Theosophy - The Vision of the Spirit by C.Jinarajadasa - Adyar Pamphlets No. 26
Adyar
Pamphlets No.
26
THE VISION OF THE SPIRIT
by C.Jinarajadasa
A lecture
delivered before the Thirty-sixth Annual Convention, T. S., held
in Benaras, 1911.
published
in April
1913 as a pamphlet by the
Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai (Madras), India 600 020
The
history of humanity is the history of ideas, and the stages through
which men have risen from savage to civilised are distinguishable one
from the other by the influence of certain great doctrines. Among
these teachings that have moulded civilisations, the idea of
Evolution stands out as heralding a new era in the world of thought.
Considered at first as of more academic interest, soon it was
recognised as of practical value, and to-day it is known as necessary
in the understanding of every problem in every department of being.
Nevertheless
it is a fact that the doctrine of evolution is a theory after all.
No
one has lived long enough to see sufficient links in the evolutionary
chain to attest that the changes postulated as having taken place
actually did so occur, and that the chain is not a fancy but a fact.
Yet evolution is accepted by all as a dynamic idea, for like a magic
wand it performs wonders in the world of thought. It marshalls the
heterogeneous organisms of nature into orderly groups, and from
inanimate element
to protoplasm, from unicellular organism to multi cellular, from
invertebrate to vertebrate, from ape to man, one ascending scale of
life is seen.
And
striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
Yet
none can say that evolution is an agreeable fact to contemplate, for
there is a ruthlessness to nature's methods that is appalling.
Utterly cruel and wasteful she seems, creating and perfecting her
creatures only to prey on each other, generating more than can live
in the fierce struggle for existence; " red in tooth and claw
with ravin," she builds and unbuilds and builds again,
one-pointed only that a type shall survive and reckless of the
pleasure or pain to a single life. Men themselves, proud though
they | be in a fancied freedom of thought and action, are nothing but
pawns in a game she plays. The more fully evolution is understood
from such facts as scientists have so far gathered, the more
justifiably can men say with Omar of their birth, life, and death:
Into
this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water
willy-nilly flowing,
And
out of it, like Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly
blowing.
Of
course this attitude does not represent that of the majority of men.
Millions of men believe in a Creator and that " God's in His
heaven, all's right with the world !" But it is no exaggeration
to say that
their optimism continually receives rude shocks. No man or woman of
sensibility can look about him and not agree with Tennyson's
comparison of life to a
play.
Act
first, this earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe
You
all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And
yet he patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this
wild Drama means.
Both
the idea of evolution and the idea of a Divine Guidance, as at
present conceived, fail to satisfy fully the
needs of men for an inspiring view of life. The former indeed shows
a
splendid pageant of nature, but it has no message to individual man
except to make
the most of his brief day of life, and stoically resign himself to
extinction when nature shall have no further use for him. The latter
speaks to men's hearts in alluring accents of a power that maketh for
righteousness, but it sees God as existing only in the gaps of that
pitiless cosmic order that science reveals. It is obvious, therefore,
that any philosophy which postulates an inseparable relation between
God and evolution, between nature and man, is worthy of examination,
and this is the view of life that Theosophy propounds in the light
of
one great idea.
This
idea is that of the Evolution of Life. Just as modern science tells
us of a ceaseless change of forms from protoplasm to man, so
Theosophy asserts that there is, pari passu, a changing, growing
life.
This life does not depend on the forms, though we see it associated
with them; and of it Theosophy says that first it is indestructible,
and second that it evolves.
" It
is indestructible, in the sense that when an organism
is destroyed, nevertheless all is not destroyed, for there remains
a
life that is still conscious. If a rose fades and its petals
crumble and fall into dust, the life of that rose has not therefore
ceased to be; that life persists in nature, retaining in itself all
the memories of all the experiences it gained garbed as a rose. Then
in due course of events, following laws that are comprehensible, that
life animates another rose of another spring, bringing to its second
embodiment the memories of its first. Whenever therefore there seems
the death of a living thing, crystal or plant, animal or man, there
persists an indestructible life and consciousness, even though to all
appearance the object is lifeless and processes of decay have begun.
