Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 1158
The upshot of it all is this: that we cannot afford to yield even to attempts at blackmail if our purpose is to serve humanity and to make that gradual, well-balanced progress of the Soul to which our destiny entitles us; nor will we yield to it if we remember that the business of existence is the patient building up of character — our own first — the world’s by our own example.
There is sanity and calm assurance in the knowledge that we reap exactly as we sow. The Theosophical teaching of Karma is the friend of honesty — the enemy of crime. The law of retribution and reward is utterly infallible and absolutely just; it knows no haste, no hindrance, no exceptions; least of all is it confined within the limits of an earth-life, which is no more than a moment in an endless chain of objective existences interspaced with periods that we call death — existences each of which is in every way conditioned by the character evolved in previous lives.
We are now the sum-total of what we have been. According to the doctrine of Reincarnation we shall be — this, conditioned by the exactly measured consequence of every deed we do in each life. Deeds being the result of character, it is inevitably only character that really counts; but character is weighed by deeds, whose quality depends entirely on the motive that provides their impulse. No hidden motive, even though so subtly hidden that it is totally unperceived, can escape detection by the unerring eye of Karma; each concession to the lower nature is against us; each self-identification with our Higher Nature, that inevitably leads to conquest of the lower, is placed to our credit and can never be forgotten or expunged.
Alertness in detecting wrongs and weighing them, leads to a progressive habit, that in turn evokes a readier skill and firmer constancy, until the subtler forms of blackmail that have victimized us hitherto, become uncovered to our mental vision. Courage employed in withstanding the more obvious and superficial threats, or in refusing to be party to them, leads to the greater moral courage needed to withstand the more evasive and dangerous forms of mental blackmail that increasing spiritual vision lays bare. Thus, by deeds done through conscience, spiritual progress is achieved.
And an attribute of spiritual progress is increasing magnanimity, associated with a decrease of the instinct for revenge. Enriched by our own experience, increasingly we understand the nature of the pitfalls into which those less experienced have blundered. Savagery, envy, and slander aimed at ourselves excite in us less resentment and more sympathy; and, as that change takes place in our own attitude, there gradually grows in us the wisdom necessary to the just determination of each problem in true, theosophical living as it actually comes up for decision.
True solutions of a difficulty must be totally unselfish. Retaliation is no remedy, but only serves to increase the ultimate amount of evil by adding to the ill will already in circulation. To repay the blackmailer with threats, to silence slanderers with slander or money, to oppose ill will with self-stupefying anger, is to court the whole savagery of the animal in man. By admitting anger and the spirit of revenge into our own motive, we have lowered the only shield we have, and have dulled our only weapon.
First and foremost, we may safely be assured of this: that any problem whatsoever, any threat, and any slander, is an opportunity to exercise such wisdom as we have, and to learn more wisdom by attaining nobler character. There is no other problem, and no other duty, in the last analysis. But wisdom is never selfish. The motive of revenge is no more vitiating than the equally unmanly subterfuge of cowardice, that offers peace under the pretense of piety.
Theosophy and Courage are one. We have not to defend ourselves, but to uphold a Principle. Our persons and our profits are a very small consideration in the endless evolution of the Universe. The only real profit we can make is in the increase of our spiritual growth; the personalities, in which in future lives we are to make our new experience, will correspond exactly to that growth; we jettison that prospect, corrupt and undermine it, if we value temporary benefit and our momentary mask more highly than the duty to do service to humanity.
Accordingly, the theosophical reply to every threat, whatever motive may be ambushed under it, is fearless and is aimed at evil, not at individuals. The accuracy of its aim depends entirely on its truthfulness; its force is gaged by its unselfishness; its consequences will be measured by the quantity of contribution that it makes to the spiritual welfare of humanity.
