In recent years,
we have witnessed several situations which recall forcibly to mind the centuries
old teaching of the Wise One that hatred ceaseth not by hatred. Revengeful
and retaliatory actions and attitudes, with each party determined not to let
the other get away with any advantage, have made such areas of the world as
the Middle East and Ireland arenas of prolonged and tragic conflict. Newspapers
and magazines have recently portrayed in detail the immense suffering endured
by large numbers of innocent people, both in Israel and in Lebanon, when brutal
terrorist attacks and sternly unmerciful reprisals took place. This is but
one example of many events of the kind. The circle of mutual hatred and suspicion
is bound to widen with each revenge-filled
explosion.
Hatred
Ceaseth by Love
In the larger
field of world affairs the alarming and seemingly endless arms-race is the
result of mutual suspicion, fear and hatred on a vast scale. This arms-race
has gone on for so long that, except for the few who are deeply concerned with
the destiny of the human race, mankind generally has become accustomed to it.
Yet it could one day lead to a tragedy in comparison to which the travail of
the Middle East and Ireland would pale into insignificance. Mutual suspicion
and fear and the perpetuation of hatred can only lead the
world into conflagration.
Each explosion
leaves behind a trail of death and destruction. The widow deprived of her husband,
the bereaved mother, daughter, brother or sister mourns a personal loss, the
bitterness of which is held to the account of the enemy. It is rare that the
mourners are conscious that pain and sorrow are shared by the bereaved and
the injured of the opposite side. To rejoice in triumph over the number of
enemy dead while bewailing one’s own loss appears ‘natural’ from the conventional, personal and nationalistic points of view. But nature
points to the fact that the major phenomena of existence - life and death,
sorrow and joy - cut across all barriers made by man. This fact is so obvious
and its implications so clear that it is a marvel that so few pay heed to it.
Even a little reflection on this subject brings about an awareness of the truth
that basically man is man, and the divisions created by geographical, political
and other boundaries are inconsequential when regarded in the perspective of
the phenomena whose impact his consciousness has to meet and transcend. Every
individual has the same task in life: he has to face the challenge of life’s movement - the ebb and flow of things - and discover in their midst a sense
of purpose which answers all situations.
Love alone offers
such an unerodable purpose and the means to stem the tide of hatred and pain.
The meaning of life does not lie in personal self-gratification. Paradoxically,
the more a person strives to make his individual existence meaningful, the
farther he wanders away from the source of significance in life. Success in
the business of survival, the grasping of comfort and enjoyment, the attainment
of status, power and importance, and the many other things which appear rewarding
and purposeful to the vast majority of individual men and women are the fabric
and substance of the agonizing struggle in which human life has been trapped
for ages. The desire to find that which is individually and personally purposeful
leads to a conflict of interests which periodically mounts up into chaotic
storms of hatred negating the possibility of rewarding experience and the growth
of the human consciousness.
In the evolutionary
movement and design each expression of the life-force - human, animal, vegetable
and mineral - is unfolding, moment by moment, a uniquely beautiful truth.
The value and significance of what is unfolded has nothing to do with its apparent
usefulness to another. It exists in itself. Its message remains valid even
if perceived by none. The human individual who seeks to make his own personal
life purposeful by making use of other manifestations of life, misses the
very
meaning he seeks because he narrows and confines himself to the objects of
his desire. Love takes birth when an awareness arises of universal purpose
and meaning, the personal purpose being merged in the larger. The history
of mankind can change into a thrilling story of discovery of the meaningful
verities
of life - happiness, peace, beauty - only when violence is not met by vengeance
and hatred is not answered by hatred, but by a sympathetic awareness of the
shared universality of suffering
if not by loving response.
Dr. Raymond Moody
in his book, Life after Life, summarizes the experiences of the many persons interviewed by him who had crossed
the threshold of death and after a time had returned to live in the physical
body. During the passing over, a review of the past incarnation which takes
place
makes the ‘dead’ person aware that the purpose of life is love. Incarnation takes place so that
one can learn to love. Unwillingness to accept the lesson is resistance to the
law of Nature and causes the individual to experience pain and suffering. Love
alone is the action which accords with
nature’s inherent purpose and is therefore the absolute and universal remedy against
hatred.
