1
At the heart of every atom of every universe there
is Spirit, divine and deathless. It is for this reason that any human society
based upon its denial has no future and cannot survive. As long as man exists he
will need to satisfy inner hunger, to find spiritual comfort, to receive holy
communion, and to hear words of eternal truth.
2
The sight of evil men rising to power over stupid or
stupefied masses has brought good men to despair. But the universe has room for
both. It is a school for all and the outcome of its instruction is yet to be
seen.
3
It may well be that those who have banished the
religious faith of childhood from their hearts and replaced it by the scientific
scepticism of adulthood, followed by the political cynicism of maturity, will
end by banishing hope, too. The perversity of mankind, the hypocrisy of its
leaders, and the presence of materialistic society may well seem to justify it.
4
Through ignorance of destiny's laws and through
weakness in his psychological being, man creates the conditions which must
finally express themselves in violent conflict with his fellows.
5
Most people have failed to recognize that the forces
of destiny are back of these events. Even the powerful impact of such stirring
events as history has recorded in our own times has not been enough to bring
about this recognition. Yet they sense their own helplessness, although they do
not understand that it is the very inevitability of their karma which has made
them feel this helplessness.
6
Some men radiate animosity as others radiate
goodwill. The unfortunate members of the first class are victims of their own
negative thinking.
7
Those of us who have been born and brought up in
democratic countries like England and the USA rightly resent the idea of living
under oppressive dictatorship. Yet we tend to overlook the fact that even in
such countries the State is itself becoming more and more formidably dictatorial
as it becomes more and more centralized. Those of us who value individuality and
freedom are coming into inner conflict with it - some of us even into outer
conflict.
8
Men who are scarcely sane, who are either
pathological cases or in need of psychological treatment, become heroes and
leaders among the young.
9
Confronted in actual firsthand experience by the
terrors and errors, the tragedies and sufferings of these decades, the serious
mind could lose its balance enough to declare life an unmitigated evil.
10
The disciples of Materialism say that the
execution of 3000-odd persons in the French Revolution was a small price to pay
for the beneficial reforms which it brought about. But only the philosopher can
trace the line of connection between its hatred and violence and the Napoleonic
wars which soon followed it, taking a half million French lives and hundreds of
thousands wounded, mutilated, or crippled French bodies; these too must be added
to the cost of hatred, the price of violence.
11
Cunning criminals and brutal plotters have found
whole nations willing to follow them.
12
These sinister figures seek, and often get, key
positions in politics, organized groups, etc., and from there manipulate the
mass and use them as blind unwitting tools.(P)
13
When we examine the forces which are active in the
heart of sick humanity today, we must report little hope for the patient's
future if we are to report faithfully at all.
14
Spiritual faith is stronger in a few individuals
but weaker in the great masses. The future is bright for better machines yet
dark for better morals. A moral awakening and religious renewal was hoped for.
That, unfortunately, is not the situation which has actually developed. Humanity
has suffered but has not been prepared enough by its sufferings to let the new
spirit have entry into its heart. Nothing is gained by blinking at these facts.
The end of the war did not bring that new spirit amongst mankind which is the
prerequisite to a better era. The social, political, and economic structures now
being erected will not succeed without it. It is a waste of time to enter any
public activity which is foredoomed to defeat.
15
The disadvantage of attempting to avoid sufficient
consideration of these truths and of shutting his eyes to their consequences, is
that the pleasanter time thereby gained is much more than offset by the immense
worsening of the climax when it does come.
16
Too many find their work boring, their careers
futile, and their lives aimless. The result is spiritual torpor.
17
In other times what they sought from drink or sex,
ambition or adventure, was happiness. But in these times what they seek from
them is - short of killing themselves - refuge from unbearable hopelessness and
fatiguing uselessness.
18
They must be uneasy whose hearts are spiritually
empty but whose world is full of menace.
19
The past has become a grave of buried hopes, the
present a dulled waiting for better times, and the future a bitter blankness
which will not bear contemplation.
20
Just as the introduction of poisons into the human
body harms it, so the introduction of unsuitable materials and forces into the
earth's body will harm it too. Nature brings its own retribution to its dwellers
for what they do to the planet. This applies just as much to the introduction of
mental and psychical pollutions into the invisible atmosphere or aura.
