To Think By Ourselves Is Not
As Easy As It Seems
The Theosophical Movement
The Theosophical Movement
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From
the hour of birth to the dying day, we come under outside influence. It is
helpful to examine the factors that influence us and to see what aspect of our
nature is influenced.
Organized religions try to appeal to a certain portion of our nature and
to stir it into action. But, if we ask the priests, “What is the constitution
and character of that portion of my nature that you are appealing to?”, there
is seldom a convincing answer. Orthodox religion does not appeal to our reason,
for religion and reason do not go together.
Then there are the teachers of the youth, those who impart knowledge in
schools and universities. Science and modern learning make an appeal to a
certain portion of our nature, namely, our reason. But how much do the modern
scientists, philosophers, psychologists and men of learning know of that part
of our nature to which they appeal, and what its relation is to the whole man?
In the same way, what we read in newspapers and books, and what we see
or hear in popular entertainments or advertisements, influences us, but when we
probe further and ask to know something about that portion of our nature which
is influenced, we have no satisfactory answer.
These are the factors to which the majority of people look for
enlightenment. Anyone who knows how to arouse our passions, no matter of what
kind, can veritably lead us by the nose, whither he will. If a person knows the
secret of injecting into a certain portion of our nature an appetite that was
not there before, or of arousing one we were unaware of, he can lead us to a
religious heaven and equally to a religious hell.
We say that man is master of himself, yet he is swayed by others all the
time, for good or ill. A single individual in a position of power can, merely
by signing his name to a declaration of war, plunge a whole nation into combat.
A single word sometimes has a magical effect and makes people hurl themselves
in one or another direction. Take the word “God”. Anyone who chooses to use his
faculties can very quickly ascertain for himself that the God of orthodox
religions is an absurd fiction; yet, how many have hurled themselves into
action, sometimes even destructive action, at the magic of the word “God”! How
does this come about? The secret does not lie in the churches, or in any power
outside of us. The secret lies in the mysteries of our own being.
What the churches try to appeal to is the moral nature in man. In so far
as they can awaken and arouse the moral nature, a tremendous force has been
evoked. What is our moral nature? It is that in us which, perceiving that there
are things beneficial and things hurtful to ourselves and to others, aspires
always to do the beneficial things; perceiving that there are things noble and
things ignoble, that there are vessels of honour as well as of dishonour, seeks
to throw its force, its energy, its power of action, in the direction of the
noble and the honourable rather than the ignoble and dishonourable. Every great
accomplishment in the world has been made possible by an appeal to the moral
nature of men and women. Not only this, but also every maleficent and ruinous
thing in this world has always been produced by an appeal to the same moral
nature.
What is the explanation? It is worth looking into. How is it that in the
name of, say, Christ - a Being who himself embodied compassion absolute, who
was himself a living, walking, human testimony to universal fraternity - how
comes it that in his name millions of men and women have been brought to hurl
themselves at each other’s throats? It is because these people, their moral
nature once aroused, took, not the channel of Truth, but the channel suggested,
like hypnotized victims. No matter how otherwise intelligent or noble, once get
a person hypnotized and he will believe anything he is told, he will do
anything that is suggested to him.
What is the secret? These men disregard that portion of their nature
which is just as important and necessary as the moral nature, namely, their
reason. No one who accepts the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount can ever be
persuaded to lift his hand against another man if he uses his reason. He would
say, “I don’t care who or what it is that bids me persecute men, deny them
their liberty of conscience, their freedom of thought. Whoever tries to
persuade me to do that in Christ’s name is worse than Judas Iscariot; he
betrayed but one man, but he who makes the Christ appeal and incites men
against their fellow men is ten thousand Judases rolled into one.” And yet every day great masses of people are
betrayed by an appeal to their moral nature, and their mental and reasoning
faculty is lulled to sleep, so that when they persecute other men they are acting
as if that portion of their nature which is aroused is their whole nature.
Once the moral nature is fully aroused, reason at once becomes a slave
to the suggestion implanted; and, therefore reason will work to the utter
undoing of the moral nature. No more infernal doctrine has ever been preached
than the doctrine of vicarious atonement: a murdered man who has not yet
uttered the confession of faith goes to hell for all eternity, while the
murderer, if he but says that he believes in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for
the salvation of mankind, has his crime forgiven! Can one find a greater
invitation to cupidity, to hypocrisy, to any abomination one can conceive of - and
all this practised and preached in the name of the Most High! In Christianity
today, in spite of all the talk about a Christian renewal, there are millions
of men and women whose reasoning power, in so far as it relates to their moral
nature, is as much under the domination of a hypnotizing religion as is that of
a victim in the hypnotizer’s chair.
Turning to modern science, how is it possible that it should have the
hold that it has at present on the best minds of the race? Anything that goes
in the name of science has today the same hypnotizing effect as religion once
had. Science appeals to our reasoning faculty - at the expense of all the rest.
We do not see that the same consequences are entailed as when the priest
appeals to the moral nature. Using our reasoning faculty only, we come to the
point where the moral nature says: “What is the use? Why should I deny myself
anything I can get? Why should I make sacrifices for another? Let us eat, drink
and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Each one for himself and the devil take the
hindmost!” No one ever performed a kind act as a result of reasoning it out.
Every time we reason with our moral impulse, we do not act up to it.
So, our religions crucify the reasoning nature, our sciences crucify the
moral nature, and yet both natures are in us. The same result accrues to the
followers of modern science as to the followers of popular religion, and that
result is - irresponsibility. If one does not take into consideration the moral
aspect of things, then he is not a complete human being.
Take the example of vivisection. Vivisectionists believe that the end
justifies the means. They do with an animal what they would not for a moment
submit to themselves, and they say they are doing this for the sake of humanity
- and humanity swallows it! Is it any wonder that diseases multiply faster than
remedies? And when we chase the scourge of disease out of one organ of our
bodies, the same old scourge reappears in another organ and we give it another
name. The way vivisection is justified today is a fair sample of modern
scientific thinking.
Every government in the world is using the very ablest talent it can
enlist for preparing weapons of wholesale murder. Our enemy of today is our
friend of yesterday and will be our friend tomorrow. And so, when we find
ourselves in such a moral relation with another that we call him a friend, our
reason tells us to do what we can to help him; and when we are in antipodal
moral relation with him who till this moment was our friend but whom we now
call our enemy, our reason is enlisted to devise ways and means to do him injury.
Why do we do that? It is because we do not think; it is because we do not look
in the right place for an answer to our problems. If we study our nature with
care we shall know all about the laws of evolution. We shall know the
beginning, the middle and the end of all things. We shall know our past and the
past of this solar system. We shall know our future and the future of this
solar system, because it is all locked up in the being called Man.
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The
above article is reproduced from the June 2003 edition of the international magazine
“The Theosophical Movement”.
000
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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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