Further,
this life is evolving in exactly the same way
that the scientist says that an organism evolves. The life is at
first amorphic, responding but little to the stimuli from without,
retaining only feeble memories of the experiences it gains through
its successive embodiments. But it passes from stage to stage through
more and more complex organisms, till slowly it becomes more
definite, more diverse in its functions; as the outer form evolves
from protoplasm to man, so evolves too the life ensouling it. All
nature, visible and invisible, is the field of an evolution of life
through successive series of evolving forms, and the broad stages of
this evolving life are from mineral to vegetable, from vegetable to
animal, and from animal to man.
The
doctrine of a life that evolves through evolving forms answers some
of those questions that puzzle the biologist to-day. Many a fact
hitherto considered as outside the domain of science is seen as
illustrative of new laws, and existing gaps are bridged over to make
the doctrine of evolution more logical than ever.
It further shows nature as not wasteful and only seemingly cruel, for
nothing is lost, and every experience in every form that was
destroyed in the process of natural selection is treasured by the
life to-day. The past lives in the present to attest that nature's
purpose is not death crushing life, but life ever triumphant over
death to make out of stocks and stones immortal men.
In
each human being is seen this same principle of an imperishable
evolving life. For man is an individual life and consciousness, an
immortal soul capable
of living apart from the body we usually call ' the man'. In each
soul the process of evolution is at work, for at his entrance on
existence as a soul, he is feeble and chaotic in his consciousness,
vague and indefinite in his understanding of the meaning of life, and
capable only of a narrow range of thought and feeling. But he too
evolves, from indefinite to definite, from simple to complex, from
chaos to order.
Man's
evolution is by successive manifestations in bodies of flesh, passing
at the death of one body to begin life once more in another new one;
and in this passage he carries with him the memory of all experiences
he has gained in the past behind him. This aspect of the evolution
of
life as it affects men is called reincarnation.
As
all processes of nature are intelligible on the hypothesis of an
evolution of organisms, so all that happens to men becomes
comprehensible in the light of reincarnation; as the former links
all forms by species and genus, family and order, class and group,
sub-kingdom and kingdom into one unbreakable chain, so the latter
binds all human experiences into one consistent philosophy of life.
How reincarnation explains the mysteries around us and inspires us
we
shall now see.
Imagine
with me that existence is a mountain, and that millions are climbing
to its summit. Let many many days be needed before a traveler comes
to his goal. Then as he climbs day after day, the proportion of
things below him and above him will change; new sights will greet his
eyes, new airs will breathe around him; his eyes will adjust
themselves to new horizons, and step by step objects will change
shape and proportion. At last on reaching the summit a vast panorama
will extend before him, and he will see clearly every part of the
road he climbed, and why it dipped into this valley and circled
that crag. Let this mountain typify existence,
and let the climbers up its sides be men and women
who are immortal souls.
Let
us now think for a moment of travelers at the mountain's
base, who are to climb to its summit. We know how limited must be
their horizon and how little they can see of the long path before
them. Let such travelers typify the most backward of our humanity,
the most savage and least intelligent men and women we can find
to-day. According to reincarnation these are child-souls, just
entering into existence to undergo evolution and to be made into
perfect souls. To understand the process of evolution let us watch
one of them stage by stage as he climbs the mountain.
The
first thing that we shall note is that this child-soul manifests a
duality. For he is soul and body; as a soul he is from God but as
a
body he is from the brute.
The
Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And
the man said, Am I your debtor ?
And the Lord, Not yet, but make it
an clean as you
can,
And then I will let you a better.
The
body he occupies has in it a strong instinct of self-preservation,
stamped upon it by the fierce struggle for existence of its animal
progenitors; he himself as a soul coming from God has intuitions as
to right and wrong, but as yet hardly any will. The body
demands for its preservation that he be self-assertive and selfish;
lacking the will to direct his evolution he acts as the body impels.
THE
VISION OP THE SEPARATED SELF
Hence
at this earliest stage of the soul his vision of life as he climbs
is that of the separated self. ' Mine not yours' is
his principle of
action; greed rules him and a thirst for sensation drives him on, and
he little heeds that he is unjust and cruel to others as he lives
through his nights and days of selfishness and self-assertion. He
seems strong-willed, for he crushes the weaker before him; but in
reality he has no will at all, for he is but the plaything of an
animal heredity he cannot control. He has no more freedom of will
than the water-wheel that turns at the bidding of the descending
stream; he is but the tool of a ' will to live ' that accomplishes
a
purpose not his own.
