Life as We Have
It Is Only The
Raw Material For
Life As It Can Be
S. Radhakrishnan


Mr. Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan
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Editorial Note:
First published in
1939, the following paragraphs by
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan [1] are very much in tune with the
teachings of “The Secret Doctrine”. They point to
universal
brotherhood as the
natural future of present mankind. They
suggest that
self-discipline and self-responsibility are part of
the way towards an
enlightened community life in this planet.
Born in September
1888, S. Radhakrishnan was the first
Vice-President and
second President of India after
independence. He
was also a respected thinker and scholar.
He wrote several
significant books on Indian philosophies, and
helped expand the
cultural bridge between Eastern and Western
views. Many a
theosophist knows that Radhakrishnan’s books
- among them “The Principal Upanishads”, “An idealist View of
Life” and “Indian Philosophy” (this in two vols.)
- have a number
of points in
common with the original theosophy of
Helena P.
Blavatsky. Besides
that, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan opposed
war and nuclear
weapons. He defended the end of social castes
and social classes
in India, and was a personal friend of Mr.
B. P. Wadia’s, one
of the main leaders of the United Lodge of
Theosophists. [2] Being a true statesman, S.
Radhakrishnan saw
that mankind is a
planetary community made possible by mutual help.
(Carlos Cardoso
Aveline)
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The fundamental
truths of a spiritual religion are that our real self is the supreme being,
which is our business to discover and consciously become, and this being is one
in all.
The soul that has found itself is not longer conscious
of itself in its isolation. It is conscious rather of the universal life of
which all individuals, races and nations are specific articulations.
A single impulsion runs beneath all the adventures and
aspirations of man. It is the soul’s experience of the essential unity with the
whole of beings that is brought out in the words, “Thou in me and I in thee”.
Fellowship is life, lack of fellowship death. The secret solidarity of the
human race we cannot escape from. It
cannot be abolished by the passing insanities of the world. Those who are
anxious to live in peace with their own species and all life will not find it
possible to gloat over the massacres of large numbers of men simply because
they do not belong to their race or country. Working for a wider, all-embracing
vision they cut across the artificial ways of living, which seduce us from the
natural springs of life.
Our normal attitudes to other races and nations are no
more than artificial masks, habits of thought and feeling, sedulously
cultivated by long practice in dissimulation. The social nature of man is
distorted into queer shapes by the poison poured into his blood which turns him
into a hunting animal. Racialism and nationalism, which require us to exercise
our baser passions, to bully and cheat, to kill and loot, all with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous and
doing God’s work, are abhorrent to the spiritually awakened. For them
all races and nations lie beneath the same arch of heaven. They proclaim a new
social relationship and serve a new society with civil liberties for all
individuals, and political freedom for all nations, great and small.
A High Purpose and Fine Resolve
The collapse of a civilization built on the audacities
of speculative doubt, moral impressionism, and the fierce and confused
enthusiasms of races and nations need not dishearten us, for it has in it
elements of an anti-social and anti-moral character, which deserve to perish.
It is directed to the good, not of mankind as a whole, but of a powerful
privileged few among individuals as well as nations. Whatever is valuable in it
will enter into the new world which is struggling to be born.
In spite of all appearance to the contrary, we discern
in the present unrest the gradual dawning of a great light, a converging
life-endeavour, a growing realization that there is a secret spirit in which we
are all one, and of which humanity is the highest vehicle on earth, and an
increasing desire to live out this knowledge and establish a kingdom of spirit
on earth. Science has produced the necessary means for easy transport of men
and communication of thought.
Intellectually the world is bound together in a web of common ideas and
reciprocal knowledge.
Even the obstacles of religious dogma are not so
formidable as they were in the past. The progress of thought and criticism is
helping the different religions to sound the note of the eternal, the universal, the one truth of spirit which life obeys, seeks for, and delights in at all
times and in all places. We are able to see a little more clearly that the
truth of a religion is not what is singular and private to it, is not the mere
letter of the law which its priests are apt to insist on, and its faithful to
fight for, but that part of it which it
is capable of sharing with all others. Humanity’s ultimate realization of
itself and of the world can be attained only by an ever-increasing liberation
of the values that are universal and human.
Mankind is still in the making. Human life as we have
it is only the raw material for human life as it might be. There is a hitherto
undreamt-of fullness, freedom, and happiness within reach of our species, if
only we can pull ourselves together and go forward with a high purpose and a
fine resolve.
What we require is not professions and programmes but
the power of spirit in the hearts of men, a power which will help us to
discipline our passions of greed and selfishness and organize the world which
is at one with us in desire.
NOTES:
[1] Reproduced from “Eastern Religions and Western
Thought”, by S. Radhakrishnan, first
edition, 1939, Oxford University Press,
Third impression by Oxford India paperback, 1989, 396 pp., see pp. 32-34.
[2] The friendship between the statesman and the theosophist
is recorded in Mr. Dallas TenBroeck’s text “B.P. Wadia, a Life of Service to Mankind”, which can be found at our
associated websites.
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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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