A Lecture by Leo
Tolstoy, Translated by
Helena Blavatsky
and With Commentaries by Her
Leo Tolstoy

Leo
Tolstoy (1828-1910)
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A 2012 Editorial Note:
The following text is reproduced from
“Lucifer” magazine, London,
November
1887 edition, pp. 203-211. It should be noted
that “Lucifer” is an ancient and
pagan term
which means “the light-bearer”. It is an attribute
of the planet Venus and one of its names. The
meaning of the word was distorted by medieval
theologians during the creation of their monotheistic fraud.
We have added a numbered subtitle between brackets to
each of the three parts of the following text. We also adapted
the spelling of Tolstoy’s name to the way it is most used nowadays.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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[1. An Introductory Note by H. P. Blavatsky]
What is life?
Hundreds of the most philosophical minds, scores of learned well-skilled physicians,
have asked themselves the question, but to little purpose. The veil thrown over
primordial Kosmos and the mysterious beginnings of life upon it, has never been
withdrawn to the satisfaction of earnest, honest science. The more the men of
official learning try to penetrate through its dark folds, the more intense
becomes that darkness, and the less they see, for they are like the
treasure-hunter, who went across the wide seas to look for that which lay
buried in his own garden.
What is then this
science? Is it biology, or the study of life in its general aspect? No. Is it
physiology, or the science of organic function? Neither; for the former leaves
the problem as much the riddle of the Sphinx as ever; and the latter is the
science of death far more than that of life. Physiology is based upon the study
of the different organic functions and the organs necessary to the
manifestation of life, but that which science calls living matter, is, in sober
truth, dead matter. Every molecule of the living organs contains the
germ of death in itself, and begins dying as soon as born, in order that its
successor-molecule should live only to die in its turn. An organ, a natural
part of every living being, is but the medium for some special function in
life, and is a combination of such molecules. The vital organ, the whole, puts
the mask of life on, and thus conceals the constant decay and death of its
parts. Thus, neither biology nor physiology are the science, nor even branches
of the Science of Life, but only that of the appearances of life.
While true philosophy stands Oedipus-like before the Sphinx of life, hardly
daring to utter the paradox contained in the answer to the riddle propounded,
materialistic science, as arrogant as ever, never doubting its own wisdom for
one moment, biologises itself and many others into the belief that it has
solved the awful problem of existence. In truth, however, has it even so much
as approached its threshold? It is not, surely, by attempting to deceive itself
and the unwary in saying that life is but the result of molecular complexity
that it can ever hope to promote the truth. Is vital force, indeed, only a
“phantom”, as Du-Bois Reymond calls it? For his taunt that “life”, as something
independent, is but the asylum ignorantiae of those who seek refuge in
abstractions, when direct explanation is impossible, applies with far more
force and justice to those materialists who would blind people to the reality
of facts, by substituting bombast and jaw-breaking words in their place. Have
any of the five divisions of the functions of life, so pretentiously named –
Archebiosis, Biocrosis, Biodiaeresis, Biocaenosis and Bioparodosis [1], ever
helped a Huxley or a Haeckel to probe more fully the mystery of the generations
of the humblest ant - let alone of man? Most certainly not. For life, and
everything pertaining to it, belongs to the lawful domain of the metaphysician
and psychologist, and physical science has no claim upon it. “That which hath
been, is that which shall be; and that which hath been is named already - and
it is known that it is MAN” - is the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. But
“man” here, does not refer to physical man - not in its esoteric
meaning, at any rate. Scalpels and microscopes may solve the mystery of the
material parts of the shell of man: they can never cut a window into his
soul to open the smallest vista on any of the wider horizons of being.
It is those
thinkers alone, who, following the Delphic injunction, have cognized life in
their inner selves, those who have studied it thoroughly in themselves,
before attempting to trace and analyze its reflection in their outer shells,
who are the only ones rewarded with some measure of success. Like the
fire-philosophers of the Middle Ages, they have skipped over the appearances of
light and fire in the world of effects, and centred their whole attention upon
the producing arcane agencies. Thence, tracing these to the one abstract cause,
they have attempted to fathom the MYSTERY, each as far as his intellectual capacities
permitted him. Thus they have ascertained that (1) the seemingly living
mechanism called physical man is but the fuel, the material, upon which life
feeds, in order to manifest itself; and (2) that thereby the inner man receives
as his wage and reward the possibility of accumulating additional experiences
of the terrestrial illusions called lives.