Millions
of men and women around us are at this first stage. Their craftiness,
hardly deserving the name of intellect, is that of a Falstaff for
whom " the world is mine oyster which I with sword will open ".
In their least animal phases comfort is their aim in life: "They
dressed, digested, talked, articulated words; other vitality showed
they almost none." The universe around them is meaningless, and
they are scarce capable of wonder: " Let but a Rising of the
Sun, let but a creation of the world happen twice, and it ceases to
be marvelous, to be noteworthy or
noticeable." The
centre of the circle of the cosmos is in themselves
and they neither know nor care if another and truer centre be possible.
Yet
when we recognise that each of these souls is immortal and that his
future is " the future of a thing whose growth and splendour
have no limit," we begin to understand why at this early stage
selfishness plays such a prominent part in his life. For in the
stages to come he must be capable of standing alone, firm on the
basis of a coherent individuality; now it is, therefore, he must
develop initiative and strength. He is quick to retaliate, but
the germs of swift decision are grown thereby; he is domineering and
cruel, but the seeds of intelligent enterprise result from the animal
cunning he displays. Every evil he does must sometime be paid back
in
laborious service to his victims; yet on the whole the evil he does
at this stage is less in quantity and force, for all its seeming,
than that done in later stages where intelligence is keener and
emotion more powerful. At a certain period in human evolution
selfishness has its place in the economy of things, for selfishness
too is a force used to build the battlements of heaven.
These
souls, whose youth alone is the cause of their selfishness, are in
their essence divine, and there is in them no evil of a positive
kind; the vices are but the result of the absence of virtues, and the
evil " is null, is naught, is silence implying sound". Each
is a
'good man ' who, deep down within him, has a knowledge of " the
one true way," though in his attempts to tread it he seems to
retrograde rather than to evolve. Like plants in a garden they are
all tended by Him from whom they come; lie knows the perfect souls
that
he will make out of them by change and growth as the ages pass by.
'
Though
still confused his service unto Me,
I soon shall lend him to a
clearer morning.
Sees
not the gardener, even while he buds his tree,
Both flower and fruit
the future years adorning?
Life
after life these souls come to birth, now as men and now as women;
they live a life of selfishness, and they die, and hardly any change
will be noticeable in the character; but slowly there steals into
their lives a dissatisfaction. The mind is too dull to grasp the
relation of the individual to the whole, and the imagination is too
feeble to realise that " man doth not live by bread alone'.
Hence it is that " the thousand natural shocks that flesh is
heir to " are duly marshaled and employed to ruffle their
self-centred contentment; old age and death cast over them shadows
that have no power to sadden a philosophic mind; disease and accident
lie in wait for them to weigh down their spirits and make them rebel
against a fate they do not understand. Till their hearts shall
enshrine a divine purpose, a Hound of Heaven pursues them, and "
naught shall shelter thee, that wilt not shelter Me ".
Thus
are they made ready to pass on to the next stage;
the foundations of abilities have been laid, and the individual is
firm on a basis built through selfishness.
Now has come the time to begin the laborious work of casting out the
self, and so there opens before the soul's gaze the vision of the
next stage. According to the type of soul, this vision is either the
Vision of the Mind or the Vision of the Emotions.
There
are in life two main types of souls, the one in whom intelligence
controls emotion and the other in whom emotion sways the mind. One
type is not more evolved than the other; they are both stages to pass
through to grow a higher faculty, that of Intuition. The vision of
the third stage is the Vision of the Intuition, but to it souls come
from the first stage either through intellect or through
emotion. Let us first consider those souls whose evolution is by way
of the intellect.
