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October 1960 to November 1960

Pages 10-11 – The Theosophical Movement – October 1960 (pp. 474-475)

Constant thinking of the Divine has to be by trying to see Divinity in the very jobs we are doing. In the paper we write on and in the ink we write with there is Divinity as our very words carry thoughts within them. The periodic remembrance of this several times a day makes the remembrance permanent. Sacramental deeds, a few every day, produce their effects and one of these is continuity in sacredness. Our work will not suffer if we feel calm — “with calmness ever present.”

Metaphysically speaking, every type of action proceeds from and is rooted in an archetype. Every word of ours proceeds from a thought and that thought has an archetypal origin; so also every deed of ours. Routine or “prosaic and worldly” duties are linked up archetypally. Thus daily waking up is the return of the Ego to the body; everyday bathing is cleansing and ought to remind us of Baptism, Snan, or the Parsi Nahan. Breaking our fast is like the child’s sucking its mother’s breast — we suck Mother Nature. Going to sleep and death of body are kindred types to the setting of the sun, which also is an action rooted in the same archetype; and so on. It is the recalling of the archetype that makes the prosaic poetic, makes the worldly romantic or other-worldly. Sacramental become our secular deeds and events. I am writing this letter to you — body speaking to body but also mind and soul speaking to mind and soul. It comes from the same archetype as my Ego’s whispering to my brain. I am using pen and paper, i.e., the king of my body (the brain) directs my pen to make marks on paper; so there is the king consciousness in Nature — Purusha using the media of Prakriti.

Our recalling or remembrance is an act of memory; when it is deliberate we consciously link ourselves up with Akasha— the Divine Astral. What ordinarily are called evil expressions are not directly connected with Akasha but come through the Astral Light. But every sin is a dark shadow of a Paramita. On more and more occasions every day we should try to recall this spirit-matter relationship. Take the correcting of proofs — is it not an art which calls for correction according to the right model or the MS.? Is this not akin to the process employed in self-examination whereby we correct our lower personality by the model-picture of our Inner Ruler? Work it out along these lines; it is a fascinating exercise; the continuous use of it is taxing. but we do get accustomed to it. This is what is implied in the Gita— walking or sitting, remember me, says Krishna. Judge ends Chapter III of his Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita with a quotation where numerous “gods” are mentioned and the list covers many routine acts. Please read those pages once again in the light of what I have said above. Thus the whole of life becomes holy. It is holiness, wholeness or health which we are seeking and attempting to secure.

Morning corresponds to our birth as to the birth of the Cosmos. It is a new emanation and that is Karma, as Krishna points out in the eighth chapter of the Gita, in the very opening verses. Morning, the first day of the week, the bright fortnight of the moon, etc., are indicative of the rising cycle. There cannot but be a meaning hidden in the intimate relationship between Deity and Man, soul and body, and so on. The law of correspondences is a highly important law of knowledge, for it becomes the language of the developing intuition. May your latent divine intuitions begin to unfold fast and faster!

If within us the heart throbs for the Guru in devotion and without we are concentrated in all we do, a sacred force, the sacramental power flows. It is not something special but it is using space and time increasingly from the Spirit point of view. We meet the same people but we meet them differently. Conscious living in the Spirit, all the time, is living in the Eternal. Thus we begin to see the immortality aspect of conscious life. This is a profound subject and much can be said, but for today this should suffice. Service of the All, the One Self, in space and time reveals the Servant within the carapace of selfhood.

“Live in the Eternal.” Some good points on this subject are to be found in Through the Gates of Gold. We do not truly live in the present, for every time we are thinking of the past or of the future with which what we are doing now is connected. Memory and anticipation all the time engulf the present. Now, when in our acts we forget the past and the future and are absorbed only in the present, we are touching the Eternal. What kind of acts (be they mental, moral or physical) make us forget memories and anticipations? Unselfish, sacrificial, service-full acts. What do we mean when we say, for example, “One forgets oneself on the platform”? It means the lower personal self. Now, the present which is not joined to the memory-anticipation complex is attached to the Higher. Personal memories, hopes, etc., keep us tied to the lower, the mundane, the temporal. We are called upon to overcome “the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.” The Temporal and the Eternal are our yokes and our unions. The former moves horizontally: past, present, future — the present joining us to the other two. But when we go up, so to speak vertically, or deep within, we are proceeding towards the Eternal. And sometimes, for a moment or a few minutes, we experience Eternity. “To see a world in a grain of sand . . . and eternity in an hour” are space-time correlates. Hope you will find this helpful in your study and cogitations on the subject. May the Eternal sustain you from day to day!

