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Lecture I GOD 1

Lecture II MAN 25

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 gu?as, 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.

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.

But now what does this Polytheism mean? There is a truth in it. For every Nation has its own ?eva, as we should say; its own Angel, as the Christian and Musalm?n would say. These subordinate hosts, these Angels and Archangels, these ?evas and ?ev?s, 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 ?evas 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 Ve?as, 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 Nirgu?a Brahman, the "Brahman without attributes". His Pantheism is as cold and uninspiring for conduct, as the Nirgu?a Brahman would be if that were the last word of Hin??ism. Infinite, All-embracing, All-in-holding, out of Space and Time, that is the central thought of every great philosophy, Musalm?n, Hin??, 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 Musalm?n 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 A?vai?a-Ve??n?a--if you take away from that the conception of the Sagu?a Brahman, and the devotional side of Shr? Sha?kar?ch?rya in his s?o?ras--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 Sagu?a Brahman, the "Brahman with attributes," that is not a second, but the One in manifestation. He manifests a part of Himself. Said Shr? K??h?a: "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 Brahm? among Hin??s; the sustaining all-preserving Power, that maintains a Universe, all-permeating, all-preserving, that is called Vi?h?u; and He into whom all re-enters, the Destroyer, the Regenerator, He into whom all returns that a higher form may reappear, that is Mah??eva, 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 Vai?h?ava fighting the one against the other. I saw the other day in the caves of Elephanta, the Ar?ha Shiva Ar?ha Vi?h?u, 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 Vi?h?u changed, and became half Mah??eva and half Vi?h?u, 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 ?evas, 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 ?evas and ?ev?s, who carry out the Will of the Supreme. "Not for the sake of the ?eva is the ?eva dear, but for the sake of the Self is the ?eva dear." Only as the manifestation of the Self is the ?eva seen, as you, in your turn, are manifestations of the same Self. But the ?eva 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 Ve?as 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 ?evas 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 ?evar?ja of Fire, and, below Agni, countless hosts of those who are called Fire ?evas, 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 ?evar?ja, was the Life-principle within the fire-matter, and so with Varu?a 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 ?eva, 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 ?evas come forth from Brahm?, 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 ?evas and ?ev?s, 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 ?eva 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 ?eva 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:

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.

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 ?shvara; 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.

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 ??his; 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 Bu??ha, 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.

Let us see how it worked out. A savage. His passions are his guides. He knows none other. He wants and takes; he desires and grasps; but he is living among others who also want and take, who also desire and grasp, and, there is a conflict between the desires of one man and another. We will follow one man: He sees his neighbour's wife; desires her; he takes her; perhaps, kills the husband--he is quite a savage, remember. He sees in his neighbour's tent food that he wants; he strikes the man down, and takes away the food. And he thinks: "I have done well; I am happy; I have gained a beautiful woman; I have gained food; I am no longer hungry. This is the path of happiness for me." But he has made enemies. The friends of those whom he may have struck down in his licentiousness, they are his enemies, and presently he has to die, perhaps is killed in revenge. But, what we call Death is only the striking away of the body in which the Spirit eternal is dwelling, and this ignorant creature, when the body is struck away, finds himself in the midst of people whom he robbed and murdered during his life on earth. He is surrounded by enemies; he finds on the other side antagonism and hatred; and he learns in the other world--the world we call Pre?aloka or K?maloka--he learns there that to do these things means sorrow, and that pain is the ultimate result of the desire unjustly satisfied. It makes a little impression upon him. But during his life, he has not only robbed and murdered: he has loved; perhaps he has loved the woman he stole; perhaps he has loved the child that was born of her. Those little seeds of love remain. The Spirit carries them with him as he passes out of the body, and when he has suffered in Pre?aloka the result of the evil he has done, he passes on to Pi??loka and to Svarga, to enjoy the good that he has accomplished; and the seed of love, selfish probably, desiring gratification, finds in Pi??loka satisfaction, and the power to love increases. And where there has been a seed of unselfish love, perhaps where the wife was ill, and the husband sat up at night, tending and nursing her although she was no longer a source of pleasure, but only a source of trouble and annoyance; that unselfishness grows out of love, even the animal love, or lust of the possessor, that remains as a little bit of unselfish seed to bear flower in Svarga. When he reaches Svarga, and finds there again the wife and the child he loved, then that little seed of love begins to grow, and grows through the life, the heavenly life, of happiness that he leads, and that is transmuted into a greater power of loving, which he brings back with him to his next birth, so that he finds himself on a higher plane of emotion than that he lived on in the last.

