Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00898)

Friends,
 

There can be no real wisdom without ethics. Perhaps this is the 
reason why it is rather difficult to find lots of wise people 
nowadays. 

In the preface to "The Voice of the Silence", HPB says that our 
world is: 

 "... Too selfish and too much attached to objects of sense to be in 
any way prepared to receive such an exalted ethics in the right 
spirit."   

And she explains:  

"For, unless a man perseveres seriously in the pursuit of self-
knowledge, he will never lend a willing ear to advice of this 
nature. And yet such ethics fill volumes upon volumes in Eastern 
literature, especially in t he Upanishads." (1) 

Indeed, the fact that some present-day  students of Theosophy have 
no real self-knowledge is shown by their utter indifference about 
ethical questions.  They tend to consider ethics as the source 
of  `endless  boring sermons', when in  fact ethics is a practical 
science,  and it is  inseparable from self-knowledge.  

In the next few days I intend to examine here some key  ethical 
issues.   Besides quoting from HPB,  I want to listen to Cicero. 

In the opening  paragraphs of his book "On Duties",  Marcus Tullius 
Cicero says that no one can pretend to be a `philosopher' – a friend 
of the Wisdom –  who do not learn, and teach, lessons of duty. 

His words:  

" ... the subject of this inquiry is the common property of all 
philosophers; for who would presume to call himself a philosopher, 
if he did not inculcate any lessons of duty?"

Of course Cicero knew  that  many pseudo-philosophers used to make 
that mistake,  in his own time –   just as  some 2,050 years later  
we can see many a naive student of Theosophy  doing in the  first 
decade of the 21st century.  He wrote:     

"But there are some schools that distort all notions of duty by the 
theories they propose touching the supreme good and the supreme 
evil. For he who posits the supreme good as having no connection 
with virtue and measures it not by a moral standard but by his own 
interests –  if he should be consistent and not rather at times over-
ruled by his better nature, he could value neither friendship nor 
justice nor generosity; and brave he surely cannot possibly be that 
counts pain the supreme evil, nor temperate he that holds pleasure 
to be the supreme good." (2) 

Thefore an ethical behaviour  is not a behaviour artificially made 
to fit into a socially built, would-be ethics. 

A truly  ethical behaviour has to do with our idea of  supreme good 
and is indifferent to blame or praise. It consists of tuning one's 
being in with the energy of  one's higher self.  This is 
accomplished  by doing one's duty with regard to one's own inner 
conscience, since this conscience is in unity with the Law and with 
the essence of all beings. 

It is only by this self-preparation that one can  gradually come to 
perceive truth, as it is quite natural that truth must always  be 
perceived by some instrument, and that instrument is – oneself.   

Ethics is a practical science, then.  

With its help,  we can  build and use  the tools  – the 
inner `telescope' and `microscope' so to say  – by which alone we 
can see truth with an impersonal and reliable accuracy.   

The noble eightfold path of the Buddhists point in  that direction, 
as do all esoteric and philosophical traditions, eastern and 
western. 


Regards,  Carlos. 


NOTES: 

(1) "The Voice of the Silence",  H. P. Blavatsky, The Theosophy 
Company, Los Angeles, CA, 1987, 112 pp., see p. iii.  

(2) "De Officiis" ( On Duties ), Cicero, Loeb Classical Library,  
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,  and London, 
England,  2005, 424 pp., see p. 8.