IN the conventional religious speech, the word "spirituality“ means “a
devotional habit of mind" or "an aspiration after
Divine things". Theosophy gives it a far fuller and
more extensive signification. It, of course, includes therein
that of yearning after “God", for this is the
highest and noblest reach of the human soul; but it also
makes it to comprehend all faculty of understanding super-sensuous
truth, all interest in the illimitable sphere outside the
range of our physical senses — those things which, as
the Christian Adept, Paul, said, "being not seen, are
eternal".
We perceive this the better when we think out the extent
to which our conception of the realities of life has been
pushed by the ever-present influence of our material bodies.
Their needs in maintenance and comfort, their demands for
pleasure and recreation, their function — through the
five senses — in opening to us whatever knowledge we
gain of the surrounding world, their connecting us in families,
social interests, and vital activities, all unite in ensuring
predominance to them in thought. More than this, our inability
to look into other realms of existence, our incapacity to
sense un-material facts in any way so literal as when we "see" a
landscape or a fellow-man, gives an objectiveness to the
material which we perforce consider reality. The vividness
of external things, seen distinctly and spontaneously, contrasts
with the dimness of internal visions, perceived vaguely and
with effort. So to us the body is the real "I", the "I" which
hungers and thirsts, wearies and pains, enjoys and plans,
finally dies; and its earthly home is the real world, to
be followed perhaps by another adapted to our then mutilated
and denuded selves.
So fixed is the idea of the body as a necessary element in
the composite, triple nature of man, that the Christian doctrine
of the Resurrection is to millions the assurance that they
are not to be left permanently in the cheerless land of spirit,
but are to regain their missing third, and the "Queen
of Feasts", Easter, convinces them of an immortality
which, without a resurrected body, would be more than doubtful
and less than desirable!
One consequence of our mode of
thought is that our attitude towards the unseen is always
of looking upward, and looking upward with strain. Spiritual
things are far away, high above our heads on other planes,
and to near them and feel them we must coerce the shrinking
muscles into unfamiliar act. Indeed, no better proof of their
little verity for us, as compared with that of material objects,
can be found than our use towards them of the word "faith", which
implies that, however sure we may be of the existence of
matter, that of spirit can be only a subject of trust ! [Page 18]
Theosophy's cardinal principle is a complete reversal of
this position. Instead of taking its stand on the physical
world as the permanent view-point, and thence looking off
to the spiritual as a changeful, uncertain region, it stations
itself in the spiritual world as the real, the enduring,
and the sure, and from there contemplates the physical as
mutable, transient, and illusive. And surely this is in conformity
to fact. Earthly objects are evidently in a state of flux.
Not one remains the same for two
consecutive hours, nay moments. Everything is disintegrating
and re-combining in other forms; the continents, the cities,
the molecules, are perpetually altering; the very bodies
which we consider " I", the very organs through
which we perceive the external world and through which comes
to us our conviction of its durability, undergo atomic change
each instant that we live. If neither the organs perceiving,
nor the objects perceived, remain the same for a single hour,
what possible stability have they as a view-point for existence
?
But none of this can be true of the realm of spirit. Reason
teaches that, as we ascend from the region of gross matter,
passing upward through the zones of the less gross, the semi-material,
the more and
more ethereal, to the home of pure spirit, we part steadily
from all the conditions which induce change, and meet ever
more fully with the permanent and the real. Its interest,
too, is correspondingly finer.
Animal desires and needs are left behind, and the expanding
nature rises past even the intellectual, psychic, and emotional
realms till it reaches the level of spiritual being, where
truth is intuitively seen and right intuitively felt. As
the pursuits of a physicist are incomparably superior to
those of a day labourer, so, it is evident, must those of
a free spirit be to those of the physicist.
But of even deeper
value to the human heart is the fact that recession from
the material is approach to true happiness. The source of
pain is in change. Hardly has a pleasure been attained than
the shifting elements of life undermine it, and it falls.
Instability is the moan of the moralist, and he finds in
it the cause of the desolating sorrows and bereavements of
this world. These evils must, of course, diminish as we recede
from the sphere of their conditions, and must die out as
we near the realm of reality. Happiness, therefore, is least
sure when it depends most on any object or content in material
existence, and gains permanency as it is rooted in the world
of the unseen, the enduring. In fact, the whole matter may
be thus summed up — that the richest, the most lasting,
the happiest quality of life is possible only as the life
is detached from bodily dependency and transferred to a plane
above the range of matter.
