The Path of Discipleship
BY
Annie Besant
FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE TWENTIETH
ANNIVERSARY
OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, AT ADYAR, MADRAS,
DECEMBER 27, 28, 29 AND 30, 1895
SECOND EDITION
BENARES
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
1899
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CONTENTS.
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1.
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FIRST STEPS
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2.
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QUALIFICATIONS FOR DISCIPLESHIP
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3.
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THE LIFE OF THE DISCIPLE
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4.
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THE FUTURE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY
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FIRST STEPS.
KARMA –YOGA. PURIFICATION.
1.
BROTHERS, - When first
I spoke in this Hall two years ago, I led your attention to the building of the
Kosmos as a whole, to the steps through which that evolution took place, the
methods, as it were, of the vast succession of phenomena. Last year I dealt
with the evolution of the Self, the Self in man rather than the Self in the
Kosmos, and tried to show you how from sheath after sheath the Self gained experience
and obtained sovereignty over its lower vehicles - still with the man as with
the universe, still with the individual as with the Kosmos, seeking ever
reunion with the Self, seeking ever That whence it had come. But sometimes men
have said to me when discussing these lofty topics: “What bearing have these on
the life of men in the world, surrounded as we are with the necessities of
life, surrounded as we are with the activities of the phenomenal world,
continually drawn away from the thought of the one Self, continually forced by
our Karma to take part in these multifarious activities? What bearing then has
the higher teaching on the lives of men, and how may men in the world rise
upward until the higher life becomes possible also for them?” It is that
question that I am going to try to answer this year. I am going to try to show
you how a man in the world, surrounded with family obligations, with social
duties, with all the many activities of worldly life, may yet prepare himself
for union and take the first steps on the path that leads him to the One. I am
going to try to trace for you the steps of that path, so that beginning in the
life that any man may be leading, starting from the standpoint where most of
you may be standing at the moment, you may recognize a goal to be reached, you
may recognize a path to be trodden - the path which begins here in the life of
the family, of the community, of the state, but which ends in that which is
beyond all thinking and lands the traveller ultimately in the home which is his
for evermore. Such is the object then of these four lectures, such the steps
along which I trust you will accompany me; and in order that we may understand
our subject let us glance for a moment at the course of evolution, at its
meaning, at its object, so that from what must be but a bird’s-eye view of the whole,
we may be able, appreciating the whole, to understand the congruity of the
steps which one by one we are to take. We realize that the One has become the
many. Glancing backward into the primal darkness that shroudeth all, we can
hear out of that darkness but a whisper - a whisper: “I will multiply”. That
multiplication is the building of the universe, and of the individuals who live
within it. In that will to multiply of the “One which is without a second”, we
see the source of manifestation, we recognize the primal germ, as it were, of
the Kosmos. And as we realize that beginning of the universe and as we see the
complexity, the multiplicity, that result from the primal simplicity, from the
primal unity, we realize also that in each of these phenomenal manifestations
there must be imperfection, and that the very limitation which makes a
phenomenon possible is also the inevitable mark that it is less than the One,
and therefore by itself imperfect. So we understand why there should be
variety, why there should be this vast multiplicity of separate and living
things. And we begin to understand that the perfection of the manifested
universe must needs lie in this very variety; that if there be more than the
One then there must be well-nigh infinite multiplicity, in order that the One,
which is as a mighty sun sending forth beams of light in all directions, may
send beams everywhere, and in the totality of the beams will be the perfection
of the lighting of the world. The more numerous, the more wonderful, the more
various the objects, the more nearly, though still imperfectly, will the
universe image forth That whence it comes.
2.
The first effort in
the evolving life must be to make many, to make separated existences -
apparently separate - so that looked at from without there shall seem many,
although looked at in their essence we see that the Self of all is One.
Realizing that, we understand that in the process of multiple individualizing,
the one as individual comes into manifestation as a faint and limited
reflection of the Self. And we begin to understand also what is to be the
outcome of this universe, why it is that these many individuals should be
evolved, why it is that this separateness should be a necessary part in the
evolution of the whole. For we begin to see that the result of the universe is
to be the evolution of the LOGOS of another universe, of the mighty Devas who
are to be the guides of all the kosmic forces of that universe in the future,
and of the divine Teachers whose duty it will be to train the infant humanity
of another Kosmos. What is going on today in all these worlds of individual
existences is a steady process of evolution, by which one universe gives to a
future universe its LOGOS, its Devas, the earliest of its Manus, and all those
great Ones that will be necessary for the building, for the training, for the
governing, for the teaching of the universe which is yet unborn. Thus are the
universes linked together, thus does Manvantara succeed Manvantara, thus are
the fruits of one universe the seeds of the universe that succeeds it. In the
midst of all this multiplicity there is being evolved a yet vaster unity which
shall be the framework of the unborn Kosmos, which shall be the Power which in
the future Kosmos shall guide and rule.
3.
And then the question
arises - as I know it arises in many minds, for it has been put to me both in
the East and in the West over and over again - why so much difficulty in the
evolution, why so much apparent failure in the working, why should men go wrong
so much before they go right, why should they run after the evil that degrades
them instead of following the good that would ennoble them? Was it not possible
for the LOGOS of our universe, for the Devas who are His Agents, for the great
Manus who came to guide our infant humanity - was it not possible for Them to
plan so that there might be no such apparent failure in the working out? Was it
not possible for Them to guide so that the road might have been a straight and
direct one instead of so devious, so circuitous?
4.
Here comes the point
that makes the evolution of humanity so difficult, having in view the object
which is to be gained. Easy in truth would it have been to have made a humanity
that might have been perfect, easy to have so guided its dawning powers that
those powers might have travelled towards what we call the good continually,
and never have turned aside towards what we call evil. But what would have been
the condition of such an easy accomplishment? It must have been that man would
have been an automaton, moved by a compelling force without him which
imperiously laid upon him a law which he was compelled to fulfil, from which he
could not escape. The mineral world is under such a law; the affinities that
bind atom to atom obey such an imperious compulsion. But as we rise higher we
find greater and greater freedom gradually making its appearance, until in man
we see a spontaneous energy, a freedom of choice, which is really the dawning
manifestation of the God, of the Self, which is beginning to show itself
through man. And the object, the goal which was to be attained, was not to make
automata who should blindly follow a path sketched out for their treading, but
to make a reflection of the LOGOS Himself, to make a mighty assemblage of wise
and perfected men who should choose the best because they know and understand
it, who should reject the worst because by experience they have learnt its
inadequacy and the sorrow to which it leads. So that in the universe of the
future, as amongst all the great Ones who are guiding the universe of today,
there should be unity gained by consensus of wills, which have become one again
by knowledge and by choice, which move with a single purpose because they know
the whole, which are identical with the Law because they have learned that the
Law is good, who choose to be one with the Law not by an outside compulsion,
but by an inner acquiescence. Thus in that universe of the future there will be
one Law, as there is in the present, carried out by means of Those who are the
Law by the unity of Their purpose, the unity of Their knowledge, the unity of
Their power - not a blind and unconscious Law, but an assemblage of living
beings who are the Law, having become divine. There is no other road by which
such goal might be reached, by which the freewill of the many should reunite
into the one great Nature and the one great Law, save a process in which
experience should be garnered, in which evil should be known as well as good,
failure as well as triumph. Thus men become Gods, and because of the experience
that lies behind them, they will, they think, they feel, the same.
5.
Now in working towards
this goal the divine Teachers and Guides of our humanity planned many
civilizations, all moulded towards the end that was in view. I have no time to
go back to the great civilization of the Fourth Race that preceded the birth of
the mighty Aryan people. I may only say in passing that there was a great
civilization which was tried, which for a time under its divine Rulers succeeded;
then the divine Rulers withdrew their immediate guiding - as a mother withdraws
her hand from her babe that is learning to walk, in order to see if without her
supporting arm it is able to make its own steps, it is able to use its own
limbs, so for the same purpose They withdrew into the darkness - the divine
Guides and Rulers - to see if the child-humanity making these early steps would
walk or would stumble on its way. And that infant humanity stumbled and fell,
and the great civilization -mighty as it was perfect in its social order,
glorious in the strength and the wisdom by which it was builded - broke into
pieces under the selfishness of man, broke into pieces under the yet
unconquered lower instincts of humanity. Another attempt had to be made, and
the great Aryan race was founded - again with divine Rulers, again with divine
Guides, with a Manu who gave it its law, founded its civilization, sketched out
its polity, with the Rishis who gathered round Him, who administered His laws
and guided the infant civilization; thus again humanity was given a pattern,
again the race was shown a type towards which it should evolve. Then once more
the great Teachers drew back for awhile to let humanity again try its own
strength, again experiment if it were strong enough to walk alone,
self-reliant, guided by the Self from within, instead of by outer
manifestations. And again, as we know, the experiment has largely been a
failure. Again, as we know, glancing backward, we see this civilization
originally divine gradually degenerating under the still unconquered lower
nature of man, again going downward for a while under the still uncurbed
passions of humanity. Looking back, as we now do, to the India of the
past, we see its perfect polity, its marvellous spirituality, and we trace its
degradation millennium after millennium as the guiding hand withdraws out of
the visible sight of man, and once more humanity blunders and fails as it tries
to walk. We see how in each case there has been the failure of the realization
of the divine ideal. We glance over the modern world and we see how the lower
nature of man has triumphed over the divine ideal which was set before him at
the beginning of the Aryan race. We see how in that day there was the ideal of
the Brahmana, an ideal that might be summed up as that of the soul approaching
liberation, which asks no longer for the goods of earth, which asks no longer
for the enjoyments of the flesh, which asks no longer for the gifts of wealth,
of power, of authority, of earthly pleasure, the type of the Brahmana being
that he was poor, but wise; whereas today we too often find the man who bears
the Brahmana name not poor and wise but wealthy and ignorant. There in that
caste you have one of the signs of the degeneration by which the ancient polity
fell; and the same with each of the four castes.
6.
Let us now see how it
was proposed by the great Teachers that man by experience should learn to
choose of his own free will the ideal which was placed before him, and from
which he turned aside how the great Teachers endeavoured to build up from the
imperfect humanity towards the perfected ideal manifested in the beginning for
the guidance of the race, and unrealized in evolution by the weakness and the
childishness of men.
7.
In order that, in the
course of ages, this might be achieved, what is called Karma-Yoga was taught to
the people - Yoga, or union, by action. That is the form of Yoga which is
fitted for the men of the world, beset with life’s activities; it is by these
very activities, by the training afforded by them, that the first steps towards
union must be taken. And so you find laid down for the training of men this
Karma-Yoga.
8.
Note the juxtaposition
of the words “action” and “union”. Action so performed that union may result,
action so carried out that union may be the outcome. It is a thing to remember
that it is our activities that divide us, it is our actions that separate us,
it is all this changing and multifarious activity by which we are drawn and
kept apart. It seems almost a paradox then to speak of union by action, union
by that which was ever a means of division, union by that by which separation
was brought about. But the wisdom of the divine Teachers was equal to the task
of reconciling, of explaining, the apparent paradox. Let us follow the steps
of the explanation and see what it is.
9.
Man runs wild, runs
wild in every direction, under the influence of the three energies in nature,
the gunas. The dweller in the body finds himself under the domination of these
gunas. They are at work! they are active, they make the manifested universe,
and he identifies himself with these activities. He thinks he is acting when
these are acting. He thinks he is busy when these are bringing about results.
Living amongst them, blinded by them, under the illusions which they produce,
he loses entirely all recognition of himself, and is taken here and there,
blown hither and thither, carried away by the currents, and so the activity of
the gunas is all that the man sees in life; clearly he is not fit under these
conditions for the higher forms of Yoga. Clearly until these illusions are at
least partially conquered the loftier steps on the Path will be beyond his
treading. He must begin then by understanding the gunas, by separating himself
from these activities of the phenomenal universe. And the great scripture of
Yoga, as it may be called, the scripture of this Karma-Yoga, is that which was
re-proclaimed by Shri Krishna on the field of Kurukshetra, when he taught this
form of Yoga to Arjuna, to the prince, to the warrior, the man who was to live
in the world, to fight in the world, to rule the state, and take part in all
external activities; here is the eternal lesson for men who are living in the
world, how gradually they may rise beyond the gunas and so reach union with the
Supreme.
10.
It will then first be
in what we may call the training and regulation of the activities of the gunas
that this Karma-Yoga will consist. There are, as you know, three gunas, Sattva,
Rajas and Tamas, the three gunas out of which all around us is builded and
combined together in various ways, mingled in various fashions. Here one is
acting and the other is working in every direction. They have to be brought
into equilibrium; they have to be reduced to subjection. The dweller in the
body, the lord of the body, must become sovereign master and distinguish
himself from the gunas. That, then, will be the work that has to be done; their
functions must be realized, their activities must be controlled and directed.
You cannot at once rise above them, you cannot at once cross beyond them - any
more than a child can do the work of a full-grown man. Can humanity in its
unevolved and in its imperfect state accomplish perfection of Yoga? Nay, it is
not even wise that man should try; for if the child be put to the work of the
full-grown man, he will not only fail to accomplish it, but he will overstrain
his powers in the attempt, and the result will be not only failure in the
present, but also failure in the future. For the task too great for his powers
will thwart and distort them. They must be trained to strength before they can
accomplish, and the child must grow to manhood before manhood’s work should be
his. Take for a moment the function of Tamas - translated darkness, or
sluggishness, or inertia, or negligence, and so on. What function can that
play, if it is to be used for human evolution? What use has this particular
guna in the growth of the man, in the liberating of the soul? The particular
use of that guna, the use to which it will be put in Karma-Yoga, is to act as a
force which is to be struggled against and overcome, so that strength may be
evolved in the struggle, power of will may be developed by the effort, self-control
and self-discipline may be accomplished by the attempt. It may be said to serve
in the evolution of man as the club or dumb-bell serves the purpose of the
athlete. He could not strengthen his muscles unless there was something against
which he exercised them. He could not gain muscular vigour unless there were
opposing weights by struggling to lift which the muscles should grow strong.
The value is not in the weight itself, but in the use to which it is put, and
if a man wants his physical muscles, the muscles of his arms, to grow very
strong, the best way to strengthen them is to take a club or dumb-bell and
daily exercise the muscles against that opposing force. In this way Tamas,
negligence or darkness, plays its part in the evolution of the man; he has to overcome
it, he develops his strength in the struggle; the muscles of the soul grow
powerful as he overcomes the negligence, the sloth, the indifference which is
the tamasic quality in his nature.
11.
So you will find for
the overcoming of these the rites and ceremonies of religion are ordained, part
of their function being to train man to overcome the sloth and the laziness and
the indolence of his lower nature, and by placing before him certain duties to
be done at a particular time - whether at that time he is inclined to do them
or not, whether at that time he is feeling active or feeling lazy - by imposing
on him duties at a particular time he is trained to overcome the sloth and
heedlessness and obstinacy of his lower nature and to compel it to walk along the
path that the will has determined it should follow.
12.
And so if we take
Rajas: you will find the activities of man are guided in Karma-Yoga along
certain definite paths which I now propose to follow, so that you may see how
this quality of activity, which is so much at work in the modern world, which
is manifesting itself in every direction, which leads to hurry, bustle and
constant effort to accomplish things in the lower life, material
manifestations, material results, material phenomena - how this shall be
gradually directed, trained and purified until it no longer has the power to
hinder the real manifestation of the Self. The object of Karma-Yoga is to
substitute duty for self-gratification; man acts to gratify his lower nature;
he acts because he wants to get something; he acts for fruit; he acts for
desire, for reward. He works because he wants money in order that he may enjoy.
He works because he wants power in order that the lower self may be gratified.
All these activities, these rajasic qualities, are set going with the purpose
of ministering to his lower nature. In order that these activities may be
trained and regulated to serve the purpose of the Higher Self, he is to be
taught to substitute duty for self-gratification, to carry on work as work
because it is his duty, to turn the wheel of life because it is his function to
turn it, that he may do as Shri Krishna said He does Himself. He does not act
because there is anything for Him to gain either in this world or in any other;
but He acts because without his action the world would cease, He acts because
without His action the wheel would no longer revolve. And those who accomplish
Yoga must act in the spirit of His acting, acting for the whole and not for the
separated part, acting for the carrying out of the divine will in the Kosmos
and not for the pleasure of the separated entity that imagines itself to be
independent when it ought to be a co-worker under Him. This object is to be
gained by gradually raising the sphere of these activities. Duty is to be
substituted for self-gratification, and religious rites and ceremonies are
ordained to train men gradually towards the true life that is their function.
Every religious ceremony is but a way of training men into the true and higher
life. A man meditates in the early morning and at the going down of the sun,
but ultimately his life will be one long meditation. He meditates for an hour
to prepare himself for meditating always. All creative activities are the
result of meditation, and you will remember that it is by Tapas that all worlds
are created. In order then that man may reach that mighty and creative power of
meditation, in order that he also may be able to exercise that divine power, he
must be trained towards it by religious ceremonies, by intermittent thought, by
Tapas taken up and laid down again. Set meditation is a step towards the
accomplishment of constant meditation; it takes a part of daily life in order
to permeate the whole, and men practise it daily in order that gradually it may
absorb the life. The time comes when for the Yogi there is no fixed hour for
meditation, for all his life is one long meditation. No matter what outer
activities he may be doing he meditates; and he is ever at the Feet of his Lord
although both mind and body may be active in the world of man. And so with all
other forms of action; first a man learns to perform action as a sacrifice to
duty and a paying of his debt to the world in which he is - the paying back to
all the different parts of Nature of that which they give to him. And then
later, sacrifice becomes more than the paying of a debt; it becomes a joyful
giving of everything the man has to give. The partial sacrifice is the debt
that is paid, the perfect sacrifice is the gift of the whole. A man gives
himself, with all his activities, with all his powers, no longer paying part of
his possessions as a debt but all of himself as a gift. And when that stage is
reached Yoga is accomplished and the lesson of Karma-Yoga has been learned.
13.
Take as one step
towards this those five daily sacrifices which are familiar in name at least to
all of you, and realize what underlay the ordination of those sacrifices. Each
one of the five is the payment of a debt, the recognition of what man as a
separated individual owes as a debt to the whole around him. And if you
consider them for the moment one by one, however hastily, you will see how
thoroughly each is this payment of a debt. Take the first: the sacrifice to the
Devas. Why is that sacrifice ordained? It is because man has to learn that his
body owes a debt to earth and to the Intelligences that guide the processes of
Nature by which earth brings forth her fruits, by which she produces
nourishment for man; as man takes the nourishment for his body, his body owes back,
in payment of the debt, the returning to Nature an equivalent for that which
has been given it through the instrumentality of those kosmic Intelligences,
those Devas, who guide the forces of the lower world. And so man was taught to
pour his sacrifice into the fire. Why? The phrase that was given as an explanation
was: “Agni is the mouth of the Gods”, and people repeat the phrase and never
try to understand its meaning, nor to go below the surface of the external name
of the Deva to His function in the world. The real meaning of course that
underlies the phrase is that all around on every side there are the conscious
and sub-conscious workers in Nature in grade after grade, a great kosmic Deva
at the head, as it were, of each division of that vast army; so that below the
Deva as a Ruler in fire, in air, in water, in earth, below that particular Deva
come a vast number of lower Gods who carry on the different and separated
activities of the natural forces in the world, the rain, the productive powers
of the earth, the fertilizing agencies of various sorts. And this first
sacrifice is a feeding of these lower agencies, a giving to them of food by
fire; and fire is called “the mouth of the Gods” because it disintegrates,
because it changes and transmutes the solid and fluid things which are placed
in it, turns them into vapour, disintegrates them into finer materials, and
thus passes them on into etheric matter to become the sustenance of those lower
grades of elemental lives that carry out the commands of the kosmic Devas. And
in this way a man pays his debt to them, and then in return in the lower
regions of the atmosphere the rain falls, and the earth produces, and
nourishment is given to man. And that was what Shri Krishna meant when he bade
man “nourish the Gods and the Gods shall nourish you”. For it is that lower
cycle of nourishment, as it were, which man has to learn. At first he accepted
it as a religious teaching; then came the period in which he thought it
superstition, knowing not the inner working and seeing only the outer
appearances; and then comes deeper knowledge when Science, which tends first to
materialism, by deeper study rises towards recognition of the spiritual realm.
