Falsity is a Theft From Truth, and the Man
Who Lives by Theft in Time Disbelieves All Honesty
John Garrigues
To consciously spread falsehoods is not a nice
thing to do
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Editorial Note:
The following text was first published at
“Theosophy”
magazine, Los Angeles, May 1947
edition, pp. 301-306, from which it is reproduced.
Its publication marked the third anniversary of
Garrigues’ death in May 1944, but it had no indication
as to the name of the author. An analysis of its style
and contents indicates it was penned by him. [1]
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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“Over the gateway
of Century I of our
era, the ominous
words ‘the KARMA OF
ISRAEL’, fatally
glowed. Over the portals
of our own, the future
seer may discern other
words, that will
point to the Karma for cunningly
made-up HISTORY,
for events purposely
perverted, and for
great characters slandered
by posterity,
mangled out of recognition ….”
(The Secret
Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky, 1888, p. xli.)
In the long struggle of Man against his own salvation,
the Spirit has but one weapon - Truth.
The animal in man has a thousand, adapted in turn to the varying modes
of the times. In one, it is the horror of excommunication and the fear of hell;
in another, the sword; or the rack or faggot. Our age is ill-adapted to the use
of fire and sword against philosophy; ridicule, slander, calumny, the keener
horrors of moral persecution, are better fitted.
Theosophists have more cause than most men to study this weaponry. This
issue is supreme; never in any age has so much depended on so few. It is not
easily that materialistic vested interests, whose very existence depends upon
the retardation of the true course of evolution, will surrender Man to the
Light of his own spirit. Many times in the past have we seen the recrudescent
struggle on the plane of glaring slander and fabricated scandal. The enemy cannot attack the philosophy of Theosophy as
such, since to do so would be to describe it and thus to propagate it. But
to single out striking personalities, ascribing to them lurid sins, or common
vices brought to depths all too easily understood by the mind of the age: this
is easy. No effort is required to understand that. The strategy is obvious; and it is excellent, if, for
instance, a reactionary religious organization wishes to render less effective
the influence of Theosophical ideas.
Clearly, few men can read hundreds of pages of calumny against H. P.
Blavatsky, and at the same time study her works with philosophic calm; yet the
study of those works is the only final authority that a man may find as to the
truth of her life. The object of calumny would appear to be to prevent investigation
of Theosophy; or, failing in this, to see that the victim approaches Theosophy
with an incurable prejudice implanted in his mind. The test of Theosophy is not
in the character of H.P.B.: the test of her character is in Theosophy. But no
pre-poisoned mind can easily understand the latter. What kind of woman wrote
the works of H.P.B.? How can a man understand that if he cannot understand the
works?
Yet Theosophy today suffers less from such obviously motivated attacks
than from irresponsible sensation - and gossip-seeking. By this peculiar means,
old vilifications, once planned as
strategy, can be made much more creditable by the apparent
disinterestedness of the tabloid-tending story-teller. That vicious tales are
eagerly sought by publishers and public but signifies the gradually extending
base upon which the “karma of calumny” will, in return cycle, render all truths obscure.
What is the karma of calumny? That is a mighty question. Not the karma,
personally considered, of Theosophists; unless by feebleness of their own
knowledge their roots are loose in the truth and their limbs weak to quiver in
such foul winds; or unless they have, despite the warnings not to look for
results, pinned their hopes on the saving of this generation of man - a saving which we have long been warned is
of doubtful accomplishment. It is the karma of the race. Men cannot fall
victims to self-exposing calumnies if their minds are clean, and eager only for
truth. Rather, their very sense of justice, if active at all, is but aroused to
seek for the full tale of the other side. In no case can harm through calumny
come to any man who has not already so harmed himself.
But indeed it is an evil age when calumny can be written, published, and
read at all as “literature”, except in stern skepticism and comparison. The
evil sweeps far and lies deep. The Secret
Doctrine statement on the karma of perverting “history” is a grim
indication that the gigantic ill of these times - even the possible on-sweeping
doom of the whole “cultural” complex - is rooted in lie and libel. The popular
lust for derogation is of a kind with the sadism that so eagerly devours the
daily tale of accident and murder, and gloats upon the battered ruin of the
prize-fighter’s face.
