THE PERFECTING OF MAN/PART 1

 

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

 

 

 

HIS FIRST STEPS

 

 

 

THERE is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recog­nised in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussal­mans in the Sufi - the mystic - teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision.[1]

 

But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of  names you choose as best attracting or ex­pressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine. Through thousands upon thousands of years some of our human race have trodden it; for thousands and thousands of years which are yet unborn, some of our race shall tread it to the end of our earth story, to the conclusion of this special cycle of human time.

 

It is the Path which, stage by stage, enables man to fulfil the command of the Christ: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”. It is the Path whereof that same great Teacher declared “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. I know that in later days, when most men had forgotten the existence of the Path, they changed those true words into words that are utterly false, that make the gate and the way narrow that lead unto a heavenly life, and broad and wide the way that leadeth to an everlasting condemnation; but that is a distortion of the occult teaching. It is a twisting of the words of the Christ, for surely He, whom His followers  call the Saviour of the world, could never have declared that only few should be the ranks of  the saved, practically numberless the crowds of the lost. In dealing with the Path we are not in those regions of exoteric faith which speak of heaven and hell. The life to which the Path leads the pilgrim is not the life of the passing joys of heaven; it is that life spoken of in the fourth gospel, where it is written “The knowledge of God is eternal life” - life which is not counted by endless ages, but which means a change in the attitude of the man; which means not time, but a life that is beyond time; which is not counted by the rising and setting of suns, even though those dawns and sunsets were in an immortal life; but which means that perfect serenity, that unity with God, in which time is only a passing incident of existence, and an ever-present reality is understood as the true life of the Spirit.

 

And so the Path that we are to study through the coming Sundays, through these brief and poor descriptions of what that Path may mean to man, is the short though difficult way by  which man evolves more rapidly than in the ordinary course of human and natural evolution; it is the Path by which, to use a simile often used, instead of going round and round the mountain by an ever-climbing spiral, man climbs straight up the mountain-side regardless of cliff and precipice, regardless of gulf and chasm, knowing there is nothing that can stop the Eternal Spirit, and that no obstacle is stronger than the strength that is omnipotence, because it has its source in Omnipotence itself.

 

Such is the Path, then, that you and I are  to try to study, not for the mere interest of  what is indeed a fascinating and enthralling subject, but rather, at least on the part of the  speaker and I hope on the part of some at least of the hearers, a study that is meant to change  the life, a study that gives birth to a determina­tion to tread the Path, to know it not only  theoretically but by a practical realisation, and to understand something of those hidden  Mysteries by which man, ever potentially divine, realises his inner Divinity and becomes  perfect, rising above and beyond humanity.

 

Such is the scope, then, of our study, and, in order that the study may be practical, we must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first steps towards the Path, need either know or recognise these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of  the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path. It is enough that the facts are there, and that the man unconsciously is allowing those facts to influence his inner and his outer life. It is enough that the laws exist; although the man may not know of their existence. Sunshine does not cease to warm you because you may not know anything of the constitution of the sun. Fire does not cease to burn you, because, unknowing its fierceness, you thrust your hand into the flame. It is the security of human life and human progress that the laws of nature are ever working and carry­ing us on with them, whether we know of them or not. But if we know them, we gain a great advantage. If we know them, we can co-operate with them as we cannot co-operate as long as we are in the darkness of ignorance. If we know the facts we can utilise them, as we cannot utilise them when we know not they are there. To know is the difference between walking in the darkness and in the light, and to understand the laws of Nature is to gain the power of quickening our evolution by utilising every law that hastens our growth, by avoiding the work­ing of those that would retard and delay.

 

Now, one of the great facts which underlie the whole possibility of a Path of Human Per­fecting, that I must take for granted throughout the lectures - for to deal with it as matter for argument would lead us far away from our subject - one of the fundamental facts in Nature, is the fact of reincarnation. That means the gradual growth of man through many lives, through many experiences of the physical world, of the intermediate world, and also of the world called heaven. Evolution would be too short to enable a man to grow from imperfection to perfection, unless he had many opportunities, a long, long road to lead him upward. And our man of the world who will take the first steps, who is ready to take them, must have behind him a long, long course of human evolution, in which he has learned to choose the good and to reject the evil, in which his mind has been evolved and trained, his character has been built up, from the ignorance and non-­moral state of the savage to the point where the civilised man is standing today. The fact of reincarnation, then, is taken for granted, for not one of us could possibly tread the whole of that long course, could reach divine perfection, in the limits of a single life. But our man of the world need not know of reincarnation. He knows it in his spiritual memory, although his physical brain may not yet have recognised it, and his past, which is a fact, will push him on­wards until Spirit and brain are in fuller com­munication, and that which is known to the man himself becomes known in the concrete mind.

