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July 1963 to September 1963

 

Pages 93-95 – The Theosophical Movement – July 1963 (pp. 352-354)

People fancy they love another while they love themselves and want love from son or husband and so on. Between blind Cupid and all-seeing Eros there is the difference between Kama and Buddhi. The gulf to be bridged between divine and human love is wider — and deeper — than between human and animal love.

Our human emotions of love and the rest are different from animal emotions (there is a volume by Charles Darwin on animal emotions). The love of the cow for the calf is different in kind from the love of the human mother for her babe. In some ways that animal instinctive love is superior to the erratic, uncertain love of the human mother; though in reality reason and rationality are meant to improve the intelligent love of the human. Anyway, Divine Love, Compassion, is again different in kind from human love. The ingredients of devotion, gratitude, sacrifice and so forth which Manas brightens up make for divine emotions. Becoming Compassion is a higher stage and follows possessing Compassion. We can develop good emotions and become truly human, but to become divine we have to secure, absorb and assimilate the stuff of Compassion. The higher aspect of Prajna is Compassion and the highest is Compassion Absolute.

We all love differently. Purification of love means in the end impersonalization of love. Recognize that Brotherhood is more a matter of feeling than of thought and more a matter of thought than of words. If people were to act Brotherhood about which they speak, they would be practising the Shila virtue. One has to make a deliberate effort to be brotherly to one person or another. We hope to be brotherly and we are vague and we miss out acting when occasion arises. It is very necessary, therefore, to plan, let us say every morning, how we shall be brotherly to so-and-so during the day, and remember to carry out the resolve. This sounds mechanical, but I do not think it is. There are will, thought and feeling behind such a deliberate act.

Of course none of us is without foibles and weaknesses; but also, is there anyone without love and sacrifice and consideration for friends? As Judge says, in the great round-up our petty faults and even mean-nesses matter but little. Love is the most powerful of forces — immortal and unifying. So, I say — let friendships grow from more to more — more friends and a deepening quality of love for old ones. Exclusiveness and the sense of possession mar the strength and the beauty of love. I do not hold that “Two is company and three is not.” The Self manifesting in different friends is different; each face reveals a new colour, a new number, anew tone, and a new word. To learn to see the Self in the friend enables us to learn to see the Self in the foe.

The joy created by the bond between real boon companions touches all those ready to experience that kind of joy. The invisible effects of love and joy are not calculable and are many and vast. Is it not a saddening commentary on present-day human nature that love and joy have become narrow and restrictive and even polluted? The shadows of lust which look like love produce grief. So, enjoy in secrecy and in silence the love and the joy in the inner recess of your heart created by the bond of companionship and strengthened by true knowledge and pure service of human souls. You must learn to radiate your silent power of love and joy in a quiet, unobtrusive way. As we strive to live and experience heart-love and heart-joy, not only our own thoughts and ideas rise to high elevations but they in their turn raise others to the heights of our own hearts. It is from the Heart that the Path to Them starts within and the depths and the heights become one.

Personal love is not only a stepping-stone but a very necessary one and badly needed. Love, pure and impersonal, is a force or a power which focuses itself at various levels — from the body to Atma. Most of us, at this hour, find it focused in our Kama-Manasic nature. Students of Theosophy, with the aid of our Philosophy, should try to move it one step higher. Manas has to be extricated from the grip of Kama. When this is done, we are Antahkaranic beings and love from that stage is purer and more impersonal as it focuses itself in body and brain. Lust is tamasic Kama; personal, selfish love is rajasic, but when we are centred in Antahkarana and act as Antahkaranic beings we begin to express sattvic love.

As to personal affection and love which are so necessary to be good so as to become spiritual — at our stage we have to learn to purify our love in order to elevate it. Krishna calls Arjuna his “devotee and friend,” and that stage of love is perhaps the last stepping-stone to impersonalization of love. Love for a friend like you seems necessary to me for myself at my stage of evolution; and not only to give and radiate love but to receive it also. The next stage, it seems to me, is the deepening of it through love and devotion to the Guru. Love between co-disciples — Guru-bhais — deepens as devotion towards our own Guru and His Blessed Compeers increases. Just as the personality has not to be destroyed but has to be transformed and transmuted into a Nirmanakaya, so also good and pure love between companions becomes elevated, becomes more and more noble, bringing them nearer to the throne of impersonal love. Through family love broadened we come upon love of those who are not blood-relations and proceed to widen our circle of love. In doing so we come upon the deepening process. We come to love our friend better than our parents and our brothers and sisters. Because of soul-ties co-workers and companions become special friends.

