And so there arose what is called Pantheism. God is All and

THEOSOPHY AND LIFE'S

DEEPER PROBLEMS

_Copyright Registered_

All Rights Reserved

_Permission for translations will be given_

BY

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

Adyar, Madras, India

THEOSOPHY AND LIFE'S

DEEPER PROBLEMS

_Being the four Convention Lectures delivered in Bombay

at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical

Society, December, 1915._

BY

ANNIE BESANT

_President of the Theosophical Society_

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA

T.P.S., LONDON; T.P.H., BENARES;

INDIAN BOOK DEPOT, BOMBAY

1916

FOREWORD

The lectures really need no Foreword. They are frankly propagandist,

being delivered in the City of Bombay, on the occasion of the return

to that city for the first time since the Anniversary held in Framji

Cowasji Hall, on December 7th, 1882, with 15 delegates present. The

little seed there planted in India by our Founders has grown into a

mighty tree. May it continue to spread ever more widely its branches,

and may its leaves be for the healing of the Nations.

ANNIE BESANT

CONTENTS

PAGE

Lecture I GOD 1

Lecture II MAN 25

Lecture III RIGHT AND WRONG 47

Lecture IV BROTHERHOOD 73

THEOSOPHICAL CONVENTION

LECTURES

GOD

FRIENDS:

Amid the excitements of the present National Week, amid all the

Conferences on matters of importance to the Nation, amid the

discussions--industrial, commercial, political--which are agitating

this great City, and will agitate it during the next week, we, of the

Theosophical Society, have ventured to invite you here to consider

not the passing concerns of the moment but the perpetual concerns of

the life dealing with the eternal interests, the life wherein alone

permanence can ever be found.

I have chosen for the subject of our Convention Lectures, those

great problems of thought which ever challenge the attention of the

highest mind of man. That question of questions of the nature, of our

conception, of God; the nature of man, his relation to the Universe

in which he finds himself--the evolution of an intelligent spiritual

Being amid the transitory phenomena of passing worlds; then that

profound question of conduct, what is Right and what is Wrong? is

it possible to find a standard of ethics? is it possible to find a

canon of conduct which will guide us in that tangled path of action

which is one of the hardest problems of human life? Then, lastly, the

meaning of Brotherhood, on what it is based, in what it consists, what

duties it imposes upon us, what is to be our attitude to our brethren

on every side. These questions, that on these four mornings we are to

consider, are not questions of the passing time, but are the problems

that confront humanity at all the stages of its evolution. Not only

is that so, but in this alone can we find peace, amid the turmoil of

the world; not in the constant struggles of outer life may peace be

found, but in the heart of peace which abides in the ETERNAL, that can

remain peaceful in the midst of storms, amid friends, amid enemies,

amid neutrals; only in the Peace of the ETERNAL may the human Spirit

find abiding rest. When that centre is found, when that knowledge of

God which is eternal life has been realised by man, then, and then

alone, can action be wisely taken, not swayed by passion, not moved by

prejudices, having nothing to gain which the outer world can give and

nothing to lose which that world can take away; asking for nothing,

desiring nothing, save to be an instrument of the Will that works for

Righteousness, seeing in the world around us the field of action where

God is working, and where we can be co-workers with God. There, and

there alone, can you work above the guṇas, using them for the Divine

purposes, but not permitting yourself to fall under the glamour of

their phenomena; making use of all: of the passions of man, of the

aspirations of man, of the good and of the evil, turning them all

to send man forward on the path which God has marked out for human

progress. That is the high activity which finds its expression in

Service, and that can only be where God has been realised, and where

the Spirit of man, consciously one with the Spirit Eternal, sees

everywhere one Will, one Wisdom, and one Activity, and men, in all

their different workings, the instruments whereby the Divine Will is

worked out in evolution.

Hence, our study in these four morning hours is not apart from the

day's activity, but is really the source, the spring, of that activity;

and so, loving all because in all the Self abides; seeing the inner

Self, unblinded by outer appearances; thus may work the messengers

of the great Hierarchy that guides our world. It is to a treading of

the path that leads to Service, it is for that, that I invite your

attention to these profound problems of the spiritual life of man.

Now, to-day, we are first to consider the nature, the existence, of

that One Life in which we all subsist, and the views that man has taken

thereof.

