WE hear a good
deal at present about " Practical Theosophy".
Is such a thing possible ? If so, in what does it exist
? To many Theosophists, Theosophy is an individual internal
thing, a system of cosmogony, philosophy, ontology, to
which the term practical is completely inapplicable. As well,
they think, talk of practical metaphysics! Others, again,
feel that to love your neighbour and still neglect to help
him in the material things in which your aid would evidently
be to his advantage, is a barren mockery. One meets people
continually [Page 17] who hardly
stir a finger to help others, and yet who talk glibly about
the “Rounds" and
the “Rings", and the “seven principles" of
man; who long for Nirvana, even for Paranirvana; who ardently
desire to be joined to the infinite, absorbed into the eternal;
who feel that all men are their brothers, all women their
sisters, and that thought makes them oh! so happy, gives
them such peace of mind! The convict is their brother — their
caught and locked-up brother — the tramp is their brother — their
idle, unwashed, whisky-soaked, good-for-nothing brother;
the workwoman is their sister — their poor, friendless
sister, who has to sew sixteen hours a day to keep body and
soul together; even the prostitute is their sister — their
fallen, wicked sister, who is hurrying to an early grave;
the famine-stricken Irish, Chinese, Hindus, are their brothers
and sisters — their skin-and-bone brothers and sisters,
who are dying of starvation.
Theosophy teaches them these beautiful truths, they say,
and it does them so much good to know it all! Speak to these
sentimentalists about “Practical Theosophy", and
they look suddenly stupid. Tell them that in a garret
not a hundred yards from their back door there lies a fever-stricken
family — that you know of fifty cases of genuine distress
that they could aid by their money and sympathy, and they
look at you as if you were something they had eaten which
had not agreed with them. Perhaps they tell you that Theosophy
is a spiritual affair, something of a private and confidential
nature between their “higher selves " and the
Great All, into which no vulgar, earthly considerations enter.
These people are probably quite unaware what a wretched sham
their “Theosophy " is, and what miserable frauds
they are themselves when they pose as Theosophists. They
don't know they are selfish. It has never entered their heads
to think what would be their thoughts, their words and their
actions if they really felt what they say they feel, if they
realized in their hearts the meaning of the words “my
brother", “my sister".
These people do not trouble themselves to think what their
sentiments would be did they learn that a real brother or
sister was in want of their aid. Suppose they heard some
fine morning that their brother was starving to death, without
the means of procuring food, what would be their sensations?
Would not their hearts stop beating in horror ? Would not
every nerve tingle with excitement and with anxiety to save
him? What pictures their imagination would draw! Their beloved
brother lying helpless on the floor of some wretched hut,
while the wife he loved and the children of his heart, emaciated
to skeletons like himself, lay dead or dying around him.
Would not any woman under these circumstances fly to her
banker and make him instantly telegraph money to his agents
in the nearest town, with instructions to send messengers
at any cost to her brother with immediate relief ? Were she
a poor woman, would she not hurry with her trinkets, her
clothes, her furniture, anything, to
the poor man's banker, the pawnbroker, thankful and proud
to be able thus to raise the money to save her brother and
his family from horrible death ? And [Page
18] then
what feverish anxiety, what sleepless nights, until she learned
that the relief she had sent had reached her brother in time!
Or, Suppose a man were told that his pure and innocent sister
had been morally tripped up and socially knocked down by
some selfish brute whom she had trusted — had been
psychically drugged by him, “ruined," deserted,
cast out, reviled and spat upon by people morally and intellectually
unworthy to be her scullions; handed over in cold blood by
the “moral" and the “pious" to the
tender mercies of the most selfish and most brutal of both
sexes, to be trampled hopelessly into the mud, the helpless
slave of the demons of drink and lust.
Would not every spark of manliness in him be fanned into
a blaze of indignation and rage ? Would he not employ every
conceivable means to discover the poor girl's hiding-place
? And when he had found his sister, would he not throw his
protecting arm around her and fight his way with her out
of the hyena's den, past the toads of scandal and the vipers
of malice, and give her an asylum in his heart and hearth,
where the poor wounded, terrified, half-demented girl could
recover her mental, moral and physical health; while those
who had never tripped, or who had never been seen to fall,
howled, and snarled, and hissed, and grimaced before his
door in impotent rage that a victim had been rescued from
the hell to which they had consigned her as a sacrifice to
their demon-god — the great infernal trinity of hypocrisy,
cruelty and selfishness ?
