The
Value of Theosophy
in
the World of Thought
By
Annie
Besant
An
Address on taking office as President of the Theosophical
Society.
Delivered
at the Queen's Hall,
You will have seen on the handbill announcing the
lecture, that we are holding this meeting in connection with my taking office
as President of the Theosophical
Society, and it is my purpose, in addressing you to-night, to try to
show you, at least to some small extent, what is the value which the Society
represents, as regarded from the standpoint of human activities, manifested in
the world of thought. I want to try to show you that
when we say Theosophy
we are speaking of something of real value which can serve humanity in the
various departments of intellectual life. I propose, in order to do this, to
begin with a very brief statement of the fundamental idea of Theosophy; and then,
turning to the world of religious thought, to the world of artistic thought, to
the world of scientific .thought, and lastly to the world of political thought,
to point out to you how that which is called Theosophy may bring
contributions of value to each of these in turn.
Now Theosophy, as the name
implies, is a Wisdom, a Divine Wisdom;
and the name historically, as many of you know, is identical with that
which in Eastern lands has been known by various names—as Tao, in China; as the
Brahmavidya, in India; as the Gnosis, among the Greeks and the early
Christians; and as Theosophy
through the Middle
Ages and in modern times.
It implies always a knowledge, a Wisdom that
transcends the ordinary knowledge, the ordinary science of the earth; it
implies a wisdom as regards life, a wisdom as regards the essential nature of
things, a wisdom which is summed up in two words when we say "
God-Wisdom." For it has been held in elder days—although in modern times
it has become largely forgotten—that man can really never know anything at all
unless he knows
himself, and knows himself Divine; that knowledge of
God, the Supreme, the Universal Life, is the root of all true knowledge of
matter as well as of
Spirit, of this world as well as of worlds other than
our own; that in that one supreme knowledge all other knowledges find their
root; that in that supreme light all other lights have their origin; and that
if man can know anything, it is because he is Divine in nature, and, sharing
the Life that expresses itself in a universe, he can know at once the Life that
originates and the Matter that
obeys.
Starting from such a standpoint, you will at once
realise that Theosophy
is a spiritual theory of the world as against a materialistic, It sees Spirit
as the moulder, the shaper, the arranger of matter, and matter only as the
obedient expression and servant of the Spirit; it sees in man a spiritual
being, seeking to unfold his powers by experience in a universe of forms; and
it declares that
man misunderstands himself, and will fail of his
trueend, if he identifies himself with the form that perishes instead of with
the life which is deathless. Hence, opposed to materialism alike in science and
philosophy, it builds up a spiritual conception of the
universe, and necessarily it is idealistic in its thought, and holds up the
importance of the ideal as a guide to all human activity.
The ideal, which is thought applied to conduct,
that is the keynote of Theosophy and its value in
the varied worlds of thought; and the power of thought, the might of thought,
the ability that it has to clothe itself in forms whose life only depends on
the continuance of the thought that gave them birth, that is its central note,
or keynote, in all the remedies that it applies to human ills. Idealist
everywhere, idealist in religion, idealist in art, idealist in science,
idealist in the practical life that men call politics, idealist everywhere; but
avoiding the blunder into which some idealists have fallen, when they have not
recognised that human thought is only a portion of the whole, and not the
whole.
The Theosophist recognises that the Divine Thought, of
which the universe is an expression, puts limitations on his own power of
thought, on his own creative activity. He realises that the whole
compels the part, and that his own thought can only
move within the vast circle of the Divine Thought, which he only partially
expresses; so that while he will maintain that, on the ideal depends all that
is called " real" in the lower worlds, he will realise that his
creative power can only slowly mould matter to his will, and though every
result will depend on a creative thought, the results
will often move slowly, adapting themselves to the
thought that gives them birth. Hence,
while
idealist, he is not impracticable; while he sees the
power of thought, he recognises its limitations in space and time; and while
asserting the vital
importance of right thought and right belief, he
realises that only slowly does the flower of thought ripen into the fruit of
action.
