Will the Soul of Europe Return?

B. P. WADIA







LONDON
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

9, ST. MARTIN’S STREET, W.C. 2

ALSO ADYAR, MADRAS; AND KROTONA, LOS ANGELES

© 2011 Online Teosofiska Kompaniet Malmö 




 

FOREWORD

THIS paper, offered to the first World Congress of the Theosophical Society, deals very roughly and generally with the principles of reconstruction in Europe. The Great War is not over and the Soul of Europe cannot work till a healthy body, pure and stable, is built with the aid of the influence of hoary Asia which has been at work and which though felt is imperceptible. The author’s aim is to offer a few suggestive thoughts, to present a few significative ideas, which are the outcome of the study of the Ancient Wisdom given to the world in the last quarter of the last century.

TAMARIS, FRANCE,
March, 1921.

 

WILL THE SOUL OF EUROPE RETURN?

”WHERE art Thou, O Minstrel ? for it is the time of flowering of the Rose-bud of my Soul; this garden of the body resounds with the strains of the Bulbul-pilgrim.”

By the silvery singing waters of Ruknabad, Hafiz, the Nightingale of Persia, warbled thus in the fourteenth century. His was an ”un­premeditated art.” He poured forth the music of his soul in the company of solitude. Having undergone a change of heart he gave up ”the lovely wanton ones,” whom he called the ”fair peace-disturbers” of his youth; but he also ceased ”extolling the musk-pods of Tartary,” because he inhaled the ”fragrance of the tresses of the True Beloved.” One day in the famous Rose Garden of Musalla, he glimpsed the Face of the Real.

He experienced the agony of Soul; he passed beyond the pleasures of the ”wanton ones”; even beyond the temple wherein the ritual and ceremonial worship extolled the gods of many realms. Once away from the sphere of the senses, there came to him the call of the Spiritual World from the sphere of aspirations. Then he cried:

”Where art Thou, 0 Minstrel? for it is the time of flowering of the Rose-bud of my Soul; this garden of the body resounds with the strains of the Bulbul-pilgrim.”

This is the cry which the Chosen Ones of the race have uttered – the result of soul-suffering and inner conversion, which in turn brings illumination.

THE CRY OF EUROPE.

The life currents manifesting as events in the microcosm are related to those of the macrocosm. This cry of Hafiz, and its like, is to-day a world cry. Like him, humanity is tired of its wanton peace-disturbers; like him, it has passed beyond the primary stage of sense-life. More – humanity having extolled the favourite musk-pods of its Tartary has, Hafiz-like, found itself touched by the spiritual currents of suffering. The hours of gloom have revealed the hollowness of churches and parliaments, as, for a moment, it saw the Face of the Real.

Europe cries to-day:

”Where art Thou, O Minstrel ? for it is the time of flowering of the Rose-bud of my Soul; this garden of the body resounds with the strains of the Bulbul-pilgrim.”

”Garden! ” – you might exclaim, and well exclaim.

A veritable hell of destruction is this world where man has sought to destroy his brother, where nations fight nations, where the weak suffer because of the might of the strong, where love is nought, where charity is a matter of calculation, where wisdom is absent, where faith is debased, where piety is a matter of coin; verily it is not a garden but a cemetery wherein rotting bodies emit stench and depict filth. Oh! let the darkness veil this horror you call” garden.” So says the poor tortured humanity of to-day.

Cemetery – Darkness – Death! but there is to be found, say our Indian Sages, the Lord of Lords who resurrects and enlightens and brings to life all things. The rhythm of life impresses itself in the dust of death. The Great Dancer, Mahadeva, stamps His footprints on the ashes of our dead selves to make us realise that we are not dead.

But mortals misjudge His work of Renovation in that Place of Mystery. They see in His followers the howling goblins of the nether world. They see in His necklace of skulls a row of cups out of which Lie quaffs the blood-wine squeezed from human flesh. They see in the ashes on His Body the cruel work of His scythe, which felled forests of human trees, and of His fire, which burnt the wood to dust and nothingness. They see an embodiment of drunken cruelty and His Dance a manifestation thereof.

”What else is there,” say they, ”but a sky made grey with the clouds of dust His frenzy throw up? Are not the very soles of His feet gory with the blood of His Victims? Does He not hug round His neck the serpent of poisonous sting? Do not temples and tombs alike crash to the awful sound of His damru? His very trident is aflame with His wrathful nature, and His eyes are closed, for they are unable to see the wanton destruction He has wrought.” 

Thus speak the men of earth, but the Sages of ancient India, otherwise. What do they say? 

The Lord of the Burning Ground is the cause of supreme felicity to all, dispenser of blessings. He is the Patron Saint of Yogis, old and yet young. Ever green is His nature which flowers in the green of earth; the blue of the sky is but a reflection of His aspect as Nilakantha. [1] It is not a frenzy but a Rhythm of Progress not to be seen with the eyes of the flesh, but to be perceived by the Vision of the Spirit, by acquiring a little of the Power of the great Tapasvi of closed eyes but awakened consciousness. The very dust of earth is made to ascend to loftier regions by His Dance. He deprives us of flesh and bone and the sting of hate and despair, and thus sets us free from the bondage of illusion which this existence is. He is the slayer of the unreal.

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[1] Of  Blue Throat, a name of Shiva

Out of darkness comes morn. Who has not heard of the travails of birth? The chastening hand of adversity, monetary or moral, transforms the ugly into the Beautiful. Law presses on and on, merciful in its very rigidity; and so green grass continues to rest our weary eyes, blue sky calms our strife, the Sun shines during the day, the Moon adorns the night, the flowers grow even where the heavy-footed soldier has been. 

Destruction bringing forth adversity has caused suffering; Europe’s corrupted heart has received a shock; chastisement has followed on the heels of riotous living. But the inexorable law has worked its miracle, and Hafiz-like, Europe cries to-day:

”Where art Thou, O Minstrel! for it is the time of flowering of the Rose-bud of my Soul; this garden of the body resounds with the strains of the Bulbul-pilgrim.”