Infallibly, those consequences will provide grief — and they may bring ruin — to the unwise individuals who have preferred to take the side of slander and identify themselves with animal- and evil-nature. But the consequences are exactly measured by the Law of Karma, which will judge ourselves and others with impartiality. If we act justly, in the general interest, devoid of any sense of personal retaliation but equally unsubmissive to the claims of lethargy and cowardice, we need have no fear that the consequences will not serve the common welfare, whatever the immediate appearance may be.
Patience is a Godlike attribute; but there is a lower patience: it degenerates into a sort of fatalistic lethargy and ceases then to be a virtue. It is hardly possible to set a limit to the amount of patience we may wisely use in keeping silence as to what we know, or think we know, that is discreditable to other individuals. Silence and strength are one, when no more is at stake than our own personal emotions; envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, both in ourselves and others, are easiest to smother and destroy by never lending them the dignity of speech. In silence, as to personal emotions and the merely personal aspects of temporary loss or gain, we gather strength and courage, as well as wisdom, to act downrightly and nobly, without fear or favor, at the measured moment, when the opportunity arrives to act in behalf of Principle and thereby benefit the human race.
It is always unwise to support the claims of personality, by asserting or opposing them. But it is also unwise to submit to blackmail, because it is the enemy of Principle. Wisdom is the inseparable companion of Principle; and in Wisdom lie the very roots of strength.
EXTRACT FROM TALBOT MUNDY’S ADDRESS AT THE WHITE-LOTUS DAY CELEBRATION, MAY 8, 1924*
COMRADES: Those of us who are of the present younger generation of Theosophists, and who have not had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with that grand Leader, H.P. Blavatsky, have none the less the privilege of being loyal to her teachings. And it may he, perhaps, that after all we have not lost so much, because we are forced to look within ourselves for that spiritual Faith which shall make firm our loyalty, without which — I mean without loyalty — there is no spiritual life.
Of course the day will come when all the world will accept Theosophy as its spiritual guide and its law. We do not know how far ahead that wonderful development will be, but we can hope for it and work for it, and the more we hope and the harder we work, the sooner it will happen. Much depends on us, and on our watchfulness. The seed has been sown, and a grand beginning has been made; but most of the work lies ahead. However, a change is taking place. Its signs are obvious all over the world. There is an aspect of Theosophy that will be recognised by the world long before it accepts the spiritual teachings as a whole. In spite of war, and an armed peace in which the nations re-arm for further war, there is evident a change within the minds of men, in every nation, although there are not many yet who recognise that change, and there are fewer still who know the meaning of it. But the truth is this: Theosophy is occult, and works in unseen ways.
H.P. Blavatsky founded a new nation, a universal nation, that knows no limits of geography, whose citizenship is not based on color, race, or creed, but it depends on character. The Capital of that new nation I take it to be here, and it is on us that that nation’s future must depend, on us and on our loyalty to H.P. Blavatsky and to our present Leader. And I would like to add this: that there will ever come crises and emergencies which we must face; but we may well remember this: that whatever the difficulties we must face, whatever the crises, there will be none so dire as H.P. Blavatsky stood up against and faced alone; and the more and the nearer we appreciate the grandeur and the majesty of what she did, the nearer we shall be worthy of citizenship in that new nation which she founded.
“OUR minds should be restless for noble and beautiful things.”
“TO exist the healthy mind must have beautiful things — the rapture of a song, the music of running water, the glory of the sunset and its dreams, and the deeper dreams of the dawn.”
“A MAN must be prepared to labor for an end that may be realized only in another generation.”
“LET the cultivation of a brave, high spirit be our great task; it will make of each man’s soul an unassailable fortress.”*
ANOTHER’S DUTY IS FULL OF DANGER
DUTY and danger are words whose stark significance is nowadays obscured by misuse. Yes and no, however, are the only words in any language that are more exactly definite or which, if used with true intention, are the keys to more perplexing riddles. One of our many modern troubles, that should be one of the easiest to overcome, is that we use words much too vaguely and divorce them from their real meaning by admitting reservations and equivocations that lead off into endless byways of perplexity.
