, to carry fresh forms of misery and
destructive energy in every direction. When you see a man go amongst
the lower animals, they fly from his face, for experience has taught
them what it means to meet a man. If he goes into some secluded part
of the [Page 9] earth
where human foot has rarely trodden, there he will find the animals
fearless and friendly, and he can go about amongst crowds of them and
they shrink not from his touch. Take the accounts you will read of
travellers who have gone into some district where man has not
hitherto penetrated, and you will read how he can walk among crowds
of birds and other creatures as friend with friends. And it is only
when he begins to take advantage of their confidence to strike them
down, only then, by experience of what the presence of man means to
them, do they learn the lesson of distrust, of fear, of flying from
his presence. So that in every civilised country, wherever there is a
man, in field or in wood, all living things fly at the sound of his
footstep; and he is not the friend of every creature but the one who
brings terror and alarm, and they fly from his presence.
And
yet there have been some men from whom there has rayed out so
strongly the spirit of love, that the living things of field and
forest crowded around them wherever they went; men like St. Francis of
Assisi, of whom it is told that, as he walked the woods, the birds
would fly to him and perch on his body, so strongly did they feel the
sense of love that was around him as a halo wherever he trod. So in
India you will find man after man in whom this same spirit of love
and compassion is seen, and in the woods and the jungle, on the
mountain and in the desert, [Page
10] these
two men
may go wherever they will, and even the wild beasts will not touch
them I could tell you stories of Yogis there, harmless in every act
of thought and life, who will go through jungles where tigers are
crouching, and the tiger will sometimes come and lie at their feet
and lick their feet, harmless as a kitten might be, in face of the
spirit of love. And thus it might he with all things that live: thus
it would be, if we were friend instead of foe. And though, in truth,
it would now take many a century to undo the evil of a bloodstained
past, still the undoing is possible, the friendliness might be made,
and each man, each woman, who in life is friendly to the lower
creatures, is adding his quota to the love in the world, which
ultimately will subdue all things to itself.
Pass
from that duty of man as monarch of the world to the next point which
in Theosophical teaching forbids the slaughter of living things. Some
of you may know that part of our teaching is that the physical world
is interpenetrated and surrounded by a subtler world of matter that
we speak of as "astral"; that in that, subtle matter
which may be called ether if the name be more familiar to you forces
especially have their home; that in that world you have the
reflection and the imaging of what occurs on the material plane; that
thoughts also take image there, just as actions are there reflected,
and this astral world lies between the material world and the world
of [Page
11] thought.
The thought-world, full of the thoughts of men, sends down these
potent energies into the astral world; there they take image, which
reacts upon the physical. It is this which is so often felt by the "sensitive".
When he comes into a special hall, a house, a city, he is able to tell you,
by a subtle feeling that he may be unable to explain, something of the general
characteristics of the atmosphere of that house, or hall, or city whether
to him it is pure or foul; whether to him it is friendly or hostile; whether
it exerts upon him a healthful or a hindering influence. One of the ways
in which you may recognise the working of this astral world is by
connecting it in your thought, as science is beginning to connect the
ether, with all magnetic currents, and with all electric action.
Take, for instance, the action that a speaker has upon a crowd. That
is dependent upon the presence of this ethereal matter in which
magnetic forces work, so that a sentence which is spoken charged with
the magnetism of the speaker has a wholly different effect upon those
on whose ears it falls than if they read the same sentence in cold
blood, as it is called, in a newspaper or a book. Why ? Because the
force of the speaker, taking form in this subtle matter which is the
medium between him and the hearers, sets it throbbing to his
vibrations; his magnetism charges it, throws it into waves, and
these waves strike upon the similar matter in the bodies of the
hearers, and the wave [Page12]
sweeps
right across the hall, and this vibration of a single thought for the
moment makes all who are there feel its power alike, though they may
not do so afterwards. Over and over again, in talking to
people talking, I mean, from the platform when the magnetic
force is strong, you will carry away the people you are talking to,
although they may not agree with the arguments you are putting to
them, and you will see somebody clapping madly in his applause who
you know is antagonistic to the thought that you are then expressing.
Meet him on the following day, and you will find him very angry with
himself because he let himself be carried away for the moment. What
has done it ? It is this magnetic sympathy, this throwing of ether
into waves, which strike on him as they strike on others, and both
his body and brain respond to the vibrations, and so for a time he is
mastered by this magnetic power of the speaker.