The world is looking for a Minstrel – He who would sing the Song of Life. The carnage of Kurukshetra begot the Song Celestial. The desolation of our spiritual hearths is keenly felt; the decay of righteousness is universally acknowledged; these have expressed themselves in a great cry of agony, and the law of demand and supply, working in moral and spiritual regions, enheartens us and asks us to be recipients of the soothing balm to that agony.

THE LAW OF LIFE.

Europe demands understanding of the inward­ness of it all. Its old God is dead – the God of its religion, the Autocrat of the Universe. Why? For the same reason that the ”Czar is dead.” That God must remain in exile, an object of curiosity to the future student, just as the Kaiser is an exile in life to-day, and will remain an object of study for the historical student of to-morrow. The conception of God as the Autocrat of the Universe has led to the collapse of modern society, and society will have none of that God.

Europe, therefore, wants a new expression of the Law of Life. It has been living by laws which have produced death. Men’s heads are burdened, women’s hearts are sore, a great weight is well-nigh crushing the shoulders of both. But the human soul is like the beautiful little Celandine; like many other flowers it shrinks in rain and frost, but unlike them it never dies; the moment the sun shines, it blossoms forth again. The law of periodicity makes the Sun shine, again and yet again. That law compels night to yield place to dawn. Human Celandines shrink and show their frailty when skies are grey and the rain and fog of adversity and suffering beat upon them, but the law makes the Spiritual Sun warm the world and immortals show forth their true Nature.

The clouds of evil have been gathering thick in the European sky for a whole season, and the storm has burst. The earth is drenched with floods of human blood; the gutters of the world run wild with the refuse of human streets; the cities with their teeming life are ugly with pools of the slimy stench and filth of human loneliness and misery; poor people’s huts are transformed into hovels; the homes of all are desolate. And yet through it all Nature continues its miraculous work. To see the process of regeneration in destruction should give us courage and stimulus for our labours.

We are suffering from the effects of the storm. Its after-effects are yet to be encountered. But the lessons of the storm ought to enable us to build our homes in a manner different from that of the past, o that they may not be destroyed again. The style of architecture will have to be changed. Most of our foundations have gone, and our master-builders must teach our Race to dig earth differently, to gauge its depth differently, to raise our tenements differently, to build them in different material from the crumbling sands of the past years.
 

THE LOST CONTINENT.

The Europe of 1914 is a lost continent. The flood of human passion has drowned it; the fire of human wrath has destroyed it. The humanity of Europe has been soaked and scorched by it. So it appears – and yet what seems, deceives us; for there has been a baptism by water and by fire, not for the body, but for the Soul of the European family. Human passion and human wrath have left a bitter taste in human mouths, and have made gloomy and grim and sour human faces; but the human soul has been purified in a measure; to some extent it is free of the passion and the wrath which have gone, like gun-powder, into invisible air.

The baptism by water has purified it, the baptism by fire has vitalised it.

After the storm, we see in the European world around us some freshness and green-ness; the air is cleaner and rarer. Humanity’s body, after a serious malady, has emerged free of certain poisons which it has thrown off. But humanity, like a child, is apt to go back to those same confections of jam, julep and jujube that made it ill! Who will save the child of European culture from itself?

H. P. B. wrote in 1888, ”from guilt to punish­ment” is ”the high-road on which move onward the great European nations.” She indicated the ways by which Europe could deliberately mitigate some of its guilt and thus save itself some of the ghastly aspects of punishment. Her words were not heeded, and yet the handful of Theosophists by their lives and labours have done something. But punishment like a shadow has accompanied the devil of guilt; the devil, for the time being, is cast out, and only its departing shadow envelops Europe. But will not the great villain return ? Not if we of the Theosophical Society, with the help of others, teach that which our great Masters have taught us through H. P. B. and others.
 

THE NEW LAW FOR A NEW EUROPE.

Europe has to be taught a new law of life. It has lived according to the law of the body, and it

has suffered. Now it must learn to live according to the law of the soul. The law of the lost continent must depart to the limbo of the past. A new continent with a new race is being born, and the latter will require its laws and institutes and commandments.

A new State and not a new political party; a new Religion, in which work is worship, and not a new church of stones and ceremonials; a new Art of self-expression for all, and not a new school of technique or daubs for the indulgence or edification of the few; a new Society in which capacity supplies need by the law of sacrifice and service, and the true noblesse oblige obtains; a new Internationalism of brotherhood and freedom and not a new diplomacy of honour among thieves; a new Socialism which loves and gives and not that dwarfing credo which hates and takes; a new Aristocracy of the Wise and the Spiritual, and not a new ”nobility” of money­lenders and money-changers; a new Kingdom for all souls and not new countries for mere nations; a New Commonwealth of True Democracy with the opportunity for every one to become a King and not a new Empire where a few rule the many. Therefore a new Revolution which will destroy for ever the danger of the birth of new false gods in the place of old false ones, and not a subversion of order and a rise of dictatorship.

There is the danger of Europe. Old Hag Sin dressed in the gay attire of youth will tempt  Europe to its old crimes. Do not make a mistake: this deadly war has not been between belligerents – not between Belgium, France and Britain, and Germany, Austria and Turkey; not between nationalities. It is that which has blinded us and stands in the way of Europe’s true emancipation at this very hour. The war has been between the unconscious forces of materialism and the equally unconscious forces of idealism; and the former are everywhere in Germany, Austria and Turkey, but also in Britain and France and India. The unconscious idealism also is present everywhere; it showed itself in the glory of French and British youth, but also in the similar glory of German and Austrian youth; it enabled Belgium to suffer in the spirit of sacrifice, but it also helps Germany in the same way in her hour of gloom; it made Revolution in Russia, but also in Austria and Germany; if the Czar has sacrificed himself, the Kaiser is no more.

That Idealism has triumphed, and the dark emperors of materialism are making an insidious attempt to regain their ascendency. Material victories are spiritual defeats, and unless Europe sees the spiritual side of her victory, there is but little hope for Europe.

The Law of the Soul! – what is that?

Europe has lived in the past the religion of soulless bodies: man was a body, and if there was a soul, the latter was the product of the body; a nation was an aggregate of ”political animals,” and the State was created by these creatures; society was an institution ruled by laws enacted by the State of political animals; religion, its churches and priests and ceremonials and rituals and angels and God, was the product of the instincts of the Society of political animals. Europe was a trading corporation, and its business had no dealings with God.