THE
VISION OF THE MIND
We
shall see in the past of these souls that much intelligence has been
developed in the first stage; their selfishness has made them quick
and cunning to adapt opportunities to minister to their comfort. This
intelligence is now taken up by the unseen Guides of evolution, and
the soul is placed in environments that will change mere animal
cunning into true intellect. The past good and evil sown by him will
be adjusted in
its reaping, so as to give him occupations and
interests
that will force him to think of men and things around him apart from
their relation to himself. Instead of weighing experiences in terms
of personal comfort he begins now to group them in types and
categories; little by little he begins to see a material and moral
order in the cosmos that is more powerful than his will. Each law of
nature when first seen is feared by him, for it seems to be there to
thwart him ; but later, with more experience of its working, he
begins to trust it and to depend upon it to achieve his aim. A
love of learning appears in him and nature is no longer a blank page;
he
has ceased to be " a pair of spectacles behind which there is
no
eye ".
At
this stage we shall see that the selfishness still in him will warp
the judgments of his mind. He will be a doctrinaire, a pedant,
combative and full of prejudice ; for all his intellect his character
will show marked weaknesses, and will often see and propound
principles of conduct which he will not be able to apply to himself.
Again and again he will fail to see how little he understands the
world, since the world is the embodiment of a life that is more than
mind, and whoso understands it with mind alone will misunderstand.
Excess of intellect will become in him defect of intelligence, and
he
will see all things as through a glass darkly.
Many
a life will pass while he slowly gains experiences through the mind
and assimilates them into a truer conception of life. By now he will
have begun to
take part in the intellectual life of the world, and when he is on
the threshold of the next stage we shall find him as a worker in
science, philosophy or literature. But his intellect has too great
a
personal bias still, and it must be made impersonal and pure before
the next vision, that of the intuition, can be his. Once again we
shall see that there enters into his life a dissatisfaction. The
structures which he builds so laboriously as the results of
years of work will crumble
one
by one, because nature reveals new facts to show the world that his
generalisations were only partly true; the world for which he toiled
will forget him and younger workers will receive the honours that are
his due. He will be misunderstood by his dearest friends, and "
he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to eat his own heart, and
clutches round him outwardly on the Not-Me for wholesomer food ".
But
this suffering, though the reaping of sad sowings of injustice to
others through prejudice brings in its train a high purification
sooner or later; the soul learns the great lesson of working for
work's sake and not for the fruit of action. Now he knows the joy of
altruistic dedication of himself to the search of truth. A student
of philosophies but the slave of none, he now watches
nature ' as it
is, and in a perfect impersonality of mind solves her mysteries one
by one of him now can it be said with the Pythagoreans that "a
great intellect is the chorus of divinity". Thus dawns for him
the Vision of the Intuition.
THE
VISION OF THE EMOTIONS
I
mentioned when describing the transition from the first stage to the
second that there were in the world two main types of souls - those
who pass from the Vision of the Separated Self to the Vision of the
Intuition by way of the mind, and those others who develop along a
parallel path and pass from the emotions to the intuition. We have
just seen how souls are trained through intellect to cast out the
self; we shall now see how the same result is achieved for those in
whom emotions sway the mind.
As
the intellectual type showed in the first stage a marked development
of intelligence of a low kind, so similarly shall we find that the
souls we are going to consider show during the same stage a great
deal of feeling. Not that this feeling will be refined or unselfish;
indeed it will mostly be lust and jealousy, with perhaps a little
crude religious emotion in addition. But the character will be
obviously easily swayed by emotions, and this trait in the soul is
now taken up and worked upon to enable him to pass to the next stage.
Following
his emotional bent, and selfish and oblivious of the feelings of
those around him, the soul will compel others weaker than himself to
be the slaves of his desires; but the passion and the sense of
possession he has of these that minister to his lusts will link him
to them life after life, till slowly he begins to feel that they are
necessary to his emotional life
and not dispensable at will. Gradually his
impure
passions will be transformed into purer
affections,
and then he will be brought again and
again
into contact with them so that his emotions shall
go
out impulsively towards them. But the evil he
wrought
them in the past will now cast a veil over their
eyes and make them indifferent to him. He
will
be forced to love on, to atone for past evil by service,
but despair will be the only reward; when in resentment
he tries to break the bond that ties him to them
he will find he cannot. He will curse love, only to
return again to again to love's altar with his offerings.
