RELIGION AND REFORM
FROM A THEOSOPHICAL VIEWPOINT
By WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
F.T.S.
TWO great shadowy shapes remain fixed in the attention of
the mind of the day, threatening to become in the twentieth century
more formidable and engrossing than ever. They are religion and
reform, and in their sweep they include every question of pressing
human need; for this first arises through the introspective experience
of the race out of its aspirations toward the unknown and the
ever present desire to solve the questions whence and why? while
the second has its birth in the conditions surrounding the bodies
of the questioners of fate who struggle helplessly in the ocean
of material existence.
Many men wielding small or weighty pens have wrestled with
these questions, attacking them in ways as various as the minds
of those who have taken them up for consideration, but it still
remains for the theosophist to bring forward his views and obtain
a hearing. This he should always do as a matter of duty, and
not from the pride of fame or the self-assertion which would
see itself proclaimed before men. For he knows that, even if
he should not speak or could not get a hearing, the march of
that evolution in which he thoroughly believes will force these
views upon humanity, even if that has to be accomplished by suffering
endured by every human unit.
The theosophist can see no possibility of reform in existing
abuses, in politics or social relations, unless the plan of reform
is one which grows out of a true religion, and he does not think
that any of the prevailing religions of the Occident are true
or adequate. They do not go to the root of the evil which causes
the pain and sorrow that call for reform or alleviation. And
in his opinion theosophy--the essence or concentrated virtue
of every religion alone has power to offer and effect the cure.
None of the present attempts at reform will meet success so
long as they are devoid of the true doctrine as to man, his nature
and destiny, and respecting the universe, its origin and future
course. Every one of these essays leaves man where it finds him,
neglecting the lessons to be drawn from the cycles in their never-ceasing
revolution. While efforts are made to meliorate his mere physical
condition, the real mover, the man within, is left without a
guide, and is therefore certain to produce from no matter how
good a system the same evils which are designed to be destroyed.
At every change he once more proceeds to vitiate the effect of
any new regimen by the very defects in human nature that cannot
be reached by legislation or by dogmatic creeds and impossible
hells, because they are beyond the reach of everything except
the power of his own thought. Nationalism, Socialism, Liberalism,
Conservatism, Communism, and Anarchism are each and all ineffective
in the end. The beautiful dream depicted by Nationalism cannot
be made a physical fact, since it has no binding inward sanction;
Communism could not stand, because in time the Communist would
react back into the holder of individual rights and protector
of property which his human nature would demand ought not to
be dissipated among others less worthy. And the continuance of
the present system, in which the amasser of wealth is allowed
to retain and dispose of what he has acquired, will, in the end,
result in the very riot and bloodshed which legislation is meant
to prevent and suppress.
Indeed, the great popular right of universal suffrage, instead
of bringing about the true reign of liberty and law, will be
the very engine through which the crash will come, unless with
it the Theosophic doctrines are inculcated. We have seen the
suffrage gradually extended so as to be universal in the United
States, but the people are used by the demagogues and the suffrage
is put to waste. Meanwhile, the struggle between capital and
labor grows more intense, and in time will rage with such fury
that the poor and unlearned, feeling the goad of poverty strike
deeper, will cast their votes for measures respecting property
in land or chattels, so revolutionary that capital will combine
to right the supposed invasion by sword and bullet. This is the
end toward which it is all tending, and none of the reforms so
sincerely put forward will avert it for one hour after the causes
have been sufficiently fixed and crystallized. This final formation
of the efficient causes is not yet complete, but is rapidly approaching
the point where no cure will be possible.
The cold acquirements of science give us, it is true, magnificent
physical results, but fail like creeds and reforms by legislative
acts in the end. Using her own methods and instruments, she fails
to find the soul and denies its existence; while the churches
assert a soul but cannot explain it, and at the same time shock
human reason by postulating the incineration by material fire
of that which they admit is immortal. As a means of escape from
this dilemma nothing is offered save a vicarious atonement and
a retreat behind a blind acceptance of incongruities and injustice
in a God who is supposed by all to be infinitely merciful and
just.
Thus, on the one hand, science has no terrors and no reformatory
force for the wicked and the selfish; on the other, the creeds,
losing their hold in consequence of the inroads of knowledge,
grow less and less useful and respected every year. The people
seem to be approaching an era of wild unbelief. Just such a state
of thought prevailed before the French revolution of 1793.