 

The next great fact, necessary and taken for granted, may be put into a single phrase of your own Scriptures: “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. It is the law of causation, the law of action and reaction, by which Nature brings inevitably to the man the  results of that which he has thought, which he has desired, which he has done.

 

Next, the facts that there is a Path and that men have trodden it before us; that the swifter evolution is possible; that the laws of it may be known, the conditions of it understood, the stages of it be trodden; and that at the end of that Path there are standing Those who once were men of the world, but now are the Guardians of the world, the Elder Brethren of our race, the Teachers and the Prophets of the past, stretching upwards in ranks of ever-more dazzling light from the ending of the Path for man to the highest Ruler of the world in which we live. Poor would be our hope if none before us had trodden the Way, if none had walked upon the Path. But They who in the past have come as Teachers have in an earlier past accomplished this mighty pilgrimage. Those whom today we honour as Masters exist in touch with our world that They may take pupils, and guide them in the treading of the Path.

 

These are the great facts in Nature, existing, whether recognised or not, on which the possi­bility of treading the Path depends: Reincarnation, the law of Karma, the fact of the Path, the Existence of the Teachers. Those are the four facts I must take for granted - not saying that they may not be shown to be true by argu­ment one after the other, but for the purposes of this course taking them for granted ­because without each of them the very lectures themselves would be impossible.

 

What steps, then, is our man of the world to take, or what steps is he taking, if he is really approaching the entrance to the beginning of the Path?

 

I have said that he need not know the four great truths I have mentioned, he need not understand them or recognise them. That is part of the hopeful side of the subject, that there may be - nay, there will be - many among you who do not yet know the truth of these things, but yet, in the course of evolution, are treading onwards towards the entrance to the Path. And though in time to come you will know more fully, though unconsciously you are evolving, none the less the evolution is a fact. And what I want to do this morning is to show you those steps, that you may be able to consider your own lives and judge whereabout you stand; that you may be able to decide, each for himself, whether or not his face is turned in the direction of the Path; for there are many among you who are going in the direction, albeit you know it not, while there are some who, having studied and understood, are deliberately turning their faces in that direction. To turn your evolution from being unconscious into being conscious, to enable you to under­stand yourselves, and where you are, that is the purpose of the first of these lectures; so that those amongst you who believe in the Path may know how to live, and that those who, unknowingly, are approaching it may, perchance, realise the happiness of their lot.

 

The first step of all, absolutely necessary, without which no approach is possible, by which achievement ever comes within reach of realisation, may be summed up in four brief words: the Service of Man.

 

There is the first condition, the sine qua non. For the selfish no such advance is possible; for the unselfish such advance is certain. And in whatever life the man begins to think more of the common good than of his own individual gain, whether it be in the service of the town, of the community, of the nation, of the wider joinings of nations together, right up to the service of humanity itself, every one of those is a step towards the Path, and is preparing the man to set his feet thereon. And there is no distinction here between the kinds of service, provided they are unselfish, strenuous, moved by the ideal to help and serve. It may be purely intellectual - the work of the writer and the author, trying to spread among others the knowledge he has found, in order that the world may be a little wiser, a little more under­standing, because that man has lived and written. It may be along the service of Art, wherein the musician, the painter, the sculptor, the architect, puts before himself the ideal of making the world a little fairer and more beautiful, life a little more sweet, more full of grace and culture for humankind. It may be along the way of Social Service, where the man, moved by sympathy for the poor, the suffering, pours out his life in the work of helping, tries to alter the constitution of Society where it needs amendment, tries to change the environment where the environment of the past, useful in the past, has become an anachronism, and is preventing the better progress that humankind should today be making in better surroundings, in nobler environment. It may be along the way of Political Work, where the life of a nation, internal and external, is the object of service. It may be along the way of Healing, where the doctor tries to bring health in the place of disease, and to make conditions good for the body, in order that the body may be healthier and longer-lived than otherwise it would be. I cannot give you one by one the numerous divisions of the Way of Service. Anything that is of value to human life is in­cluded on that way. Choose then what way you will, because of your capacities and your oppor­tunities; it matters not as regards the treading of the first steps. Commerce, industry, any­thing of use to man, production, distribution; they all come within Service for man and supply man’s necessities.