Let me say at the very outset, that there is a common view to-day

among many thoughtful, among many good men, that it does not much

matter what a man believes providing that his conduct is right. That

is a half truth, not a whole truth, and it is the natural reaction

from the Middle Age view in Europe that it did not matter what a

man's conduct was provided that his beliefs were orthodox. Such a

view has not only been found in mediæval Europe, but also has been

found in India herself. You will find among Indians to-day, as still

among some Christians, that the all-important matter is belief in

certain dogmas, and that where those are held conduct is comparatively

unimportant. We all know men in all faiths who are orthodox, as it

is said, in belief, but whose lives are worldly lives, and sometimes

not even of a very high worldly character. Now, a century or so ago

that view was so common that men were persecuted, men were penalised,

because of a difference of theological views. If men did not believe,

at one stage, the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, then

their fate was, at first, the stake, then later the prison, and still

later, slander, social ostracism, and disabilities under the law of

the land. In England, that is now largely swept aside, and we have the

opposite exaggeration: "Let a man think as he will; but let him be a

good citizen, a good man." But that leaves out the profound truth that

"man is created by thought, and as a man thinks, so he is"; conduct

is not independent of thought, for thought is the spring of conduct, and

so it is written in the _Bhagavaḍ-Gīṭā_, that "a man is compacted,

composed, of his beliefs," and as a man believes, so he is. You have to

make, however, a distinction between beliefs conventionally accepted,

and the real belief, which is the conviction of the heart, out of

which action arises. And so, I urge on you to-day that right-thinking

on the great truths of life is a most important part of the whole of

your conduct. The better your thought, the better will be your life.

The truer your thought, the more candid and transparent will be your

actions. But _remember that it must be your own thought_, and not

the thought of your neighbour, not the thought of authority, not the

thought of a book, however ancient and however sacred, not the thought

of a great man, however true for him; the thought that moulds conduct

is the thought of the actor, and every man is responsible for his own

thinking; the repetition of the thought of another is useless and even

mischievous. Be not then afraid to think, even about God Himself. Do

not think it is blasphemous to enquire; do not think it is blasphemous

to doubt. Doubt is the stage which comes before a larger and truer

thinking. You doubt your past thought, because you are opening up

new vistas of thought and the past is lying behind you. The man who

never doubts never really thinks; and there is a wholesome, a healthy

scepticism which is the forerunner of a nobler and a truer faith. Think

as far as you can. It is true that from the very Highest thought and

speech fall back unable to go farther; but as far as you can think,

as far as your intellect is able to grasp, to investigate, to argue,

think your freest and your noblest, and you will grow by your errors

as well as by your truths. Do not then fear to think; do not fear to

be called unorthodox; try your best to think truly and accurately, and

trust in Truth, who never betrays her servant. The determination to

think your highest, the determination to think your best, may lead you

into some desert for a time, but there are gardens on the other side of

the desert. You may have to cross many a desert, many a torrent which

seems to sweep you away; but I, who ventured all to seek for Truth, who

left family, friends, religion, because their religion had become to me

untrue, I bear you witness that such unbelief is the way to a higher, a

greater, and a serener faith, and that those who are unwilling to lose

the life of the past will not be able to advance into the life of the

future.

Now, let us, with regard to our thoughts of God, realise that there are

two lines towards knowledge. The first is the way of the intellect,

which deals with metaphysics, which deals with philosophy, which

gradually lifts a man out of superstition, out of narrowness, out of

ignorance, and carries him as far as human intellect can go. Along

those lines exercise your intellect, think your best, but remember,

that it is written that not by intellect shall the Self be found,

and the path of realisation is not the path of the intellect. It is

the path of the conquered senses, of the conquered mind, when in the

"quietude of the senses and the tranquillity of the mind, the man

beholds the glory of the Self". That is realisation: that is the only

knowledge: that is Eternal Life. By the intellect we reach the highest

philosophy, and let none dare to despise philosophy, which rises up to

peaks of knowledge, which are the glory of the human race. But, on the

other hand, remember that it is the pure in heart who see God. It is

the conquest of the lower nature which enables us to breathe the air in

which the higher nature lives; and not by intellectual research, not

even by devotion itself, but by sinking into the depths of your own

being, by searching within, there where the Self abides; by casting

aside everything that changes; by saying to the senses: "You are not

I"; by saying to the mind: "You are not I"; by saying to the highest

intelligence: "You are not I"; in the silence, where the mind has

naught to say; in the silence, where the senses are not heard; in the

depths of yourself, one with the Supreme Self; there, and there only,

shall you realise that you yourself are one with the Self Universal. A

hard path, a difficult path, the outcome of the practice of lives of

self-abnegation and of service; but once you have realised God, you

can never doubt again. An intellectual argument may be overthrown by

keener logic, by larger grasp of facts; but the man who once has seen

the Face of God, he never again can doubt that God is, that God is All.

That is the Self-realisation of the Mystic. That is the triumph, not

of the intellect but of the Spirit; then the Spirit which is Divine

recognises its kinship with the Spirit Omnipresent, and when once, as

I have said before, you have found God within yourself, then, and only

then, will you find Him in every one in everything, around you. That is

the triumph of the Spirit. That is the Peace of the ETERNAL.

And now, let us turn to man's conceptions of God, and see how they have

changed. And, in doing this, friends, let us seek for the kernel of

truth which underlies even mistaken beliefs; for, man is so constituted

that no error can hold him long in bondage save by the truth that

that error conceals. Just as you may have the husk, the shell, and

the kernel within it, so in every error that dominates mankind there

is a kernel of truth that gives it its nutritive power. Only when you

recognise the kernel of truth will you be able to convince a man of the

husk of error.

