Belief
Is the Yardstick By Which
We
Measure the Importance of Events
John Garrigues
John Garrigues
Unless Theosophy has something definite to offer to the man in the street
it may as well disappear from the field of human interest. If its mission is only to coteries of
learning or curiosity it is unworthy the devotion of those who promulgate and
defend it. If it is inadequate to any
need of humanity, if it retires baffled before any problem of fate and fortune,
if it fails to make life better worth
living and death better worth dying, its advocates may admit that they have
misdirected their energies and dedicated their lives amiss.
But it is to the man in the street that
Theosophy makes its chief appeal. It is
to the masses of humanity - not to the few nor the elect - that its chief gifts
are offered. It invites to its study all
who would see an orderly law of life in the place of chaotic chance, all who
would recognize the operations of an absolute justice dominant over human
affairs, all who would enter consciously into an individual existence whose
immensities are not limited by death or change.
In protesting against the binding power of
creeds we must not overlook the effect of belief upon action and upon
character. Every deed of our lives is
governed by our conceptions of self interest, although those conceptions may be
as lofty as they are often debased. The
toiler among the poor is actuated by an exalted sense of self-interest that
demands service and compassion. The burglar believes that he will benefit by
his theft. Cruelty, greed, and passion
all are honest in so far as they are interpretations, or rather
misinterpretations, of self-interest.
According to our readings of life, of time, and of divine law, so will
be our actions. Belief governs
conduct. It is the yardstick by which we
measure the import of events and their value to ourselves. An hour of sunshine
is the life of a gnat, a cloud is its tragedy, a drop of rain its
extinction. A span of minutes is its
standard of values.
It would seem then that religion, which is
only another name for philosophy, is actually a standard of values. A religious belief is a yardstick by which we
measure the import of events. If we
conceive of human life as bounded by birth and by death, with nothingness
before and annihilation after, it is obvious that all the events of that life
will seem large in inverse proportion to the brevity of the period. A child cries for a broken toy because its conception
of life is so narrow as to make the tiny mishap seem a tragedy. Its standard of values is inadequate. Enlarge our time conceptions of life and we
dwarf the relative magnitudes of its events and completely change our angle of
vision.
In the same way a religious or philosophic
conception may change our entire estimate of self-interest. If we accept the idea of a perpetual and
conscious individual life, we must at once rearrange our computations of
value. If we believe that the perpetual
and conscious individual life is governed by a precise law of cause and effect
we shall be tranquil under the disabilities that we shall know to be
self-created, and we shall be hopeful of a future in which there will be fewer
seeds of ill to fructify.
If we recognize the unity of the life that
sweeps through the universe we shall be careful to injure none of its
manifestations, and we shall recognize that fraternity is not merely a
sentiment but a compelling law that cannot be thwarted. And if we perceive the dominance of an
unchanging and resistless law that moves inexorably towards its goal we shall
have learned to cast out fear from our hearts.
All these things are practical achievements. There is no one whom they do not
concern. They come within the scope of
the average human intellect. And they
give to life a confidence, a strength, and a tranquility that can come from no
other source.
Therefore it is evident that every man has
some kind of a philosophy of life, even though it be unformulated, even though
he be unaware of its existence. Every
man without exception is trying to be happy, and his life is governed by some
policy that he believes will conduce to his happiness. Every man has some time standard, usually the
duration of his own life, or even the duration of his youth, by which he
measures the importance of the things that happen to him.
Theosophy thus makes a double appeal to
the average man. It tries to show him how he may acquire a true and a permanent
happiness. And it tries to furnish him with a new time standard so that he may
revise the relative values of his daily experiences. But Theosophy seeks to achieve its end, not
by the imposition of dogmas nor by the weight of spiritual authority. It asks only for a courageous facing of known
facts and for the inferences logically to be drawn from those facts. In other words, it appeals only to universal
knowledge and to the reasoning faculty.
Let us then take the two groups of facts
most apparent to us, that is to say the facts of consciousness and the facts of
experience. It is obvious that
consciousness and character are being continually changed by events of
experience. Every event that befalls us
adds somewhat to the knowledge that governs our future actions. In other words
it changes our character, however slightly. And every such change increases our
happiness, or detracts from it. So true
is this that every man has made for himself a certain classification of the
things that he must not do because they bring unhappiness, and of the things
that he ought to do because they bring happiness. He may be wholly wrong in his
judgment, he may have based it upon ignorance, but at least he has attempted to
reach a judgment, and to discriminate between the things that are good for him
and the things that are had for him.
And every experience whether good or evil
has changed his character. It is then
evident that nature is trying to teach him something, that inasmuch as his
character is being constantly changed by experience there must be somewhere in
the great mind of nature a destination, a plan, an intention. If we see the foundations and the framework
of an unfinished house we know them for exactly what they are, and we may even
foresee the ultimate form and appearance of the house when the builder shall
have finished his work. We know that
somewhere there is an architect’s plan, a blue print, that there is purpose and
design behind every hammer stroke, that there is no detail too insignificant to
find its place. The acorn bursting in
the ground is the prediction of the oak tree.
