Barbara Hebert - USA
We are living in a time that seems extraordinarily divisive and full of conflict. We may feel as if we are being rubbed raw on all sides. It may remind one of being caught in a grinder or a sifter. Surprisingly, the analogy of a sifter is a part of the Ageless Wisdom tradition, as we see from the following quotes from the Voice of the Silence:
“When a person carefully sifts and consciously discriminates, he works with Nature without awaiting Karma's disciplinary measures; and "Great Sifter" is the name of the "Heart Doctrine," O disciple.” And it continues, saying “The wheel of the good Law moves swiftly on. It grinds by night and day. The worthless husks it drives from out the golden grain, the refuse from the flour. The hand of Karma guides the wheel; the revolutions mark the beatings of the Karmic heart.”
These quotes encompass a depth and breadth of theosophical concepts, touching on or implying a connection with almost all of the Ageless Wisdom teachings…teachings that we have studied for lifetimes upon lifetimes. When we look at each of these concepts and drill down as deeply as possible, we find that each one leads us to the core of the Ageless Wisdom teachings. They lead us to what may be called the Heart of Theosophy.
What is the Heart of Theosophy, the core of the Ageless Wisdom teachings? From the perspective of many, the core of the Ageless Wisdom teachings is Love. Many people tend to use the word “love” very casually–actually probably most of us do. We use it to indicate things that we like: I love this beautiful flower. I love being here with all of you. I love french fries! At other times, we use the word in a more personal way: I love my children! Interesting isn’t it? I don’t love french fries the same way I love my children. These are quite different feelings. Yet we use the same terminology. Not that there is anything wrong with the casual or personal use of the word “Love.” In fact, it probably makes us happy to think of the vibrations of Love rippling across the world. However, these casual uses of the word -- even love for family, which is a personal type of love--are not what we are discussing here. This is not the Love that is at the core of Life, at the Heart of Theosophy. The Love that exists as the Heart of Theosophy is so much deeper and broader.
G. dePurucker in his Golden Precepts of Esotericism writes “Love is the cement of the universe; it holds all things in place and in eternal keeping; its very nature is celestial peace, its very characteristic is cosmic harmony, permeating all things, boundless, deathless, infinite, eternal. It is everywhere, and is the very heart of the heart of all that is.” dePurucker’s statement sounds as if this type of Love is a synonym for the Ultimate Reality--permeating all things, everywhere, and is the very heart of the heart of all that is.
This Love-- “the very heart of the heart of all that is” --has no personal implications; rather, it is a universal and impersonal type of love. It is a love that goes beyond anything we can imagine except possibly in those few moments of meditation or intuitive leaps toward the Divine. What we are talking about is Love beyond all measure for humanity. Here, we are talking about a specific type of love, agape love, as the Greeks used the word. Agape love can be defined as the highest form of love: a love that incorporates empathy, compassion, understanding, unconditional love, the love of the Infinite for humanity, and the love of humanity for the Infinite.
De Purucker, while not using the term Agape, describes it for us saying that “the more impersonal [love] is, the higher it is and the more powerful.” Impartial love is love that has no attachment. Once we have attachment, love of family, for instance, while it is a form of love, it is not Universal love.
N. Sri Ram, former International President of the TS says: “The love which deserves that name is impartial, non-possessive, wholly beneficent; in that love alone is to be discovered the force which will ultimately bring man to his freedom. Love is the only force which does not create or add to the complications of karma.” He goes on to say, “Without love there is no unfoldment, because love belongs to the life of the Spirit, to the real Self; without love all search is in vain.”
Love that belongs to the life of “the real Self”, as N. Sri Ram calls it, is often referred to as altruism or philanthropy in theosophical writings. Once again, these words are not used in a casual sense, but denote the highest form of altruism or philanthropy: service to humanity.
The Mahatma KH writes: “…The true theosophist is the Philanthropist who—"’not for himself, but for the world he lives’" (Jinarajadasa, Letter #68). HPB tells us “Every true Theosophist is morally bound to sacrifice the personal to the impersonal, his own present good to the future benefit of other people” (p. 282). She defined true occultism as “altruism” and she further tells us “a true Theosophist must put in practice the loftiest moral ideal, must strive to realise his unity with the whole of humanity, and work ceaselessly for others” (The Key to Theosophy, p. 1).
If we act altruistically, we put the needs of the whole before the needs of the self. When we recognize the essential unity of all life, we realize that what happens to one person happens to all of us. We are the wrongly imprisoned, we are the hungry and thirsty, we are the abused and neglected, we are those living in war-torn places across the world, we are “the other.”
As theosophists, we have choices to make, don’t we? This is clearly stated in HPB’s The Voice of the Silence. In Fragment II she describes two paths, the Open Path and the Secret Path. We are told that we will have to choose between these two paths. The book says that the Open Path is “...the way to selfish bliss, shunned by the Boddhisattvas of the ‘Secret Heart,’ the Buddhas of Compassion.” We are also told that taking the Secret Path ...
...is to forego eternal bliss for Self, to help on man’s salvation. To reach Nirvana’s bliss, but to renounce it, is the supreme, the final step–the highest on Renunciation’s Path….The Path is one, Disciple, yet in the end, twofold…At one end–bliss immediate, and at the other–bliss deferred. Both are of merit the reward: the choice is thine. The One becomes the two, the Open and the Secret. The first one leadeth to the goal, the second, to Self-Immolation….Thus, the first Path is Liberation. But Path the Second is–Renunciation, and therefore called the ‘Path of Woe.’