21
The magnetic relationship between the two earth
poles has been disturbed by the excessive amounts of radiation poured lately
into space, with great weather disturbance as a result.
22
A despondent outlook can be an effective obstacle
to hearing the Overself's voice.
23
History, both ancient and modern, shows that there
is much evil in mankind, that its stupefying effect leads not only to an
unwillingness to listen to truth and an unreadiness to understand it, but also
to a hostile malignity against it expressed through vituperation and opposition.
24
Resistance to the spiritual forces and rejection
of their message must lead in the end to the destructive penalties of which war,
pestilence, and flood are instances.
25
"Conscious of danger in its depth, I would not
preach the Law of Laws to men." Thus Buddha told his disciples of one of the
reasons why he first refused to make public his discovery of ultimate truth. To
whom was this danger? If to himself, he was above fear. It was to his own
generation. He expressly declared, on another occasion, "I have seen these
things before, yet I did not reveal them. I might have revealed it, and others
would not have believed it. Now, had they not believed me, it would have been to
their loss and sorrow." Buddha meant - and his meaning is further elucidated by
other sayings - that those to whom he offers mystical truth and reject it, will
bring hurt upon themselves by the very act of rejection. Such truth is
accompanied by great power. It cannot be separated from its sayer. The sage
doubted is the truth doubted. The sage rejected is the truth rejected. When this
happens, the accompanying power - which would have blessed and helped if
believed in - still affects those it touches but affects them adversely. It is
like electricity, which is so useful a servant of man but so dangerous when not
rightly treated, which may save life or destroy it altogether. The Prophet of an
age or a continent knows these facts, as the law that brings him into birth
knows it too. Consequently he appears when humanity has passed through such
tremendous self-earned sufferings that the risk involved in saying the Word and
thus showing them the only true way out, becomes an act of mercy by contrast.
26
When man becomes insensitive to the sacredness
within himself, he is lost.
27
It is a sin to deny the Power from which his body
draws its life, his mind its consciousness and intelligence, his soul its very
existence. It invites punishment, which comes through being left alone with the
opposing force in Nature, with its physical, intellectual, psychical and subtle
forces, unguided by the intuitive and unprotected by the divine. Man then tries
to live by his own light alone. He fails, stumbles, falls and suffers. This is
his position today and this is why there is a world-crisis of stupendous
proportions. This is his hour of real need. This is when he must turn, as in
Biblical history, to his true Deliverer. Every other way out except this one is
closing for him.
28
Atomic Energy. What the scientists have
done is to destroy the atom, the stuff which God made and used to make
the universe. They have released destructive forces into the world and
degenerative forces along with them among mankind. Even the peaceful commercial
use of nuclear energy in reactor-installations brings these evils among us and
the precautionary safeguards fail to overcome them.
29
Man's intellect, when not balanced by intuitive
feeling and when directed by his animalistic and egoistic impulses, can only
lead him to self-destruction in the end. In a total sense, this will not be
permitted by the World-Mind. Therefore, its course will be hindered and he
himself restrained as soon as the time is appropriate.
30
The physical starvation or privation which
afflicts so many millions in Europe and Asia is deplorable but the spiritual
starvation or moral degeneration which afflicts many more is really a worse
evil. This idea may seem strange, even repulsive, to most people. For its truth
can become evident only after carefully thinking out the causes and consequences
of both situations, although it is evident in a flash to those who have enough
intuitive insight.
31
There is a grimmer prospect than overpopulation.
By destroying his home, man as species is destroying himself, not to mention
animals and plants who will pass with him. If this planet dies a new one will be
born, yes, but he will carry the moral guilt.
32
In an unsympathetic society, what is deep in a
man's heart may be deliberately denied expression and not allowed to come out.
33
The large cities have become large blots on
mankind's inner life and outer health. They are marvels of ingenious
arrangements but monstrosities of nervous strain and psychoneurosis. Their
inhabitants follow an artificial existence under the delusion that it is a human
existence. Everything within them is abnormal yet custom and cowardice,
ignorance and selfishness have proclaimed it normal. The air is filled with
chemical poisons by travelling vehicles and factories and industrial plants.
