Part 5

Come to another point, where you do not know in a particular case, what is Right and what is Wrong. To the more developed man, it is no longer a conflict between the "Right and Wrong" that he knows. It is a conflict between two duties, and he does not know whether of the twain is the one that he should follow. There you come to the agony of the opening Spirit, the unfolding God within, who is faced by two paths, and knows not which is the right one. Some arguments on one side, some arguments on the other. "Which of the two paths shall I take? How may I know what is the will of God?" That is the agony of the Soul whose will is set to the Right, but who does not know the Right under the conditions which surround him. What does it mean? It means that he lacks experience. For Conscience, that which tells you "this is Right, that is Wrong," is only the accumulated experience of your past, which has registered certain facts in the nature that you bring into the world with you as that fruit of experience. You have murdered--you have suffered; you are born with the instinct that murder is wrong. You have robbed--you have suffered; you are born with the instinct that theft is wrong. That does not exist in the savage. Take a savage child, and you will find that your precepts carry him up to a certain point, and you can go no further. You can awaken in him the result of past experience, but you cannot give him a Conscience, an experience, which he has not yet acquired. But you, you have a great fund of Conscience, a compelling voice, which says: "kill not," "steal not," "don't give way to lust which injures another"; you take it for granted that is Right, and that knowledge is the outcome of your past experience. But now, you do not know what is Right and what is Wrong. Why? Because, you have not had the experience to enable you to judge in a new condition, to enable you to see the Right in an environment that you have not been in before. When a fresh step forward is to be taken, when a new knowledge is to be gained, what shall you do? You have to act. First, use your best intelligence; think as far as you can. Then try to put aside the bias which the inner desire is apt to imprint upon your thinking. Try to put aside all questions of personal gain, all questions of personal loss, everything which makes you more inclined to take one path or the other. It is a difficult thing to do, and it implies considerable training before you can thus neutralise the inner desires of your nature. Do your best; and then having used your intelligence, having put aside your desires, try, in that tranquillity of mind and senses, lifting up your heart to God, or Master, to see which is the higher path. Sometimes an inner voice will whisper to you and give you guidance; sometimes a Ḍeva may help you and suggest the better path; sometimes you are left to find your own way. Having done your best, decide; and when you have decided, act; for you have done all you can. Then watch the results; see what is the outcome of your decision; and you will discover by that outcome whether you judged rightly or wrongly. If you judged wrongly, do not regret. You did your best, and you have gained a new experience by the blunder, and it will help you in the future. If you have done right, you are stronger for the future; you have solved a new problem and gained a new knowledge. Sometimes you may come to a point in your evolution, where you have to face the question of following your conviction of the inner law of Right against every impulse that presses you to take a lower path. You have grown to the point where new ideals attract. You have begun to realise that the claim of humanity is greater than the claim of individuals with whom you are connected. You have come to the point to which all must come, to the point where to follow the Right is martyrdom, and where to follow the Wrong is easy and is regarded as praiseworthy by those around you. My Brother, if you have come to that point, be glad with exceeding joy; for it means that you have gone beyond the normal evolution of your race, and that which is Right to the men and women around you has become Wrong to you, who have caught a glimpse of a higher law. And then, surely comes the question: "Will you stand by the fruit of your glimpse, alone, unhelped, unsupported, unregarded? Will you follow Conscience that bids you take the path alone, or will you follow the voice of the multitude, still at a lower range of evolution?" It is the choice of the Hero; it is the choice of the Martyr. Better to die, you will feel, than to bow to a lower law than that which your Spirit has learnt to recognise. To tell a lie is to be debased; to tell a lie is to lose the vision of Truth; to tell a lie is to put a bandage round your eyes, and to refuse to see that which is already glimpsed. And if for you it is easier to face calumny, ostracism, the cold shoulder of friends, the hatred of Governments, and, if against all these things, you say: "It is easier to suffer than to lie," then you are taking your place amidst earth's Heroes, and you are serving your day and generation. But make no mistake; the choice is not as easy as it seems. The worst enemy of the martyr and the hero is the inner enemy, not the outer--the love that pleads with you to falter in your duty; worse than all, the inner doubt. "Can I really be Right, when every one around me tells me I am Wrong? Can I alone see what ought to be done? All these good men and women, honourable, faithful, good citizens of the world, tell me that I am mistaken and headlong. Is it not conceit, is it not vanity, to set my solitary choice against the wisdom of the aged, against the experience of my time?" Ah! that is a worse enemy than any outside pressure, for the outer you can resist, but the inner saps the very essence of your strength; the time comes when you are able to say: "Right or Wrong, whether it leads me to heaven or to hell, I follow the Inner Voice, which is the best guide I have; and, if it leads me wrong to-day, I shall know the Right by my blunder to-morrow." I know that means courage beyond the normal, but that is the courage that the Martyrs have shown, and posterity rewards them, if contemporaries destroy them. For it is true, as Giordano Bruno said, going to the stake: "To know how to die in one century is to live for all centuries to come." And so, again, he taught what he called "the heroic life". "It is better to try nobly and to fail, than ignobly not to try at all." That is the great inspiration for those who have caught a glimpse of the higher. Follow your own higher, whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead you; for the inspiration comes from the highest yet manifest within you, and not to follow it is to be a traitor to the Truth you see. Thus, by study of the Divine Will in Evolution, by trying to see where one stands in the long climbing upwards, every man ultimately, must be the supreme and final judge of Right and Wrong for himself.

