EVOLUTION AND OCCULTISM/PART 8
Occultism, Semi-Occultism and
Pseudo-Occultism
Lecture delivered on Thursday, June 30th,
1898, at the Blavatsky Lodge, London
Speaking
to the Lodge for the first time after returning from India, it will not seem to
you, I think, either strange or inappropriate that I should take for my subject
one which is largely drawn from Indian history; not the history of the outside
nation, but the history of that inner line of thought which is of the deepest
interest to us as students and as Theosophists. And inasmuch as history
continually repeats itself, such a study may offer points of instruction to us
in our own time. For I am going to ask you to consider with me what I may
perhaps define--although definition is a little difficult--as, first,
occultism, then what may be called semi-occultism, and, thirdly, the
out-growths which follow and surround these and which are specially marked and
active at any time when true occultism is working in the world.
It is
a very common blunder made by many people to suppose that spiritual forces have
in them something which they are pleased to call unpractical, and we
continually notice an assumption, which is taken for granted without argument,
that if a nation, for instance, should turn itself towards a spiritual ideal,
or if individuals should devote themselves to the spiritual life, that then
such a nation is likely to be undistinguished along other more evident and
visible walks in life, and such an individual is likely to lose much of what is
called his practical value in the world. Such a view of life is a blunder, and
a blunder of the most complete kind. The liberation of spiritual forces, the
setting free of energies on the spiritual plane, has a far greater effect both
on the individual and on the nation in the other regions of its activity than
can be produced by any of the forces that are started on the lower planes of
life. When a spiritual energy is set free it works down through the other
planes of being, giving rise on each plane to a liberation of energy, and
bringing about results great in proportion to the nature of the spiritual
force. So that it is true in history, as you may find by study, that when
spiritual forces are liberated the intellectual life of the nation will also
leap forward with tremendous energy, the emotional life of the nation will show
fresh development, and even on the lowest plane of all, the physical, results
will be brought about entirely beyond anything that could have been achieved by
the energies of the physical plane which are set to work and which apparently
cause these results. That is a principle, a law, which I will ask you to bear
in mind through all that I have to say to you--that every force initiated on
the higher planes, as it passes down to the lower, brings about results
proportionate to itself; so that it is the shortest-sighted view of human life
and of human activity which imagines that devotion to the spiritual life, the
evolution of the individual in the spiritual world, is anything but an immense
addition to all the forces of progress that work on the earth, anything but a
lifting up of the world on the great ladder up which it is climbing.
But
there is another principle that we must also bear in mind in our study, and it
is this: that as forces are liberated on any plane, the results brought about
by those forces will vary in their character according to those who utilize the
energies after their liberation. As we have often pointed out to you here,
energies on the different planes of nature are not what we call good or bad in
themselves. Force is a force; energy is an energy. When we bring in the idea of
good and evil, of right and wrong, of morality and immorality, these ideas are
connected with the results brought about by individuals in the utilization of
the forces. A time, then, of great spiritual energy, of great liberation of
forces from the spiritual plane, will be marked to a great extent by activities
of opposed characters on the lower planes of being, and those energies which
are liberated on each plane may be taken up and used by individuals for what we
should call either good or evil. The great mark of good or evil, looking at it
from this standpoint, is the use that the individual is making of these forces,
or such part of them as he is able to control; whether he is using them for the
uplifting of humanity, whether he is regarding them as the divine energy which
he may use to forward the divine purposes, or whether he is simply trying to
grasp them for his own separate ends, striving to apply them to that which he
desires to grasp and to hold, serving his own purposes without regard to the divine
economy. This, then, as I said, we will bear in mind in following out, first,
as a lesson, something of the past in India, and then in applying the lesson
that thus we learn to the movement which we know amongst ourselves at the
present day, that great spiritual movement which is manifesting itself in the
world and of which the Theosophical Society is one of the potent expressions.
