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
Now let us pause for a moment and ask what are the special marks of
that Race in consciousness and in body. In consciousness, clearly the
recognition of unity. That is essential; for what the intellect divides
the Spirit unites. The recognition of life in each rather than of the
separated form, the recognition of the one Self in all rather than the
separated selves that are marked out by the separated bodies, that will
be the great mark in consciousness, the new unfolding; wherever that
recognition of unity is made, there is one of the signs of the Coming
Race. And then, side by side with that, growing inevitably out of it, a
breadth and liberality of tolerance will mark those in whom the sense
of unity is beginning to unfold. All that is narrow and exclusive, all
that tends to separate one from another, all that emphasises differences
instead of emphasising likenesses, all those are against the unfolding of
the consciousness that knows the One in the many, and recognises Divinity
in all. With that unfolding consciousness will come a type of body of
which there are beginning to be many amongst us to-day. When there is
going to be a variation which will start a new evolutionary type, it
is always noted that those out of whom the variation grows are what is
called unstable. Instability is the mark of progress, or of degeneration.
There is the instability of health, but also of disease; and with the
changing type of the nervous system you find this instability present
in both its forms. If you look around you at the present time, what is
one of the marks of the bodies in the most advanced races of the earth?
Nervous troubles of every kind, and most marked amongst the most highly
developed. It is needless to draw your attention to that; everyone knows
it. The greater tension of the nervous system shows itself out amongst
us in all kinds of different ways; saddest of all, in the extraordinary
increase of madness in the most highly civilised nations of the world.
Lunatic asylums are always multiplying, for as soon as a new one is built
it gets filled, and another is demanded. That is the sad sight when
we are looking around, looking for the Coming Race; the present race
suffers by the very conditions that that race has made for itself; all
the separative conditions of competition, struggle, class and individual
and trade antagonism, all these are destructive to the evolving nervous
system of man. The environment is impossible, the conditions ruinous for
the evolution of a finer, more delicate nervous organisation; and yet the
resistless force of nature presses onwards against the human race, forces
it onwards whether it will go or not, and the evolutionary forces cannot
be opposed save at the risk of destruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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