Now, looking back to early times in our race, we find what is called

Polytheism; and that you practically find everywhere. You find it very

very strongly in the first half of the Hebrew _Old Testament_, as is

called the Hebrew part of the Christian Bible. If you read that, what

is the God that you find? Clearly, a God of limited power, a God of

limited knowledge, what in the talk, the jargon, of the day is called

a "tribal God". In the early story told by the Hebrews, the conception

of God is very limited. You find Him "walking in the garden in the cool

of the day," and calling out to the man he had created: "Adam, where

art thou?" You find him a little later--when men have multiplied and

begun to build a tower which in their ignorance they think will reach

up to heaven--saying; "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their

language, that they may not understand one another's speech." For "now

nothing," he said, "will be restrained from them, which they have

imagined to do". And so, we read, that "the Lord came down to see the

city and the tower, which the children of men builded," and he confused

the speech of the builders, so that they were scattered abroad and

could not build their tower. And the Babel of Tongues is a phrase in

English, because it was the Tower of Babel from which all the languages

on earth originated! You find him again with his chosen people, the

children of Abraham, leading them into the land he gives them; and

then you come across the remarkable statement that "the Lord was with

Judah," one of the tribes, and he drove out all "the inhabitants of

the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley,

because they had chariots of iron". You see at once that you are in

the realm of a very limited kind of tribal God. Of course, I know that

in the days when the Bible was regarded as verbally inspired, as God's

Word, they said these statements were an accommodation to the ignorance

of man; but that is only the desperate effort of the believer in

verbal inspiration to infuse the knowledge of later days into the form

of ancient fables. You and I recognise at once that where thoughtful

Christians are concerned, these are to them old ideas, that you have

here the local God, the tribal God, and that the God of the Hebrews of

the early days does not claim to be the only God, but only the chief

one, the chief for his own nation: "Who among the Gods is like unto

Thee, O Jehovah!" That is the position of the Hebrews, and they have

their own National God. To go away from him is treachery to the State.

To disbelieve in him is punishable with death, because it is treason to

the Nation, and such punishment was not so much regarded as a religious

persecution as a State penalty. As a State and social sanction, the

worship of Yahveh was maintained among the Hebrews; it was the State,

the National, Religion. He conquered the Gods of the Philistines, He

fought with the Gods of all the other people round about, each with

their own God.

Then you come to a new aspect. The people of Israel are scattered;

they are carried away captives into Babylon. They come into touch

with the great Theologies of the East, and then a new view of God

is taken by their writers. You may draw a line in the Hebrew Old

Testament between the post-Babylon, and the pre-Babylon views of God.

That is done now by every scholar. The pre-Babylon view is that of

the Tribal God, one among many; the post-Babylon view is the sublime

conception drawn from a great eastern faith, and then we find poetic

and splendid phrases regarding God. He is the "High and Lofty One who

inhabiteth Eternity, whose Name is Holy". There you have a spiritual

thought. You are no longer within the region of the tribal Gods. You

are out of the region of the local Deities; you have passed on into

a great and spiritual world, where God inhabits Eternity, and where,

in another splendid phrase, it is written: "God made man in the image

of His own Eternity." There you have the later conception, there the

God Universal; and with that, one remarkable fact that you must never

forget, that in the later writing God is recognised not as what we call

the Author of good only, but the Author of evil also. It is written in

the Prophet Isaiah: "I am the Lord, and there is none else; I form the

light and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord

do all these things." It is written again: "Shall there be evil in a

city, and the Lord hath not done it?" You must realise that where God

is seen as "the One," when there is "none else," then He is the Author

of all, and not only of the particular line of narrow morality that

belongs to the evolving human kind. So also in the _Bhagavaḍ-Gīṭā_

you find the phrase of Shrī Kṛṣhṇa: "I am the gambling of the

cheat." I shall come back to that in order to point out to you its

meaning, but at the moment I only ask you to remember that in what is

now called the Christian Bible, not in the Hebrew part of it only,

but in the Christian part as well, you find that same conception of

one "Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," that

shows itself in every form, that cannot be divorced from anything that

exists. And so, in a very splendid psalm, again post-Babylon, you have

the psalmist saying: "If I go up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I

make my bed in Hell, behold, Thou art there also; if I take the wings

of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there

shall Thy Hand guide me, and Thy Right Hand lead me." Heaven or Hell,

what are they? passing phenomena of human evolution. If God is found

in Heaven, he is also found in Hell; only in Heaven he is the Bliss

of Unity with the Law; in Hell He is the Pain of Law disregarded, and

that, in order that by the suffering caused by the onward rush of the

disregarded Law, He may teach the lesson of obedience to the Law, the

lesson which the man refused to learn by precept, and must therefore,

for his own future safety, learn by experience. Now that idea is

eastern. When the Christians wrote the New Testament, they narrowed

this profound idea of God.

