Wise People Concentrate Their
Minds on the Law and Their Duties
Theosophy Magazine
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A 2018 Editorial Note:
Written in the
late 1940s as the Cold War began,
this anonymous
article speaks to the 21st century.
It is reproduced
from “Theosophy” magazine, Los
Angeles, USA, December
1947 edition, pages 49-51.
(Carlos Cardoso
Aveline)
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In a world
ravaged by war and the fear of war, words of peace and brotherhood sound ever
more distantly in the ears of men. The shibboleths of wishful thinkers rattle
hollowly, and faint hearts are foremost at the council tables.
Who is there to affirm peace on earth, good will to
men? Who can outface the mockery of human hopes, withstand the loss of human
faith? Man asks, what is Brotherhood, that it can be so cruelly negated, and
where is Compassion, that it cannot be multiplied in time of need?
This period of trial and transition, a testing of men
and nations of men, is evidently one of the cyclic crises of human evolution.
Like an ultimate moment in the life of any being - an intense concentration of
karma - it manifests a philosophical need, and may bring into focus the vision
of the soul. Then, the being may read as in a flash the meaning of events, the
lesson of the law.
No moment of choice in human evolution has passed
without a witness on the scene to point the way to those in whom the travail
has awakened the will to know: the philosophy if Theosophy is present, in this
age of transition, by design of great teachers. Their function, and the purpose
of the knowledge they present and represent, is to draw the developing
intelligence of mankind to “consider the great truths concerning the destiny of
the soul”.
The teachers of Theosophy do not offer a patent
nostrum [1] for the wasting disease
that seems to have afflicted human ideals, hopes and aspirations. The fact that
peace or harmony must be in the seeker, before it can be found in external
relations, cuts away the ground beneath all who would legislate men into
universal brotherhood.
Vicarious atonement has a perennial appeal for human
nature, but no way has yet been discovered which will enable a man to secure
the protection and benefit of the moral law, without invoking its processes
upon his own head. Were it otherwise, peace could be - and would have been,
down the ages - obtained by strife; brotherhood by conniving; and good will by
propaganda, dogma, and force.
The proposition is succinctly put in the “Notes on the
Bhagavad-Gita”:
“Can a man go
against the general will of nature and escape destruction, and also be able to
desire wickedly with knowledge, and accomplish, through will, what he wishes?”
“Such a man can do all of these - except to escape destruction. That is
sure to come, no matter at how remote a period.”
“He acquires extraordinary knowledge, enabling him to use powers for
selfish purposes during immense periods of time, but at last the insidious
effects of the opposition to the general true will makes itself felt and he is
destroyed forever. This fact is the origin of the destruction-of-the-worlds myths.....”. [2]
It is reported of Jesus that he wished peace on earth to men of good will, nor would this have
been a vague blessing. Whatever his exact words, the “gentle Galilean Adept”
was not alone among great teachers in limiting peace to those who know it in
themselves, who keep it by natural right or karmic fitness.
Jesus came to bring not peace, but a sword - the sword of spiritual knowledge, the
law of spiritual action. [3] But men
set him apart as a god, and replaced his philosophy with a vague mysticism
which permitted “false pietists of bewildered soul” to retire from the world of
action and strive for purity through inaction.
Human weakness protected itself by counsels of
imperfection, and men, protesting that God’s law could not be theirs, made a
“success” of believing in their inability to practice spiritual action. Jesus
was mummified in the winding tape of ecclesiastical dogma and ritual, with his
example laid away beside him.
In the nineteen century the philosophy of Theosophy
was not presented by an ostentatious “Savior”. From the standpoint of
appearances, nothing could be more unlike a spiritual teacher than the person
of H. P. Blavatsky, and whereas the accepted tradition about Jesus portrays him
with a gentleness and a meekness unfathomable by human thought, Helena
Blavatsky attempted no concealment of the warrior soul, and the most
intuitional of her colleagues had deep knowledge of the “lion heart”.
The fact of divine beings was not a dogma or article
of faith, but was shown to be inseparable from the principle of evolution,
natural, human and spiritual. The theosophical adepts and Masters of Wisdom are
lawful products of evolution, perfected in knowledge of this period of
evolution: “The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits of no
privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through
personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and
reincarnations.” [4]
The theosophical adepts are presented as knowers and
agents of natural law, rather than passive perfections. Pre-eminently active
beings, they are denominated in the Bhagavad-Gita
as “fortune’s favored soldiers”, engaged in the glorious unsought fight.
Spiritual warfare employs only creative, never
destructive, energies, if we are to judge by the Commentary quoted in the
“Secret Doctrine” (vol. II, p. 427), wherein is described the “destruction of
the wicked” on Atlantis.
The doom of Atlantis, carried out by natural forces,
illustrates how far removed are spiritual beings (“men of the good law”) from
the dreadful malignity of Jehovistic retribution; there is no place in occult
law for personal crusades by self-righteous “Angels”. Work “against” evil is
unphilosophical because the laws of mental action and concentration determine
that it shall inevitably be work with
evil. The psychological effect of destructive activity cannot be other than
destructive on the man’s own nature.
A man of good will has “only one single object, and
this of a steady, constant nature”. Concentrating upon the law and the duties
it presents to his understanding, he is content with his karmic opportunities.
He works as those work who are ambitious, and achieves a higher happiness than
that sought for by those who live for happiness. Since he neither campaigns for
converts, nor attacks with righteous indignation those who do not follow the
same law, his service spreads itself without diminution, and the pure in heart
declare that he benefits the whole of mankind.
NOTES:
[1] Nostrum: an ineffective medicine prepared by an
unqualified person. (CCA)
[2] “Notes on the
Bhagavad-Gita”, Theosophy Co., 1986, Los Angeles, 237 pages, see pp. 37-38.
(CCA)
[4] From “The Secret Doctrine”,
H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, Volume I, p. 17. (CCA)
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The above article
was published in our associated websites on 16 September, 2018.
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