Re: Government of the World
Dec 24, 2004 07:08 PM
by Eldon B Tucker
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Eldon Tucker
--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Anand Gholap" <AnandGholap@A...>
wrote:
> [ www.AnandGholap.net - Online books on Theosophy ]
>
> " I want to put before you, if I can in these three lectures, a
certain view of the world, and of the way in which that world is
guided and directed. As this meeting is a public meeting, there is
one statement I think that I ought to make, which it would not be
necessary to make, if it were composed of members of the
Theosophical Society. It is important to remember that in the
Theosophical Society we have no authority on matters of opinion.
Every member is free to work out his own theory of life, to choose
his own line of thought, and no one has the smallest right to
dictate to any member what he should choose or what he should think.
In the Theosophical Society there is only one condition which binds
a member, namely, the recognition of Universal Brotherhood. Outside
that every member is absolutely free. He may belong to any religion,
or he may belong to no religion at all. If he belongs to a religion,
he is never asked to leave it, to change it, but only to try to live
up to its teachings of spiritual life, recognising the unity of all,
to live in harmony with people of his own faith and people of other
faiths. When we speak of Theosophy, we may take the word in one of
two senses. The first, what it should be to the individual. In that
sense there is no difference between Theosophy and the ancient
Brahmavidya of India, the Para Vidya, and the Gnosis of the Greek -
no difference at all. It is the recognition that man can realise
God. It is called, in the Upanishad "the knowledge of Him by whom
all things are known". It is a difficulty rather of our language
that we speak in that sense of "knowledge", because knowledge
implies a duality, or indeed a triplicity - the Knower, the Known,
and the Relation between them - whereas when the Spirit of man, who
comes forth from Ishvara, realises his own nature, it is no longer a
case of thinking or of knowing. It is a case of realising that
identity. You know it is written again in the Upanishad: "He who
says `I know', he knows not," because the very word knowledge is an
error in this realisation. In that, we do not say, "I know"; we
say, "I am". This gives the primary meaning of the word "Theosophy".
Then it is also used in a secondary sense: a certain body of
teachings. No one of these particular teachings is binding on any
member. The whole of these teachings together are the teachings the
Society is formed to put forward in the world, but it does not make
them binding on its members. That policy rests on a very sure
foundation. The foundation is that no man can really believe a
truth, until he has grown to the extent which enables him to see it
as truth for himself. A teaching is not really a part of your
spiritual life; it comes within the mental life, into that part of
your nature which is said to be knowledge, the intellect; and that
is able to see that which is akin to itself. The truth in you
recognises the truth outside you, when once the inner vision is
open. Hence, in the Society, the study of the great fundamental
truths of all religions is one of its objects. Members are not asked
whether they believe in them or not. They are left to study them, in
the full conviction that just as when the eyes are open the man who
is not blind sees by the light of the sun, he is not asked to
believe in the light, so is truth in the mental world. As soon as
the eyes of the inner nature, the eyes of the intellect, are open,
it is not a question of argument, but a question of sight. You
recognise the truth because the faculty of truth in your own nature
shows that it exists. You see by it, as you see by the light of the
sun. As long as a man is blind, the sun to him as light is nothing.
When the eyes are opened then no argument is necessary as to the
existence of the light by which he sees. Truth is regarded in that
way, and hence the student is left to study until for himself he
knows the truth of any doctrine. The teachings which are spread by
the Society are those which you find in every great religion. If,
for instance, you take a book published by the Central Hindu College
as a text-book for Hindu boys, and an Advanced Text-book for Hindu
young men in the College, you will find in them certain truths. They
are given in the Hindi form. If you take the Theosophical text-book,
used for teaching in schools where all religions are taught, where
there are boys whose parents hold particular religions, you have
those truths given which are common to all religions. The only
difference is that in the Theosophical text-book, the various
Scriptures of the world in different religions are quoted in support
of them, while in the Hindu text-book only the Hindu Scriptures are
quoted. That is the only difference so far as the great ideas are
concerned; the ideas are identical.
>
2. You will
understand that in all that I say now, I am dealing with things as
they appear to me. They are not binding upon any particular member,
for the duty of each is to think for himself. They do not commit the
Society as a Society, because that only puts forward acceptance of
Universal Brotherhood as a condition of admission. That which I say,
I am responsible for. What I say is the result of my own study. It
is for every one of you, Theosophists or non-Theosophists, member or
non-member, to use your own intellect, your own judgment, your own
conscience, in weighing every statement that I make. You ought not
to take them ready-made as truth for you. Everyone must use his own
thought, and not simply go by that of another. Especially is that
so, because I am going to deal with abstruse subjects. Speaking of
them as truths, I am speaking largely on my own knowledge and also,
in addition to that, taking certain statements congruous with what I
know, but applied to a much larger area of facts then I myself am
yet able to reach. For I am going to say a few things about the
larger Kosmos of the solar systems, which I am not able to examine
for myself. I am only dealing with the subject before you as a
whole, and will deal with that part briefly. But it is necessary, in
order to give you as it were a fairly complete view, because there
are many other solar systems about which I know nothing. Most of us
speak about many facts of science which we have not been able to
verify; for instance, I am unable in astronomy to verify the
statements of great astronomers as regards the situation and the
relations of our vast solar system. I have not studied astronomy. If
I had studied, I could not have attained to the knowledge of great
experts in that particular science. But if I find them teaching on
the solar system the facts that they have observed and collected by
telescope and by the many other ways, like the spectroscope, that
they have of examining the composition of planets other than our
own, I should take this from them, if their new facts were,
generally speaking, congruous with what we know as regards our own
constitution, its relationship to certain other bodies
mathematically worked out, and so on. We are exactly in a similar
position in dealing with what are called occult statements; namely,
statements of facts as regards a particular order of existence, with
some of which we can come into contact in our own world, the
existence of which to some extent we can find out from the history
of our own world; there are others as to which we find ourselves
unable to make discoveries, to gain first-hand knowledge; as to
them, a large number of statements have been made about them by far
more highly developed persons than ourselves. It is as true of
occult science as it is true of astronomy, that a large part of it
is taken on trust from experts. Certain parts of it may be found out
by ourselves, by our own study; other parts cannot. The conditions
are similar to those in astronomy, or in any other science. We must
give to the study a large amount of time. We must study along
certain lines which have been verified over and over again. We must
go on to first-hand knowledge, which is the best but the most
laborious way of acquiring knowledge. This, however, demands, to
begin with, a certain amount of faculty for the particular science.