No! those who descant upon the
brotherhood of man seldom realize, even in the faintest degree,
the meaning of the pretty sentimental words they utter. If
they did, there would be no question as to the nature of
Practical Theosophy. If they did, a great unrest would seize
them, a supreme desire to help the thousands of suffering
brothers and sisters that cross their path every day of their
lives, and from whom they shrink because cowardice, selfishness,
and indolence inhabit furnished lodgings in their hearts.
The Australian savage murders any black-fellows he meets
who do not belong to his little tribe. He kills them on general
principles — because they belong to “another
set". The
civilized world has advanced so far upon the road to Practical
Theosophy, that we do not actually murder or maim those who
do not belong to our tribe, we merely let them suffer and
die, and the advanced ones, the pioneers of the race, write
on their tomb-stones, “Here lie my dear brothers and
sisters".
The fact is, however, and a staggering one
it is too, that Practical Theosophy, in its full acceptation,
would mean a dissolution of society as at present constituted.
Of that fact there cannot be the slightest doubt, for it
would mean a reign of kindness, of sympathy, of unselfishness,
of tenderness to the weak, of forgiveness for the erring,
of mutual helpfulness, of happiness in seeing others happy,
and there is not a single one of our present social institutions
that is not founded upon principles diametrically the opposite
of these, and which would not swell up and burst to pieces
were the ferment of [Page 19]
altruism introduced into it.
Only fancy what the result would be of
introducing Practical Theosophy into our treatment of criminals,
and into our legal processes. What would become of that dignified
and learned profession, the law, were the object of the solicitor
and the barrister to make people friendly and forgiving,
instead of being to fan their enmity, spite and hatred ?
What would we do with our great prisons and convict establishments,
were jurymen, judges and legislators to really look upon
criminals as their ignorant, misguided, erring, stupid, neglected
brothers and sisters ? Or, again, what would become of our
arsenals and iron-clads, of our generals and admirals, our
colonels and captains, and our be-feathered and be-belted
warriors generally, were the people of various nationalities
to refuse to shoot and stab and blow each other to pieces
at the word of command, for no better reason than that they
were brothers and had no quarrel, and did not want to harm
each other, or each other's wives or children ? Another noble
profession would go to the dogs ! What would become of the
churches were the clergy to treat their fellow-creatures
as brothers and sisters ? Would not the bishops hasten to
convert their palaces into asylums for the homeless wretches
who now lie shivering at night in the road before their gates
? Would not the lesser clergy quickly follow their example
? Then they would have to feed these unfortunates, for the
bishop's brothers and sisters are starving all the time as
well as shivering; and how could they do that and at the
same time maintain au establishment ?
What would the Lord think of His ministers if they neglected
to keep up their place in society ? The next thing would
probably be that the clergy would open their great empty
churches for wretched and homeless women and children to
take shelter in, instead of letting them lie shivering in
the rain and wind before the barred doors of those gloomy
temples of their jealous God — and then what on earth
would become of religion ?
But let us be reassured! The social
order is in no danger just yet of being upset by the introduction
of Practical Theosophy into the lives of men. Practical
Theosophy to exist, except in fancy, requires Practical Theosophists — in
other words, people who value the happiness of others more
than their own enjoyments, and such people are a rare exception
in any place in life — in the law the army, the church,
the legislature, in agriculture, trade, commerce or manufacture.
If anyone feels today that his sentiments are those of Practical
Theosophy, and seriously proposes to sacrifice his worldly
prospects and enjoyments in order to spend his life in doing
what little he can to benefit others, he runs a risk, that
is not far from a certainty, of being treated by the world
as all incorrigible lunatic.
It is a fact which few will deny that anyone would be considered
a madman who openly and confessedly followed the injunction
of the great Practical Theosophist of Judea, to sell all
that he had, and having given the proceeds to the poor, to
follow him — that is to say, who devoted his life,
in complete forgetfulness of self, to the great and glorious
task of raising humanity [Page 20] out
of the quagmire of ignorance, selfishness and cruelty, in
which it flounders. If he had some reasonable object in view,
well and good. The world can understand a person being altruistic
for the sake of a good living and an assured position in
society — there
is some sense in that; it can even excuse a man for loving
his neighbours, if he firmly believes that he will thereby
be entitled to a reserved seat in the hall of the gods; but “utter
forgetfulness of self", that is quite unnatural, and
amounts to a sign of weakness of intellect!