Trust and love tie the knot of friendship, but there are also trust and love in blood ties. There is less of the personal force in friendship and more of the egoic. Love is love — difficult to analyse, but the emotion has to be felt. Love has in it compassion, affinity and devotion; it seems to me that these three ingredients must exist in proper proportion to overcome the vagaries and other awkward obstacles which must come to test our compassion and affinity and devotion. Love is the binding power in and of Tanha— the will to live with others, in others. Hate is the will to live for self and with and in others provided the self is satisfied. A sonnet of Shakespeare has real understanding. It refers to that love which “bears it out even to the edge of doom.” To live with and in others, to pour out any or all of the three aspects into another, into others, into all — that is expansion and hate is contraction.

It is not only natural but essential that there should be a mutual exchange of love, trust and faith between friends. But one must not have a bargaining spirit: “He is cold, therefore I will be cold.” “He is warm, therefore I will be warm.” You say that it must be two-way traffic, but in chelaship we are learning something more. To begin with, take an example, not from individual, but from corporate life: Masters love humanity; it is one-way traffic. They work, watch and labour, and civilizations rise and fall and rise again, but They go on. Now, in a 'similar fashion, take our own real and great Guru. He knows us from the past. Kali-Yuga and other Karmic conditions blot out our personal memory of the inner relationship. What does the Master do? Ever ready He is, waiting for the chela to get ready. Then, even during chelaship, how graciously, how patiently, how compassionately He watches, now coaxing, now admonishing, mostly in silence, to make the chela awaken! That, in a way, is one-way traffic. Now we have to learn quietly and silently to copy that almost unapproachable example. Suppose you find your friend going astray, then going wrong, will you stop loving him, advising him, admonishing him, etc.? If you left him, would it be for you a step taken on the right path? So, you will soon find yourself developing the holding power which labours for two-sided traffic while going singly on the single track. What I am trying to convey to you is in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Love’s not Time’s fool...
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Read the whole of it. It begins: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

Pages 96-97 – The Theosophical Movement – August 1963 (pp. 392-393)

It is a deepening process — this kind of love in which mind participates with heart. Our Theosophy is Divine Love and practice of it in this special way has an elevation all its own. How many moderns can value it or even appreciate it or are capable of accepting it as a possibility? To love and serve and help one another without lust or personal attachments which cause personal bickerings; and constructively, to acquire the technique of holding minds and hearts in embrace, destroying the mundane effects of space and time — this is what we need. This type of inner communion is useful also inasmuch as it is the extension of this very technique which is used in the higher phases of chelaship. The same can be accomplished by each with others. Where is jealousy? Where is envy? And all the anxiety, worry and depression? It is sweetness and light all along the line.

Love by its very power and purity is very often apt to stir up jealousy in others. Its very seed is dangerous and Judge speaks of seeds acting in a metamorphosed way. Jealousy is like a weed in creeper form; it entwines round our whole nature. It is almost impossible to destroy the creeper once it has grown within and without our corpus. But one has to watch for the very seeds. Those who never heard of the idea of self-discipline and know nothing about its ways and means suffer from it; they catch the disease and do not know it. Fortunate in that are those who know the place, purpose and value of discipline and try to control the mind and elevate the heart.

Love’s electricity and magnetism when pure radiate spreading beneficence because one’s abiding heart-love becomes viable and breaks the hard shell of the personal. A crust of personal matter surrounds us, shutting us in. Love, and it alone, breaks it. Cracks thus made in the shell enable us to see beyond; and then knowledge is very necessary, for seeing without understanding brings subtle selfishness in place of selfishness of a crude and gross variety. Blind love is the root of selfishness and strife. The spiritual variety is unselfish. If we try to analyse its manifestation we find that this central love manifests as compassion, charity and sympathy to those less evolved; friendliness, companionship and comradeship with our equals; and devotion, reverence and worship to those who are mightier than ourselves. Thus from our “sphere of sorrow” feeling radiates to Deity Itself, abstract and concrete — Brahman and Krishna, the Absolute and the Logos. Then comes the next step — to see the Divine Krishna in all men and women.

It is good that you find that Love is a real power — shakti. The primal power of Krishna is called Daiviprakriti; when it becomes active it is Compassion manifested and creates human souls. Gods live and multiply, it is said. How do they create? By Will and Yoga, says the S.D. It is Compassion in action. It is Kriya Shakti, i.e., this primal Shakti acts — creates in and by action. H.P.B. says that Daiviprakriti or Para Prakriti is Fohat. Fohat is spoken of as “He” (see S.D., vol I), and He creates Wisdom. We at our human stage are purifying and elevating human love to become Divine Love, creative and regenerative. At the early stages love creates not by and with bodies only but esotericists are learning to create by thoughts and feelings. This is not Kriya Shakti but will lead to Kriya Shakti in the progress of time.