Now in the savage the growth is very slow. Hundreds of lives sometimes pass and little change is seen. But where the Sages I spoke of are present, there the growth is more rapid, for there comes in the recognition of the law, and the understanding of the sequence of events. The man comes back again for many births, until he comes back as an average common-place semi-civilised man. As a savage, he has hardly any power of thought; through the lives that pass the power of thought has grown. And now, you come to a man who, in a comparatively civilised country, is born as an ordinary mediocre man--"the man in the street," we often call him. Now his experience is more varied. He has many loves and hates, many unjust desires, but also some higher aspirations; and as he goes through a life, the result of his own past, he gathers together fresh experiences, whereof presently more faculty will be manufactured. Just as a sea-gull, sweeping through the air, sweeps down into the ocean, catches a fish, comes up again and flies away to feed upon the fish, so does the human being, out of the great expanse of life in the higher world, sweep down into physical existence to gain the food of experience there. He carries it away through the gateway of death, and feeds upon it in the worlds on the other side of death. Again, more fully and more subtly than in the early stages of life, he reaps the result of the evil that he has done; but his mind is now larger, his mind is more intelligent, he traces the evil act bringing about the suffering, and that is imprinted on the tablet of the mind. Then he goes on into Svarga, and there turns over the good experience he has gained. The experience in love-emotion, that turns into higher powers of loving, greater desire to serve, greater recognition of the claims of others upon him, until he has formed a better and higher love-emotion, ready to return with him to his next experience of life. But he has also gathered much thought; he has gained experience in knowledge; he has exerted mental faculties. He gathers up all the mental experiences and these he works up into intellectual faculties. Is it not written that man is created by thought, and what a man thinks upon that he becomes? The life of Svarga is a life of changing experience into faculty. Every experience that you are making now, intellectual experience, you will weave into mental power on the other side of death. Whatever you may have gained, whatever knowledge you have acquired, that you carry with you through the gateway of death, and you work it up into mental power during your life in Svarga. You may have been weak in some faculty, in judgment, we will say, and you made many errors in judgment here: you suffer for them on the other side of death. You remember them in Svarga, and you build up that experience into an increased power of judgment, and you bring that back with you as an innate quality, and it shows itself in your childhood as part of your intellectual equipment. And, so with every faculty, with reason, with memory, with logic, with the power of understanding; not one of your efforts here is wasted; they all come back to you as food-experience in your heavenly life. You brood over them, you change them into faculty, and that faculty is yours for evermore. For that passes on into the intellectual side of the Spirit, as the emotions pass on into the moral, which is the wisdom side; and so, you come back to earth with higher intellectual power, with greater moral faculty. That continues, on and on, life after life, and when you are born into the world with high ability, it only means the many lives you have studied, the many lives you have laboured in, the many after-death periods during which you have assimilated.

See how the process resembles your life here, which is, indeed, its reflection on the physical plane. You take food; you are satisfied. That food passes down, and is digested. The nutritive part of that is assimilated, and your brain, your muscles, your nerves, all grow by the assimilated nourishment; and when it is assimilated you begin to feel hungry again. You have used up what you took, and you are hungry for more food, in order that you may grow again; and then, you have again another meal, and the whole process is repeated.

So in your spiritual life also. You take the food of experience; you digest it; you assimilate the nutritive part of it, and by that you unfold the hidden powers of the Spirit, and, when you have assimilated all, when nothing remains to be transmuted, then in the heavenly world you are hungry for more experience, and your hunger brings you back to birth in the world in which that hunger can be satisfied. That is the Law. That is the Law of Reincarnation.

