This is a practical age, and every
system or theory is challenged to give proofs of what it may accomplish in
action. How very little is gained by mere belief is the standing reproach to
Churches. Their diversified Creeds have been steadily evolving through the
centuries as new problems in theology or science arose, and today the separated
sects have an outfit of every possible belief on every possible theme.
No small proportions of these themes
are in regions remote from practical life, as also from any means of proof.
They concern such questions as the number and nature of Divine Beings, the
character and bearing of the Divine Will, the fixedness of the future life, the
best form of ecclesiastical sacraments, etc.
All of them with little facility of
demonstration and with no utility when demonstrated. Moreover, it is quite
evident that, whether there be One God or Three, whether He predestinates or
not, whether evil-doers are damned eternally or temporarily, whether Baptism is
efficacious towards pardon, the various sects have not made this earth more
worthy of the Divine care or diminished the evils which religion should cure.
As conservators of morals, abates of
sin, regenerators of society, Churches are assuredly a lamentable failure. It
is not merely that society remains un-regenerated, but that nobody now expects
them to regenerate it. A copious provision of minute creeds has clearly done
nothing to extirpate evil.
This being so, it is just as certain
that the addition of another creed will not do so. The two classes interested
in human progress are the philanthropic and the devout, and both, when any
unfamiliar scheme for such progress is submitted to them, are sure to point out
that mere beliefs have wholly failed.
They say, with entire correctness,
that not a new platform or Church is needed, but something with an object and
an impulsion hitherto untried. If Theosophy has no better aim than have the
sects, if it imparts no motive stronger than do they, if it can show no results
more distinct and valuable, it may as well be rejected now as after a futile
trial. But, on the other hand, if it holds out a better prospect and a finer
spur, if it can prove that these have actually operated where conventional ones
have failed, it is entitled to a hearing.
The doctrinal question is
subordinate, though, of course, an ethical system is more hopeful if upon a
rational basis.
Let us see if the unfamiliar system
known as "Theosophy," and which has lately received so much attention
from the thinking world, possesses any qualities warranting its substitution
for the religions around it. They have not reformed mankind; can It?
FIRST
Theosophy
abolishes the cause of all of the sin, and most of the misery, of life. That cause is selfishness. Every
form of dishonesty, violence, outrage, fraud, even discourtesy, comes from the
desire to promote one's own ends, even if the rights of others have to be
sacrificed thereby.
All aggression upon fellow-men, all
attempts to appropriate their comfort, possessions, or plans, all efforts to
belittle, outshine, or humiliate them, express the feeling that
self-gratification is to be sought before all else. This is equally true of
personal vices, as well as of that personal contempt for Divine authority which
we may call "impiety." Hence the root of all evil conduct towards
God, towards other men, or towards one-self is self-love, self-love so strong
as to sacrifice everything rather than its own indulgence.
From this indulgence follow two
things:
1) First, the pains of envy, disappointment, jealousy, and all the mean
and biting passions which attend the ever-present thought of self, and the
utter loss of all those finer, gentler joys which are the fruit of beneficence
and altruism.
2) Second, the restraining measures which society, for its own
protection, is obliged to put upon aggression in its coarser forms, – the
workhouses, jails, and gibbets from which no land of civilization and churches
is free.
And if we wish to realize what would
be the effect of a universal reign of unselfishness among men, we may picture a
land without courts, prisons, and policemen, a society without peculation,
chicanery, or deceit, a community whereof every heart was as vacant of envy and
guile as it certainly would be of unhappiness and pain. The root of universal
sorrow would be eradicated, the stream dried at its source.
Now this is what Theosophy enjoins.
Its cardinal doctrine is the absolute equality of human rights and the
universal obligation to respect them. If my neighbor's possessions – of
feeling, property, happiness, what not – are as much to be regarded as are
mine, and if I feel that, I shall not invade them. Still more. If I perceive
the true fraternity of man, if I am in accord with the law of sympathy it
evokes, if I realize that the richest pleasure comes from giving rather than
receiving good, I shall not be passively unaggressive, I shall be actively
beneficent.
In other words, I shall be a true
philanthropist. And in being this I shall have gained the highest reach of
happiness to self, for "he that loseth his life, the same shall save
it." You say that this is a Christian text? Very well; it is also the
epitome of Theosophy.
SECOND
Theosophy
sounds ceaselessly the truth that every act of right or wrong shall receive its
due reward. Most
religious systems say otherwise. Usually they provide a "vicarious"
plan by which punishment is to be dodged and unearned bliss secured. But if
awards may be transferred, so may duties, and thus chaos is introduced into the
moral order of the universe.
