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

that the Society as a Society, as the vehicle of this great torrent of life, must not pour that torrent into any physical and earthly vessel, lest again it should break the vessel into pieces, lest again it should put the hands of the clock back, instead of forward, as was done in France. So for this time it was to be a spiritual movement, and the work was to be spiritual, intellectual, and ethical. Those were to be its special marks, this its special work; and when the two great Teachers who were identified with the movement--her own Master and His closest co-worker in the Great White Lodge, the two who over and over again in centuries gone by had stood side by side as fellow-workers in the civilisations of the past--when They volunteered for this great emprise, doubt, as I said, arose among Their peers. The lesson of the eighteenth century was not forgotten; the question inevitably arose: "Is the West ready for a movement of this sort again? Can it be carried on in such an environment without doing, perhaps, more harm than the good which it is capable of accomplishing?" And so, much discussion arose--strange as that may sound to some, in connection with a body of workers so sublime--and most were against it, and declared the time was not ripe; but these two offered to take the risk and bear the burden, offered to bear the karma of the effort, and to throw their lives into the shaping, guiding, and uplifting. And as the question of time is always one of the most complicated and difficult questions for Those who have to deal with the great law of cycles and the evolution of man, it was felt that it was possible that the effort might succeed, even although the time was not quite ripe, the clock had not quite struck the hour. And so permission was given, and the two assumed the responsibility. How the earlier stages were made is familiar to you all; how they chose that noble worker Their disciple, known to us as H.P.B., and prepared her for the work she had to do; how in due course They sent her to America to search there for a comrade who would supply what was lacking in herself--the power of organisation, the power of speaking to men and gathering them around him, and shaping them into a movement in the outer world. And you all know the story of how they met; you all know how they joined hands together. One of them has put the whole thing on record, for the instruction of the younger members of the Society now and in centuries to come. The movement began, as you know, closely watched over, constantly protected by those two who had taken this burden of responsibility upon Themselves. And you may read in many of H.P.B.'s letters, how continual in those days was the touch, how constant the directions; and it went on thus year after year--for the first seven years at least of the Society's life, and a little more; you may read in the issue of the _Theosophist_ (June) a letter from one of these same Teachers, showing how close was the interest taken, how close the scrutiny which was kept up in all the details of the Society's work. In publishing that letter I thought it only right to strike out the names which occur in the original. It would not be right or fair to print those publicly yet, as you can perfectly well see when you are able to supply the blanks which are left for names. You may read in that letter how the Master who wrote it had been watching the action of a particular branch, how He had marked in connection with another branch some of the members of the branch who were working ill or not well; how He pointed out that such-and-such members would be better out of the branch than in it, were hinderers rather than helpers--all going to show how close was the watch which They then kept upon the branches of Their infant Society. And so again you may read in other letters than that, suggestions of writing letters to newspapers, and so on, which would strike you as very trivial if they came from the Masters at the present time; how a letter might be written here, an article answered there; how a leading article ought not to be allowed to remain with its false suggestions to the injury of the Society, and so on. But there came a time, with the increase of the numbers in the Society, when many came in who had not the strong belief of the outer founders in the reality of the life of the Masters and Their connection with the Theosophical Society, and disputes and arguments arose. And if you turn back to the _Theosophist_ of those days you will see a great deal of discussion going on as to who were the Brothers, and what They did, and what relation they bore to the Society, and so on; until at last They grew a little weary of this continual challenging of Their life, and work, and interest, and gave the warning which still exists amongst the papers of the Society, that unless before a very short time these questions were set at rest, and the fact of Their relation to the Society was generally recognised, They would withdraw again for a time into the silence in which They had remained so long, and would wait until conditions were more favorable before they again took Their active part in the guiding of the Society's work. Unfortunately the warning was not taken, and so the withdrawal into the comparative silence took place, and the Society entered on that other cycle of its work on which, as you know, the judgment of the Master was passed in the quotation I made the other day, that "the Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence, and we have let it go; we make no unwilling slaves. It is now a soulless corpse, a machine run so far well enough, but which will fall to pieces when.... Out of the three objects, the second alone is attended to; it is no longer either a Brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the great Range." Thus Their relations to the Society of the time altered, became less direct, less continual. Their direct influence was confined to individuals and withdrawn for the Society at large, save as to general strengthening, not because They desired it should be so, but because so the Society desired, and the Society is master of its own destiny, and may shape its own fate according to the will of its majority. Still They watched over it, though not permitted to "interfere" with its outer working so much as They had done in the earlier days, and H.P.B. was obliged to declare that They did not direct it. The relation remained, but was largely in abeyance, latent to some extent, as we may say, and They were waiting for the time when again the possibility might open before Them of more active work within the movement which They had started, whose heavy karma They were compelled to bear.

