There is a Price
to Pay for
Removing Organized
Delusion
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Nicolas Berdyaev
The universe is a creative process: it is unfolding
yet, and its development obeys the Law of Symmetry and Equilibrium. One must
therefore pay a karmic price for everything.
If one wants solidarity, one has
to understand the mechanisms of its absence.
If we look for truth, we must challenge and defeat the procedures of
self-perpetuating illusion. If you look for sincerity, you need to know and
fight its opposite.
Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev was born on 18
March 1874, and died in 1948. In “The
Destiny of Man”, a book dedicated to Ethics and to the future of mankind, he
wrote these extraordinary words:
“Ethics has not paid sufficient attention to the
monstrously big part played by falsehood in man’s moral and spiritual
life. What is meant here is not
falsehood which is regarded as an expression of wickedness, but falsehood which
is morally sanctioned as good. People do not believe that the good may be
preserved and established without the aid of falsehood. The good is the end, the lies are the means.
In the nineteenth century Tolstoy, Ibsen, Nietzche and Kierkegaard passionately
protested against the falsity of our moral life. The religious life of mankind,
and perhaps of Christendom in particular, is permeated with falsity. ”
Nicolas (or Nikolai) Berdyaev explained:
“There is a kind of falsity which is considered a
moral and religious duty, and those who reject it are said to be rebels. There
exist social accumulations of falsity which have become part of the established
order of things. This is connected with
the essential character of moral perception and judgment - with the absence of
what I call first-hand moral acts.
Conventional, as it were, socially organized falsity clusters round all
social groupings, such as the family, the class, the party, the church, the
nation, the state. Such conventional falsity is a means of self-preservation
for these institutions; truth might lead to their break up. The conventional falsity of socially
organized groups (I include among them schools of thought and ideological
tendencies) deprives man of the freedom of moral perception and moral
judgment. The moral judgment is made not
by a free personality in the presence of God [1] but by the family, the class, the nation, the party, the
denomination, etc.” [2]
These words raise a point that is decisive
in theosophy. The karma of searching for truth includes the need to dismantle
the hidden traps of organized delusion. One’s family may not be an exception to
the rule, and Berdyaev confessed:
“What an amount of conventional falsity accumulates in
family life! And it is regarded as essential for its existence and
self-preservation. How many true
feelings are concealed, how many false ones expressed, how conventionally false
the relations between parents and children, husbands and wives often are!
Hypocrisy acquires the character of a family virtue. What never finds
expression in consciousness, or does so in quite a misleading and
unintelligible way, is stored up in the subconscious.” [3]
The teaching is shared by modern
theosophy. Personal existence and
family life can be observed, understood and changed from within, with a gradual
regeneration taking place under the silent guidance of eternal wisdom.
As to the present churches and religious sects,
they are often worse than useless to the evolution of human soul, as stated in
the Letter 10 of “The Mahatma Letters”. And
Berdyaev added on the same page:
“Falsity has its own symbolism, and that symbolism is
regarded as something good. When a lie acquires the character of a social
symbol it is always regarded as good. It is considered evil only as it is
individual. The social lies have come to be regarded as truths. Such lies are
to be found in the socially organized judgments of all denominations - in the
judgments of the Catholics about the Orthodox, of the Orthodox about the
Catholics, of Christians about non-Christians and vice-versa. The amount of
these lies is truly terrifying. It is almost impossible to get at the truth, at
the pure, free, first-hand, original judgments.”
Individuals of good-will can have the courage to look
for truth and to provoke healthy changes in everyday life. The task ahead for
them is to simultaneously defeat organized ignorance in themselves as
individuals and in the groups to which they belong.
The fall and destruction of illusions are taking place
in their own rhythm during the 21st century.
Such a process is unavoidable. Although its speed is growing already, one
can always help the process, and the task is worthwhile.
NOTES:
[1] The word “God” here does not make sense except if
defined as “Universal Law of Justice”, “Higher Self”, or “one’s own
conscience”.
[2] “The Destiny of Man”, Nicolas Berdyaev, Harper
Torchbooks, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960, 310 pp., see pp. 160-161.
[3] “The Destiny of Man”, Nicolas Berdyaev, Harper
Torchbooks, pp. 161-162.
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On the
difference between truth and falsehood in the esoteric movement, see the book “The
Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian
Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon
Books.
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