Sorrow cannot touch anyone who has truly learnt the lesson of love.
Credulity
Versus Faith
The technical
and material progress of the present age are the outcome of the scientific
spirit. Scientific enquiry and knowledge are based on well formulated principles
of testing and strictly logical deductions. Blind belief, prejudgements and
prejudices have no place in the scientific approach to truth. In the age of
science, and in countries where science and technology have so revolutionized
daily life that travelling from the ‘developed’ to the ‘undeveloped’ countries one has the impression of journeying into a different world, it is
interesting to note the widespread growth of credulity. Charlatans of many
kinds are able to foist a variety of cults and beliefs on eager devotees who
are willing victims. Self-styled gods are many in number because their claims
are accepted without question by a sufficient congregation. UFO enthusiasts
relate not only observed phenomena, but append wild tales which appear to be
all the more convincing to believers because they are so far removed from the
normal and the rational. On the one hand there is legitimate enquiry into how
far scientific knowledge can lead and what its limits are; on the other there
is the craze for abandoning all rational parameters and adopting a passive
role of
acceptance before a ‘guru.’ ‘Gurus’ in diverse garbs have mushroomed to pander to the hidden desire of the believers
to abdicate responsibility, the guise of dispenser of truth being an essential
part of the make-believe. Credulity is becoming as much a symptom of the times
as scientific
progress.
The more science
advances, the more apparent it is becoming that even the surface of the unfathomed
depths and mysteries of life and nature has hardly been explored and that the
seership of the wise men of old was able to apprehend facts of nature by means
other than those which science has so far recognized. Capra’s book The Tao of Physics is one of the latest publications to correlate the ancient wisdom with the discoveries
of science. Science, philosophy and religion, in the real sense, are all avenues
to truth and may one day form an integrated pathway thereto. The possibility
of realizing truth cannot be assigned solely to the province of the scientist,
although blind belief and irrationality have been rejected by science as, indeed,
they have by true philosophy (love of wisdom) and true religion. Both religion
and philosophy (if worthy of the name) have dealt with the truth of separational
existence but not with the illusory shadows
which arise from irrational urges.
Faith has ever
been an element in the religious approach. The Christian virtues include faith
along with hope and charity. The Hindu Vedanta, stating the qualifications
necessary for the path,
includes sraddha or faith. In Buddhism, both belief and doubt have been named as fetters which
have to be cast away by the aspirant who wishes to tread the way of enlightenment.
Faith, however, is not blind belief, still less is it credulity. Faith, in its
true religious sense, refers to the inner stability which arises from the recognition
that the universe is guided by law and from knowledge of the principles embodied
in its manifestation. To mention an example, recognition of the principle of
perfection which is inherent in the evolutionary process leads to faith and serves
as an unshakable anchor with which to weather all storms. If rightly understood,
faith engendered by this principle would place all relationships on a basis different
from that of the faithless. It exists with and encourages free investigation
and search for truth because it gives inner stability.
Faith has thus
little to do with belief, which is attachment to things which help to cover
up hidden weaknesses and inadequacies. Whenever there is blind belief there
is fear that the inadequacy may be exposed and hence belief is often accompanied
by fanaticism, resistance to challenge and the shutting out of any other point
of view. Faith is open minded and needs no shoring up, while belief stands
always on shaky ground.
It is obvious
that the credulous mind is not one which can follow the road to truth. It falls
by the roadside, clinging to any glamourous temptation, and pursues the by-paths.
The search for truth calls for a healthy scepticism and the reservations of
judgement when confronted by that which, for the time being, remains unexplained.
Scepticism is unhealthy from a spiritual point of view if it is carried to
an extreme, for unproven and indescribable things cannot be said not to exist.