To
begin with, what is occultism? The word is used and misused in the most
extraordinary ways. H.P. Blavatsky once defined it as the study of mind in
nature, meaning by the word mind, in that connection, the study of the
Universal Mind, the Divine Mind, the study of the workings of God in the
Universe, the study therefore of all the energies which, coming forth from the
spiritual centre, work themselves out in the worlds around us. It is the study
of the life side of the Universe, the side from which everything proceeds and
from which everything is moulded, the looking through the illusory form to the
reality which animates it: it is the study which underlies all phenomena: it is
the ceasing to be wholly blinded by these appearances in which we so
continually move and by which we are so continually deluded; it is the piercing
through the veil of Maya and perceiving the reality, the one Self, the one
Life, the one Force, that which is in everything and all things in it. So that
really occultism, in the true sense of the word, may be said to be identical
with that vision which, as you know, is spoken of in the Bhagavad Gita, where Shri
Krishna declares that he who sees Me," that is, who sees the One Self,
"in everything and everything in me, verily he seeth." Such a study,
if you understand at all what is implied in it, must necessarily mean the
development in the one who sees of the highest spiritual faculties, for only by
the Spirit can the Spirit be known. We speak continually of proving this, that,
or the other spiritual thing. There is no real proof possible of Spirit, save
through Spirit; there is no proof of the intellect, no proof of the emotion, no
proof of the senses which is proof when you come to deal with the reality of
the Spirit. Nothing of the nature of proof along those lines, whether sensuous,
emotional, or intellectual, can be anything more than a suggestion, a reflection
of the truth, an analogy which may lead us on the right path, but proof in the
true sense of the word it never can be. And it has been written truly in one of
the great Indian scriptures and repeated over and over again in the other
scriptures of the world, that there is in the full sense of the word no proof
of God save the belief in the Spirit, for only the Spirit that is akin to Him,
and that is Himself, is able to know, is able to touch.
Now
looking at real occultism as thus defined, realizing that no one can be in the
full sense of the word an occultist save one in whom the spiritual nature is
developed and active, we should, in our next step, be able to separate off from
this true occultism very much that goes by its name both in the past and the
present, amongst those who went before us and amongst ourselves to-day. But we
should need, in separating off all these forms of so-called occultism, to
distinguish between those which may be said, in a sense, to be stepping-stones
to the real, which were intended as stepping-stones by those who gave them to
the world and which may be used as stepping-stones and utilized for progress,
and other forms which are not really included under the name of occultism in
any true sense of the term, those things which H.P. Blavatsky once spoke of as
occult arts, and which for many people seem to include everything they regard
as occultism--arts in which certain forces of nature are utilized and in which
faculties are developed on various planes in nature below the spiritual; for
there are worlds above what we call the physical, but still below the spiritual
regions, with which the development of certain faculties brings man into touch,
enabling him to control and utilize their forces. There are almost myriad arts
and lines of study of this kind which ought never by any real student, by any
one who is seeking the higher truth, to be included in his thought when that
thought is turned towards occultism. And some of you might clear up much
confused thinking on this subject if you would refer to the writing of H.P.
Blavatsky on "Occultism versus the Occult Arts," where she draws the
dividing line extremely clearly and shows the position that these occult arts
hold, and should be recognized as holding, when we are dealing with human
evolution.
True
occultism, then, is that to which at first I would ask you to turn your
thoughts, and its pursuit implies, as I have said, the development of the
spiritual nature. Now the moment we speak of the development of the spiritual
nature we must at once recognize that for the larger number of us that
development must necessarily lie in the future, but that we may begin to work
towards it to-day; that it is of enormous import to our true progress that we
should recognize it and work towards it, and not, by misunderstanding the
nature of that development, waste our time, waste possibly many lives, by
following blind alleys and mistaken roads. The development of the spiritual
nature must succeed--and this is one of the most important points that we can
realize--must succeed the purification of the lower parts of our nature. We
must be pure emotionally and intellectually, we must have reached a certain
stage, at least, of the elimination of the personality before anything that can
rightly be called spiritual progress is within our reach. No amount of mere
intellectual development--and I will come back to that point, for I do not wish
in any way to depreciate that most necessary line of human growth--but no
amount of mere intellectual development will of itself bring about the growth
of the spiritual nature. With the fundamental reason for that I shall deal more
fully in a future lecture, but I must say in passing that the development of
the spiritual nature and of the intellectual nature are on one vital point in
direct opposition. The principle that we call the intellect is the analyzing,
the dividing, the separative principle. The very purpose of its evolution is
the building up of the individual, its root lies in the Ahamkara, or the
"I"-making faculty, it is that which limits, which defines, which
separates, which marks off the man from every other man, which makes what we
may call that coating of selfishness which is absolutely necessary as one stage
in evolution, which is one part of our growth in this world. It is a stage
through which all humanity must pass, but which, regarded by itself, makes all
those illusions which the Spirit transcends, and gives the touch of apparent
reality to the separated self, the antagonistic self, the self that covets and
grasps and holds and sets itself against all others. So that what we might call
the very principle of illusion is represented by this intellectual faculty.