Their water flows through miles and miles of sediment-lined pipes. Their food is
stale, devitalized, adulterated, and often disease-breeding. The unnatural
living and high tension of millions of city-prisoned people exposes them to
physical and nervous sickness.
34
It becomes harder with each year for the
inhabitants of modern London or modern New York to achieve this gentle
receptiveness to intuitive spiritual moods.
35
Science has not served the world if its industrial
constructions have turned wandering streams into foul gutters, green fields into
filthy slums, and pleasant valleys into mean joyless streets. Worse is the
poisoned air and food, the mechanized worker.
36
In destroying woods and forests, in building over
glades and dells, men have been destroying one of their principal resources of
spiritual welfare. The message which their loveliness and silence could give is
lost; the benefit to feeling and thought is not received.
37
Bafflement in the face of the world problem
produces inertia and paralyses initiative.
38
We all are suffering the evil effects of dispersed
radioactivity even now. The dosage is small but cumulative, worsening with every
year that passes.
39
An exhausted people may become too tired to
believe in anything or to hold on to principles, may live from moment to moment
in weary opportunism.
40
Despite delusions about their progress in
conquering Nature all men are still controlled by Nature's higher laws.
Violation of those laws always brings suffering but the present-day violation
will bring disaster.
41
An ethically blinded world may not perceive the
actuality and factuality of karma. Hence, it may not comprehend that it was
Europe's remorseless collective karma which compelled Neville Chamberlain -
pacifist though he was - finally to declare the war for whose avoidance he had
dedicated the work of a whole decade. There is no other God pulling historic
strings than the karmic laws of retribution and re-adjustment. And let us not
forget that this destiny is not an arbitrary tyrannical power; it is self-earned
by the nations as by individuals and thus self-called into operation. The
sufferings it brings to peoples are really the reactions of their own near or
remote deeds. They are visited by the consequences of their own making. Karma
works in its own time to set straight all crooked things, not in ours.
Nevertheless we can sometimes see it move quickly enough to teach a vivid lesson
both to those who suffer its consequences and those who observe that suffering.
42
Because sufficient people were unable or unwilling
to learn the proper lessons of the first world war, they had to suffer the
consequences of this failure in a worse form - the second world war. If the
latter's lessons are in turn also left unlearned, then those consequences will
come in the worst possible form - a third and atomic world war.
43
When a civilization becomes so mechanized or
brutalized or sensualized or materialized as to be quite insensitive to the
higher values of life, it invokes its own slow passing away or abrupt
disappearance.
44
The violence and vice of our times are the direct
consequences of the irreverence and materialism of our times.
45
When men who have spent their whole lives
harbouring destructive ideas are given a constructive teaching, they are
naturally impermeable and unreceptive to it. There are materialists who are
impatient at hearing philosophic truths and even irritated by them. Such persons
may even become quite violently abusive. This happens because they have
completely lost their capacity to practise calm unprejudiced abstract thinking,
and because they have crushed the feeling of veneration before something higher
or nobler than themselves - whether it be a beautiful landscape or God.(P)
46
The hard, almost callous, insensitivity of so many
moderns, their sceptical, contemptuous, sarcastic, and conceited attitude when
confronted with the finer and subtler things of life, show how deeply atheism,
or materialism, has eaten into their souls, how ignorant they are of the higher
laws governing life.
47
We naturally and normally shrink from entering
into the study of spiritual mysteries, so materialized have we become.
48
Man is more miserable, more restless and
unsatisfied than ever before, simply because half his nature - the spiritual -
is starving for true food, and the other half - the material - is fed with bad
food.
49
Whilst so many are obsessed by materialistic
outlooks, it is inevitable that they should lose the moral sense and commit
blunder after blunder and consequently suffer distress after distress. Yet of
the worst result of these obsessions they are not even aware. And that is, to
live so remote from their own inner core of divinity as to miss the most
worthwhile values and meanings of life itself.
50
Without knowledge of these higher laws, men
blunder into sin and suffering. With the increased power to hurt others which
the advances of science have brought them, the need of this knowledge has become
acute. For the fear and hate which they have brought over from their animal
phase of evolution will still motivate the use of this power.
