dear sir and brother:
tell your friend and inquirer this: no one was ever converted into theosophy. each one who really comes into it does so because it is only "an extension of previous beliefs." this will show you that karma is a true thing. for no idea we get is any more than an extension of previous ones. that is, they are cause and effect in endless succession. each one is the producer of the next and inheres in that successor. thus we are all different and some similar. my ideas of to-day and yours are tinged with those of youth, and we will thus forever proceed on the inevitable line we have marked out in the beginning. we of course alter a little always, but never until our old ideas are extended. those false ideas now and then discarded are not to be counted; yet they give a shadow here and there. but through brotherhood we receive the knowledge of others, which we consider until (if it fits us) it is ours. as far as your private conclusions are concerned, use your discrimination always. do not adopt any conclusions merely because they are uttered by one in whom you have confidence, but adopt them when they coincide with your intuition. to be even unconsciously deluded by the influence of another is to have a counterfeit faith.
spiritual knowledge includes every action. inquirers37 ought to read the bhagavad-g?ta. it will give them food for centuries if they read with spiritual eyes at all. underneath its shell is the living spirit that will light us all. i read it ten times before i saw things that i did not see at first. in the night the ideas contained in it are digested and returned partly next day to the mind. it is the study of adepts.
let no man be unaware that while there is a great joy in this belief there is also a great sorrow. being true, being the law, all the great forces are set in motion by the student. he now thinks he has given up ambition and comfort. the ambition and comfort he has given up are those of the lower plane, the mere reflections of the great ambitions and comforts of a larger life. the rays of truth burn up the covers time has placed upon those seeds, and then the seeds begin to sprout and cause new struggles. do not leave any earnest inquirer in ignorance of this. it has cost others many years and tears of blood to self-learn it.
how difficult the path of action is! i see the future dimly, and unconsciously in such case one makes efforts either for or against it. then karma results. i could almost wish i did not hear these whispers. but he who conquers himself is greater than the conquerors of worlds.
perhaps you see more clearly now how karma operates. if one directs himself to eliminating all old karma, the struggle very often becomes tremendous, for the whole load of ancient sin rushes to the front on a man and the events succeed each other rapidly; the strain is terrific, and the whole life fabric groans and rocks. as is said in the east, you may go through the appointed course in 700 births, in seven years, or in seven minutes.
the sentence in light on the path referred to by so many students is not so difficult as some others. one answer will do for all. the book is written on the basis38 of re?ncarnation, and when it says the soiled garment will fall again on you, it means that this will happen in some other life, not necessarily in this, though that may be too. to "turn away in horror" is not detachment. before we can hope to prevent any particular state of mind or events reaching us in this or in another life, we must in fact be detached from these things. now we are not our bodies or mere minds, but the real part of us in which karma inheres. karma brings everything about. it attaches to our real inner selves by attachment and repulsion. that is, if we love vice or anything, it seizes on us by attachment thereto; if we hate anything, it seizes on our inner selves by reason of the strong horror we feel for it. in order to prevent a thing we must understand it; we cannot understand while we fear or hate it. we are not to love vice, but are to recognize that it is a part of the whole, and, trying to understand it, we thus get above it. this is the "doctrine of opposites" spoken of in bhagavad-g?ta. so if we turn in horror now (we may feel sad and charitable, though) from the bad, the future life will feel that horror and develop it by reaction into a re?ncarnation in a body and place where we must in material life go through the very thing we hate now. as we are striving to reach god, we must learn to be as near like him as possible. he loves and hates not; so we must strive to regard the greatest vice as being something we must not hate while we will not engage in it, and then we may approach that state where we will know the greater love that takes in good and evil men and things alike.