Necessary
as its evolution is, none the less it is on this point in antagonism to spiritual
evolution; for spiritual evolution means the recognition and the growth of the
One Self into manifested activity, first within that sheath which has been
formed by the intellect, and then by transcending it and bringing about that
realized unity which is the object of our human evolution. It is for this that
we place the unity of mankind in the spiritual regions, it is for this that we
proclaim the brotherhood of man as a spiritual reality; for the Spirit is one,
and it is only as that unity is recognized, consciously known--not simply
intellectually seen, but consciously realized--it is only as that is done that
the spiritual nature is in course of evolution. Inasmuch as the intellect is
separative and the Spirit unifying, inasmuch as the one gives rise to illusion
while the other transcends it, as the one is the source both of individuality
and of personality, whereas the other is the source of that oneship which we
seek and shall realize--you will readily see how in the course of evolution
these two parts of the nature cannot be regarded as causally related in the
strict sense of the term, and we cannot say that by the evolution of the
intellectual nature the spiritual nature will inevitably develop. On the
contrary, we have to learn that we are not the intellect, but are to use the
intellect as an instrument; that we are not the separated self, but the One
Self living in all. That is the object of our evolution, that the goal of our
pilgrimage; and therefore occultism, which means the study and the development
of the spiritual nature, must transcend completely the intellectual evolution.
It may even in many of its earlier stages find, and does find, its bitterest
antagonist, its most dangerous enemy in that very maker of illusions that you
may remember we are warned against in The Voice of the Silence, that most
spiritual book which so many of us have found as opening up the path for us to
the spiritual life. Recognizing this, we shall naturally look forward to the
spiritual evolution as a thing to be worked for rather than to be accomplished
from the stage at which we are at present. We should also be prepared to
realize the immense difficulty of such an achievement, to understand how much
will have to be done with the character and with the nature, how tremendous are
the demands that we shall have to meet, before anything which in the strict
sense of the term can be called occultism will be at all within our reach.
In the
history of the past, where true occultism was the life of the world, where that
great fount of spiritual life flowed from the Beings in whom the spiritual
nature was wholly developed, when the world was drawing its light and its life
from such Beings, it was obviously not possible that their knowledge, their
powers, their work could be largely shared in by undeveloped humanity or even
by the comparatively advanced humanity that surrounded them. Still less was it
possible that any great part of their teaching or any true comprehension of
their work and their methods could be known to the people at large; and yet it
was necessary that links should be made, that steps, as it were, should be
created. The result of this necessity was that men who were advanced--although
in them the spiritual nature was not yet wholly evolved--men of great powers,
who stand out in history as giants in humanity, strove to make possible for the
advancing ranks of mankind some understanding of the upward path that should be
trodden, some realization of the methods that might be adopted whereby approach
might be made to the spiritual regions.