From that, Europe has to become a family-unit of souls: men and women are souls who wear European bodies when they are born on the soil of Europe. There is a National Soul which expresses itself in every National State and Society. The State is a projection on earth of its heavenly archetype, [2] and Society living within its aura affects it, and is affected by it; corrupted Society corrupts the State, and soiled conditions of State make a worse Society. Just as the foul habits of the human constitution drive the Soul away from the body; just as bodily corruptions make it impossible for the human soul to guide and inspire its personality; so also corruptions of State and Society remove from the first its heavenly aspects and make the second but a vehicle for the expression of material instincts. Thus the European family race drove away the real Gods of the heavenly spheres when it con­ceived itself as a Society of political animals, and this world the home of the devil. It is the nature of the beasts to fight!
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[2]  See the author’s ”Problems of National and International Politics” in Theosophic Outlook, Convention Lectures of 1917. 
 

Let us bring back the Gods we have driven away by restoring to our Society its proper State.

The refugees of war horrify us; but what about the exiles from the Europe of the pre-war days? In these days we have to think of a new race of pariahs which no European Government will touch to-day – the waste matter of the War. Five thousand years ago, on the eve of the Great War of Kurukshetra, Arjuna complained of the impending ”caste-confusion,” and in Europe to­day the condition is repeated. Not individuals, but populations have been disinherited; some Austrians are no more Austrians, some Germans are now Belgians, and hundreds, nay thousands, know not who they are. The war has created a race of untouchables. The more-settled classes and nations are careful not to be contaminated by these untouchables. The history of India, read with a spiritual vision, affords lessons in world-history. Let European humanity look out; let it not make the mistake our Aryan forefathers committed in the past in India. They then produced an untouchable class which has today grown into a sixth of India’s population. That treatment also brought about the ultimate foreign domination of India; in making millions of untouchables, with the help of our Aryan conquest, we sowed the seeds of our political slavery from which we are now setting ourselves free in India, thanks among others to Mrs. Annie Besant, the President of the Theosophical Society.

In the slowly emerging International State in Europe, if the European family proceeds by the method of division, ignoring the principle of Brotherhood and the Law of Love in the struggle for existence, this newly-born international sub­race of pariahs will grow in numbers; and then will come, from some far-off centre of earth-space, the conquerors of your mind-race to subdue you and teach you how to compensate for the breaking of that Law of Laws. 

But who are these war-refugees, this race of pariahs? Are they not the harvest of your own past sowing? Physical and political events are but projections and reflections of spiritual happen­ings. There is a race of spiritual exiles, in­tellectual refugees – driven out of priest-ridden and mammon-worshipping societies, and diplomacy – intriguing, selfish States of the Europe of pre-war days. Think of the race of Idealists. From the times of the early Greeks, Europe has exiled the Idealists of every clime. Europe gave hemlock to Socrates, the cross to the Christ, flames to Bruno. Before the attacking forces of the Inquisition ran the conscientious, the learned, the truth-seeker, as simple folk ran from the attacking armies of Russia and Germany, Austria and Roumania, and even now before our very eyes run with their bag and baggage, their children and their infirm, before the armies of the Reds and the Whites. Materialisations follow psychic phenomena in the spook-room. And the material condition of Europe to-day is the natural and karmic harvest of the work of your priests and politicians who, following their dark instincts, have fought soul-full forces. They have murdered Idealism and trifled with its dead empty shell, like most of the modern spiritualists, and have produced materialisation. Turn away from empty shells and mere spooks masquerading as Angels of Light and Gods of Wisdom; they are false objects.

A portion of Europe, intuitively or instinctively, or both, feels the need and the necessity of some­thing beyond the material, and there is a tendency to mistake subtle-matter for Soul and psychism for Spirituality.

When Julian the Apostate saw for the last time his beloved gods, he wept; for, they were no longer the shining spiritual beings he had known and had worshipped; they were the pale and wornout shells of those beings. What a symbolic vision of the European Cycle he was beginning! Let us not play with spooks, but work and pray for the returning Nirvanis.
 

THE INTERNATIONAL STATE.

In the opening of this new cycle of a new age, let us, who have it from Theosophy, give to Europe a new attitude to life and labour, organised life and organised labour. 

The International State is upon us. We cannot escape it. We may prolong the National State for a while, but it must yield place to the wider unit. The real danger, however, is that we may carry into the emerging Internationalism the evils of our Nationalism. Instead of enabling the projections of Heaven to materialise, we may unconsciously participate in dragging in the astral shells of the evil of our dead State. Those constituents which sapped the vitality of spiritual Nationalism, and made the National State a materialistic one and overran it with evils of materialism, may once again destroy in years to come the new State, may make it a materialistic State. The ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity were never realised by any of our National States, because they assumed a materialistic basis for the individual, the society and the State. The ideals of self-determination and self-expression in Internationalism may be made to take materialistic shapes and forms, and then the evil will eat its heart out, and from one failure we shall work to arrive at another failure.

Therefore, when a new State is arising, which will affect Society in every country, when a fusion of nationalities is taking place, when a new order of things is growing, it is very necessary to put before the European family-race right concepts and correct basic principles.

What Europe decides in the coming months will be the foundations on which the Europe of the future will be built. Cause and effect are very difficult to separate. Who can draw a demarcating line between them? The causes of the future effects are being generated now, but those very causes are rooted in the effects of the events of the past ten years. The International Commonwealth of Europe is part of the wider Commonwealth of the Aryan Race. In that wider Commonwealth will manifest the International State, and in the latter an international society of many nations, of differing customs and cultures, will afford suitable play­grounds for individual human beings to progress and evolve. Our whole Theosophical teaching supports the idea that State- and Society-environment attract and draw Egos suited to them. We are the makers of the environment. We, by our present policies and plans, invite the builders of the future international Commonwealth in every nation, in all continents. Who shall they be?
 

THE BUILDERS. 