Scientific knowledge begins to say in scientific terms what the Rishis said in
terms of the spirit, that man may rule and regulate the working of the lower
powers of Nature by action that he himself performs, and in this way growing
knowledge justifies the ancient teaching, justifies to the intellect what the
spiritual man sees by direct intuition, by the spiritual sight.
14.
Next, there is the
sacrifice to the ancestors; the recognition of what man owes to those who went
before him in the world, the payment of the debt that he owes to those who
worked in the world ere his last coming, the gratitude and veneration which are
due to those who partly made the world for us, and brought about improvements
that we should inherit them. That service is a debt of gratitude due to those
immediately before us in human evolution, who took their part in it during
their earthly lives and bequeathed to us the result of their labours. As we
reap the benefit of their work, we pay back the debt of gratitude. And so this
is one of the daily sacrifices, the recognition of this debt of gratitude to
those who have gone before.
15.
And then of course
comes the sacrifice of knowledge, that of study, in order that by the study of
the sacred words men may be able to help and train those more ignorant than
themselves, and may also evolve in themselves the knowledge necessary for the
manifestation of the Self within them.
16.
Fourthly, the
sacrifice to men, the payment to some particular man of the duty owed to
humanity, the feeding of some particular man as a recognition that men owe to
each other all kindly deeds in the physical world, all the assistance that
brother can give to brother. The sacrifice to men is the formal recognition of
this duty, and in feeding those who are hungry, and in showing hospitality to
those who are in need of it, while you feed one man as a concrete fact you feed
all humanity ideally and in intention; when you give hospitality to one man
who comes past your door, you open the door of your heart to humanity as one
great entity, and in helping and sheltering one you give help and shelter to
humanity as a whole.
17.
And so also with the
last of the five sacrifices, that to animals; food is to be placed on the
ground by the householder that any passing animal may take. In this you
recognize your duty to the lower world, your duty of giving help, of giving
food, of giving training to them. The sacrifice to animals is meant to impress
on his mind that we are here as trainers, as directors, as helpers, of the
lower creatures that stand beneath us on the ladder of evolution. Every time we
sin against them by cruelty, by harshness, by brutality of any sort, we sin
against Him who is dwelling within them and whose lower manifestations they
also are. And in order that man might recognize the good within the brute, in
order that he might understand that Shri Krishna is in the lower animal,
although more veiled than He is in man, man was bidden to sacrifice to the
animals, not to the outer form but to the God within. The only way we can
sacrifice to them is by kindness, by gentleness, by compassion, by training, by
helping forward the animal evolution, and not by beating it back by the
brutality and by the cruelty we see around us on every side.
18.
Thus man was taught by
these outer rites and ceremonies the inner spiritual truths, by which his life
was to be permeated. And when the five sacrifices were over, he was to go out
into the world of men still to sacrifice by other forms of action, still to
sacrifice by the performance of his daily duties. And his daily life that was
begun by these five sacrifices passed out consecrated into the outer life of
men. With gradual carelessness as to the five sacrifices has grown carelessness
of duty in that outer life of men. Not because these sacrifices in themselves
will be for ever necessary, for a time comes when a man rises above them. But
remember this he only rises above them when his whole life has become one long
and living sacrifice. Until that is accomplished, these formal recognitions of
duty are necessary for the sake of the raising of the life,
19.
And unhappily in India
today these have largely dropped out of account, not because men have risen
above them nor because all their lives are pure, spiritual and lofty, so that
they have no need of the lower training and the continual reminder; but because
they have become careless and materialistic, and have fallen so far below the
ideal of their Manu. They refuse all dutiful recognition to the Powers above
them, and therefore they fail in their duty to the men around them.
20.
Let us consider next
the outer daily life - the duty of the individual in the world. Wherever it is,
he is born into some particular family; that marks his family duties. He is
born into some community; that marks out his communal duties. He is born into a
particular nation; that marks out his national duties. For each man the
limitations of duty are set by the circumstances of his birth, which, under the
good Law, under the karmic direction, give to each man the place of his
working, the training ground on which he is to learn. Therefore is it said that
each man should do his own duty, his own Dharma. Better to do your own,
although imperfect, than to try to do the higher Dharma of another. For that
into which you are born is that which you need; that into which you are born is
your wisest training. Do your own duty careless of results, and then you will
learn the lesson of life, and you will begin to tread the path of Yoga. At
first of course action will be done for its fruit; men will do it because they
desire to gain its reward. And here we understand their early training, where
men were taught to work for results in the world of Svarga. The child-man is
trained by rewards; Svarga is held out to him as a thing to be gained by work;
as he accomplishes his religious rites and duties he ensures their svargic
recompense. And in this way he is induced to practise morality, just as you
induce a child to learn its lessons by giving it some reward or some prize. But
if action is to be used for Yoga and not for the gaining of reward, either here
or in any other world, then it must be done only as duty.
21.
Consider for a moment
the four great castes and see how each of these was meant to be used. The
Brahmana was to teach in order that there might be a succession of wise
teachers to guide the evolution of the race. He was not to teach for money, he
was not to teach for power, he was not to teach for anything he got for
himself; he was to teach in fulfilment of his Dharma, and he was to have
knowledge that he might in turn hand it on to others. Thus in a well-regulated
nation there would be always teachers to instruct, able to guide and advise unselfishly
and without a selfish object; thus nothing would be gained by him for himself,
but everything would be gained by him for the people. In this way his Dharma
would be accomplished and the soul set free.
22.
Then there came the
Yoga which was the fitting of the active man of the world for governing and
regulating, the training of the dominant class, the Kshattriya. There you had
the man who was to rule. Why? Not that he might gratify himself by power, but
in order that justice might be done, in order that the poor man might feel
secure and the rich man might be unable to tyrannize, in order that fairness
and impartial justice might prevail in the struggling world of men. For in the
midst of this world of struggle, in the midst of this world of anger and
strife, in the midst of this world where men are seeking to gratify the spirit
of self instead of the common good, they have to be taught that justice must
be done, that if the strong man abuses his strength the just ruler will
restrain that unfair exercise of strength, that the weaker shall not be
trampled upon, that the weaker shall not be oppressed. And the duty of the
king was to do justice between man and man, so that all men might look to the
throne as the fountain from which divine justice flowed. That is the ideal of
the divine kingship that is the ideal of the divine ruler. Rama came to teach
it, Shri Krishna came to teach it; but men were so dull that they would not
learn the lesson. The Kshattriya used his strength to gratify himself and
oppress others, and took their wealth for his own and used their labour for his
personal advantage. He lost the ideal of the divine ruler who incarnated justice
in the warring world of men. But he was meant to make that ideal the object of
his life, and his duty, therefore, was to administer the land, to administer it
for the good of the nation and not for the gratification of himself. And so
also when his duty was the duty of the soldier. The nation was to carry on its
functions in peace. Poor men and harmless men were to live secure with their
households round them in happiness and prosperity. The merchant was to carry
on the work of a merchant in peace. All the various avocations of life were to
be carried on fearlessly, secure against aggression. And so the Kshattriya was
taught that when he was to fight, he fought as the defender of the helpless and
gave his life freely that they might enjoy their lives in peace. He was not to
fight because he wanted gain. He was not to fight because he wanted land. He
was not to fight because he wanted power or dominion. He was to stand as an
iron wall round the nation so that every attack should break itself against his
body, and within the circle made by him all men should live in peace, in
security and in happiness. If he was to follow Yoga within the duty of the
Kshattriya, he must look on himself as the agent of the divine Actor, and
therefore it was that Shri Krishna taught that He had done all and that Arjuna
but repeated the action in the world of men. And when the divine Actor is
recognized in every action of the man, then he can accomplish action as duty
without desire, and it loses its binding power on the soul.
23.
So again with the
Vaishya who was to accumulate wealth. He was to do it not for his own gratification,
but for the support of the nation. He was to be rich in order that every
activity that needed wealth should find a store of wealth at hand and be
carried out in every direction. So that everywhere there might be homes for the
poor, everywhere rest-houses for the traveller, everywhere hospitals both for
men and beasts, everywhere temples for worship, and everywhere the wealth
which was needed to support these activities of perfect national life. And so
his Dharma was this accumulation for the common good and not for individual
self-gratification. In this way he too might follow Yoga, and by Karma-Yoga
prepare himself for the higher life.
24.
So also with the Shudra,
who was to perform his Dharma in the commonwealth. His work lay in
accomplishing the duty of forming the great hand o the nation, which brought
into it what was wanted and carried on the serving external activities. His
Yoga, if it were to be accomplished, lay in gladly discharging his duties,
doing them for the sake of doing them and not for the reward that by doing them
he might gain.
25.
First men do action
for self-gratification, in that way experience is gained; then they learn to do
it as duty, and so they begin to practise Yoga in their daily life; lastly they
do it as a joyful sacrifice for which they ask nothing back, but give every
power they possess for the accomplishment of the work. And in this way union is
accomplished.
26.
We understand what is
meant by purification, when we notice these stages of self-gratification, of
doing duty as duty, of giving everything as a freewill sacrifice. These are
the stages of the path of purification. But how shall such purification be made
as shall lead to the higher steps, to the beginning of the discipleship for
which all created activity is to be the preparation? Every part of man must be
purified, body as well as mind. On the purification of the body I have not time
to dwell, but I may remind you that according to the teaching of the Bhagavad
Gita it is by way of moderation that this purification is accomplished and
not by self-torturing asceticism, torturing the body and Him that dwells
within it, as Shri Krishna says. Yoga is accomplished by temperate self-control,
by deliberate training of the lower nature, by quietly choosing the pure path
in food, by care and moderation in all physical activities, thus gradually
training and regulating and moderating until the whole body comes under the
control of the will and of the Self. Therefore the household life was ordained;
for men were not fit for the hard road of celibacy, save here and there a few.
Brahmacharya was not for all. By household life were men taught to control and
moderate their sexual passions, not by crushing them out - which is for the
mass of men impossible, and if attempted with unwise energy often result in a
re-action that throws the unwise person into the worst profligacy of life - not
by single effort which tries to kill and to uproot in a moment, but by gradual
training in moderation, and by practising the self-denial of the home, where
the lower nature should be slowly trained to temperance and be accustomed to be
controlled by the higher, trained out of its over-activity and made utterly subordinate
to the One. There is where this Karma-Yoga comes in. The householder has
gradually to learn self-control, moderation, making the lower nature yield to
the higher, training it day by day until it is absolutely subject to the will.
In that way he purifies the body and becomes fitted for the higher paths of
Yoga. Then again he must purify the passions of the lower nature all through.
Take as an illustration of it - I want to give you three illustrations of this
so that you may work it out in your lives - take the passion of anger, and see
how it may be worked upon in Karma-Yoga, in order that it may be transmuted in
quality. Anger is an energy, an energy that goes out of man to fight his way.
You see it in an undeveloped and untrained man as passion, showing itself in
many brutal forms, beating down opposition, caring not what methods are used if
he strikes out of his way all that which opposes the gratification of his will.
27.
And in that form it is
an undisciplined and destructive energy of Nature which he who would do
Karma-Yoga must most certainly subdue. How shall he subdue and train the
passion of anger? He gets rid of the personal element to begin with. When a
personal injury is done to him he trains himself to cease to resent it. There
is the duty which lies before many of you. Some man does you a wrong; some one
does an injustice against you. What shall you do? You may let the passion of
anger carry you away and you may strike at him. He has cheated you: you try to
injure him in return, and to take advantage of him. He has injured you: you
try in turn to injure him. He has gone behind your back: you go behind his back
and do him wrong in turn. And so the passion of anger rages, and destruction is
seen on every side in what should be the society of men. How shall this passion
be purified? You may take the answer from any one of the great Teachers who
taught Karma-Yoga, who taught how action in the world of men might be used for
the purposes of the Self. You may remember that amongst the ten-fold system of
duty which Manu laid down, forgiveness of injuries is one of the duties. You
may remember that when the Buddha was teaching He taught: “Hatred ceases not by
hatred at any time, hatred ceases by love”. You may remember that the Christian
Teacher followed the same line of thought and He said: “Be not overcome of
evil, but overcome evil with good”. That is Karma-Yoga. Forgive the injury;
give love for hatred; overcome evil with good. In that way you eliminate the
personal element; you will no longer feel angry because you are wronged; you
will have purified away the personal element, and anger in you will no longer
be of this lower kind. But still a form of anger may remain of a higher kind.
You see a wrong done to the weak: you are angry with the wrongdoer; you see an
animal ill-used: you are wrathful with the person who is cruel; you see a poor
man oppressed: you are angry against the oppressor. Impersonal anger - far
nobler than the other, and a necessary stage in human evolution; far nobler and
better to be angry with a wrongdoer than pass by in stolid indifference,
because you have no sympathy with the suffering that is inflicted. That higher,
impersonal anger is nobler than indifference, but it is not the highest. It
also in turn has to be changed, and it has to be changed into the quality of
doing justice to the strong and the weak alike; which compassionate the
wrongdoer as well as the wronged; which sees that he injures himself even more
than the person whom he hurts; which is sorry for him as well as for the person
who suffers under him; which embraces all, wrongdoer and sufferer, in one
embrace of love and of justice. The man who has thus purified the passion of
anger stops the wrong because it is his duty to stop it, and is gentle to the
wrongdoer because he also must be helped and trained; thus what was anger
striking back against a personal wrong becomes justice which stops all wrong
and makes the strong and the weak equally safe and equally protected. That is
the purification which is done in the world of action, that the line of daily
effort by which the lower nature is purified in order that union may be
attained.
28.
Take again love. You
may have that in the lower brutal form - the animal passion between the sexes
of the very lowest and the poorest kind, which cares nothing for the character
of the one for whom the attachment is felt, which cares nothing for the beauty
of the mental and of the moral nature; it cares only for the physical beauty,
the physical attraction, and the physical pleasure. There is passion in its
lowest form. Self is sought and only self. That is purified by the man who
follows Karma-Yoga into love which sacrifices itself for the one who is loved;
he performs family duties, he takes care of wife and of child and does his very
best for them at the sacrifice of his own inclinations, of his own leisure and
his own gratification; he works in order that the family may be better
supported, he works in order that the family wants may be supplied; in him love
no longer seeks only its own pleasure but seeks to help those who are beloved,
and to take on itself the evil that threatens them in order that they may be
sheltered and spared and guarded; by following Karma-Yoga the man purifies his
love from the selfish elements, and that which was an animal passion for the
other sex becomes the love of the husband, of the father, of the elder brother,
of the relative, who fulfils his duty, working for the sake of the loved and in
order that their lives may be fairer and happier. And then there comes the last
stage, when the love that is purified from self goes out to all. Not only in
the narrow circle of the home does it work, but it sees in every one whom it
meets a person who is to be helped, sees a brother to be fed in every starving
man, sees a sister to be protected in every woman who is left forlorn. Finding
any one who is lonely, a man thus purified becomes father and brother and
helper to that one, not because he loves personally but because he loves
ideally, and because he seeks to give for love’s sake and not even for the
gratification of being loved in return. The highest love, the love that grows
out of Karma-Yoga, asks nothing back in return for what it gives; it seeks no
gratitude; it asks for no recognition; it is willing to work unknown; nay, it
is more glad to work unknown and unrecognized than to work in a way that brings
recognition and that brings praise. And the ultimate purification of love is
where that love becomes absolutely divine, where it gives because it is its nature
to spread happiness, where it asks nothing for itself but seeks only that
others should be glad.
29.
And so again with
greed, covetousness. Men seek to gain in order that they may enjoy; they desire
gain in order that they may have power; they strive to gain in order that they
may be lifted up. They purify that first form of greed; and they begin to
desire gain that the family may be better off, that the family may be in a
better position, that the family may be beyond suffering and want and
starvation; thus they grow less selfish than before. Then they go further. They
desire power in order that they may use it for good, that they may spread it to
do good over a wider area than the family, that they may serve in a wider field
than the home; and at last, as in the case of love, they learn to give without
any return. They learn to desire knowledge and power not that they may hold it
but that they may give it, not that they may enjoy it but only in order that it
may be spread. And in this way selfishness is burned up.
30.
Have you ever wondered
why He to whom is given the name of Mahadeva, why He dwells in a
burning-ground? A strange place, men would have thought, in which the Mightiest
One should dwell. Strange surroundings with which to environ Him who is purity
itself. What is hidden under the symbolism of the burning-ground is human life;
and in that burning-ground where Shiva dwells all the lower things in human
life are consumed as by fire. If He dwells not within it, then these earthly
things remain to putrefy, to corrupt, to be a source of danger, to spread
disease and corruption everywhere. But in the burning-ground in which He
dwells, through which His fire passes from side to side, is burned up
everything that is selfish, everything that is personal, everything which is of
the lower nature; out of those regenerating flames the Yogi rises triumphant,
with nothing of the personal element left within him; for the fire of the Lord
has burned up all lower passions, and there is nothing there remaining to
corrupt or to spread disease. Therefore is He called the Destroyer - the
Destroyer of the lower in order that regeneration may come; for out of His Fire
the soul was originally born, and from that burning-ground the purified Self
arises.
31.
Thus do these first
steps lead onward towards true discipleship, lead onward towards the finding of
the Guru, lead onward towards the Inner Temple, the holiest of holies, where
the Guru of humanity resides. These are the first steps that you must take,
this is the route by which you must travel. Men you are, living in the world
and bound by worldly ties, men living the social and political life; and yet at
the back of your hearts you are desiring true Yoga and the knowledge which is
of the permanent and not only of the transitory life. For in the hearts of
every one of you, if you go down to the very bottom of them, you will find a
yearning to know something more, a desire to live more nobly than you live
today. You may have the outer appearance of loving the things of the world, and
you do love them with your lower natures; but in the heart of every true Hindu,
who is not absolutely renegade and apostate to his religion and his country,
there is still an inner yearning for something more than the things of earth,
still a faint longing, if only from the past traditions, that India shall be
nobler than she is today and her people more worthy of her past. Here then is
the route that you must begin to tread: no great nation unless individuals are
great; no mighty people if individuals are sordid and poor and selfish in their
lives You must begin where you are today, in the life that you are leading and
following these lines that I have roughly sketched you will take your first
steps towards the Path.
32.
Let me close by
reminding you of what the end of that Path is, although I have still to take
you further towards it in the lectures that lie before us in these morning
hours. The end of the Path is union - the Karma-Yoga which we have been
studying is Union by Action. There are other steps to take, but what is
“union”? You remember how Shri Krishna gave the marks of the man who had passed
beyond the gunas, the marks of the man who had crossed beyond them and who was
fit for the nectar of immortality, the man who was ready to know that which is
Highest, to come into union with the Supreme. He perceives no agent save the
gunas. He knoweth That which lies beyond. He sees the gunas acting; he desires
them not when they are absent, he repels them not when they are present. He is
balanced amidst friends and foes, balanced in praise and in shame,
self-reliant, looking on all things with an equal eye, on the clod of earth, on
the piece of gold, on friend and on enemy alike. He is the same to all, for he
has crossed over the gunas, and is no longer deluded by their play. That is the
goal that we are seeking. These are the first steps towards the Path that
crosses over. Until these are trodden no other steps are possible; but as these
are gradually accomplished the beginning of the true Path is seen.