They brought also, those post-Babylon Jews, they brought also the

Babylonian conception of an Evil Spirit over against the Good, the

great idea in Zoroastrianism of the opposition between Hormazd and

Ahriman, that coloured all the Christian concepts. The Satan of

Christianity, the Satan of the Christians, is the Ahriman of the

Zoroastrians. And so also with the Eblis of the Musulmāns. He is

the enemy of God. There you come down, as it were, to the planes of

practice. Two forces quarrel for the mastery and we call them good and

evil, recognising the duality of the flesh and the Spirit. We take

that duality, and we put one over against the other. We forget that

the flesh is necessary for the unfolding of the Spirit. We forget that

matter is the necessary field in which the Seed of Divinity shall

develop into the manifest God, and so we lose the Unity. We live in

the realm of duality, and we make opposites, as they are in practical

life, of those two sides of Deity, the Spirit that informs, the matter

that makes action possible. Zarathushtra has, behind his duality, that

"Boundless Space" which is really the description of the all-enveloping

nature of God Universal; and when we deal with Hinḍūism, we find

there the explanation of those rather fragmentary truths that come

down to us along other lines. We have finally that terrible blunder

of the Christian, who makes God, all love--as in truth He is--giving

forth from Himself--for He is the only creator, One, "there is none

else"--the Spirit Satan, who is the embodiment of hatred; and you

find, finally, that in the great struggle, according to the common

Christian belief--which intellectual Christians are outgrowing, you

must not forget--you find in the final result of the struggle, that it

is not God, but Satan that is the conqueror, for "the bottomless pit"

is full to overflowing, while Heaven is a city with walls around it,

and with a comparatively limited number of inhabitants. But that is not

the deeper teaching of Christianity; it is the crude popular view. If

you go through the writings of S. Paul, what is written there? You find

it is written that the day shall come when the Son, who is God, shall

be "subject to Him who put all things under Him, and God shall be all

in all"--God in Satan, God in Hell, God in the wicked, evolving them

to righteousness. And so in the very centre of the Christian teaching

you find that "God is all and in all," and is it not also written in

_Al Qurān_, which largely reflects the popular necessary teachings of

the time, is it not written by the great Prophet of Arabia, that "All

shall perish, save His Face"? Everywhere is God; God is everything; in

everything He is the ultimate good, the inevitable fate of man.

But now what does this Polytheism mean? There is a truth in it. For

every Nation has its own Ḍeva, as we should say; its own Angel, as

the Christian and Musalmān would say. These subordinate hosts, these

Angels and Archangels, these Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, they are all superhuman

intelligences, working out the will of God the Supreme. Think for a

moment of Astronomy. There was a time when this little world was the

centre of the Solar System, when fixed, with the Waters below and the

Waters above, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars also, circled around our

Globe. Science gradually found out that the universe was larger than

the Solar System; that the Universe had many Suns and many systems.

It found out that our globe went round the Sun and not the Sun round

our globe. The world was lifted out of this position of superiority

and thrown out into space, one among myriads of worlds; that was the

heresy for which Giordano Bruno died. He proclaimed the multiplicity of

worlds, and that the Sun was the centre of our system, but that there

were other worlds and other Suns. In the old days that was a frightful

horror, for he turned everything upside down. What can you do with

Christian teachings if our globe is one among many? Christ died for

this world. Did God die for a grain of dust in an endless Universe?

The whole dignity of our world was lost. Then they said that Christ

ascended up into Heaven, but Bruno said that there was no "up" and no

"down". Our world with space below it; our world with space above it.

Where then is Heaven? Where is Hell? Where is Heaven? Where is the

Throne of God? Where the right hand of God where Christ is sitting?

Where did He go to on that Ascension day? Where is He to be found

in this unlimited space? And so they said: "Oh! burn him, get rid of

him, send him to find the worlds of which he talks." So they burnt him

and scattered his ashes, and joyed that he was dead. But Bruno lived

still although the body was dead, and Science, Science triumphed,

although its votaries were burnt, were racked, were imprisoned. They

took Galileo and forced him to his knees to confess that he had

been mistaken; "and yet it moves," were the whispered words of the

Scientist, who did not dare to face the horrors of the Inquisition.

And so Science triumphed, and now, what do you find? Not only that our

Sun is, to us, a stationary body and the world goes round it; but that

ours is only one of many systems, and that all those systems and their

Suns go round another Sun, and that is not the last, and again that

is not the last; for all those masses of systems, they also go round

a still higher Sun, and so concentric circles of worlds, of systems,

of Universes, without end that human eye can pierce, without end that

human mind can grasp; and so we begin to realise that the local Gods

of the past, they have their places, all circling round the One who is

the centre of all life, "the One without a Second". All Universes rise

and fall in Him. All Universes are born and die in His immensity. No

thought may limit Him. No mind may grasp Him. He is the All, the One,

the Omnipresent, and His Life lives in the Angels and Archangels, lives

in the Ḍevas of all the systems, and in all they are His Ministers,

carrying out His Will.