These
men, great as they were, were not, as I have said, men in whom the spiritual
nature was wholly developed, supreme, complete. Their evolution in many
cases--and I speak with all reverence of those so much greater than
ourselves--may even be said to have gone along one line in excess of other
lines of their growth; so that one man might have enormously developed
intellectual power but less perfection perhaps of moral character; another
might have made great advance in devotion and might not have developed so much
of intellectual force; another might be keenly alive to the religious
necessities of man and not so much interested in his philosophical evolution;
another, again, might have turned his attention towards the development of
certain sides of man's nature which would touch the physical regions of
existence, and even to the forcing of faculties in man, which, when built up
from below, would bring him into touch with parts of the astral or the lower
metal world, and might force those faculties and the part of his nature to
which they belong in advance alike of mental and moral evolution. Along these
various lines you will readily see that individuals might have progressed, and
that each man would be characterized in his thinking and in his endeavour to
serve mankind, by his own qualities, the attributes which he had specially
evolved. So that looking back into the ancient history of India we find great
teachers, Rishis as they were called, of many different types, each giving to
the nation some great gift from his thought or from his knowledge, intended to
help the more advanced souls of that nation towards progress which should end
in spiritual evolution. Hence, to take one line of growth, the great
philosophical systems which we find in Indian thought, such a system for
instance as the Vedanta. Regarded as an intellectual system of pure philosophy,
it puts in a magnificent intellectual form a view of the Universe, of the One
Self, of the One Life, and of its manifestations as illusory in the deepest
philosophical sense, that serves as an intellectual training, as a step which
men must take in learning something of the mysteries of the universe. This
system, when studied apart from the Yoga that alone can make it practical, may
be classed under the head of semi-occultism. It is a system true within its own
realm, a system intended to help forward the progress of mankind, only capable
of being grasped, of being followed, of being studied by souls already advanced
in mentality; but none the less it is not the spiritual truth; it is only an
intellectual presentment of one aspect of it, an intellectual showing forth of
one side of it.
It is
a thing that must always be remembered that the Spirit can never be expressed
in terms of the intellect, that the One can never be grasped in the terms of
the many, and that any intellectual presentment of spiritual truth must
necessarily be partial, must necessarily be imperfect. must be, as has often
been said, a coloured glass through which the white light is seen; a ray is
passed through the prism of the intellect which breaks up the white light of
the Spirit, showing it in varied colours as these scattered beams, each one of
which is imperfect in itself. One, then, of the great gifts to ancient India
coming in this way as the result of true occultism, as the result of the mighty
spiritual life, was the philosophy of the Vedanta and all those intellectual systems
intended for the training of man, and giving, so far as the intellect could
give it, a view of the spiritual realty. But remember the saving clause,
"as far as the intellect could give it." The intellectual view is
only a partial view; and such a view, however much it may help man to see
intellectually something of the possibilities of the higher life, can never
make him realize it in consciousness, or give the true knowledge which comes
alone through the evolution of the spiritual nature itself.
Along
another live of activity would come the many schools of Yoga. These schools, as
you well know, were exceedingly various in their nature. Some of them were
designed to develop the higher intellectual consciousness in man by means of
concentration, by means of meditation, and thus to bring him into touch with
the higher regions of his being; they were intended to lead him, stage by
stage, to get free from the body, to pass consciously into higher worlds, so
that his consciousness might function in those more extended realms of being.
And we find many of the teachings of Yoga--you may read many of these systems
at your leisure, those which come under the great classification Raja
Yoga--carefully adapted to aid the growth of the mind, the evolution of the loftier
mental faculties, the rising on to the higher intellectual planes, the passing
into states of consciousness far beyond the reach of ordinary humanity. They
are, again, a stepping-stone offered, but still coming under this heading that
I have called semi-occultism. Other schools were founded which dealt with man
in different fashion, which strove to force his faculties from below, to force
the evolution and the training of the astral faculties, to bring him first into
touch with the astral world, to make him familiar with a part of the phenomenal
universe closely allied to the material. These have generally been classed as
the schools of Hatha Yoga, and in them various methods were employed dealing
with the lower vehicles of man. By these methods the body was trained, was to a
great extent purified and rendered an obedient instrument. The power of the
will was also enormously developed, the man was taught to be master of his
lower nature and so to take what in very many cases was a real step upwards, although
we cannot include it in any sense of the term under the heading of true
occultism.
It
must be remembered when dealing with all these schools, when looking at them
and striving to learn alike their use and their abuse, that it is a great thing
for a man to become master of his passions, it is a great thing to subject the
animal nature, to be able to stand unshaken, no matter what temptations may
assail the lower man. And very, very many of these schools, which it is often
the fashion in the West to scoff at and despise, have yet in them this element,
that they at least recognize that man's intellectual nature should be master of
his sensuous nature and that he should learn complete control over the body,
complete control over the passions. And even along many of the darker lines of
evolution, even in the schools that tread the path which all those who would
reach the highest should most carefully avoid, it is none the less true that
the subjugation of the lower nature is most rigorously insisted upon. It is
only the ignorant who suppose that those darker schools are all given over to
sensuous practices. Many of the followers of those schools lead lives which, so
far as that side of the nature is concerned, might be taken as examples by an
enormous majority of the men of the western world.