But remember: you should not blame your neighbour because he does not see with your eyes. You should not despise those who think you are wrong, but weigh their blame, and see how much of reason there is therein. Remember also that in this struggle upwards, full weight should be given to the experience of the race as well as to your own. You should not despise nor flout those laws which keep the mass of the people in the path of decency and of good citizenship, and you should remember the warning of Shrī Kṛṣhṇa, so pre-eminently wise: "The standard that the wise man sets, by that the people go." To take your own road alone means a tremendous responsibility, as well as an act of heroism, for others may follow, unknowing, where you have deliberately chosen your path. Others less prepared by self-discipline and training may rush in after you where you have opened the gateway; and so, in your action, by which the blind must judge you, you must consider your circumstances as well as your vision of the Best. Only when to yield is treason to the Highest in you, should you set yourself alone against the world. "Tangled," said Shrī Kṛṣhṇa, "Tangled is the path of action," and that is true. Therefore you must develop your intellect; therefore you must train your will; therefore you must try to illuminate your judgment; no headlong, thoughtless action must be taken on the first impulse towards an unaccustomed path.

There is one thing that I have often said, and that I will here repeat, especially for my younger friends, whom I welcome to our meetings here. I would say to them: If you want advice, and ask: "Shall I disobey the customary law, and go my own way?"--then wait. The wanting of advice is the sign that the Spirit in you has not yet spoken with the compelling voice that you ought to obey. I have had boys come to me and say: "Shall I disobey my father? this refusal to obey seems to be the right path." My answer invariably has been: "My boy, if you are doubtful, as you must be since you ask me, then obey your father and mother, and see what the result is; for, when the Spirit speaks, no outside advice is wanted." The great decisions of the Spirit are made in solitude, and they are not made by the advice of man. If you want others to support you, if you want the opinion of others to buttress you up, then the chances are, when the moment of stress comes upon you, you will quiver, you will say to your adviser: "Oh! you have advised me to do this; see what trouble it has brought, and I must suffer for it." And so, I have never advised, nor will advise, a great act of sacrifice. O crowd of thoughtful men and women, I say to you: "Choose your highest and follow it unflinchingly." But if any one of you comes to me and says: "Shall I sacrifice this? shall I sacrifice that? shall I disregard the other?" I say: "My friends, the decision is with you and not with me. Your own conscience must guide you. Your own intelligence must direct you. As I cannot suffer for you, I will not advise." For one has no right to impose upon another a sacrifice one is willing to face for one's self. I know my own strength and weakness. I am accustomed by many lives of aspiration to judge what path I shall follow. But shall I follow the path that I see to be Right for me, the path of suffering, and invite others to enter on it, who may not be prepared to face the pain? No; the decision towards pain must be made by the open vision of the one who affronts the suffering; otherwise, in the stress of the agony he may wish he had chosen the easier and the smoother path. The pioneer must know his strength; the pioneer must be ready for the stones that pierce his feet, for the thorns that tear his flesh. Let no weakling enter on the path of that higher, more strenuous, endeavour. We want pioneers. But we want pioneers of courage, of heart, of strength, of endurance, that no danger can daunt, that no peril can paralyse. Only such are worthy to come into the ranks of the pioneers, who make the path along which humanity shall march in days to come. And if you say to me: "Why should we go? Why should we suffer that others may tread smooth? Why should our flesh be torn that others may walk in ease?"--my answer is: "Unless the Spirit is so unfolded in you that the path of progress is to you the path of happiness, so that when the feet are bleeding, when the flesh is tortured, you can look up with a smile and say: 'Lord, I have come to do Thy will'; until the path to you is the only path of happiness, you had better tread the accustomed ways of the men and women around you."