This seems unpractical, perhaps visionary. Why ? Because
we are still clinging to the notion of the material as the
real and the spiritual as the unreal. But let us reverse
the conception. Let us assume — if we do [Page 19] not
already know it — that each thing, function, process
in this surrounding world of substance is a manifestation
in density of a corresponding idea in the unseen sphere of
spirit. It of course follows that the former, because of
inevitable limitations, must be imperfect, changeful, and
restricted. But it also follows that, such limitations not
existing, the latter may be complete, enduring, and boundless.
Apply this to our percipient organs. The eye, the ear, etc.,
should have a super-sensuous analogue, of which they are
the physical representations. We infer, therefore, to the
human spirit a faculty of sight and hearing on the plane
whereto it belongs. Further, as cultivation is the law to
perfectness in the former, even more, by analogy, must it
be to the latter. Still further, if the results from scientific
use of the former are both marvellous and demonstrable, in
even greater degree must this be true of the latter. And
thus we reach the conclusion that spiritual senses are not
less real than bodily, not less susceptible to training,
even more rich in proved attainment.
Now what is the law
of the change of spirituality, expressed in contrast of both
fact and method? Col. H. S. Olcott, President-Founder of
the Theosophical Society, has thus admirably stated it: “Mankind
usually receive a thousand impressions through the senses
to one through the spiritual nature. Adeptship means reversing the proportion". In other words, the spiritual world
bears the relation to the perfected man that the material
world does to the rudimentary man.
But how are we rudimentary men to become perfected men ?
We cannot ignore facts in existence and the conditions of
it, nor can we essay to live as if now Adepts. By no means.
But we can recognize other and larger facts in existence,
and we can begin the training which men now Adepts began
when like ourselves. Here are some of the successive steps.
Ist) We can give reality to the conception that all physical
matters are mutable and illusive, and that permanency is
to be found in the realm of the physically unseen world. This conception
must first be clearly formed. Reality is imparted to it by
acting upon it. A man may make real the spiritual world by
transferring to it his thoughts, his meditations, his aspirations,
his interests, and his efforts. As he thinks upon it and
strives after it, it discloses itself as truly to his spiritual
perceptions as does this earth to the student of physics.
2nd) We can affiliate affiliate ourselves intellectually
and morally with the principles of the unseen world. The present usual intellectual attitude of incredulity towards
all fact which seems strange or which is intangible may be
overcome, and the axiom that “there are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy" be
digested. The possibility of cosmic, and terrestrial, and
individual forces playing ever around and in us then becomes
plausible. Coupled with this may be a like recognition of
the unbending moral powers, which ensure the triumph of good,
and of [Page 20] sweetness, and of light, giving certain victory
to truth and honour, and the doctrine of human fraternity
as a consequence of human origin from the Divine. No lasting
benefit can come from that which is not lasting, and only
good lasts.
3rd) We can substitute duty for self-interest as the motive
power in life. The
subordination of selfish wishes to the standard of right
and of universal claims soon moderates the egotism which
bars out spiritual light. More than this, it brings us into
harmony with this great law of Oneness which sweeps throughout
the universe, and thus fits us for perceiving and co-operating
with the ends of our own being. When a man invariably does
what he ought to do, and not merely what he would like to
do, he has lost his greatest disqualification for true spirituality,
4th) We may acquire the power of fixedness in thought. This
is an indispensable step in the progressive course. Our thought
now is discursive, aimless, discontinuous. The mind escapes
the reins of the will, and wanders from topic to topic, seizing
none and exhausting none. To recover control, to retain it,
to enforce it, is one of the hardest trials to a beginner.
Yet till the power of thought is gained, till wandering is
checked and concentration easy, no one can peer into his
own being, learn the mysteries of his nature and his desires,
understand how real is the unseen within. The soul must master
the mind which is its instrument.
5th) We may endeavour to develop these perceptive organs
of the spirit, now
dormant, which are analogous to those of the physical body.
This does not mean clairaudience, or clairvoyance, or any
gifts of the psychic plane. Nor does it mean mere intelligence
or conscience. It means rather a receptiveness, a responsiveness
to supersensuous truth, to truth of and from super-sensuous
realms, which gradually awakens those organs to their functions
and enables them to attract more, perceive more, and receive
more. It is a process hardly stateable in language, and only
verifiable through experience, but it is a process which
everyone may begin if sincere and continue if devoted, and
its results are indicated in the words of Col. Olcott.
Spirituality is not, then, a vague aspiration after the Divine;
nor is it that sentimental and unpractical quality of character
which scoffers stigmatize as "goody-goody". The
very same reasons which evoke respect for the coarse man
who is educating himself into love and appreciation and practice
of refinement, apply to him who is striving for emancipation
from the belittling, benumbing effects of purely material
interests and habits. An eagle chained in a barnyard may
symbolize our ordinary selves; "an eagle soaring into
the sunlight and winging its way among mountain peaks, the
spirit of man, vivified, illuminated, FREE !
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