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
entering being that the houses shall lay themselves open to the
sunshine, so is the man who has become the second aspect of Deity, in
whom that perfection of Divine Sonship is revealed. Man, as the Son of
God in Heaven, is above all the distinctions that you find on Earth. He
sends down his rays into the waiting hearts of men, and the only
condition necessary for his entrance, the one thing that ensures his
coming, is that his brother will open his heart to receive him. For he
will not break his way in, he will only come where he is welcome. Thus
this great life of God shows itself forth now in the man who has become
the Saviour, the Son, the Initiate, as a deep compassionate love for
all. Every man who reaches that stage is a new force for the uplifting
of humanity. Every man who develops that aspect of life is one more wing
with which to lift everything upwards. If a man be weak, his life can go
to him to strengthen him; if a man be sorrowful, his life can go to him
to make him glad; if a man be sinful, his life can go to him to make him
pure from sin. To all men he says: "Wherever a man is there will I meet
him, and there will I accept him." That is Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa in
manifestation, that the love that shines forth from the bliss aspect of
the Human Self.
One step remains, the last, of evolution for this rapidly perfecting
life. Again I take up my Christian symbol and venture the quotation:--
"As Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be
one in Us." The Son becomes in fact what he has ever been potentially,
one with the Father. He enters into the mighty realm of Self-Being,
where God, in the Christian phrase, is "all-in-all." Do not let the
narrower presentations of Christianity that here meet you blind
you to these fundamental identities of the deeper and more spiritual
Christianity with our own ancient faith. Shall these pettinesses, or
even outer divergencies, separate those whom the living Spirit would
unite? We learn, as we study the Hindu Scriptures, that man after having
reached the second stage rises by Yoga, until he attains the last, and
becomes one with the Deity Himself in full power of eternal Self-Being.
It was because your own Svâmi T. Subba Rao knew this occult truth, which
too many know not, that he spoke, as I before mentioned, of the
innumerable Centres, or Logoi, in the One, every one of which could be
the beginning of a new universe, of a new out-pouring of life. The
building of those Centres is a purpose of Life-evolution. The building
them up stage by stage is done as the life passes from form to form; and
end or ending there is none in the infinite series of the future. What
that life holds for us we cannot tell; how should we imagine that far
off land, those distant reaches? But this we know: that no will of the
Eternal is ever frustrate, no purpose of the Eternal lacks its fruit or
misses its goal; and if our eyes fail us in the dazzle of the light
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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