For there is a time in evolution, when all wish for aught the world can give has vanished from the human Spirit; when there is no desire for aught save that God's will may be done on earth, as it is done in the higher realms of wisdom; when to be allowed to suffer in order that that Will may be done is a joy beyond all earthly joy, is a delight beyond anything that the world can give. Realise that the Martyr and the Hero die, because death is the most joyous thing that they can meet, knowing that by their death the world's progress is improved. Unless you feel this in you, then travel along the road that for you is Right; for the consent of the intelligence, the consent of the conscience, the realisation of God, these alone are the strength of the Hero; these, in the midst of the very flames of martyrdom, enable him to smile with joy, for vision of the future that he sees.

BROTHERHOOD

FRIENDS:

We have arrived now at the last of the four Convention Lectures, and I will ask you to recall for a moment the path that we have trodden on these three days.

First you remember we considered the nature, the existence of God, His all-pervading Presence, His all-embracing Love and Power. Then we turned to the study of Man, and we saw that man evolved, grew from a Seed of Divinity into the tree in the likeness of the father-tree, whence the seed was thrown into the world. That he evolved under two great Laws: the "Law of Reincarnation" and the "Law of Causation, or Karma". Yesterday, we considered the complex problem of Right and Wrong, tried to understand the tangled path of action, and to understand also how, by realising our highest capacities of the moment, we could rise higher and higher in Knowledge, in Power, and in Love. To-day we close our study by looking at the "Law of Brotherhood," trying to understand what it means, seeing what it implies, endeavouring then, in the understanding, to see the principles on which a stable Society may be builded, and to glance forward into the near future of Humanity, with the changed ideals which will illuminate the Coming Race.

Now, this word, "Brotherhood," has been used for many ages and held to cover many different ideals. First of all, let us take the fact that "Brotherhood" does not and cannot connote equality, save in blood, in essence; rather does it connote inequality of age and development. As you know, you have the proclamation talked of so much in the French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and it has been taken for granted by many that Liberty and Fraternity imply the middle term, Equality. Now what is meant by the word "Equality"? If it be meant that all men are equal in their origin, that every man is born of the Divine Nature, that every man ultimately will reach the manifested Divinity, in that sense Equality is true. We all come forth from God, we all return to God, bearing with us the harvest of our long evolution, having unfolded potentiality into power. In the beginning and the ending, men are equal, equally divine in their beginning, equally divine in their ending; there all men stand on a common platform. But in the long course of evolution from the seed to the full-grown tree, in the long unfolding of Divinity, of God manifest in the flesh, in the long changing struggle between Spirit and Matter, there the races of mankind stand at different stages of their pilgrimage, and they are not on a common level, but are divorced the one from the other: While in Spirit all men are equal, in the flesh men are radically unequal; for Nature, in her long evolution, knows nothing of equality, and protests continually by facts against the theory of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Where is the equality between the man of genius and the fool? Where is the equality between the stalwart and healthy man and the man who has inherited a terrible disease? Where is the equality between the cripple and the athlete? Between the Saint who has nearly accomplished his pilgrimage, and the savage who stands at the beginning? It is of no use to repeat a phrase that flies in the very face of facts and of Nature. Brotherhood connotes inequality of age, inequality of capacity, and inequality of duty. The duty of the elder brother is not the duty of the babe in the cradle. You do not crush the infant of a year old with the heavy burden of the family that lies on the elder brother, who has passed out into the struggle of life; and you need to get rid of the cant of a phrase and to understand the reality of life. You have to realise that the most that can be asked--because the most that is possible--in the building up of Society, is that no man shall artificially, by a man-made law or custom, be placed at an unfair disadvantage so far as those around him are concerned, but that there shall be equality before the law, equality of rich and poor before the law, equality of every citizen in the face of the law. Moreover, you ought to make it your ideal to give to every man equal opportunities; but you must remember that the radical inequality lies _in the power to grasp an opportunity_ when it comes; there is the radical natural inequality that no human society and no human law can obviate.