As you grow more and more in stature, your growth becomes more rapid. And at last, a time comes, when you say: "I have had enough of this; I no longer care for power--it ends in disappointment; I no longer care for wealth--it is a burden rather than a joy; I no longer care for the things that break in the enjoyment; I no longer care for the things that perish in the using." And then there sets in the discontent with the transitory goods of this world; there sets in that which is called Vair?gya--dispassion. The objects no longer attract; and then the man that has this Divine discontent within him begins to seek for the permanent, begins to look for that which will satisfy; and there is nothing that can satisfy the Divine Spirit in man save God Himself, the Illimitable Life and Love. And so, as an English poet wrote--an old-fashioned poet:

When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let me, He said, pour on him all I can; Let the world's riches which extended lie Contract into a span. Then strength first made its way, Then beauty followed, wealth and power and pleasure. At last, when all was gone, God made a stay. Perceiving that at last of all his treasure Rest in the bottom lay. For if I should, said He, Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature, So both should losers be. Then let him keep the rest, But keep them in repining restlessness. Let him be rich and weary, that at last, If goodness move him not, yet restlessness Shall toss him to my breast.

Now that is the truth. There is nothing in all this world that does not break in your hands, when you have it. God is like a mother, and He dangles in front of His children all the joys, the glittering baubles, that earth can give. And, in front of one He dangles wealth, saying: "Come, my child, and grasp the wealth." And the child, in trying to grasp, puts out his power, and his strength develops, and his will develops, and in the struggle to be rich many of the faculties of the man and the power of will are developed, and when that has been done, and the child grasps the bauble--it breaks. For the value was in the struggle and not in the possession, for the Divine Spirit in man. The Divine Spirit in man can never be satisfied with gold or wealth. If a mother took up her child and carried it always, as some foolish men would have God carry us, then when the child ought to be walking, strengthening its legs, tumbling down and picking itself up again, it would have been carried in its mother's arms, until when it was 6 or 7 or 8, it would be paralysed, and would never grow into a man at all. And so it is with God's child, Man. "Struggle," He says. "See all the beautiful things I have here for you." For God is in all the objects of sense. God is in everything that attracts; there is no attraction save in God, the only fair. And so, He hides Himself in gold, and He hides Himself in pleasure, and He hides Himself in Power; and He hides Himself in fame; and when the child has exerted himself and gained the desirable object, God slips out of it and the attraction vanishes, and so we grow and learn. It is the only way. We grow strong, intellectually strong, morally strong, until nothing has power to attract save the one supreme attraction, God Himself.

And so it is written, that when a man becomes weary he begins to abstain from the objects of the senses. And then come the strange words: "The objects of the senses turn away from the abstemious dweller in the body." Why? because God is in them, and when they no longer attract they have done their work, and they turn away to educate some less developed man; and then, it is written, that the taste for them still remains, but even the taste for them vanishes away when once the Supreme is seen. There lies the truth. You feel distaste for the lower only when you have seen the higher. When you have seen the Supreme Beauty, the fragments of that Beauty down here can no longer mislead; you see God in them, and keep a grateful memory of all that they have taught you, in that they have led to the realisation of the God hidden in them, the treasure which remains. When you have gained the knowledge, the realisation of God, what has earth left, that earth can give? He is all power; He is all might; He is all beauty; He is all love; and you learn to know that nothing that has attracted you can perish in its permanent reality. Although the form may break, and change into another, it only increases your treasure in the riches of the Supreme. You love a woman; it is well; for love is the great purifier and the great uplifter of human hearts; but remember that her loveliness is but a fragment of the Divine Loveliness, and that all that attracts in her is the beauty of the Self shining forth through the beauty of the form.

Not for the sake of the wife is the wife dear, but for the sake of the Self the wife is dear; not for the sake of the husband is the husband dear, but for the sake of the Self the husband is dear; not for the sake of the son is the son dear, but for the sake of the Self the son is dear.

But the wife and the husband and the son are rightly dear, because there is dwelling in them the glory of the Self, and that remains for ever, with all that has made it beautiful to you on earth; for God is Love, and love can never die; and all the loving and beloved J?v??m?s, that have been embodied in many forms, remain as your companions through the everlasting ages of the Future.