Feeling is experience. Lower feelings bring mundane experiences. Higher feelings or aspirations create celestial experiences. Love and devotion are potent powers.

Love and devotion are precious —the best kind of wealth. Heart qualities change for the better our mind and thoughts. A new style of thinking, in motive and method, and so a transmuted attitude, is all too valuable. Fix yourself, more and more, in the Higher or Inner, and let your love for all you contact and your devotion to the Great Blessed Masters glow from more to more. Grow like the flower, spreading beauty and balm all around.

The power which sustains the relationship between friends comes from mutual trust. Not even affection and love work in the final tests — it is trust. The occult world of the Masters is held together by the Pure Prana — Trust. Personal love vanishes but trust in persons and personages remains. So you will please learn to trust — not blindly, but intelligently. Never judge hastily. Many things and teachings you may not understand, but try to use the key of trust to open the locked knowledge. None of us are perfect; the tallest among us has his limitations and blemishes. Only one thing gives the real test: Is one, through good and evil report, ill or well, respected or suspected, loved or disliked, going on with the task of Masters? Trust is of the heart. There are many, many things in Occultism that one does not understand, that puzzle. Look at the history of Hume, Sinnett and others. Who trusted to the endless end? H.P.B. did and Judge and Damodar and Crosbie and a few others, known and unknown. So study in and with trust, apply trustfully, and above all serve, trusting Them and Their Philosophy. But be prepared to be doubted and suspected, not by all and sundry but by those very ones whom you trust. Silence and secrecy will aid you. Well, can say many more things on trust and silence, but just one thought, see how Karma works — it trusts the sufferer and the wrong-doer by giving him opportunity to adjust the error and secure true happiness. Also, how profound is the silent and secret activity of the Good Law which “know not wrath nor pardon”!

May the Great God of Love help you to see light in darkness, great in small good in evil and the Whole in the part! Endow knowledge with love and your life will become increasingly a, holy life of service to all.

Pages 98-100 – The Theosophical Movement – September 1963 (pp. 433-435)

Turning to your problem about God and prayer: This is a point winch many friends raise. When they read such a sentence as the Key contains: “Prayer kills self-reliance,” they are confused. Prayer as ordinarily understood, as an appeal for favours to a Personal God, is one thing, and prayer as an inner communion with one’s own Divinity in the heart is a different thing. H.P.B. has made that clear and a recent article in the May [1953] number of The Theosophical Movement, “How Shall We Pray?” ought to satisfy any honest inquirer. We are not against the prayer which appeals for guidance and help to one’s own Inner Divinity. Here a distinction has to be made between the person who prays, that is, the personality, and the intelligence to whom prayer is offered, namely, the individuality. Unless there is consubstantiality between the two intelligences, the personality and the individuality, there cannot be any real communion. Therefore the implication is that the personality should purify itself and bring itself nearer and closer to the individuality if the personality’s prayers have to be answered. This important idea is not understood.

That brings me to your next problem, that in Theosophy there is no scope or outlet for man’s emotional nature as there is in prayer or worship. This also is not quite accurate, for the emotional nature has to be purified and elevated. Desires are of two kinds, and desires are the basis of all emotional activity. There are higher desires, which we may call aspirations, and the aspirations bring into play the right kind of emotions. The feeling of devotion, of enlightened faith, the intense longing to do the right, to tread the path, to come in contact with the Masters, are all proper channels for the expression of the higher emotions or aspirations. Anyway it is indeed good to know that though they may speak of the absence of emotional expression, at your meetings there is great fervour and enthusiasm. That itself shows that Theosophy is not devoid of the right type of aspirational expression.

We must evaluate our wrong actions through self-examination and then use the way of true repentance, including, “Look not behind or thou art lost.”

Self-examination is very necessary. It is of two sorts, a daily one and a periodic one. Two sources provide the correct check. (1) our own Higher Self and Inner Ego and (2) the Divine Philosophy and especially the Divine Paramitas. This is part of our discipline Incidentally, it develops the much-needed virtue of intellectual honesty.