Now,
taking that — which is only an illustration, to show you what I mean
by this astral matter and the way in which it is thrown into
vibration by magnetic currents think of astral matter for a
moment from the standpoint of Theosophy as interpenetrating and
surrounding our world ; then carry your thoughts to a
slaughter-house. Try to estimate, if you can, by imagination if
you have not been unfortunate enough to see it in reality something
of the passions and emotions which there are aroused, not for the
moment in the man who is [Page
13]
slaying I
will deal with him presently but in the animals that are being
slain!I Notice the terror that strikes on them as they come within
scent of the blood! See the misery, and the fright, and the horror
with which they struggle to get away even from the turning down which
they are being driven! Follow them, if you have the courage to do
it, right into the slaughter-house, and see them as they are being
slain, and then let your imagination go a step further, or, if you
have the subtle power of sensing astral vibrations, look, and
remember what you see: images of terror, of fear, of horror, as the
life is suddenly wrenched out of the body, and the animal soul with
its terror, with its horror, goes out into the astral world to remain
there for a considerable period before it breaks up and perishes. And
remember that wherever this slaughtering of animals goes on, you are
there making a focus for all these passions of horror and of terror,
and that those react on the material world, that those react on the
minds of men, and that anyone who is sensitive, coming into the
neighbourhood of such a place, sees and feels these terrible
vibrations, suffer under them, and knows whence they are.
Now,
suppose that you went to Chicago I take that illustration
because it is one where I myself particularly noticed this effect.
Chicago, as you know, is pre-eminently a slaughtering city; it is
the city where they have, I suppose, the most elaborate arrangements
for the killing of animals [Page
14] which
human ingenuity has yet devised, where it is done by machinery very
largely, and where myriads upon myriads of creatures are slaughtered
week by week. No one who is the least sensitive, far less anyone who
by training has had some of these inner senses awakened, can pass not
only into Chicago, but within miles of Chicago, without being
conscious of a profound sense of depression that comes down upon him,
a sense of shrinking, as it were, from pollution, a sense of horror
which at first is not clearly recognised nor is its source at once
seen. Now, here I am speaking only of what I know. And, as it
happened, when I went to Chicago, I was reading, as I am in the habit
of doing in the train, and I did not even know that I was coming
within a considerable distance of the town for the place is so
enormous that it stretches much farther than a stranger would
imagine, and it takes far longer to reach the centre than one has any
notion of and I was conscious suddenly, as I sat there in the
train, of this sense of oppression that came upon me; I did not
recognise it at first, ray thoughts were anywhere but in the city;
but it made itself so strongly felt that I began to look and to try
to sense what it was that was causing this result; and I found very
soon what the reason of it was, and then I remembered that I was
coming into the great slaughter-house of the United States. It was as
though one came within a physical pall of blackness and of
misery this psychic or astral result [Page
15]
being,
as it were, the covering that overspread that mighty town. And I say
to you that for those who know anything of the invisible world, this
constant slaughtering of animals takes on a very serious aspect,
apart from all other questions which may be brought to elucidate it;
for this continual throwing down of these magnetic influences of
fear, of horror, and of anger, and passion, and revenge, works on the
people amongst whom they play, and tends to coarsen, tends to
degrade, tends to pollute. It is not only the body that is soiled by
the flesh of animals, it is the subtler forces of the man that also
come within this area of pollution, and much, very much of the
coarser side of city life, of the coarser side of the life of those
who are concerned in the slaughtering, comes directly from this
reflection from the astral world, and the whole of this terrible
protest comes from the escaped lives of the slaughtered beasts.
I
said that there was this, apart from the men who slaughter. But can
we rightly leave them out of consideration when we are dealing with
the question of flesh-eating? It is clear that neither you nor I can
eat flesh unless we either slay it for ourselves or get somebody else
to do it for us; therefore, we are directly responsible for any
amount of deterioration in the moral character of the men on whom we
throw this work of slaughtering because we are too delicate and
refined to perform it for ourselves. Now take the case of the [Page
16] slaughterer.
