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LESSON VII

 

       TRUE INDIVIDUALITY; – IN WHAT SENSE AND TO WHAT EXTENT IS MAN A FREE MORAL AGENT, AND WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE OF INDIVIDUAL SPIRITUAL ATTAINMENT

 

            THE problem of divine sovereignty and human free agency is one of the most difficult ever presented to the human mind for solution, and we certainly do not expect to solve the problem fully so as to remove all difficulties out of the Way of the honest inquirer, nevertheless we hope to throw at least a little practically helpful light upon it.

 

            In this age when it is customary in many quarters, presumably learned and scientific, to deny the supernatural altogether, it is necessary to define clearly what truth underlies the doctrines of supernaturalism.

 

            The word nature signifies a something born, therefore if nature is something born, the laws of nature are laws governing something born, or laws inherent in this something born, we know that nothing is born without parents and that nothing can come into existence without an adequate cause. The so-called supernatural is strictly speaking only super-phenomenal, super-material, super-sensuous, or super-terrestrial.

 

            Supernaturalism arises with the conviction that there is in divine power an unlimited faculty of causation, God being an infinite and omnipresent cause, knowing no beginning or ending of his work but dwelling and working in an eternal present.

 

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            Whenever enlightened Hebrews called the Divine Being Yahveh or Jehovah, they signified by this term the Being who always was and who therefore ever will be. The Eternal One who was never made and could never be destroyed.

 

            When a child inquires, “If God made everything, who made God?” his question is simply puerile and insignificant, because if you could tell who made God, the question would then occur, who made the being who made God? And then if you reached in your reply to the being who made God, you would have to answer still another question, viz.: who made the being who made the being who made God? You would be of necessity obliged at length to take the position that there is, because there must be, a self-existent something or some one. The entire difference between theism and atheism, and between gnosticism and agnosticism is a difference with regard to the attributes of the self-existent being.

 

            The atheist is obliged to admit that something always vas and ever will be; that something vas never created and can never be destroyed. He says you can not destroy an atom, that annihilation is inconceivable as applied to substance itself, and if nothing can be put out of existence, then nothing was ever brought into existence. Theism goes further and affirms that the eternal something which never came into existence and can never go out of existence is not unconscious and therefore unwise, for it would be an axiomatic absurdity to declare that the something always in existence is less than the something not always in existence; it consequently follows that if consciousness,

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love, wisdom, spiritual life, in a word all the virtues, were not always in existence, you are brought face to face with the miracle of creation, of something made out, of nothing. Therefore, those who deny God and substitute an unconscious nature teach  the absurdity of something being created out of nothing, for if goodness, wisdom, will, intelligence, mind, spirit, soul, if everything relating to our higher being was not always in existence, how did it ever come into existence? but if that which was never made, never even made itself, but ever was and ever will be, if the Eternal Being includes all attributes pertaining to nobility of mind and soul, if all the attributes and elements we desire to be permanent, were in the eternal heart from eternity and will remain in the same eternal heart to eternity, this view induces us to regard our individual finite personal lives here as nothing other than expressions in limited form of attributes, elements and principles which are infinite and eternal in the fullness of their being.

 

            People talk of divine existence as totally apart from human existence very often. It is not absolutely correct to speak of God’s existence, but it is entirely correct to speak of man’s existence; existence means expression. Existence is a revelation of something. God is eternal being, and existence which is external, is a manifestation of being. Therefore we say that we exist but that God is. In making such a statement we logically, in technical language, convey our idea concerning eternal being and temporary existence.

 

            When we know what we are, we lave discovered the absolute and infinite truth of being itself; when we

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have reached to that stage in the ladder of our journey we shall look no longer at things as they seem but shall behold them as they are; then we shall know what Longfellow meant and all that any poet could imply in that wonderful statement in the Psalm of Life, “Things are not what they seem.”