You may find, for instance, a man who could never become a great
astronomer - no matter how long he studied; a man who is deficient
in mathematical power could never become a really great astronomer,
because the higher mathematics are wanted in much of the astro
nomical study. If a man is by nature very stupid in that science, he
could never become a great astronomer. So it is also with occult
study. There are a number of persons who have not got the faculty to
begin with. It depends upon their past, upon the line of evolution
along which they have come. Progress depends upon whether they have
the faculty, how much time they are ready to give to the study, how
far they are conforming to the rules laid down by experts for
beginners in the study, and so on. But admitting that there is a
great difference between the reception given to occult science and
the reception given to astronomical statements made by experts,
everybody, practically every educated person, is willing to receive
the testimony of the greatest astronomers to facts which they are
themselves unable to observe or to verify. It is not a matter of
life and death if they are wrong. But when you come to deal with
statements of occult science, some of which you find in the great
Scriptures of the world, some of which you find in the ancient
histories of the world, there is much unfair scepticism in modern
thinkers. Histories are thrown aside as legendary and mythical.
Scriptures are thrown aside as superstition, though they contain the
ideas of ancient peoples, much more learned than ourselves. Hence
the difficulty of Occultism in justifying itself; a man must take it
just on the lines I have put to you as to astronomical science. But
the man of the day is ready to receive science which are based on
apparatus. Where people make very elaborate apparatus, such as
telescopes, spectroscopes, all kinds of things of extraordinary
fineness and delicacy, they appeal to the mind of the day,
especially in the West; they for the moment are most advanced, it is
said, in ordinary sciences. That is the way the mind works. It looks
out to the objects and builds up its theories by observation,
comparison, classification, and so on. Anything that goes along that
line easily justifies itself to the ordinary modern mind. They do
not challenge. Occultism works in a different way. It works by the
development of new organs which are within the man, instead of by
the manufacture of apparatus which is outside the man. Now the
development of the inner senses, the inner powers of observation,
can only be done under certain rules, rules which affect the body
and the conduct of the man. It is much easier to buy a telescope and
look at the moon through it, than it is to develop your own nature
along lines to which evolution has not as yet accustomed us. There
lies the difficulty of occult study. A person will be willing to
submit to a discipline, will not resent it, if it is carried on in
the laboratory of science, but he does resent it if it comes to him
with the authority of the great Knowers of the past. It is along the
line of facts thus obtained that I am going to speak to you.
Therefore you must take them from that standpoint, and understand
that I am not asking you to believe a thing because I say it. I am
only putting before you a theory of the Government of the World
which has many facts to recommend it in history and in religion, but
which may be challenged by those who do not accept ancient history,
who do not accept the great Scriptures of the world of religion -
and some which I am going to add from my own study, I will begin
with that which I am unable definitely to verify. I can only put to
you certain reasons for accepting it. Now broadly stated they are
these. We have a solar system consisting of certain planetary bodies
revolving round the central sun. These bodies are studied, and said
by ordinary science to be moving under certain definite forces,
under certain definite laws of nature, as we call them, which by
observation have been established and re-verified over and over
again. According to that scientific view, our solar system is to a
certain extent a self-contained body. The central sun in a sense
controls the movements of the planetary bodies which circle round
it. And outside the solar system you have space, practically empty
space. But science tells us there are a great many solar systems. We
are only one out of a group. It tells us that the solar systems are
in groups; and that we belong to a group - the whole group circling
round another sun far, far, far off in the depths of space; so that
we are not wholly self-contained. We are under other influences and
are moving in obedience, as a whole group system, to other laws. We
do not trouble much about that because we have little opportunity of
observation. Any part of the argument of science there is
practically an induction from certain ascertained facts. You make a
theory that if there were a body exercising certain powers of
attraction and repulsion, if your particular part moves in a way
which is not accounted for by anything you can discover, then there
must be something as yet unknown to you causing these other move
ments which you cannot trace to any force existing within our own
solar system. I know very little about that, and do not want to say
anything more about it."
>
> Complete book can be read at
>
> http://www.anandgholap.net/Inner_Government_Of_The_World-AB.htm
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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