Moreover, the palpable injustices of
human life, those injustices which grieve the loving heart and sting the bitter
one, are unaccounted for. All the inequalities and paradoxes and uncertainties
so thick around us are insoluble. Why evil flourishes and good withers may not
be known. Night settles down on the most important of human questions.
Theosophy illuminates it at once. It
insists that moral causes are no less effective than are physical, and that its
due effect, in harm or benefit, is infallibly attached to every moral act.
There is no escape, no loss, no
uncertainty; the law is absolutely unflinching and irresistible. Every penny of
debt must be paid, by or to the individual himself. Not by any means
necessarily in one life, but somewhere and somehow along the great chain is
rigorous justice done; for the effect of causes generated on the moral plane
may have to exhaust themselves in physical circumstances.
If unselfishness constitutes the
method towards social regeneration, Karma – for such is the name of this
doctrine of justice – must constitute its stimulus. Nothing fails; – no good,
no evil, can die without its fruit. The result of a deed is as certain as the
deed.
How can a system be unpractical when
it abolishes every bar to the law of causation, and makes practice the key to
its whole operation?
THIRD
Theosophy
holds that every man is the framer of his own destiny. All the theological apparatus of
"elections" and "predestinations" and
"foreordinations" it breaks indignantly to bits. The semi-material
theories of "luck," and "fate," and "chance" fare
no better. Every other theory which shifts responsibility or paralyzes effort
is swept away. Theosophy will have none of them. It insists that we can be only
that which we have willed to be, that no power above or below will thwart or
divert us, that our destiny is in our hands.
We may perceive the beauty of that
conception of the future which embodies it in a restoration to the Divine
fullness through continuous purgation of all that is sensuous and selfish and
belittling, and, so perceiving, may struggle on towards that distant goal; or
self-besotted, eager only for the transient and the material, we may hug
closely our present joys, heedless alike of others and of Karmic law; but,
whatever be the ideal, whatever the effort, whatever the result, it is ours
alone. No Divinity will greet the conqueror as a favorite of Heaven; no Demon
will seize the lost in a predestined clutch. What we are we have made
ourselves; what we shall be is ours to make.
Here comes in the fact of
Reincarnation. No one life is adequate to a man's development. Again and again
must he come to earth, to taste its quality, to lay up its experience and its
discipline, each career on earth determining the nature of its successor.
Two things follow:
A) 1st, our present state discloses
what we have accomplished in past lives;
B) 2nd, our present habits decide what
the next life shall be. The formative power is lodged in us; our aspiration
prompting, our will effecting, the aim desired.
Surely it is the perfection of
fairness that every man shall be what he wishes to be!
~ * ~
Of all the many schemes for human
melioration which history has recorded and humanity tried, is there one so
rational, so just, so impartial, so elevating, so motived, as that presented by
Theosophy.
Artificial distinctions and
conceptions are wholly expunged. Fanciful ambitions have absolutely no place.
Mechanical devices are completely absent. The root of all separations and
enmities – selfishness – is exposed and denounced. The inflexibility of moral
law is vigorously declaimed. The realization of individual aim is made entirely
individual.
Thus sweeping away every artifice
and annulling every check devised by theologians, opening the path to the
highest ideal of religious fervor, insuring that not an item is lost in the
long account each man runs up in his many lives, handing over to each the
determination and the acquirement of his chosen aim, Theosophy does what no
rival system has done or can do, – affirms the moral consciousness, vindicates
the moral sense, spurs the moral motive. And thus it is both practical and
practicable.
Thus, too, it becomes a guide in
life. Once given the aim before a man and the certainty that every act affects
that aim, the question of the expediency of any act is at once determined. If
an act is selfish, and aggressive, then it is un-theosophical. If an act is conducive
to fraternalism and spirituality progress, then Theosophy affirms it.
The test is simple and
uncomplicated, and, because so, feasible. He who would be guided through the
intricacies of life need seek no priest or intercessor, but, illuminated with
the Divine Spirit ever present in his inner man, stimulated by the vision of
ultimate reunion with the Supreme, assured that each effort has its
inseparately-joined result, conscious that in himself is the responsibility for
its adoption, may go on in harmony, hope, and happiness, free from misgivings
as to justice or success, and strong in the faith that he who has conformed to
Nature and her laws shall be conformed to the destiny which she predicts for Man.
(Originally
published as a brochure, reprinted in Echoes
of the Orient III, p.69-72)
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