 

But you will say that everyone is engaged in one or other of the things I have mentioned, or in similar avocations in life. That is true, because the way to the Path is set in human life, and there is nothing necessary for the growth and evolution of that life which may not be made a step towards the Path. But the difference lies in the conditions of the work. Truly, men follow all these ways and many more; they produce, they distribute, they take part in industry or commerce, they are writers, artists, politicians, social reformers, doctors, what you will; but with what object, and moved by what motive? There lies the  difference between the man who is on the ordinary road of evolution, growing by his work or his study, and the man who, while growing, is growing with the object of Service and not of personal success, with the object of lifting the world a little higher and not only of earning his livelihood therein. I am not speaking with any idea of looking down upon, or with contempt for, those who are merely walking in the ways of the world with the ordinary worldly objects. That is a part, and a necessary part, of evolution. How should man evolve his mind, how should man train his emotions, how should man develop even physically, unless he considers the ways of the world, and makes efforts to succeed therein? It is well that men should work for the fruit of action, well that men should struggle in order to succeed, well that men should be ambitious, should grasp after power and place, after fame, honour, and success. Toys! Yes, they are toys; but they are the toys by which the children learn to walk, the prizes in life’s school by which the boys are stimulated to exertion, the crowns in the struggle of life by which strength and energy and future possibilities are developed. Do not despise the common world of men, in which men are striving and struggling, making many an error and many a blunder, committing many a sin and even a crime, for all these are lessons in life’s school, all these are stages through which every man must pass. As the fierce struggle in the world of the brute develops strength and cunning and the power to guard the life, so do the fierce struggles among men develop the power of the will, the power of the mind, the power of the emotions, even the power of muscle and of nerve. In a world which springs from infinite Wisdom and  infinite Love, there is no lesson in life that has not its purpose, and in all the prizes of the  world - call them from the higher standpoint toys as you may - in ail the fruits of action  which in the higher life you are bidden to renounce and to cast aside; in every one of these God is hiding, in every one of them Isis attractiveness is the only power that allures, and, although they break into pieces when you have grasped them, although ambition turns to ashes when it is satisfied, although wealth becomes a burden when it is gathered, although pleasure becomes satiety after it has filled the cup of delight; still the breaking is another  lesson, the lesson that you may remember was exquisitely put by the Christian poet, George  Herbert:

 

 

 

When God at first made man,

 

Having a glass of blessings standing by;

 

“Let us (said He) pour on him all we can;

 

Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,

 

Contract into a span.”

 

So strength first made a way;

 

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

 

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

 

Perceiving that alone of all his treasure,

 

Rest, in the bottom, lay.

 

 

 

“For if I should (said He)

 

Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

 

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

 

And rest in nature, not the God of nature;

 

So both should losers be.”

 

 

 

“Yet let him keep the rest;

 

But keep them with repining restlessness

 

Let him be rich and weary, that, at least,

 

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

 

May toss him to my breast.”

 

 

 

There is the great truth of at once the value and the worthlessness of human life: valuable, because it brings out the faculties without which no progress is possible; worthless, because everything breaks into pieces, and leaves the hands empty till at last they grasp the feet of God.

 

There then is the worth of the ordinary life, and our man of the world has begun to realise that nut in seeking pleasure, wealth, and honour for himself can permanent joy be found; but in the service of his fellow-men, in the helping of the miserable, the teaching of the ignorant, the uplifting of the oppressed, the lightening of the sorrow of the poor. And many there are among you today who are well off and comfortable, whose hearts are heavy for the sorrow of the world, and who cannot rest in your comfort, in your luxury, while others are starving, miserable, crushed under the burden of life. Oh! the waking of the social conscience amongst us, the recognition of social duty, of social responsi­bility, is the noblest sign of the evolution of man, a proof of the coming of a new Race that shall have sympathy instead of indifference, co-operation instead of competition, as its rule in the outer life of man. And as that spreads and grows, more and more men of the world will tread these early steps. But it must be strenuous: not the passing feeling of compassion that makes you out of your superfluity give what you never miss to some good cause or some unhappy family; not the throwing aside of some luxuries you have in order that others may have more of the necessaries of life. Much more than that is demanded from you, O you who would tread towards the entrance to the Path. You must give yourself, and not only what you possess - and in that there is an immensity of difference. You must feel the sorrow of others as you feel your own pain; you must feel the grief of others as you feel the piercing of your own heart. It must come to you as an intolerable goad to action, that presses you along the Way of Service, which you cannot deny nor resist. You find people amongst you like that, people who cannot rest. It is not making sacrifices. That lies behind them. The things the world calls sacrifices are their delights; they joy to give themselves; it is only a sacrifice in the sense that the Life­-Spirit is ever flowing out to others; but that is joy and not sorrow, delight and not pain, involuntary, almost a necessity of life. And where you see that passion of Service, where you see that willingness to give everything up that others may be happier, where you see people ever thinking what they can do to help, whom they can find to serve, who there is near them to whom they can render help - it may be within the circle of the family or in the larger circle of public life, but it must be the constant resolute endeavour to give everything away that others may profit - there you have made manifest the inner Spirit, who only lives to pour himself out, and finds his satisfaction in the Service of man.