33.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR
DISCIPLESHIP.
34.
CONTROL OF MIND.
MEDITATION. BUILDING OF CHARACTER.
35.
BROTHERS, - The
special section of the subject with which I am to deal this morning is the
qualifications for discipleship. And let me begin by drawing your attention
to the question of re-birth, and the way in which a man may realize what is
meant by discipleship, and may deliberately choose that as his future path in
life. You will remember what was said yesterday, how I traced for you the
different stages of action: how a man first performed action for the
gratification of his own lower nature ever seeking for fruit, how then he
gradually learnt in the practice of Karma-Yoga to perform action not for the
sake of the fruit for the lower self, but because the action ought to be done,
thus identifying himself with Law, thus consciously taking part in the great
work of the world. Then I hinted to you that there was a stage beyond that
where the sacrifice was made not only as duty but as a joyful giving of
everything that a man possessed. It is clear that when that stage is aimed at,
when a man performs work not merely because it ought to be done but because he
desires to give everything that he is and has to the service of the Supreme,
then it is that it becomes possible for a man to break what are called the
bonds of desire and in that way to liberate himself from re-birth. For that
which draws man to re-birth in the world is desire; the desire to enjoy the
things that here may be enjoyed, the desire to achieve the things that here may
be achieved. Every man who puts before him some earthly aim, every man who
makes the goal of his life some earthly object, that man is evidently bound by
desire. And so long as he desires that which the earth can give him, he must
return for it; so long as any joy or any object belonging to the transitory
life - physical life upon earth - is a thing that has power to attract, it is a
thing that has also power to bind. Every attraction in other words is that
which binds the soul, and brings it back to the place where the desire may be
accomplished.
36.
Man is so divine in
his nature, so God-like in himself, that even this out-going energy of his,
that we speak of as desire, has in itself the power of accomplishment. That
which he desires he attains, that which he desires nature gives to him in due
course when the time is ripe; so that man, as has often been said, is master of
his own destiny, and whatever he demands from the universe that the universe
will give. He must of course take the results of the desire in that portion of
the universe to which the desire belongs. So that if he desires the things of
earth, he must come back to earth in order that the desire may be accomplished.
So again a man is bound to re-birth by any of those desires which find their
satisfaction in the temporary and transitory worlds on the other side of
death; those worlds which are transitory, beyond the gate-way of death, all
lead back again, as we know, to re-birth here; so that if a man’s desires are
fixed on the joys of Svarga, if he looks for the fruits of his life in this
world in some other world which is also transitory, supposing that he denies
himself earthly joys with the deliberate object of attaining the joys of
Svarga, then those joys are the fruit of his work, and that fruit will be given
to him in due course. But inasmuch as Svarga is itself fleeting, inasmuch as
Svarga is itself transitory, he has only taken for his path what has been
called the path of the Moon, the path that leads to re-birth - you may
remember it is written that “the moon is the door of Svarga” - and then from
Svarga the soul comes back to the earthly world of men. In that way desire -
whether it is to be accomplished in this world or in some other world, also
transitory and fleeting - ties the soul to re-birth, and therefore it is that
it is written that only when “the bonds of the heart are broken” can the soul
reach liberation.
37.
Now liberation pure
and simple (for an age) may be gained by this mere destruction of desire. Without
any very, very high achievement, without any very lofty stage in the evolution
of the soul, without the unfolding of all the divine possibilities that lie
enwrapped in human consciousness, without attaining those great heights on
which the Teachers and the Helpers of mankind are standing, man may gain, if he
so desire it, a liberation which is fundamentally selfish, which lifts him
indeed out of the world of change, which breaks indeed the bonds that bind him
to the worlds of life and death, but which helps not in any way his brethren,
which does not break their bonds nor set them free; this is a liberation which
is for the unit rather than for the whole, in which a man passes out of
humanity and leaves humanity to struggle along its way. I know that many men
have in life no higher thought than that; that there are many who seek simply
for liberation, careless of others so that they themselves escape. That, as I
say, may fairly easily be gained. It needs a recognition of the transitoriness of
earthly things, of the worthlessness of the objects of ambition with which a
worldly man naturally busies himself day by day. But after all that liberation
is only for a time, for a manvantara perhaps; after that there is a return. So
that while it sets the soul free from this world and leaves it liberated so far
as this earth is concerned, in a future cycle such souls have to come back to
take another step towards what is the really diviner destiny of man, the
evolution of the human consciousness into the All-consciousness which is to be
used for training, for helping, for guiding the worlds of the future.
38.
I turn aside then from
that to those wiser and more generous souls who while they would break the
bonds of desire would fain break them not that they themselves may escape from
the difficulties of earthly life, but in order that they may follow that higher
and nobler Path which is called the Path of Discipleship, follow the Great
Ones who have made the pathway possible for humanity; such seek to discover the
Teachers who are willing to accept those who qualify themselves for
discipleship with a view not of simply liberating themselves, not of simply
gaining escape from trouble, but of becoming the helpers and teachers and
saviours of humanity, giving back to the world at large that which the
individual has received from the Teachers who have gone in front. That
discipleship is hinted at in all the great Scriptures of the world. The Guru
who may be found and who teaches men is one of the ideals of all the highest
and most developed souls who in this outer world have sought to realize the
divine. Take any Scripture that you will, and see how this thought is expressed
there. Take Upanishad after Upanishad and see how the Guru is mentioned and how
the attention of the would-be disciple is directed towards His seeking and His
finding. It is that which I desire to put to you this morning; the
qualifications for discipleship; that which has to be done before discipleship
is possible; that which has to be accomplished before the search for the Guru
has any chance of success; that which has to be done in the world, in the
ordinary life of men, utilizing that life as a school, as a place for learning
the preparatory lessons, as a place for qualifying the man to be fit to touch
the Feet of the great Teachers who shall give him the true re-birth - the
re-birth which is symbolized in all exoteric religions by one or another
external ceremony, sacred less for itself than because of that which it
symbolizes. You will find in Hinduism the word “Twice-born”, implying that the
man is not only born of earthly father and mother, but has passed the true
second birth which is given by the Guru to the soul. That is symbolized - alas!
only symbolized, in too many cases now - by the initiation given by the family
Guru or by the father to the son, when he becomes what in the outer world is
called the twice-born man. But in the days of old - and in the present days as
well - there was and is a real, a true Initiation which is the original of that
external ceremony; there is a real, a true Initiation which is not simply
initiation into an exoteric caste but into a really divine birth; which is
given by a mighty GURU; which comes from the GREAT INITIATOR, the One Initiator
of humanity. We read of these initiations in the past, we know them to exist in
the present. All history bears testimony to their reality. There are temples in
India beneath which are the places of the ancient initiations, places which now
are unknown to the people, places which now are hidden from the eyes of men,
but which none the less are there, which none the less are accessible to those
who prove themselves worthy to attain them. And not in India alone are such
places to be found. Ancient Egypt had also her crypts of initiation, and mighty
pyramids in one or two cases stand over the ancient places, that now are hidden
from the eyes of man. The later initiations that took place in Egypt, those of
which you may read in the history of Greece and the history of Egypt itself,
those of which you may have heard that one or another of the great philosophers
was there initiated -those took place in the outer buildings known to the
people, which covered the real Temples of Initiation. Into these entrance was
not gained by outer knowledge, but under conditions that have existed from the
furthest antiquity and that exist today as really as they existed then; for as
all history bears testimony to the reality of the initiation, so does history
bear testimony to the reality of the Initiate. There stand at the head of every
great religion Men who were more than ordinary men, Men who gave the Scriptures
to the people, Men who traced the outlines of the exoteric faiths, Men who
Stand out in history head and shoulders above Their fellows by the spiritual
wisdom that gave Them glory and the spiritual insight by means of which They
saw, and who testified of what They saw; for there has been one note which we
have often remarked with regard to all these great Teachers. They do not argue,
They proclaim; They do not discuss, They declare; They do not reach Their
conclusions by logical processes, They reach them by spiritual intuitions; They
come forth and speak with authority that justifies itself in the very speaking,
and men’s hearts recognize the truth of Their teaching, even when it rises
higher than their intellect is able to follow. For there is in the heart of
every man that spiritual principle to which every divine Teacher makes His
appeal, and it answers to the truth of the spiritual declaration, even though
the intellectual eyes may not be keen enough to discern the reality of that
which the Spirit sees. Those great Gurus then who are found in history as the
greatest Teachers, as well as Those whom we find standing out as the mightiest philosophers,
Those are the Initiates, who have become more than man; such Initiates exist
today as they have ever existed. Nay, how should death touch Them who have
overcome life and death, and are the Masters of all lower nature? They have
evolved out of humanity in the course of the millennia which lie behind, some
out of our humanity and some out of humanities anterior to our own. Some of
Them came from other worlds, from other planets, when our humanity was a child;
others grew up when this humanity had trodden long enough the path of evolution
to produce its own Initiates, Gurus of our own race to help onwards the
humanity to which They Themselves belong. When that path is trodden and that
goal is reached, for such a Man there is no more possibility that death should
have power over Him, and that having been He shall not continue to be; the very
fact that They are found in history is the guarantee for Their present
existence; that would be enough to show that They exist, without the testimony
which is growing year by year of those who have found Them, and who know Them,
those who are taught by Them, who take lessons at Their Feet. For in our own
time and in our own day, one after another finds the ancient path; in our own
time and our own day one after another finds that ancient and narrow path, keen
as the edge of a razor, that leads onward to the gateway of discipleship and
makes entrance on the Path of Discipleship a possibility for men; as one after
another finds it, one witness after another in modern times is able to proclaim
the truth of the ancient writings, and entering on that Path they may follow it
stage by stage.
39.
But for the moment we
are concerned with finding what qualifications are demanded ere entrance to
the Path may be gained. Now the first of these qualifications is one which must
be met to a very considerable extent at least before discipleship in any sense
is possible. One of these qualifications is what is called control of the mind,
and my first task now is to explain to you very definitely what control of the
mind means, what the mind is which is controlled, and who it is that controls
it. For you must remember that for the great mass of people the mind is the
representative of the man. When he speaks of “himself”, he really means his
mind. When he says “I”, he is identifying that “I” with the mind, the conscious
intelligence that knows; and when he says “I think, I feel, I know”, you will
not find, if you inquire closely into the meaning, that he goes beyond the
limits of his consciousness in his waking hours. That is what he means by the
“I”, for the most part. Certainly those who have studied carefully know that
such an “I” is illusory; but while they know it as an intellectual proposition,
they do not realize it as a practical matter in life. They may admit it as
philosophers, they do not live it as men in the world. And in order that we may
understand clearly what this control of mind is, and how we may control the
mind, let us just for a moment pause at what we call self-control when we are
dealing with the man of the world; and we shall see how very inadequate that is
when it is compared with the self-control which is one of the qualifications
for discipleship. When we say a man is self-controlled we mean that his mind is
stronger than his passions; that if you take the lower nature, the passions and
the emotions, and over against that you set the intellectual nature, the mind
and the will and the reasoning power and the judgment, that these last are
stronger than the first; that the man is able in a moment of temptation, under
an appeal to his passions, to say: “No, I will not yield to that; I will not
permit myself to be carried away by passion, I will not allow myself to be run
away with by means of the senses; these senses are simply the horses that draw
my chariot; I am the driver, and I will not permit them to gallop along the
road they desire”; and then we say that that man is self-controlled. That is
the ordinary sense of the word, and mind you, that self-control is an admirable
quality. It is a stage through which every man must pass. The uncontrolled and
unregulated man, who is subject entirely to the senses, he indeed has much to
do ere even this quality of worldly self-control will be acquired; but very,
very much more than that is wanted. When we talk about a strong-willed man and
a weak-willed man, we mean for the most part that the man who has got a strong
will is a man who under the ordinary circumstances of temptation and
difficulty will choose his path by reason and by judgment, and will guide
himself by the memory of the past and by conclusions which are based thereon;
then we say a man has a strong will; he is not a man who is at the mercy of
circumstances; he is not a prey to every impulse, he is not like a ship carried
by the currents of the river or driven about by the winds as they blow upon it.
He is rather like a ship controlled by a seaman who understands his duty, who
utilizes the currents and the winds to drive his ship in the direction in which
he desires to go, who uses the rudder of the will to make the ship follow the
path on which he himself has determined. And it is true that this difference of
strong and of weak will is a mark of growing individuality; as the man himself
grows, as the individuality increases, this power of direction from within is
one of the clearest marks of the growth. I remember H. P. Blavatsky saying in
one of her articles when she was dealing with individuality, that you might
recognize individuality in man and the absence of individuality in the lower
animals by observing the way in which the man and the lower animals act under
certain circumstances. If you take a number of wild animals and surround them
with similar circumstances, you will find them all act in the same general
way. Their action is determined by the circumstances that surround them; each
does not arrange his own action to modify the circumstances, balancing the one
against the other in order to make the path which he selects; they act all
alike. If you know the nature of the animal, and if you know the circumstances,
you might judge of the action of the whole class by the actions of one or two.
Now that distinctly shows the absence of individuality. But if you take men, a
number of men, you cannot judge beforehand that they will all act in the same
way; for according to the development of the individuals will be the variety of
the action taken by them under the same circumstances. One individual is
different from another, therefore he acts differently; he has a will of his
own, therefore he chooses differently; the man who is weak-willed has less
individuality, he is less developed, he is not as far advanced on the road of
evolution.
40.
Now supposing that
this is realized, then a man may go a step further than the control of the
lower nature by the higher, and he may begin to realize something of the
creative power of thought. This will imply more than the thought of the
ordinary man of the world; it will imply knowledge of some philosophy. If for
instance he has studied the great writings of the Hindus he will there gain a
definite intellectual apprehension of the creative power of thought, but the
moment he has seen that he will further see that there is something behind what
he calls his mind; for if there be a creative power of thought, if a man can
generate thought through the mind, then there must be something that generates,
and that is hidden behind the mind producing these thoughts. The very fact that
there is such a creative power of thought, that a man is able to influence and
train his own mind and the mind of others by this creative power is enough to
show that there is something behind the mind, something which is as it were
separable from it, and something that will use the mind as its instrument. And
then there dawns on the student who is endeavouring to understand himself,
that he has to deal with a mind which is exceedingly difficult to deal with,
and that thoughts come unbidden, and spring up as it were without choice of his
own; when he begins to study the workings of the mind he finds thoughts come
rushing into it without his asking them to come; he finds himself possessed of
ideas which he would wish very different. All kinds of fancies come into his
mind which he wants to expel; he finds himself helpless, he cannot get rid of
them. He finds himself compelled to grind on at thoughts that dominate the mind
and which are by no means at his bidding nor under his authority. And he begins
to observe these thoughts; he begins to ask: whence come they? how do they
work? how may they be controlled? and he gradually learns that many thoughts
that come to his mind have their origin in the minds of other men, and that
according to the line of his own thinking so will he attract from the outer
world of thought the thoughts of others; in turn he influences the minds of
others by the thoughts that are generated by himself, and he begins to understand
that this responsibility is much greater than he ever dreamed. He used to think
that only when he spoke did he affect the minds of others, only when he acted
did he by example influence the actions of others; but as he learns more and
more he begins to understand that there is an invisible power which goes out
from the thinking man and plays on the minds of other people. Modern science
tells us something of this, and to the same effect; modern science in many of
its experiments has learned that thought may be sent from brain to brain
without the spoken word or without the written message, and that there is
something in thought which is palpable, which is observable, which is like a
vibration that sets other things vibrating, although no word be formulated, no
articulate speech be uttered. Science has discovered that in silence thought
may be sent from man to man, that without any outer communication - or as
Professor Lodge said, without material means of communication, using the word
“material” in its physical sense - it is possible for mind to affect mind.
41.
If that be so, we are
all affecting each other by thought without either word or action; for the
thought that we have generated goes out into the world to affect the minds of
other men; the thoughts that they think come to us to affect in turn our thinking,
and we begin to realize that for the most part thinking is a very small part of
the life of most people, and that the mere receiving of other people’s thoughts
is what we are apt to call thinking. In fact men’s minds are very much like
houses, rest-houses, through which travellers pass and in which they stay for a
night; most men’s minds are not very much more than that. The thought comes in
and goes out. The man contributes very little towards the thought he receives.
He receives it, harbours it, and it passes away. But what we ought to be doing
is to be thinking deliberately, and thinking with a purpose behind the thought
to accomplish that which we determine.
42.
Why should this
control of mind, this control of thought, this stopping of thought, this
refusing of harbourage to the thoughts of others, be so valuable? Why should
this be a condition of discipleship? Because when a man becomes a disciple his
thoughts gain added power; because when a man becomes a disciple his
individuality is growing, is increasing, is becoming mightier; and every
thought that he thinks has increased vitality and increased energy and influence
on the outer world of man. By a thought a man can kill; by a thought a man can
heal a disease; by a thought a man can influence a crowd; by a thought a man
can create a visible illusion which shall deceive other men and lead them
astray. As thought has such mighty power as the individual grows and increases,
and as discipleship means the rapid growth and the increase of individuality,
so that a man accomplishes in a few lives what otherwise would take millennia
of years to accomplish, it is necessary, before these added powers come within
his reach, that he should learn to control his thoughts, that he should learn
to check all that is evil in them, that he should learn to harbour nothing save
that which is pure and beneficent and useful. Control then of the mind by the
Self is made a condition of discipleship, because ere a man has the added power
of thought that comes from the teaching of the Guru, he must have obtained
control over the instrument by which the thoughts are produced, so that it may
make what he determines that it shall make, and produce nothing without his
full consent.
43.
I know that on this
point people will feel difficulty. They will say: what is this individual that
is always growing? What is this individual who develops will and power of
control over the mind, who, you say, is not the mind but is greater than the
mind? May I take a picture from the outer world so as to help you to image in
your thinking the way in which the individual comes to be and the way in which
he grows? Suppose that you went into an atmosphere supercharged with watery
vapour, but the atmosphere was so hot that the water remained in suspension,
invisible, so that the place seemed to you to be empty; nothing is there, you
would say, it is empty air. You know quite well that if a chemist took some of
that air thus charged with vapour, enclosed it, and gradually cooled it down,
you would see appear out of the emptiness a faint mist or cloudiness, and that
faint mist would gradually grow a little denser and a little denser, until, as
more and more the atmosphere was chilled, there would be formed a drop of water
where before nothing was seen. Now that may serve as one of the clumsy physical
images that one may take to illustrate the formation of the individual. Out of
that Invisible which is the One from which all proceeds, appears as it were a
faint cloud becoming visible, a faint mist condensing, which separates itself
from the invisible vapour around it, and gradually condenses more and more till
it becomes the individual drop, that we recognize as a unit; out of that which
is All comes the separated and distinct; one indeed in its nature with the All,
the same in its essence but separated by its conditions, and so individualized
out of the whole. And the individual soul of man is such an individualization
from the One Self, and it grows and grows by experience. It grows and increases
and develops as it is re-born life after life and time after time, hundreds of times
into the world. And what we call the mind is just a little out-putting of this
individual into the world of matter. As the amoeba when it wants food thrusts
out a portion of itself and takes in a little particle of nutritive matter and
draws the protruded part containing the food back into its own substance, thus
nourishing itself with the food that it takes in, so does the individual put
out into the world - the physical world - a little protrusion from itself, to
gather experience as food for the individual, and draw it in again in what we
call death, absorbing this gained experience to nourish its growth. And the
mind is this out-putting into the physical world, it is part of the individual,
of the soul; the consciousness that is you is greater than your mind, the
consciousness that is you is greater than that which you recognize as the
intellect. All your past, all the experience that you have gained, is garnered
in consciousness. All the knowledge that you have acquired is treasured in the
consciousness that is really you. You put out at your birth a little part of
yourself to gather new experience and to increase this; consciousness still
more; this the soul takes for its own growth, and in each life out of its wider
consciousness it tries to influence that out-put portion of itself; what we
call the voice of conscience is nothing but this greater Self speaking to the
lower self, and trying to guide the lower self in its ignorance by the wisdom
which the Higher Self has acquired life after life.