 

            As long as we dwell in the region of the seeming, y we live in a lower region than the region of being. When we deal with things as they appear we do not usually deal with them as they are. All the delusions and counterfeits with which we are so accustomed to deal, will pass away, and be destroyed forever; but that which is permanent, whatever is real substance, cannot ever be destroyed. Destruction of error is accomplished in the sense in which folly is destroyed by the advance of wisdom, for wisdom is greater than folly, folly being but the’ absence of wisdom. Ignorance is destroyed through. Education, for education brings knowledge; knowledge is greater than ignorance, for ignorance is but the absence of knowledge. All our frailties, imperfections, faults, and misbelieves, all our imperfect dreams and personal vagaries, will at length be cast into a bottomless pit, and be burned with unquenchable fire, while all that is real, our true being, all that is preservable because worth preserving, will forever, in our individual consciousness, enable us in the limited circle of individual capacity to say, I am as the Eternal, embracing eternal life. Every child of God, every son and daughter of the Most High reaching the bed rock, touching the eternal foundation upon which is reared the temple of finite existence, can say forever,

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“I am.” The realization of this divine individuality, this glorious identity of soul that forever will be man’s blessed portion, is the only infallible evidence of one’s entrance into the true Kingdom of Heaven, or Nirvana, to which many Orientals especially look forward with such earnest and eager quest.

 

            Many people, in consequence of a total ignorance of genuine Theosophy, suppose that hundreds of millions of people desire annihilation, which implies that they desire that their individual souls should no longer retain identity; what they really desire is complete destruction .of personal or external selfhood, or the lower nature, whose passions constantly war against the higher.

 

            We tell you most emphatically that you have to lose your outer self in order to find your inner self. You must part with all that personality which makes you disagreeable to one another and engenders animosity and rivalry, in order to find that divine individuality which teaches you to enjoy each the other’s welfare and to live in perfect peace and harmony throughout eternity as a thoroughly united family. When you attain the glorious height of spiritual perfection, when you have trod the perfect way, reached the perfect goal and won the perfect prize, you will have lost everything that could possibly make you disagreeable to any one, and every one around you will have lost whatever could possibly make them disagreeable to you, but you will retain everything that makes you agreeable and valuable to each other and you will have found in this ocean of love, infinite powers of enjoyment which you never dreamed of when you were on earth

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concerning yourself with external business with a view to outdoing your neighbor.

 

            We endeavor to point our students to the higher truths of spirit, to the higher view of immortal life, so we have to tell them there are things to forget as well -is to remember; there is a memory to be killed as well ,is a memory to be cultivated; there is a carnal selfish self that must die and never rise again, as well as an eternal identity that never can die; we assure you that the only things that can be destroyed are things that cause you discord and trouble by alienating you in interest one from another. All desire to kill must be annihilated; the desire of one nation to make war upon another must be annihilated; the disposition of one person to hate or slander another must be annihilated, with everything that makes you rivalrous and selfishly ambitious; for when you enter fully into the glorious region of the truly real, and the principle of absolute being is known and understood, you will all unite, all coalesce, so as to all form one glorious heavenly company, one divine choir: and as in a grand organ there are many stops and many parts which harmoniously blend together and as there swells forth as a result of this blending, a volume of sound wherein one cannot distinguish with an untrained ear the separate sound of each sweet note; or as in some great and glorious choir pouring forth -melodious harmony you hear the music of a thousand voices, but cannot discriminate with the untutored ear, one voice from another; the reason why you fail to detect individuality is because you are not trained sufficiently in the sense of hearing to discriminate; but bring a thoroughly

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trained musician into the presence of ever so mighty a torrent of sound and lie will tell you he hears each separate voice in the chorus no matter how many are singing at once, and if any voice is singing out of tune, he can tell which voice it is. When we have found our true identity we shall know each other as we shall know ourselves, we shall all be individual members of the celestial orchestra, each an individual member of a perfectly harmonious choir; those angels who are now able to distinguish us truly the one from the other in the sense of recognizing each of us to the extent of knowing how we are all performing our respective parts, individualize us perfectly in their thoughts and we shall all somewhere find that individuality is ours (in a far more glorious and perfect sense than now) when it is apparently to outward sense lost in the mass of perfected humanity than it ever was when we took an arrogant position of aggressive selfhood and endeavored to annihilate the individuality of every other member of the race by setting our interests in conflict with those of our brethren.

 

            In the eternal harmonies of the universe every soul must play its own part and sing its own song; in the glorious temple of eternity every individual will be found in his proper place, and as nature has stamped individuality upon every atom, upon every globule, as individuality is the very basis of life, true individuality is consistent and compatible with perfect accord and perfect coalescence. In the divine life let us think of ourselves as all forming one great family of the Most High, in perfect harmony the one with the other, each individual enjoying the blessedness of recognition by

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friends and kindred, not in the earthly, but in the highest spiritual sense forever.