There are two crops of Egos waiting to come in; and, according to the environment we create, we shall attract the one or the other type. The Lords of Karma will give to the Europe of to-morrow what she works for to-day. There are two classes, one fairly small, the other fairly large, of Egos who await incarnation at the dawn of this new age. The first is composed of the flowers of a previous age whose wisdom and sacrifice demand a spiritual environment in family, nation, and in State. They can incarnate in our midst to utilise their spirituality in the building of a Commonwealth on a spiritual basis. These are the ”returning Nirvanis” referred to by H. P. B. in the Secret Doctrine and other places. The second class is the millions of egos set free from their bodies by the carnage of the battlefields. This latter class has manifested a wonderful self-sacrifice and love of country. The Mahabbarata classes such sacrificers along with perfect yogis, as far as their after-death condition is concerned. But we have to take into account the prevailing mood of the individual when death took place, and not only the high motive which engendered the action which produced death. After-death condition is affected first by the motive of the life just closed, and secondly, by the prevailing mood of the dying. If a man of noble motives, many acts of self­abnegation and full of general love impulses dies in a mood of anger and jealousy, his after-death condition is narrowed by that mood, just as it is made expansive and happy by the former motives, acts and impulses. So teach the ancient Sages. ”The ruling passion strong in death” guides the man’s rebirth, and produces his environment. These youths, French, German, British, Belgian, Austrian, American, Turkish, Bulgarian, Roumanian, Indian, have cast off their bodies, and what has been their ”ruling passion strong in death” ? Their inspiration was an ideal, but their mood of realising that ideal? If not one of hate and wrath, then at least one of righteous indignation. But, whether one or the other, it would be a mood rooted in the hate­ emotion though perhaps engendered by a motive rooted in love. If they come back it is but natural that Mars must shine in their heavens.

Destruction and construction proceed in cycles. After a period of destruction of the nature we have experienced there will follow a period of construction. Construction of what? Of Society and State. Who will construct Society and State? Individuals. But construction implies the beginning and carrying on of work and its completion. The Law of Cycles and the Law of Evolution demand that it shall be an international State; from the archetypal regions it is being projected; we, on earth, have to build it. Shall we be ”artists who imitate the heavenly pattern” or shall we once again create our God and State in our own likeness? Plato speaks of these artists in his Republic, and says, ”Herein will lie the difference between them and every other legislator—they will have nothing to do either with individual or State, and will inscribe no laws, until they have either found, or them­selves made, a dean surface.” The making of the ” dean surface” is the immediate task in hand, and then must be taken up the ”filling in” work. ”And when they are filling in the work, as 1 conceive, they will often turn their eyes upwards and downwards: 1 mean that they will first look at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human copy; and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of a man; and this they will conceive according to that other image, which, when existing among men, Homer calls the form and likeness of God.”

Plato and Aristotle give to us the two types of State: the former would reproduce on earth the heavenly archetype and bring forth a race of god-like men ; Aristotle’s State is composed of political animals. So far Europe has worshipped at the shrine of Aristotle and rejected Plato, and from failure to failure the European race has proceeded, achieving its progress in spite of itself, in spite of its lack of insight, in spite of its mistakes, its blunders, its crimes. A deeper layer of that Race-consciousness is now to be brought into working operation – the inter­national layer. In the womb of futurity lies hidden the destiny of Europe: there are charts and prophecies which speak of the destruction of the continent; but sunk continents, with their civilisations, rise up again; lost Atlantis will emerge again, but will also bring forth its atmo­sphere. A man’s material bodies may die and disintegrate, but his new set of vehicles is surrounded by his old atmosphere, virtuous or vicious, making or marring his new life. Once again the ”ruling passion strong in death” affects a race and a continent as well as an individual. Is it not our task so to mould and shape that a major portion of the European race may be regarded as worth saving from those currents of destruction when the time comes for Europe to go down? But leaving aside that faroff future, let us apply ourselves to the task of the present and ask ourselves the question – On what basis shall the new International State be built – on the Platonic or on the Aristotelian model? Theosophy clearly shows that the former is the more correct to follow in principles. If the European family-race endeavours to do that it will speedily make room for the” returning Nirvanis.”

Of the second crop of Egos, those whose bodies were struck down in the Great War, 1 think we must recognise the fact that they are of two types, broadly speaking. First, the large class whose patriotism, manifesting as righteous in­dignation, indulged in an emotional outburst rooted in hate. Though without bodies these are not different from hundreds in every country who are physically alive, many of whom are witnessing the cruel aspects of hate in their own lives and environments, and thus are being purified, while others are still being pushed to expressions of hate. Witness the middle-class armies at their work in Ireland, and on the continent of Europe. To return to the dead: this first group of young soldiers, men of noble motives but whose ”ruling passion strong in death” was rooted in hate, will come if a fitting environment is created, suited, that is to say, to a life actuated by noble motives, but also demanding the competitive struggle in which their astral forces can find adequate expression. If we do not make that environment for them they will attain, in the process of evolution, purificatory stages and be ready as better men, because of noble motive to work for a nobler phase of Nationalism in the International State of the future. There is a second group, however, among them: some of our own brothers of the Theosophical Society belong to that second class; also men of great and noble motives, but whose ”ruling passion strong in death” was equally rooted in Love emotion and who, therefore, according to the Gita and the Mahabbarata have attained to a high heavenly condition. These practically are a class of” Nirvanis” in the sense H. P. B. uses that term, and can and will return if, once again, we make a proper environment for them. 

It will be clear from what 1 have said that our duty is to produce a spiritual International State; if we begin that work in right earnest, if we show sincerity of purpose and honesty in execution of the task, we shall immediately attract the willing co-operation from the other side, not from the astral plane, but from the world of ”Nirvanis.” [3]

And now let us consider the work in hand from that point of view.
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[3] Has not H. P. B. hinted at a series of Divine Dynasties for every Root Race (”S. D.,” II., p. 429)? and what happens in larger cycles is repeated in smaller ones. Dynasties are in­dividualistic as well as hierarchical. 


THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

The International State cannot arise all at once. It will take a long term of years; we are only in the throes of birth and feel its pangs. Every concept in the world above takes a period to manifest itself in the world below. In the world below, human will, being divine in essence and therefore free, often wars against that manifesting process, spoils it, and even kills it. Have we not heard how even a Manu had to destroy a whole race because it did not reproduce the heavenly pattern? Therefore, what we have to achieve is to harness the power of human will and its dependants and co-adjutants, to help this manifesting process. The archetypal currents throw down their constituent factors to be gathered up and arranged; they function and therefore require a vehicle for themselves; they require organisation. We, in the world below, provide that organisation, and, not understanding, often create faulty, inadequate or deformed organisation. Thus we work in harmony with or frustrate the efforts of the Gods. Function and organisation are interdependent and affect each other and, therefore, a co-operation between those who function and those who organise, becomes necessary.

In our new civilisation, new organisations must be created, and already our people are creating them; but lack of knowledge, non-understanding of fundamentals, absence of spiritual impulses and right instincts push us into building faulty, inadequate, or deformed institutions. We are at this hour creating organisations or are planning them. In either case we are apt to go wrong unless the principles of future growth are thoroughly understood. For example, take the League of Nations. An International State cannot function without an international organisation. To build up the latter we must have the right conception of the International State. The present League of Nations is built without this right understanding, without this right conception. As a matter of fact it is not a true international organisation. It is a League of soma Nations; nay, it is a League of some representatives of some Nations; nay, it is a League of some repre­sentatives of doubtful status of some Nations. It has rightly been called ”a League of States”; Dr. Rabindranath Tagore has given its other phase by naming it ”a League of Robbers.” The idea is all right: the heavenly projection has functioned and inspired some noble minds to conceive of it; but what a deformed, what an inadequate vehicle! And why is it so? Because the old fossils of a lost continent of Materialism are hugging their dead, and are endeavouring to carry the corpses into the region of the new life. Contamination, caste-confusion, if you like, must result. These old-world leaders, actuated by old-world ideas and motives, are blind to the spiritual signs in the heavens of to-day. Propelled by their old-world Karma, Eke the Egyptians of one period, these people want to live in and through their old mummies. Thoroughly identified with their houses of flesh they are so proud of their bodies that they would like to walk the Earth in those embalmed mummies! Let us hope Nature in this instance will prove stronger than Nurture!


TRUE INTERNATIONALISM.

First, then, must come an international organisation. We must first work for a real League of Nations – all Nations, great as well as small (geographicaliy small nations are often culturally very strong, and vice versa), victorious as well as vanquished (militarily victorious are generally spiritually vanquished, and material defeat often becomes spiritual victory), the White as also the Yellow and the Black (Aryans, including Brown, and the Atlantean and Lemurian branches absorbing themselves into the Aryan). [4] But this means an altogether different code of international ethics – first in Europe, and then in the world. Europe must enforce the laws of the new ethics. The ethics of Nationalism applied to the fresh beginnings of an International State will bring forth chaos. We shall have to copy Nature’s International expressions and not her National expressions. However different the flora of many climes, the same green beautifies them the world over. However different the fauna of many lands, the same blood flows in them all. The same blue sky arches over the one mother earth. Is the grass which grows in France green and in Germany red? Do we breathe air in Austria and Turkey, and something different in Belgium and Britain?  There come to mind the noble lines of the French Lamartine:
 

”Et pourquoi nous hair et mettre entre les races
Ces bornes ou ces eaux qu’abhorre l’il de Dieu?
De frontires au ciel voyez-vous quelques traces?
Sa volte a-t-elle un mur, une borne, un milieu?
Nations, mot pompeux pour dire barbarie
L’amour s’arr&te-t-il ou s’arrtent vos pas?
Déchirez ces drapeaux, une autre voix vous crie.
’L’égoisme et la haine ont seuls une patrie
La Fraternité n’en a paa.’

Recueillements Poetiques.
”La Marseillaise de la Paix.” [5] 

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[4] H. P. B. quotes Lefevre: ”the time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three great human types,” and adds ” (before the sixth Root-race dawns) the white (Aryan fifth Root-race), the Yellow and the African Negro­ with their crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Red-skins, Eskimos, Papuans Australians, Polynesians, etc., etc. – all are dying out. Those who realise that every Root-race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven branchlets, etc., will understand the ’why.’ The tide-wave of incarnating Egos has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity.” –” Secret Doctrine,” Vol. II, p. 780.

[5] ”And why do we hate and put between the races
These limits and these waters that the eye of God abbors?
Do you see any trace of frontiers in the sky?
Has its dome a wall, a limit, a middle?
Nations – a pompous word for barbarousness.
Does Love stop where your feet stop?
Destroy these flags, another voice proclaims.
'L’Egoism and hatred alone boast a fatherland.
La Fraternity has none.’”

There is a tendency to perpetuate the hate‑emotion of effete Nationalism, and that strikes at international proportions in terms of their own nationalistic ideas. They forget that those who stand for such views are the defeated in every nation. The Kaiser and his Prussian Junkers are defeated, but those who are now building New Germany on international plans are the victors. On the other hand some of those men in Britain and France who ”won the war,” are now making their countries lose the true victories. What is necessary, therefore, is to estimate the victories and defeats of the war differently; let it be done in the coin of Internationalism, and not in the broken currency of Nations. 