One of such
philosophers is now undeniably the great Russian novelist and reformer, Count
Leo N. Tolstoy. How near his views are to the esoteric and philosophical
teachings of higher Theosophy, will be found on the perusal of a few fragments
from a lecture delivered by him at Moscow before the local Psychological
Society.
Discussing the
problem of life, the Count asks his audience to admit, for the sake of
argument, an impossibility. Says the lecturer: -
[2. The Science of Life, by Leo Tolstoy ]
Let us grant for a
moment that all that which modern science longs to learn of life, it has
learnt, and now knows; that the problem has become as clear as day; that it is
clear how organic matter has, by simple adaptation, come to be originated from
inorganic material; that it is as clear how natural forces may be transformed
into feelings, will, thought, and that finally, all this is known, not only to
the city student, but to every village schoolboy, as well.
I am aware, then,
that such and such thoughts and feelings originate from such and such motions.
Well, and what then? Can I, or cannot I, produce and guide such motions, in
order to excite within my brain corresponding thoughts? The question - what are
the thoughts and feelings I ought to generate in myself and others, remains
still, not only unsolved, but even untouched.
Yet, it is
precisely this question which is the one fundamental question of the central
idea of life.
Science has chosen
as its object a few manifestations that accompany life; and mistaking [2]
the part for the whole, called these manifestations the integral total of life
. . . . . . .
The question
inseparable of the idea of life is not whence life, but how one
should live that life: and it is only by first starting with this question
that one can hope to approach some solution in the problem of existence.
The answer to the
query “How are we to live?” appears so simple to man that he esteems it hardly
worth his while to touch upon it.
. . . . . . One
must live the best way one can - that’s all. This seems at first sight very
simple and well known to all, but it is by far neither as simple nor as well
known as one may imagine. . . . . . .
The idea of life
appears to man in the beginning as a most simple and self-evident business.
First of all, it seems to him, that life is in himself, in his own body. No
sooner, however, does one commence his search after that life, in any one given
spot of the said body, than one meets with difficulties. Life is not in the
hair, nor in the nails; neither is it in the foot nor the arm, which may both
be amputated; it is not in the blood, it is not in the heart, and it is not in
the brain. It is everywhere and it is nowhere. It comes to this: life cannot be
found in any of its dwelling-places. Then man begins to look for life in Time;
and that, too, appears at first a very easy matter. . . . . . Yet again, no
sooner has he started on his chase than he perceives that here also the
business is more complicated than he had thought. Now, I have lived
fifty-eight years [3], so says my
baptismal church record. But I know that out of these fifty-eight years I slept
over twenty. How then? Have I lived all these years, or have I not? Deduct the
months of my gestation, and those I passed in the arms of my nurse, and shall
we call this life, also? Again, out of the remaining thirty-eight years, I know
that a good half of that time I slept while moving about; and thus, I could no
more say in this case, whether I lived during that time or not. I may have
lived a little, and vegetate a little. Here again, one finds that in time, as
in the body, life is everywhere, yet nowhere. And now the question naturally arises,
whence, then, that life which I can trace to nowhere? Now - will I learn . . .
. . . But it so happens that in this direction also, what seemed to me so easy
at first, now seems impossible. I must have been searching for something else,
not for my life, assuredly. Therefore, once we have to go in search of the
whereabouts of life - if search we have to - then it should be neither in space
nor in time, neither as cause nor effect, but as a something which I cognize
within myself as quite independent from Space, time and causality.
That which remains
to do now is to study self. But how do I cognize life in myself?
This is how I
cognize it. I know, to begin with, that I live; and that I live wishing for
myself everything that is good, wishing this since I can remember myself, to
this day, and from morn till night. All that lives outside of myself is
important in my eyes, but only in so far as it co-operates with the creation of
that which is productive of my welfare. The Universe is important in my
sight only because it can give me, pleasure.
