Writings
of H P Blavatsky
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Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of Modern Theosophy
Is The Desire
To Live Selfish?
By
H
P Blavatsky
THE passage,
"to Live, to Live, TO LIVE must be the unswerving resolve," occurring
in the article on the Elixir of Life, published in the March and April Numbers
of Vol. III of the Theosophist, is often quoted, by superficial readers
unsympathetic with the Theosophical Society, as an argument that the above
teaching, of occultism is the most concentrated form of selfishness. In order
to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the word
"selfishness" must first be ascertained.
According to an
established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive regard to one's own
interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a
person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or
happiness, without regarding those of others."
In short, an
absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself and none else, or,
in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense of importance of his
own personality that to him it is the acme of all his thoughts, desires and
aspirations and beyond that all is a perfect blank. Now, can an occultist be
then said to be "selfish" when he desires to live in the sense in
which that word is used by the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life? It
has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after
occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all
Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies himself with
the Father in Christian phraseology. For that purpose, every veil of illusion
which creates a sense of personal isolation, a feeling of separateness from THE
ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other words, the aspirant must gradually
discard all sense of selfishness with which we are all more or less affected. A
study of the Law of Cosmic Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution,
the more does it tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility
of Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her
purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of total annihilation. The Occultist
thus recognises that unselfishness and a feeling of universal philanthropy are
the inherent law of our being, and all he does is to attempt to destroy the
chains of selfishness forged upon us by Maya. The struggle then between Good
and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is
mentioned in the sacred books of all the nations and races, symbolizes the
battle between unselfishness and the selfish impulses, which takes place in a
man, who tries to follow the higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal
tendencies, created by selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy
thoroughly routed and annihilated. It has also been often put forth in various
theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between an
ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of cosmic evolution
and an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior knowledge, adopts such
methods of training and discipline as will hurry on that process of evolution,
and he thus reaches in a comparatively very short time that apex to ascend to
which the ordinary individual may take perhaps billions of years. In short, in
a few thousand years he approaches that form of evolution which ordinary
humanity will attain to perhaps in the sixth or the seventh round during the
process of Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression. It is evident that the average
man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or rather in one incarnation. Now
those, who have studied the occult teachings concerning Devachan and our
after-states, will remember that between two incarnations there is a
considerable period of subjective existence. The greater the number of such
Devachanic periods, the greater is the number of years over which this
evolution is extended. The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so
control himself as to be able to control his future states, and thereby
gradually shorten the duration of his Devachanic states between his two
incarnations. In his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical
death and his next re-birth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual
sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state of
unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself reborn, to
continue his purpose. The period of this sleep may vary from twenty-five to two
hundred years, depending upon the degree of his advancement. But even this
period may be said to be a waste of time, and hence all his exertions are
directed to shorten its duration so as to gradually come to a point when the
passage from one state of existence into another is almost imperceptible. This
is his last incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him.
This is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
convey, when he says:--
By or about the
time when the Death-limit of his race is passed HE IS ACTUALLY DEAD, in the
ordinary sense, that is to say, that he has relieved himself of all or nearly
all such material particles as would have necessitated in disruption the agony
of dying. He has been dying gradually the whole period of his Initiation. The
catastrophe cannot happen twice over. He has only spread over a number of years
the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a
few hours. The highest Adept is in fact dead to, and absolutely unconscious of,
the World--he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries--in so
far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves him blind
to its very existence. . . .
The process of
the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist controls, has been
discussed at length in that article and in other writings. It is by these means
that he gets rid gradually of all the old gross particles of his body,
substituting for them finer and more ethereal ones, till at last the former
sthula sarira is completely dead and disintegrated and he lives in a body entirely
of his own creation, suited to his work. That body is essential for his
purposes, for, as the Elixir of Life says:--
But to do good,
as in every thing else, a man must have time and materials to work with, and
this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more
good can be done than without them. When these are once mastered, the
opportunities to use them will arrive. . . .
In another
place, in giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same article
says:
The physical
man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more
penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical.
The above
important considerations are lost sight of by those who snatch away from the
context the following passage in the same article:--
And from this
account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the
Theosophists "to procure for them communication with the highest
Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced,
even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with
mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say--"This is not God-1ike. This
is the acme of selfishness" . . . . But let him realise that a very high
Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more
submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that
line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?
Now, in
condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness, superficial readers
and thinkers lose sight of various important considerations. In the first
place, they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress, new
senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good can be done
than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes, the less can he meddle
with mundane, gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to a
spiritual work. It has been repeated, time out of number, that the work on a
spiritual plane is as superior to the work on an intellectual plane as the one
on the latter plane is superior to that on a physical plane. The very high
Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only spiritually: they are
constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly affairs. But this applies
only to very high Adepts. There are various degrees of Adeptship, and those of
each degree work for humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is
only the chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain
degree. And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their
chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject are
aware. Each cycle produces its own occultists who will be able to work for the
humanity of those times on all the different planes; but when the Adepts
foresee that at a particular period the then humanity will be incapable of
producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions they do
provide by either giving up voluntarily their further progress and waiting in
those particular degrees until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to
enter into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation in time to reach those
degrees when humanity will require their assistance at that stage. And although
the world may not be aware of the fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts
who have preferred to remain statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees,
for the benefit of the future generations of humanity. In short, as the Adepts
work harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they have
as it were made a division of labour, according to which each works on the
plane at the time allotted to him, for the spiritual elevation of us all--and
the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is only the means to
the end which, far from being selfish, is the most unselfish purpose for which
a human being can labour.
Theosophist,
July, 1884
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Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Quick Explanations
with Links to More Detailed Info
What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis Anthropogenesis Root Races
Ascended Masters After Death States
The Seven Principles of Man Karma
Reincarnation Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical
Society
History of the Theosophical
Society
Theosophical Society Presidents
History of the Theosophical
Society in Wales
The Three Objectives of the Theosophical
Society
Explanation of the Theosophical
Society Emblem
The Theosophical Order of
Service (TOS)
Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
Index of
Searchable
Full Text
Versions of
Definitive
Theosophical
Works
H P Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine
Isis Unveiled by H P Blavatsky
H P Blavatsky’s Esoteric Glossary
Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett 1 - 25
A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
(Selection of Articles by H P Blavatsky)
The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s
writings published after her death
Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
The Early Teachings of The Masters
A Collection of Fugitive Fragments
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy
Mystical,
Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical
and Scientific
Essays Selected from "The Theosophist"
Edited by George Robert Stow Mead
From Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. II
In the Twilight”
Series of Articles
The In the
Twilight” series appeared during
1898 in The
Theosophical Review and
from 1909-1913
in The Theosophist.
compiled from
information supplied by
her relatives
and friends and edited by A P Sinnett
Letters and
Talks on Theosophy and the Theosophical Life
Obras
Teosoficas En Espanol
Theosophische
Schriften Auf Deutsch
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
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