Pages 12-13 – The Theosophical Movement – November 1960 (pp. 34-35)

Steadfastness is an important quality. No doubt you will be cultivating it. Let nothing disturb you. Keep Masters alive in your heart, Their Teachings in your mind. Keep close to the Great Ideas which nourish the embodied soul and purify it of all dross. Elation and depression must and will come like the heat of May and the cold of January, but it is we who feel heat and cold; in themselves heat and cold are natural conditions in the right place; so also with elation and depression and all other pairs of opposites. The very best antidote to these pairs is to be found in the 12^th Chapter of the Gita—numerous pairs are mentioned and by rising above them Devotion, true Bhakti, results. Steadfastness is not possible without a deepening devotion.

So build your Inner Centre. Do not wait. Study and reflection, self-examination and right resolves daily considered will form that Centre. By all means go slow, but emphasize “go” not “slow”! Live in the Centre within, not only in hours of study and reflection, but try even when you are eating food, doing chores. Our food feels better to the tongue, our pots and pans shine brightly by an inner radiance of their own. Believe me, it is true that we can and should bring out the radiance inherent in every person, in every object and in every event. This enriches life, makes it good and beautiful and true.

 All the time we must try to take whatever Time develops — the sweet with the sour and even the bitter. It is most annoying when trifles interrupt work, but that too has its value; our spiritual Will develops as we remain steady and calm and are able to turn from one to the other thing, to execute a duty and then to return to the previous one. Spiritual Will requires this and incidentally teaches us to look upon all jobs as of value, and from and through each Karma fulfils itself. Patience is a great virtue and is needed at every turn, almost every hour. Do not allow anything to cause annoyance in you. You are building a centre within yourself — a centre of thought, feeling and will in consciousness. Unless we stand the shock of outer impacts by the thousand we are not pukka fellows! This is a most important exercise and I know we fall a million times. So take care of the Inner Centre and do not allow things to ruffle you. Put your attention constantly on the Masters, the Great Gurus, who are so patient and forgiving with us personally and with the race as it goes through civilizations. Devotion to the Blessed and Holy Ones who are perfect has to be developed, and They watch with joy as we overcome our small foibles and weaknesses. And are these really small? So piety and patience as holding powers are essential. There is psychic cohesion and not only bodily. In the last chapter of the Gita there is something valuable for us on cohesion and steadfastness.

I find it more and more necessary to live within and to value the outer, including the body, at its true worth. We allow the without to affect us overmuch. “The world is too much with us” — there are some good things in Wordsworth. We must get hold of the within and make it a habit to establish truth and purity as bases for thought; from there we see and value the great without. That will be our firm position and the end in view should be to gaze still inwards and to the beyond where the Self is. More and more of this practice seems necessary not only to live as one should but also to serve as one should. We slip off and almost every five minutes we have to catch ourselves and bring ourselves to be the seeker and the seer within the brain-mind.

The one and only thing you can do under existing circumstances is to be firm in the inner position — the seat neither low nor high and the eyes fixed on Them. Study and work are not only your salvation and your protection; there is nothing else to do, without a bad fall which will cause injury. Be cheerful and lot nothing daunt you. Resist without resisting. Your peculiar environment provides excellent opportunities to develop Vairagya within and thoroughness without. You may feel “imperfect” in your practice: are you? In what measure? Perfection is not there, granted; but persistency is the measuring stick. Vairagya in the mind and in the heart, in the small hourly affairs, will make your Inner Centre strong and then potent. Mundane things are mortal and will pass away, while we learn and grow through endurance. Higher carelessness, higher patience and higher resignation are the real roads to the Self, and before we reach It we meet Masters.

There is a bright side to every darkness. Each night is dark; but arising out of day it gives birth to another day. If we can but succeed in retaining our calm centre in mind as well as in heart! Trials and tribulations become helpers if we but remember their purpose in human evolution. We not only undervalue Nature’s gifts but do not recognize them as gifts. The blessed knowledge of Theosophy stirs us up but also proves a solace and a soothing grace.

Each one has a kind of heart shell in which he lives in a world of his own, and he often does not know the real outside world till the shell is broken and he can see the real world as it is, without any veils of delusion and illusion. Knowledge does it, but knowledge is not the final breaker of this shell. The real breaker of the heart shell is the accumulation of knowledge and the aspiration to use that knowledge out of love for humankind. That is where devotion, even to a few people or a single individual is of real help to the aspirant. This idea is an important one and a real one. because the outermost layer of the subtle body is very hard, like the skeleton of the physical body, and unless it is cracked and breaks open, our real vision into the inner worlds does not begin to function