I suppose no one will contend that it is a form of business which he
himself would very gladly take up, if he be either an educated or
refined man or woman for I do not know why women should be left
out of this, as they figure largely amongst meat-eaters. I presume
that very few men and very few women would be willing to go and catch
hold either of sheep or of oxen and themselves slaughter the
creatures in order that they may eat. They admit that it has on the
person who does it a certain coarsening influence. So much is that
recognised by law that, certainly in the United States I don't
know if the law is the same here no butcher is permitted to sit
on a jury in a murder trial; he is not permitted to take part in such
a trial, simply because his continual contact with slaughter is held
to somewhat blunt his susceptibilities in that connection, so that
all through the States no man of the trade of a butcher is permitted
to take part as juryman in a trial for murder. That law is not
confined to the States, but, as I say, I do not know if it is the law
in England. This is very clear and definite: that if you go to a city
like Chicago, and if you take the class of slaughtermen there, you
will find that the number of crimes of violence in that class is
greater than among any other class of the community; that the use of
the knife is far more common, and this has been observed I am
speaking now of facts that I gathered at Chicago it has been [Page
17] observed
that this use of the knife is marked by one peculiar feature, namely,
that the blow struck in anger by these trained slaughtermen is
almost invariably fatal, because instinctively they give it the
peculiar twist of the hand to which they are continually habituated
in their daily killing of the lower animals. Now that, in Chicago, is
recognised as a fact, but it does not seem to imply in the minds of
the people any moral responsibility for their share in the evolution
of this very uncomfortable type of human being. And so with the whole
question of slaughtering in this city and anywhere else.
Has
it ever struck you as a rule in ethics that you have no right to put
upon another human being for your own advantage a duty that you are
not prepared to discharge yourself? It is all very well for some tine
and delicate and refined lady to be proud of her delicacy and
refinement, to shrink from any notion, say, of going to tea with a
butcher, to certainly strongly object to the notion of his coming
into her drawing-room, to shrink altogether from the idea of
consorting with such persons "So coarse, you know, and so
unpleasant". Quite so, but why ? In order that she may eat meat,
in order that she may gratify her appetite; and she puts on another
the coarsening and the brutalising which she escapes from herself in
her refinement, while she takes for the gratification of her own
appetite the fruits of
[Page 18] the
brutalisation of her fellow men. Now, I venture to submit that if
people want to eat meat, they should kill the animals for themselves,
that they have no right to degrade other people by work of that sort.
Nor should they say that if they did not do it the slaughter would
still go on. That is no sort of way of evading a moral
responsibility. Every person who eats meat takes a share in that
degradation of his fellow men; on him and on her personally lies the
share, and personally lies the responsibility. And if this world be a
world of law, if it be true that law obtains not only in the
physical, but also in the mental and the moral and the spiritual
world ; then every person who has a share in the crime has a share
also in the penalty that follows on the heels of the crime, and so in
his own nature is brutalised by the brutality that he makes necessary
by his share in the results that come therefrom.
There
is another point for which people are responsible in addition to
their responsibility to the slaughtering class. They are responsible
for all the pain that grows out of meat-eating, and which is
necessitated by the use of sentient animals as food; not only the
horrors of the slaughterhouse, but also the preliminary horrors of
the railway traffic, of the steamboat and ship traffic; all the
starvation and the thirst, and the prolonged misery of fear which
these unhappy creatures have to pass through for the gratification
of the appetite [Page
19] of
man. If you want to know something of it, go down and see the
creatures brought off some of the ships, and you will see the fear,
you will see the pain, which is marked on the faces of these our
lower fellow-creatures. I say you have no right to inflict it, that
you have no right to be party to it, that all that pain acts as a
record against humanity and slackens and retards the whole of human
growth; for you cannot separate yourself in that way from the world,
you cannot isolate yourself and go on in evolution yourself while you
are trampling others down. Those that you trample on retard your own
progress. The misery that you cause is, as it were, mire that clings
round your feet when you would ascend; for we have to rise together
or to fall together, and all the misery we inflict on sentient beings
slackens our human evolution, and makes the progress of humanity
slower towards the ideal that it is seeking to realise.