Now
the whole of these different schools rose and flourished in ancient India as
the result of the great downpouring from the spiritual regions on to the lower
planes, and naturally they were used both for selfish and for unselfish
purposes. But in dealing with all those schools of Yoga which train the
intellect and develop the higher forms of intellectual consciousness, it is
well to remember that they are real stepping-stones to the higher, and that it
is a necessary stage of our progress that we should practise concentration,
that we should use meditation, that we should be accustomed to contemplate
intellectually and emotionally the ideals which appeal to us by their grandeur
and their nobility. Those are stages in our upward path, and stages that very
many of us might well be utilizing now, with a view to the higher growth, the
deeper wisdom of the future. Men took up these varying lines of evolution,
stirred fundamentally by the prompting of the Divine Life within them, ever
seeking to raise them and to help their upward growth; stirred, so far as they
themselves were conscious, by the natural and rightful desire for higher
evolution, for further progress, for growth in life. For, as we have often seen
when we have been studying progress, we cannot leap at a bound to the heights
of the spiritual life; we have to climb step by step, we have to utilize the
higher thoughts in us for the subjugation of the lower, and then in turn to
outgrow that higher when a greater height comes within our sight and within our
reach. We have learnt, as we well know, in our studies, that we may constantly
eliminate lower ambitions by nourishing a higher ambition, and that though that
higher ambition be still attached to the personality, or even transcending the
personality, be attached still to the individual, it is none the less a
stepping-stone, it is one of the ways by which we climb. It is well continually
to kill out our lower by our higher desires, though even those higher in their
turn seem lower as we are rising above them and greater perfection comes slowly
within our gaze. So that this longing for a higher life, this desire to
develop, this yearning for progress, had, and have, their rightful place in
evolution; and it is out of the ranks of those who feel these, out of the ranks
of those who use the methods which make progress possible, that are taken those
who are capable of further evolution. They learn gradually to transcend the
hope for individual progress, and learn that that also, in the fullest sense of
the term, is illusory, inasmuch as the separated life is an illusion and cannot
exist as separate in the higher regions. The true life is the life which is
spent as part of the Divine Life, pouring itself out for others; and no life is
true, no life real, no life spiritual, save when the very idea of the separated
life is entirely transcended. and all the thought of the being, all the
energies of the life, are poured forth as part of the One Self and no
distinction is recognized. Service is then the natural expression of the life,
helping is that in which the true existence is felt. But ere it is possible
that this ideal can be even intellectually realized, some progress, at least,
must have been made in transcending what we recognize as the personality; and
it was in order to make that possible to every man immersed in illusion, as all
men have been and are, that the various methods were suggested by those who
would fain help their fellows forward, as steps on the upward path.
Others,
seeing in the religious instinct in man--in that side of his nature allied to
the emotions, in which devotion finds its root and the possibilities of its
growth--seeing in that his easiest upward path, gave to the world the various
forms of religion in all their variety of adaptation to human needs, thus
making the path upwards suitable for those whose constitution attracted them
chiefly in the direction of love and of service. Seeing, then, that all these
methods of growth were most active at the time when the real life was working
at the heart of things, it will not be difficult to understand how, as that
life found fewer channels for its expression in the world, fewer who we ready
to transcend their own limitations and to give themselves wholly as channels of
the Divine Life, all these methods lost their vitality and a great part of
their usefulness. And so we find, in looking around the India of to-day, that
many of those things that were living are now dead, that many of the systems
that were vital are now mere shells, forming subjects for intellectual
controversy or for individual pride, but no longer stepping-stones to the
higher life. Here and there, still, some gleam of the true life survives, some
real use is being made of these stepping-stones upward; but so far as the great
masses of the people are concerned, mere shells and forms remain--evidences of
what existed in the past, evidences, may we dare to hope, of what may be in the
future.