The fact that They bear the karma of the Society as a whole, seems to me one which members of the Society ought never to forget; for, coming into this movement as we have done, finding through the Society the teachings which have changed our lives, having received from it the light which has made all our thought different, which has rendered life intelligible, and life on other planes familiar, at least in theory, and to some in practice, it would seem that the very commonest gratitude, such as men or women of the world might feel for some small benefactions shown by friend to friend, that even that feeling, small and poor as it is, might live in the heart of every member towards Those who have made the existence of the Theosophical Society possible. I do not mean, of course, in those who do not believe in the fact of Their existence; and there are, quite rightly and properly, many such amongst us; for it is the foundation of the Theosophical Society that men of all opinions may come within its ranks and benefit by the splendor of its teachings, whether or not they accept them one by one. Their non-belief does not alter the fact that the teachings come to them through the Society, and from Those who made the Society a living organism upon earth. Nor do I mean in saying that this feeling of gratitude should exist in the heart of each, that anyone need take the particular view of the Masters which I myself take, founding that view, it may be, on more knowledge than very many of those who reject it personally can be said to possess. In all these matters every member is free, and I am only urging upon you your responsibility at least to try to understand, where you touch matters of such far-reaching importance; and at least to consider that you should not add to the burden on those mighty shoulders more than you can avoid adding. Now none of us, whatever we may happen to know--the differences of knowledge between us are trivial as compared with the difference between all of us and Them--can surely escape the duty of considering whether by his own ignorance, and carelessness, and folly, and indifference, he is adding to that burden which They bear. For They cannot avoid taking the karma that you and I largely generate, by virtue of Their unity with this Society, and the fact that Their life circulates through it, and that They have sacrificed Themselves in order that it may live. By that sacrifice they cannot avoid sharing the karma that you and I are making by every careless thought, by every foolish action, by every wilful or even not wilful ignorance, the burden that They have taken out of love for man and for his helping. And I have often thought, when I have been trying dimly to understand the mysteries of this divine compassion, and the greatness of the love and of the pity which moves those mighty Ones to mix themselves up with our small, petty selves, I have often thought how strange must seem to Them, from Their position, the indifference with which we take such priceless blessings, the indifference with which we accept such mighty sacrifice. For the love that These deserve at our hands is surely beyond all claim of kindred, of blood, of touch between man and man; the claim that They have upon us, these Men who are Masters and Teachers, for what They have given and made possible for you and me, seems to me a claim beyond all measuring, a debt beyond all counting. And when one looks at the Society as a whole, and realises how little as a whole it takes account of those deep occult truths into touch with which it has come, how little it realises how mighty the possibility that these supreme acts of sacrifice have opened before every one of us, it seems almost too sad to be credible, too pathetic to be expressed; one realises how sometimes Their hearts must be wrung, as the heart of the Christ was wrung when He stood and looked over Jerusalem, and knew that the people to whose race He belonged were driving further and further away their possibilities, and were despising that which He had brought for their redemption. How often His cry: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thee together as a hen