But on the importance of thought he lays a stress
unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a
man, that "it does not matter
what he believes but only what he does." That is
not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so
he is ; as a man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There was a time in
the world of thought when it was said with equal error: " It does not
matter what a man does, provided his faith is right." If that word "
faith " had meant the man's thought in its integrity, then there would
have been but little error; for the right thought would inevitably have brought
right action ; but in those days right thought meant only orthodox thought,
according to a narrow canon of interpretation, the obedient repetition of
creeds, the blind acceptance of beliefs imposed by
authority.
In those days what was called Orthodoxy in religion
was made the measure of the man, and judgment depended upon orthodox
acquiescence. Against that mistake the great movement that closed the Middle
Ages was the protest of
the intellect of man, and it was declared that no
external authority must bind the intellect, and none had right to impose from
outside the thought which is the very essence of the man—that great assertion
of the right of private judgment, of the supreme principle of the free
intelligence, so necessary for
the progress of humanity.
But like all things it has been followed by a
reaction, and men have run to the other extreme: that nothing matters except
conduct, and action alone is to be considered. But your action is the result of
your thought of yesterday, and
follows your yesterday as its expression in the outer
world; your thought of to-day is your action of to-morrow, and your future
depends on its accuracy and its truth, on its consonance with reality. Hence it
is all-important in the
modern world to give back to thought its right place
as above action, as its inspirer and its guide. For the human spirit by its
expression as intellect
judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is
the outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into
action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so
largely characterise our modern life.
Pass, then, from that first assertion of the
importance of right thinking, to see what message Theosophy has for the
world of religious thought.
What is religion ? Religion is the quenchless thirst
of the human spirit for the Divine. It is the Eternal, plunged into a world of
transitory phenomena, striving to realise its own eternity. It is the Immortal,
flung into a world of death, trying to realise its own deathlessness. It is the
white Eagle of Heaven, born in the illimitable spaces, beating its wings
against the bars of matter, and striving to break them and rise into the
immensities where are its birthplace and its real home. That is religion : the
striving of man for God. And that
thirst of man for God many have tried to quench with
what is called Theology, or withbooks that are called sacred, traditions that
are deemed holy, ceremonies and rites which are but local
expressions of a universal truth.
You can no more quench that thirst of the human Spirit
by anything but individual experience of the Divine, than you can quench the thirst
of the
traveller parched and dying in the desert by letting
him hear water go down the throat of another. Human experience, and that alone,
is the rock on which all religion is founded, that is the rock that can never
be shaken, on which every true Church must be built. Books, it is true, are
often sacred; but you may tear up every sacred book in the world, and as long
as man remains, and God to
inspire man, new books can be written, new pages of
inspiration can be penned.
You may break in pieces every ceremony, however
beautiful and elevating, and the Spirit that made them to express himself has
not lost his artistic power, and can make new rites and new ceremonies to
replace every one that is broken and
cast aside.
The Spirit is deathless as God is deathless, and in
that deathlessness of the Spirit lies the certainty, the immortality of
religion. And Theosophy,
in appealing to that immortal experience, points the world of religions—confused
by many an attack, bewildered by many an assault, half timid
before the new truth discovered every day, half scared
at the undermining of old foundations, and the tearing by criticism of many
documents—points it back tcp its own inexhaustible source, and bids it fear
neither time nor truth, since Spirit is truth and eternity. All that criticism
can take from you is the outer form, never the living reality; and well indeed
is it for the churches and for the religions of the world that the outworks of
documents should be levelled with the ground, in order to show the
impregnability of the citadel, which is knowledge and experience.
But in the world of religious thought there are many
services, less important, in truth, than the one I have spoken of, but still
important and valuable to the faiths of the world; for Theosophy brings back to
men, living in tradition, testimony to the reality of knowledge transcending
the knowledge of the senses and the reasoning powers of the lower mind.
It comes with its hands full of proof, modern proof,
proof of to-day, living witnesses, of unseen worlds, of subtler worlds than the
physical. It comes, as the Founders and the early Teachers of every religion
have come, to testify again by personal experience to the reality of the unseen
worlds of which the religions are the continual witnesses in the physical
world. Have you ever noticed in the histories of the
great religions how they grow feebler in their power
over men as faith takes the place of knowledge, and tradition the place of the
living testimony of living men ? That is one of the values of Theosophy in the religious
world, that it
teaches men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring
back the evidence of what they have met and studied; that it so teaches men
their own nature that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel
without the physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the
gateway of death. I say " Long thought unattainable " ; but the
scriptures of every religion bear witness
that they are not unattainable. The Hindu tells us
that man should separate himself from his body as you strip the sheath from the
stem of the grass.