Meanwhile,
something else is bound up with this knowledge in me of my existence.
Inseparable from the life I feel, is another cognition allied to it; namely,
that besides myself, I am surrounded with a whole world of living creatures,
possessed, as I am myself, of the same instinctive realization of their
exclusive lives; that all these creatures live for their own objects, which
objects are foreign to me; that those creatures do not know, nor do they care
to know, anything of my pretensions to an exclusive life, and that all these
creatures, in order to achieve success in their objects, are ready to
annihilate me at any moment. But it is not all. While watching the destruction
of creatures similar in all to myself, I also know that for me too, for that
precious ME in whom alone life is represented, a very speedy and inevitable
destruction is lying in wait.
It is as if there were
two “I”s in man; it is as if they could never live in peace together; it is as
if they were eternally struggling, and ever trying to expel each other.
One “I” says,
“I alone am living as one should live, all the rest only seems to live.
Therefore, the whole raison d’être for the universe is in that I may be
made comfortable.”
The other “I” replies,
“The universe is not for thee at all, but for its own aims and purposes, and it
cares little to know whether thou art happy or unhappy.”
Life becomes a
dreadful thing after this!
One “I” says, “I
only want the gratification of all my wants and desires, and that is why I need
the universe.”
The other “I” replies,
“All animal life lives only for the gratification of its wants and desires. It
is the wants and desires of animals alone that are gratified at the expense and
detriment of other animals; hence the ceaseless struggle between the animal
species. Thou art an animal, and therefore thou hast to struggle. Yet, however
successful in thy struggle, the rest of the struggling creatures must sooner or
later crush thee.”
Still worse! Life becomes
still more dreadful. . . . . .
But the most
terrible of all, that which includes in itself the whole of the foregoing, is
that: -
One “I” says, “I
want to live, to live for ever.”
And that the other
“I” replies, “Thou shalt surely, perhaps in a few minutes, die; as also shall
die all those thou lovest, for thou and they are destroying with every motion
your lives, and thus approaching ever nearer suffering, death, all that which
thou so hatest, and which thou fearest above anything else.”
This is the worst
of all. . . . . .
To change this
condition is impossible. . . . . . One
can avoid moving, sleeping, eating, even breathing, but one cannot escape from
thinking. One thinks, and that thought, my thought, is poisoning every
step in my life, as a personality.
No sooner has man
commenced a conscious life than that consciousness repeats to him incessantly
without respite, over and over the same thing again. “To live such life as you
feel and see in your past, the life lived by animals and many men too, lived in
that way, which made you become what you are now - is no longer
possible. Were you to attempt doing so, you could never escape thereby the
struggle with all the world of creatures which live as you do - for their
personal objects; and then those creatures will inevitably destroy you.” . . .
. . .
To change this
situation is impossible. There remains but one thing to do, and that is always
done by him who, beginning to live, transfers his objects in life outside of
himself, and aims to reach them. . . . . . .
But, however far he places them outside his personality, as his mind
gets clearer, none of these objects will satisfy him.
Bismarck, having
united Germany, and now ruling Europe - if his reason has only thrown any light
upon the results of his activity - must perceive, as much as his own cook does
who prepares a dinner that will be devoured in an hour’s time, the same
unsolved contradiction between the vanity and foolishness of all he has done,
and the eternity and reasonableness of that which exists for ever. If they only
think of it, each will see as clearly as the other; firstly, that the
preservation of the integrity of Prince Bismarck’s dinner, as well as that of
powerful Germany, is solely due: the preservation of the former - to the
police, and the preservation of the latter - to the army; and that, so long
only as both keep a good watch. Because there are famished people who would
willingly eat the dinner, and nations which would fain be as powerful as
Germany. Secondly, that neither Prince Bismarck’s dinner, nor the might of the
German Empire, coincide with the aims and purposes of universal life, but that
they are in flagrant contradiction with them. And thirdly, that as he who
cooked the dinner, so also the might of Germany, will both very soon die, and
that so shall perish, and as soon, both the dinner and Germany. That which
shall survive alone is the Universe, which will never give one thought to
either dinner or Germany, least of all to those who have cooked them.