It is
hardly worth while to remind you that while semi-occultism may serve as a
steppingstone to real occultism, pseudo-occultism is generally a distinct
obstacle and hindrance. Under this heading may be classed all the "occult
arts," in the study of which many promising beginners have lost their way
and wasted their lives. Geomancy, palmistry, the use of the tarot, etc., all
these things are well enough for those who want to tread the byways of nature
and to gather knowledge of her obscurer workings. They may be harmless,
interesting, even useful in a small way, but they are not occultism and their
professors are not occultists. A little success in their pursuit and success
does not demand high qualities of either head or heart--is apt to breed the
most absurd vanity and pretentiousness, as though this dalliance with the
Apsaras of the kingdom of occultism converted a commonplace man into one of its
rulers, a mage. A man may be past master of all these arts, and yet be further
away from occultism than is a pure and selfless woman seeking only to love and
to serve, or a generous, clean-souled man, devoted to the helping of his
fellows. And if these arts be turned to selfish purposes, or if they nourish
vanity, their professor may find himself approaching perilously near to the
gateway of the left-hand path.
Looking
for the application of this to our present movement, the lesson springs easily
enough to our gaze. Again, in our own days, a great outpouring of real life has
occurred. Again an effort has been made by those who are the guardians, the
reservoirs, of that life for our humanity, to pour out the true spiritual
energies for the helping and the uplifting of man in every region of his being,
the manifesting again of the possibility of the real life. This has been.
marked by certain definite statements made from time to time, by hints thrown
out here and there by her who was the special messenger in our own day of this
possibility opening up for our own race. And there is one passage in that paper
to which I referred at the beginning, which gives us in a phrase the reality of
life: we are told that when a man becomes a real occultist he becomes only a
force for good in the world. Here is a sentence that people read without
realizing at all its meaning, a sentence that comes in the middle of many other
statements, and does not strike with its full force on the unprepared mind and
heart. For many things may be said which are missed for want of receptivity,
and many truths are proclaimed which remain dark and silent, save to those
whose eyes are beginning to be opened to see, and whose ears are beginning to
be opened to hear. And that statement, which really puts the occult life in a
few words, is one that most readers pass by without realizing its significance.
There is no true spiritual life, there is no real occultism, until the man at
least recognizes that the goal of his living is to become a force for good, and
that only, in the world. He is no longer to seek his own progress, no longer to
seek his own life, no longer to seek his own development--no longer to ask
aught that heaven or earth or any of the other worlds can give him for himself.
There is only one thing left within him, the longing to be of service; only one
thing the motive of his being, to be a channel for the great life of God, to
enable that life to be scattered more effectively over the world of man, and
over all worlds where that life exists.
When
that is recognized, even afar off, when that ideal first dimly dawns upon the
human heart--come it by way of intellectual apprehension of its sublimity, or
by way of devotional recognition of its truth--then for the first time the
spiritual life stirs within the man, the first germ of the spiritual nature
begins to quicken into life. And so we begin to realize that if true occultism
could be reached and understood by any of us, we should have to begin the
preparation for it by working at character in the way that every religion has
taught. How often do we hear it said amongst ourselves, "we know all these
moral truths, there is nothing new in Theosophy when it simply reiterates the
old morality. When we are told to be unselfish, to seek to help others forward,
to eliminate the personality, to kill out our faults, it is all an old story
that we have heard to weariness. We want something new, we want some fresh
knowledge, some facts of the astral world, some strange things of the mental
region--that is what we demand from Theosophy, that is what we are seeking, and
we do not desire to have pressed upon us these ethical maxims, these continual
repetitions, these old world stories which every religion has made familiar,
and which we can hear from any pulpit." And yet the truth of the matter is
that along that path only the spiritual life has been and is possible for man;
that the Divine Teachers who gave the religions to the world with their
perpetual insistence on morality, gave them knowing the spiritual life, and
knowing that only along that line the real progress of man into unity with God
was possible. And when it was again declared by the lips of the Christ that
only he might gain his life who lost it, that those who would be perfect must
sacrifice all that they had, when he again reiterated the ancient teaching that
narrow was the path and straight was the gate-way, he was only repeating what
all true occultists have taught as to the necessity of the training for the
spiritual life.
