London Lectures of 1907 by Annie Besant (books to read for beginners txt) 📖

nothing in the object world is an object of faith; all are objects of knowledge. If you can keep that distinction clear in your mind; if you can remember that the only warranted conviction above reason is that conviction of your eternity, then you may go safely into the region of phenomena, into the manifestations and happenings of the objective world, with clear judgment, clear sight, unbiased mind; and knowledge shall reward you in your researches into Nature, for Nature always has a reward for the seeker into her secrets.



Spiritual and Temporal Authority

I am to speak to-night, as you know, on "Spiritual and Temporal Authority," and I have chosen this, with the other subjects, as bearing on questions of immediate interest to the Theosophical Society. But in dealing with each of these, as on the first occasion, I want, if I can, to lift you above any controversy of the moment, and to put before you broad outlines rather than mere details, and to lead you to look at all these questions from the wider standpoint of the experience of the past, trying to apply that experience as far as you can to the questions, the difficulties, of the present. And this question that I have chosen for the subject of our thought to-night is one which carries us back into the very beginnings of human history on our globe, which we may trace downwards through civilisation after civilisation, and we can then study, as it were by contrast, many of our modern civilisations. And out of all this it may be that we shall learn some lesson for our own small affairs of the moment. For local affairs are only really interesting as we see them as manifestations of the great principles which work out in the history of humanity; and we can only rightly, I think, understand the power of the Theosophical Movement, if we see it in its proper place in history, and not as a mere bubble on the water of the present.

Now, far, far back--I suppose some people will say "not in history," for the time I am speaking of is what would be called "prehistoric"--when the great Lords from the planet Venus came to our globe to guide and train the humanity which just then had come to the birth, we find a group of Teachers and Rulers, not belonging to our humanity at all, but, as I said, coming from the planet Venus, from the far more highly evolved humanity living in that world. They came for the specific purpose of making the evolution of the new humanity more rapid than otherwise it would be. For, as you know, at that time humanity was facing a very terrible danger. The bodies had evolved up to a certain point, the brooding Spirit was over each body, but the intellectual evolution had scarcely begun to dawn; mind, as we know it now, had scarcely asserted itself; only mind, as we see it in the animals, had been slowly unfolding its powers in the upward-climbing towards the light. And as it is always true that any force which is poured down into a body must necessarily flow along the channels which that body has prepared for it, in these animal men, as we may call them, when they received a new influx of spiritual life--or, if we prefer the phrase, "as the influx grew stronger and stronger"--that new life, that additional force, inevitably ran into animal channels, lacking the guiding and directing force of the intelligence. Hence the immediate result of any increased down-pouring from the spiritual plane was an increase in animality in the growing man; and his body, growing up out of the animal kingdom, influenced by that--although, as you remember, human from the beginning, yet retracing its ancestry in those early days--was driven by the incoming life into various lines of activity, harmless to the brute, but that would have been destructive to the upward-climbing human being. Hence the need for a swift intervention on the part of the Guardians of all humanities; and our planetary Logos called to His help humanity from a chain older than His own, so that He might have for His infant children guides that would protect them against danger, and would lead them upwards more swiftly than they themselves could have climbed alone. Hence the coming of those Mighty Ones, and it was They who were the first Adepts, Masters, for our humanity. There is no other term for the moment to apply to them, although the term "Master" is really inappropriate: They were far higher in the Occult Hierarchy than Those we speak of as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. They became the first Teachers and Kings of our child humanity, and They were of many grades. "Divine Kings" They are called in the old records; Teachers and Kings in one. They established the polities of the infant nations; They gave to those same nations their religions; and in those early days, as in the days that will close our human history, there was no distinction recognised between "sacred" and "profane." It was seen that Spirit, clothing itself in matter, should be regarded in each of its tabernacles as a single individual. Spirit and matter were not regarded, so to speak, as distinguished from each other, save in quality. The two combined into the making of the man. And the man's life was a human life, and the body guided by human consciousness; but the body was not thought of as separate from the Spirit, nor the Spirit from the body; both were combined into a single being. And in all true organisations that is the point which is to be aimed at: that the informing life shall shape and mould the organism which is thus expressing the life on planes of matter; that that organism shall ever be an organism spirit-inspired, life-shaped, so as to become more and more perfectly the expression of the life which it enfolds. We shall see presently that for a time, when Spirit became utterly blinded by matter, that matter, as it were, took the upper hand and claimed to be monarch. But in those far-off days it was still recognised that Spirit was the master of matter, and the Gods walked amongst men and were recognised by men as their Teachers and Kings. And humanity in its infancy clung to These, who were as fathers and mothers of the race, and looked to Them for everything necessary to nourish and develop the young life. So that looking back to those earlier days, the great lawgivers like the Manus were at once Kings and Priests. They gave everything to the humanity that They guarded: literature, science, art, architecture, everything which was necessary to the national life. And under that mighty protection grew up the vast civilisations of the past. You find traces of them, of course, in Egypt; traces of them, in fact, everywhere in the older, the now dying, or dead peoples. And these King-Priests, these King-Prophets, summed up in Their own divine persons all the ruling powers of Spirit and matter alike. The State was a Church, or the Church was a State.