 

            When we have found our souls, and not until then, have we found the purpose of our existence or the guiding principle of our life. When we have found our inmost identity, we have found that which can never desert us; but until then we are wandering on, often in complete darkness and never in a very bright light. We are all thoroughly differentiated on earth; not only are we endowed with special individuality and appointed special works, but we all differ the one from the other in our stage of development, and therefore, in our perception of the principle of being. The reason why there are so many differences of opinion in the world is simply because so many different people are obliged to look at matters from their own peculiar standpoints; no one can look at a matter from another standpoint than his own. All persons have not an equally wide horizon, all cannot see equally far, no matter how much they may try to; all cannot hear an equal number of sounds, no matter how intently they may listen to music; all cannot smell an equal number of perfumes or taste an equal number of flavors, no matter how much they may strive to. As we cannot all see, hear, taste, smell or touch equally much, some of us being far more limited in capacity than others, owing to some being further along the line of spiritual development than others, so all again cannot look at matters from the same side, some standing as it were with face to the north, others to the south, and others to the east and west; those who gaze northward see something that exists; so do those who look in the

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other directions, but they do not see the same things; but though they do not see the same things, they see different portions of the one truth; often because of not seeing the whole truth, they act like children having some blocks of a puzzle, but not all, while it is necessary to have every block to complete the puzzle or picture; therefore if you have not all in your possession, the puzzle remains a puzzle and the riddle continues a riddle. Leave out a single necessary ingredient in some compound, and you cannot form the compound until you have procured the lacking ingredient.

 

            Different people start out in different directions and arrive necessarily at different conclusions; they ignorantly imagine all others must be wrong if they are right, while others may be partially right and they partially wrong, but all will at some time learn they have each seen a portion of truth, and foolishly imagined the portion they saw to be the whole; this error was the whole of their mistake.

 

            One person says, “I believe in fate”; he recognizes a portion of truth. Another says, “I believe in free will”; he recognizes another portion of truth. One says, “I believe in foreordination, in predestination, in God’s sovereignty”; he recognizes a portion of truth. Another says, “I believe that every man enjoys freedom of will, and has to work out his own salvation; that he is the arbiter of his own fate, and that his destiny lies in his own hands”; such an one has also discovered a portion of the truth. Now, when we inquire how the seemingly irreconcilable truths are all parts of one great truth, it is important for us to remember that while certain grand declarations of

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wisdom are irrefutable, we very often state a principle in words correctly, and then argue incorrectly because we have not understood the true application of the principle as an entirety to all its parts.

 

            You make a statement which is perfectly true; “there is an infinite will; the infinite will cannot be thwarted; there is an. infinite plan which cannot be frustrated;” but because this is true you go on to say, erroneously, that certain other things which are also true, cannot be: that man cannot have a free will because there is an infinite will for example, which is false reasoning from a true principle. The principle is sound; there is an infinite will, but you have not discovered what is the will of the Being whose will is infinite: now if it is the will of the Infinite that man should enjoy free will, though Iran’s free will must necessarily be only so far free as the eternal will ordains it to be free, divine providence permits of the freedom of the human will, as a smaller circle enclosed within the infinite circle of divine sovereignty.

 

            To bring this eternal and infinite question to the level of our daily actions, and thus bring it within the comprehension of the youngest child, we will illustrate by the familiar representation of parent and child, which is always the highest, sweetest and truest illustration that can be given of the dealings of the Eternal One with his children. You as a parent are physically and mentally a great deal stronger than your child; if you choose you can restrict your child’s actions so that he can never take a step alone, you can so govern and command him, if you will, that he can never give utterance to a single opinion you do not approve;

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if you choose to hold your child so thoroughly under your control, he never can go out of doors unless you take him out, he need never be a moment out of your sight, and never deviate a single iota from your desire. You would under such a regime be fully carrying out your will as to your child, and in such a case it would be your will that your child should have no will of his own.

