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B.P. Wadia

Extracts from Unpublished Letters

Years 1959 to 1965

December 1959 to June 1960

Page 1 – The Theosophical Movement – December 1959 (p. 72)

"Taking knowledge" should become a habit. And it is not only from books but from people things and objects and also from events that we can learn. Everyone and everything has its own message for us. Nature speaks to us in its own language of sublime silence - through numbers and forms, colours and sounds, words which make events, historically repeated, intuitively prophetic. In our own speech and deeds we learn the motions of our own thinking and feeling. To learn thus we need to be seeing without and serving that without. But it is the Inner which sees and the Inner which serves. Next, in the Inner is the individual "I"-centre and the Universal All-Wholeness. The triple universe - of the without, of the within of the "I," and of the All, the Most High - this should come to our consciousness as we walk, talk, eat and act. Every breath is triple.

This leads to continuous meditation, the first step to which is to do everything with attention. Attention is the power-expression of Dhyana. Concentration begins with attention. Attention directs us to accuracy and punctuality. The feeling of "to do, to do," as Judge puts it, makes us rush and attention is the remedy to slow down and become rhythmic. This forces us to eliminate many actions as unnecessary. So, we are forced to examine our motives and there purity of causation comes in.

Now, we are doing something every moment: we are reading the newspaper or studying the S.D.; we are sitting or we are walking: etc. Well, we have to learn to be attentive to our functions. How do we walk ─ at what speed, with what rhythm? How do we talk ─ fast or deliberately, drawlingly or rhythmically? Just try to concentrate on how you eat - do you eat slowly and deliberately, or do you gobble and get to work? Do you register the taste? And so on. You will soon find that in all this there is a subjective and inner process and an objective, outer process. Other steps follow as we go on.

Page 2 – The Theosophical Movement

You Will find that it is possible for us to know a great many facts about the Masters. i.e., about Their real nature, Their powers, etc. Most people from the days of H.P.B. up till even now have tried to understand Them by the aid of their ordinary thinking minds, and the best of them have failed in comprehending Them. At our stage They and Their Work have to be apprehended. It is a matter more of higher feeling than of philosophical thought. More of imagination should go into our ideation. Our study gives us the basis for our reflection. By this way Judge succeeded where Sinnett failed. So, don't try to reach out to Them with the mind, but, making study and service your basis, reach out to Them with your Heart. Strong search on the path of enquiry, gentle service of the souls of your fellows, humility in both study and service, will make Wisdom spring up spontaneously in you and you will know Them. Read the fourth chapter of the Gita. I tell you, Devotion does it; nothing else can. I agree with you: the starling. point is within ourselves. So. find the starting point within yourself. In fact you have found that starting point in recognizing this very truth. The next steps are in every direction. How very accurately you have found the key to the march forward by Taking up Judge's Letters That Have Helped Me! You cannot find a better guide than those letters, written mostly to Jasper Niemand who succeeded in reaching Them by the heart.

Page 3 – The Theosophical Movement – April 1960 (p. 226)

If you watch you will perceive that all the time within you is taking place a change. The main thing is to keep ourselves energized by right study and real devotion. The first illumines our intelligence, the second brings peace and power to the heart. Both must go together to be truly effective. Be fair and just to yourself and that is achieved by the spirit of self-sacrifice; the manifestation of this must be looked for in our steady, continuous and even attempt to live our best and highest, proceeding from within without. To be sacrificing spasmodically heightens our personality in our eyes. and we fancy we are somebody and say to ourselves, ‘’What a nice fellow I am to do this, or to have done that!” But, if we are evenly and continuously engaged in Work which is Theirs, or in Service which is our fellow men’s, we get little time to ruminate on ourselves; and in comparison to Their effort what is our puny attempt, and in the light of the intense anguish and suffering of millions of minds and hearts what, after all, is the bulk of our petty service? To live, to live, and continue to live the highest within the very core of our being is at once to live in the Eternal and to grow like the flower. All of us have to live and have to grow; if only we would realize that we are in the Eternal though we illusion ourselves by past memories and future anticipations, that we are growing like the rose albeit we foolishly draw the attention of the world to our thorns and look, like a cactus! To be natural, to be spontaneous, to hold everything sacred, to see not only the good in all things but also the beautiful — that is performing yoga, with objects in our environment, with people in our vicinity. Keep on trying therefore, and do not give way to that inner weariness which sometimes comes over you but do not pay any attention to the fact that you are trying — only try. And as to weariness, why — do you remember those beautiful lines of Herbert’s, what God said of man at the creation of the latter? —

Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.

Page 4 - The Theosophical Movement – June 1960

The metaphysical and moral aspects of Theosophy are intimately connected. They are Higher Manas and Buddhi, correspondentially speaking. Buddhi, the moral aspect, has to be activated; students of the S.D. go to the mental aspect. But Buddhi-Manas is latent and aloof from our personalities. We are Kama-Manasic; so lower-Manas mentality, joined to human desires and passions, functions prominently. When we speak of morality we mean human-personality morality — to be good in contradistinction to being spiritual. Similarly our mental efforts at, let us say, grasping the Three Fundamentals are mechanical, not truly metaphysical. The sevenfold man is a robot, not a living, vibrating Antahkaranic entity. Study of the Stanzas of the Book of Dzyan and of The Voice of the Silence should and would produce at least temporarily an Antahkarana slate, during which the world of the senses and the sensuous falls away and that of the Soul and Spirit, of Ideation and Imagination, is brought into activity. We might return to the world of pelf from the world of power, but then we would remember and aspire not to have the world too much with us.

Wisdom is an aspect of Compassion. You will get it a little more quickly if you train your memory to remember and to retain ideas in pairs; i.e., to discern in every teaching both the metaphysical and the moral aspects. You will find that the strong point in Judge’s articles and in Crosbie’s letters. Do not consider only your mental capacities but also your heart-sight. This is very important for you.

Study should not remain an external thing. In fact, if it so remains, then it is not real study. Application, leading to assimilation, is the true learning by heart. Promulgation is the test-tube in which our application-assimilation has to be evaluated. The practice of ethics without a study of metaphysics is not practicable. Why did H.P.B. write on Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis? Why did the Masters take the time and the trouble to give the teachings not only about the seven principles but also about Rounds, Races, etc.? The Voice came the very last. How can anyone seek the Inner Ruler within without a proper and very careful study of (1) the seven principles; (2) their interrelationship; (3) their macrocosmic source; and (4) the Divine Ethics underlying this teaching? Study-application-promulgation are the three sides of an equilateral triangle.

The study of books is highly important. We are apt to become speculative without a proper check-up by consulting the texts. Thinking and assimilation imply application. Of course we should preach what we are able to practise: but do not overlook that promulgation draws our attention to our lack of application. Because we advise and preach, it soon strikes us what we ourselves need to apply. Also, promulgation reveals gaps in our knowledge and it does not take long for us to infer that unless more application is made more knowledge cannot come.