44.
But we know there is a
difficulty about this lower self of ours, the mind. Do you remember what Arjuna
said to Shri Krishna when he was dealing with this control of the lower Manas
that we are studying? You remember how he said to his divine Teacher that Manas
was so restless; “Manas is verily restless”, he said, “O Krishna; it is impetuous,
strong, and difficult to bend; I deem it as hard to curb as the wind”. And that
is true; every one knows it to be true who tries to curb the mind. Every one
who tries to control Manas knows how restless, impetuous, and strong it is, and
how hard to curb. But do you remember how the Blessed Lord gave answer to
Arjuna when he said it was hard as the wind to curb? His answer was: “Without
doubt Manas is hard to curb and restless, O mighty armed; but it may be curbed
by constant practice and by indifference”. There is no other way. Constant
practice: no one can do it for you; no Teacher can accomplish it for you. You
yourselves must do it, and until you begin to take it in hand no finding of the
Guru is possible for you. It is useless to cry out and desire to find, if you
will not take the steps that are laid down in the published words of all the
great Teachers in order to guide you to Their Feet. Here is a mighty Teacher, an
Avatara, who lays down what must be done and who says it may be done. And when
an Avatara says it may be done, He means that it can be done by the man who
wills it; for He knows the powers of those whom He can see, and whom He as the
Supreme has brought into the world; and when He gives His divine word that the
conquest is possible, shall we dare to say that we cannot do it, and so as it
were give the lie to the God that speaks?
45.
How then shall it be
done? “By constant practice”, says the Lord; that is to say in your daily life
as you have it, in the busy life of men, you are to begin to train this
restless mind of yours and make it subject to your will. Try for a moment to
think steadily. You will find your thoughts fly away. What shall you do? bring
them back again to the point on which you desire to fix them. Choose a subject
and then think definitely and consecutively upon it. Remember you have an
immense advantage in this training of the mind; you have the ancient Hindu
traditions, you have the physical heredity which has been moulded under these
conditions, and the training in your youth which ought to have accustomed you
to this regulation of the mind. It is far harder for a western-born person to
conquer the restlessness of the mind than it ought to be for you, because there
the control of mind has not been taught, there the training of the mind is not
part of the religious education in the same way, and men are inclined to fly
from one subject to another. The habit - to take a trivial case - of constant
newspaper reading, three or four papers, perhaps, a day, is one of the things
that makes very difficult the control of the mind. You fly from one subject to
another; here a number of telegrams that whirl the mind off to England, to
France, to Spain, to Kamskatcha, to New Zealand, to America; when you have read
that column or half-column you find another kind of news. Accounts of the
doings of well-known people. Reports of plays in the theatres, of cases in the
law courts. Here a race of ships or of men; there descriptions of sports or
athletics, and so on. You all know the varied contents of the newspaper. Men do
not understand the harm they do themselves by wasting the energies of the mind
as they habitually waste them on these trivial and unimportant matters. You
will find men in England, I know, who will read half a dozen papers every day;
that means more than that they are for the time scattering the powers of the
mind; for if you scatter them day after day you get into the habit of
scattering, and you cannot then readily concentrate your thoughts on one idea.
In addition to that there is the waste of time which might be given to higher
matters. I do not mean to say that as men in the world you should not know what
is going on in the world around you; but it is quite enough to take up a single
paper which deals with the more important matters of the outer world, and read
quietly through for a few minutes; if you know how to read, that is enough so
far as these outside things go.
46.
In order that you may
fight against this modern tendency of scattering thought you should make it a
daily habit to think consecutively and to concentrate your attention for some
time on one subject; make it a serious practice in the training of your mind to
read every day some part of a book that deals with the graver matters of life,
with the eternal rather than with the transitory; fix the mind upon it while
you are reading. Do not allow it to wander, do not allow it to scatter. If it
travels off bring it back, and place it again on the same idea, and in that way
you will strengthen the mind, you will begin to curb it, you will by constant
practice learn to control it, and make it go along the path that you desire it
should follow. Even in things of the world this quality is of great advantage.
It is not only that in doing this you are preparing yourself for the greater
life which is open to you, but even in the common things of life the man of
concentrated thought is the more successful man; the man who is able to think
consecutively, clearly and definitely, he is the man who even in the lower
world will be able to make his way. So you will find this constant practice in
training the mind useful in this unimportant world as well as in greater
things. And then you will gradually learn the control which is one of the
conditions of discipleship.
47.
As you thus train the
mind you will perhaps take another step - meditation. Meditation is the deliberate
and formal training of the mind in concentration and in fixity of thought. You
are to do it every day, because if you do it every day you are helped by what
is called the automatism of the body and mind. That which you do daily becomes
a habit; that which is done daily is done without an effort after a time; that
which is hard to begin with becomes easy by practice. Now meditation may be
taken partly as devotional and partly as intellectual, and the wise man who is
training himself for discipleship will meditate in both ways. He will
concentrate his mind, fix his thought, on the divine ideal, on the Teacher
whom, unknown at present, he still ultimately hopes to find; and keeping
before him this perfect ideal, he will fix his lower mind on that ideal in the
hour of meditation, and will aspire upwards towards it with fixed and unswerving
thought. As the mind grows, this will become easier and easier; as he keeps
this ideal before the mind in meditation he will begin to reflect it, to grow a
little like it. That is one of the creative powers of the mind - the man
becomes that upon which he reflects; and if he reflects daily on the perfect
ideal of humanity he will begin to grow towards that perfect ideal himself.
Then he will gradually find that as he fixes the mind steadily on this ideal,
as he aspires upwards towards it, and longs to come into contact with it, he
will find during this time of meditation that the lower mind will become
peaceful, that the lower mind will sink into quietude, that the outside world
will fade away from consciousness, and that the deeper consciousness will shine
as it were from within - the higher consciousness, that of the individual
himself, realizing and knowing what he is. For as the lower mind is thus
quieted, as its restlessness is conquered, it becomes like a still lake of
water which is unruffled by any wind, unmoved by any currents. That lake is
like a mirror; on that mirror-like surface, unruffled, tranquil, the sun which
is in heaven shines down, reflecting itself in the quiet water; so also the
higher consciousness reflects itself in the mirror of the tranquillized lower
mind. And then the man knows, no longer by authority but of his own knowledge,
that he is more than the mind which he has realized as intellect, that his
consciousness is greater than the passing consciousness of the mind; then it becomes
possible for him to begin to identify himself with the higher, and if only for
a moment to catch a glimpse of the majesty of the Self. For remember how in
the great Scriptures you are always taught that you yourself are the higher and
not the lower. What means the saying that we read in the Chhandogyopanishad and
elsewhere, the proclamation: “Thou art Brahman”, “Thou art That”? so the
Buddhists repeat also: “Thou art Buddha”. That will never be a fact of
consciousness to you, however much you may intellectually realize it, until by
meditation you have made the lower mind the mirror in which the higher may be
reflected; then, in a further stage of meditation you yourself will consciously
become the higher, and then you will know what every great Teacher has meant by
that famous phrase, which has in it the assertion of the inherent divinity of
man.
48.
When this is done
daily, is practised by meditation followed day after day, month after month,
year after year, it gradually permeates all the life and becomes constant
instead of partial. First, confined to the time of meditation; then spreading
over into the life led in the world. You may say: How can I be conscious of
that when I am busy in the outer world? How can I keep consciousness of the
higher when the lower is in full activity? Do you not know how, bowing before
the altar you may use your body to offer flowers, whilst the mind is
concentrated on the Deity Himself? The outer activity of the body is there, yet
your thought is not on the flowers that you are offering but on the Object of
the offering; the hands perform their duty and offer their flowers perfectly,
although the mind is fixing its thoughts on the Divine itself. And so in the
outer world of man, you may offer the flowers of duty in a life of constant
activities, of daily work; you may offer these flowers with the body and with
the mind, fulfilling to the utmost your duty in the outer world, but you yourselves
will be fixed ever in meditation and in worship. Once learn to separate your
higher consciousness from your lower, yourself from your mind, and your will
gradually acquire the power of carrying on mental activities without losing
the real “I” in them; the mind working perfectly at its appropriate duties
while the Self remains at a loftier height. You will never leave the inner
sanctuary, however much the outer life is busy in the world of men. In this way
the man is preparing himself for discipleship.
49.
There is another stage
which we must just glance at, that which I call the intellectual side of meditation,
concerned with the gradual and conscious building of character. Again I turn to
the great treatise of Karma-Yoga, the teachings of Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad
Gita. If you turn to the 16th discourse you may find the long list of qualities
there given which a man must develop in himself so that he may be born with
them in the future. They are called “the divine properties”, and Arjuna is
told: “Thou art born with divine properties, O Pandava”. Now in order that you
may be born with them in future births you must make them in the birth that is;
if you are to bring them back with you into life you must gradually create them
in lives as they come one after another, and the man of the world who wants to
know how to build his character can do nothing better than take this list of
qualities, the divine properties which are wanted in discipleship, and build
them one by one in his daily life by a conjoint process of meditation and
action. Purity for instance is one of them. How shall a man build himself into
purity? By, in his morning meditation, taking purity as part of the subject on
which he thinks, realizing what it means. No impurity of thought must ever
touch him; no impurity of action must ever stain him, he must be pure in the
threefold thread of action, word and thought. That is the threefold cord of
duty, as I once reminded you, and is that which the Brahmanas threefold thread
is intended to represent. In the morning he thinks of purity as a thing that is
desirable, that he must accomplish; and when he goes out into the world he
carries the memory of his meditation with him. He watches his actions; he
allows no impure action to stain his body; he commits no impure action all
through the day, for he steadily watches every action that no touch of impurity
may soil it. He watches his words. He speaks no word that is impure; he makes
no reference in his talk to an unclean subject; he never permits his tongue to
be soiled by making an unclean suggestion. Every word of his is pure, so that he
would dare to speak it in the presence of his Master, whose eye sees every
lightest stain of impurity which the ordinary mortal eye would miss. He will
watch every word that it may be the purest that he can utter, and he will never
foul himself or others by a single word or phrase coarse with impure
suggestion. His thought will be pure. He will never allow an unclean thought to
come into his mind, or if it comes into his mind it will at once be cast out;
the moment the thought comes he will cast it out; and as he knows that it could
not come into his mind unless there was in his mind something to attract it, he
purifies his own mind, so that no unclean thought of any one else may be able
to gain entrance. Thus he watches on this one point through the whole of his
day. And then again he will take truth in his morning meditation; he will think
of truth, its value in the world, its value in society, its value in his own
character; and when he goes out into the world of men he will never commit an
action that will give a false impression, he will never speak a word that
conveys a false idea. Not only will he not lie, but he will not even be
inaccurate, because that also is speaking a falsehood. To be inaccurate in
recounting what you have seen is to speak untruth. All exaggeration and
painting up of a story, everything that is not perfectly consistent with fact,
so far as he knows it, everything which has any shade of untruthfulness, may
not be used by him who would become a disciple. And so in thought again he must
be true. Every thought must be as true as he can make it, with no shadow of
falsehood to pollute his mind. So with compassion. He will meditate on
compassion in the morning and during the day he will seek to practise it; he
will show all kindness to people around him; he will do all service to family
and friends and neighbours. Wherever he sees want he will try to relieve it;
wherever he sees sorrow he will try to comfort it; wherever he sees misery he
will strive to lighten it. He will live compassion as well as think it, and so
make it part of his character. So with fortitude. He will think of the nobility
of the strong man, the man whom no outer circumstances can depress or elate,
the man who is not joyful over success nor miserable over failure, who is not
at the mercy of circumstances, sad today because things are troublesome and
joyful tomorrow because things are easy. He will try to be himself, always
balanced and strong; as he goes out into the world he will practise; if trouble
comes he will think of the Eternal where no trouble is; if loss of money comes,
he will think of the wealth of wisdom that cannot be taken away from him; if a
friend be snatched by death, he will consider that no living soul can die and
that the body that dies is only the garment which is thrown aside when it is
out-worn, and another taken, and that his friend shall be found again. And so
with all the other virtues of self-restraint, of peaceableness, of
fearlessness - all these things he will think of and practise. Not all at once.
No man living in the world would be able to give sufficient time to meditate on
each of these every day; but take them one by one, and build them into your
character. Work on steadily: do not be afraid of giving time to it; do not be
afraid of giving trouble to it. Everything that you build you are building for
eternity, and you may well be patient in time when eternity spreads before you.
Everything you gain, you gain for evermore. Meditation alone or practice alone
is insufficient for the building of the character. Both must go together; both
must form part of the daily life, and in this way a noble character is made.
50.
A man who has thus
trained himself, a man who has thus done the utmost that he can do, who has
given his time and thought and trouble to make himself fit to find the
Teacher, even by him the Teacher shall verily be found; or rather, the Teacher
shall find him and manifest Himself to his soul. For do you imagine in
blindness and in ignorance that these Teachers desire to be hidden? Do you
imagine, veiled in illusion, that They deliberately hide Themselves from the
eyes of men in order to leave humanity to stumble helpless, unwishful to aid it
and to guide? I tell you that much as you may for a moment desire to find your
Teacher, the Teacher is a thousand-fold more constant in His desire to find
you, in order that He may help. Looking out over the world of men, They see so
many helpers are wanted and so few are found. The masses perish in ignorance;
teachers are wanted for them and they perish by myriads; there is none to help
them. The great Teachers need disciples who are living in the lower world, and
who, trained by the Teachers, shall go out into the world of men, and bring
help to the suffering, bring knowledge to the darkened minds. They are always
looking out into the world to find one soul that is willing and ready to be
helped; always looking over the world in order that They may at once come to
the souls that are ready to receive Them, and will not shut the doors of their hearts
against Them. For our hearts are closed against Them and fast-locked, so that
They cannot enter. They may not break down the doors and come in by force. If a
man choose his own way and if he lock the doors, none other may turn the key;
we are locked up by worldly desire; we are locked up by grasping after the
things of the earth; we are locked up with the keys of sin and indifference and
sloth; and the Teacher stands waiting till the door be opened in order that He
may cross the threshold and illuminate the mind.
51.
Do you say: How do
They know among the myriads of men one soul that works for Them and makes
itself fit for Their coming? The answer was once given in the form of a
picture; that as a man standing on a mountain-top looking over the adjacent valley
sees a light in a single cottage because the light shines out against the
surrounding darkness, so does the soul that has made itself ready show the
light in the darkness of the surrounding world which catches the eye of the
Watcher on the mountain side and draws his attention by its own light. You must
light the soul, in order that the Teacher may see it. He stands watching, but
you must give the signal in order that He may become your Teacher and guide you
on the way. How great the need you will perhaps understand better at the end
of the remaining work that lies before us, as I trace the work of the disciple
and what may really be done by him: but let me leave you this morning with this
thought in your minds: that the Teacher is watching, is waiting, is desiring
to find you, desiring to teach you that you have the power to draw Him to you,
that only you can let Him come. He may knock at the door of your heart, but you
must cry out the word that bids Him enter; and if you would follow the path I have
traced for you this morning, if step by step you would thus learn control of
mind, meditation, building of character, there you would have spoken the
threefold word which makes it possible for the Teacher to reveal Himself. When
that word is breathed out in the silence of the soul then the Master appears
before it, and the feet of the Guru are found.
52.
THE LIFE OF THE
DISCIPLE.
53.
THE PROBATIONARY PATH.
THE FOUR INITIATIONS.
54.
IT is a difficult
task, my brothers, that lies before us this morning. In the two preceding
lectures I have been dealing with the life of men in the world, and pointing
out to you how in this ordinary life men might gradually prepare themselves for
the higher stages of evolution; how they might gradually train themselves for
swifter progress, for swifter advance. But today we have to go outside the life
of man in the ordinary sense of the term - not so far as the outer appearance
is concerned, but so far as the reality of the inner life is to be studied. For
the stages of human progress that we are now to deal with are distinct and
definite stages, which lead men out of the life of the world into the life of
the higher regions; out of the ordinary humanity into a humanity which is
divine. And inasmuch, therefore, as it must take us more outside common
experience, the task is, as I say, more difficult, both for you who hear it and
for myself who speak. For in these higher matters higher faculties must needs
be brought into play; and they best will be able to follow this lofty teaching
who, at least, have tried to some extent that purification of life and building
of character to which our last two mornings have been devoted in thought.
55.
I brought you
yesterday up to the point at which a man, having tried to improve his life and
control his thought, to bring himself into preparation for discipleship, has
drawn the attention of some great Teacher, has drawn the attention of a Guru,
so that he may now begin the first stages of discipleship. And it is these
first stages that we will take in beginning this morning. However large the
subject, I have to try and run through the whole of the life of discipleship,
of chelaship, this morning.
56.
The first stages make
up what has been called “the probationary path”, that is the stage of
probationary as separated from the stage of accepted chelaship. In the
probationary path, while we can recognize certain stages, and the acquirement
of certain definite qualifications, we do not find them so definitely marked
out as are those of what we will call the Path proper - that of chelaship
recognized and distinct. In the true Path, the Path where the disciple is not
only recognized by his Master, but recognizes his Master, in that Path the four
stages are exceedingly distinct, are known by separate names, and are separated
by distinct Initiations. On the probationary path the stages are marked, but
they are not separated in that distinct way. The stages may be said rather to
run side by side than successively and one after the other. The probationary
chela, as we may call one entering on the stages of this path, is not expected
to perform perfectly everything he begins to practise. He is expected to
attempt, but perfect performance is not demanded from him. It is sufficient if
he be in earnest, if his efforts are sustained, if he does not change his mind
nor lose sight of his goal. Many allowances, as we say in human affairs, are
made for him on the ground of human frailty, human weakness, and the lack of
knowledge which still hinders his advance. The trials he meets with, the tests
he undergoes, are the trials and tests which are met with in ordinary life,
troubles of every kind and form, on which I shall have a word to say presently,
but they are not of the nature of those which belong to the distinct and
definite Path. The stages of the probationary path, if I remember rightly, were
traced some years ago from the well-known Hindu teachings, by a Brahmana, then
in England, and a member of the Theosophical Society, Mohini Mohun Chatterji of
Calcutta; he recounted what have been called the preliminary steps which men
must take and must accomplish, helped to a certain extent by their Teachers,
but for the most part unconsciously to themselves - that is, as far as their
waking consciousness is concerned; the chela appears to himself to be treading
the path alone, and to be dependent on his own strength and energy. I need not
say that this is an illusion due to his own blindness and ignorance, for the
eyes of his Teacher are on him, although it may not be known to him in his
waking consciousness, and help is ever extended to him from the higher planes
of being, help that shows itself in his life, although it may not show itself
clearly to his waking mind. And now we shall find the qualifications we have
dealt with as preparatory in a general sense take to themselves more definite
shapes on the probationary path.
57.