The Buddhist tells us that by deep thought and
contemplation mind may know itself as mind apart from the physical brain.
Christianity tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its earlier
teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of angelic
teachers training the
neophytes in knowledge. Islam
tells us that its own great prophet himself passed into higher worlds, and brought back the truths which
civilised Arabia, and gave knowledge which lit again the torch of learning in
Europe when the Moors came to Spain.
And so religion after religion bears testimony to the possibility of
human knowledge outside the physical world; we only re-proclaim the ancient
truth—with this addition, which some religions now shrink from making: that
what man did in the past man may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are
not shackled, that the knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to
man.
And outside that practical knowledge of other worlds
it brings by that same method the distinct assertion of the survival of the
human Spirit after death. It is only in
very modern times that that has
been doubted by any large numbers of people.
Here and there in the ancient world, like a Lucretius
in Rome, perhaps; like a Democritus
in Greece; certainly like a Charvaka in India, you find one here and
there who doubts the
deathlessness of the Spirit in
man; but in modern days that disbelief, or the hopeless cynicism
which thinks knowledge
impossible, has penetrated far
and wide
among the cultured, the educated
classes, and from them to the masses of the uneducated.
That is the phenomenon of modern days alone, that man
by hundreds and by thousands despairs of his own immortality. And yet the deepest convictionof humanity,
the deepest thought in man, is the persistence of himself, the " I "
that cannot die. And with one great generalisation, and one method, Theosophy asserts at once
the deathlessness of man and the existence of God; for it says to man, as it
was ever said in the ancient days : " The proof of God is not without you
but within you." All the greatest teachers have reiterated that message,
so full of hope and comfort; for it shuts none out from knowledge.
What is the method ? Strip away your senses, and you
find the mind; strip away the mind, and you find the pure reason; strip away
the pure reason, and you find the will-to-live; strip away the will-to-live,
and you find Spirit as a unit; strike away the limitations of the Spirit, and
you find God. Those are the steps: told in ancient days, repeated now. "
Lose your life," said the Christ, " and you
shall find it to life eternal." That is true: let
go everything that you can let go; you cannot let go yourself, and in the
impossibility of losing yourself you find the certainty of the Self Universal,
the Universal Life.
Pass again from that to another religious point. I
mentioned ceremonies, rites of every faith. Those Theosophy looks at and
understands. So many have cast away ceremonies, even if they have found them
helpful, because they do not understand
them, and fear superstition in their use. Knowledge
has two great enemies: Superstition and Scepticism. Knowledge destroys blind
superstition by asserting and explaining natural truths of which the
superstition has exaggerated the unessentials; and it destroys scepticism by
proving the reality of the facts of the unseen world. The ceremony,
the rite, is a shadow in the world of sense of the
truths in the world of Spirit; and every religion, every creed, has its
ceremonies as the outward
physical expression of some eternal spiritual truth.
Theosophy defends them, justifies them, by explaining them; and when they are
understood they cease to be superstitions that blind, and become crutches that
help the halting mind to
climb to the spiritual life.
Let us pass from the world of religious thought, and
pause for a moment on the world of artistic thought. Now to Art, perhaps more
than in any other department of the human intelligence, the ideal is necessary
for life. All men have wondered from time to time why the architecture—to take
one case only—why the architecture of the past is so much more wonderful, so much
more beautiful, than the architecture of the present. When you want to build
some great national building to-day you have to go back to
time, as that was expressive of the past ? The severe
order of Egypt found its expression in the mighty temples of Karnak; the beauty
and lucidity of Grecian thought bodied itself out in the chaste and simple
splendor of Grecian buildings; the sternness of Roman law found its ideal
expression in those wondrous buildings whose ruins still survive in Rome; the
faith of the Middle
Ages found its expression in the upward-springing arch
of Gothic architecture, and the exquisite tracery of the ornamented building.