About self-examination: Of course there is a reflex action in self- self-righteousness. “Regret nothing,” says Judge. “Look not behind,” says the Voice. This ingredient in our attitude balances and also brighten up the dreary side of this business. Nothing, self-examination included, is perfect. All human actions are enveloped by ills, says the Gita. So we have to go onwards calmly and patiently. Detachment and resignation unfold gradually and we have to be prudent and observant to be deliberate.

Memory and loss of memory is the central psychological problem of every aspirant. Fixed times of meditation and self-examination help all daily processes; and the latter deepen the special acts. Unity all the time, everywhere. Resignation and activity also are unified; so are frustration and successes. So must emerge “calmness ever present.”

The words of Paul about mind-control are an experience which every aspirant on the Path of Chelaship passes through. They parallel the closing part of the third chapter of the Gita.

Theosophy has practical guidance to give on the subject of what is ordinarily and loosely called meditation. The general idea is well given — in U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 12, which reprints the articles of Damodar and Mr. Judge. Our Hindu brothers get all tangled up with the words without making a proper distinction between the terms they use. The term generally used is “Yoga,” as in the Sixth Chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita, and it is related to the subject of meditation. The important point made there is that two qualities are necessary — Abhyasa, which involves practice according to knowledge, and Vairagya, which means dispassion. These two are considered essential for the practice of meditation. But the important point must not be overlooked: Krishna recommends that every time the wandering mind goes away from the subject under consideration it should be brought back and put upon the Spirit. People do not understand this. If I am engaged in, let us say, a mundane matter, connected with my routine life, I am supposed to be concentrated there. My mind wanders. I am called upon to bring it back, not to the work from which it wandered, but to the Spirit. Unless the real significance of this is understood, confusion results. There is a spiritual basis or aspect of every mundane activity and the general direction is that you should find that spiritual aspect, for it is on the basis of the spiritual aspect that concentration or meditation or contemplation can be practised. People want to have a spiritual experience in special meditation of half an hour or an hour and they fail, simply because the real power of their periodic meditation is not utilized. I will never be able to bring my wandering mind under my control if I devote only an hour to keep it from wandering, when during the rest of the period it wanders.

But the Gita does not go further into the details about the exercise. The next book that people use is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and there again they begin to use terms without understanding their proper meaning and significance There are four terms used: Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. There is a fascination that people have for Dhyana and Samadhi without a realization that in the absence of the first steps of Pratyahara and Dharana, Dhyana is not possible, much less Samadhi. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the principles which are contained in these terms.

Pratyahara deals with the power of the mind which must try to gain one-pointedness in reference to whatever it is doing, and this is a worldly exercise. It is not necessarily recommended that special objects of meditation shall be taken up. But the highest in each aspect has to be sought out. This is the same as what is said in the Sixth Chapter of the Gita.

Then comes the subject of concentration; the next is contemplation, and then realization. Take the analogy of a military army. A regiment is concentrated, is brought to a point; all the soldiers come together. Then the general contemplates the object to be attacked — a city or a fort or a hill, or what not. Then he gives orders for the regiment to make its attack and that city or fort or hill is taken possession of. This is a good imagery. We must come to a central point, must concentrate. The very word indicates coming together to a centre. Now look up the root of the word “contemplation.” It is the consideration of that which has come together. Then Samadhi is the possession of the object contemplated upon, becoming one with that object. As a matter of fact, every wandering mind, without meaning to do so, goes through all these three stages. Mr. Judge tries to explain this in his Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita. So you see, it is a complex subject and it is necessary for us to get hold of the primary principle.

The other difficulty that you will find is that no concentration is possible unless the nature of the Higher or Spiritual Self is understood, at least in some measure. At one stage it is the lower self in its concentrated position that contemplates on the Higher Self and becomes one with that Higher Self. Then the next position is that, having become one with the Higher Self, once again he descends into his lower nature as a superior controller than when he left his ground previously.

You will find that if our Indian students will turn to The Voice of the Silence and take up certain verses they will be more successful in their meditation than by going through the difficult things which are written in Sutra style in the Patanjali book. A Sutra itself requires deciphering. An aphorism is not an easy thing and so such sentences in The Voice of the Silence as pertain to the subject of mind will prove beneficial. Take for example: “The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real,” or the verses about withholding the mind from external objects and internal images, or the verse that refers to the mind as a mirror and to the dust to be brushed away from it; then there is this verse: “Thyself and mind like twins upon a line, the star which is thy goal burns overhead.” And there are other verses. If any student is really interested, he can cull from The Voice of the Silence these verses and arrange them in a particular order. I did that many years ago and found it worked admirably in more than one direction.

 

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