The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909Besant, Annie
Religion
The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909
Besant, Annie
Theosophy; Theosophy -- Study and teaching
Seeing the God in them, and loving and trusting, that will help them
to grow out of the limitations, of the blunders and errors that are
hindering the divine manifestation. And remember that is what is wanted
now, not for yourselves only but for every one around you, so that when
the Teachers come They may be able to remain in the world amongst us.
They dare not come yet, because even in the Theosophical Society They
would not be welcomed. A Master who came amongst you now would not
for the most part be very much liked by you; His ways, His views, His
thoughts would be so different, He would raise suspicion and dislike.
We saw it in the earlier days when They came out more, and were met by
judgment and criticism, until one of Them said, in the fashion in which
They look at ignorant criticism; “The standard of the Adept is not kept
at Simla, it is kept at Shamballah and I try to accommodate myself to
that.” There is a great lesson in that for all of us. The standard of
those who are passing onward into the higher life is not the standard of
the judgment of the people around them, but the standard that the Masters
hold up before them, to which they are ever trying to conform. Think of
that in your attitude to the people around you; remember that on you,
and on people like you everywhere, depends the success or the failure of
the next great manifestation of the divine life on the earth; that this
Theosophical Society, spread everywhere over the world, is literally the
John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of the Christ; to fill
that part is your work and duty—and need I say, your privilege, your
highest honour?
To leave the Society now, in the days which are just dawning, surely it
is bad karma enough, and you should only feel the tenderest thoughts of
pity towards any who go out from us in the days when to belong to the
movement is the greatest crown that can be given for any nobility of
past life that any one of us may have had. No words of harshness or of
condemnation, nothing that will make it harder for them to return, but
everywhere gentlest and most tolerant speech—this is our duty to our
immediate brethren; and to the world what I have told you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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