The Roots of All Lower Feelings Deserve to Be
Under Careful Observation, Seven Days a Week
Anger is not a beautiful thing to see. Yet one should avoid its contagion effect: it is not wise to become too indignant before it.
If you get excessively rancorous at angry people, it might mean that you are envious of them, and would like to be as spontaneous as they are in their natural ignorance and childish inclination to destroy. If we prefer not to abandon our balanced state of mind, the correct thing to do is to remember that anger is a form of psychic and spiritual disease and paves the way to physical ailments.
Individually, persistent anger reduces or destroys the contact with one’s own spiritual soul. A large-scale collective hatred helps provoke social crisis, civil war and wars among nations.
Certainly, as H.P. Blavatsky writes, repressing anger is often the ultimate accomplishment in hypocrisy. And hypocrisy feeds anger.
“No ‘Cultured’ man or woman will ever show anger in Society”, says HPB. “To check and restrain every sign of annoyance shows good manners, certainly, but also considerable achievement in hypocrisy and dissimulation. There is an occult side to this rule of good breeding expressed in an Eastern proverb: ‘Trust not the face which never shows signs of anger, nor the dog that never barks’. Cold-blooded animals are the most venomous.” [1]
The twin attitudes of constant ill-will and falsehood towards others are the children of spiritual ignorance and lack of discernment, and often feed one another. An occasional expression of moderate anger or similar feelings like arrogance and ambition is better than a sort of neurotic repression that will make these feelings become deeper and harder to observe, leading them to be disguised and protected by cunning and malice.
It is a rule with esoteric philosophy - as H.P. Blavatsky says in “Isis Unveiled” - not to hide too much one’s mistakes; and not to make propaganda of one’s supposed accomplishments along the road to wisdom. One should avoid the mask of false perfection used by those who have a Ph. D. in hypocrisy. These are the “whited sepulchres” on whom Jesus delivered one of his most fiery - if not angry - sermons in the New Testament.
Moderate irritation plays therefore a positive role in life.
As an expression of frustration, anger may be the agent of self-respect, after a long period of profound suffering. It may defend truth, when it has been attacked by the enemies of sincerity. Irritation usually gives way to more constructive and positive emotions, especially if it is observed with respect, rather than blindly condemned or repressed.
Theosophically, the Causes of anger are more important than its Symptoms.
In the writings of Helena Blavatsky and in the Mahatma Letters one learns that Initiates are not smiling-machines distributing unmerited benedictions to all. Anger is linked to rejection, just as the love felt by lower selves is linked to attachment. Both feelings have the nature of desire.
Attachments and rejections are forms of suffering. And sadists and masochists alike have a sickly pleasure in pain.
The roots of all lower feelings deserve to be under careful observation, seven days a week. They feed the sense of Ahamkara or personal self. Wisdom comes from perceiving the symmetry and the equilibrium between blind attraction and that kind of rejection which can see nothing.
Crosbie, on Being Charitable
There is sometimes the temptation to get furious at other people’s mistakes, after considering oneself as morally far superior to them. This usually occurs while ignoring one’s own mistakes, or at least superficially convincing oneself that they are irrelevant.
Robert Crosbie wrote:
“At a late meeting the question of being charitable to the weaknesses of others came up for discussion, and brought out quite a lengthy talk on why that attitude is absolutely necessary, from the standpoint of the spiritual Ego, for right development in the mind of spiritual perception and knowledge. It was pointed out that all the errors of any life result in reality from a diseased - if not insane, at least, un-sane mentality. An imperfection is an imperfection - the difference in kind not being anything that anyone should pride himself upon.”
“Our duty is not to rid our neighbors of their imperfections, but ourselves of our own. The pride that results from fancied virtue was spoken of; judgment in anger - that the anger passes but the judgment remains as a bias in the mind, and a hindrance to the one judged; the danger of thus standing in the way of another, to say nothing of the reactionary effect on ourselves. The talk came up because of the tendency of minds in general to pride themselves upon not having the defects that others have, while at the same time they may exhibit defects, which, while not so obvious - as generally classed by the world - are yet worse, because of being deeper seated and harder to eradicate, as well as being more widely injurious.” [2]
Crosbie is right as usual.
And being charitable with mistakes, including our own, does not mean we accept them as they are. However, the right way to counteract mistakes - mainly ours own, and secondarily those belonging to others - is to promote the correct actions which are opposite to the failures, as suggested in the Aphorisms of Yoga of Patanjali.
Mistakes can only be corrected in the presence of both the will and the ability to humbly see them, in the first place, and then promote an entirely different kind of action, which can heal the corresponding wound of the soul. A solid feeling of goodwill is necessary, together with self-esteem and confidence in Life and in the One Law.
Boris de Zirkoff wrote:
“We should also remember that what we see in others is quite often what others see in us. We are mirrors to each other. Though differing outwardly, we all partake of the same fundamental consciousness - the consciousness of the One Universal Self. Viewed in this light, men are but life-atoms of a vast evolutionary current that flows from age to age.” [3]
Anger is a dangerous form of wasting vital energies. The habit of irritation destroys one’s astral life, thus reducing physical vitality. Anger is a serious obstacle in martial arts. It has the same substance of fear.
No danger can be lucidly confronted if one is blinded by irritation, fear or hope. A warrior can only be effective if he is free from such personal emotions. Wise warriors are guided by their sense of inner peace and their love for right action.
The possibility of anger must be observed therefore from a deep, wide, and long-term perspective, so as to avoid its Cause, which is generally spiritual ignorance in one form or another.
NOTES:
[2] “The Friendly Philosopher”, Robert Crosbie, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, 1945, 415 pp., “The Spirit in the Body”, letter twenty-nine, pp. 86-87.
[3] From the article “The Life of Boris de Zirkoff”.
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The article “The Danger of Anger in Theosophy” was published on the websites of the Independent Lodge of Theosophists on 22 August 2025.
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Helena Blavatsky (photo) wrote these words: “Deserve, then desire”.
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