Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00019)

Wednesday, July 02, 2003


Dear Friends:

The following is important for us all

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by B. P. Wadia

HAMMERING OUT OUR CHARACTER

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“Character is what God and the angels know of us.”
-- TOM PAINE


The educator and the social reformer of today are asking
questions. How to enable the learner at school and college to
fashion his own character deliberately, scientifically? How to
educate the citizen so that by himself he is able to recognize
his moral responsibilities? How to elevate the political animal
to the status of a moral man accountable for his conduct to his
own conscience? So-called religious education and moral education
have failed as instruments for character-building. Thoreau's
question must find an answer, "How can we expect a harvest of
thought who have not had a seed-time of character?"

If as THE MAHABHARATA points out, the mark of Dharma (Religion,
Law, and Duty) is good conduct, then organized religions, codes
of law, instruction about the performance of duties, have not
succeeded. Why? Parents and teachers who try to build the
characters of the young, or the adults who desire to mould and
reshape their own, do not quite get the significance of a
statement of Froude: "You cannot dream yourself into a character;
you must hammer and forge yourself one."

Emotions play a major part in human behavior. They provide the
motor power for human actions. They imply motion. They move
heavenwards under the impact and influence of the Spirit on the
human mind and we have noble aspirations. Lower desires, on the
other hand, arise from the response of our sensorium to mundane
objects, which now attract, then repel, causing pleasures and
pains and ending in, frustration. The Chinese, Mencius, refers
to this dual nature of our character: "He who attends to his
greater self becomes a great man and he who attends to his
smaller self becomes a small man."

Why are high aspirations necessary for the building of character?
How do low desires affect conduct? What part do Will and
resolutions play in the activity of the emotions? What part,
Thought and knowledge?

Character building and the science of conduct are very amorphous
subjects in the body of modern knowledge. Its devotees do not
know what definite purpose underlies human evolution. Nor do
they suspect that laws of Nature are intelligent expressions of
sub-mundane and super-mundane intelligences. Devas and Devatas,
Powers and Principalities, and Angels and Archangels are not
realities to men of modern knowledge as they were to sages and to
seers of the ancient world.

Our educators can never succeed in formulating the method of
building character or of assigning true values to human conduct
or behavior till they study the ancient doctrine of the existence
of invisible worlds with their denizens and citizens, and the
influence of these on human beings -- infants and adults alike.

The fundamental teachings of the ancient philosophy are:

(1) Everything in the universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is
conscious, i.e.., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind
and on its own plane of perception.

(2) The universe is worked and guided from within outwards. We
see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary
or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by
internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or
mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's
external body can take place unless provoked by an inward
impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with
the external and manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is
guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of
Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to
perform.

(3) These Intelligences are dual in character: being composed of
(a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the
intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and
guides
that energy.

(4) Man is a compound of the essences of all those celestial
Hierarchies, and MAY succeed in making himself, as such,
superior, in one sense, to any or all of them.

(5) Man WILL succeed if he knows himself, i.e., his
constitution,
visible and invisible, sensuous, psychic, and spiritual, and
then
endeavors to develop his divine aspirations while starving his
mundane desires.


To appreciate the greater ideals set forth by Bhishma in THE
ANUSHASANA PARVA, CIV, the aid of the above teachings becomes
essential. 

Says THE MAHABHARATA:

“Thou shouldst know that conduct is the root of prosperity.
Conduct is the enhancer of fame. It is conduct that prolongs
life. It is conduct that destroys all calamities and evils.
Conduct has been said to be superior to all the branches of
knowledge. It is conduct that begets righteousness. Conduct is
the most efficacious rite of propitiating the deities.”

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[From THUS HAVE I HEARD, pages 296-98.]


D T B




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