And so there arose what is called Pantheism. God is All and in all.

Now there is a great difference between the Pantheism of the West as

embodied in Spinoza, and the Pantheism of the East, that you find in

the Veḍas, that you find in the Zend-Avesta, that you find in the old

dead Religions of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome. The Pantheism of the

West is one Divine Existence with certain attributes, the Spinozean

Pantheism. It is the Formless Boundless Existence. Not quite the

Nirguṇa Brahman, the "Brahman without attributes". His Pantheism is

as cold and uninspiring for conduct, as the Nirguṇa Brahman would

be if that were the last word of Hinḍūism. Infinite, All-embracing,

All-in-holding, out of Space and Time, that is the central thought of

every great philosophy, Musalmān, Hinḍū, Zoroastrian, I might almost

say Christian--though that is more doubtful, for it is more rigid,

and narrowed by being confined more or less within the conceptions of

the Bible. If you go to the great Musalmān Doctors of the ninth and

tenth centuries A. D. you will find magnificent descriptions of the

All-God. In That is said to exist not only what has been, not only what

is, but that which shall he, and all eternally existent, all that is

conceivable, all that is inconceivable, all is in Him. It is the

same as the Aḍvaiṭa-Veḍānṭa--if you take away from that the

conception of the Saguṇa Brahman, and the devotional side of Shrī

Shaṅkarāchārya in his sṭoṭras--the One without a Second, embracing

all, conceiving all, all-existing, one Now, without past, present,

and future, nothing to be excluded. But then comes the next step, the

Saguṇa Brahman, the "Brahman with attributes," that is not a second,

but the One in manifestation. He manifests a part of Himself. Said

Shrī Kṛṣhṇa: "I established this Universe with a portion of myself,

and I remain"; all-transcending, all-embracing, the manifested God,

limiting Himself by manifestation. And so Manu speaks of Him as "a

mountain of light," the generating Light; the One with attributes,

but the attributes belong to the manifestation. They might vary

perchance in another age, in another Universe. Then there go forth

from Him the three great manifestations, Will, or Power; Wisdom,

or Self-Realisation; Activity, or Creative Intelligence, and that

threefold manifestation, of Power, of Self-Realisation, of Creative

Intelligence, that is the root of every Trinity, as it is called,

that you find in the ancient and in the modern worlds. Three forms

of Manifestation inherent in one Existence, the creative Power,

that brings a Universe into existence, called Brahmā among Hinḍūs;

the sustaining all-preserving Power, that maintains a Universe,

all-permeating, all-preserving, that is called Viṣhṇu; and He into

whom all re-enters, the Destroyer, the Regenerator, He into whom all

returns that a higher form may reappear, that is Mahāḍeva, Shiva, the

Supreme Bliss.

Naturally among a people unmetaphysical and unphilosophical, you get

a division which in truth does not exist. They see three different

Deities and quarrel over them, where there is only One, showing

Himself in the three essential forms for a Universe which comes, which

lives, which passes; and hence you have the Shaiva and the Vaiṣhṇava

fighting the one against the other. I saw the other day in the caves of

Elephanta, the Arḍha Shiva Arḍha Viṣhṇu, the Hari-Hara, which is

said in the legends to be the combination of the twain in one. A

fanatic was worshipping one and depreciating the other, it is said, and

the image of Viṣhṇu changed, and became half Mahāḍeva and half

Viṣhṇu, and the double image smiled upon the worshipper, to remind him

that the division was in man and not in God.

So also there are hosts of Ḍevas, for the eastern Pantheism includes

the innumerable forms in which God-in-all expresses Himself, and so we

have Polytheism in a higher form. You need not be afraid of words, for

that is the all-embracing truth. Polytheism asserts the existence of

the Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, who carry out the Will of the Supreme. "Not for

the sake of the Ḍeva is the Ḍeva dear, but for the sake of the Self

is the Ḍeva dear." Only as the manifestation of the Self is the Ḍeva

seen, as you, in your turn, are manifestations of the same Self. But

the Ḍeva is a more highly evolved manifestation than you are. These

innumerable ministers of the Supreme Will, they also are manifestations

of the One; they mar not the Unity. And so in the Veḍas you chant to

all of them; and so in the Zend-Avesta you invoke them all.

Now the Western will tell you that all these Ḍevas of yours are the

personifications of the elements; that Agni is not a being, but is the

Fire personified. You must turn that right upside down, if you want to

make it true. Agni is not a personification of the element Fire; but

Fire, the element, is the material expression of Agni, his body, his

vehicle, by which he shows himself in the world. And that is your key.