But if you go into the Gothic cathedral, what do you find there ?
That not alone in wondrous arch and splendid pillar,
upspringing in its delicate and slender
strength from pavement to roof, not there only did the
art of the builder find its expression. Go round to any out-of-the-way corner,
or climb the roof of
those great buildings, and you will find in unnoticed
places, in hidden corners, the love of the artist bodying itself forth in
delicate tracery, in stone that lives. Men carved for love, not only for fame;
men carved for beauty's sake, not only for money; and they built perfectly
because they had love and faith, the two divine builders, and embodied both in
deathless stone. Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern
ideal, and when you have found it you can build buildings that will defy time.
But you have not found it yet; the artist amongst us
is too much of a copyist, and too little of an inspirer and a prophet. We do
not want the painter only to paint for us the things our own eyes
can see. We want the artist eye to see more than the
common eye, and to embody what he sees in beauty for the instruction of our
blinded sight. We do not want accurate pictures of cabbages and turnips and
objects of that sort. However cleverly done, they remain cabbaggs and turnips
still. The man who could paint for us the thought that makes the cabbage, he
would be the artist, the man who
knows the Life. And so for our new Art we must have a
splendid ideal.
Do you want to know how low Art may sink when
materialism triumphs and vulgarises and
degrades ? Then see that exhibition of French pictures
that was placed in
then you will understand how Art perishes where the
breath of the ideal does not inspire and keep alive. And Theosophy to the artist
would bring back that ancient reverence which regards the artist of the
Beautiful as one of the chief God-revealers to the race of which he is a
portion; which sees in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the
painter, a God-inspired man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate
the dull grey planes of earth.
The artists should be the prophets of our time, the
revealers of the Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they
would be regarded with love and with reverence; for true art needs reverence
for its growing, and the artist, of all men— subtle, responsive, sensitive to
everything that touches him—needs an atmosphere of love and reverence that he
may flower into his
highest power, and show the world some glimpse of the
Beauty which is God.
And the world of science — perhaps there, after the
world of religion, Theosophy has most of value to offer. Take Psychology. What
a confusion; what a mass of facts want arrangement; what a chaos of facts out
of which no cosmos is built!
Theosophy, by its clear
and accurate definition of man, of the relation of consciousness to its bodies,
of Spirit to its vehicles, arranges into order that
vast mass of facts with which psychology is struggling
now. It takes, into that wonderful " unconscious " or "
sub-conscious "—which is now, as it were, the answer to every riddle ; but
it is not understood—it takes into that the light of direct investigation;
divides the " unconscious" which comes from the past from that which
is the presage of the future, separates outthe inheritance of our long past
ancestry which remains as the " sub-conscious" in us; points to the
higher " super-conscious," not " sub-conscious," of which
the genius is the testimony at the present time; shows
that human consciousness transcends the brain ; proves that human consciousness
is in touch with worlds beyond the physical; and makes sure and certain the
hope expressed by science,
that it is possible that that which is now unconscious
shall become conscious, and that man shall find himself in touch with a
universe and not only in touch with one limited world. That which Myers
sometimes spoke of as the " cosmic
consciousness," as against our own limited
consciousness, is a profound truth, and carries with it the prophecy of man's
future greatness. Just as the fish is limited to the water, as the bird is
limited to the air, so man has been limited
to the physical body, and has dreamed he had no touch
with other spaces, to which he really belongs.
But your consciousness is living in three worlds, and
not in one, is touching mightier possibilities, is beginning to contact subtler
phenomena; and all the traces of that are found in your newest psychology, and
are simply proofs of those many theories about man which Theosophy has been
teaching in the world for many a century, nay, for
many a millennium.
And physics and chemistry is there anything of value
along Theosophical lines of thought and investigation, which might aid our
physicists and our chemists, puzzled at the subtlety of the forces with which
they have to deal?
Has it never struck some of the more intuitive
physicists and materialists that
there may
be subtler senses which may be used for investigation
of the subtler forces? That man may
have in himself senses by the evolution of which he
will able to pierce the secrets that now he is striving vainly to unveil ?