Duty is that which is due, and there is no escape from it, although the ways are limitless by which we may deceive ourselves, and others, with a temporary, false sensation of escape. But that is because we are all too prone to overlook the fact that all life is eternal, and that death provides no ‘alibi’ or refuge from the inexorable law, that as we sow, we reap. The Higher Law, that actually governs us, is neither limited nor qualified by time; its range is the eternal Now, and though each succeeding minute may provide new opportunities for progress, neither minutes nor aeons affect the Law, which is, and was, and forever will be the sole arbiter of individual and of collective destiny.
When a bill is due, we have to pay it; the alternatives are an appeal to the more or less elastic patience of the creditor, or bankruptcy. The first postpones the day of reckoning but is often costly in accruing interest; the other compels us to relinquish all our assets, and to begin again from the beginning, without credit and without the benefit of such momentum as a business-in-being normally provides. In either event, there is nothing gained beyond a breathing-spell; and the only sure way in which a bankrupt can regain his credit is by making use of opportunity to settle with his creditors to their satisfaction.
That is no more than a simple illustration of the occult law, that what is due eventually must be paid; with interest, if we delay the payment; with increased difficulty and without the assistance of reserved resources, if we delay too long, or if we are caught deliberately trying to evade a settlement.
A very common cause of bankruptcy is signing other people’s notes: that is, guaranteeing that another individual shall pay his debts. That individual defaults — and does so the more readily because his sense of responsibility has been weakened by what may have been intended by the guarantor simply as an act of friendship — the guarantor is called on to fulfill his guarantee; he finds it impossible, fails, and the law takes its course. He then joins the host of hurt and disappointed good-intention-mongers, who chant the dirge the ages have all listened to (so often that the ‘recording angel’ must have more than plenty of that gramophonic bleat in store)— “Never, no never again!”
But he will do it again. He will do it, in some form or other, the first moment that the risk looks profitable. Nothing less than wisdom, that has so grown from within that it has become identified with the individual, will save him from forever trying the impossible; and, in the end, he is better off should his attempts to avoid the law of individual responsibility meet disaster at the outset; because ‘nothing succeeds like success’ in convincing a man that his mistakes are wise, and the longer he seems able to avoid the law without distress to himself, the harder it will be for him to learn when the inevitable consequence begins to function, and the greater the distress will be. Failure in the early stages of an error is good fortune in disguise.
That is only an example on the most objective plane, where it is easiest to understand it. The Law, that as we sow we reap, is universal; it is everywhere, and it applies to everything and to everybody. It governs all the consequences of the most elusive and abstract thinking, as well as the effect of a blow struck in anger and the mixing of selected chemicals. Cause and effect are one, and they cannot be separated, although time, which is the mother of delusions, frequently persuades us that they can be.
Every individual is finally and unavoidably responsible for his own acts. Being causes, they set up consequences, that in turn become causes and bring endless chains of consequences in their wake; and for every one of those the originator must inevitably answer, at some time, in some place. It becomes easy to realize that the conditions we must meet in future lives depend entirely on performances in this life and the lives behind us, although no human brain can understand more than a fraction of the intricacies and adjustments of the Law of Karma.
A little thinking — a little facing of the facts without seeking to force them to fit time-rooted prejudices — brings to the surface the delightfully contenting knowledge that our problems are our own; that we have nobody to blame except ourselves, and no acts but our own to answer for, in the ultimate analysis. Hundreds of thousands — millions — of people have dimly realized that fact, and have sought to apply it; but, because they have only dimly realized one aspect of it, they have fallen headlong into selfishness, assuring themselves that the Law reads ‘I come first.’