If a real organisation responding adequately and wholly and healthily to the function of true Internationalism is to be created, then we must view the factors of war and its issues very differently. With a single eye to the future stability and well.-being of the International State we should proceed to apportion not the blame for past folly, but the responsibility for the future progress of the Race as a whole. An International State, harmonious in its structure, cannot be founded on prejudice, enmity and hatred. It must be established on the basis of co-operation; and that not only by forcing others to co-operate with us, but also by our­selves working at it, earnestly and sincerely. An aristocracy of nobility cannot flower from the seeds of egotism and arrogance, fed by the waters of vanity and the atmosphere of assumed superiority. Let us start by putting away the false notions of victors and vanquished. All Europe is van­quished: Europe which boasted of its Christian instincts and showed itself obsessed by” madness risen from hell,” to quote Swinburne’s words. What animal passion has it not shown? All of us are vanquished in as much as our Race has failed to fight humanely, chivalrously, or honestly — nay, failed inasmuch as we have thought it necessary to fly at each others’ throats. But all of us are victors too. Are not the Russian Revolutionaries who carried out the commands of Asquith, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, to fight to a finish the forces of autocracy ? Is not Ger­many a victor whose Kaiser fled and whose Junkers are humbled? Is not the Czar the Great Victor who made himself the embodiment of the evil autocracy of his state? Therefore, in a spirit of humility, remembering that not a single nation is altogether free of the crimes it condemns in other nations, and that not one single nation is devoid of fine qualities, let us come together for the common good of all. Let us change the League of Nations to suit the true ideals of spiritual Internationalism and let us begin by forgiving the blunders of others, and praying for the forgiving of our own sins. Every nation of Europe has sinned and is sinned against, and the forgiveness must be mutual; if not, European humanity in this season of sowing will put underground the seeds of self-pride and others’ chastisement and reap. once again the deadly poison-plant of War. Let the very root of the new plant. The foundations of the International State cannot be nationalistic. The so-called victorious peoples want to lay the foundations of the new Race of us not live in the sphere of make-believe. Every one in Europe is humbled, and if European humanity will not acknowledge it to-day, Nature will be compelled to take severer measures to-morrow. From the point of view of the future well-being of the International State such ideas as ”making Germany pay” are an introduction of poison into a very tender body. Our task is to make the world copy this very Congress of ours. As equals, as friends, as brothers, we have met, talked, discussed our common problems for our common good. Let us work through our beloved T. S. so that European humanity may soon come together as we do to-day.
 

SELF-EXPRESSION.

The International State must aim at affording the greatest possible opportunity for self-expression. Of whom? Of the individual in the first place; of the individual as a citizen of his country and nation in the second place; of the individual as an internationalist and a humanitarian in the third place. This implies individual Liberty in the first place, self-government in the second place, and lastly Altruism in the third. Liberty of the individual implies its extension in civic, political and international affairs. Self-government implies masterhood not only of hearth and home and votes in national concerns, but actual participation in the govern­ment of the country and the nation; the in­dividual in Europe must be brought to take the

same interest in national affairs as he has to take in his home affairs. He builds his home, he preserves it and improves it by the capacity to earn and to love; the same must be made to obtain, through some process, in the citizen’s relationship to his country and nation. Lastly, Altruism, not of charity by the rich towards the poor, of the stronger, man or nation, towards the weaker, but the true Altruism where poverty and weakness do not exist as such; this does not mean that now or ever there will not be some members of the human kingdom stronger in body or mind than others, or again some will not be financially or intellectually better off than others. It means that in the International State the, weakness of a small nation in the sphere of physical prowess, and in the province of numbers, will not be taken advantage of by numerically stronger peoples. Bullies are not respected in polite society to-day, and we must cease to respect their manifestation in international affairs. Every nation has its message for the common good of all, and true Altruism lies in our endeavor to live our lives in terms of our own dharma and to leave and enable others to do likewise for themselves. The corporate life in the Nationalistic State has grown to fine stature already, and we have to begin to manifest its higher phases in the International State. Just as the capacity, refine­ment and well-being of a family depend on the variety of expression in its individual members; just as the strength of a nation lies not only in the well-being of one of its classes, but on all its parts functioning in harmony, .so also the stability of the International State will be in this real Altruism, with its key-word of self-expression. Self-determination implies capacity to determine one’s environment in light of the requirements of one’s self. Such a determination, to be real, must accompany self-expression, and these two complementary factors are to be found in true altruism. Not an effort to save other people’s souls, but an honest and earnest endeavor to express the powers of one’s own, and thus helping others to follow suit, constitutes true Altruism. Every nation has its mission to fulfill, and by this process of real Altruism, every nation can attain it. In the International State every nation should speak eloquently its message of life for all. No land is so poor as not to be able to give its message and fulfil its mission; no land is so rich that it can afford to lose the meaning and import of such messages from sister countries.

These are vague generalities and very roughly indicate the aims of the International State.

Now one of the phases of the Law of Cycles is the Law of Succession and Inheritance. I am not indulging in legal parlance. Man-made laws of succession and inheritance, like all man-made laws, are inadequate and faulty. Nature’s laws are otherwise and work with unfailing candour and justice. The overlapping of cycles is adjusted by Nature by the proper use of her law of succes­sion and inheritance. Therefore the early manifestations of the International State will arise at the junctions which produce the Nationalistic chaos in every European land. The deepest and sharpest shadows show the existence of clearest and brightest light. Where the clouds have gathered thickest there will be the downpour. Therefore light is to be found for the purposes of creating the International State in the thickest darkness of Nationalistic States; refreshing rain will make things new and bring forth the International State at the very place where in the Nationalistic States to-day black ugly clouds are thick. Now, the liberty of the individual is most attacked in a particular sphere or in places where its influence reflects itself; self-government is more absent there than in other places; altruism, with its duality of self-expression and self-­determination, is wholly absent, nay, its reverse, struggle rooted in selfishness is most prevalent in that province. In that sphere, place and pro­vince are also to be found the deepest shadows, indicating the existence of light close by. It is the sphere of industrialism, the province of commercialism, the place of struggle in every Nationalistic State.

It is a big subject, and it is not possible to handle it with ease and thoroughness and yet be concise. Let me briefly put down a few ideas and pass on.
 

THE DANGER.

The great truth wonderfully enunciated by the Buddha that ”hatred ceaseth not by hatred but by love,” carries with it the implication that hatred is apt to perpetuate itself in many forms unless somewhere some one checks it at some time. The momentum gained by such perpetuation can be reduced in terms of rnechanics and algebra. Certain workings of the law of succes­sion relate themselves to this swing backwards and forwards in mood after mood or life after life in the case of an individual, and struggle, consolidation of its results, and struggle once again, in varied phases of group-life, such as that of a nation. There is a danger, therefore, in the passing over of the industrial system, burdened with its weaknesses and its woes, from Nationalistic to Internationalistic State. But there is a greater danger. If the International State which is to come into being must not be based on the past wrongs of Nationalism, it also must not be established on the faulty concepts of Inter­nationalism. If, on the one hand, we must save the International State from being an extension of Nationalism (as old-world leaders, referred to above, are endeavouring to achieve), we must also make an effort to guard its foundations from being planned on old-world pictures of the International State with all its factors and con­stituents and institutions. If certain monarchical institutes are dead, so also are certain kings of international socialism and the like; both belong to the lost continent, the old-world which is no more.