As the intellectual
condition of man increases, he comes to the idea that no happiness connected
with his personality is an achievement, but only a necessity. Personality is
only that incipient state from which begins life, and the ultimate limit of
life. . . . . . .
Where, then, does
life begin, and where does it end, it may be asked? Where ends the night, and
where does day commence? Where, on the shore, ends the domain of the sea, and
where does the domain of land begin?
There is day and
there is night; there is land and there is sea; there is life and there is no
life.
Our life, ever
since we become conscious of it, is a pendulum, like motion between two limits.
One limit is, an
absolute unconcern for the life of the infinite Universe, an energy directed
only toward the gratification of one’s own personality.
The other limit is
a complete renunciation of that personality, the greatest concern with the life
of the infinite Universe, in full accord with it, the transfer of all our
desires and good will from one’s self, to that infinite Universe and all the
creatures outside of us. [4]
The nearer to the
first limit, the less life and bliss, the closer to the second, the more life
and bliss. Therefore, man is ever moving from one end to the other; i.e.
he lives. THIS MOTION IS LIFE ITSELF.
And when I speak of
life, know that the idea of it is indissolubly connected in my conceptions with
that of conscious life. No other life is known to me except conscious
life, nor can it be known to anyone else.
We call life, the
life of animals, organic life. But this is no life at all, only a certain state
or condition of life manifesting to us.
But what is this
consciousness or mind, the exigencies of which exclude personality and transfer
the energy of man outside of him and into that state which is conceived by us
as the blissful state of love?
What is conscious
mind? Whatsoever we may be defining, we have to define it with our conscious
mind. Therefore, with what shall we define mind? . . . . . . .
If we have to
define all with our mind, it follows that conscious mind cannot be defined. Yet
all of us, we not only know it, but it is the only thing which is given to us
to know undeniably. . . . . . .
It is the same law
as the law of life, of everything organic, animal or vegetable, with that one
difference that we see the consummation of an intelligent law in the
life of a plant. But the law of conscious mind, to which we are subjected as
the tree, is subjected to its law, we see it not. But fulfill it. . . .
. . .
We have settled
that life is that which is not our life. It is herein that lies hidden the root
of error. Instead of studying that life of which we are conscious within
ourselves, absolutely and exclusively - since we can know of nothing else - in
order to study it, we observe that which is devoid of the most important factor
and faculty of our life, namely, intelligent consciousness. By so doing, we act
as a man who attempts to study an object by its shadow or reflection
does.
If we know that
substantial particles are subjected during their transformations to the
activity of the organism; we know it not because we have observed or studied
it, but simply because we possess a certain familiar organism united to us,
namely the organism of our animal, which is but too well known to us as the
material of our life, i.e. that upon which we are called to work and to
rule by subjecting it to the law of reason. . . . . . No sooner has man lost
faith in life, no sooner has he transferred that life into that which is no
life, than he becomes wretched, and sees death. . . . . . A man who conceives
life such as he finds it in his consciousness, knows neither misery, nor death:
for all the good in life for him is in the subjection of his animal to the law of
reason, to do which is not only his power, but takes place unavoidably in him.
The death of particles in the animal being, we know. The death of animals and
of man, as an animal, we know; but we know nought about the death of conscious
mind, nor can we know anything of it, just because that conscious mind is
the very life itself. And Life can never be Death. . . . . . .
The animal lives an
existence of bliss, neither seeing nor knowing death, and dies without
cognizing it. Why then should man have received the gift of seeing and knowing
it, and why should death be so terrible to him that it actually tortures his
soul, often forcing him to kill himself out of sheer fear of death? Why should
it be so? Because the man who sees death is a sick man, one who has broken the
law of his life, and lives no longer a conscious existence. He has become an
animal himself, an animal which also has broken the law of life.
The life of man is
an aspiration to bliss, and that which he aspires to is given to him. The light
lit in the soul of man is bliss and life, and that light can never be darkness,
as there exists - verily there exists for man - only this solitary light which
burns within his soul.
[3. Concluding
Commentary, by H.P.B.]
