[Drifter]

I thought his relevant to the Thread topic and the Power vs. Force concept.

Easy reading for a leisurely Sunday morning contemplation . . .


> We, old Theosophists, are like people standing on a rocky cliff
> and watching the waves dashing against its foot; the waves, in
> our case, are the assults of the impotent critics of the
> Ancient Wisdom, that living rock of philosophy which stands firm
> and unshaken from age to age amid the fugitive changes of
> dogmatic theology.
>
> H.S. Olcott, OLD DIARY LEAVES, V, page 128.

----------------------------------------------------------
HYPOCRISY OR IGNORANCE

By W.Q. Judge

[From THE PATH, December 1891, pages 268-70, under the penname
Eusebio Urban, reprinted in ECHOES OF THE ORIENT, I, pages
203-4.]

There are some members of the Theosophical Society who expose
themselves to the charge of indulging in hypocrisy or being
ignorant about their own failings and shortcomings. They are
those who, having studied the literature of the movement and
accepted most of its doctrines, then talk either to
fellow-members or to outsiders as if the goal of renunciation and
universal knowledge had been reached in their case, when a very
slight observation reveals them as quite ordinary human beings.

If one accepts the doctrine of Universal Brotherhood, which is
based on the essential unity of all human beings, there is a long
distance yet intervening between that acceptation and its
realization, even in those who have adopted the doctrine. It is
just the difference between intellectual assent to a moral,
philosophical, or occult law, and its perfect development in
one's being so that it has become an actual part of us. So when
we hear a Theosophist say that he could see his children, wife,
or parents die and not feel anything whatever, we must infer that
there is a hypocritical pretension or very great ignorance.
There is one other conclusion left, which is that we have before
us a monster that is incapable of any feeling whatever,
selfishness being over-dominant.

The doctrines of Theosophy do not ask for nor lead to the cutting
out of the human heart of every human feeling. Indeed, that is
impossibility, one would think, seeing that the feelings are an
integral part of the constitution of man, for in the principle
called Kama -- the desires and feelings -- we have the basis of
all our emotions, and if it is prematurely cut out of any being,
death or worse must result. It is very true that Theosophy, as
well as all ethical systems, demands that the being who has
conscience and will, such as are found in man, shall control this
principle of Kama and not be carried away by it nor be under its
sway. This is self-control, mastery of the human body,
steadiness in the face of affliction, but it is not extirpation
of the feelings which one has to control.

If any Theosophical book deals with this subject, it is THE
BHAGAVAD-GITA, and in that Krishna is constantly engaged in
enforcing the doctrine that all the emotions are to be
controlled, that one is not to grieve over the inevitable -- such
as death, nor to be unduly elated at success, nor to be cast down
by failure, but to maintain an equal mind in every event,
whatever it may be, satisfied and assured that the qualities move
in the body in their own sphere. In no place does he say that we
are to attempt the impossible task of cutting out of the inner
man an integral part of himself.

But, unlike most other systems of ethics, Theosophy is scientific
as well, and this science is not attained just when one
approaching it for the first time in this incarnation hears of
and intellectually agrees to these high doctrines. For one
cannot pretend to have reached the perfection and detachment from
human affairs involved in the pretentious statement referred to,
when even as the words are uttered the hearer perceives remaining
in the speaker all the peculiarities of family, not to speak of
those pertaining to nation, including education, and to the race
in which he was born.

This scientific part of Theosophy, beginning and ending with
universal brotherhood, insists upon such an intense and
ever-present thought upon the subject, coupled with a constant
watch over all faults of mind and speech, that in time an actual
change is produced in the material person, as well as in the
immaterial one within whom is the mediator or way between the
purely corporal lower man and his Higher divine self. This
change, it is very obvious, cannot come about at once nor in the
course of years of effort.

The charge of pretension and ignorance is more grave still in the
case of those Theosophists guilty of the fault, who happen to
believe -- as so many do -- that even in those disciples whose
duties in the world are nil from the very beginning, and who have
devoted themselves to self-renunciation and self-study so long
that they are immeasurably beyond the members of our Society, the
defects due to family, tribal, and national inheritance are now
and then observable.

It seems to be time, then, that no Theosophist shall ever be
guilty of making pretension to any one that he or she has
attained to the high place which now and then some assume to have
reached. Much better is it to be conscious of our defects and
weaknesses, always ready to acknowledge the truth that, being
human, we are not able to always or quickly reach the goal of
effort.