It was pointed out long ago that science can explain what water is, but not
what wetness is. Such principles as perfection and beauty exist though there
may be many who do not perceive them at all. An individual who asserts that
what he himself cannot see, prove or know does not exist, is maintaining himself
in a state of blindness. The humility of saying, ‘I do not know,’ is essential for anyone who seeks truth. Doubt is therefore numbered among the
fetters in the Buddhist
tradition.
The humility with
which a seeker for truth proceeds, however, is not to be confused with credulity.
Credulity arises, as mentioned above, because of an unconscious urge to counterbalance
hidden uncertainties. The greater the uncertainty the more shut in and defensive
of his belief is the believer or credulous person. Awareness of truth is a
state of total wakefulness, the release from finiteness to vastness, from superficiality
to profundity. The words buddha and buddhi refer to ‘waking up’ from dreams, illusions and limitation. Intense alertness and an extremely sensitive
mind are necessary in the search for truth. A spirit of enquiry and investigation
helps to retain alertness, while credulity closes the mind and lulls it to
sleep. Belief, therefore, is a fetter which
must be cast aside.
Theosophists
and Religion
‘...Theosophy
is not a Religion... but Religion itself...’ * [H.P. Blavatsky’s: Collected Writings, Vol.X.] declares H. P. Blavatsky. And she goes on: ‘Its doctrines, if seriously studied, call forth, by
stimulating one’s reasoning powers and awakening the inner in the animal man, every hitherto
dormant power for good in us, and also the perception of the true and the real,
as opposed to the false and the unreal. Tearing off with no uncertain hand the
thick veil of dead-letter with which every old religious scripture was cloaked,
scientific Theosophy, learned in the cunning symbolism of the ages, reveals to
the scoffer at the old wisdom the origin of the world’s faiths and sciences. It opens new vistas beyond the old horizons of crystallized,
motionless and despotic faiths; and turning blind belief into a reasoned knowledge
founded on mathematical laws - the only exact science - it demonstrates to him under profounder and more philosophical aspects
the existence of that which, repelled by the grossness of its dead letter form,
he had long since abandoned as
a nursery tale.’
H. P. B. also
wrote: ‘ What is needed is not that we should convert each other, but that each of us
should deepen and spiritualise his own religion and find out its value for
himself. As that spirit spreads over the world, surely the emergence of a world-religion
becomes possible.’
The above statements
suggest that the Theosophist has to examine and regard his own religion in
the light of Theosophy and that, stripping it of dead-letter encrustations,
he should deepen and spiritualise it as a preparation for the emergence of
a world religion.
Some decades ago,
there was a strong movement among Theosophists to try to do this. The light
of Theosophy was turned upon the major religions of the world and public attention
was aroused to the possibility of restoring to the faiths their pristine splendour.
The interest which many Theosophists took in the Bharata Samaja in India and
the Liberal Catholic Church in the West was symptomatic of a strongly felt
need for reform, and for deepening and spiritualising the religious
consciousness.
Although H. P.
B.’s words still remain valid, it is to be regretted that so many members of the
Theosophical Society still remain conventional, if not orthodox, adherents
of their particular religion. A Theosophist cannot be conventional, for true
Theosophy stimulates the reasoning powers and the capacity to discriminate
between the false and the real. It is when Theosophy itself becomes a dead
letter or a lip philosophy that there is no vital change in one’s outlook whether
it be in the religious, social, educational or any other sphere.
The Theosophical
Society’s vitality also depends on its being alive with an essentially religious spirit,
so that it may be a pure vessel for the dissemination of the Wisdom-Religion
to the world. The three declared Objects of the Society, when pursued in a
profane spirit, could lead to the degeneration of the Society into a mere social-service
organization, an academic body or an ‘academy of magic’. It is the spirit infused into the Society by the undeclared Object, which is
to
act as a channel of the Wisdom-Religion, which can prevent it from losing ‘by imperceptible
degrees that vitality which living truth alone can impart.’
The Theosophist
1978
Universal
Brotherhood is the only thing which is
binding
on members of The Theosophical Society.
Nothing
else. The Theosophical teachings as to
Karma,
Reincarnation, or the Masters, are not
binding
on the mind or conscience of any member.
The
Changing World, Annie Besant