The first
qualification is the outcome of the experiences through which he has passed;
they awake and train in him VIVEKA, or discrimination. Discrimination between
the real and the unreal, between the eternal and the transitory. Until this
appears he will be bound to the earth by ignorance, and worldly objects will
exercise over him all their seductive glamour. His eyes must be opened, he must
pierce through the veil of Maya, at least sufficiently to rate earthly things
at their true value, for from Viveka is born the second of the qualifications
- VAIRAGYA. I have already pointed out to you that a man must begin to train
himself in separation from action as regards its fruit. He must train himself
to do action as a duty without continually looking for any sort of personal
gain. That training we will suppose has been carried out by a man certainly for
life after life, before the demand is made on him which he must answer to a
very considerable extent before Initiation is possible, that he shall become
definitely indifferent to earthly objects. Indifference to earthly objects,
indifference to worldly objects, Vairagya, is the second of the qualifications
in the probationary path of chelaship. He has developed Viveka and, as we have
seen, this means the discrimination between the real and the unreal, between
the transitory and the permanent. And as reality and permanency make themselves
felt in the man’s mind, it is inevitable that worldly objects shall lose their
attraction, and that he shall become definitely indifferent to them. When the
real is seen the unreal is so unsatisfactory; when the permanent is recognized,
if only for a moment, the transitory seems so little worth striving after; in
the probationary path all the objects around us lose their attractive power,
and it is no longer an effort for the man to turn away from them; it is no
longer by deliberate effort of the will that he does not permit himself to work
for fruit. The objects have no longer an attraction in themselves; the root of
desire is gradually perishing, and these objects, as it is said in the Bhagavad
Gita, turn away from the abstemious dweller in the body. It is not so much
that he deliberately abstains, as that they lose the power to any way satisfy
him. The objects of the senses turn away from him, because of that training
that we have already dealt with, that he has passed through.
58.
Seeing objects then in
their transitory character it is quite natural that out of indifference to the
objects should also grow, as a matter of course, that which he has long been
striving after, namely, indifference to their fruits; for the fruits are
themselves but other objects. The fruits themselves share the impermanency and
unreality which he recognizes, having seen the real and the permanent.
59.
And then the third of
the qualifications has to be gained on the probationary path: SHATSAMPATTI, the
six-fold group of mental qualities or mental attributes which show themselves
within the life of this chela-candidate - as perhaps we may call him. He has
long been striving to rule his thoughts in the manner with which we are
familiar. He has been practising all those methods which we spoke of yesterday,
to gain self-control, to acquire the habit of meditation, and to perform the
building of character. These have prepared him now to show forth in the real
man - for we are concerned with the real man and not with the illusory
appearance - to show forth in the real man, Shama, control of the mind,
that definite regulation of thought, that definite understanding of the effects
of thought, and of his relation to the world around him, as he affects it for
good or for evil by his own thinking. By the recognition of that power that he
has either to help or to mar by his own thought the lives of other men, how to
hinder or to help the evolution of the race, he becomes a deliberate worker for
human progress and for the progress of all evolving beings within the limits of
the world to which he belongs. And this regulation of thought - now a definite
attitude of the mind - is preparing him, as we shall see, for complete and
definite chelaship, where every thought is to be made the instrument of the Master’s
work, and where comparatively without effort the mind is to run along the
grooves that are traced for it by the will.
60.
Out of that regulation
of thought, now so largely accomplished, follows inevitably Dama, control
of the senses and the body, that which we may call regulation of conduct. Do
you notice how when dealing with things from the occult standpoint, they are
reversed as compared with the standpoint of earth? Worldly men think more of
conduct than of thought. The occultist thinks far more of thought than of
conduct. If the thought be right the conduct must inevitably be pure; if the
thought be regulated, the conduct must inevitably be well controlled and
governed. The outer appearance or action is only the translation of the inner
thought which in the world of form takes shape as what we call action; but the
form is dependent on the life within, the shape is dependent on the moulding
energy which makes it. The Arupa world is the world of causes, the Rupa world
is only the world of effects; and therefore if we regulate thought the conduct
must be regulated, as it is the natural and inevitable expression of thought.
61.
The third mental
attribute that marks this attitude of the inner man is Uparati, best
translated perhaps as a wide and noble and sustained tolerance - I use that
word in the very widest sense that you can give to it - tolerance of all that
is round him, a kind or sublime patience which is able to wait, which is able
to understand, and, therefore, demands from none more than he can give. This
again is the preparation for a very distinct stage on the path of full
chelaship. This attitude of the man, the tolerant attitude, is able to make
allowances for every one and everything, looks on all men not as they are seen
from without but as they are seen from within, sees their aspirations, their
desires and their motives, and not only the clumsy mistranslations which
appearance often gives in the outer world. He learns tolerance of all different
forms of religion, tolerance of all different kinds of custom, tolerance of all
the varying traditions of men. He understands that all these are transitory
phases which men ultimately outgrow, and he is not so unreasonable as to expect
from the child humanity that wideness, that breadth, that sense of dignified
patience which is characteristic of humanity in its manhood and not in its
early stages. This attitude of the mind must be constantly cultivated by the
man who is approaching initiation, and he must gain that tolerance by insight
into truth and be able to recognize the underlying truth underneath the veil of
misleading appearances.
62.
Do you notice how all
through it is the dawning of the sense of reality that is the great change that
has come over the man in this probationary path? He is no longer deceived by
appearances as he was in the early days. As he grows he sees reality and so
gradually gets rid of illusion. He is shaking off subjection to appearances,
and he is recognizing truth, no matter what may be its illusory form.
63.
The next point in his
mental attitude is Titiksha, endurance, a patient bearing of all
that comes, a total absence of resentment. You will remember how I drew your
attention to this as a thing to strive for, how a man was gradually to get rid
of the tendency to feel injured, how he was to cultivate love and compassion
and forgiveness, and the result of that cultivation of the mind is this mental
attitude steady and defined. The inner man thus gets rid of resentment -
resentment towards everything, towards men, towards circumstances, towards
everything that surrounds him in life. Why? Because he sees truth and he knows
the Law, and therefore knows that whatever circumstances surround him, they are
the outcome of the good Law. He knows that whatever men may do to him they are
only the unconscious agents of the Law. He knows that whatever comes to him in
life is of his own creating in the past. And so his attitude is the attitude of
absence of resentment. He realizes justice, therefore he cannot be angry with
anything, for nothing can touch him which he has not deserved; nothing can come
in his way which he has not put there in his former lives. Thus we find that no
troubles and no joys can turn him aside from his path; he is no longer to be
changed in direction by anything that comes in his way. He sees the path and
treads it; he sees the goal and he presses towards it. He is no longer
following devious and indefinite ways, here, there and everywhere; but firmly,
steadily, he follows the path he has chosen. He cannot be attracted away from
it by pleasure; he cannot be driven away from it by pain. He cannot be discouraged
by dulness, by voidness, by emptiness, he cannot be induced to stray from it by
offers from any save the one Guru whose Feet he seeks. Incapacity to be turned
aside, strong in endurance - ah! there is a quality he needs indeed on this
probationary path. For I spoke of the tests and ordeals which will beset his
way, and it is well that you should understand why these difficulties should
come. The man who has entered on the probationary path intends to accomplish
within a very limited number of lives what the man of the world will accomplish
in hundreds upon hundreds of lives. He is like the man who, wanting to reach
the top of the mountain, refuses to follow the track that winds round and
round. He says: “I am going straight up the mountain-side, I am not going to
waste my time on this winding beaten track which will take me so long, the slow
way on which most of the going is smooth and easy, beaten by the myriads of feet
that tread it. I shall go by the shorter route, I shall take the swifter path,
I shall go straight up the mountainside. No matter what the difficulties, I
will climb the mountain. No matter what obstacles there may be, I will go;
precipices there may be - I will cross them; walls of rocks there may be - I
will climb them; obstacles and boulders in my path there may be - I will manage
in some way to surmount them or get round them; but up that mountain - side I
mean to travel”. What will be the result? He will find a thousand-fold more
difficulties surround him on the path. If he gains in time he must pay in
trouble for the difficulty of the achievement. The man who enters on the
probationary path is the man who chooses the short way to the mountain-top, and
calls down on himself the whole of his past Karma, which is largely to be got
rid of before he is fitted for initiation. The great Lords of Karma who
administer the karmic Law - those mighty Intelligences high above us, greater
than our comprehension can understand, greater than our reason can in any way
fathom, who have been spoken of as the Recorders of Karma, Those who keep the
akashic records in which are written down all the past thoughts and deeds of
men - They have, as it were, an account of each individual. They have before
Their omniscient eyes the life-record of each man, and that record which lies
under Their eyes has to be mostly discharged, ere he passes through the
portals of initiation. And when he enters on the probationary path, when deliberately
of his own set will he puts his feet on that path, the very putting of his feet
there is a cry to the great Lords of Karma that They will balance up the
account that there is against him, and present him with the karmic debt he is
obliged to discharge. Is it then any wonder that difficulties grow round his
path? The Karma that would have spread over hundreds of lives will have to be
passed through in a few, perhaps in one, and so naturally the path is difficult
to tread. Family troubles come round the man, business troubles press upon him,
troubles of mind and of body assail him; do you wonder then that I said he
needs steadfastness, in order to proceed along the probationary path and not
turn back, in order not to be discouraged. It may seem that everything is
against him. It may seem to him that his Master has forsaken him. Why, when he
is trying his best should the worst befall him? Why, when he is living better
than he ever lived before, should all these difficulties and pains assail him?
It seems so unjust, it seems so hard, it seems so cruel, that when he is living
more nobly than he has ever tried to live before, he finds himself more hardly
treated than ever before by Destiny. He must stand the test, he must refuse to
allow any sense of injustice to penetrate into his inner life. He must say to
himself: “It was my own doing, I challenged my Karma; what wonder then that I
am asked to pay it”. And at least he has the encouragement of remembering that
the debt once paid is paid for ever, once lived through no more of it can come
to disturb him. Every karmic debt he pays is struck from off life’s ledger for
evermore. That debt at least is done with. So that if illness strikes him down,
he thinks it is well that that much trouble should be gotten rid of; if pain
and anxiety assail him, he thinks it is well; he answers: “It will be behind me
in the past and not before me in the future”. And so it is that in the midst of
sorrow he is joyful, in the midst of discouragement he is hopeful, in the
midst of pain he is at ease, for the inner man is content with the Law, he is
satisfied with the answer which has come to his demand. If there were no
answer, it would mean that his voice had not reached the ears of the Great
Ones, it would mean his prayer had fallen back to earth; for this trouble is
the answer to his petition. Thus in these struggles, these difficulties, these
efforts, he gains the fifth mental attribute and that is: Shraddha, faith,
or we may call it confidence - confidence in his Master and in himself. You
can understand how that will be the result of such a struggle. You can
understand how on the further side of the struggle confidence must come out, as
the flower must open under the stimulating influence of sunshine and rain. He
has learned confidence in his Guru, for has He not led him through all this
thorny path and brought him to the other side where the gateway of initiation
begins to open in front of him? And he has learned confidence in himself - not
in his lower self whose weakness he has conquered, but in his divine Self whose
strength he is beginning to recognize. For he understands that every man is
divine, he understands that what his Guru is today, he himself is going to
become in the lives that still stretch out in front of him. And the confidence
he feels is in the power of the Master to teach and to guide him, in the wisdom
of the Master to lead and to instruct him; and a confidence in himself, most
humble yet most strong, that inasmuch as he is himself divine, he also has the
power to accomplish; that however much of effort may be needed, however much of
difficulty still remains to conquer, the strength that is in him is one with
Brahman, and is enough for every difficulty, enough for every trial.
64.
The sixth mental
attribute is Samadhana, balance, composure, peace of mind, that
equilibrium and steadiness which result from the attainment of the foregoing
qualities. With the gaining of this the probationary path is trodden, the
chela-candidate stands ready before the gateway, and there appears without
further effort the fourth qualification: MUMUKSHA, the desire for
emancipation, the wish to gain liberation, that which, crowning the long
efforts of the candidate, shows him to be an Adhikari, to be ready for
initiation. He has been proved and not found wanting: his discrimination is
keen, his indifference is no temporary disgust, due to a passing
disappointment, his mental and moral character is lofty - he is fit, he is
ready for initiation. No more is asked, he stands fit to come face to face with
his Master, face to face with the life that he so long has sought.
65.
Notice ere we put our
hand on the gateway of initiation that every quality of the probationary path
is a preparation for what lies in front, is a moral and mental quality. Moral
and mental qualities are the qualifications that are demanded - not powers, as
they are called, not abnormal psychic development, not the Siddhis. These are
not in any sense demanded or required. A man may have gained some of the
Siddhis and yet not be fit for initiation; but he must have the moral
qualifications. These are demanded with a rigidity that nothing can change -
with a rigidity, let me say in passing, that is the result of experience. For
the great Gurus in Their vast experience of humanity, have been training it
step by step for myriads of years. They know well enough that the qualification
for true discipleship must be found in the mind and in the moral character and
not in the development of the psychic nature; that has to come in its own place
and in its own good time. But to be a recognized disciple, an accepted chela,
the mind and morals must be fitted to meet the gaze of the Guru; such as have
been stated are the qualifications He demands, and these His pupils must give
Him ere the second birth will be granted by Him who alone can give it. And
notice also that these imply knowledge and devotion - the growth of knowledge
that the man may see, and the growth of devotion without which the path cannot
be trodden. And, therefore, it is written in the Upanishad that knowledge
unallied to devotion is not enough, that devotion by itself is not sufficient;
it must be knowledge wedded to devotion, for these are the two wings by which
the disciple rises.
66.
We come to the Path
itself. Of the great Initiations which mark the stages of the Path after the
chela is accepted by his Guru and when the Guru takes upon Himself the guidance
and instruction and guardianship of His chela - of these great Initiations
from time to time a word has been dropped from the lips of some Teacher in the
outer world, and we can find hints thrown out here and there, hints which are
verified by the experience of those who pass within the gateway, hints which
are permitted to be expanded to some small extent, not for the gratification
of idle curiosity, but for the training of those who would fain prepare
themselves for this great step in advance. What can be said about them must
obviously be imperfect; that which can be revealed in the world of men of these
great mysteries can only be fragmentary information. Many questions will rise
in your mind as I take these hints and weave them together into a slight but
connected whole. Many questions will rise in your minds the answers to which
could not be wisely given. The whole object, as I say, of giving the
information is not to gratify curiosity, it is not in order that a man may ask
a number of questions and get answers given to them one after another; the
hints that are given are meant for men who are in earnest, for those who want
to know in order that they may prepare, for those who want to understand in
order that they may be able to accomplish. And so from time to time these hints
are given, the partial information which is enough for immediate guidance, but
not enough to satisfy mere idle and worldly curiosity.
67.
Two mighty Teachers
stand out in history as having given more information on this subject than any
others - each of Them a Teacher of a world-wide religion - world-wide not in
the sense of area, but world-wide in their bearing on the souls that are ready
for their reception. One of these great Teachers was the Founder of Buddhism,
the LORD BUDDHA; and the other of these Teachers was SHRI SHANKARACHARYA, who
did for Hinduism what we may say the BUDDHA did for countries beyond its reach
in founding His exoteric faith. As regards the Path Their teachings are
identical, as the teachings of every such great Initiate must needs be. Each of
Them laid down the same stages; each of Them marks the stages by definite
initiations which separate each stage from those which precede it and those
which follow it. In the teaching itself there is perfect identity, it is only
in the phraseology adapting it respectively to one faith or the other that
differences arise. Here again, of course, is one of the reasons why men must
learn to seek truth under diverse forms and appearances, otherwise they quarrel
about the forms instead of realizing the identity that underlies these outer
labels that are merely names.
68.
Four different stages
there are, as I say, and each of them marked by an initiation. Now initiation
means this; it means the expansion of consciousness which is brought about by
the definite intermediation of the Guru, who acts in place of the one GREAT
INITIATOR of humanity and gives the second birth in His Name. This expansion of
consciousness is the note as it were of initiation, for this expansion of
consciousness gives what is called “the key of knowledge”; it opens up to the
Initiate new vistas of knowledge and of power, it places within his hand the
key which unlocks the doors of nature. To what end? In order that he may become
more serviceable to the world at large; in order that his power for service may
be increased; in order that he may join that scanty band of men who are vowed
to humanity and who have renounced the lower self, who seek nothing save the
service of the Master and of humanity; who know that the service of the Master
and of humanity is one and the same service; who have done with the world and
everything that the world can offer; who have dedicated themselves for ever to
the service of the Great Ones to be Their instruments of work, the channels of
Their help and of Their grace. And between each of the great Initiations
certain definite things have to be done - changes in the inner man - but with
a great difference from the changes which have hitherto been considered. When a
man is once initiated, what is done has to be done perfectly, no longer
imperfectly; every accomplishment is completely achieved, every chain is
definitely cast off. No longer the imperfect working out; can’t he pass onwards
till perfectly the work of the stage is accomplished. So that there is this
definiteness about it, which is nowhere else in life, that each successive
stage is finished before the man passes further. No half-work, no incomplete
achievement is here accepted. However long it may take, the work must be
absolutely finished before another step forward can be taken. Technically that
has been called “the casting off of the fetters”, of certain things that still
bind the soul. At the end of the Path lies Jivanmukti; to have trodden it is to
reach that stage where life is free, so that every fetter must be cast off
wholly in order that nothing may bind the living man.
69.
The first great
Initiation makes the man what is called by SHRI SHANKARACHARYA the Parivrajaka
- what is called by the BUDDHA the Srotapatti. The Buddhist word, generally
given in its Pali form, means “he who has entered the stream” which separates
him from this world. He no longer belongs to this world, though he may live in
it; he has here no place, nothing can hold him. Exactly the same idea is
conveyed by the word Parivrajaka, a man who wanders about, that is, who has no
settled home; not necessarily wandering about in the body, not necessarily no
settled home in the body - as it has come to mean in the exoteric sense - but
the man who in his inner life is separated from the world, who has in this
transitory world no fixed place of abode, to whom in this transitory world one
place is not different from any other. He can go here, there and anywhere,
where his Master may send him. No place has power to hold him, no place has
power to bind him; he has shaken off the fetters of place. And so he is called
“the wanderer”. I know of course, as you know, that this stage is taken in
quite an exoteric sense today; but I am taking it in the inner sense, in the
meaning of the Great Ones who gave it. We know, alas! how much things have
changed from the older days; how that which was then a reality in life has now
become a matter of words and of outer appearance. But I am anxious that you
should know the four stages of the Path as they are spoken of in Hinduism, as
some people imagine that they were revealed only by the LORD BUDDHA, whereas He
but proclaimed again the ancient narrow Path, that all Initiates of the One
Lodge have trodden, are treading, and shall tread.
70.
Let me take the
reality first. The man who has crossed the stream, as I said, has definitely
parted with the world - he wants no more of it except as he can serve it. He
asks no more of it except as in it he can do his Guru’s bidding. That is the
mark of the first great Initiation - of the man who is re-born. For the most
part the re-birth takes place outside the body but in waking consciousness: i.e.,
the man is initiated generally in his astral body in full consciousness,
the physical body being left entranced; occasionally a chela is initiated
without the waking consciousness being permitted for a time to share in the knowledge.
But in either case the act can never be undone; the man can never again be as
he was before. The babe, when it is born into the world, may for a time be
unconscious of the new world around it, but that babe cannot return into its
mother’s womb and be as though no birth had been passed through. So neither can
the Initiate who has passed through the second birth ever again be as though he
had not been thus born, and share in the life of the outer world as those who
have not passed the second birth may share in it. He may delay in his progress,
he may be slow in his advance, he may take a longer time than is necessary to
throw off the fetters that still bind him; but he can never again be
uninitiated, the key can never again pass out of his grasp. He has stepped into
the stream; he is separated from the world; he must go forward, however slowly,
however many lives he may spend in the doing.
71.
A question has been
raised as to the number of lives intervening between this step and final liberation,
the attainment of Jivanmukti. I remember hearing that Svami T. Subba Row,
speaking here to some friends about the general idea that seven lives had to be
passed in this division of chelaship, made the perfectly true and significant
remark: “It may be seven lives or seventy, it may be seven days or seven
hours”. That is: the life of the soul is not counted by mortal years or by
mortal time; it depends on its energy, on its strength, on its will to succeed.