We have translated
this rather lengthy fragment from the Report of Count Tolstoy’s superb lecture,
because it reads like the echo of the finest teachings of the universal ethics
of true theosophy. His definition of life in its abstract sense, and of the
life every earnest theosophist ought to follow, each according to, and in the
measure of his natural capacities - is the summary and the Alpha and the
Omega of practical psychic, if not spiritual life. There are sentences in the
lecture which, to the average theosophist will seem too hazy, and perhaps
incomplete. Not one will he find, however, which could be objected to by the
most exacting, practical occultist. It may be called a treatise on the Alchemy
of Soul. For that “solitary” light in man, which burns forever, and can never
be darkness in its intrinsic nature, though the “animal” outside us may remain
blind to it - is that “Light” upon which the Neo Platonists of the Alexandrian
school, and after them the Rosecroix and especially the Alchemists, have
written volumes, though to the present day their true meaning is a dark mystery
to most men.
True, Count Tolstoy
is neither an Alexandrian nor a modern theosophist; still less is he a
Rosecroix or an Alchemist. But that which the latter have concealed under the
peculiar phraseology of the Fire-philosophers, purposely confusing cosmic
transmutations with Spiritual Alchemy, all that is transferred by the great
Russian thinker from the realm of the metaphysical unto the field of practical
life. That which Schelling would define as a realization of the identity of
subject and object in the man’s inner Ego, that which unites and blends the
latter with the universal Soul - which is but the identity of subject and
object on a higher plane, or the unknown Deity - all that Count Tolstoy has blended
together without quitting the terrestrial plane. He is one of those few elect
who begin with intuition and end with quasi-omniscience. It is the
transmutations of the baser metals - the animal mass - into gold and
silver, or the philosopher’s stone, the development and manifestation of man’s
higher SELF which the Count has achieved The alcahest of the inferior
Alchemist is the All-geist, the all-pervading Divine Spirit of the
higher Initiate; for Alchemy, was, and is, as very few know to this day, as much
a spiritual philosophy as it is a physical science. He who knows nought of one,
will never know much of the other. Aristotle told it in so many words to his
pupil, Alexander: “It is not a stone”, he said, of the philosopher’s stone. “It is in every man and in every place,
and at all seasons, and is called the end of all philosophers”, as the Vedanta
is the end of all philosophies.
To wind up this
essay on the Science of Life, a few words may be said of the eternal
riddle propounded to mortals by the Sphinx. To fail to solve the problem
contained in it, was to be doomed to sure death, as the Sphinx of life devoured
the unintuitional, who would live only in their “animal”. He who lives for
Self, and only for Self, will surely die, as the higher “I” tells the
lower “animal” in the Lecture. The riddle has seven keys to it, and the Count
opens the mystery with one of the highest. For, as the author of “Hermetic
Philosophy” beautifully expressed it:
“The real mystery
most familiar and, at the same time, most unfamiliar to every man, into
which he must be initiated or perish as an atheist, is himself. For him is
the elixir of life, to quaff which, before the discovery of the philosopher’s
stone, is to drink the beverage of death, while it confers on the adept and the
epopt, the true immortality. He may know truth as it really is - Aletheia,
the breath of God, or Life, the conscious mind in man.”
This is “the
Alcahest which dissolves all things,” and Count Tolstoy has well understood the
riddle.
H.P.B.
NOTES:
[1] (Note by HPB) Or Life-origination,
Life-fusion, Life-division, Life-renewal and Life-transmission. )
[2] (Note by HPB) “Mistaking” is an erroneous
term to use. The men of science know but too well that what they teach concerning
life is a materialistic fiction contradicted at every step by logic and fact.
In this particular question science is abused, and made to serve personal
hobbies and a determined policy of crushing in humanity every spiritual
aspiration and thought. “Pretending to mistake” would be more correct.
[3] “I have lived fifty-eight
years”. Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9 (new style), 1828. Therefore
he delivered this lecture in the second semester of 1886 or early 1887. (CCA)
[4] (Note by HPB) This is what the
Theosophists call “living the life” - in a nutshell.
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In September 2016, after
a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students
decided to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
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