There is a great danger of the Law of Succession operating and giving us an inheritance in the shape of wrong international industrialism, wherein the vested interests of the working­ classes will manifest their powers. We do not want, to swing from the extreme right of capitalistic tyranny prevalent in Nationalism to the extreme left of working-class despotism in Internationalism. Our Internationalism must give every one his due — and not only the present under-dog. We do not want to perpetuate the institution of the under-dog. We want a spiritual solidarity in industrialism arising as a first factor in the International State.

To let the light manifest where deep shadows darken the industrial world, all of us, and not only labourites and capitalists, must acquire a new view of industry and commerce. These at present are regarded as materialistic, and we are apt to look upon them as soul-corroding, beauty-destroying, mind-enslaving instruments of the Devil. That is not altogether wrong as things are at present. But we must endeavor to change that; and on the principle that what you think that you become, we must set out to acquire the view that industry, trade and commerce are fundamentally and in essence spiritual, and then follow up by an effort at manifesting that view in action – individualistic or institu­tional. The science of industrialism is generally believed in; its art side is beginning to impress itself on the popular mind; but industrialism as a religion, with its ethics, philosophy, mysticism and esotericism, is not even thought of. That is our work in the Theosophical Society. The pro­duction of good, true and beautiful commodities by free men of soul-force under democratic conditions – that should be our cry. We must seriously endeavor not only to make it known, but also to realise it in active life. Thus will we co-operate with the divine will in evolution and bring forth the seeds of the International State.

If one aspect of the Law of Cycles enables us to understand why the International State is due; if another as Law of Succession and Inheritance indicates the directions to be avoided and those that can safely and profitably be taken; so a third phase reveals to us the instruments to be utilised by individuals and nations engaged in the great enterprise.
 

 CULTURAL UNITS

IN this Aryan Race, mind development in seven stages is taking place. The principles of human constitution relate themselves to races and sub-races of the human kingdom. In the new international state, a sub-layer of the mind principle of the race will operate. We are not here concerned with the beginnings of the next sub-race; I am referring to the Aryan-European-family- race growth in terms of mind. The advance sixth sub-race is related to and to a certain extent dependent on the mind unfoldment of our fifth sub-race in all its ramifications of family-races. The advance guard of that family is passing out of the stage in which the use of the scientific mind is made, to that in which the philosophic mind operates. The front-rank pioneers of that advance guard are getting even beyond that – passing out of the philosophic to the use of the archetypal mind. The bulk of the European race is still in the two lower stages of  Kama-Manas. We of the Theosophical Society have to help the manifestation of the philosophic mind and aid the early expression of the archetypal.

At the beginning of a race, a certain seclusion takes place by the advance-guard of the race for the proper introduction of the activities of the new principle which is to operate in that race; in other words, the fixing of the type of the race takes place. What is true of a race is also true of its sub-divisions. The early work of the unfoldment of the principle which will operate in the new world now coming into being, will take place in seclusion. But seclusion, not as it is ordinarily understood by the world or even by the generality of our members in the T. S. To enable the new world to proceed on the right roads of its many-sided evolution, it has to be convinced of certain fundamentals. We cannot convince people save by imparting the right knowledge about those fundamentals. A new culture must mould and shape the new civilisation. Who is to bring forth into being this new culture? It will not drop from heavenly regions; it has to be imbibed and assimilated by higher mind-processes, and gradually and steadily and healthily it has to be brought down from the sphere of mind to that of action. Our politicians will have to possess the faculty of looking heavenward to do the work referred to by Plato. [6]

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[6]  Plato speaks of the artists in his Republic who imitate the heavenly pattern. ”Herein will lie the difference between them and every other legislator – they will have nothing to do either with individual or state, and will inscribe no laws, until they have either found or themselves made, a clean surface.” The making of the ’clean surface’ is the immediate task in hand, and then must be taken up the ’filling in’ work. ”And when they are filling in the work, as I conceive, they will often turn their eyes upwards and downwards: 1 mean that they will first 1ook at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human copy; and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of a man; and this they will conceive according to that other image, which when existing among men, Homer calls the form and likeness of God.”
 

The new Nobility of Culture cannot come to birth in the slums of space, of struggling, cursing, unhappy Europe. The new society, with varied capacities tos upply the common needs in the spirit of sacrifice and true altruism, cannot arise unless a few begin to live that life. To sacrifice for the benefit of others we must possess something worthy of sacrifice; to be capable means to possess some faculty. I have referred to a new Revolution, in terms of law, order, harmony; a new crusade for a spiritual kingdom; a new message from the Ancient Seat to guide the band of European humanity, not by the way of war but by that of wisdom, to a realisation of a new commonwealth affording opportunity to all to be kings unto themselves. But the Eternal Hermitage must yield new sages for the spiritual crusade to precipitate the new kingdom. Therefore the Eternal Hermitage must be reproduced in the world of men.

What are required now, immediately, are a few Cultural Units or centres where men and women, of the international world, may strive with all the powers of their souls to create and work out, as fully as may be possible, with the help of their philosophic and archetypal minds, the many phases which will enable the international state to come to fruition in the course of time.

The cultural centres must be focal points at which the international state in miniature may exist. A new politics must replace the struggles of politics-- ”where all are for the State and none for the party”; where representative government ceases, for all govern and take part in government; where capacity is taxed in terms of the common need and the currency of culture and not of coin obtains; where worship is offered not in dimly lighted churches and with gorgeously-clad priests by lip-mummery to man-created half-gods, but in the open expanse of Nature to the God within us, who keeps company with the true gods in heaven, as we mortals of this world keep company with mortals; where the creator using the language of art does not suffer from the fret and fever of material life, but undergoing an inner conversion, impelled by a divine discontent followed by a spiritual realisation, works with a deeper motive and a profounder suggestion, ”seeking to wean humanity” from the obvious and the external reality of the senses ”to a higher view of life, work and world,” by holding forth to its vision ”significative forms to suggest the formless infinity which is hidden behind the physical world of forms.” [7] Where, in short, may be gestated a race of humans who could not conquer others because they have conquered themselves, who do not hate others because they have cast out fear from themselves, who teach by life and not by words, who create by life and not by brains, who work with life and not with hands, who perceive by life and not by senses. These are not symbolical, allegorical or paradoxical phrases; they must be taken as simple truths of a higher world. To an animal our language of mind culture might appear so, for it works with instinct-culture. To it a new sun rises every morning, which is rank ignorance to us; but for us a new spring rises every March – which may be, nay, is rank ignorance to creatures of a higher realm.