Has it never even struck a physicist or a chemist
that, if he does not believe in the possibility of
himself developing those subtler forces, he might
utilise them in others in order to prosecute further his own investigations ?
They are beginning to to do that in
I would not say to the scientific man: " Accept
our theories," I would say to him: " Take them as hypotheses by which
you may direct your further experiments, and you may go on and make discoveries
more rapidly than you can at the present time." For there is many a
clairvoyant who, put before a piece of some elemental
substance, could describe it very much better than is
done by your fractional analysis. And along other lines—chemical and
electrical—surely there is something a little unsatisfactory, when a few years
ago men told us that the atom was composed literally of myriads of particles,
and during the last year it has been suggested that perhaps one particle is all
of which an atom is composed. Might it not be wise to try to get hold of your
atoms by sight keener than the physical, as it is possible to do, whether by the
ordinary clair-voyant who is sometimes developed up to that point, or by
an untrained sensitive whose senses are set free from the limitations of the
physical brain, and from
that sensitive try to gather something of the
composition of matter which may guide you in your more scientific search ? I
realise that what one, or two, or twenty people see, is no proof for the
scientific man ; but it may give a hint whereby mathematical deductions may be
made, and calculations which otherwise would not be thought of. So that I only
suggest the utilising by science of
certain powers that are now available, keener than
those of the ordinary senses—a new sort of human microscope or human
telescope—whereby you may pierce to the larger or the smaller, beyond the reach
of your physical microscopes and
telescopes, made of metal and not of intelligence
showing itself in matter.
Is there anything of value in Theosophical ideas,
shall I say to the science of medicine? Some say it is not yet a science, but
works empirically only. There is some truth in that; but are there not here
again lines of investigation which the physician might well study? For
instance, the power of thought over the human body, all that mass of facts on
which partly is built up such a science as Mental Healing, or what is called Faith
Cure, and so on. Do you think that these things have been going on for hundreds
of years, and that there is no truth
lying behind them ? " The effects of
imagination," you say. But what is imagination? It does not matter of what
it is the effect, if it brings cure
where before there was disease- If you put into a
man's body a drug that you do not understand, and find that it cures adisease
and relieves a pain, will you throw the drug aside because you do not
understand it ? And why do you throw the power of
imagination aside because you cannot weigh it in your balance, nor find that it
depresses one scale more than the other? Imagination is one of the subtlest
powers of thought: imagination is
one of the strongest powers that the doctor might
utilise when his drugs fail him and his old methods no longer serve his
purpose. Suggestion, the power of thought. Why, there are records of cases
where suggestion has killed! That which has killed can also cure, and man's
body being only a product of thought, built up through the ages, answers more
rapidly to its creator than it does to clumsier products from the mineral and
vegetable
kingdoms. Here again I only ask experiment. You know
that you can produce wounds upon the body of the hypnotised patient, in a state
of trance. By suggestion lesions are made, burns are caused,
inflammation and pain appear by the mere suggestion of
a wound. A blister is placed on a patient and forbidden to act; the skin is
untouched when the blister is removed: a bit of wet paper is given by thought
the qualities of the blister,
and it will raise the skin, with all the
accompaniments of the chemical blister.
Now these things are known. You can see the pictures
of wounds thus produced, if you will, in some of the
lies much of useful experiment to be brought to the
relief of the diseases of humanity.
But as I have touched upon medicine, let me say—
for I ought here to say it—that there are some methods
of modern medicine which Theosophy emphatically
condemns. It declares that no knowledge which is gained from a tortured, a
vivisected creature, is legitimate, even if it were as useful as it has been
proved to be useless. It declares that all inoculations of disease into the
healthy body are illegitimate, and it condemns all such.
It declares that all those foul injections of modern
medicine which use animal fluids to restore the exhausted vitality of man are
ruinous to the body into which they are put. Here again
they feared that they had caused more diseases than
they cured. Why are these things condemned as illegitimate ? Because the
building up of the human body is the building by a living Spirit of a temple
for himself, and it is moulded by that Spirit for his own purposes.