Ignorance personifies an Element. Knowledge sees a Being whose material

expression is an Element. Ignorance sees the physical. Knowledge sees

in everything physical a manifestation of the One Self, showing Himself

in a limited form for the helping of His world. And so the higher

Occultist may address Agni, the Ḍevarāja of Fire, and, below Agni,

countless hosts of those who are called Fire Ḍevas, or Fire Elementals,

all expressions of his nature, all using a special type of matter in

the world. Hence you hear that when the world was built, the elements

came forth, and each had the Life-principle within it. Fire came forth,

but Agni, the Ḍevarāja, was the Life-principle within the fire-matter,

and so with Varuṇa for water, and so with Kubera for earth. You have

within every Element, nay, within everything that you call a law in

nature, you have a Life-principle, a Ḍeva, or Angel, call him what you

will, names matter not, provided that you realise that the Self which

works in you as man, works in all these Beings in ascending ranks of

hierarchical power; but they all are expressions of the one Divine

Will, and the One works in all of them, and "the wise see the One,

although they call Him by many names".

Now there you have the whole truth: God is everything and in All.

God is manifested in countless forms, in countless grades of living

intelligences, and each has its own place, and the Ḍevas come forth

from Brahmā, as later from Him come forth vegetables and animals

and men. There is only the One Life, but it is manifest in infinite

forms--Pantheism-cum-Polytheism, God-in-a-Universe. Now, if you

realise that, if you understand that, all these many Ḍevas and Ḍevīs,

these many Angels and Archangels, are only expressions, phenomena,

manifestations, of the One, just as you are. Then, you will realise

that all these, carrying out the Divine Will, are the hearers of

prayer, are the guardians of mankind; some are guardians of Nations,

others the guardians of special areas smaller than Nations, but

all are agents of the One. When the peasant prays to the form that

he worships, and asks for help, that is really a prayer to the One

Supreme, which is answered by His minister, the Ḍeva who is addressed

by the peasant; and if you talk to the peasant here in India, you will

find that most, if not all, of them realise the One behind the many,

and know, that the One alone is God, although they appeal to those

who are nearer in evolution to themselves, as they ask a Collector

rather than the King. And so we begin to realise that Polytheism has

its truth, and only needs to be understood. Then all Nature becomes

living, beautiful, sympathetic, God smiles in everything. The thinker

should realise it, and then none will ever blur the Unity by the

multiplicity of manifestations. Thus you come to the whole truth, and

find it living, exquisite, a perpetual joy. All Nature lives and loves.

There is but One Life, but One Existence, but one Supreme Omnipresent

Being. We cannot call him Spirit, because Spirit is the antithesis of

Matter, and Spirit and Matter blend in Him. So we call Him the ONE

WITHOUT A SECOND. In the boundless realms of space, in the infinity of

Universes, that ONE is expressing Himself in countless ways, but all is

a manifestation of Himself. He the One Thinker; from Him, all thought

comes forth. He, the one Actor; from Him all activities proceed. All

our human words of right and wrong, of good and evil, those are limited

to the evolving lives in relation to each other. There is nothing that

can be excluded from the One and Universal. In Him, all is well, all

is highest and best. And, when we come to deal with Right and Wrong,

we shall see how this works out, how it gives us a human standard,

a standard by which we may guide our steps. But, for this morning,

I will leave with you that Supreme Ideal: that there is but the One

in All, in Everything; the lowest dust beneath your feet has the One

within it; the highest Ḍeva in the highest heaven is but another

expression of the One. You express Him, the animal expresses Him, the

vegetable expresses Him, the mineral expresses Him. How else shall

they live, save in Him who is life? How else shall they evolve, save

in Him who is manifesting Himself through them? Be not afraid to love

the world, which is one of His manifestations, one of His thoughts; but

see Him everywhere and in everything, and so shall everything become

spiritualised. Let Him speak to you through the world, as He speaks to

you through the Spirit. He speaks in every breath of air; He speaks in

every leaf on the forest tree; He speaks in the foam and crash of the

Ocean's breaking billows; He speaks in the solitude and silence of the

Mountain. There is none other. There is nothing else. He is the One

Existence. And as you realise that, you share His power, and you share

His peace.