Now when a man has learnt Vair?gya, then comes the great period of Service. No longer does he work for anything for himself, but to carry out the Divine Will in Evolution. Has not Shr? K??h?a said that He acts perpetually? Because, "if I do not act," He says, "all these worlds would perish." "I have nothing to gain," are His words. But they would perish, save for Him, and He goes on to say: "Let the wise man, acting with me, render all action attractive." Action is only a clog, is only a fetter, after man has gained all its fruit in experience, when it is not done for the sake of sacrifice. But when the action is consecrated to the Service of God and Man, that action becomes wings that uplift, and not fetters that clog, the advancing Spirit. And so, in the arrangement of castes that we have in India, there is one great lesson that comes out. The Sh??ra, the lowest caste, is the man who serves all. But the highest, above all castes, the Sanny?s?, what is he but the Servant of humanity, reproducing on a loftier plane the Service in which a Sh??ra is taking his first lesson down here? The Sh??ra learns service to others, and accumulates what he learns; the Vaishya learns to sacrifice material wealth in charity to others; the K?ha??riya learns to renounce life itself in defence of others; the Br?hma?a learns to renounce all for knowledge, that he may teach others. Then caste has taught its lessons, and the highest of all services are the services done for the sake of sacrifice by the liberated Spirit, the Paramahamsa, the man who has gone beyond the illusion of the Separated Self. So wisely was planned the ancient order, full of true significance.

The only other point that you have to remember is that all this is done under inviolable Law. "As you sow, so shall you reap." There is a great verse in a Christian Scripture too often forgotten by Christians: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." No use for substitution; no putting on of an imputed righteousness; no safety by a Saviour; you must reap your own harvest, you must work out, earn, your own salvation for yourself. But this remember: that your only limitation in taking up the strength of God lies in you, and not in Him. That is where the doctrine of so-called Divine Grace comes in. As the Sun shines all around you, as the Sun shines upon your house, you may close all the shutters, and say: "I don't want light; I shut my windows and my doors against the incoming rays of the Sun." So may you say to the Supreme Sun, the Light and the Life of the Universe: "I shut against you the doors of my heart; I don't want you to penetrate within me. I close my doors; I close my windows; your light shall not illuminate my Soul." And the answer of the Divine is: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man open, I will come in." There lies what men call Divine Grace. The grace is ever there, shining upon your closed shutters. You may shut your door; there is no change in the effulgence of the Sun. And so there is the Divine Light ever around you. You turn your backs upon it, and you say that it is dark; you have refused to see the Light, and you dwell in the shadow that you yourselves have made. Well, stay there, as long as you will. Play with the toys, as long as it pleases you. But know, that the day will come when the breaking of the toys will leave you desolate, and then you will open your hearts to the Supreme Love, and say: "Light, come in, and fill my heart with Thyself, for Thou and I are one, we were never separate; and I, the child of Man, recognise my birthright, and I claim, in the Self-realisation of my Divinity, the fruition of my life as Man."

RIGHT AND WRONG

FRIENDS:

And so, in dealing with morality, as in dealing with every Science, you must use your brains as well as your emotions, and you must judge the consequence of actions in order to guide your path.