Looking
at the thing from this broad standpoint, we get away from all the
smaller arguments on which discussion arises, away from all questions
as to whether meat nourishes or not, whether it helps the human body
or not; and we take our ground fundamentally on this solid position:
that nothing that retards the growth and the progress of the world,
nothing that adds to its suffering, nothing that increases its
misery, nothing that prevents its evolution towards higher forms of
life, can possibly [Page
20] be
justified, even if it could be shown that the physical vigour of
man's body were increased by passing along that road. So that we get
a sound standpoint from which to argue. Then you may go on, if you
will, to argue that as a matter of fact the physical vigour does not
need these articles of food; but I would rather take my solid stand
on a higher ground: that is, on the evolution of the higher nature
everywhere, and the harmony which it is man's duty to increase, and
finally to render perfect in the world.
You
may notice on all these points I have been arguing outside, as it
were, the individual meat-eater; I am not, therefore, urging
abstinence for the sake of personal improvement, for the sake of
personal development, for the sake of personal growth. I have been
putting it on the higher basis of duty, of compassion, of altruism,
on those essential qualities which mark the higher evolution of the
world. But we have a right also to turn to the individual and see the
bearing on himself, on his body, on his mind, on his spiritual
growth, which this question of meat-eating or abstinence from meat
may have. And it has a very real bearing. It is perfectly true, as
regards the body, when you look upon it as an instrument of the mind,
when you look on it as that which is to develop into an instrument of
the Spirit; it is perfectly true that it is a matter of very great
importance what particular kind of nourishment you contribute to [Page
21] the
body that you have in charge. And here Theosophy comes in and says:
This body that the Soul is inhabiting is an exceedingly fleeting
thing; it is made up of minute particles, each one of which is a
life, and these lives are continually changing, continually passing
from one body to another, so that you get a great stream as it were
of particles going from body to body and affecting, as they fall on
them, all these bodies, affecting them either for good or for evil.
Science, remember, is also coming to recognise that as truth.
Science, studying disease, has found that disease is constantly
propagated by these minute organisms that it speaks of as microbes;
it has not yet recognised that the whole body is made of minute
living creatures that come and go with every hour of our life, that
build our body today, the body of someone else tomorrow, passing
away and coming continually, a constant interchange going on between
these bodies of men, women, animals, children, and so on.
Now
suppose for a moment you look on the body from that standpoint,
first, again, will come your responsibility to your fellows. These
tiny lives that are building your body take on themselves the stamp
that you put upon them while they are yours; you feed them and
nourish them, and that affects their characteristics; you give to
them either pure or foul food ; you either poison them or you render
them healthy; and as you feed [Page
22] them
they pass away from you, and carry from you to the bodies of others
these characteristics that they have gained while living in your
charge; so that what a man eats, what a man drinks, is not a matter
for himself alone, hut for the whole community of which that man is
part; and any man who in his eating or in his drinking is not careful
to be pure, restrained and temperate, becomes a focus of physical
evil in the place where he is, and tends to poison his brother men
and to make their vitality less pure than it ought to be. Here both
in flesh and in drink the great responsibility comes in. It is clear
that the nature of the food very largely affects the physical
organism, and gives, as it were, a physical apparatus for the
throwing out of one quality or another. Now the qualities reside in
the Soul, but they are manifested through the brain and the body;
therefore, the materials of which the brain and the body are made up
is a matter of very considerable importance, for just as the light
that shines through a coloured window comes through it coloured and
no longer white, so do the qualities of the Soul working through the
brain and the body take up something of the qualities of brain and
body, and manifest their condition by the characteristics of that
brain and that body alike.