A man may waste his time or spend it to the best advantage, and according to
that will be the progress that he will make.
72.
But during this stage,
which is commenced by the first great Initiation and is closed by the second,
there are three different things that a man must get absolutely rid of ere he
can pass the second portal. The first of these is the illusion of the personal
self. Personality must be destroyed; no longer now controlled, no longer now
diminished, no longer kept in check: but destroyed, killed for evermore. The
illusion of the separated personal self has to go. The chela must recognize
himself as one with all other selves, for the Self of all is one. He must
realize that all around him, man, the animal and plant worlds, the mineral and
elemental forms of life, are all one. The illusion of personality must be
gotten rid of. See how the extending consciousness will help in this; how the
recognition of the true Self will make it possible to get rid of the false; how
the seeing of the Real will cause the disappearance of the unreal; and so the
illusion of the personal self is absolutely killed. Why? because his eyes are
opened and they pierce through the illusion; thus he becomes free and casts off
the fetter called “the delusion of self”.
73.
And he must get rid of
doubt. That is the second obstacle that will prevent him from going further.
But he has to get rid of doubt in a very definite way - he is to get rid of
doubt by knowledge. No longer to him are the things of the invisible world to
be questions of speculation; no longer to him are the great truths of religion
to be philosophic ideas. They are to be realized facts. He must no longer have
any question in his mind as to how is this or why? There are certain
fundamental truths of life on which no longer possibility of doubt must remain
to him. Ere he can go one step further forward, he must be absolutely convinced
beyond the possibility of question of the great truth of Re-incarnation; he
must know beyond the possibility of question the great truth of Karma; be must
know beyond the possibility of question the great truth of the existence of the
divine Men, of the Jivanmuktas, who are the Gurus of humanity. On these points
no possibility of doubt must remain; that is he must have knowledge no longer
theoretical but real, no longer theoretical but practical, so that no shade of
questioning on these can ever again possibly cloud his mind; the only position
that is thus secure is where knowledge replaces speculation, and where absolute
contact with the reality makes impossible any more the deceptions that are
caused by the illusions of the outer world.
74.
The last of these
three fetters that he has to entirely cast off at this stage is superstition.
Realize clearly what that means and then you will understand very fully why
both SHRI SHANKARACHARYA and the BUDDHA used the names that They respectively
gave for this stage of chelaship. Superstition means this, in the technical
sense (in which I am, of course, now using the word): it means the reliance on
external sectarian rites and ceremonies for spiritual help. So far as their
external nature is concerned, the man recognizes the truth beneath the form,
and if the truth be there the value of the outer shape depends on its
adaptation to this world of ignorance and illusion. The man has risen above
exoteric forms and ceremonies. But you are familiar with this idea in your
everyday life. The Sannyasi is supposed to be a man who is risen above these
things, and from whom they are no longer demanded. And why not? Because he is
supposed to have touched reality, because he is supposed no longer to have any
need of these things which are the rungs of the ladder by which men must climb;
they are necessary in the earlier stages - do not forget that fact - this is a
case of growth. If you would mount to the top of the house you must mount by
the staircase or ladder, and foolish would be the man who said, “I will not
climb by the staircase or steps”, unless that man had such power and such
knowledge of the laws of nature that he was able to change the polarity of his
body and rise by what is called levitation - by the action of the will instead
of by the comparatively slow and clumsy method of going up step by step. For
such a man the staircase is unnecessary because he can rise upward by his own
power, and reach the top of the house without the slow method of climbing. But
it does not therefore follow that the staircase is useless; it does not
therefore follow that other men can reach the top of the house by refusing to
use the staircase. And too many men today, who are unable to raise themselves,
refuse to use the staircase, forgetting that until the will is developed the
lower forms are necessary if the man is to rise at all.
75.
And this brings me to
say a word on the “true Sannyasi”. Even five thousand years ago the word was
used without the reality. Even five thousand years ago, at the beginning of the
Kali Yuga, we find Shri Krishna drawing a distinction between the Sannyasi in
appearance and the Sannyasi in reality. Do you remember how speaking on this
very subject he said: “He that performeth action as duty, independently of the
fruit of action, he is a Sannyasi, and he is a Yogi; not he that is without
fire and who doeth nothing”. You know the meaning of the technical phrase, “he
that is without fire”, that is, he who does not light the sacrificial fires,
who does not perform rites and ceremonies; for from the Sannyasi these are not
demanded. But, said Shri Krishna, he is not the true Sannyasi who is known only
by the absence of rites and ceremonies and by the absence of his actions in the
world of men. And if this were true five thousand, years ago, it is far truer,
alas! today. If it were true when the great Avatara was treading the plains of
India, it is far more true when five thousand years of darkness have elapsed.
When we glance over the whole of the Eastern world, if we take India herself
with her countless Sannyasis, we see men who are Sannyasis by the cloth and not
by the life, men who are Sannyasis by outer appearance and not by inner
renunciation. And if we leave Indian soil and tread that say of Ceylon, Burma,
China or Japan, there too we find Buddhist monks who are monks by the yellow
robe and not by the noble life, in the external appearance and not in the
internal truth. And although it is still true that religion is easier to live
here than in any other land; although it is still true that the traditions of
India make her very soil sacred and her very atmosphere more spiritual than the
atmosphere of other lands; although there are places so holy through the lives that
have been led in them that even for the worldly man to go to them quiets the
mind and wakes up the aspirations of the soul; although all this is true of
India, and therefore she is beloved and sacred evermore, alas! her children
are unworthy of her possibilities, and they have fallen on every side. Looking
over the world of men we see no place where the spiritual life is generally
led, no nation where this is recognized as supreme. The heart might go well
nigh to breaking that knows the possibilities and sees the actualities, that
knows what might be and sees what is, that knows the truth and sees, alas! the
lie that simulates the truth. And yet despite all, no disciple’s heart need
break, for the Masters live for evermore and Their disciples also still tread
the world of men; but now their discipleship is shown not in the outer garb but
in the inner life, not in the mere cloth that is worn, but in the knowledge,
the purity and the devotion which still open the gateway of Initiation.
76.
So we come onward to
the second stage called by SHRI SHANKARACHARYA the Kutichaka, the man who
builds a hut, called by the Buddhists the Sakridagamin, the man who receives
birth once more. This stage is one in which no definite fetters are cast off,
but certain acquirements are made. Here comes in the place of the Siddhis.
After the second Initiation it is necessary that the Siddhis should be
developed, because the disciple has reached a stage of his life in which he
must be capable of very extended service, in which he must be able to do his
Master’s work not only in the world of physical men, but also in the other
worlds that surround it and lie outside the physical plane. He must be able not
only to speak with the lips but also to speak directly from mind to mind with
conscious and deliberate intention. I shall try to show you tomorrow hat the
possibilities of service are that lie before him, which react on the physical
world, and which, if they were thoroughly accomplished, as they are not today,
would largely change the trend even of the physical life of man. But in order
that he may do this part of the work, in order that he may prepare himself for
the lofty tasks that lie before him when all knowledge will be open to him, and
Nature will have no veil able to blind his eyes, he must at this stage develop
his inner faculties and unfold one by one those inner possibilities of the
man. It is at this stage that it is necessary, if it has not been done before,
that the inner fire should be awakened, it is here that Kundalini must be
roused to function in the physical body and in the astral body of the living
man. You can read about it in some books, as in the Ananda Lahiri of
SHRI SHANKARACHARYA, of the awakening of the living fire, of the leading it
from chakram to chakram; as it wakes up it gives the man the power to leave the
physical body at will, for as it is led from chakram to chakram it disengages
the astral from the physical and sets it free. Then without break of
consciousness, without any chasm of blankness separating one world from the
other, a man is able to pass out of the physical body into the invisible world,
and is able to work there in full consciousness and to bring back all knowledge
of the work that he has there accomplished. It is within the second stage that
all these powers are developed and evolved, if they have not been evolved
earlier, and until they are in full working order, until they are entirely at
the command of the chela, until there are no barriers left between the visible
and invisible world, he cannot pass on. As those barriers break away by the
unfolding of the inner senses and powers of the man, by the gaining of the
Siddhis, he becomes ready for the third great step in his progress, ready to
pass onwards into the next higher stage of being. You will readily understand
how easily mischief may be done to unfit men who try to artificially bring
about this stage before they are spiritually developed, before the time when
they should reach it in orderly evolution. In published writings there are
many hints thrown out, especially in the Tantrika books, which are greedily
seized on by those who desire to possess powers, and care little for their
moral and mental ability to wield those powers aright. In many of the Tantras
there are underlying truths for those who can reach them, but the statements on
the surface are often exceedingly misleading from their incompleteness for
those who do not know the real facts, and who have no Guru to explain blinds
and to fill up gaps. And so people - ignorantly taking these up to practise,
with the object of forcing their psychical development before their mental and
moral development has fitted them to do it with safety - very often bring about
results indeed, but results which work for evil and not for good. They often
ruin their physical health, they often lose their mental balance, they often
injure their intellectual faculties, because they are trying to pluck the fruit
of the tree of life before it is ripe for the plucking; because with hands
unclean and senses unpurified they try to penetrate into the Holy of Holies.
Within that fane the atmosphere is such that nothing unclean can live in it;
its vibrations are so powerful, that it breaks in pieces everything which is
set in a lower key; it shivers all that is impure, all that is not able to
adapt itself to that subtle and tremendous motion.
77.
When, however, under
the training of his Guru - for only thus should it even be attempted - when
under the training of his Guru the disciple has completely accomplished this
stage, then comes the third great Initiation, that which makes the man what
SHRI SHANKARACHARYA Called a Hamsa, what is called in the Buddhist literature
an Anagamin, the man who receives birth no more, save indeed by his own free
will. This stage is one - as the name given by SHRI SHANKARACHARYA implies - in
which the man realizes unity, in which he knows that he is one with the
SUPREME. The name is given because in his expanding consciousness he had
already risen into the region in the universe where that identity is realized,
and had experienced “I am It”. With the perfecting of his psychic senses and
their correlation with the physical, he is able not only to penetrate the
region where consciousness is felt as a unity, but he is also able to bring back
the memory of that consciousness into his waking hours, to impress it on his
physical brain. Need it be said that the last shred of earthly desire must
needs now fall away from him if at this stage any shred still remains. So that
in this stage a fetter is cast off which is called Kamaraga, desire, little of
earth indeed as there can be in it; but with that realizing of the unity of
all, everything that is separate in appearance loses its power to deceive for
evermore. He has risen far, far above the limitations of separateness, and so
he stands above not only what here we should call earthly desires, but above
the most highly refined, the most spiritual desires which have in them aught
for the separated self; even spiritual desires fall away from the man who
reaches such a height; he cannot separate himself in thought from others,
therefore he cannot have spiritual desires for himself as separate, for himself
save as part of the whole. Everything that he gains, he gains for all;
everything that he wins, he wins for all. He stands in a region of the Universe
whence strength comes down into the world of men, and as he gains it he passes
it on, he sheds it on all, he shares it with all. Thus all the world is better
for each man who reaches this stage. All he wins is won for humanity, and all
that comes into his hands comes only to pass through them into the wider world
of men. He is one with BRAHMAN, and therefore one with every manifestation; and
he is that in his own consciousness, and not only in hope and aspiration. A
strange word is here used to describe the other chain, that he casts off in
this stage - the Pali word Patigha, which in English we are obliged to
translate as “hatred”, although the English word is absurd in this connection.
What it really means is this: that inasmuch as he has become one with all he no
longer feels the distinctions between races and families, between all the
differentiated objects in the world. He no longer can either love or hate
because of external distinctions. He can no longer love or hate because a
person belongs to a different race. He can no longer love or hate because he
draws distinctions between men and the things around them. You remember that
strange phrase of SHRI KRISHNA, when he speaks of the Sage making no
distinction between the illuminated Brahmana and a dog. He has reached unity,
he sees BRAHMAN in everything. Or to take another phrase: he sees SHRI KRISHNA
everywhere, and the outer garment of the Lord makes no difference to his
purified vision; therefore he is absolutely without what we are obliged to
call “hatred” or “repulsion”. Nothing repels him, nothing drives him back. He
is love and compassion to everything, love and compassion to all. He spreads
round him as it were an all-embracing circle of affection. All that come near
him, all that approach him, feel the influence of his divine compassion. And
that is why in the days when Brahmanas were really all that their name implies,
it was said of the Brahmana that he was “the friend of everything, of every
creature”. The heart being one with the Divine was wide enough to enclose
within its limits everything that the Divine had made.
78.
Having then cast
separateness aside for ever, he passes into the final stage of chelaship,
Paramahamsa SHRI SHANKARACHARYA calls it, Arhat is the Buddhist term. Here
again one feels the terrible modern degradation of sacred names, that lofty
condition having its name used so widely and so carelessly, used so often for
mere compliment, for an outer appearance instead of for a living reality. The
real meaning of this name is that the man has passed the fourth great
Initiation, and stands within the stage that precedes Jivanmukti; in his waking
consciousness he can rise to, live in, the Turiya region. He has no need to
leave the body to enjoy it. He has no need to leave the body to be conscious in
it. His consciousness embraces, has expanded to, that, although at the same
time it may be working in the lower brain. And that is one of the great marks
of the attainment of that stage. There is no such thing as physical
unconsciousness necessary in order that that high region of consciousness may
be trodden; for his consciousness has expanded to it, and while he is speaking
and talking and living in the world of men, he has all that vast knowledge
within his reach and is consciously experiencing it at will. In this stage, he
throws off the last five “fetters”, that he may become the Jivanmukta. The
first of these is called Ruparaga, desire for “life in form” - no desire for
such life can move him. Then, he casts off Aruparaga, desire for “life without
form” - no such desire has any power to bind him. And then Mana is cast away,
and again we have to use an English word far too gross to express the real,
subtle nature of the fetter cast off pride; not thinking even for a passing
moment of the greatness of his own achievement, of the dizzy altitude at which
he stands, fur he recognizes neither high nor low, neither lofty height nor
lowly vale. He sees and feels them all as one. He casts off next the
possibility of being ruffled by anything that may occur. Whatever happens, he
will remain unshaken. The spheres may clash together, he will remain unmoved.
Nothing that can happen to the manifested world can shake the sublime serenity
of the man who has risen thus to the realization of the Self of all. What
matters a catastrophe - it is but the form that is broken. What matters the
crash of a world - it is but the manifestation that is changing. The eternal,
the undying, the ancient and the constant, he lives in That, and there is
nothing that can shake his serenity, there is nothing that can mar the perfection
of his peace. And then there falls from his limbs the last fetter of all -
Avidya - that which makes illusion; the last faint film which prevents the
perfect insight and the perfect liberty. While he need be born no more, he may
take birth if he will; no compulsion can bring him back to earth, but of his
own will he can re-incarnate. He brings within his knowledge everything of our
planetary ring. He learns all that this manifestation has to teach; not one
lesson is left unlearnt, not one secret remains hidden, not one corner exists
into which his eye cannot pierce, not one possibility that he is not able to
grasp. At the end of this stage all the lessons have been learnt. All the
powers have been achieved. He is omniscient, omnipotent, within this planetary
chain. He has accomplished the evolution of humanity; he has trodden the last
step that humanity shall have taken when the great Manvantara is accomplished
and the work of this universe is achieved. There is nothing that is veiled from
him, nothing that is not within himself his consciousness has expanded to take
all into himself. He can enter Nirvana itself at will; and there, there is unity,
there, there is all-consciousness, there, there is the fulness of life. He has
reached the goal of humanity; only the last gateway is before him, and that
swings open at the sound of his footstep. That gateway passed, he becomes the
Jivanmukta, according to the Hindu phrase, the Asekha Adept, or He who has no
more to learn, according to the Buddhist nomenclature. All is known, all is
accomplished. Before Him lie open different paths, any one of which He may
choose; before Him spread vast possibilities, any one of which He may stretch
forth His hand and take. Out of the limits of this planetary chain, outside the
limits of our Kosmos, into regions far beyond even our dimmest apprehending,
paths lie open that the Jivanmukta may choose to tread. One path, the most
difficult, the hardest of all, though the swiftest, is that which is called the
Path of the Great Renunciation. If He chooses that, deliberately looking over
the world of men the Jivanmukta refuses to leave it, refuses to go away from
it, says that He will remain and take to Himself a body again and again, for
the teaching and for the helping of man. Once more SHRI SHANKARACHARYA speaks
of Those who wait and function until the work is accomplished. Their own task
is over indeed, but They have identified Themselves with humanity, and until
the evolution of humanity is over They will not pass away from the struggling
ranks of men. They are free, but remain in a voluntary bondage; they are
liberated, but in a liberation that will not complete itself until others are
liberated too. They are the great Masters of Compassion, who live within the
reach of men, that humanity may not be an orphan without a father, that the
pupils may not be seeking a Guru and find no Guru to instruct. They are Those
to whom some of us feel such an intensity of gratitude, because They stay
within the sphere of earth though They live in Nirvanic consciousness beyond
it, in order that a link may be kept between the higher worlds and the men who
are yet unliberated, those to whom the body is still a prison, in whom the life
is not yet set free. All are glorious who have reached that lofty level, all
are divine who stand where They are standing. Bat perhaps one may dare to say
without irreverence, that the dearest to the heart of humanity, the most
closely bound to it by the ties of passionate gratitude for the renunciation
made, are Those who might have gone from us but who stay with us, who might
have left us orphans but who remain as the Fathers of men. Such are the great
Gurus at whose Feet we bow; such the great Masters who stand behind the
Theosophical Society. They sent Their messenger, H. P. Blavatsky, to bring the
message to the world which the world had well-nigh forgotten, to point again to
the narrow and ancient Path along which some feet are treading now, along which
your feet may tread.
79.
THE FUTURE PROGRESS OF
HUMANITY.
80.
METHODS OF FUTURE
SCIENCE. MAN’S COMING DEVELOPMENT.
81.
BROTHERS, - The task
that lies before us this morning is by no means an easy one. Hitherto I have
been tracing for you the progress of the individual; hitherto I have been
trying to show you how a man who thus determined on his future might be able
step by step to rise from the life of the world to the life of the disciple,
and how he might anticipate the progress of humanity, how he might accomplish
in a few short years what the race will accomplish in the course of untold
millennia. But this morning a different task lies before us. I am going to try
to trace for you that progress through the ages. I am going to try to lay
before you, necessarily exceedingly briefly, the great stages of human
progress, taking humanity as a whole. So that we shall, as it were, have a
bird’s-eye view of evolution, realize not only the past out of which we have
grown into the present, but the future that lies before us as a race. It is the
progress of nations with which I propose to deal, the unfolding of humanity
with which we are now concerned. And in trying such a flight as that I feel
almost as though I were asking you to mount with me upon the back of Vishnu’s
vehicle, Garuda the mighty bird, and sweep through the atmosphere of untold
ages, glancing downwards at the landscapes over which we pass. I feel that I
shall leave you and myself well nigh breathless after the transit. It is easier
for me in one way than it is for you, because by often dwelling on the thought
it has become more familiar, while to many of you the ground may perhaps be
almost strange, and the Theosophical conception of evolution through the ages
may be new in its detail. I shall necessarily be compelled to pass rapidly from
point to point without elucidation, and shall therefore be sweeping you over
many difficulties rather perhaps by the speed of the transit than by a complete
and detailed comprehension of the whole. But let me say this to you: I may be
mistaken in some of the details that I may give; I may be in error in some of
the smaller points of this vast picture; but the outline as a whole is true; it
is not mine, it comes from elsewhere; and although the weakness of the
representer may cause error in detail, the fundamental accuracy of the sketch
is an accuracy on which you may rely.
82.