MAN

FRIENDS:

I will ask you to remember the point at which we had arrived when

the first lecture was concluded. We had studied the nature, the

existence of God, and we had come to the point where we realised one

all-pervading Life, the One without a Second, the One Life permeating

every form from the lowest mineral to the highest Ḍeva, nay--the Lord

of the Universe, Īshvara Himself. He also is an embodiment of the

Supreme Self, showing forth infinite Power, Wisdom and Activity, the

attributes of the Self, showing them forth in supreme measure. But

even in Īshvara Himself, the Lord of the Universe, we recognise that

He is an embodiment, and that, as is written in the _Bhāgavaṭa_, there

are many Īshvaras, many Shivas, Viṣhṇus, Brahmās, each triplet the

centre of a Universe, each the Īshvara of a Kosmos. Realising that,

then, as our foundation, and that everything in a Universe, in its

measure, is animated by the One Life, inspired by the One Energy, moved

by the One Will, we then descend from those great heights to study

one phase of the embodiments, that which we know as MAN. Realise that

Man is only one grade in this mighty hierarchy of existences, that,

beginning with the mineral, passing onwards through the vegetable, then

ascending through the animal, culminates in Man, more and more of the

Supreme Life shown out stage by stage. You may remember how the great

commentator Sāyaṇa pointed out that the Supreme Self in the mineral

shows out only the quality of existence. Passing onwards to vegetable

and animal, He shows out there the attribute of consciousness.

Passing onwards to Man, He reveals Himself in fuller measure--Man,

who remembers what is past, who forecasts that which is yet to come.

While man heads these ascending grades in our normal world, we

yet pass onward in thought to the great hierarchies of Super-Men,

of Ḍevas--Angels, call them what you will--then still onwards and

onwards, ever in ascending grades of Power, of Wisdom and of Activity,

until we reach those mighty Spirits who stand, as it were, around

Īshvara Himself, His Viceroys in the mighty Empire of our system, all

subordinates and ministers, who carry out the will of the Supreme Lord.

Now in this great Ladder of Life, Man occupies what we may call a

middle place. The characteristic of Man is that in him there is a

warfare of Spirit and of Matter, striving for the mastery. In the

mineral, in the vegetable, in the animal, there you find Matter is

supreme; Spirit is most deeply veiled in the mineral, rather less

veiled in the vegetable, still less in the animal. When we come to Man,

in his lowest condition we find that Matter is still triumphant; then

a struggle begins, and at last Spirit shows himself triumphant. Matter

is spiritualised by the indwelling Life, and instead of being a fetter

and a clog it becomes a vehicle, an expression of the indwelling, the

directing, Spirit. The interest then of Man is that in all the stages

of his long evolution the struggle is going on. First we see Matter

is supreme. Gradually as Mind develops, the lowest manifestation of

the Spirit, the struggle becomes marked; then slowly and gradually

evolving, ever further and further, in the Saints, in the Sages of our

race, we find the triumph of the human over the animal, the triumph of

the Spirit over Matter; it is that mighty evolution that is the subject

of our study this morning.

* * * * *

Where shall we begin? We must necessarily begin in the bosom of Īshvara

Himself, whence come forth the human Spirits, the Jīvāṭmās. For is

it not written that as millions of sparks go forth from the flaming

fire, so do the Jīvāṭmās go forth from Īshvara Himself; or again, do

we not find it said by Shrī Kṛṣhṇa, speaking as the Supreme

Īshvara: "A portion of Myself--Mamāmsha--a fragment of Myself, going

forth into the world of Matter, draws round itself the senses, and

mind as the sixth." There you have the definition of Man. A portion

of Īshvara Himself, a fragment of that illimitable Life, thrown down

into the world of Matter, which incases the fragment within itself,

which that fragment is destined to turn into a vehicle for the unfolded

powers of God. As a seed is cast into the ground and within that seed

lie hidden every power, every beauty, every possibility of the tree

that sent it forth, so from the eternal Tree of Life of God Himself

the seed is cast into the soil of our world, impotent, helpless,

nescient--knowing nothing at first. But, inasmuch as it is a seed of

God, it is destined to unfold Divine Powers, and to become in the

course of ages the image of That from whom it has come forth. And

so we find it written in the _Bṛhaṭ Āraṇyaka_, showing the contrast

between the Supreme Āṭmā, the Paramāṭmā, and the Jivāṭmā,

the human Spirit: "All-powerful the one, but powerless the other."

In the one, all power manifests; in the other, every potentiality is

present. And so, you find also in the later religion of Christianity,

that it is declared by the mouth of the Christ Himself: "Be ye

therefore perfect, as your Father which in Heaven is perfect." I

ask all of you to realise what lies in those words of the Christ;

as God in Heaven is perfect, such is the destiny of the children of

men; not always to be weak and frivolous, not always to be childish

and impotent, but to become, in the course of ages, _perfect_ as God

Himself is perfect. That, and nothing less than that, is the destiny of

every one of you. You may delay it; you may retard it; you may wander

in many bye-ways and lose ages of time; but what is time, however long,

to you who are eternal, for whom there is no limit of space or time,

inasmuch as your essence is the essence of God Himself. Nothing less

than that, your Future.

But now, let us look at this Seed of Divinity and ask: How it is to

develop, how it is to grow into splendour so illimitable? For though

you be sons of a King, though your heritage be sure in the future,

you may yet, if you will, grovel in the mire; you may, if you will,

forget your birthright; you may think yourselves children of the

dust, while you are children of Īshvara; but you must at last come

to your inheritance, for the Divine Will in you cannot be ultimately

frustrated, and your destiny, your Divine destiny, must be worked out.