Gradually, as these Great Ones withdrew, as Those who only lived for service saw that humanity had begun to take its first steps, and needed less physical guidance and visible helping, others still great, but not as superhuman as the earlier ones, took up the royal and priestly rank. Still the two ran together: the temporal and spiritual power in one pair of hands; and so on and on, from Atlantis downwards. Some traces of it still survive, as in the Indian civilisation, where the ideal of the monarch is always that of the Divine representative upon earth. But in India, after the earliest days, you see the beginning division, and the offices of the King and of the Teacher gradually diverged the one from the other. And as time went on, and man grew a little older in his childhood, those who ruled over the State gave away out of their hands the teaching of the religion. Rightly and well; for it was necessary that humanity should learn to guide itself. It was on the downward arc still, not yet beginning its upward climbing, and it had to plunge deeper and deeper into matter. The eyes of the Spirit had to be blinded in order that the eyes of the intellect might open, and so gradually prepare humanity for a loftier manifestation of the spiritual life.

And then we find that with the dividing of the two offices, the Kings grew less and less fathers of their peoples, and became more and more tyrants over the nations. In the elder days the principle that was taught was clear and simple: the greater the power, the greater the sacrifice; the greater the power, the greater the duty. And on that principle of the Law of Sacrifice the old civilisations were built up; to that they owed their splendor; to that the long ages through which they lived and flourished; to sacrifice, as the very basis of the national and religious polity, they owed the vigor, the young vigor, of humanity. Their literature was grandiose; their architecture magnificent; their art sublime. The traces of divinity ran through the whole of it. But, beautiful as it was, it would not have been well that it should have lasted, for had it been so, mankind would have grown to depend too much upon the manifested Divine life walking incarnate side by side with it. And it was necessary that the growing child should prove his own limbs, and the growing intelligence should learn to depend upon itself. Then we come to a long period when the tyranny of the King brought out more and more strongly the usefulness of the Teacher, and when the Teacher was continually standing between the power of the tyrant and the helplessness of the people; when religion became a shield for the weak, a strong check for the violence of power. And we pass thus through all that long period of human history where the oppressed found their only refuge in the priests of the religions, and found them a sure protection against the sword of the secular power. So went on for hundreds, nay, for thousands of years, the growth of humanity; and the two powers went further and further apart, coming more and more the one into opposition with the other. And the people, the nations, gradually grew in power, grew in intelligence, to a considerable extent. The priest was still the teacher, and still the schools and the temples were united. Unfortunately, after a while the religions became corrupted as well as the royalties, and priests began to share the worldliness that had already degraded the Kings; and then, with the failure of the priesthood, practically ceased the education of the people for many and many a long century, and intelligence was not developed, and the power of the mind was not assisted to manifest itself.

And so onward and onward till we come to Middle Age Europe, and we find a down-trodden proletariat, an indifferent and luxurious kingship and priesthood, allied now to oppress, not to raise. Therefore, contest between the Church and the State, until the Pontiff of Rome remained the only representative of the union of the spiritual and temporal authority--his spiritual authority enormous, his temporal authority growing smaller, and badly used, so that in the States of the Church in Italy there was almost the acme of bad temporal government; and there was little to choose, really, between the States of the Church and the odious tyranny of Naples. In the States of the Church the old ideal of the Priest-King was degraded to its lowest point, and neither on the side of