good and evil are only the two poles of the one thing. in the absolute, evil is the same thing in this way. one with absolute knowledge can see both good and evil, but he does not feel evil to be a thing to flee from, and thus he has to call it merely the other pole. we say good or evil as certain events seem pleasant or39 unpleasant to us or our present civilization. and so we have coined those two words. they are bad words to use. for in the absolute one is just as necessary as the other, and often what seem evil and "pain" are not absolutely so, but only necessary adjustments in the progress of the soul. read bhagavad-g?ta as to how the self seems to suffer pain. what is evil now? loss of friends? no; if you are self-centered. slander? not if you rely on karma. there is only evil when you rebel against immutable decrees that must be worked out. you know that there must be these balancings which we call good and evil. just imagine one man who really was a high soul, now living as a miser and enjoying it. you call it an evil; he a good. who is right? you say "evil" because you are speaking out of the true; but the true did know that he could never have passed some one certain point unless he had that experience, and so we see him now in an evil state. experience we must have, and if we accept it at our own hands we are wise. that is, while striving to do our whole duty to the world and ourselves, we will not live the past over again by vain and hurtful regrets, nor condemn any man, whatever his deeds, since we cannot know their true cause. we are not karma, we are not the law, and it is a species of that hypocrisy so deeply condemned by it for us to condemn any man. that the law lets a man live is proof that he is not yet judged by that higher power. still we must and will keep our discriminating power at all times.
as to rising above good and evil, that does not mean to do evil, of course. but, in fact, there can be no real evil or good; if our aim is right our acts cannot be evil. now all acts are dead when done; it is in the heart that they are conceived and are already there done; the mere bodily carrying out of them is a dead thing in itself. so we may do a supposed good act and that shall outwardly appear good, and yet as our motive40 perhaps is wrong the act is naught, but the motive counts.
the great god did all, good and bad alike. among the rest are what appear evil things, yet he must be unaffected. so if we follow bhagavad-g?ta, second chapter, we must do only those acts we believe right for the sake of god and not for ourselves, and if we are regardless of the consequences we are not concerned if they appear to be good or evil. as the heart and mind are the real planes of error, it follows that we must look to it that we do all acts merely because they are there to be done. it then becomes difficult only to separate ourselves from the act.
we can never as human beings rise above being the instruments through which that which is called good and evil comes to pass, but as that good and evil are the result of comparison and are not in themselves absolute, it must follow that we (the real "we") must learn to rise internally to a place where these occurrences appear to us merely as changes in a life of change. even in the worldly man this sometimes happens.
as, say bismarck, used to moving large bodies of men and perhaps for a good end, can easily rise above the transient evil, looking to a greater result. or the physician is able to rise above pain to a patient, and only consider the good, or rather the result, that is to follow from a painful operation. the patient himself does the same.
so the student comes to see that he is not to do either "good" or "evil," but to do any certain number of acts set before him, and meanwhile not ever to regard much his line of conduct, but rather his line of motive, for his conduct follows necessarily from his motive. take the soldier. for him there is nothing better than lawful war. query. does he do wrong in warring or not, even if war is unlawful? he does not unless he mixes his motive. they who go into war for gain or41 revenge do wrong, but not he who goes at his superior's order, because it is his present duty.
let us, then, extend help to all who come our way. this will be true progress; the veils that come over our souls fall away when we work for others. let that be the real motive, and the quality of work done makes no difference.
z.
it would seem that good and evil are not inherent in things themselves, but in the uses to which those things are put by us. they are conditions of manifestation. many things commonly called immoral are consequences of the unjust laws of man, of egotistic social institutions: such things are not immoral per se, but relatively so. they are only immoral in point of time. there are others whose evil consists in the base use to which higher forces are put, or to which life—which is sacred—is put, so that here also evil does not inhere in them, but in ourselves; in our misuse of noble instruments in lower work. nor does evil inhere in us, but in our ignorance; it is one of the great illusions of nature. all these illusions cause the soul to experience in matter until it has consciously learned every part: then it must learn to know the whole and all at once, which it can only do by and through reunion with spirit; or with the supreme, with the deity.