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[7] ”The New Indian School of Painting," by O.C. Gangoly
 

Therefore, a new and finer asceticism must be practiced, which will awaken that aspect of the spirit in us which is also to manifest, in course of decades, in the new civilisation now coming to birth.[8]  That is why we must start the work of building spiritual centres, cultural units. The Pythagorean unit made Greek culture; the monks retired to their monasteries when the ’barbarians’ began the invasion of the Roman Empire and later gave to Europe their Christian culture. Who is to give to the young world, which is now being born, the necessary culture it will require in economic, political, artistic, religious and philosophic spheres?

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[8]  Incidentally it may be mentioned that the archetypal mind unfoldment ultimately brings about the illumination of the mind; in other words, Buddhi-Manas begin to blossom, the mind which has to operate in the sixth sub-race. Thus will the fifth Sub-race begin to merge into the sixth Sub-race and become one with it. Just as the first became the second, so will the fifth become the sixth, as H.P.B. has clearly shown in her ”Secret Doctrine”.
 

The world has to be educated – the international world. Not a narrow world of a few thousands, but a wide world of millions upon millions. ”What is the use of a few cultural units?” people might exclaim.

It is the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump. From five loaves and two fishes the Christ fed a whole multitude. A few Theosophists may function as the leaven. But we must possess that which we desire to give. Let us acquire that which we want to possess.

Ever the Dawn breaks in the East.

The ”circling path of time” has brought us to a new dawn. ’The clock of Karma’ indicates the beginnings of a new day.

Modern tendency in commerce, art, philosophy or religion is towards the East. Soul-forces sometimes utilise the material instincts and the psychic urge to achieve their own purpose. The collapse of the West is like unto a night; the gloom of its darkness surrounds us and penetrates into our very being; but it inspires hope, for the morn is coming and our gaze stretches far on the Eastern horizon.

 Those who are sustained by that hope are active supporters of the idea that adequate use should be made of the night, its darkness and its gloom.

 A careful study of the great message of H.P.B. points to the necessity of a labour of love on the part of a few who should endeavour to gain an inner conversion in personal consciousness and then be possessors of the culture which will enable them to precipitate in the physical world of action the new international state. To attain this, what 1 have called cultural units are necessary. Small community life-centres where people will learn the art of spiritual self-expression, in an atmosphere of freedom of thought, discriminative study, profound contemplation on the Society-to-be; where the knower of the field will till the field, till the latter is full of green and gold crops sufficient to feed the hungry world; where soul will contact soil.

The Soul and the Soil!

In a new manner, at a different time, the old teaching of the 13th discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita has to be applied. In the midst of carnage was the message delivered then; in the midst of desolation and suffering its wisdom holds the inspiration for a few now. Not for all, but for a few so that they can serve all –

”The wise, who soar, but never roam,
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.”

But those who soar to heaven will descend to homes to sing the Song of the Life of the Real.

Let us as souls contact our soil – our real swadesh, our true patria. Let us weed out the elements of discord, the selfishness of patriotism, the strength of egotism, the glamour of the psyche within the body, the blinding power of the senses, the automatic rule of the sense-organs, the brain-power which enchains the mind-faculty, instincts which interfere with aspirations, impulses which mar the expression of intuitions, binding activities, many and varied, which stifle the manifestation of the One Spirit.

The higher asceticism will purify and transform our modern ’goodness into strength, our modern charity into brotherliness, our modern virtues into their heavenly prototypes. It is not the wickedness of men that is so dangerous to civilisation as what Passes off for virtue. The fire of meditation will burn to ashes the self-hood of personality made respectable by adornments of knowledge from the books and brains. of others, and bring into being the soul individuality which lives by the sacrifice of wisdom, by the joy of service dependent on its own inherent divinity and on its own spiritual vision.

A few such soul-individualities will produce a new religion of life in the place of creeds, a new art on which a new morality will be modelled, a new politics to legislate for an international state with politicians of the type Plato referred to as quoted above. They will make the philosophic mind operate; a few among them will begin to use the archetypal mind and work towards the illumination of buddhi and the realisation of atma.

We are at the parting of the ways : a false turn, and we may enter the dreary long lightless road of a dark age; a right turn, and we may march into the avenue of beauty and harmony of a new day. The former, by a circuitous, exhausting and weary travel may bring us after a time to the latter, but we can avoid much suffering and gloom by a right understanding of the situation, a right interpretation of the signs and tokens nature and her laws give, and a right application of knowledge to the conditions of today.

 The message which the Great Eastern Masters gave through H P B in the last century, contains wisdom which will enable us to help the advance of human progress, if we make that wisdom our own. We of the theosophical society must not offer something which satisfies our competitive civilisation, and our greedy and grabbing humanity. Let us not, like clever tradesmen, produce goods for sale, and pamper to our customer’s idiosyncracies and try to make them buy by making them happy. Let us give humanity a chance by speaking and living the truth and wisdom those Eastern Masters gave. Thus, perhaps, we will succeed in leading our fellow men on to that peak of spirituality from which they can perceive for themselves the grandeur and beauty of divine will working out in evolution, and where clarity of atmosphere will give them the power of right valuation.

 If the Theosophical Society, true to its original impulses, does this work it will be instrumental in saving the European humanity of today. If it does not achieve that, it will be because it has proven false to those impulses. We, the present day members, are some of the trustees in this world of the wisdom which H P B brought. Shall we be found worthy of the trust when the recorders of destiny’s page write their judgement? Time alone will tell. May their blessings help us to earn the privilege of rendering unto god the things that are god’s, and thus be chosen again as such trustees in a future day and generation. Let us courageously, with an honesty of purpose, a purity of motive, and a single eye to truth as we perceive it, live striving for the precipitation of the kingdom to which H P B belonged, and from which she came to help this race to realise it for itself.

 B. P.  WADIA

 

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