Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems: Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915 — John Shaqi
Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems: Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915Besant, Annie
Religion
Theosophy and Life's Deeper Problems: Being the Four Convention Lectures Delivered in Bombay at the Fortieth Anniversary of the Theosophical Society, December, 1915
Besant, Annie
Theosophy
Now if you realise these great truths, you will understand how morality
must change with the upward evolution of the individual man. When
you see wrong-doing in the undeveloped, when you see evil in the
savage--whether the savage who is an anachronism in civilised society,
or the savage who in his own native conditions--you will realise that
that man is only beginning to learn the lessons of morality, and must
learn them by dashing himself against the laws he knows not. And so,
gradually, he grows out of the unmoral state into the beginning of
the moral state, when he knows a little distinction between Right and
Wrong, and often chooses the Wrong, because of the temporary pleasure
that the yielding to the Wrong affords. And then he has the lesson I
have just spoken of, until, within his innermost nature, he has branded
the evil to be avoided. Now it is no merit to any one of us that we do
not murder a man. We do not want to do so, because we have done it very
often in the past, and have found that the fruit thereof was pain. We
do not want to do it now, and the not wanting to do a particular wrong
is the proof of moral growth. I know how often we are inclined to say:
"Oh! How admirable is the man who struggles against evil." Yes. It is
admirable for a man to struggle against temptation, to see him fighting
against his lower nature. He is a hero in the struggle. But greater
than the man who struggles is the man who has transcended the struggle,
and who does the Right naturally, because he loves the Law and feels
no inclination to turn towards wrong. That is not so often remembered.
The man who has conquered in past lives, the man who has risen above
the temptations that his younger brother struggles against, he is at
a higher stage of evolution, for he chooses with full conviction the
concord with the will of God. That means that the Divine Will in his
own Spirit is emerging, and that quality, the Divine Will in the man,
is the sign of approaching Liberation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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