51
The search for truth is impossible in a society
where freedom of thought is forbidden, where public activity on behalf of
mystical truth is totally forbidden and on behalf of religious truth
progressively throttled.
52
It was not a moralist or religionist, but an
economist - J.M. Keynes himself - who looked back on life and confessed that "in
truth, it was the Benthamite Calculus, based on over-valuation of the economic
criterion, which was destroying the quality of the popular ideal."
53
Higher values vanish, morals disappear, and
character becomes baser when the shallow atheism replaces superstition and
imposture masquerades as religious faith.
54
Their faith in a higher purpose of life having
failed, it is not long before the labour of correcting and purifying human
nature will seem unnecessary.(P)
55
The suffering which people have gone through has
not awakened them sufficiently, and spiritually people have even declined. This
is a grave problem everywhere, and has its roots in a materialistic obsession
with a merely external life.
56
The worth or worthlessness of a materialistic
attitude towards life will come out not only in dealing with the ordinary
questions and everyday problems but much more in special difficulties,
emergencies, and crises.
57
The danger today is that most men are not only
unaware of their true relation to Nature but also obsessed by their deceptive
materialistic illusions about it.
58
The very sense of an inner lack which exists in so
many people today, is itself a recognition of their spiritual deficiency.
59
A world without meaning, a life without purpose -
this is the miserable consequence of materialism!
60
The number of awakened individuals must be
compared with the number who still remain asleep in ignorance and materialism.
Then it will be realized how greatly the latter rules humanity.
61
Millions of people seem to carry on their lives
quite comfortably and form their opinions quite easily without the necessity of
troubling themselves about the place in one for spiritual laws and in the other
for spiritual truths. It is as if such things simply did not exist. The realm of
spiritual truths has become like a foreign country to them, the spiritual life
like a queer eccentricity. It is not that they are incapable of understanding
the truths, for many of them have fair intelligence, or that they are too
distant from the life, for many of them are good in heart and conduct. But when
so many people are so unaware of, or so indifferent to, the higher purpose of
life it requires no special foresight to forecast what gloomy changes will take
place in their future course. Those whose interest in life begins and ends in
their little egos, who cannot believe in and immediately reject the need of
putting a higher purpose into all their activities, naturally fall into
unavoidable error and ex perience avoidable sufferings.
62
Both the protagonists in our contemporary
international scene have really fallen into the same soul-sickness; the chief
difference is only in the way and the extent to which they fell into it. Both
have sold their spiritual birthright for a mess of materialistic pottage, the
one through temptation and freedom and the other through blindness and
compulsion. The goals of both civilizations are similar, only their methods and
atmosphere differ, and differ widely. Both seek the mechanistic and
materialistic life, but one only partially, the other wholly. Hence the real
struggle is between two varieties of materialism. The only correct conclusion is
that this is not so much a conflict of clashing ideologies as of two different
variants of the same ideology - a good variant and an evil one. This leads to a
confused rather than a clear issue. The clean-cut difference in ethical values,
aims, and ideals which made the war against the previous incarnation of the
aggressive spirit a defensive stru ggle against obvious evil is still present
today, but the metaphysical issues are somewhat chaotically distributed on both
sides.
But how far is it enough from the point of view of higher culture? Will they learn to appreciate the values of truth, goodness, and beauty or despise and trample on them? For the juncture of social justice with mechanical development could provide them for the first time with more freedom every day. What use will they make of this enlarged or even new freedom? We may not let such questions hinder us from creating the opportunity to think about higher matters. What use or abuse will be made of it is history's concern.
If, as we believe, it be true that history moves in cycles, the world is now entering a new cycle. The old Chinese culture featured this theory of collective fortunes moving through a series of phases, whilst a similar doctrine has long been held in India. We well remember one evening many years ago listening at a riverside village near Gaya, where Buddha attained Nirvana, to one of those melancholy Hindu melodies whose monotonous repetition of the same low wailing notes depresses most Westerners. We complained about this to our cultured companion. He was an extremely old man who sat twice a day in the yogi posture of intertwined ankles - so pleasing to behold, so difficult to perform - with his gaze fixed into space and the fading sunlight playing in quivering undulating waves around his figure. The sacred cord of the twice-born, the white triple thread of the Brahmin, hung around his neck. He did not answer for a full two minutes, for he had been wedded by long habit to silence.