Both lies and libels are expressed fears - the first, fear of abstract truth; the second, fear
(issuing in dislike and resentment) of another’s moral superiority, that is, of
truth embodied in human character.
The karma of fear, in this case, takes the form of a preference for distortion. One who distorts truth in his own mind
is corrupting himself, not truth: it is only a question of time before he
creates an inner demon that rejoices at every opportunity to promote damage to
another’s physical person (sadism); or to destroy, in some measure, his psychic
adjustment with society (slander).
Distortion of truth in individual relationships is the root from which
grows the familiar forest of expedient political policy - the lies of state.
This renders more comprehensible the sequence of events depending upon
Bismarck’s falsification of the Ems telegram, which led to the war of 1870,
which led to the war of 1914, which led to the war of 1939, which may lead …
where? It was not altogether that single deed: the whole story is one of a widening,
growing stream of falsehood converging from the dark canyons of nationalism.
But let us first - with some little aid from modern psychiatry - explore
the smaller crevices of our own souls, and test the fluids rising from their
depths; for do not these flow into and compose the greater torrent of the race
mind?
Calumny will be seen to exist in several degrees of guilt, like the
physical slaying of which it is the moral counterpart. Let us understand this,
lest, in our turn, we calumniate the calumniator. Least culpable is the
“pathological liar” to whom truth and the random fancies of his own mind are
truly indistinguishable - the condition of the imaginative child who has never
grown up. Such persons all unwittingly become at times lusty slanderers, but
their “defect of nature” corresponds to the insanity which rescues the murdered
from the gallows. They are irresponsible, because unconscious, mediums: the
astral light, ever pressing upon their susceptible minds, causes images of sin
and crime to rise effortlessly in colorful presentations. Receptive also in the
extreme, these vivid imaginations set off in hue and cry after every
suggestion, elaborating ad infinitum
and often with the greatest verisimilitude.
Have we ever listened in a lawyer’s office to highly detailed, earnestly
presented particulars, alleged to be eyewitnessed, of infamies charged against
some unhappy defendant; deeds which could not possibly have occurred under the
circumstances? Did we notice that the “witness” believed all of it; and
believing it, would have been a most convincing witness to an uninformed jury,
if his true nature had not been quickly recognized by the lawyer for the
defendant.
The pathological liar is one kind of “psychic”; exemplar of the karma of
a false “yoga” that has in some previous life destroyed the power of
delineation between planes of perception, between images of reality, and
self-imaginings. The ultimate responsibility of the soul of such a one is deep,
and terrible; of the present personality, little or none. The trail of the
pathological liar, once the traits of the type are known, is clearly
discernible throughout the history of the Theosophical Movement; all the way
from fervent belief in imaginary visits of “Masters” and romantic past incarnations,
to the vilest of slanders. And in that wide field of credulous hearers and
irresponsible gossips, no cautious judges or experienced lawyers stand on guard
to protect the innocent victim!
Next in ascent of guilt, come - ourselves. Ourselves, the purveyor of
the casual quip, the “wise crack”, of petty gossip; we, the sewing circle
assassin; the bridge table terrorist.
The sources of the satisfactions arising from malicious gossip are being
well enough established by modern psychiatry; they were well known to
theosophists long before, even though in one school the responsible force is
called the “karma” and in the other the “id”. The random calumniator can be
absolved from the karma of the more magnificent forms of character slaughter in
that he has no real animus against his victims; one will do as well as another
to satisfy his hunger for self-esteem. The “inferiority complex” must relieve
itself by achievement - achievement in nihilism in the case of a Hitler - or by
pulling down the rest of the world to the same inferior level.
Next in line of ascending guilt we may logically place the fanatic -
religious or otherwise - to whom the cause of the enemy is the cause of the
Devil; an adversary against whom only hell-fire may prevail, any means of
victory being thus justified. Nothing is too brutal to be believed and said
against a religious opponent - as theosophists well know; nor does the
situation differ in politics, albeit the slings and arrows of the lie are there
directed as a rule against hides well-armored with old scar tissue.
The cause of Theosophy - or say rather the cause of those who might have
benefitted by it but were turned away - has suffered most from the righteous
slanderer; in which history it stands side by side with many a great man of the
past - Paine, for instance.