Now,
suppose that you look for a moment at some of the lower animals in
connection [Page
23] with
their food; you find that according to their food, so are the
characteristics that they show. Nay, if you even take a dog, you find
that you can make that dog either gentle or fierce according to the
nature of the food with which you supply him. Now, while it is
perfectly true that the animal is much more under the control of the
physical body than the man; while it is quite true that the animal
is more plastic to these outer influences than the man with the
stronger self-determining will; still it is also true that, inasmuch
as the man has a body and can only work through that body in the
material world, he makes his task either harder or easier as regards
the qualities of the Soul, according to the nature of the physical
apparatus which that Soul is forced to use in its manifestations in
the outer world. And if in feeding the body he feeds these tiny
lives, which make it up, with food which brings into action, with
them, the passions of the lower animals and their lower nature; then,
he is making a grosser and a more animal body, more apt to respond to
animal impulses, and less apt to respond to the higher impulses of
the mind. For when he uses in the building of his own body these tiny
lives from the bodies of the lower animals, he is there giving to his
Soul as an instrument a vehicle which vibrates most easily under
animal impulses. Is it not hard enough to grow pure in thought ? Is
it not hard enough to control the passions of the body ? [Page
24]
Is
it not hard enough to be temperate in food, in drink, and in all the
appetites that belong to the physical frame ? Has not the Soul
already a difficult task enough, that we should make its task harder
by polluting the instrument through which it has to work, and by
giving it material that will not answer to its subtler impulses, but
that answers readily to all the lower passions of the animal nature
to which the Soul is bound ? And then, when you remember that you
pass it on, that as you eat meat, and so strengthen these animal and
lower passions, you are printing on the molecules of your own body
the power of thus responding, you ought surely to train and purify
your body, and not continually help it, as it were, to remain so
responsive to these vibrations belonging to the animal kingdom. And
as you do so you send them abroad as your ambassadors to your follow
men, making their task harder, as well as your own, by training these
tiny lives for evil and not for good ; and so the task of every man
who is struggling upwards is also rendered harder by this increase of
the molecules that vibrate to the lower passions. And while that is
true in the most terrible degree of the taking of alcohol which
acts as an active poison, going forth from every one who takes it it
is also true of this animalising of the human body, instead of the
ensouling and spiritualising of it; we are keeping the plane of
humanity lower by this constant degradation of the animal self. [Page
25]
When
you come then to think of the evolution of the Soul in yourself, what
is your object in life? Why are you here ? For what are you living ?
There is only one thing which justifies the life of man, only one
thing that answers to all that is noblest in him and gives him a
sense of satisfaction and of duty done; and that is when he makes his
life a constant offering for the helping of the world, and when every
part of his life is so regulated that the world may be the better for
his presence in it and not the worse. In Soul, in thought, in body, a
man is responsible for the use he makes of his life. We cannot tear
ourselves apart from our brothers; we ought not to wish to do it,
even if we could, for this world is climbing upwards slowly towards a
divine ideal, and every Soul that recognises the fact should lend its
own hand to the raising of the world. You and I are either helping
the world upward or pulling the world downward; with every day of
our life we are either giving it a force for the upward climbing or
we are clogs on that upward growth; and every true Soul desires to
be a help and not a hindrance, to be a blessing and not a curse, to
be amongst the raisers of the world and not amongst those who degrade
it. Every true Soul wishes it, whether or not it is strong enough
always to carry the wish into act. And shall we not at least put
before us as ideal that sublime conception of helping, and blame
ourselves whenever we fall below it. whether in [Page
26] the
feeding of the body or in the training of the mind?
For
it seems to me, looking at man in the light of Theosophy, that all
that makes life well worth having is this co-operation with the
divine life in nature, which is gradually moulding the world into a
nobler image, and making it grow ever nearer and nearer to a perfect
ideal. If we could make men and women see it, if only we could make
them respond to the thought of such power on their own side, if only
they would recognise this divine strength that is in them to help in
the making of a world, to share in the evolution of a universe, if
they could understand that this world in theirs, placed as it were in
their hands and in their charge, that the growth of the world depends
upon them, that the evolution of the world is laid upon them, that if
they will not help, the divine life itself cannot find instruments
whereby to work on this material plane if they would realise
that, then, with very many falls, their faces would be set upward;
with very many mistakes and blunders and weaknesses, still they
would be turned in the right direction, and they would be gazing at
the ideal that they long to realise. And so in mind and in body, in
their work in the inner world of force as in the outer world of
action, the one ruling idea would be: Will this act and thought of
mine make the world better or worse, will it raise it or lower it,
will it help my fellow men or hinder [Page 27] them
? Shall the power of the Soul be used to raise or to lower ? If that
thought were the central force of life, even though forgetting it or
failing, the Soul would again take up the effort and refuse to yield
because it had so often failed. If we could all do that and think
that, and win others to do it too, then sorrow would pass away from
earth, the cries and the anguish and the misery of sentient existence
would lessen; then from man, become one with divine law, would love
radiate through the world and bring it into nobler harmony. And each
who turns his face in that direction, each who purifies his own
thought, his own body, his own life, is a fellow-worker with the
inner life of the world, and the development of his own Spirit shall
come as guerdon for the work he does for the helping of the world.
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