Looking then at it in this way, we must see what "evolution" means. It means that at first progress is secured by inviolable laws of Nature, that press upon a whole class. As I said, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, they cannot resist the law; they cannot evade it; they are compelled by an inner instinct to conform themselves to the law of their nature, imprinted upon them by the hand of ?shvara Himself, and so you have no mental struggle. The wild beast in the forest, he develops keenness, swiftness, shrewdness, cunning, because without them, he perishes. When you come to the savage, the law of evolution is very much the same. The savage is without the knowledge of good or of evil, and that is recognised everywhere. Most of you will know the Jewish legend, how God created a man and a woman and placed them in a garden, so that they might enjoy the fruit of every tree in the garden save the one tree that was forbidden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then comes in the curious point that God gives His creatures a command: "You shall not eat of that tree"; but, having no knowledge of good and evil, they could not know that disobedience was evil and that obedience was good; and, as the fruit was attractive and desirable, they ate and gained the knowledge, which they had been forbidden to acquire. And so you have the curious condition that the "fall of man" is brought about by his ignorance of Right and Wrong; he does the Wrong unconsciously, and so gains the knowledge of distinction between good and evil. Now while it would be a terrible injustice that their ignorance should be counted as a sin, for which any of us, their descendants, should perish everlastingly, yet if you look on the story as a symbolical representation of fact, it becomes most illuminative and helpful. For the first stage in the emergence of the human race from the innocence and the ignorance of the animal and the animal-man lies in the experience of good and of evil, which brings happiness in assonance with the law and unhappiness in discord with the law. The savage knows no Right or Wrong. You remember the most typical case of the Missionary, who wanted to point out to an Australian savage that he should not, when he was hungry, have eaten his wife. He was short of food, the poor man, and was very very hungry; his wife was the handiest form of food; he killed her and ate her. "Oh!" but said the Missionary: "That was very wrong," and as there was no word in the savage's language for "wrong," he said: "That was not good." "I assure you," said the innocent savage, "she was very good." There was no idea there of any "good" except physical gratification, and as the flesh of the wife stilled the hunger of the man, "she was very good," he answered. Now there was no Right or Wrong there. The man was unmoral; he only knew the gratification of his own desires; he followed them blindly; but that, as with Adam and Eve, was the road to progress. He would want his wife presently, and he would miss her. The gratification of hunger was a momentary pleasure, but the presence of the wife was a continual help and service. And so, presently, that man would think that it was a mistake to kill her: "I had better have been hungry for a few more hours, and have kept my wife." And the first idea dawns upon him that the gratification of a momentary want is not the path to a lasting happiness. Both are temporary, of course, but one is longer than the other. Now the first lessons of the savage come along that line. The white man gives the savage drink; the savage likes it; he gets drunk; but he finds in the morning that he has a very bad headache; if the attraction of the drink is greater than the fear of headache, he goes on drinking and drinking, until he dies perhaps in delirium tremens. And looking at it all, after death, the savages profit by that; and they say: "This drink makes us ill; this drink shortens our life; this drink brings unhappiness at last"; and they learn after very many such experiences that intoxication is Wrong; but they cannot learn this without the experience. They cannot gain knowledge without knowing the pair of opposites, one of which is good and the other evil; and all the first evolution of the savage depends on his gathering experience, which shows him that going with the law of health means happiness in the physical sense, going against it means unhappiness. Now the savage takes a very long time to learn this. But he is not left, as I pointed out to you yesterday, only to the gathering of experience. Some wise man, the Founder of a religion, or nowadays a Christian or Musalm?n Missionary, says: "Don't touch drink; it will make you miserable." He breaks the command. How many Hin??s, how many Musalm?ns to-day, forbidden by their religions to take strong drink, break the religious command and suffer thereby. How many Princes of R?jpu??na have died in middle age owing to excessive drinking; so that you find a number of young Princes succeeding to the gadi, their fathers having fallen victims to the curse of European drink. The old Princes in R?jpu??na, Musalm?n and Hin??, are the men who have followed the law of their religion, and have abstained from strong drink. Is that not a lesson to the younger men who follow them? You can see the result of the lesson in the improved temperance of the younger generation of Indian Princes to-day. They have learnt the lesson by the experience of others, instead of by the bitter fruit of experience in themselves.

Most of you have been evolved without craving for drink; most of you, if you have touched it, have thrown it aside as distasteful. It has no power over you; it has no attraction for you; you turn away from it with disgust, as that which cannot tempt; and the only way of reaching that point is to have had experience of the evil, and to know that it is the womb of pain. Now out of this grows one great lesson for those of you who are more advanced. You know that sometimes, you who are fathers and mothers, you know that against all precept, against all training, against all prayer, your son goes wrong. You have told him: "My boy, to give way to passion is ruinous"; you have told him: "If you yield, you will suffer in your manhood." He disregards your prayer; he disregards your commands; the wild youth goes on; he will have his way. In that moment of parental agony, in that moment of despair, remember that doctrine of the Omnipresence of God that I spoke of in the first discourse: "If I go down into hell, behold, thou art there also," and realise that God--who loves your child more than you can love, more wisely as well as more intensely--has allowed that soul to go down into hell in order that He may meet him there in his degradation and his agony, and teach him by the lesson of pain, when he would not learn by the lesson of precept, that there is a law that none may disregard and live in happiness. For God is the Pain that comes to the transgressor from the disregarded law, as He is the Bliss that comes to the man who is in harmony with law.