if we take, with all due reverence, so much of the standpoint of the supreme as our finite minds or our dawning intuition may permit, we feel that he stands above unmoved by either good or evil. our good is relative, and evil is only the limitation of the soul by matter. from the material essence of the deity all the myriad differentiations of nature (prakriti, cosmic substance), all the worlds and their correlations are evolved. they assist the cyclic experience of the soul as it passes from state to state.42 how, then, shall we say that any state is evil in an absolute sense? take murder. it seems an evil. true, we cannot really take life, but we can destroy a vehicle of the divine principle of life and impede the course of a soul using that vehicle. but we are more injured by the deed than any other. it is the fruit of a certain unhealthy state of the soul. the deed sends us to hell, as it were, for one or more incarnations; to a condition of misery. the shock, the natural retribution, our own resultant karma, both the penalties imposed by man and that exacted by occult law, chasten and soften the soul. it is passed through a most solemn experience which had become necessary to its growth and which in the end is the cause of its additional purification. in view of this result, was the deed evil? it was a necessary consequence of the limitations of matter; for had the soul remained celestial and in free being, it could not have committed murder. nor has the immortal soul, the spectator, any share in the wrong; it is only the personality, the elementary part of the soul, which has sinned. all that keeps the soul confined to material existence is evil, and so we cannot discriminate either. the only ultimate good is unity, and in reality nothing but that exists. hence our judgments are in time only. nor have we the right to exact a life for a life. "vengeance is mine, saith the lord (law); i will repay." we become abetters of murder in making such human laws. i do not say that every experience must be gone through bodily, because some are lived out in the mind. nor do i seek to justify any. the only justification is in the law.
the innocent man unjustly murdered is rewarded by karma in a future life. indeed, any man murdered is reimbursed, so to say; for while that misfortune sprang from his karma, occult law does not admit43 of the taking of life. some men are the weapons of karma in their wrong-doing, but they themselves have appointed this place to themselves in their past.
the great soul needed just that body, whatever the errors of its nature, or its physical environment, and to disappoint the soul is a fearful deed for a man. for it is only man, only the lower nature under the influence of tamas (the quality of darkness), which feels the impulse to take life, whether in human justice, for revenge, for protection, or so on. "the soul neither kills nor is killed." what we know as ourselves is only the natural man, the lower principles and mind, presided over by the false consciousness. of the soul we have but brief and partial glimpses—in conscience or intuition—in our ordinary state. there are, of course, psychic and spiritual states in which more is known. thus nature wars against nature, always for the purpose of bringing about the purification and evolution of the soul. nature exists only for the purpose of the soul. if we think out the subject upon these lines, we can at least see how rash we should be to conclude that any deed was unmixed evil, or that these distinctions exist in the absolute. it alone is; all else is phenomenal and transitory; these differences disappear as we proceed upward. meanwhile we are to avoid all these immoral things and many others not so regarded by the crowd at all, but which are just as much so because we know to what increased ignorance and darkness they give rise through the ferment which they cause in the nature, and that this impedes the entrance of the clear rays of truth.
i doubt that the soul knows the moral or immoral. for just consider for a moment the case of a disembodied soul. what is sin to it when freed from that shell—the body? what does it know then of human laws or moralities, or the rules and forms of matter?44 does it even see them? what lewdness can it commit? so i say that these moralities are of this plane only, to be heeded and obeyed there, but not to be postulated as final or used as a balance to weigh the soul which has other laws. the free soul has to do with essences and powers all impersonal; the strife of matter is left behind. still higher and above as within all, the passionless, deathless spirit looks down, knowing well that, when the natural has once again subsided into its spiritual source, all this struggle and play of force and will, this waxing and waning of forms, this progression of consciousness which throw up coming clouds and fumes of illusion before the eye of the soul, will have come to an end. even now, while we cannot master these high themes, we can have a patient trust in the processes of evolution and the law, blaming and judging no man, but living up to our highest intuitions ourselves. the real test of a man is his motive, which we do not see, nor do his acts always represent it.