Now, we have a fragment of Divinity embodied in flesh. Under what

conditions, by what laws, is that fragment to evolve, to unfold its

powers? There are two great laws under which that Seed of Divinity

must develop into manifested God. The one, the Law of Reincarnation;

the turning of the wheel of births and deaths to which every one

of us is bound; where freedom can only come to us by realising our

Divinity; whence we may not escape until the law is utterly fulfilled.

And the second, the Law of Karma, that law of the Divine Nature in

which everything exists related, bound together, by simultaneous

co-existence; hence, when out of that Eternity any portion of the

Divine comes into space and into time, you have causation, where

before there was simultaneity. You have what you call causation,

which is only the coming into appearance and recognition of the real

simultaneity of all. In God all is; in man all becomes; but that is the

only difference; and what you call causation is nothing more than the

unfolding in time, which is succession, of that which ever exists out

of time in the Supreme. Let us then see how the law works, and it works

through many stages, it works through endless ages. We have our Divine

Seed--a child-Spirit, let us call him--born into our world. He is not

left there alone, to find out by long experience only how evolution

must proceed; for, out of previous Universes, out of past evolutions

in other worlds, there come to the helping of these infant children of

Man, Those who have passed through the earlier stages, and have become

superhuman in Their knowledge and Their power. There are two ways of

finding out the existence of a law. One, the way in which, surrounded

by the laws of nature that we may not change nor violate, unknowing

that they exist, unconscious that they are around us, we are like a man

in a darkened chamber, where there is no light to see his environment,

who knocks himself up against one thing or another and bruises himself

in the knocking. By the bruising, he finds out the obstacles; by the

pain that he suffers, he finds that he can only move without pain in a

certain direction. That is the scientific way. Every law of nature that

has been so far discovered by Science has been discovered by experience

which has turned ignorance into knowledge. Take Roger Bacon, one of

the early chemists in the days when to investigate was heresy, in the

days when to understand was crime. He was a monk, but a monk with the

soul of a scientist in him. He experimented with chemical substances.

He knew nothing about them. He did not know that putting these two

together made a new and useful substance; that putting another two

together made an explosive substance, that scattered everything around.

He put together whatever he could find. What was the result? One time

he was stretched senseless on the floor of his cell; another time

a finger was blown off; another time an eye was blown out; onward

and onward he went, with that dauntless courage, that interminable

patience, which make the truly scientific man, who looks on knowledge

as the supreme good. Struck senseless he came to again, and began again

his work: missing a finger, he used the rest for new experimentation:

when one eye had gone, the other remained with which he could still

see. And, by such pain, by such loss, such infinity of dangers, Science

slowly won its way to its knowledge of the laws around it. Inviolably,

unchangeably, God manifests in Nature.

The result of the long experimenting is that now, when the young man

goes into the laboratory, textbooks are ready for him. A professor

is there to warn him where the dangers of investigation lie. "Do

not put," he will say to him, "nitrogen and chlorine together; if

you put them together without certain precautions, you will find

yourself in fragments and your laboratory will be destroyed." The

boy in the laboratory now does not experience the dangers of earlier

investigators. That, for him, is done. Men have come to show him the

way, and the experience of the Past is the guide to the knowledge of

the Present, and the warning to the dangers of the Future. So with

Man. There were Professors, there were Teachers, round the infant

races of our Globe. We call them Ṛṣhis; we call them Saints; we call

them God-illuminated men; we call them Sages; Founders of Religions;

and They said to infant humanity, as the Professor says to the boy in

the laboratory: "Do that, don't do the other. Here lies safety; there

lies danger. Take our experience as a guide, and you will realise

the existence of the law; your happiness lies in your obedience, in

your conformity with law." Hence, infant humanity started with the

advantages of Sages to guide it who proclaimed the law.

Now, for a moment, put yourselves by imagination in the position of one

of those infant races, hearing the words of the Teacher, and willing

to learn. "If," said the Teacher, "you follow that course of conduct,

misery will result." You may remember the words of the Lord Buḍḍha,

that "as the wheels of a cart follow on the heels of the ox, so misery

follows on the commission of evil. As the wheels of the cart follow the

heels of the ox, so happiness follows on the commission of right." And

why? because, as we shall see to-morrow, right is harmony with law, and

wrong is discord with it. And, as the law cannot be broken, as the law

itself is inviolable, the man who dashes himself against it is like the

ship that dashes against a rock; the rock remains unmoving, but the

ship is shattered into pieces. So is it with the law, the expression of

the Divine Nature.

Now the recognition of law was helped by those declarations of the

Teachers. For when a man, disobedient and careless, committed a wrong

act, he suffered; and then he said: "I was told that I should suffer;

after all, the Teacher was right; I have made myself miserable by

disobeying the law." And the earlier lessons of man ran along these

lines.