Though
life now becomes full of disappointment and
despair, in his serener moments he will acknowledge that in spite of
the suffering it entailed, his emotional life has slowly opened a new
sense in him. He catches now and then glimpses of an undying youth
in all things, and the world that seems dreary and
aging will re-appear under certain emotional stress
as he knew it before life became a
tragedy. These glimpses are transitory at first, lasting indeed only
so long as the love emotion colours his being; but there is for him
a
time :
When
all the world is young, lad,
And
all the trees are green,
And every goose a swan, lad,
And
every lass a queen.
Life
after life, fostered by his transitory loves, this sense will grow
in
him till it blossoms into a sense of
wonder.
Then nature reveals in all things in life new values whose
significance he can henceforth never wholly forget. While love sways
his being each blade of grass and leaf and flower has to him a new
meaning; he sees beauty now where he saw none before. Everything
beautiful around him - a face, a flower, a sunset, a melody - will
link him in mysterious ways to those he loves; the world ceases to
be a blank page.
Love
wakes men once a lifetime each,
They
lift their heavy lids and look ;
And lo! what one sweet page can
teach,
They
read with joy, then close the book.
And some give thanks, and some
blaspheme,
And
most forget. But either way
That and the child's unheeded dream
Is
all the light of all their day.
It
will happen that this sense of wonder is intermittent, and that there
come periods when the world is veiled; but the veil is of his own
making, and must bo torn asunder if he is to possess the Vision of
the Intuition. Once more there enters into his life a
dissatisfaction - a discontent that love itself ia transitory
after all. Those he loves and who love him in return will be taken
from him just when life seems in flower; friends he idealises will
shatter the ideals so lovingly made of them. Cruel as it all seems,
it is but the reaping of sad sowings in past lives, but the reaping
has a meaning now as always. He has so far been loving not Love but
its shadow, not the Ideal from which nothing can be taken away but
its counterfeit which
suffers diminution; he must now see clearer and feel truer. The
character must be steadied so that it shall not rebound from
enthusiasm to depression, nor be satisfied with a vague mysticism
that prefers to revel in its own feelings rather than evaluate what
causes them.'
Hence
the inevitable purification through suffering; the dross of self is
burned away till there remains the gold of a divine desire. He then
discovers that the truest feelings are only those that have in them
the spirit of offering. Now for him thus purified in desire and for
that other type of soul made impersonal in intellect there dawns the
Vision of the Intuition.
THE VISION OF THE INTUITION
"
Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the
ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness." All souls
that have come to this stage have learnt by now the bitter lesson
that " it is only with Renunciation that Life, properly
speaking, can be said to begin "; they have proved in their own
experience that what once seemed death was but a " repentance
unto life ". They have now discovered the meaning of life - that
man is a child of God come forth to life to bo a co-worker with his
Father. It matters not that a soul does not state to himself his
relation to the whole in these terms; it only matters that he should
have discovered that his part in existence is to be a worker in a
work, and that nothing happening to himself matters so long as that
work proceeds to its inevitable end. lie knows that the end of thought
and
feeling is action for his fellow-men, and that this action must be
either dispassionate and without thought of reward, or full of a
spirit of grateful offering.
He
possesses now the faculty of the intuition, which transcending both
reason and emotion yet can justify its judgments to either, lie grows
past' common-sense,' the criterion for common things, into an
uncommon sense ; for life is full now of uncommon things of whose
existence others are not aware. In men and women he discerns those
invisible factors which are inevitable in human relations, and hence
his judgment of them is " not of this world ". In all
things he sees and feels One Life. Whatever unites attracts him ; if
intellectual he will love to synthesise in science or philosophy, if
emotional he will dedicate himself to art or philanthropy.
Now
slowly for him the Many become the One. The Unity will be known only
in the vision of the next stage, but preparing him for it, science
and art, religion and philosophy, will deduce for him eternal
fundamental types from the kaleidoscope of life. Types of forms,
types of thought, types of emotions, types of temperament - these
he sees everywhere round him, and life in all its phases becomes
transformed because it reflects as in a mirror Archetypes of a realm
beyond time and space and mutability.
Everything
of mortal birth
- ls
but a type;
What was of feeble worth
- Here
becomes ripe.
What was a mystery
- Here
meets the eye;
The Ever-womanly
- Draws
us on high.