The higher powers of intelligence have made
the human body what it is, different from the animal
bodies out of which, physically, in ages long gone by, it has grown. Your
delicacy of touch, the
exquisite beauty and delicacy of your nervous system,
these things are the outcome of the higher powers of the Spirit expressing
themselves in the human body, where they cannot express themselves in the
animat form. And if you ignore this, if
you forget it,
if you forget that
this splendid human temple built up by the Spirit of man through ages of
toil and of suffering, to express his own higher qualities—compassion,
tenderness, love, pity for the weak and the helpless, protection of the
helpless against the strong—if you forget the whole of that, and act as a brute
even would not act,
in cruelty and wickedness to men and animals alike,
you will degrade the body you are trying to preserve, you will paralyse the
body you are trying to save from disease, and you will go back into the
savagery which is the nemesis of cruelty, and ruin these nobler bodies, the
inheritance of the civilised races.
I pass from that to my last world, the world of
political thought. Now Theosophy
takes no part in party politics. It lays down the great principle of human
Brotherhood, and bids its followers go out into the world and work on it—using
their intelligence, their power of thought, to judge the value of every method
which is proposed.
And our general criticism on the politics of the
moment would be that they are remedies, not preventions, and leave untouched
the root out of which all the miseries grow. Looking sometimes at your party
politics, it seems to me as though you were as children plucking flowers and
sticking them into the sand and saying: " See what a beautiful garden I
have made." And when you wake the next morning the flowers are dead, for
there were no roots, but only rootless flowers. I know you must make remedies,
but you should not stop at that. When you send out your Red Cross doctors and
nurses to pick up the mutilated bodies that your science of war has maimed,
they are doing noble work, and deserve ourlove and gratitude, for the wounded
must be nursed; but the man who works for peace does more for the good of
humanity than the Red Cross doctors and nurses.
And so also in the political world. You cannot safely live "hand-to-mouth" in
politics any more than in any other department of human life. But how many are there in the political
parties who care for causes and not only for effects ? That is the criticism we
should make. We see everywhere
Democracy spreading; but
Democracy is on its trial, and
unless it can evolve some method by
which the wise shall rule, and not merely the weight of ignorant numbers, it
will dig its own grave. So long as you
leave your people ignorant
they are not fit to rule.
The schools should come before the vote, and knowledge
before power. You are proud of your
liberty; you boast of a practically universal suffrage—leaving out, of course,
one half of humanity!—but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of
the voters who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know
anything of economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for
the guiding of the ship of the State through troubled waters ? You do not
choose your captains out of people who know nothing of navigation; but you choose the makers of your rulers
out of those who have
not studied and do not know.
That is not wise.
I do not deny it is a necessary stage in the evolution
of man. I know that the Spirit acts wisely, and guides the nations along roads
in which lessons are to be learned; and I hope that out of the blunders, and the
errors, and the crudities of present politics there "will evolve
a saner method, in which the wise
of the nation will have power and guide its councils, and wisdom, not numbers,
shall speak the decisive word.
Now there is one criticism of politics that we often
hear in these days. It is said that behind politics lie economics. That is
true. You may go on playing at
politics for ever and ever ; but if your economic
foundation is rotten, no political remedies can build a happy and prosperous
nation. But while I agree that behind politics lie economics, there is
something that lies also behind economics, and of that I hear little said.
Behind economics lies character, and without character
you cannot build a free and a happy nation. A nation enormous in power, what do
you know of the way in which your power is wielded in many a far-off land ? How
much do you know about your vast Indian Empire ? How many of
your voters going to the poll can give an intelligent
answer to any question affecting that 300,000,000 of human beings whom you hold
in your hand, and deal with as you will ? There are responsibilities of Empire
as well as pride in it, and pride of Empire is apt to founder when the
responsibilities of Empire are ignored. And so the Theosophist is content to go
to the root of the matter, and
try to build up for you the citizens out of whom your
future State is to be made. Education, real education, secular education, is
now your cry. They tried secular education in
of the schools altogether, and train the children only
in morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way ? Why! we have
done better than that in
and morality alike. I grant it was a Theosophical
inspiration that began the movement; but the whole mass of Hindus have fallen
in with it, and are accepting the books as the basis of education. Government
has recognised them, and has begun to introduce them for the use of Hindus in its
own schools. That is the way in which we Theosophists work at politics. We go
to the root to build
character, and we know that noble characters will make
a noble and also a prosperous nation.
