National Wales Centre for Theosophy:-
Masters
and Men
By
Ernest
Egerton Wood
THE LIBERATED MAN
THE theosophical world seems to be dividing itself on
the old question: which is more important for educative purposes, environment
or character? Nobody of any consequence has ever suggested that character can
be implanted by environment.
No Theosophist proposes the method of the builder,
which assumes that a man evolves as a house is built, that he is a vacant site
to which you bring various materials and there build them up into a house. Nor
the method of the sculptor, which assumes that human character is crude stone
and someone must from the outside chip away the unwanted portions, just as a
sculptor takes a block of stone and leaves a statue, which in a sense was in
the stone all the time. Thousands of forms were in that stone; the sculptor
chooses one. But every man is a living being with a character of his own.
By Masters we mean those men who have realized the
goal of human life and are no longer in bondage to things. They know the world
of life. So they regard the temporary creations as merely a shadow-world. They
may remain in that world, using human bodies, but they are interested as
teachers in calling people to enter their world, which is the world of life.
Those who recognize the life never become builders or
sculptors of men, but may be gardeners or teachers, who know that every seed
will grow according to its kind, that both the pattern that is to be made and
the power with which it is to be built come from within the seed itself.
Therefore no thoughtful writer has ever suggested that
Masters can give life to anybody or can evolve anybody or can help anybody to
evolve themselves. They can give money, and have been known to do so. And they
can give thought-forms. But they cannot give growth or evolution, understanding
or love or power.
The Theosophical Society has the same function as the
Masters. Its purpose is not to attempt to feed the people, but to call their
attention to great truths with which they can feed, clothe, shelter, amuse and
educate themselves as men, without the suffering which they have been bringing
upon themselves so long, Its first object — brotherhood — is to be understood
in this deep and essential way. Greater than any material gift is the offering
of wisdom.
Consider understanding. It is one of the powers of our
life. It is tested by power, for if I have made a machine, and it will not
work, that tells me that my understanding was wrong, Let me tell a story about
thought-power, which is vouched for by some good and honorable friends. In a
certain city in
What would happen in this case ? The thought-form acts
as one speaking. It says: “Come now, things are not as bad as they have
appeared, and besides there is a possibility of happy life, which you really
want. Please do not lose your balance, but consider the facts.” Reason
prevails, and the would-be suicide changes his mind. The thought-form reminds
him at a critical moment of ideas which had been obscured in his troubled mind.
This is good work, of course, in the way of lifting a
lame dog over a stile, but now there is life to be lived and it must live in
its own strength. Every teacher recognizes that, however simple may be the idea
which he is putting before his class, no student will grasp it until he has
made some effort of attention and of thought. There is a moment between the
hearing of his words or the seeing of the experiment that he is doing, and the
student's understanding. In that moment the student thinks, and nobody can do
it for him.
Consider in the same way the work of an artist. With
skill he produces beauty. Beauty is the test of skill, as power is the test of
knowledge, and both these come from inward effort alone. Painting pictures for
a man who has no hands will not make him into a painter — or even for a man who
has hands.
Carrying babies does not teach them to walk. On the
contrary, I knew a naughty little boy who when about four years old would
insist upon being carried up hill when out for a walk. He had been carried too
much.
Similarly, the guiding lines given to us when we are
learning to write prevent us from writing straight, because they teach us to
think that they are necessary. Only a few days ago I was writing a letter on an
unruled writing block. Suddenly I said to myself: “Why, I am writing straight,
without lines !”
From that moment my writing became crooked. Such is
the power of suggestion. Crutches are only for cripples. You do not teach a
baby to walk with crutches.
THE MASTER'S PRESENCE
If people think they need a personal Master, by that
thought they destroy their own power and delay their own progress. If they
think they could do better with a personal Master than without one, it is the
same thing. If they could, he would be there. There are two kinds of persons to
whom the Masters cannot communicate their contribution to the common
brotherhood — those who cannot get on with them, and those who cannot get on
without them. But really there is no need to search for a teacher, because when
we start learning he is always there. The entire galaxy of all who have
attained liberation or entered into the world of life is always at hand, for
they are the one life, which is also our essential life. No one can shut that
open door.
The Masters work behind the scenes, and are not out of
touch with any part of life. Some one wrote to Madame Blavatsky and asked to be
put in connection with the Brothers. Her reply was: “ Do you know so little of
the laws of their order as not to understand that by this very act of yours —
which was entirely unsolicited and a spontaneous proof of your loyalty — you
have drawn their attention to you already, and that you have established
relations with them yourself ?
“ It is not within our power to do anything for you
more. Occultism is not like Christianity, which holds out to you the false
promise of mediatorial interference and vicarious merit. Every one of us must
work his own way up towards the Brothers. If you want to see them, act so as to
compel them to let you do so.
They are equally with all of us subject to the laws of
attraction and repulsion; those who most deserve their companionship get it.
Take a half hour each morning upon first rising, and in an undisturbed place free
from all noises and bad influences concentrate your thoughts upon them and upon
your own higher self, and will that you shall become wise, and illuminated and
powerful.”
THE MASTER'S WORK
What then does a Master do? He is a witness to the
life beyond all appearances, even his own. As fire tells us not to burn
ourselves, so does the Master tell us not to forget ourselves. People forget
themselves not only in anger sometimes, but in a thousand things and nearly
always.
The Master's human form is beautiful because his life
is true. Consider the beautiful limbs of a race horse They have been produced
quite naturally by life trying to run. What would be the use of a small horse
worshiping that beauty of limb ? He must run. So the Master says to us: “ Do
not worship me. Know that there is life which can be fulfilled in full living,
and from which all beauty, truth and love will flow.”