As
progress is made, all those methods of Yoga which tend to help forward the
individual, which are followed in order to gain progress, practised in order to
evolve faculties, and used in order that the individual may go faster forward
himself--all these are dropped, and Yoga is regarded, not as the means of
self-evolution, as we are accustomed to regard it here, but as the using of
great forces for the lifting and the helping of humanity, with utter disregard
for the going forward of him who is using them, with no thought of progress on
the part of him who is wielding them for the helping of man. For in truth all
control of higher forces, all utilization of these vast energies, ought to come
only within the grasp of man when he has transcended the personality and has
learnt to use them only for the helping of all. We readily admit this in the
common things of life, and recognize the difference between learning the use of
an instrument and the mere holding an instrument without knowing how to use it.
A pen, for example, is one of the most useful of instruments, but its utility
depends upon the brain and the heart behind it, upon the knowledge and the
skill that wield it, and a pen in the hands of a child is of no more use than
any fragment of wood that the same child might pick up to use as a toy in its
play. Very much the same is the grasping of the forces of the super-physical
world by those who have not yet conquered the lower nature, eliminated personal
desires and consecrated themselves wholly to the divine service. They are,
truly, picking up an instrument which may be used for the highest and noblest
ends; they are, truly, placing their hands upon a tool which in hands that know
how to use it may serve for the salvation of the race; but unless the spiritual
nature be developed, that tool fails in its highest purposes, that instrument
fails in all its noblest possibilities. And it has this peculiarity, that
whereas the pen that I used as symbol might be comparatively harmless in the
hands of the child, the grasping of those forces by one in whom the personality
is not eliminated may become a source of danger alike to himself and others,
and may tend to retard the progress of the race instead of lifting it upwards.
That is why some of us who have learnt but the mere alphabet of these great
truths lay so much stress--stress to weariness, as I know some of you think
when I am speaking to you--on the moral training which must precede all attempt
at occult study. H.P. Blavatsky gave us the same lesson when she herself said
that she had blundered, in teaching part of the alphabet of occult knowledge,
without insisting upon that old precept that the moral growth must come before
the occult training, and that the character must be purified, raised and
spiritalized before any one should dare to lay his hand upon the latch of the
occult gate-way. Hence it is that those qualifications that we have so often
studied are made qualifications for imitation; hence it is that there has ever
been the demand that only the pure should enter, that only the selfless should
come in.
If I
have spoken of the past to you to-night, if I have reminded you that amongst us
to-day the very outburst of the new spiritual life will cause activity on all
the lower planes, it is because I would bring the experience of the past to
reinforce a lesson so often given from this platform, it is because I would
warn you of the dangers that surround us on every side--dangers that some of us
are beginning keenly to recognize, and to recognize just because they have to
some extent struck us, and have therefore made progress the more difficult. So
that it is our duty as Theosophists, as would-be students of the science of the
soul, to be careful that in all things character precede any attempt at the
gaining of power, that purity, selflessness, devotion, utter self-surrender, be
found in us ere we touch the Ark of occultism--for without these any success is
a defeat, without these any attempt is doomed to failure. And sure it is better
for us to learn from the experience of the past than by the bitter suffering
that grows out of the personal experience of to-day; better to learn by the
authority of the great Teachers who have proclaimed the lesson over and over
again, than to have to learn it by the suffering that follows from grasping
powers ere we are ready to use them, from plucking the fruit of knowledge ere
it is ripe for our consumption, from striving to rule ere yet we have learnt to
obey, and from endeavouring to snatch at the mighty forces of the spiritual
realm until we have learnt that great lesson of the Spirit--that only by giving
is the spirit shown, that only by utter abnegation is the true life realized.
As the very life of God in manifestation is a life that gives everything and
asks nothing back, so those who would reach unity with Him and realize what the
spiritual life means, must learn to give and not to take, to help and not to
hold, to pour out without seeking or looking for return. Only as we learn that
do we become fit candidates for the higher knowledge, only as the heart is thus
rendered absolutely pure may we dare to face the presence of the Master, hoping
that when "He looks at the heart He may find no stain therein."
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