Then, without turning his head, he said slowly:
"My son, among our people it is otherwise. We are not, like the Westerners, afraid of truth's sadness, while welcoming its joy. We know that the scenes of this world come and pass like a dream of the night. And this is true of all the events and fortunes of a people's life also - more especially now that we live in the Iron Age, which is ruled by frequent death and covered by spiritual darkness. You know that we measure the world's history in great epochs, each divided into four successive lesser epochs and each endlessly departing and returning on itself like a wheel. Do not blame us, then, if our minds fall quickly into despondency and if our music reflects this sadness. We accept it resignedly, and through such resignation find contentment. We know that karma is always active and we try to accommodate ourselves to it.
"Once I brooded for long over the strange prophecies to be found in an ancient Sanskrit book, a Purana. In it I found this passage: 'When the earth is bound by iron chains (are they not your railways?), when men speak to each other across immense spaces (is this not your telephone without wires?), and when materialism rules supreme (has history shown a less spiritual age than ours?), in that time there will incarnate Kalki, the Slayer of Men, who (it is written symbolically) will carry a flaming sword in his hand.' "
63
The negative and undesirable traits of character
will tend to reproduce themselves in undesirable and inharmonious forms of
experience.
64
The rule of casting out all negative thoughts, and
keeping them out, is an absolute one. There are no exceptions and no deviations.
Such negatives as hate, irritability, and fault-finding make poisons in the body
and neuroses in the mind. They irritate the nerves, disturb the proper movement
of the blood, distort the internal secretions, and destructively affect the
chemical composition of tissue cells. Nor is this the end. They provoke like
emotions in other people with whom we are constantly thrown in contact. We then
have to suffer the effects as if they were echoes of our own making. Thus the
discords inside oneself throw up disturbances outside oneself. One's anger
provokes the other person's anger, for instance.
65
Negative emotions and memories hold accumulations
of worthless, even self-harming material, useless debris that serves only to
hinder progress.
66
Fierce intense hate blinds the eyes of reason,
hurts the hater, and creates delusion.
67
Whoever holds fiercely to his hatreds not only can
never enter the kingdom of heaven, but will certainly never enter the kingdom of
truth.
68
The man who is happy only when he hates will one
day be tutored by having to experience the results of his own destructive
feelings.
69
He who slanders others attracts slander to
himself.
70
If these negative traits are too strong, they may
not only hinder the appearance of "the flash" but also the progress in
meditation. This is one of the reasons why the medieval mystical authorities
laid down a ruling that cleansing of the heart, purification of the mind, must
precede or at least accompany the practice of meditation. That they often
carried this process too far and enjoined a rigid extreme asceticism does not
invalidate the excellence of their ruling.
71
Arrogance and pride not only prepare the way for a
fall, as history so often tells us, but also make a man stick more stubbornly to
his deviation from the correct way.
72
The compromise with evil leads in the end to
confusion and weakness, a gradual decline of standards, a wavering fealty to
opportunism, and a fatal contradiction of principles.
73
If a negative emotion is strong enough, it may not
only colour his reasoning faculty, but even preclude its use altogether.
74
It is hard for a man who is filled with bitterness
about a situation in which he is involved to be strictly objective toward it.
75
We are weakened every time we give harbourage to
snarling thoughts about other people and whimpering ones about ourselves.
76
The negative person too frequently expresses
criticism, disapproval, or anger. This contributes to his own bad health.
77
When the lower passions of violence, aggression,
and greed are more developed than reason, they enslave reason and put it to
their own selfish service. Excessive greed and unscrupulous ambition easily
distort the straight shapes of rational truth and put plausible disguises on
ancient errors. The defect in all such thinking is that it has not been pushed
far enough. It stops too short and too soon. It stops working when confronted by
ethical considerations and it will not go on to reckon with the existence of
retributive karma. The defeat and failure of its wrong-doers illustrates the
eventual defeat and failure which always overtake wrong-doing in the end.