But whoever adopts that policy of selfishness will find himself degraded to a plane of consciousness on which, in self-defense, all others will be quite as selfish as himself; just as he who adopts a policy of unselfish usefulness will eventually find himself promoted to a plane on which his fellow-men will act unselfishly toward him. Nor are these far-away planes, to be reached in future incarnations or avoided by some superstitious supplications to an ‘unknown God.’ They are nearer than breathing; they are closer than hands and feet. They are here, immediately ready, and as easy to attain to, or to tumble down into, as a cold bath or the measles.
So a selfish policy is not the remedy for any process of unwisdom. Like creating like, and action bringing its exactly measured consequences to the doer, it is clear, when we have once been bold enough to face facts, that we cannot help anyone by trying to help him to do the impossible: that is to say, by trying to help him to succeed in error or to avoid the consequences to himself of his own unwisdom. In that respect we have enough to do to keep our own course straight amid the massed perplexities our own unwisdom has produced. If we associate ourselves with his unwisdom we become identified with it and, however self-righteously contenting the emotion that impels us, all that we succeed in doing is to add to the amount of trouble in the world, of which there is already quite enough without our interference.
Our business is to reduce the amount of trouble; and there is one royal way, but only one, in which that possibly may be accomplished. All other ways are vanity and a delusion.
A simple illustration will suggest the real process and convey a hint of its infallibility: suppose a fleet of ships to be sailing toward one destination. Some of them are keeping a correct course; others are diverging toward rocks and shoals, with which the course is limited on both sides. There is an adverse current, but each ship has sufficient power, and a little over, to force itself against the wind and tide; each is supplied with charts and is in charge of a navigator, whose duty is to bring his ship to port.
What would happen if the ships that are on the proper course should diverge from it in order to head the others in the right direction? Or if they should stop their engines and lose headway in order that their captains might argue the point with the other captains who were heading for the shoals? The probability of disaster, of course, would simply be increased, and nobody would be the gainer by it.
On the other hand, suppose that the captains who were on the proper course, and who knew they were, having taken all the seamanlike precautions, should call attention to the direction they were taking and should ‘carry on,’ they would be doing their full duty, by giving clear warning of the danger to the others, and by showing the course where safety lay.
Life is not so different from that, that we cannot profit by the illustration. There are, of course, and for instance, schoolmasters whose duty is to go long ways, and drastically now and then, in interference with the navigation of the frail barks with which the young begin life’s journey; but even they find that example is the most efficient remedy for error, and that constant fault-finding not only deadens the beginner’s alertness but deprives him of capacity for self-direction. They do not find it profitable to do a pupil’s duty for him.
And there are extremes to which unselfishness may rightly go in rescuing those who have met disaster, provided that it truly is unselfishness and not self-righteousness, or a craving for self-advertisement, or the prospect of possible reward that gives the impulse. There are men and women whose very presence in the world uplifts it, so endowed by Nature with compassion for all suffering and all hopelessness that it becomes their duty to plunge into the stream of events and make other people’s business theirs. Such was H. P. Blavatsky. But then that quality of true compassion that possessed her, had its natural corollary of wisdom, so that she could do the right thing, at the right time, in the right place. Wisdom provided foresight, and she knew full well what consequences her brave altruism would inevitably bring down on herself; and, aware in advance of the slander and the persecution that would be her lot, she took her course deliberately, gallantly, surrendering her own peace for a lifetime solely that the coming generations might be benefited.
Privileges such as hers were must be earned; and they cannot be earned by talking, or by meddling with other people’s duty. No man knows how many lives were spent by H. P. Blavatsky in mastering the measureless experience that made her fit to undertake the work she did. And no man knows the tenth of what she suffered in one lifetime, which she might have lived at ease, in enjoyment of wealth and an unchallenged reputation. Neither is it possible for anyone to measure her reward, because those who are incapable of doing what she did are equally incapable of guessing at the heights she climbed by the unsparing use of all her spiritual gifts. Those who work for reward are not those who receive it, because its nature is beyond their comprehension; all the higher spheres of influence are kept for those who do not seek them, but who strive to serve in order that they may learn to serve more usefully.