Theosophy here suggests the reconciliation of science and
religion by showing that there is a common foundation for all
religions and that the soul exists with all the psychic forces
proceeding therefrom. As to the universe, Theosophy teaches a
never-ending evolution and involution. Evolution begins when
the Great Breath--Herbert Spencers "Unknowable" which
manifests as universal energy--goes forth, and involution, or
the disappearance of the universe, obtains when the same breath
returns to itself. This coming forth lasts millions upon millions
of years, and involution prevails for an equal length of time.
As soon as the breath goes forth, universal mind together with
universal basic matter appears. In the ancient system this mind
is called Mahat, and matter Prakriti. Mahat
has the plan of evolution which it impresses upon Prakriti, causing
it to ceaselessly proceed with the evolution of forms and the
perfecting of the units composing the cosmos. The crown of this
perfection is man, and he contains in himself the whole plan
of the universe copied in miniature but universally potential.
This brings us to ourselves, surrounded as we are by an environment
that appears to us to cause pain and sorrow, no matter where
we turn. But as the immutable laws of cause and effect brought
about our own evolution, the same laws become our saviors from
the miseries of existence. The two great laws postulated by Theosophy
for the world's reform are those of Karma and Reincarnation.
Karma is the law of action which decrees that man must suffer
and enjoy solely through his own thoughts and acts. His thoughts,
being the smaller copy of the universal mind, lie at the root
of every act and constitute the force that brings about the particular
body he may inhabit. So Reincarnation in an earthly body is as
necessary for him as the ceaseless reincarnation of the universal
mind in evolution after evolution is needful for it. And as no
man is a unit separate from the others in the Cosmos, he must
think and act in such a way that no discord is produced by him
in the great universal stream of evolution. It is the disturbance
of this harmony which alone brings on the miseries of life, whether
that be of a single man or of the whole nation. As he has acted
in his last life or lives, so will he be acted upon in succeeding
ones. This is why the rich are often unworthy, and the worthy
so frequently poor and afflicted. All appeals to force are useless,
as they only create new causes sure to react upon us in future
lives as well as in the present. But if all men believed in this
just and comprehensive law of Karma, knowing well that whatever
they do will be punished or rewarded in this or other new lives,
the evils of existence would begin to disappear. The rich would
know that they are only trustees for the wealth they have and
are bound to use it for the good of their fellows, and the poor,
satisfied that their lot is the just desert for prior acts and
aided by the more fortunate, would work out old bad Karma and
sow the seeds of only that which is good and harmonious.
National misery, such as that of Whitechapel in London (to
be imitated ere long in New York), is the result of national
Karma, which in its turn is composed of the aggregation of not
only the Karma of the individuals concerned but also of that
belonging to the rest of the nation. Ordinary reforms, whether
by law or otherwise, will not compass the end in view. This is
demonstrated by experience. But given that the ruling and richer
classes believe in Karma and Reincarnation, a universal widespread
effort would at once be made by those favorites of fortune toward
not only present alleviation of miserable conditions, but also
in the line of educating the vulgar who now consider themselves
oppressed as well by their superiors as by fate. The opposite
is now the case, for we cannot call individual sporadic or sectarian
efforts of beneficence a national or universal attempt. Just
now we have the General of the Salvation Army proposing a huge
scheme of colonization which is denounced by a master of science,
Prof. Huxley, as utopian, inefficient, and full of menace for
the future. And he, in the course of his comment, candidly admits
the great danger to be feared from the criminal and dissatisfied
classes. But if the poorer and less discriminating see the richer
and the learned offering physical assistance and intelligent
explanations of the apparent injustice of life which can be found
only in Theosophy there would soon arise a possibility of making
effective the fine laws and regulations which many are ready
to add to those already proposed. Without such Theosophic philosophy
and religion, the constantly increasing concessions made to the
clamor of the uneducated democracy's demands will only end in
inflating the actual majority with an undue sense of their real
power, and thus precipitate the convulsion which might he averted
by the other course.
This is a general statement of the only panacea, for if once
believed in even from a selfish motive it will compel, by a force
that works from within all men, the endeavor to escape from future
unhappiness which is inevitable if they violate the laws inhering
in the universal mind.
The Twentieth Century
New York, March 12, 1891
Theosophy.org Home | up
| top |