'The Ever-womanly'
now shows him everywhere one Wisdom; science tells
him of the oneness of nature and philosophy that
man
is
a consciousness creating his world; art reveals in all things youth
and beauty and religion whispers to his heart that Love broods over
all. His sympathies go to all as his will is ever at their service.
Not
far now is the time when for him shall dawn the vision of the Spirit.
But to bring him to its portal a dissatisfaction once more enters his
soul. No longer can that dissatisfaction be personal; the sad
reaping of sorrow for evil done is over, and " only the sorrow
of others casts its shadow over me". Nor is it caused by any
sense of the mutability of things, for, absolutely, without question,
he knows his immortality, and that though all things change there is
behind them that which changes never. Yet while he climbs to his
appointed goal dissatisfaction must always be.
'It
comes to him now as a creator. For with intuition to guide him
he creates in that field of endeavour in which he has
trained himself in
past lives ; as poet,
artist,
statesman, saint, or scientist, he is one of the world's
geniuses. But though his creations are a miracle to all, yet to him
they are only partly true and only partly beautiful, for he sees the
ideal which he would fain bring down to men, and knows his failure
as
none others can know. Life is teaching him "to attain by
shadowing forth the unattainable".
As
thus he grows life after life, scientist and poet, artist and saint
now merge into a new type of being who sees with " larger, other
eyes than ours ". He has regained his integrity of heart and his
innocency of hands and is become " a little child "; "
by pity enlightened " he is now Parsifal, " the Pure Fool," who
enters upon his heritage.
THE
VISION OF THE SPIRIT
Then
it is that at its threshold there meets him One who has watched him
climbing for many a life and all unseen has encouraged him. This is
the Master, one of that " goodliest fellowship of famous knights
whereof the world holds record ". In him the soul sees in
realisation all those ideals that have drawn him onward and upward
;
and hand in hand with this " Father in God " he now treads
the way while the Vision of the Spirit is shown him by his Master.
Who shall describe that vision but those that have it, and how may
one less than a Master here speak with authority ? And yet since
Masters of the Wisdom have moved among men, since Buddha, Krshna and
Christ have shown us in Their lives something of what
that vision is, surely from their lives we can deduce what the vision
must be.
In
that Vision of the Spirit the Many is the One. " Alone within
this universe he comes and goes; 'tis He who is the fire, the water
He pervadeth ; Him and Him only knowing, one crosseth over death ;
no
other path at all is there to go."
Now
for the soul who has come to the end of his climbing each man is only " the
spirit he worked in, not what he did, but what he became
". There is no high nor low in life, for in all he sees a ray
from the Divine Flame; as through the highest so through the lowest
too, to him " God stooping shows sufficient of His light for us
"in the dark to rise by ". Life is henceforth become a Sacrament
and he is its Celebrant; with loving thoughts and deeds he celebrates
and at-ones man with God and God with man. He discerns, purifies in
himself, and offers to God " infinite passion and the pain of
finite hearts that yearn"; from God on high he brings to men
what alone can satisfy that yearning.
He
has renounced " the will to live " and thereby has made its
purpose his own : " Foregoing self the universe grows I."
Yet he knows with rapture that that ' I' is but a tiny lens in a
great Light. Henceforth he lives only that a Greater than he may live
through him, love through him, act through him; and evermore
shall his heart whisper, in heaven or in hell, whithersoever his work
may
take him : " Him know I,
the Mighty Man, resplendent like the Sun, beyond the Darkness; Him
and him only knowing one crosseth over death; no other path at
all
is there to go."
Thus
do we, the happy few, the precursors of a new age, see life in the
light of reincarnation. As the evolutionist sees all nature linked
in one ladder of life, and sky and sea testify to him of evolution,
so do we see all men linked in one common purpose, and their hopes
and fears, their self-sacrifice and their selfishness, testify to us
of reincarnation. Life and its experiences have ceased to be for us
An
arch where thro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move
No
longer can the world be for us as the poet sang:
Act first, this
earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe
You
all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And yet be patient. Our
Playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this wild drama means.
The
Fifth Act is here before our eyes. It is that Vision of the Spirit
that is the heritage of every soul and thither all men are slowly
treading for " no other path at all is there to go".
|