 

            But if on the other hand you voluntarily give your child a certain amount of freedom, you remonstrate with him, reason with him, and then say, “Now, you have heard what I say and know what I wish, but you can do as you like; I advise, recommend and request you to do a certain thing, but I permit you to do as you choose;” would you not be exercising your will discretionally with your child as fully as in the other dissimilar case? In this case it would be your will that your child should exercise some will of his own.

 

            The question for theologians and philosophers to decide, is this: Has the Eternal Will ordained that we should nave no will, or some will of our own? Has the Eternal Will decreed we should have a limited amount of freedom, or no freedom at all?

 

            Our teaching is, that the Eternal Will wills us finite freedom as a means of developing within us nobility and grandeur of disposition. We believe that the possession of that gift is the primal cause of the soul’s embodiment. Many Theosophists believe that the soul which has forever dwelt in ‘the bosom of the Eternal Infinite, the soul being an uncreated spark of the divine fire, the child of the Infinite Spirit, awakes to the consciousness of its own individuality and begins to reflect

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upon it, when an impulse from the Eternal awakens within it the power of choice.

 

            There is much truth in the theological doctrine of the Fall of Man, and also in the Darwinian hypothesis of the ascent of man, for man falls in order to rise. The soul does not come in contact with matter, does not take up its abode in an earthly tabernacle, and enter a terrestrial school to do nothing and learn nothing; all our earthly discipline or experience is for the purpose of developing that individuality and voluntary nobility of character which alone makes noble men and women, and at length develops celestial angels.

 

            We may conceive of the soul prior to any earthly experience doing right from necessity; but the same soup after all its earthly pilgrimages are completed, returns to the angelic home and does right from choice. The soul before it has known earthly experience at all obeys the divine will automatically as a machine obeys the machinist, as an instrument responds to the master hand of a performer; but when the soul goes back to that wonderful’ home in spirit whence it came to earth, it has acquired during its term of experience a power to love and choose the right, and is therefore no longer an automatic machine, but a machine that understands its own movement, and instead of obeying the hand that works it from necessity, consciously and voluntarily obeys from love. Is there not an immense difference between unthinking and thoughtful obedience? Between reflective and unreflective adoration? Between one who obeys consciously from love, and one who obeys from necessity, without realizing any other possible course of action than the one he is pursuing?

 

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            Again to cite the analogy of child and parent, you see this truth illustrated; a very little child obeys you without knowing why; that little child is pure and innocent; you endow it in mind with every sweet and charming attribute of purity, but when you know that the many trials and tribulations of life lie before that young and tender one, though you know that ere the child grows up to be a man or woman he or she will have to fight a way through the world and may fall into many pits and pass through a veritable Slough of Despond en route to the Celestial City, you feel that out of it your beloved one will rise with added experience upon the other side, and therefore even though you knew all that your children would have to encounter in the world, you would still send them out into the world; you would not lock them up so that they could never be contaminated with a breath of impurity; you would not say they will lose their virtue while fighting the battle of life, but you still prefer to send them out to fight it; then when like valiant soldiers returning from battle, though there are scars upon their cheeks, those scars are glorious, for they are the evidences of successful encounter with the adversary; that they have been wounded by the enemy makes the boys dearer to you than they ever were before.

 

            Do you not think that in times of war when a mother welcomes home her son who has been mutilated in battle, but who has been great and noble through all, she is more proud of him than when she rocked him in his cradle or danced him on her knee as a little babe? It may be that the young man has not always maintained a perfectly moral record; it may be that he has done

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many things for which he was sorry afterward in his soldier life, much that he would fain erase, many mistakes he would not repeat, but still there is more pride, more rejoicing (and more cause for it), when the boy comes home a bronzed and bearded plan with all the stain of travel and scars of battle upon him, than when he was ushered into the world a sweet little infant who (lid not know the difference between right and wrong.

 

            We believe so firmly that all earthly discipline is for a good purpose, that all our sufferings and trials arc a part of our education, that there is a divinity that shapes ours ends (not a chance or a fate) that whenever we are called upon to give consolation to those in sorrow or bereavement, we feel we can honestly with our whole soul tell them that all discipline is for their good and they will rise out of it ennobled, strengthened and purified.