 

There, then, is the first great step. And wherever you see that, the person is approaching the Path, though he may never have heard of it. He is coming towards the Masters, though he knows not that They exist. There are some who are still in the twilight of unbelief in the spiritual life, who are nearer the entrance to the Path than many so-called religious men, who know the theory of religion but do not follow its practice. And there is one thing true of the value of the training of passing through a period of materialism - that in that there is absolutely no reward, no talking about the joys of heaven, nothing about “he that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord, and lo, what he layeth out it shall be paid him again”. In the life of the unbeliever, he sacrifices him­self for man, and has no reward to look to, no return of outpoured riches to expect, and, in that, he gains a perfection of the sacrifice of  the lower self that many an earnest Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu might envy him, in his  depth and reality of life. There is an old friend of mine, twenty-one years passed away, whom some of the elder ones among you remember under the name of Charles Bradlaugh. There you have a man who had no belief in the life of the other side of death, who, dying, remained with the idea that death for him ended every­thing, that nothing was left save any work he might have done for men. And I know of no more spiritual statement - aggressive Atheist as he was - than a passage that he uttered when he spoke of the citadel of human liberty and happiness that in the future he hoped humanity might reach, though he believed he would never see it for himself. “Enough for me,” he said, “if my body, falling into the ditch that keeps humanity from its future, may act as a bridge over which others may tread to the happiness that I shall never see”. The man who could say such words, with the depth of belief that distinguished all which was his, was a man who was taking the first steps to the Path, which, in another life, most surely he shall find.

 

Learn, then, that the service demanded is that unselfish service that gives everything and asks for nothing in return; and if you find that in you it is a necessity of your nature, not a choice but an overmastering impulse, then you may be sure that you are one of the men of the world who are taking the first steps towards the Path. (I need hardly say that when I say men I mean women too, but I cannot keep on saying “man and woman” each time, as it makes such difficulty with the pronouns!)

 

Take that, then, as the first and the most vital step. And there is another that may strike you as a little strange, and yet it is true. The man who can become possessed by an idea, so that no argument, no personal advantage, none of the reasons which influence ordinary men can turn him away from the following of that idea, that man is coming near to the Path. The great Indian psychologist Patanjali, who wrote certain axioms of Yoga, described in these the stages of the life of man through which the mind of man passed. And he said there was the butterfly stage, the stage of the child, in which the mind ran from one thing to another as the butterfly hovers over the flowers, taking a little honey here and there,  ever changing the objects it turns to, seeking pleasure, amusement, delights, everywhere. That butterfly mind, he said, is far from Yoga. And then there was the mind of youth, as he  considered it, the mind that is impulsive, under the sway of the emotions, rushing everywhere, possessed as it were for a moment with an idea but then possessed with another, more steady than the butterfly mind, but still varying in direction although holding strongly for the time. That, he said, is far from Yoga. There was then the stage when the mind became  possessed by an idea, obsessed if you like, but so gripped and held that nothing could turn  aside the man from its following. Now, if that idea be a true idea, turning to the Service of man, consonant with natural law, such an idea­ possessed man is near to the entrance to the Path. I am not forgetting that the fixed idea may be the fixed idea of the maniac; but then it is a false idea, not a true one; then it dis­regards the laws of nature, is not in accord and in harmony with the law of evolution, which is the law of progress. But in studying the maniac with his fixed idea, you may gain some light on what it means when we say a man is possessed by an idea. You see it in enthusiasts, in heroes, in martyrs. When a man like Arnold von Winkelried rushed upon the pikes of the enemy and drew as many as he could into his arms and turned the points into his own bosom, in order that a gap might be made in the opposing force through which his comrades might pass when he lay dead on the ground, he was possessed with the idea of helping his country, and - when it was a question of his country’s liberty - love of life, fear of pain, that influence ordinary men, had no power to  change him. And so with the martyr, the man who dies rather than tell what he believes to be a lie. It does not so much matter whether he is right or wrong. Many men have been martyred for what they believed to be true, but which was error. That matters not so far as this possession is concerned. When a man so believes a thing to be true that it is easier for him to die than to deny his truth, the man deserves the name of martyr; and the crown of martyrdom is knowledge afterwards of the truth. It is the attitude of the man that matters. I will take another point which will show you that I am not putting this merely as thinking of things with which I thoroughly agree myself.