Now if you realise these great truths, you will understand how morality must change with the upward evolution of the individual man. When you see wrong-doing in the undeveloped, when you see evil in the savage--whether the savage who is an anachronism in civilised society, or the savage who in his own native conditions--you will realise that that man is only beginning to learn the lessons of morality, and must learn them by dashing himself against the laws he knows not. And so, gradually, he grows out of the unmoral state into the beginning of the moral state, when he knows a little distinction between Right and Wrong, and often chooses the Wrong, because of the temporary pleasure that the yielding to the Wrong affords. And then he has the lesson I have just spoken of, until, within his innermost nature, he has branded the evil to be avoided. Now it is no merit to any one of us that we do not murder a man. We do not want to do so, because we have done it very often in the past, and have found that the fruit thereof was pain. We do not want to do it now, and the not wanting to do a particular wrong is the proof of moral growth. I know how often we are inclined to say: "Oh! How admirable is the man who struggles against evil." Yes. It is admirable for a man to struggle against temptation, to see him fighting against his lower nature. He is a hero in the struggle. But greater than the man who struggles is the man who has transcended the struggle, and who does the Right naturally, because he loves the Law and feels no inclination to turn towards wrong. That is not so often remembered. The man who has conquered in past lives, the man who has risen above the temptations that his younger brother struggles against, he is at a higher stage of evolution, for he chooses with full conviction the concord with the will of God. That means that the Divine Will in his own Spirit is emerging, and that quality, the Divine Will in the man, is the sign of approaching Liberation.