But if you realise Brotherhood then you come to a new conception. You imagine the building of a social system, in which every man who is born into it shall have the opportunity of developing every faculty he brings with him into the world. A social system wherein from every member of the Society there shall be demanded social service according to his capacity, and to every member shall be given social helping according to his needs. You change the law of struggle into the law of life; you change the brute law of the struggle for existence into the social law of sacrifice. You begin to realise, as Huxley said, quoting a statement of a Master, an Indian Ṛṣhi, that while the brute progresses by the law of the survival of the fittest, the man progresses by the law of self-sacrifice.[1] There you come to the higher ideal and you see that in an elder brother there is inequality of age, and therefore inequality of capacity, therefore inequality of power, and therefore inequality of duty. By the law of love, the strong exist not for tyranny but for service, and where the weakest members are found there the tenderest compassion protects them, and saves them from being trampled under foot. Therefore was it said by one of the great Prophets of our race, by the Christ of Judæa: "Let the greatest among you be as he that doth serve." Great is the strength evolved, but for helping not for trampling; and so the inequalities of Nature are redressed by an infinite compassion.

Let us see how in the ancient world these principles, or the denial of these principles, has worked. Now the ancient ideal of Kingship is drawn from the perfect example in the great White Brotherhood of the Ṛṣhis of the race, wherein you find a graded order. They call themselves the "Elder Brothers" of mankind. Those whom we call Masters, because of Their greatness, They love better the name of Elder Brothers on whom lies the duty of guidance, of protection, of helping, in order that the younger brothers of our Humanity may come to stand where They are standing. There is the perfect Brotherhood. These, older in evolution than ourselves, wiser because of that longer evolution, these Jīvanmukṭas, these liberated Spirits, They, who are free by right, become bound to our earth by love. They remain waiting for the growth of Their younger brethren; They use Their wisdom to guide them; They use Their power to protect them; They use Their age to strengthen and sustain them. There is the ideal of Brotherhood, where Brother means the Servant of mankind.

And from that early recognition of the Elders in the childhood of the Root Races of the world, you come to the first great historical exemplification, the Divine Dynasties, the Divine Kings, as you find them in Egypt, as you find them in India, to go no further back to that earlier civilisation of the fourth Race, where in the City of the Golden Gate, of which the Chinese tell us, the Divine Emperor ruled with mighty power, and built the great Toltec race into a world-wide dominion. I will not go back so far, nor will I pause on Egypt, because here, in India, we have in the still living literature of the ancient days, the duties laid down which fall upon the Elder Brother in a Nation, who in those ancient days was the recognised King of the people. You find ideal Kings, like Shrī Rāmachanḍra, and you can see in His life, as you can see in the description of the duty of the King, what, from the standpoint of the Elder Brothers of the race, was meant by the position of the King. His life is not a life of enjoyment, but of service and of sacrifice. It is written, that the King remains awake, in order that his subjects may sleep; that the King toils, in order that his subjects may enjoy; that the King faces danger, in order that his people may be protected; that he is the Supporter of the State, the Guardian of the weak, the Dispenser of Justice to his people, the Father of the fatherless, and the Husband of the widow. And so in early days the Ṛṣhi comes to the court of the King, and questions him how he is ruling his younger brothers. "Have you seen," asked Nāraḍa, when He came to a later dynasty, no longer divine; "have you seen that the artisans are provided with all the materials that they need for their manufactures and industries? Have you seen that the agriculturists have a store of seeds, that they are provided with water, and with agricultural implements? Do you take care that your soldiers receive their wages? Do you take care that the widows and orphans of those who have died for you in battle are well provided for and carefully tended?" And so, this Elder Brother of the race, coming to this man, divine no longer, but only a human copy of the once manifested Divine King, pressed on him the duties of his station, and demanded whether those duties were being rightly exercised. Out of that great ideal of Kingship has grown the reverence for the modern King, though he be of smaller stature, and has not often fulfilled his duties well; for that ideal has printed itself on the heart of mankind, and the passionate love, the intense loyalty, that go out to a King, who is in any sense worthy of Kingship, show how the human heart loves to reverence and to honour, where high power and great position are in any way worthy of the privileges enjoyed.

And always one great warning went out to those ancient Kings, as spoken by Bhīṣhma, the Master of Ḍharma, when the blameless King Yuḍhiṣhthira went to him to ask as to the duties of the Elder Brother of the Nation. He bade him remember that behind the King was the Law, the Divine Law, which none might break with impunity. And then those famous words were spoken that every King should daily remember: "Take care, O King, of the weak, not of the strong; take care of the weak, for the tears of the weak undermine the throne of Kings." That is the great lesson for modern rulers. You may have enemies, you can fight them and conquer them; you may have difficulties, you can surmount them and turn them into steps upwards; but take care of the poor, take care of the miserable, take care of the starving of your realm. For of these, said Bhīṣhma, to whose cry no man listens, the cry enters into the ears of God, who calls on His representative to give account for the miseries of the poor, and who avenges their wrongs by the destruction of the careless King. Now there lies the old ideal.