THEOSOPHY AS A GUIDE IN LIFE BY WILLIAM JUDGE

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)