Man in the vision of
the Great Ones who were his earliest Teachers, Rulers and Guides, is not man as
he is today, for he is not all that he is meant to be, all that he shall yet
become. I do not mean by that that his progress has on the whole been
unsatisfactory. It has not. The place in evolution he has reached, surrounded
with difficulties, with doubts, with much of suffering, is a place which on the
whole, looked at from the highest standpoint, is fairly satisfactory,
considering the shortness of the time that lies behind him, short in the divine
measurement, although so long measured by mortal years. Certainly man as he is
today is by no means what man is in the minds that projected his pilgrimage, in
the sight of Those who started him on his evolution. He has come downwards; he
has passed his lowest point; a mighty climbing lies in front of him, at the end
of which humanity, perfected and glorious, shall indeed be very different from
what it is today, shall be as it was projected in the divine thought.
83.
The universe, you must
bear in mind all through, consists of seven great and distinct regions, thrown
out as it were from the divine Mind, thrown from within outwards or from above
downwards, whichever expression you prefer - a mighty universe in seven planes
or regions. Each plane is distinct in its material, although the essence of all
is one and the same, Paramatma whence all proceeds. As this outpouring of the
divine thought took shape by the divine will in the manifested universe, and as
plane after plane was formed, each plane was characterized by the difference of
the density of its material, by the difference of the number of enwrappings in
which the primal energy was veiled. So that speaking broadly, you may conceive
of this great Kosmos with the LOGOS who gave it birth, you may conceive of it
as a mighty solar system, the sun representing the LOGOS and, coming outwards,
orb after orb, each orb representing a plane of the universe. Those within
would be those in which the matter was subtlest and the energy was least
fettered; those outside would be those in which the matter was growing denser,
and the energy was more crippled by this density of the material by which it
was enfolded.
84.
Next you have to
realize that each of these regions has its own inhabitants, and that the course
of evolution is the sweeping outwards from the centre to the circumference and
then the returning inwards from the circumference towards the centre. As the
Great Breath goes outwards and matter comes into existence, becoming denser and
denser, there will be a point at which matter will be at its densest and energy
at its feeblest, at which form will be at its most rigid and life at its most
hidden; so that this outward process will be a process in which matter will be
densifying and form will be increasing in rigidity, while life will be becoming
more and more veiled in its manifestation. On the other hand when there is the
returning of the Breath, the bringing again of this creative activity as it
were to the centre, matter will grow more and more subtle, life will become
more and more unveiled, until finally the Great Breath will draw in from this
manifested Kosmos all the world’s experiences that have been gained. The
humanity which was the object and outcome of this evolutionary process will
have become divine and ready for yet mightier stages of advance. And following
that great sweep outwards we realize that as we follow it there is as regards
the inhabitants a process towards individualization as they pass into denser
matter. So that looking at the inhabitants of these planes, as they lie behind
us, we shall see what is called the elemental essence gradually taking to
itself more and more definite forms; its evolution, being on the descending
arc, lies in its becoming more separated and taking more material forms; it is
a process downwards into matter whereas the evolution now of mankind, being on
the ascending arc, lies in its rising into unity and taking more subtle forms,
for it is a process upwards into the unveiled life.
85.
You may roughly grasp
in this way an idea of the Kosmos as a whole, and you will understand that in
the planes that are less dense than the physical, we have not only evolving and
ascending humanity but also the involving and descending elemental essence. In
the mineral world is the turning point, for there the densest stage has been
reached. In the upward evolution the mineral and the vegetable kingdoms of this
physical world occupy the physical plane and do not pass to a consciousness
beyond it; as evolution proceeds the animal world takes one step upwards, and
the animal has to live on what is called the astral plane as well as on the
physical; man is intended in the thought of his Builders to conquer and occupy
during this evolution five out of the seven planes of the universe. He is
intended to function and to be master on the physical, to function and to be
master on the astral, to function and to be master on the plane above the
astral, the mental, which includes the Svarga of the Hindu, the Devachan of the
Theosophist; we may use another term that better expresses the whole range of
that state of consciousness, the term Sushupti, a state now known during
earth-life only by the exceptionally experienced and developed, but which in
the course of evolution will be experienced by the majority of the human race.
Above this comes the fourth, or Turiya plane, the plane of Buddhi, and above
that yet again the plane of Nirvana, or Turiya-tita. So that you get five
distinct regions of the Universe which humanity is meant to occupy in the
course of this evolution - the physical, the astral, the sushuptic, the turiyic
and the nirvanic. Those are the stages of expanding consciousness through which
man has to pass, if he is to succeed in the pilgrimage which he has to make.
The individual may take these steps more rapidly by Yoga, but the majority of
the race is to accomplish this evolution only in the course of ages; not quite
the whole race, but the majority of human kind, ere this Manvantara is over,
will have conquered all these planes of expanded consciousness and will be
functioning upon the whole five, Man will then have formed to himself vehicles
in which consciousness can work on each plane. And when we look at man to-day
we know that in him there is the possibility of the unfolding of this five-fold
life, the five-fold vehicles which will occupy these different regions and make
him, as he is meant to be, master and lord of this manifested universe.
86.
Two planes yet lie
above and beyond, which will not be touched by the majority of mankind in this
evolution at all - two planes which are mere names for us, names conveying no
definite meaning, so high are those spheres beyond our loftiest imaginings.
These are that which is spoken of as Paranirvana and that which is still
higher, Mahaparanirvana. What these states are we cannot even dream. These are
the seven stages of the Kosmos. Humanity as a majority is to conquer and occupy
five of them, and some of humanity’s children will reach to the yet higher that
remain; but for the bulk of our race its evolution is within the five-fold
universe.
87.
That may perhaps give
you a hint - I have no time to work it out in this lecture - as to what
underlay the controversy that arose as to the “five” and “seven” in Nature.
There has been much dispute as to that, especially between some of the
Theosophists and some of our Brahmana brothers. The Brahmanas claimed the
five-fold classification, whereas the Theosophists insisted on the seven-fold.
The truth is that the total classification is seven-fold as you will find in
the sacred Books, the seven-fold fire dividing itself, hinted at here and there
in the Upanishads. But the present evolution is an evolution of the five-fold
nature only, the evolution symbolized in the five pranas familiar in Hindu
literature. I only say this in passing because so many disputes are disputes which
need not arise if people understood each other a little better than they do; if
instead of fighting over mere appearances they would look beneath the surface,
they would generally find a point of union. As I say, I have not time to dwell
upon it, but it is here that really lies the key to the riddle of the five and
the seven. Mankind as a whole develops five vehicles for the five-fold
evolution, whereas those who are the very flower of humanity reach two stages
that lie still beyond.
88.
Now studying the evolution
of humanity, we find the First and the Second Races employed in the evolution
of form, and in the evolution of the lower or animal nature; that is they
developed the physical body with the etheric double (which in theosophical
books has been called the Linga Sharira) and the kamic or passional nature -
that which you find in the animal and also find in man. Coming to the Third
Race of humanity we find that special help was given to it when it had reached
its midmost point; it was not that humanity could not have developed in the
course of ages without that special help, but that such help enormously
quickened the process and made its evolution far more rapid than otherwise it
would have been. The great Kumaras, Those who are spoken of as Manasaputras,
Sons of Mind, the first fruits of a past evolution, Those came to humanity in
order that They might hasten its growth, might quicken its development, and by
throwing out a spark from Their own essence They gave that impulse we have read
of, by which Manas, or the individual soul, was born in man.
89.
The outcome of that
special help was, as I have said, a great increase in the rapidity of human
evolution. And then was formed that vehicle known as Karana Sharira, or causal
body. It is the “body of Manas” that lasts through the whole life of the
reincarnating soul. It lasts from life to life, carrying on the result of each
to the next. Therefore is it called the causal body, because in this body there
are the causes which unfold themselves into effects on the lower planes of
earthly life.
90.
Now the plan of human
development from that time forward is this: the causal body being formed there
was a vehicle in which everything could be laid up and accumulated, the
receptacle and the storehouse of experience. Passing into earthly life and
throwing out, in the way I explained to you before, a projection of itself, its
earthly life is spent in the gathering of experience, in the collecting in the
physical world of certain facts, certain knowledge, that which as a whole we
call the experience of life. Passing through the gateway of death man has to
assimilate the experience that he has gathered, and he lives a life out of the
body, when he is no longer to be seen in the physical world, but is dwelling on
the astral and the devachanic planes that lie beyond it. There he works out
certain effects and assimilates the experiences he gathered on earth, working
them into his own nature. Each life gives him certain results; these results
are taken and worked up into faculties and powers. If a man for instance
exercised during his physical life much power of thought, used much effort to
understand, to accumulate knowledge, to develop his mind, then during the
period that intervenes between death and birth, he is employed in turning all
these efforts of his into intellectual capacities, with which he will return
for his next birth in this world; so also all his higher aspirations, his
spiritual hopes, his spiritual longings, will be worked into the essence of his
nature, during the time which intervenes between his death and his next birth.
When he returns again to earth he will be born under circumstances which will
facilitate his growth, and he will bring with him the developed spiritual
capacities which he can use for further development during his next life upon
earth.
91.
You see how perfectly
regular are the stages of growth in the body that lasts from life to life. The
Karana Sharira puts out a projection from itself on the lower planes, and
gathers a harvest of experience; then it withdraws it with its experiences
towards itself, letting it remain in the lower regions of Devachan for the
assimilation of that experience and the building it into faculty, into power,
into capacity; then it withdraws it wholly into itself as the containing
vehicle of consciousness; and then comes another putting forth of this now more
highly developed life, which shows on the lower planes the powers it has gained
in this way. Thus there should be a steady and continuous advance, life after
life, the Karana Sharira being the receptacle of all the experiences, and being
the permanent man into which the whole of these experiences are built.
92.
Realizing that, you
will understand what is meant by the “pilgrimage of the soul”: each life should
find a man greater in his mind, greater in his moral powers, greater in his
spiritual faculties. That is the plan of evolution. It is carried out very
imperfectly, and hence the enormous length of the pilgrimage. It is carried out
with many turns and twists and wanderings into by-ways and travelling along
devious paths, instead of pursuing a straight and upward road. Therefore
humanity is long in its journeying and the evolution needs such myriads of
millennia to accomplish. None the less it shall be accomplished, for such is
the Divine Will for humanity, and that cannot be finally frustrated however
much delay may be made in its accomplishment.
93.
Evolution proceeded
through the second half of the Third Race and onwards into the Fourth. Now in
the Fourth Race grew up that mighty civilization of Atlantis which reached its
highest point in the great sub-race of which you have heard a few words even
from Western science - the Toltec. It was a civilization which was marvellous
in its accomplishments; but there was this difficulty in connection with it.
Man was very low down on the ascending arc, and was deeply immersed in matter.
His mental faculties were very largely what we should now call psychic, and it
was necessary that they should be veiled for a time in order that intellectual
power might be evolved and make a higher evolution in the future possible for
humanity. Therefore the great kosmic law, that law that nothing can resist,
swept the race into a great but a very material civilization. This
disappearance of the psychic faculties was quickened to some extent by the
deliberate action of the higher and ruling classes in the Toltec empire of
Atlantis. They deliberately for their own selfish purposes tried to dwarf,
tried to stunt, the use of the psychic faculties in the lower classes of the
population, lower in evolution and therefore in the social scale: and in order
to make them more apt instruments for their own purposes they used their occult
knowledge for the deliberate dwarfing of their psychic faculties. In this way the
faculties were artificially stunted in excess of the working of the great
kosmic law; and this makes me remind you of one thing that is worth thinking
out for yourselves at leisure. That is, that no man can resist the great sweep
of kosmic law; no man can stop the mighty march of the divine evolution; but
man may co-operate with it or work against it. He may work for good or for
evil. Recognizing the wisdom and grandeur of the march he may work with it for
duty’s sake and in submission to the divine will; or he may try to grip for his
own personal gain some of these forces of nature, and use them for his own
transient, for his own personal and selfish gratification, instead of for the
carrying out of the divine purpose. Where a man uses for selfish purpose these
great forces of the Kosmos he makes his individual Karma bad, although the
tendency of the great Karma of the race remains unaffected; thus the individual
may mar his own future; while he is within the wide sweep of the kosmic law, he
may make misery for himself in the narrow circle of his own individual
development; for if he uses kosmic law selfishly he will reap a selfish
harvest, and so within this one great law both happy and unhappy individual
Karmas are made. I say that, recommending it to you for detailed consideration,
for it may solve for you some of the puzzles men often feel how Karma can be a
divine law by which man is swept onwards, seeming like a destiny imposed on
him, while he yet knows that his own will is relatively free; he can choose his
own path but within this mighty sweep.
94.
As I say then, in that
civilization of the past, man used this great law of the Kosmos for his own
selfish purposes, and the final result was the destruction of Atlantis, the
total sweeping away of that civilization, save for such wrecks of it as
remained here and there in the world, especially in South America in the civilization
of Peru, where some faint traces of its glory were left; so beautiful were
these even in their degradation that when Peru was conquered by the Spaniards
from the West they stood marvelling before the happiness of the community,
before the sweetness, the gentleness, the purity of the people who lived there,
the wisdom of the government and the prosperity of the nation as a whole; that civilization
which was slain by the Spaniards, trampled under foot by their advancing hosts,
that was the last faint gleam of the civilization that I speak of which was so
grand at its zenith, which had so great a fall, and was swept away by the
catastrophe that made the Atlantic waves roll where once fair lands stretched.
95.
Passing onward swiftly
from that, we come to the evolution of our own race. To follow the remainder of
this evolution you must remember that the LOGOS of our system reveals Himself
in three-fold aspect. You know that in every great religion the Trimurti, or
the Trinity, is the representation of the manifested God; and you know also, at
least the more thoughtful and philosophic among you know, that the Three are
but a three-fold manifestation of the One; the three aspects of the one -
unmanifested Existence, that can be known only as it is manifested in the
Universe. And you know that in the three-fold LOGOS there is seen the aspect of
Power, the aspect of Wisdom, the aspect of Love.
96.
Now all human
activities bear the impress of this three-fold LOGOS; all human activities may
be classed under one or another of these headings - they fall under the heading
of power, of wisdom, or of love, and under these three all races of men are
grouped, and all activities of nations and individuals are classed. I take that
classification because in a subject so complex as is mine this morning the
classification gives us a set of little boxes into which you may put the
different parts of the subject of the lecture for your further thought and
consideration. Remember that the three are one. Remember that they
interpenetrate each other. Remember that these divisions are divisions of
phenomenal appearance and not of essence; but inasmuch as we are in the world
of phenomena and the separation is phenomenal, we may fairly take it, and we
shall not be misled by it if we realize the fundamental unity from which all
proceeds.
97.
Suppose then we take
the three-fold classification and sub-divide a little more: under Love we shall
find those activities of mind will naturally fall which have to do on the one
side with religion, on the other side with philanthropy, using both the words
in their widest sense, religion meaning the service of those above us,
philanthropy meaning the service of those around us and below us; so that under
this one head of Love we include the whole of the human activities which pay
homage and service to Those who are above us in evolution, and give help and
compassion and assistance to all who are below and around us. Taking the
division of the Gods and men, religion would have to do with the direct service
of the Gods - and how much that means you will see in a few moments - while
philanthropy would have to do with the direct service of men, in this physical
plane at first, of the men we see around us. Under the heading of Wisdom will
come all those activities of the human mind, both lower and higher, that we can
divide further into science, philosophy and art. There we have three great
fields of the activities of the mind that fall under the heading of wisdom; not
that knowledge itself is wisdom, but it is the material out of which, by a
spiritual alchemy, wisdom is evolved, for spiritually transmuted knowledge becomes
wisdom; so we put all these activities of knowledge under the heading of wisdom
as a whole. And then under the heading of Power will come all those human
activities that have to do with the governing of man, with the exercise of
administrative and executive functions, with the building of the nations, with
the forming of communities, with everything in which power is exercised; and
under this also come those creative faculties in man which are his by virtue of
his birthright as the offspring of the Divine - those creative faculties that
so few understand, that so few exercise with knowledge, which are the great
means for human elevation, and the great force for human advance. All the
efforts of the divine Teachers in the past and in the present are directed to
bring these great fields of activity under intelligent human cultivation, so
that they may be rightly tilled by man and that by such tillage his evolution
may be ensured. All their efforts tend to give a right direction to these
activities, that whether they be of love or of wisdom or of power, they may be
sent along the right road for the general evolution of mankind. For this has
every great religion been founded; for this has every noble code of morals
been proclaimed; for this has every strong impulse towards intellectual development
been intended; and for this in our own days is man given the fuller
re-statement of all the ancient truths, under that name of Divine Wisdom which,
in its Anglicized Greek form, is now familiar to you as Theosophy. It is but
another re-statement of the old truth, another effort of the same Teachers to
guide those activities of human life.
98.
At the present time it
is needed most especially; for if you look abroad in the world you will find
that in each great department of human activity man seems to have come
well-nigh to the limit of his powers. He has conquered the physical plane; he
has so brought it into subjection that the physical is occupying far too much
of his attention and interest, and the realities of the higher planes are
veiled from his vision. If we look at the activities of life we find as to
religion that materialism is fighting against it from one side and superstition
is undermining it from the other; so that against religion there are turned two
daggers in the hands of humanity each of which is menacing its life - the
scepticism that disbelieves, and the superstition that misbelieves. Both are
fatal to human progress along this particular line of activity. When you turn
from religion to philanthropy in the modern world, you find human misery too
vast and too great for men to be able to grapple with it; where modern
civilization is the most successful, where modern civilization is the most
triumphant, there you find the greatest aggregate of suffering, and the most
horrible misery which can crush human life; when you look at these miseries you
not only see that philanthropy is helpless against them, but they are giving
birth to resentment, to class hatreds, to threats of revolution and of
anarchy. Thus civilization is menaced from its very foundation, and men know
not how to meet the danger, for they have lost the spirit of love.
99.
And if from love you
turn to wisdom you find that there is difficulty everywhere in its three great
fields. Science seems to have come to the end of its material resources. Its
apparatus is so marvellously delicate that no further development seems within
reach, its balance so marvellously accurate that it can weigh what seems an
unperceivable part of a grain; and yet they say that there are substances
imponderable even for their delicate balances. Science is almost at the end of
its resources so far as its methods are concerned; and against its will it is
being pressed upon by forces of a subtler and far more mysterious kind than it
has been wont to recognize. If we look into the laboratory of the chemist, into
the study of the scientific man, there seem to be pressing in forces that he
cannot deal with by weight or measure; they puzzle him by their reality, while
at the same time they are against every method of his science, they are against
everything that he thinks he knows of nature. In philosophy you find the
struggle between materialism which is proven to be inadequate and idealism
which fails to find a steady and unassailable foundation; and you find also in
the realm of art - that art is tending to barrenness, to sterility, that no
great new things are being produced but only inferior copies of the old;
sterile, barren, it has lost its creative power.
100.
And if you turn to the
third great activity I have spoken of, the activity of power, what do you see
in the modern world? Nation after nation trying experiments; they have lost
the divine rulers that once were there, able to govern the nations and to guide
them along the path of prosperity and of happiness; they are trying to make up
for the loss of these divine kings by having a many-headed king that is called
the People: instead of the divine kingship of mighty Initiates they have what
is called self-government and the methods of democracy - as though by multiplying
ignorance by a sufficiently big multiplier, you might be able to multiply it
into knowledge. You find so far as the creative power is concerned that the
very knowledge of it is gone, and people would be ridiculed who should speak of
it, so far has man lost sight of his inheritance that is divine.
101.
