Blavatsky
responded this question with the following article:
IS THE DESIRE TO "LIVE"
SELFISH?
The passage “to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,”
occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, published in the March
and April Numbers of Vol. III of The
Theosophist — is often quoted by superficial and unsympathetic
readers as an argument that the teachings of occultism are the most
concentrated form of selfishness. In order to determine whether the critics are
right or wrong, the meaning of the word “selfishness” must first be
ascertained.
According to an established authority, selfishness is that “exclusive
regard to one’s own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or
self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement
of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others.”
In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself
and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense
of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the acme of all his
thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond that all is a perfect blank.
Now, can an occultist be then said to be “selfish” when he desires to live
in the sense in which that word is used by the writer of the article on the
Elixir of Life?
It has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every
aspirant after occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the
individual, freed from all Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma,
or the Son identifies himself with the Father in Christian phraseology. For
that purpose, every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal
isolation, a feeling of separateness from the All, must
be torn asunder, or, in other words, the aspirant must gradually discard all
sense of selfishness with which we are all more or less affected.
A study of the Law of Cosmic Evolution teaches us that the higher the
evolution, the more does it tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate
possibility of Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against
her purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of total annihilation. The
Occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to attempt
to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya (illusion).
The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and Asuras, Devas and Daityas,
which is mentioned in the sacred books of all the nations and races,
symbolizes the battle between unselfish and selfish impulses, which takes place
in a man, who tries to follow the higher purposes of Nature, until the lower
animal tendencies, created by selfishness, are completely conquered, and the
enemy thoroughly routed and annihilated.
It has also been often put forth in various theosophical and other
occult writings that the only difference between an ordinary man who works
along with Nature during the course of cosmic evolution and an occultist, is
that the latter, by his superior knowledge, adopts such methods of training and
discipline as will hurry on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a
comparatively short time that apex to ascend to which the ordinary individual
will take perhaps billions of years.
In short, in a few thousand years he approaches that type of evolution
which ordinary humanity attains in the sixth or seventh round of the Manvantara,
i.e., cyclic progression.
(Cid's
observation: here Blavatsky exaggerates because Master Kuthumi pointed out that
reaching in this fourth round the level that humans will have in the fifth
round is already an immense achievement.)
It is evident that an average man cannot become a Mahatma
in one life, or rather in one incarnation. Now those, who have studied the
occult teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember
that between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective
existence. The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the
greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended.
The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to
be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the
duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations. In the
course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical death and
his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual sleep,
the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state of
unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself reborn, to
continue his purpose.
The period of this sleep may vary from twenty-five to two hundred years,
depending upon the degree of his advancement. But even this period may be said
to be a waste of time, and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its
duration so as to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last incarnation,
as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him.
This is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means
to convey when he says:
« By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed HE IS
ACTUALLY DEAD, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved
himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated
in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the whole
period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice over. He has only
spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others
endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead
to, and absolutely unconscious of, the World —he is oblivious of its pleasures,
careless of its miseries— in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense
of duty never leaves him blind to its very existence. »
The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other writings.
It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the old gross particles
of his body, substituting for them finer and more ethereal ones, till at inst
the former sthula sarira is completely dead and disintegrated, and he
lives in a body entirely of his own creation, suited to his work (see link).
That body is essential to his purposes; as the Elixir of Life says:
« But to do good, as in every thing else, a man must have time
and materials to work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of
powers by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these
are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive. »
In another place, in giving the practical instructions for that purpose,
the same article says:
« The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the
mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and
philosophical. »
The above important considerations are lost sight of by those who snatch
away from the context the following passage in the same article:
« And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
people to ask the Theosophists “to procure for them communication with the
highest Adepts.” It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be
induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by
meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: “This is not God-like.
This is the acme of selfishness.”
. . .
But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the
world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the
result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to
prompt a renewal of the attempt? »
Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
superficial readers and thinkers lose sight of various important
considerations.
1. In the first place, they forget the other extracts already quoted which
impose self-denial as a necessary condition of success, and which say
that, with progress, new senses and new powers are acquired with which
infinitely more good can be done than without them.
2. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the less can he meddle with mundane
gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to spiritual work.
3. It has been repeated, time out of number, that the work on the spiritual
plane is as superior to the work on an intellectual plane as the latter plane
is superior to that on a physical plane.
The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only
spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly
affairs. But this applies only to very high Adepts. There are various
degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for humanity on the planes
to which they may have risen. It is only the chelas that can live in the
world, until they rise to a certain degree. And it is because the Adepts do care for
the world that they make their chelas live in and work for it, as many
of those who study the subject are aware.
Each cycle produces its own occultists who will be able to work for the
humanity of those times on all the different planes; but when the Adepts
foresee that at a particular period the then humanity will be incapable of
producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions they do
provide by either giving up voluntarily their further progress and waiting in
those particular degrees until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to
enter into Nirvana
and submitting to re-incarnation in time to reach those degrees when humanity
will require their assistance at that stage. And although the world may not be
aware of the fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to
remain statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit
of the future generations of humanity.
In short, as the Adepts work harmoniously, since unity is the
fundamental law of their being, they have, as it were, made a division of
labour, according to which each works on the plane at the time allotted to him,
for the spiritual elevation of us all — and the process of longevity mentioned
in the Elixir of Life is only the means to the end which, far
from being selfish, is the most unselfish purpose for which a human being can
labour.
(Theosophist,
July 1884, p.242-243; CW 6, p.241-248)
OBSERVATIONS
Here,
Blavatsky is referring to the occultist who concentrates on his own evolution
in order to develop more quickly, and thus later be able to help humanity in a
greater way.
But also in
her work "The Voice of the Silence"
she explained that there are individuals who focus on their own evolution only
to be able to enter Nirvana as soon as possible, regardless of the suffering in
which the rest of humanity finds themselves.
Such
individuals are called "selfish Buddhas" and they have the right to
abandon their human brothers, since they have made efforts to accelerate their
evolution, and therefore they are entitled to their reward.
So in this
strategy of first concentrating on our own evolution, there are these two
aspects.
In the second case to give you an
analogy, is like a man who study only to his own welfare, while the second case, it is like the student who concentrates solely on his professional
career, but to become a great doctor and then joins an altruistic association
such as "Doctors without borders".
Instead, what Pastor recommends
is that you do not focus so much on your career, but that you seek a balance
between your ambitions and your life on Earth, but at the same time that you
study, also dedicate a part of your time helping people with what you already have
learned.
And Master
Pastor also explained that the fastest evolutionary path is that of service,
where one stops concentrating on our own evolution to start working especially
on the evolution of others, putting our efforts mainly on other people to help
them to advance more quickly in their own evolution, even if that means that we
no longer have time for ourselves.
And the human who wants to become
a selfish Buddha, if he is cunning, instead of working to purify himself, what
he is going to do is to help others in their development, because in that way he
will evolve faster and so he will be able to enter in Nirvana sooner than if he
alone works on his own development.
So as you
yourself can see, there are several ways to carry out this matter.
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