Come to another point, where you do not know in a particular case, what is Right and what is Wrong. To the more developed man, it is no longer a conflict between the "Right and Wrong" that he knows. It is a conflict between two duties, and he does not know whether of the twain is the one that he should follow. There you come to the agony of the opening Spirit, the unfolding God within, who is faced by two paths, and knows not which is the right one. Some arguments on one side, some arguments on the other. "Which of the two paths shall I take? How may I know what is the will of God?" That is the agony of the Soul whose will is set to the Right, but who does not know the Right under the conditions which surround him. What does it mean? It means that he lacks experience. For Conscience, that which tells you "this is Right, that is Wrong," is only the accumulated experience of your past, which has registered certain facts in the nature that you bring into the world with you as that fruit of experience. You have murdered--you have suffered; you are born with the instinct that murder is wrong. You have robbed--you have suffered; you are born with the instinct that theft is wrong. That does not exist in the savage. Take a savage child, and you will find that your precepts carry him up to a certain point, and you can go no further. You can awaken in him the result of past experience, but you cannot give him a Conscience, an experience, which he has not yet acquired. But you, you have a great fund of Conscience, a compelling voice, which says: "kill not," "steal not," "don't give way to lust which injures another"; you take it for granted that is Right, and that knowledge is the outcome of your past experience. But now, you do not know what is Right and what is Wrong. Why? Because, you have not had the experience to enable you to judge in a new condition, to enable you to see the Right in an environment that you have not been in before. When a fresh step forward is to be taken, when a new knowledge is to be gained, what shall you do? You have to act. First, use your best intelligence; think as far as you can. Then try to put aside the bias which the inner desire is apt to imprint upon your thinking. Try to put aside all questions of personal gain, all questions of personal loss, everything which makes you more inclined to take one path or the other. It is a difficult thing to do, and it implies considerable training before you can thus neutralise the inner desires of your nature. Do your best; and then having used your intelligence, having put aside your desires, try, in that tranquillity of mind and senses, lifting up your heart to God, or Master, to see which is the higher path. Sometimes an inner voice will whisper to you and give you guidance; sometimes a ?eva may help you and suggest the better path; sometimes you are left to find your own way. Having done your best, decide; and when you have decided, act; for you have done all you can. Then watch the results; see what is the outcome of your decision; and you will discover by that outcome whether you judged rightly or wrongly. If you judged wrongly, do not regret. You did your best, and you have gained a new experience by the blunder, and it will help you in the future. If you have done right, you are stronger for the future; you have solved a new problem and gained a new knowledge. Sometimes you may come to a point in your evolution, where you have to face the question of following your conviction of the inner law of Right against every impulse that presses you to take a lower path. You have grown to the point where new ideals attract. You have begun to realise that the claim of humanity is greater than the claim of individuals with whom you are connected. You have come to the point to which all must come, to the point where to follow the Right is martyrdom, and where to follow the Wrong is easy and is regarded as praiseworthy by those around you. My Brother, if you have come to that point, be glad with exceeding joy; for it means that you have gone beyond the normal evolution of your race, and that which is Right to the men and women around you has become Wrong to you, who have caught a glimpse of a higher law. And then, surely comes the question: "Will you stand by the fruit of your glimpse, alone, unhelped, unsupported, unregarded? Will you follow Conscience that bids you take the path alone, or will you follow the voice of the multitude, still at a lower range of evolution?" It is the choice of the Hero; it is the choice of the Martyr. Better to die, you will feel, than to bow to a lower law than that which your Spirit has learnt to recognise. To tell a lie is to be debased; to tell a lie is to lose the vision of Truth; to tell a lie is to put a bandage round your eyes, and to refuse to see that which is already glimpsed. And if for you it is easier to face calumny, ostracism, the cold shoulder of friends, the hatred of Governments, and, if against all these things, you say: "It is easier to suffer than to lie," then you are taking your place amidst earth's Heroes, and you are serving your day and generation. But make no mistake; the choice is not as easy as it seems. The worst enemy of the martyr and the hero is the inner enemy, not the outer--the love that pleads with you to falter in your duty; worse than all, the inner doubt. "Can I really be Right, when every one around me tells me I am Wrong? Can I alone see what ought to be done? All these good men and women, honourable, faithful, good citizens of the world, tell me that I am mistaken and headlong. Is it not conceit, is it not vanity, to set my solitary choice against the wisdom of the aged, against the experience of my time?" Ah! that is a worse enemy than any outside pressure, for the outer you can resist, but the inner saps the very essence of your strength; the time comes when you are able to say: "Right or Wrong, whether it leads me to heaven or to hell, I follow the Inner Voice, which is the best guide I have; and, if it leads me wrong to-day, I shall know the Right by my blunder to-morrow." I know that means courage beyond the normal, but that is the courage that the Martyrs have shown, and posterity rewards them, if contemporaries destroy them. For it is true, as Giordano Bruno said, going to the stake: "To know how to die in one century is to live for all centuries to come." And so, again, he taught what he called "the heroic life". "It is better to try nobly and to fail, than ignobly not to try at all." That is the great inspiration for those who have caught a glimpse of the higher. Follow your own higher, whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead you; for the inspiration comes from the highest yet manifest within you, and not to follow it is to be a traitor to the Truth you see. Thus, by study of the Divine Will in Evolution, by trying to see where one stands in the long climbing upwards, every man ultimately, must be the supreme and final judge of Right and Wrong for himself.

But remember: you should not blame your neighbour because he does not see with your eyes. You should not despise those who think you are wrong, but weigh their blame, and see how much of reason there is therein. Remember also that in this struggle upwards, full weight should be given to the experience of the race as well as to your own. You should not despise nor flout those laws which keep the mass of the people in the path of decency and of good citizenship, and you should remember the warning of Shr? K??h?a, so pre-eminently wise: "The standard that the wise man sets, by that the people go." To take your own road alone means a tremendous responsibility, as well as an act of heroism, for others may follow, unknowing, where you have deliberately chosen your path. Others less prepared by self-discipline and training may rush in after you where you have opened the gateway; and so, in your action, by which the blind must judge you, you must consider your circumstances as well as your vision of the Best. Only when to yield is treason to the Highest in you, should you set yourself alone against the world. "Tangled," said Shr? K??h?a, "Tangled is the path of action," and that is true. Therefore you must develop your intellect; therefore you must train your will; therefore you must try to illuminate your judgment; no headlong, thoughtless action must be taken on the first impulse towards an unaccustomed path.

