Evolution of Life and Form: Four lectures delivered at the twenty-third anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, 1898Besant, Annie
Religion
Evolution of Life and Form: Four lectures delivered at the twenty-third anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, 1898
Besant, Annie
Evolution; Life -- Origin; Theosophy
Then we find further that Devas bring people together and carry them
apart, always for the working out of their individual karmas; that men
are guided to places and positions at definite times, according to those
circumstances which, by their karma, they must meet.
Now men are related especially to one or other of the great Gods, by the
constitution of their bodies visible and invisible. That gives them a
special affinity for one Deva rather than for another. For instance, the
lower hosts of Devas who, we will say, belong to Agni, build into a
man's invisible and visible bodies, the kind of matter in which that God
normally works. That gives the man a relationship to that particular
God. Every man is connected with a special manifestation of God, to whom
by his constitution and evolution he should turn. Unhappily ignorance
has so widely taken the place of knowledge, that it is difficult for a
man to discover to which Deva he is thus related. I have not time to
work that out but you will see how thoroughly it supports the ancient
idea that men rightly worshipped different manifestations of the Divine,
and profited by such worship.
But we must hurry on with this outline, for we have yet to deal with the
more highly evolved souls, and on your understanding this last part of
our subject will depend your power to defend our sacred literature when
it is attacked by those who do not understand it. Therefore I will ask
you to follow it carefully, and you can apply the principles that I will
illustrate by special stories in a hundred other cases.
The Devas, in their relationship to the more advanced human lives, have
that function of teaching that I have alluded to, and also the function
of testing and trying them, to see how far they are worthy and reliable,
testing all their weak points in order that those weak points may be
gotten rid of, trying them, where there is a germ of vice still
remaining, in order that that germ of vice may be eradicated. Let us try
to realise the nature of that working. Suppose we see a man who has made
great progress. He is approaching the end of his births. In that man
there is some germ of evil still remaining that has not been brought out
yet into manifestation by the working of karma. He is going to be
liberated, but he cannot be liberated while that germ remains. What
shall be done with him? That germ of evil must be hastened to its
ripening. It must be made to grow more quickly than otherwise it would
grow. It must be gotten rid of, at any cost of pain, of anguish, and of
temporary degradation, and the God will take such action as will ripen
that germ and bring it to fruitage; so that, the man acting as he would
act when that germ had been ripened by evolution, may suffer the results
which would follow from the error, and by such suffering may get rid of
that evil in his nature, which would otherwise have prevented him from
attaining liberation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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