 

            Whenever we meet a poor suffering creature who has sinned and suffered, who has, like the prodigal son., in the parable, reached even the swine’s trough and only been brought to a right mind when famishing with hunger, we feel that when the discipline is over, when the suffering consequent upon the sin has yielded peaceable fruits of righteousness, when after having fallen into manifold temptations lie has developed patience and nobility, directly he has renounced his love of evil and overcome his infirmity, borne the penalty and through it grown wiser, that we are fully justified in saying to him – for we have the evidences before us – “Thy sins are forgotten, wiped out, outgrown, overcome, go in peace.” Such was the course always pursued by the meek and lowly Jesus and all the world’s

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greatest benefactors every where. But remember that whilst you are doing wrong in rebelling against the higher voice, your own conscience will not allow you peace. You may strive for it, other people may pronounce it, but your conscience permits you no peace until you have overcome the love of evil; then when the discipline of pain has awakened within you the divine love of virtue, though all the world may brand you, all the uncharitable people in creation may tell you that you are not fit for decent society, God speaks peace in your heart, the returning prodigal and repentant Magdalene feels the peace of God which passeth all mortal understanding, a peace which cannot be bestowed by the world and which the world therefore cannot take away. We have all to deal with God as a divine Judge in ourselves, the judgment seat is within us, but the mercy seat is beyond and above us where the Eternal reigns, where angels are, where bright and holy ones are who have passed out of great tribulations into realms of glory, where the pure ones are who have outgrown the love of everything but purity.

 

            There is the mercy seat, so when we approach the higher power we approach infinite love, in which there is no reproach, but as the infinite love streams down upon us, as the light of divine mercy makes its way into our souls, telling us there is a higher and better way, ever saying, “Behold, I show unto you a more excellent way,” that divine life, light and love constitute all the fire there is in. “purgatory” or “hell,” either in this world or any other.

 

            Let us thank God for the “fires of hell,” illustrations of which were drawn by Jesus from the pit of

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Gehenna outside the gate of Jerusalem, wherein all the refuse of the city was consumed, Gehenna being a sanitary institution that the atmosphere of the city might be pure and its streets clean.

 

            So outside of this world, or the realm of man’s mortal observation there is an ever-burning fire, and when a rich man who cares nothing for his fellow creatures while on earth, who is less kind than oriental dogs, and will let the dogs pay their serviceable attentions to the best of their ability to the poor Lazarus covered with sores, without taking example from them even to the extent of giving the beggar the crumbs from his table, when such a selfish miser, who cares for nothing and no one but thinks entirely of his own personal comfort and luxury finds himself in hell and there lifts his eyes in torments, what effect does the fire have upon him? When it has burned him so severely that he would gladly fall at the feet of the Lazarus whom he had spurned, if he could but obtain from him but a single drop of water to cool his burning tongue, he outgrows his selfishness and pride, and while we are not told that the sufferings have as yet abated, before they begin to abate they have shown their reformatory nature, for that man who was the very embodiment of luxurious self-indulgence, the very personification of egotism, never thinking previously of any one but himself, or of anything beyond his own dinner, his own house and his own comfort, even though suffering intensely, exclaims, “would that an angel might be sent to my brethren lest they also come into this place of torment.”

 

            The world wants to know what Jesus really

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preached, to hear the New Testament explained, instead of ridiculed, the hidden wisdom revealed, instead of listening to ignorant attacks upon ancient spiritual literature made by people who are not capable of understanding its true meaning.

 

            Jesus taught that all suffering by fire, all torment, if you will, was God’s angel of deliverance leading us to higher knowledge and nobler life. Jesus, familiar as he must have been with the opinions of the people about him, with Jerusalem and its outskirts, with the traditional beliefs of the House of Israel, with Talmudic and Rabbinical literature (having when only twelve years of age entered into consultation with the learned council of the Sanhedrim, the highest council in Israel), understood perfectly that Gehenna was a place of purification. In reading the Greek Testament, it may not be scholarly to translate the word for everlasting (as some Universalists have translated it), long-enduring, for in several instances the same adjective has been variously translated eternal and everlasting simply for the sake of euphony, the original being in both instances the same. Do not be surprised, when we say that we are very glad the Universalists are not right in this particular, because if the fire were not eternal, if the time ever came when the fire should go out, then those who were not thoroughly redeemed would have to remain for eternity in their sins. The divine fire which burns eternally, burns in us, as well as without us, eternally; it torments us only until we have learned our needed lesson, and then that same fire yields us indescribable comfort and delight. The fire burns in the moral sense, and who is there that wishes

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to get rid of conscience, to blot it out so as to have no conscience throughout eternity? Not one who thinks at all on this subject, can deny that the conscience which upbraids and accuses and is the source of our greatest misery, when it applauds, is the source of our greatest joy.