When people talk
of Practical Theosophy as a thing that is possible in the
world today, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they
are thinking of practical benevolence and charity; for if
the very foundation of Theosophy be the sentiment of the
brotherhood of man, Practical Theosophy, by the very laws
of society, as at present constituted, is an impossibility.
Law, religion, politics, our very system of morality itself,
are all incompatible with the existence of the sentiment
of the brotherhood of man. All these institutions were invented
by and for people imbued with the opposite sentiments; they
are fitted only for such people, and could not exist for
ten minutes in a world inhabited by Practical
Theosophists.
The natural laws that govern the manifestations
of Practical Theosophy are as different to those that obtain
in our present system of egoism and
destructive competition, as the laws that govern the phenomena
of steam are to the laws of hydraulics. We know full well
that no steam will be generated in a boiler until the whole
of the water therein has been raised to boiling-point. Even
so we also know that in order to raise the world to the point
at which men will “generate", Practical Theosophy,
the spiritual temperature of the whole of mankind, must be
raised; all men and women must be made kinder and still kinder
in heart, and stronger and still stronger in spirit; and
this call only be done by acting on them en masse, and raising
the standard of kindness and of spiritual strength in the
whole race.
Will works of benevolence and charity do this ? Are they
not in themselves a consequence rather than a cause, a fruit
rather than a seed ? Such works are indeed a fruit, the immature
fruit which the tree of kindness bears in the half-grown
stunted condition it necessarily presents when planted in
the uncongenial soil of selfishness. Benevolence and charity
belong to the time when men stone and crucify those who tell
them that all men are brothers and ought to treat each other
as such. They are the tithe grudgingly paid by vice to virtue,
by egoism to altruism, and their existence shows that egoism
and vice take nine- tenths, or rather ninety-nine hundredths,
of the produce of human life. Were Practical Theosophy the
rule of life, benevolence and charity would not be needed,
for they owe their existence to the greater prevalence of
malevolence and injustice. They are the exceptions occurring
when the rule is in force, and disappear when the rule ceases
to act. Benevolence has become an anachronism since the idea
of universal brotherhood dawned upon the world. Charity,
[Page 21] under the higher law,
is no better than a flattering deceiver, for it tells people
that they are worthy of praise and reward for doing the things
which Theosophy declares it to be criminal to leave undone,
because not to do them, and a thousand times more, is to
do injustice.
Active works of benevolence and charity are therefore not
Practical Theosophy. They belong to the old regime of egoism,
of which they are the flowers and the fruit; and, however
good in themselves, they should not be mistaken for Practical
Theosophy if a dangerous delusion is to be avoided.
If, then,
Practical Theosophy be in reality a form of human life — of
morality and of society — far higher than those which
exist in the world of today, and for the coming of which
we can but prepare the way, can we, nevertheless, not give
a practical turn to such Theosophy as we already have, so
that it will hurry on the reign of Brotherhood ? Or must
our Theosophy remain for long centuries only a self-centred
and self-ideal thing ? What form can we Theosophists give
to our efforts as to make our Theosophy an influence in the
world for good ? If Theosophy is to be the guiding power
of our lives, in what
manner, and to what end, is it to guide us ?
We cannot, at
the present day, exercise Practical Theosophy and still remain
in such harmony with our surroundings as would entitle us
in the world's eyes to be called sane. We cannot even realize
in our imagination, soaked through as we are with egotistic
modes of thought and standards of value, what it will be
like to live in a world peopled by Practical Theosophists.
But, without the slightest doubt, we can turn what Theosophy
we have in us to practical account; for we can each of us
add his or her warmth to the general heat, and thus help
to raise the moral and spiritual temperature of the world
a little nearer to the point at which the free generation
of Practical Theosophy will naturally take place among men.
We must remember, however, that for the exercise of Practical
Theosophy, as it will one day exist in the world, reciprocity
is necessary. If the person you treat as a brother treats
you in return as an enemy, the real effect of the principle
of Brotherhood cannot manifest itself; and at present, as
society is constituted, it is not possible, and not in human
nature, for any man to carry out that principle in all his
intercourse with his neighbours. Practical Theosophy in isolated
individuals, if it is to avoid an opposition that would paralyse
or destroy it, must of necessity take on a somewhat different
form to that it would assume in a society where all were
Practical Theosophists.