What does all this
tell us? It tells us that mankind as a whole is going to take another step
onwards. It tells us that we have reached one of those transition periods,
where the old being outworn must give place to the new growth and the new
development; under all the turmoil and the trouble, under all the distress and
the perplexity, there are slowly forming within humanity the seeds of its next
advance, which shall give back to these three great types of activity the
ancient power with a new development, the ancient definiteness with new lines
of progress opening; for while evolution does not go backward, retracing its
past steps and reproducing its ancient forms, it goes on a spiral which
reproduces on a higher level all that was best on the lower; and upon such a
spiral humanity is treading now, to accomplish with new powers and wider
possibilities that which in the past we see under different forms.
102.
Consider love. When
humanity takes its next step upwards - and already there are signs here and
there that it is preparing for it - having made the physical vehicle perfect,
its work will be to perfect its second vehicle of consciousness, that in which
it is to function freely on the astral plane. As thousands of years go by,
mankind will develop this second vehicle of consciousness, and the majority
will be able to function in it on the astral plane as easily and as readily as
they function in the physical body on the physical plane today. Not quite the whole
of mankind, for all men are not equal, as the modern absurdity pretends; but a
great mass of men will take this step forward in evolution, will develop that
astral body and function in it completely, and so the progress of humanity will
go on.
103.
What difference will
this step make? In religion the open vision of humanity will bring within its
scope that plane of existence called the astral, where many of the greater
Intelligences manifest themselves in form, for the helping and the teaching of
men. Men will learn to see and know the Beings whose existence has been
proclaimed to them by every mighty faith; they will know Them as now they know,
or think they know, the physical bodies around them. They will know the beings
of the at present unseen world. So that the majority of men will share with the
advanced people of the present that first-hand knowledge that is now so rare,
that first-hand certainty which will render scepticism for ever impossible. No
man can be a sceptic as to the unseen world when he knows in his ordinary
waking consciousness the existence of those beings surrounding us on every
side, any more than you can be sceptical as to the existence of your fathers
and mothers and your children. (I am not discussing the philosophic question of
the Real and the Unreal; I am dealing with the phenomenal universe, and use
words in the ordinary sense in which they are employed amongst us in our
intercourse with each other.) When this step is taken, religion will so far
change its character that that which is known and proclaimed by seers and
prophets will be known by all men, and will be a matter within their experience
and their daily cognizance, and the result will be that scepticism will be
impossible, as it is impossible as regards much of the science of the present
day. Superstition will be slain as much as scepticism. Superstition lives in
darkness. It lives by human ignorance; it lives and grows and flourishes, and
is a curse to the nations because some men who have the tradition of knowledge
without its reality use that tradition for the enslavement of their fellow-men;
and these, being ignorant, are terrified by the claim to knowledge and they bow
down before those who assume to hold its keys, even though the keys be rusty
and turn not in the locks at all. And we shall find, as you find today, that as
men’s eyes are opened superstition becomes impossible. You do not know the
mischief that superstition works on the other side of death. You do not know
the misery and the terror that too many souls undergo when they pass from the
body into the world which to them is unknown, and is crowded for them with all
the imaginary terrors with which superstition dominated by pretended knowledge
has peopled it; especially is this the case in the West where men talk about
eternal hell, and tell people that after death there is no growth and no
progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the lake of fire and brimstone,
there to spend the countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation,
without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what the effect of that is on souls
passing into the other world through the gateway of death, and imagining that
all this is, or even may be true, imagining that they may be victims of this
horror that they have heard of from their ignorant teachers; great are the
difficulties they have who help the souls on the other side, to gradually do
away with the terror and to make them understand that law is everywhere, and
that malice and malignity are not found amongst the ruling powers of the
Kosmos. So, as I say, scepticism will be impossible, superstition will be
impossible; there will be other difficulties, other problems, other
obscurities, but these twin enemies of man, scepticism and superstition, will
be slain beyond resurrection when that day shall come for humanity.
104.
And with love also on
its philanthropic side the gain will be great; so much more can be done for man
from that plane than from the physical. Physical activities make a great fuss,
and have comparatively small results. You see a man running about making laws,
and doing this and that in the world of the state and of society, and you think
how great is his work, how wonderful are his results. But how small and petty
they are in comparison with the results which flow from unseen labour done in
quietness and silence, without speech of tongue, without effort of the
physical body, done by the working of the mind in the subtler medium which
affects men’s thoughts more than their bodies, which influences their minds
more than their outward frames. When humanity rises on to that higher plane,
then this influence will be far more widely spread than it is today, and
misery, crime and wretchedness will be met by working on the minds of men,
purifying them and raising them, and thus lifting them above the possibilities
that engulf them now. Do you realize, you to whom I am now speaking, that every
one of you who generates an impure or revengeful or angry or sordid thought,
sends out that thought into the world of society as a living force, as an
active entity, which plays upon society, which is taken in by the weakest, by
the most receptive, by the least developed, so that out of those thoughts of
so-called respectable men there are scattered the seeds of crime through the
lower masses of the people, and the sins of these which show out in actions
belong very largely to the Karma of those whose thoughts have given them birth.
That is not known as widely as it should be known. It is not believed as it
should be believed. Every man who feels revenge sends out into the astral world
a power for destruction; and when some weak creature comes along with a bad
Karma behind him, and bad circumstances surrounding him, with impulses which
are not under his control and passions which are stronger than his mind, these
evil thoughts come down upon him, all these angry thoughts from men living in
respectable conditions in society, and if he be stimulated by some wrong,
maddened by some injury, these impel him to strike a blow which we call murder;
though he holds the knife in his physical hand, the blow is largely struck by
the thoughts of many men whose revengeful feelings are of the essence of
murder, although they appear not in outward form. You will not get rid of
crimes in the lower strata of society until you purify the thoughts of the
higher classes, of those who are educated and can understand the nature of
things. And when all this is seen and known, when the astral world lies open to
men’s vision, there will be a new force available to help and to raise mankind;
for men will no longer disbelieve in the power of thought, they will then
appreciate their responsibility for the thoughts they generate, and will send
out loving and helping influences instead of the degrading influences that go out
so often today. Then also we shall find that direct help is possible, as it is
indeed given now from that higher region; for the discoveries that men of
science are making often come to them from that world by direct play on their
minds. When a man of science takes a new departure, when a man, say like Sir
William Crookes, discovers the genesis of atoms - one of the finest
generalizations of modern science - do you think he has climbed up to that from
below? I tell you that such ideas come from above and not from below. It is
thus that the Teachers work on the minds of those who have some special
capacity which is able to be utilized; and out of the world of thought, through
the astral plane where thoughts are active functioning entities, they
occasionally influence particular individuals in order that the progress of the
world may be quickened and the growth of humanity may be facilitated. The
reason why this is not done more frequently today is this: that until man’s
moral nature grows, it is not well that he should have too much knowledge of
the unseen forces that lie behind the veil; he would misuse them instead of
utilizing them, use them for oppression and for selfish purposes instead of
for the lifting and helping of man. Therefore it is that knowledge is not more
widely given; therefore it is that science is not more helped. Science, as one
of the Great Ones said, must become the servant of humanity for it to receive
very much help from Those who are above all else the Helpers and Saviours of
the race.
105.
In another way more
rapid progress will be made in the days towards which we are looking. In
education I suppose it has hardly struck you when dealing with children, when
dealing with very young lads, how great are the possibilities that lie within
them, if only their teachers had knowledge enough to directly foster the good
and to dwarf and starve out the evil in them. You know that round every man
there is visible to the trained eye, say to the eye of the Yogi, what is called
an aura, which shows the development of the mind, the nature of the character,
which gives definite information as to the stage of advancement reached by the
soul that dwells in that body, and as to the characteristics and attributes of
that soul. Every one of you bears around him this record of his own state, the
clearly seen evidence of the stage that he occupies in evolution; round each
one of you there is this atmosphere that shows your thoughts, that shows your
character, that is as legible to the trained eye as are the physical features
to the physical eye, and is far more instructive as regards the character of
the man. Now when a young child comes into the world and passes through the
early stages of its growth, there is this peculiarity about its aura: it brings
with it the karmic outcomes of its past, but a large number of the mental and
moral tendencies that it brings over from the past are present in it in germ
and not in full fructification. If you take the aura of a young child it is
comparatively clean; its colours are pure and transparent, not dense and muddy
and thick as they are in grown-up men and women; within that aura lie the germs
of tendencies which may be developed. Some are good and some are evil. The
trained eye, distinguishing these characteristics, might cultivate the good and
starve out the evil by bringing suitable influences to bear on the child. If
you want a healthy plant from a seed, you must take it and put it into good
soil, and you must water it and let the sunshine play on it. All the essentials
of the plant are in the seed, but all the plant is not yet in manifestation,
and according to the soil that you give it, the care you take of it, the air
that plays upon it, the sunshine that warms it - according to these will be the
greater or the less development of the seed; it may be made to grow into great
beauty or it may be stunted and dwarfed in its growth. So it is to a great
extent with the little child. A child is born; it has in it the germ, say, of
anger, of hot and passionate temper. Suppose that those around it are endowed
with knowledge and wisdom, they will know how to deal with it. It should never
be allowed to hear an angry word, it should never be allowed to see a
passionate action. Every one around it should be gentle and loving and self-controlled;
and there should never be sent to the germ that is within the child the
stimulating force of the anger of older people that is like a force to make it
grow more rapidly, to intensify it and force it to fructification. You should
take care that round the children there should be influences that will stimulate
all that is good, all that is noble, and all that is pure. And if you did that
for every child humanity would go forward at a racing speed, whereas it goes
forward with the gait of a cripple at the present time. Ignorance clouds men’s
minds and they know not how to train the young; there is failure round us,
failure that will not exist when man rises to wider knowledge and educates by
sight instead of blindly as he does today, educates with knowledge instead of
ignorance. This need of real education explains why in the ancient days every
boy was sent to a Guru. That ancient institution was meant to give to the child
the advantage of a trained mind playing on his and the help of an insight that
went beyond the insight of an ordinary man. The Guru used to be a man who knew:
the Guru used to be a man who could see, and the child passed into his hands
because under such training the evil was dwarfed and the good was developed. As
the real Gurus have gradually disappeared mankind has lost that great
advantage; but it will come back when knowledge is spread amongst the people,
and when a higher stage of development makes this nobler education possible.
106.
All through the sphere
of knowledge the methods will be changed. The doctor will no longer be obliged
to guess at a disease from outside symptoms but will diagnose by vision and not
by reasoning; men already are beginning to diagnose by the use of what are
called clairvoyant faculties; instead of the doctor being shut out by the
density of the physical body, he utilizes the clairvoyant whose sight pierces
through physical matter, who can see the disease, who can see exactly what is
wrong with any one of the organs of the body; he by this vision, giving the
necessary information to the doctor, enables him to act with perfect
definiteness and to trace the action of his drugs. Think how different all
medical science would be if the doctor had that clairvoyant vision, and if what
is now held only by a few were generally spread amongst them, so that they
might diagnose with certainty and trace the action of every remedy with the
precision that comes from sight. So with chemistry: how much more might the
chemist do than he can today if his eyes were opened, how much more if he could
trace all the stages of the combination of his materials, if he could make his
compounds by vision instead of very often by guess-work, waiting for the result
of an experiment before he is a sure of the result coming about. How much of
accident might be avoided, how much might this knowledge quicken the progress
of science. A hint is given how such progress can be made in an article that
can be found in the November (1895) number of Lucifer. You will see
there how the limits of knowledge will enlarge when the mind has made
manageable its vehicle upon the astral plane. And so with psychology: when men
shall communicate with each other by thought instead of by the slow methods of
pen and print, how thought will speed from brain to brain, communicating ideas
without the clumsy processes that we use today. You will see at once what that
means to humanity from the mere standpoint of this lower world. It means that
separation will be a thing of the past, no mountain or sea will be able to
divide man from man, friend from friend, relative from relative. It means that
when men have conquered this region of nature they will be able to communicate
with each other, mind with mind, no matter where they may travel, no matter in
what land they may dwell; for to the mind there are no limitations of space and
time as there are in the lower world. When man has perfected his astral vehicle
he will always be within reach of those he loves, and separation will have lost
its pain, as death also will have lost its power to divide. Take the life of
man as it is today, take the life of nations as it is lived in the present, and
you know that death and separation are two of the great sorrows that oppress
humanity. Both of these will have lost their chief wounding power when man has
taken this great step forward; both these will have lost their power to divide
when man has reached that higher stage. That which only disciples have today
shall then be shared by the majority; and how much fairer will be the lower
life of man when these influences are swept away from disturbing him.
107.
So also, of course,
with philosophy with its then keener knowledge of the possibilities of matter
and its then keener insight into the realities of life. So too with the writing
of history, when all history shall be written from the akashic records and not
in order to gratify the passions of a political party or to support some
theory of human growth or to strengthen some hypothesis of scientific
imagination. All history lies in the akasha; its records are there imperishable
and indestructible; not one act of humanity that is past but is registered
there, not one fact of human history that is not written there for the eyes
that are able to see. The time will come when all history will be written from
that, instead of in the ignorant way that it is written now, and men when they
want to know the past will look back into the imperishable records and use them
for swifter development, utilizing past experience to promote a swifter growth of
humanity.
108.
And what art will be
when these new powers come within the reach of man, only those perhaps can
estimate who to some extent use them now. Possibilities of new forms beautiful
beyond expression, of colours dazzling beyond all imagination, colours unknown
in the physical world that take existence in the subtler matter of the astral
plane - colours that none can describe because a colour that is not known
cannot be understood by verbal description. All those will come within the
region of art, and all marvellous possibilities of the subtler senses.
109.
And what of will and
power? Then divine kingship will return to earth; then men will take their
places in society according to the stage of development that they have
reached, and not according to mere guess-work as they do today. All men will be
able to see what they themselves and others are, for, printed on each man’s
aura, visible to all men’s sight, will be his mental attributes and moral
capacities, and therefore the place in human society that he is best fitted to
take. Then we shall find young men trained for work for which their capacities
fit them, for which their powers give possibility of achievement; there will
not be the discontent there is today, for discontent arises out of faculties
that are frustrated in their accomplishment and from a sense of injustice that
works in the mind of men when they feel that they have powers and no
opportunity of showing them, when they feel that they have capacities that they
are not able to expand. If they were wise they would know, of course, that
their circumstances were karmic. But now we are dealing with the masses, and
not with the more thoughtful individuals. For them discontent will be
impossible when each man is in the place for which his visible faculties fit
him, and so there will be again a really orderly society. Then also we shall
know better how to deal with the lower types of humanity. We shall not punish
our criminals but cure them; we shall not slay them but educate them. We shall
be able to see the very point at which help is needed; and there will be wisdom
to reform instead of anger to punish. Not only will society change by thus
working on the very natures of men, but the entire outside world will also
change its appearance; all the animal world will come under the moulding power
of man. He will no longer be a tyrant and oppressor as he is now; but he will
be a helper and educator and teacher of the lower animal world. He will do what
he was meant to do - be the helper and the trainer of the brute, and not its
ill-user and its oppressor, as he so largely is today. I need not say that
forms of cruelty will gradually fade away; no longer will animal blood stain
the earth as it stains it so deeply now; no longer will animals fly from man
with dread and horror, knowing him as enemy instead of recognising him as
friend; for we shall be passing onwards towards a golden age when all living
things shall love instead of hate.
110.
I have given you what
seems a fairy tale, but it is only the next stage of man’s growth, it is only
the result of the conquest of the astral plane, of that which is next to the
physical. What shall it be when man rises still higher, and occupies in full
and waking consciousness the manasic or mental plane? I can only take one or two
of the points and show you how the expanding consciousness will triumph. If in
those far-off days there should be an orator and an audience, how different
then would be the; oratory and how different would be the effect on the people.
Instead of their hearing words, articulate sounds that reach the ears, and
convey so imperfectly and inadequately but a small portion of the thought, they
would see thought as it really is; thought springing out before their eyes
radiant in colour, beautiful in sound, exquisite in shape, and they would be
spoken to as it were in music, they would be spoken to in colour and in form,
until the whole hall would be full of perfect music and perfect colour and
perfect shapes. For that is the oratory of the future when men have conquered
that higher plane of consciousness and of life. Do you think I dream? I tell
you there are those today who can go to that plane of consciousness and know it
and feel it and see it, who are behind the veils that blind the majority and
shut out from their view the wider possibilities of life. For as a man standing
on the top of a tower can see all the country round, and as from every part of
the landscape there come to him colours and sounds and forms, but if he goes
down the tower by the staircase he can only see as much of the landscape as a
window in the wall may permit him to see: so is it with the life of man on the
mental plane. Knowledge flows in to him on every side. Not through the senses
as we know them, but through a single sense that answers to every vibration
that comes from without. And as man goes down into the lower bodies it is just
as though he descended into the tower; he can only see as much as the eyes and
the ears and the nose - the little windows in the wall - enable him to know of
the outside world; for the senses are only windows, and the wall of the body
shuts us in, and only as we rise above the body are we able really to see the
world around us in its glory, in its beauty and in its wonders.
111.
Then again life will
be so much mightier. All the greatest intellectual thoughts come from that
region through the astral. The mightiest mental agencies for helping man in the
physical world today are being sent down from the manasic region by those who
are able to function there. The disciples of the Masters are there in waking
consciousness, working for the helping of man, working, for the raising of
humanity; and every one who has passed those great portals of Initiation, about
which yesterday I spoke to you, lives in that region working there for the
helping of man. The disciple may work in the physical world; but he works far
more in the higher and more effective region. There his greatest activities are
carried on; there his furthest-reaching services are rendered. And when the majority
of men rise to that region, how numerous will be the workers, how vast the
congregation of the helpers! Only a few hundreds are functioning there today
for the helping of the millions of mankind, and the work is imperfectly done
because of the small number of the workers. But when the bulk of humanity rises
there how swift will be the growth out of the lower stages in men. Mankind will
be elevated with a speed that we can scarcely imagine today.
112.
Higher yet and higher
to another region that man shall conquer; that region where all is one and man
knows himself as one with every manifested thing; the region called Turiya,
which man shall occupy ere the Manvantara closes, that region which is now open
to the waking consciousness only in the last stage of discipleship that I spoke
to you about yesterday; into this the Seventh Race of men shall climb and this
shall occupy. In that extended consciousness there is no separation that
divides man from man; each knows himself to be one with others; feels as they feel,
thinks as they think, knows as they know - a consciousness that stretches out
to embrace myriads; and then the brotherhood of man becomes an accomplished
fact. There the essence of things is seen, and not only the appearances; there
realities are seen, and not only phenomena. The one Self is recognised that
lives in all; hatred is for evermore impossible to the man who knows.
113.
And above that still
one step further, that no words of mine can image, that no phrase of mine can
represent, that which the Sages have spoken of as Nirvana, which they have
tried to explain and have failed, because human language is inadequate to the
task, and from their efforts to impart their own knowledge only
misunderstanding has resulted. It is consciousness so great that it is
unimaginable, it is consciousness embracing the whole universe and therefore
seems as unconsciousness to men’s limited apprehension; but I tell you that the
life of Nirvana, the life of the mighty Ones that have attained it, is a
consciousness beside which our consciousness is as that of the stone, in the
limitations that bind it, in the blindness that darkens it, and in the
incapacity of its methods. There is life there beyond all dreams of living,
activity there beyond all possibilities of our thinking, life which is one and
yet that spreads itself forth in manifested activities, where the LOGOS is the
manifested Light, the beams whereof shine out through all regions of the world.
That too is man’s goal for this Manvantara, that too he shall know when the
Seventh Race has run its course; and the first fruits of our humanity who know
it now shall find Themselves surrounded by countless myriads who then shall
know it. Then the Life of the LOGOS for untold periods, then the perfect
reflection of the LOGOS in Those who have grown into His image and likeness,
until a new universe is to be born, until a new Kosmos is to come into
activity. And These, in Their turn a LOGOS, shall build a new universe, shall
train a new humanity. Such is the future that awaits us; such the glory to be
revealed.