ACQUIRE POWER
THROUGH SELF DEVELOPMENT.
It is the natural
right of every human being to be happy to escape all the miseries of life.
Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the
seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only because of our ignorance that
we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to
comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of
human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every
ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.
Why do we suffer
in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in
evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way
and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us. Usually we
do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon
us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A
week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony. Today we
have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little
while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change
and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason
why this should be. There was a time when we had health and strength; but they
have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater
tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to
us little miseries and minor heartaches. We most earnestly desire to avoid them
but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our
ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination
that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human
suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can
but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably
and swiftly. It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with
furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be
slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that
would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly
and with perfect safety and comfort.
The old method of
education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed facts, as could
be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the personality. The
theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human being and that all
that could be done for him was to load him up with information that would be
used with more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be
born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that
constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of
the self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and
wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical world
as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together constitute
the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the
purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such
self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom attained.
Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the
evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering.
Why does death
bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. The only
other reason why death brings grief or fear is
because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in
human evolution. But the moment our
ignorance gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness
takes its place.
Why do we have
enemies from whose words or acts we suffer? Because in our limited physical
consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize that our
wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people a situation
from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to think evil and
then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already generated are
fully exhausted. When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in
the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more
forever.
Why do people
suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that
makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their
meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we
but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary
factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson
is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.
And so it is with
all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our
ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we
have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and
disappear. It is not by the outward
acquirement of facts that men become wise and great. It is by developing
the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light
called genius.
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