 

One of the burning questions of the day is the policy which is being followed now by the extreme party in Women’s Suffrage. On that policy it is no duty of mine to express an opinion; when I am not taking part in a thing, I never judge those who are facing a danger that I do not share. But I say it does not matter whether the people concerned honestly in that are right or wrong. It does not matter whether they succeed or fail. It does not matter whether their judgment is accurate or foolish. These questions do not touch the character, the life, that is being builded by the heroic sacrifice and the splendid devotion which are sending gentle, refined, and cultured women into the hell of the police court and the prison.

 

I have taken that case because in any audience you will find much difference of opinion as to the wisdom or the folly of the action, and I want you to realise that from the occult stand­point the outer action is as the husk which is broken and cast away, and within the husk the fruit of the motive is seen: nobility of character, heroism and courage, perfection of self-devotion. And when you find people thus possessed by an idea, so that no worldly argument suffices to shake them, then I tell you, by that great occult rule which many of us know to be the truth, they are approaching the gateway of the Path. For the errors of the brain may be corrected rapidly, almost in a moment, but the building of heroism, devotion, and self-sacrifice is the work of many lives of strenuous endeavour. And it is in that way that Occultism judges of all these things in the world. The outer action is the expression of some past thought, some past emotion; the motive for the action is what is all-important. And so, looking around over the world, we do not judge the place of men by action, but by thought, by will and by emotion. Those are the things that last, while actions rapidly pass away.

 

I do not know if, without seeming for a moment to be too personal, I might tell you one incident in my own life which, as Madame Blavatsky told me, brought me in this special life to the Portal of Initiation. As a matter of fact, it did, and it was a great blunder, a great  mistake; and I mention it the more willingly because it was a mistake and not a thing that as an action was wisely thought or wisely done - the defence of the Knowlton Pamphlet, backing up a wretched little pamphlet whose author died before I was born, which no one could be proud of, no one could like, merely because I thought the suffering of the poor would last longer, unless the question of population was allowed to be discussed. I know that in these days thousands of people are on that side. Then they were not. It meant social disgrace, apparently social ruin, especially for a woman; and it was about as wrong-headed a thing as anybody could have done, looked at from the standpoint of the world; and that is why I mention it. Everything was wrong, except the desire to lessen the sufferings of the poor and the willingness to suffer for that object; but because that was the motive, because, for the sake of the poor, I flung aside everything that a woman values, therefore it brought me to the Gateway of Initiation in this life. You could not have a more extreme case.

 

You see then why I say that the occult rule judges of the motive, and not of the outer action in which that motive materialises itself in the world of men. And it did not matter one bit that one of my earliest actions after coming into the Theosophical Society was to  repudiate utterly the whole of that theory­ - logical from the standpoint of materialism, but  impossible from the standpoint of spirituality. That was my test.

 

Realise, then, friends, that what you have to study is your motive more than your action. Make your actions as wise as you can; use your best thought and your best endeavours to judge what is right before you do it; but know, for your comfort, that the eyes that scrutinise not the outer face but the heart of man, judge by a better judgment than the judgment of the world. Give yourself wholly to Service, keeping nothing back; help, wherever help is possible; work, wherever opportunity of work is seen; give yourself to some great ideal; follow it through cloud and sunshine; walk by it in storm and in peace. And when the lives that lie behind you have flowered in this life into such blossoms of service, of heroism, of devotion, then, man of the world as you may be, knowing nothing of the things of which we have been speaking, knowing nothing of the existence of the Masters and the glories of the occult world, you are beginning to tread those first steps which will bring you up to the begin­ning of the pathway, which inevitably will make you begin to seek the Master; but He will have found you long ere you begin to seek. Though seeking be necessary in the lower world, although the consent of brain and heart down here be necessary, and must be directed to the seeking of Him whose pupil one desires to become, know for your helping that the Master is there long ere you seek Him, that the Master is watching whilst still your eyes are holden; and  while you think you are only serving man, while you think you are only helping the downtrodden, the miserable, the ignorant, and the suffering, in the higher world where the judgment of the great Ones is made, Their sentence is pro­nounced, although you know it not: “Inasmuch  as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me”.

 

 

 

NEXT CHAPTER 

SEEKING THE MASTER