Joy Mills in her book, From Inner to Outer Transformation, says, “As is evident throughout The Voice of the Silence and indeed throughout all of HPB’s writings, the dharma or way inherent in the theosophical worldview is that of the Bodhisattva, the path of renunciation.” Ours is the Secret Path: as Theosophists, we live to serve humanity. We follow the Bodhisattva Path.
We have chosen to focus--to the best of our ability—on alleviating the suffering of humanity. One who follows the Bodhisattva Path is an individual whose thoughts, words, and actions focus on serving the well-being of all others, not merely in a physical sense, but in the highest sense of facilitating enlightenment.
The Voice of the Silence asks: “Compassion speaks and saith Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shall thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?” We have taken this verse to heart and responded that we will serve until all are liberated from rebirth. As it says in The Voice of the Silence:
Let thy soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun. Let not the fierce sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast wiped it from the sufferer’s eye But let each burning tear drop on thy heart and there remain, nor ever brush it off, until the pain that caused it is removed….These tears, O thou of heart most merciful, these are the streams that irrigate the fields of charity immortal. ‘Tis on such soil that grows the midnight blossom of Buddha more difficult to find, more rare to view than the flower of the vogay tree. It is the seed of freedom from rebirth. It isolates the Arhat both from strife and lust; it leads him through the fields of being into the peace and bliss known only in the land of silence and non-being.
Compassion, says The Voice of the Silence is “the Law of laws,--eternal harmony” (III, 300). We are enjoined to become “compassion absolute” (III, 301). This is the Bodhisattva way.
Compassion, at least from one perspective, is the outward manifestation of the love as described by dePurucker as “the very heart of the heart of all that is” and by N. Sri Ram as “the only force which does not create or add to the complications of karma.” Moving forward on the path of compassion requires a great deal of us. It requires that we spiritually transform ourselves through unrelenting self-awareness and objective self-observation. Many theosophical writers have discussed spiritual self-transformation, sometimes called self-regeneration, indicating a need to re-create ourselves in order to serve humanity. Therefore, through self-awareness and self-observation, we become aware of those aspects of our personalities that need to be changed or transformed, and then we work to change them. One may ask why it is incumbent upon us to change in order to serve humanity.
The conversation of self-transformation consistently arises for us on the spiritual path. Along these lines, Joy Mills tells us:
The pathway to such transformation lies in the willingness of each one of us to plunge into the mysterious depths of our own human identity. This process—as we shall see—has been well defined in every tradition and mythology. It is the age—old hero (or heroine) quest of the encounter with the dragons of the psychic realm, the shadows and complexes about which contemporary psychology has so much to say. As it was for Dante, it may well involve our descent into hell (facing all the karma of our own past) before an ascent can be made. It is the mystic quest of the medieval alchemist in which the pure gold of the spirit must be distilled from the crude material of the personality.
She also tells us that in this effort, “we are dealing directly with the psycho-mental transformations which constitute the hero journey of the soul.”
Mills continues, quoting HPB, saying:
For HPB, who clearly restated for our time the principles of the mystery-tradition, stated explicitly that the next developmental stage in our evolution would have “more to do. . . with psychology than with physics. . . ” (The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 135). To repeat, the focus of our work today is at the psychological level... It involves dealing with the … kâma-manasic field of operation within us …. As said so often by HPB and her successors, as well as by her Teachers, it is a change in consciousness that is required today. And it is this message that is being repeated by many of the leading thinkers of our time. (The Human Journey: Quest for Self-Transformation, TPH Adyar, 2016)
As we change ourselves, because we are a part of the One, then all contained within the One must change. As our consciousness expands, then we are facilitating the expansion of consciousness of all beings—even though it is a very, very slow process. We can look to the words of others for additional understanding. Former international president of the TS, N. Sri Ram, tells us in his 1964 presidential address “The Masters of the Wisdom, who aid evolution, although They are interested in all changes that make for human progress, are especially concerned with the spiritual regeneration of mankind, which is of fundamental importance. Because, when that takes place, all else follows….What the Masters want...is this regeneration, beginning with ourselves.” Krishnamurti tells us “To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine...”
References
Blavatsky, H. P. (1889). The Voice of the Silence. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1889.
dePurucker, G. (3rd ed) (1979). Golden Precepts of Esotericism. Theosophical University Press.
Jinarajadasa, CJ. Letters to the Masters of the Wisdom, Series II (p. 282).
Judge, W.Q. “Aphorisms on karma”. (https://www.blavatsky.net/index.php/aphorisms-on-karma)
J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume 5: 1948–1949 – Choiceless Awareness. Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, 1991
Mills, Joy. (1991). From Inner to Outer Transformation: Lectures on The Voice of the Silence. Quest Books.
Mills, Joy. The Human Journey: Quest for Self-Transformation, TPH Adyar, 2016; (retrieved 3/7/23 from https://theosophy.nz/news-resources/the-human-journey-quest-for-self-transformation)
N. Sri Ram, (1950). Thoughts for Aspirants. Theosophical Publishing House. Chapter 5.