I can realize that the Masters see benefit wherever
people are trying to express their life, even though there be grave attendant
defects. Let me take a crude and rather painful example — that of the old
practice of foot-binding in
This was not done, .as some have suggested, to keep
women in subjection to men, but, as Chinese poets have explained, as an
assertion of human superiority to earth, that women might not be gross and
earthly, like men, but delicate as a flower that sways lightly upon its slender
stem. It was an attempt to express beauty and spirituality, somewhat similar to
the old Western custom of tight-lacing the figure. They have now recognized the
folly and harmfulness of these external means, that small and beautiful feet
belong to those who balance themselves and walk well, and that the shapely
waist is produced by healthy activity, so that if we have it not in our age as
well as in our youth it is entirely our own fault.
Yet the main point of all this, the abiding good of
it, is that they show an effort. However ignorant they were, they were
well-meant, and were therefore in their degree expressions of life. Whenever
mankind puts itself to some trouble for an idea, however stupid, it is good,
for there will then be progress. There is no room for ridicule, and little for
interference or correction.
There is great danger in what is usually called
devotion. True devotion is respect for the beautiful, the good and the true,
wherever it may be seen. It is respect for life. But most devotion implies
disrespect for life, inasmuch as it singles out one expression of life for its
fervent admiration, and almost equally despises the rest. So is God shut away,
as people go into caves to worship the sun.
True devotion has nothing to do with that
self-abasement which makes a man think that because he is inferior to another
he must not rely on his own judgment.
However evolved or unevolved he may be, that is
exactly what he must do. The man who does not make his own vision of the goal
for himself does not awaken to the full his own life in the present moment of
living, and therefore does not make the most use possible for him of that
moment.
There is always some danger even when virtues are
extolled. Such praise implies or suggests that they are beyond ordinary life,
and the feeling arises; “It would be uncommonly good of us if we did this. We
are not quite expected to do it”. In
I have come across some cases of partial mental
paralysis due to misuse of the idea of Masters. I have heard one say; “This
work has failed; that shows that the Masters did not want it.” It was perfectly
clear to me that the cause of the failure was that he had not used his brains
in the work under reference.
Then again, when the thought was habitually turned to
the Master as if he were a separate entity, in moments of difficulty, for
example, when there was a blank in conversation, the man would find himself
able to think only of the Master's name. And also in danger, or in any crisis,
do you pray or do you keep your head ? You cannot do both. Every occasion is a
crisis, did people but recognize it.
But what of Master's authority ?
Does he not know more than we? The Master is a witness
of the light, but it is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. His form is only an illusion; it is not our goal, but our life, which is
also his life, is our goal. There cannot be a form of a Master. There is
nothing unusual in this. In a chemistry class the professor is not our goal,
but chemistry is our goal. Leaf whispers to leaf, and tells rejoicingly of the
life it feels, like lovers hand in hand looking at the same moon. It is the
power of love that with it we thus at last come to look with all eyes at all
things.
And Master's work and orders ?
I see no use in them unless they are our own work and
orders at the same time. If a man does his honest best he will be doing what
the Master wants to have done. If our understanding rises to what the Masters
call their mind-plane their ideas become our ideas, we think their thoughts
with them, and there is nothing to be gained by insisting that the ideas or
purposes are theirs, not ours, which is a mode of separation of the Masters and
ourselves, and tends to prevent our union in the one life.
You cannot have this separation in fact. You cannot
have men gradually making their own noses perfect according to their own
thoughts, feelings and actions, and at the same time the Masters moulding those
noses according to some external plan. Masters' work and orders are surely a
question of our being attuned to their spirit and their law, which is our own
true spirit and law, In that service (if such it can be called) is perfect freedom,
Their teaching is an intuition, but not usually peculiar and distinguishable
from what we call our own thought. There is no necessity to import into the
idea of our relation to Masters the dramatic and separative characteristics of
human domination or interference by man with man. Masters are masters of life
not masters of men.
The Mahatmas as Ideals and Facts
By W Q Judge
The Masters as Ideals and Facts
By Annie Besant
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Foundation of the Original Theosophical Society 1875
The first
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मूल थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी 1875 फाउंडेशन
पहले थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी को न्यूयॉर्क में स्थापित किया गया था
17 नवंबर Helena Petrovna Blavatsky द्वारा 1875,
कर्नल Henry Steel Olcott,
William Quan Judge और दूसरों.
थियोसोफिकल आंदोलन अब एक विविध रेंज के होते हैं
आगे थियोसोफिकल परंपरा ले जो संगठनों.
कार्डिफ थियोसोफिकल सोसायटी 1908 के बाद से ब्रह्मविद्या को बढ़ावा देने की गई है
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Mūla thiyōsōphikala sōsāyaṭī 1875 phā'uṇḍēśana
Pahalē thiyōsōphikala sōsāyaṭī kō n'yūyŏrka mēṁ sthāpita kiyā gayā thā
17 Navambara Helena Petrovna Blavatsky dvārā 1875,
Kamala Henry Steel Olcott, aura dūsarōṁ.
Thiyōsōphikala āndōlana aba ēka vividha rēn̄ja kē hōtē haiṁ
Āgē thiyōsōphikala paramparā lē jō saṅgaṭhanōṁ.
Kārḍipha
thiyōsōphikala sōsāyaṭī 1908 kē bāda sē
brahmavidyā
kō baṛhāvā dēnē kī ga'ī hai
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