There is one thing that I have often said, and that I will here repeat, especially for my younger friends, whom I welcome to our meetings here. I would say to them: If you want advice, and ask: "Shall I disobey the customary law, and go my own way?"--then wait. The wanting of advice is the sign that the Spirit in you has not yet spoken with the compelling voice that you ought to obey. I have had boys come to me and say: "Shall I disobey my father? this refusal to obey seems to be the right path." My answer invariably has been: "My boy, if you are doubtful, as you must be since you ask me, then obey your father and mother, and see what the result is; for, when the Spirit speaks, no outside advice is wanted." The great decisions of the Spirit are made in solitude, and they are not made by the advice of man. If you want others to support you, if you want the opinion of others to buttress you up, then the chances are, when the moment of stress comes upon you, you will quiver, you will say to your adviser: "Oh! you have advised me to do this; see what trouble it has brought, and I must suffer for it." And so, I have never advised, nor will advise, a great act of sacrifice. O crowd of thoughtful men and women, I say to you: "Choose your highest and follow it unflinchingly." But if any one of you comes to me and says: "Shall I sacrifice this? shall I sacrifice that? shall I disregard the other?" I say: "My friends, the decision is with you and not with me. Your own conscience must guide you. Your own intelligence must direct you. As I cannot suffer for you, I will not advise." For one has no right to impose upon another a sacrifice one is willing to face for one's self. I know my own strength and weakness. I am accustomed by many lives of aspiration to judge what path I shall follow. But shall I follow the path that I see to be Right for me, the path of suffering, and invite others to enter on it, who may not be prepared to face the pain? No; the decision towards pain must be made by the open vision of the one who affronts the suffering; otherwise, in the stress of the agony he may wish he had chosen the easier and the smoother path. The pioneer must know his strength; the pioneer must be ready for the stones that pierce his feet, for the thorns that tear his flesh. Let no weakling enter on the path of that higher, more strenuous, endeavour. We want pioneers. But we want pioneers of courage, of heart, of strength, of endurance, that no danger can daunt, that no peril can paralyse. Only such are worthy to come into the ranks of the pioneers, who make the path along which humanity shall march in days to come. And if you say to me: "Why should we go? Why should we suffer that others may tread smooth? Why should our flesh be torn that others may walk in ease?"--my answer is: "Unless the Spirit is so unfolded in you that the path of progress is to you the path of happiness, so that when the feet are bleeding, when the flesh is tortured, you can look up with a smile and say: 'Lord, I have come to do Thy will'; until the path to you is the only path of happiness, you had better tread the accustomed ways of the men and women around you."

For there is a time in evolution, when all wish for aught the world can give has vanished from the human Spirit; when there is no desire for aught save that God's will may be done on earth, as it is done in the higher realms of wisdom; when to be allowed to suffer in order that that Will may be done is a joy beyond all earthly joy, is a delight beyond anything that the world can give. Realise that the Martyr and the Hero die, because death is the most joyous thing that they can meet, knowing that by their death the world's progress is improved. Unless you feel this in you, then travel along the road that for you is Right; for the consent of the intelligence, the consent of the conscience, the realisation of God, these alone are the strength of the Hero; these, in the midst of the very flames of martyrdom, enable him to smile with joy, for vision of the future that he sees.

BROTHERHOOD

FRIENDS:

We have arrived now at the last of the four Convention Lectures, and I will ask you to recall for a moment the path that we have trodden on these three days.

First you remember we considered the nature, the existence of God, His all-pervading Presence, His all-embracing Love and Power. Then we turned to the study of Man, and we saw that man evolved, grew from a Seed of Divinity into the tree in the likeness of the father-tree, whence the seed was thrown into the world. That he evolved under two great Laws: the "Law of Reincarnation" and the "Law of Causation, or Karma". Yesterday, we considered the complex problem of Right and Wrong, tried to understand the tangled path of action, and to understand also how, by realising our highest capacities of the moment, we could rise higher and higher in Knowledge, in Power, and in Love. To-day we close our study by looking at the "Law of Brotherhood," trying to understand what it means, seeing what it implies, endeavouring then, in the understanding, to see the principles on which a stable Society may be builded, and to glance forward into the near future of Humanity, with the changed ideals which will illuminate the Coming Race.

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