Wherever there is motion or change there
also there must be intention, a destination, and an architect’s plan. Theosophy asks the average man to look at the
changes in his own character, at the praise and blame of conscience which bring
happiness and unhappiness, and so to ask himself what is the intention of
evolutionary nature toward him, what is it that nature would have him be. In
other words, what is the architect’s plan of this unfinished human house.
Surely there can be no other question so practical as this.
And as soon as we recognize that there is
a plan, that we ourselves are uncompleted structures, we see at once that the
limits of one earth life are pitifully inadequate for its completion. And it is a plan that can be completed
nowhere else but on earth, since it concerns itself mainly with our bearing
toward our fellow men. We have been born with certain characters, that is to
say with certain tendencies in our bearing toward others. As we live through
our lives these characters have been gradually changing by experience. Since experience is thus obviously the only
factor in a change of character it is evident that the character with which we
are born must have been fashioned at some time by experiences of the same
nature as those that are now changing it.
And since it is equally evident that our characters are still unfinished
structures, far short of nature’s design, the process of experiencing must be
continued, and continued under like conditions to the present, that is to say,
by human contact under earth conditions.
And so we reach what may be called the central Theosophic tenet, that
all evolution has a destination, and that it proceeds toward that destination
through a process of reembodiment or
reincarnation in which the law of ethical cause and effect holds sway:
“Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” And in this there is no
dogma, no authority, no supernatural revelation. It is simply an irresistible deduction from
obvious facts.
Now it would be possible to argue at great
length in support of the contentions (1)
that there is one, Universal Life sweeping through all the kingdoms of nature
and that we ourselves are expressions of that One Life and separated from one
another only by the illusions of the selfish personality. (2)
That the method of evolution is through constant re-embodiments or
reincarnations which are knit together by the law of cause and effect, such law
assuming an ethical aspect in human evolution and producing such circumstances
in each earth life as have been earned by the thoughts and acts of the lives
that preceded it. (3) That all
evolutionary movements are regulated by a precise and cyclic law, and that
nowhere in the universe or in human life can there be such a thing as chance or
a permanent injustice. It would be easy
to show that these great postulates have been the basis of every religion that
the world has ever known and that they are commended alike by reason and by
experience. But the present object is
not to argue about these things but merely to state them, to leave them for
consideration, and to suggest the effect that they must have upon the lives of
those who accept them as truths.
The effect must be an immense and a
radical one. In the first place they
will change all our conceptions of time and therefore of the relative values of
the events that move in time. Instead of
imagining ourselves as coming at birth from an impenetrable darkness, with
darkness for our destination, we shall now see ourselves as being’s that have
lived forever, and who will live forever, and in whom consciousness can never
be extinguished even for a moment.
The memory of the brain may fail to bridge
the abysses of time, but somewhere within the depths of our being, or rather
upon its heights, we shall recognize the existence of a soul in which all
memories of the past are stored, all knowledge and all power, and that nothing
hides us from that radiance except the self-imposed limitations of personality
and the love of self. In the presence of
such a realization what room can there be for the paltry ambitions, greeds,
fears, and griefs that now fill our tortured lives? Against that stupendous background of time
all these things sink into insignificance and to their true values. They seemed large only when we viewed them
against a background of a few score years, only when we measured them by the
false standards of a few score years.
Look at them now against the background of a conscious eternity and
forever they lose their power to wound.
At last we learn the true value of events, and we are lifted by that new
wisdom beyond the reach of personal sorrow.
We are no longer as children who cry over broken toys.
But the Theosophic philosophy will do more
than this. The light of law will lift us
forever beyond the reach of fear, because we shall know that a cruel or
indifferent chance has no part nor lot in our fortunes, that we are masters of
our fate and the captain of our soul.
And how pitifully, how abjectly, we now
cringe before our fears. We are afraid of poverty, afraid of death, afraid of
disease. We imagine ourselves as
fortified citadels besieged by a pitiless and hostile nature. Terrors lie in wait for us in the dark places
of life, and every corner has a foe. A
perpetual paralysis of fear destroys our strength and hides the sunlight by its
baleful shadows.
And how needless it all is! With what new confidence we move forward in
the light of a law that is merciful because it is just, that declares its
presence in the least of the events of our lives, that holds the universe in
its grasp for the sake of the human soul, that inflicts pleasure and pain for
no other purpose than to point out the only road that leads to happiness. This
is no philosophy for the elect. It demands
no large learning for its comprehension.
It owes nothing to authority or to revelation. Its appeal is to every human being whose eyes
are open to the facts of his own life, who can take but one step from the seen
to the unseen.
Are we apprehensive that the adoption of a
spiritual philosophy will militate against what we call our “success in
life?” It would indeed be strange if
ignorance were more profitable than knowledge, if weakness were a larger
advantage than strength. The greatest of
all success in life is reserved for those who know what life is, its origin,
purpose, laws and destiny. Strength in our life work comes to those who ally
themselves with nature, not to those who resist her: to those who keep her
laws, not to those who violate them.
000
The above article was first published at “Theosophy” magazine, Los
Angeles, in its March 1913 edition, pp. 169-173. It had no indication as to its
author. The text was twice reproduced at “The Aquarian Theosophist”: in its
ULT-Birthday Special Issue of February
2006, and in the edition of May 2013.
000
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.
000