 

            If you are seemingly alone in the world, fighting for the right, with no friend in the material form to stand by you, and your conscience says you are in the right, if you feel the Eternal Being sees your heart, reads your motive, you would surely rather let every-thing else go than have conscience destroyed or your sense of the divine omnipresence removed.

 

            Take away from one who has committed an act of murder in the dark (no man having seen him he cannot be led to the gallows) all sense of divine scrutiny, of God’s omnipresence, he might have comparative peace, because conscience is as terrible to him as it is beautiful and blessed to the other. In the one case “Thou God seest me” saves a man from suffering; in the other case it drives him to desperation; in the one instance it supports him even though the whole world is against him; it enables him to so triumph inwardly that though his flesh were to perish at the stake he would sing praises to the Most High and know it is but a leap from flames to glory; but in the other case it compels him to throw himself upon human justice, confess his crime, or else go raving mad and die in despair, possibly by suicide. In both cases it is the same conscience, and the application of its working to two diametrically opposite states of mind is necessarily divine. Now if we follow that poor wretched victim of perverted

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instincts into the invisible world, even though he is condemned to execution, or though lie commit suicide, even though he drink to drown his sorrow, until through temporary insanity he is run over by horses in the street – no matter what becomes of him, what sufferings he may have to endure on the other side of the grave as well as on this – you will meet him among the blessed in eternity; and when you meet him thus, no matter when or where, with all his sufferings outlived, with all his sins outgrown, with all his miseries forever vanquished, that man will possess the same conscience, the same realization of right and wrong, though in a higher degree, but it will conduce to his bliss among the angels; lie will then say, “Thank God for my conscience. Thank God for that once dreaded text of scripture, ‘Thou God seest me,’ for now I realize the truth involved in it as essential to my unending happiness.”

 

            When we realize that all that once caused us pain, suffering or sorrow is necessary to the development of our highest happiness, then Ave shall have made a right use of free will; we shall then enjoy perfect freedom of will; a will to choose between our higher and lower self, a will to choose between the hosts of heaven that side with our conscience, and the hosts of those yet in darkness who side with our passions; but we shall then always choose on the right side.

 

            We are placed here on earth between opposing powers; those who urge us up and those who try to drag us down; it all, cones in the long run to this: That we must struggle between conscience and passion, for all higher influences reach us through our moral

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sense, while all lower influences reach us through our animal proclivities.

 

            Let us realize ourselves as ever between the higher and the lower spheres, and remember that as our power of resistance, like the extent of our knowledge, is not a fixed quantity that can never be increased. When we are very weak we cannot move a chair out of our way, while at another time we can almost carry a piano upon our shoulders. We are continually increasing in bodily and mental strength so that we become daily the creators of circumstances instead of their creatures, and the time will come when we shall acknowledge no sovereign but the Eternal Being; when all personal wills will have lost their hold upon us, when all external circumstances will be under our government and control, and we who have been faithful over a few things will be rulers over many things.

 

            Our freedom of will is a constantly growing quantity; but we can never be free from God’s will, and when we are sensible we never wish to be. When we reach our highest condition we shall know God’s will, and appreciate as well as understand it, both love and obey it, then we shall be under no earthly control. No one will then be able to enslave us, for having outgrown that condition wherein we are servants to our own lower inclinations and proclivities, and are therefore creatures and tools of lower wills, we shall be servants of God, and shall obey no other ruler. We shall obey the Eternal as he makes his will known in our souls, because we love and appreciate the perfect goodness of his will. And thus with no dread of God, but with the understanding

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coupled with the love of God; with no dread of punishments, with no irksome sense of being under government, we shall obey, because our own higher nature feels the beauty and blessedness of obedience; in such condition we are perfectly free in truth, and this perfect freedom of our will will be our crown and our prize in that glorious state of immortality where sin and misery are unknown forever.