Finally, a special place must be reserved for the slanderer for a
profit; the professional writer who, rising from one butchered reputation,
calmly casts about for another, plump for slaughter and weakly defended - especially
defenseless if the owner thereof is long dead.
H.P. Blavatsky herself said it long ago, with more dignity than we
command, in casting her gauntlet to the cynical world and rendering thereto the
salutation of her doomed repute:
“The mercenaries and parasites of the Press, who
prostitute its more than royal power, and dishonor a noble profession, will
find it easy to mock at things too wonderful for them to understand; for to
them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity. From many
will come honest criticism; from many - cant. But we look to the future.”
“The contest now going on between the party of public
conscience and the party of reaction, has already developed a healthier tone of
thought. It will hardly fail to result ultimately in the overthrow of error and
the triumph of Truth. We repeat again - we are laboring for the brighter
morrow.”
“And yet, when we consider the bitter opposition that
we are called upon to face, who is better entitled than we upon entering the
arena to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator to Caesar: MORITURUS
TE SALUTAT!” (New York, September, 1877. Isis Unveiled, vol. I, p. viii.)
Since her day, and following H.P.B.’s own injunction, much has been
written in the attempt to unravel the tangled ways into which the bewildered
will of man throws the simple but irresistible power of Karmic Law. A neglected
phase - for quantitative data are lacking - is the mathematical relation
between a little and ignoble motive and the gigantic misdeed that may be its
cumulative result. That thousands standing at the impalpable apex of their
final choice for good or evil, may be lured into the abyss by a clever
collection of vulgar misrepresentations, assembled in order that a writer may
replenish a purse; that a civilization hanging over the abyss may have its last
life-line cut by facile scissors clipping scandal - what words in reality could
command a description of the future of such a one? He who has truly experienced
in full the retributive weight by which the Law purges a deep sin, knows that
the truth will be avenged - but alas, knows also the ghastly emptiness of
vengeance.
It can be shown that calumny can and does lead to every kind of
individual human misery and disaster as it grows through the peoples and
through the years; that it can destroy the repute of nations as of individuals,
setting man against man unto the ultimate of mass murder; that it can smother
and could all knowledge that may save, and in the end blast civilizations out
of existence. And why not? For it is the direct expression, the active aspect
of the Great Illusion - the Maya of matter; its blinding obfuscations Mara’s
very veil. Involving every disaster, it must involve every penalty. As the
great island is built by the multitudinous efforts of the coral insect, so the
great disasters of religious and national ignorances and hatreds are builded by
the indefatigable efforts of those of us who yield day by day to the petty
temptation of the malicious thought, the slurring word.
This cheap chatter in which all indulge upon occasion, is most subtle in
its erosion of character. The habit tends to grow; if allowed to mature, in
time our friends sense that in us which is to be distrusted. The inner life of
achievement and right intent can be replaced by degrees with mere derogation
and contempt of others, as the fibre of the good wood is replaced unseen by the
dry-rot fungus. In the course of time we may find ourselves among those who
even find livelihood by skill in scandal, parasitic upon the spiritual
life-blood of the race.
Falsity is a theft from truth. The man who lives by theft in time
disbelieves all honesty; with loss of discrimination comes inability to tell
friend from foe; hence with loss of discrimination, loss of all.
So with the thief of truth: the shell built between himself and the
Spirit - which is embodied Truth of itself - grows impenetrable. The seeds sown
- of bewilderment and darkness, sin and sorrow, of errancy and delayed
evolution - ripen and are reaped. In the end, the deserted self cries in
anguish for aid, for light; and from all the Universe comes no pitying echo,
nor any faintest gleam of dawn.
Upon that dread excursion from the path stray all our feet from time to time. When our Cause is wounded by the lying
tongue, let us, then, look to ourselves.
“… Great characters [are] slandered by posterity, mangled out of
recognition, between the two cars of Jagannatha - Bigotry and Materialism; one
accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden
mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of things.”
NOTE:
[1] The ten main criteria by which the texts of this
author are identifiable can be found in the article “Life and Writings of John Garrigues”, which is available 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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