But you can no more make a nation of free men out of
children untrained in duty and in righteousness, than you can build a house
that will stand if you use ill-baked bricks and rotten timber. Our keynote in
politics is Brotherhood. That worked out into life will give you the nation
that you want.
And what does Brotherhood mean ? It means that
everyone of us, you and I, and every man and woman throughout the land, looks
on all others as they look on their own brothers, and acts on the same
principle which in the family rules. You keep
religion out of politics ? You cannot, without peril
"to your State; for unless you teach your people that they are a
Brother-hood, whether or not they choose to recognise it, you are building on
the sand
and not on the rock. And what does Brotherhood mean ?
It means that the man who gains learning, uses it to teach the ignorant, until
none are ignorant. It means that the man who is pure takes his purity to the
foul, until all have become
clean. It means that the man who is wealthy uses his
wealth for the benefit of the poor, until all have become prosperous. It means
that everything you gain, you share; everything you achieve, you give its fruit
to all.
That is the law of Brotherhood, and it is the law of
national as well as of individual life. You cannot rise alone. You are bound too
strongly each to each. If you use your strength to raise yourself by trampling
on your fellows, inevitably you will
fail by the weakness that you have wronged.
Do you know who are the greatest enemies of a State?
The weak, injured by the strong. For, above all States, rules an Eternal
Justice; and the tears of
miserable women, and the curses of angry, starving
men, sap the foundations of a State that denies Brotherhood, and reach the ears
of that Eternal Justice by which alone States live, and Nations continue. It is
written in an ancient scripture that a Master of Duty said to a King: "
Beware the tears of the weak, for they sap the thrones of Kings." Strength
may threaten: weakness undermines.
Strength may stand up to fight: weakness cuts away the
ground on which the fighters are standing. And the message of Theosophy to the modern
political world is: Think less about your outer laws, and more about the lives
of the
people who have to live under thoselaws.
Remember that government can only live when the people
are happy; that States can only flourish where the masses of the population are
contented; that all that makes life enjoyable is the right of the lowest and
the poorest; that they can do without external happiness far less than you, who
have so many means of inner satisfaction, of enjoyment, by the culture that you
possess and that they lack. If there is not money enough for everything, spend
your money in making happier, healthier, purer, more educated, the lives of the
poor; then a happy nation will be an imperial nation; for Brotherhood is the
strongest force on earth.
Theosophy in
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______________________________________________
Foundation of the Original Theosophical Society 1875
The first Theosophical Society was founded
in New York on
November 17th 1875 by Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky,
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan
Judge and others.
The Theosophical Movement now consists of a
diverse range of
organizations which carry the Theosophical
Tradition forward.
Cardiff Theosophical Society has been
promoting Theosophy since 1908
______________________________________________
मूल थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी 1875 फाउंडेशन
पहले थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी को न्यूयॉर्क में स्थापित किया गया था
17 नवंबर Helena Petrovna Blavatsky द्वारा 1875,
कर्नल Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge
और दूसरों.
थियोसोफिकल आंदोलन अब एक विविध रेंज के होते हैं
आगे थियोसोफिकल परंपरा ले जो संगठनों.
कार्डिफ थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी 1908 के बाद से ब्रह्मविद्या को बढ़ावा देने की गई है
_______________________________________
Mūla thiyōsōphikala
sōsāyaṭī 1875 phā'uṇḍēśana
Pahalē thiyōsōphikala sōsāyaṭī kō
n'yūyŏrka mēṁ sthāpita kiyā gayā thā
17 Navambara Helena Petrovna Blavatsky dvārā 1875,
Kamala Henry Steel Olcott, aura dūsarōṁ.
Thiyōsōphikala āndōlana aba ēka vividha
rēn̄ja kē hōtē haiṁ
Āgē thiyōsōphikala paramparā lē jō
saṅgaṭhanōṁ.
Kārḍipha thiyōsōphikala sōsāyaṭī 1908
kē bāda sē brahmavidyā
kō
baṛhāvā dēnē kī ga'ī hai
_____________________________________________
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