The Practical Theosophist of today is the individual who
is animated by that spirit of brotherhood which will one
day become universal; and, as such, he is none other than
the man who at all times tries to impart to others the Theosophical
knowledge he has got himself, and to imbue them with the
Theosophical principles by which he guides his own conduct;
who tries to stir up in others the spirit of kindness, of
patience, of gentleness, of courage and [Page
22] of truth; who tries to induce his neighbours
fearlessly to think out the problem of existence for themselves,
and to feel the dignity and the responsibility of their own
manhood and womanhood; who tries to make others self-respecting
and strong. Those who become penetrated by these sentiments
and qualities do not need any stimulus to make them engage
in works of so-called charity, for these will be for them
the natural outlet, in the present order of things, for their
overflowing impulse to benefit others. The feelings that
prompt to all kind actions belong to the domain of Practical
Theosophy, but the actual works of benevolence and charity
to which they prompt are not Theosophy; they are accidents
in the growth of Theosophy, just as the useful inventions
of modern times are accidents in the progress of Science.
The object of Science is not to discover new bleaching powders,
or murderous explosives; its object is the intellectual conquest
of material nature.
Even so the object of Theosophy is the moral conquest of
man's animal nature, irrespective of the soup kitchens and
orphan asylums that spring up during the process. It seeks
to subdue or chase out the toad, the vulture, the wolf, the
pig, the viper, the sloth, the shark, and all the rest of
the menagerie of lower animal natures that now howl and croak
and hiss and grunt and caw in the hearts of men, and it knows
that this is an operation which can only be performed by
each man for himself. Each must purify his own mind and make
his own spirit strong, and the difference between Theoretical
and Practical Theosophists is that the former talk about
these things and the latter do them. But though this process
is a self-regarding
one, the effect is not. He who is a Practical Theosophist,
who tries to make himself
strong and pure-hearted, is, even unconsciously, a powerful
influence in the world,
and he becomes a centre of energy potent in proportion as
he forgets himself, and merges his hopes and fears, his likes
and dislikes, his thoughts, words, and deeds, in the great
life of humanity — dissolving his personality, so to
say, in the race to which he belongs; feeling with it, thinking
for it, bearing its burdens in his consciousness, and its
sins upon his conscience; and knowing that to sacrifice himself
for the good of humanity is therefore in reality but to ensure
his own salvation.
The Practical Theosophist, in proportion to his own strength,
gives strength to all with whom he comes in contact, through
a process somewhat similar to that of electrical induction.
Colonel Ingersoll was once asked if he thought he could improve
upon the work of “the Creator". He replied that
had he been consulted he would have made good health catching,
instead of disease. Had the great American orator and wit
looked a little deeper into his own heart, he would have
seen that ”the Creator" is not so stupid as he
thinks Him, for health is in reality catching, especially
health of mind and heart; and Ingersoll himself owes most
of his great influence in the world of thought, not to his
logic, powerful as that is, not to his wonderful command
of illustrations and similes, not to his rapid flow of brilliant
language, but to the healthy [Page 23] contagion
of a heart overflowing with the magnetism of kindness, generosity
and pity, and charged with the electricity of a love for
the good, the true and the beautiful. The Practical Theosophist,
wherever he goes and whatever he does, causes those with
whom he has to do to “catch" Theosophy.
A hint dropped here, a word said there, a question asked,
an opinion expressed, become through the power of his vitalizing
magnetism the seeds of Theosophy in others.
Practical Theosophy then is the sum of those institutions
into which human life will spontaneously crystalize when
men and women become Practical Theosophists; in other words,
when they feel in their hearts that all men are brothers,
and act accordingly. Practical Theosophists today, those
sporadic and premature instances of all altruism that will
one day become universal, are the drops that precede and
presage the rain. They cannot, under the rule of the present
morality, and with existing social religious and political
institutions, live and act as they would were all men as
they themselves are. The most they can hope to do is to try
their best to prepare the world for the reception of human
brotherhood as the foundation of all our ideas of life and
morality; and this they can best accomplish by each one making
himself pure and strong, for then they become centres of
a spiritual health which is “catching"; they
become laya points", so to say, through which
there flows into the world from another plane of existence
the spirit of brotherhood, of mercy, of pity and
of love.
Practical Theosophy is the great edifice which will be constructed
here below by the invisible, intelligent Powers of Nature
as soon as there exists on earth the material necessary to
build it. Practical Theosophists are the bricks with which
the edifice will one day be constructed; and the builders
only wait until the lumps of mud that now cover the earth
have been converted by the fire of misery and sorrow, of
painful effort and sustained aspiration, into hard and shining
bricks, fit to build a temple to the living God.
ΔΔ
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