78
Those who find nourishment in tales of horror and
drink in reports of crime open their minds to evil suggestion. In strong
characters and truly adult persons the influence may be but slight, but in weak
ones and mere adolescents it is more serious.
79
His stumblings and his fallings may depress his
heart and reduce his aspiration. They may deter his will from further endeavour.
80
For those monsters of hate and cruelty, either
utterly materialistic and God-denying or fanatic and taking the name of God in
vain, there is no shelter where they can hide once they are forced across the
barrier of death.
81
The qualities of determination, intelligence, and
persistence - so useful in philosophy - can be used for good or evil. They can
make a more successful criminal as well as a better philosopher. The upsurge of
well-thought-out, daring, resourceful, and highly ambitious crime in modern
times is a sign of misapplied powers, while its violence is a sign of merciless
egocentricity. The end for such persons is commensurate. Then may come a
crippling deformed future birth, or a sudden and radical awakening to the grave
peril toward which they are heading - and a change of course to a better life.
82
The unfortunate experiences which sometimes befall
an individual's worldly life are, or may be, partly induced by his own psychic
practices of the period immediately preceding them. One may have been drawn into
a vortex of psychic evil which has harmed his spiritual life and brought
suffering into his worldly existence.
83
What are the inner causes which can produce these
dismal outer effects? Here are some of them: shock, worry, fear, resentment,
anger, excessive criticism, condemnation of others.
84
The English woman novelist named Ouida, who wrote
during the earlier part of this century, was so successful that she became the
highest-paid fiction writer of her time. Yet when she died she was alone,
penniless, half-blind, and dwelling in a back alley of Viareggio, Italy. Why?
She was brilliant, fluent, and vibrant in her style, but most of her written
work was scathing, bitter, highly critical, filled with prejudices and even
hates. To what extent did a mind and heart holding so many negatives contribute
to these unpleasant results? Yet she was unquestionably a lady in manners,
breeding, dress, and way of life. She wrote her letters and even her manuscripts
on the finest quality paper. She was highly independent and refused an offer to
write her own life story, even though a substantial amount of money was the
prize. Her reply was that it would be lowering herself to feed her own egotism
and vanity to do so!
85
It is quite true and utterly obvious that bad
physical conditions make their contribution also, but it is even more true that
bad inner conditions are the fundamental causes which turn outward remedies to
disappointments in the end.
86
Blind selfishness brings mutilated lives and ugly
minds.
87
Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological
suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution.(P)
88
Long ago Buddha said that if we make room in our
minds for negative, bitter thoughts of complaint, outrage, or injury against
those who mistreat us, we shall not be free and will remain unable to find
peace.(P)
89
Beware of giving birth to thoughts of hate, envy,
malice, or wrath and sending them to another person. For they will reach him,
yes, but will then return like a boomerang to their source.
90
The Sanskrit proverb which says that wicked men
may gain the fruits of their aggressions and desires, may win victories over
others, also says, "But at the end they are destroyed at the roots."
91
The coldly calculated torture of animals in the
name of scientific progress must be paid for in different degrees by those who
allow it as well as by those who perpetrate it. The practice of vivisection is a
sinful one. The men who do it will have to pay the penalty one day, quite often
by being born into a maimed and hurt body. Some among them, who gradually lose
every vestige of pity from their character, become heartless monsters.
92
Through violent aggression whereby impassioned men
seek to destroy others, they work their own destruction - at first moral, in the
end, physical.
93
These undesirable thoughts and feelings are bad
for others as well as himself, besides wasting so much of his own energies.
94
An evil man's mistakes sometimes strike back at
him later when he least expects them, and can least afford them.
95
Is it prudent to heed all this talk of coming
calamity? Is it a mistake to read material speculating on its likelihood or
imagining its horrors? Each person must answer such a question for himself, but
the philosophic person approaches it in a different manner. On general
principles he dislikes negative thoughts and repels them. He seeks a clear
recognition of what is happening in the world around him, but he trains himself
- disciplines his mind and detaches his emotions - to do so without picking up
the accompaniments of panic or depression. He practises living with complete
calm in the face of provocations and irritations, keeping his head, when others
all around are losing theirs.