Theos-Talk Archives (February 1996 Message tl00017)

Thank you, Nicholas, for that very detailed explanation. Is the whole thing
a quote from Judge, or only a part of it? I couldn't quite make that out. In
any case, I think it's very much to the point.
Liesel
 Member TI,
Member, HR, 5thRR

>    HOW SHOULD WE TREAT OTHERS?
>
>         The subject relates to our conduct toward and treatment of
>    our fellows, including in that term all people with whom we have
>    any dealings. No particular mode of treatment is given by
>    Theosophy. It simply lays down the law that governs us in all our
>    acts, and declares the consequences of those acts. It is for us
>    to follow the line of action which shall result first in harmony
>    now and forever, and second, in the reduction of the general sum
>    of hate and opposition in thought or act which now darkens the
>    world.
>
>         The great law which Theosophy first speaks of is the law of
>    karma, and this is the one which must be held in view in
>    considering the question. Karma is called by some the "law of
>    ethical causation," but it is also the law of action and
>    reaction; and in all departments of nature the reaction is equal
>    to the action, and sometimes the reaction from the unseen but
>    permanent world seems to be much greater than the physical act or
>    word would appear to warrant on the physical plane. This is
>    because the hidden force on the unseen plane was just as strong
>    and powerful as the reaction is seen by us to be. The ordinary
>    view takes in but half of the facts in any such case and judges
>    wholly by superficial observation.
>
>         If we look at the subject only from the point of view of the
>    person who knows not of Theosophy and of the nature of man, nor
>    of the forces Theosophy knows to be operating all the time, then
>    the reply to the question will be just the same as the everyday
>    man makes. That is, that he has certain rights he must and will
>    and ought to protect; that he has property he will and may keep
>    and use any way he pleases; and if a man injure him he ought to
>    and will resent it; that if he is insulted by word or deed he
>    will at once fly not only to administer punishment on the
>    offender, but also try to reform, to admonish, and very often to
>    give that offender up to the arm of the law; that if he knows of
>    a criminal he will denounce him to the police and see that he has
>    meted out to him the punishment provided by the law of man. Thus
>    in everything he will proceed as is the custom and as is thought
>    to be the right way by those who live under the Mosaic
>    retaliatory law.
>
>         But if we are to inquire into the subject as Theosophists,
>    and as Theosophists who know certain laws and who insist on the
>    absolute sway of karma, and as people who know what the real
>    constitution of man is, then the whole matter takes on, or ought
>    to take on, a wholly different aspect.
>
>         The untheosophical view is based on separation, the
>    Theosophical upon unity absolute and actual. Of course if
>    Theosophists talk of unity but as a dream or a mere metaphysical
>    thing, then they will cease to be Theosophists, and be mere
>    professors, as the Christian world is today, of a code not
>    followed. If we are separate one from the other the world is
>    right and resistance is a duty, and the failure to condemn those
>    who offend is a distinct breach of propriety, of law, and of duty.
>    But if we are all united as a physical and psychical fact, then
>    the act of condemning, the fact of resistance, the insistance
>    upon rights on all occasions -- all of which means the entire
>    lack of charity and mercy -- will bring consequences as certain
>    as the rising of the sun tomorrow.
>
>         What are those consequences, and why are they?
>
>         They are simply this, that the real man, the entity, the
>    thinker, will react back on you just exactly in proportion to the
>    way you act to him, and this reaction will be in another life, if
>    not now, and even if now felt will still return in the next life.
>
>         The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or
>    judge seems now in this life to deserve it for his acts in this
>    life, does not alter the other fact that his nature will react
>    against you when the time comes. The reaction is a law not
>    subject to nor altered by any sentiment on your part. He may have,
>    truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which in the
>    eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to
>    do with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your
>    condemnation or judgment there will be a reaction on you, and
>    consequently on the whole of society in any century when the
>    reaction takes place. This is the law and the fact as given by
>    the Adepts, as told by all sages, as re-ported by those who have
>    seen the inner side of nature, as taught by our philosophy and
>    easily provable by anyone who will take the trouble to examine
>    carefully. Logic and small facts of one day or one life, or
>    arguments on lines laid down by men of the world who do not know
>    the real power and place of thought nor the real nature of man
>    cannot sweep this away. After all argument and all logic it will
>    remain. The logic used against it is always lacking in certain
>    premises based on facts, and while seeming to be good logic,
>    because the missing facts are unknown to the logician, it is
>    false logic. Hence an appeal to logic that ignores facts which we
>    know are certain is of no use in this inquiry. And the ordinary
>    argument always uses a number of assumptions which are destroyed
>    by the actual inner facts about thought, about karma, about the
>    reaction by the inner man.
>
>         The Master "K.H.," once writing to Mr. Sinnett in the Occult
>    World, and speaking for his whole order and not for himself only,
>    distinctly wrote that the man who goes to denounce a criminal or
>    an offender works not with nature and harmony but against both,
>    and that such act tends to destruction instead of construction.
>    Whether the act be large or small, whether it be the denunciation
>    of a criminal, or only your own insistence on rules or laws or
>    rights, does not alter the matter or take it out of the rule laid
>    down by that Adept. For the only difference between the acts
>    mentioned is a difference of degree alone; the act is the same in
>    kind as the violent denunciation of a criminal. Either this Adept
>    was right or wrong. If wrong, why do we follow the philosophy
>    laid down by him and his messenger, and concurred in by all the
>    sages and teachers of the past? If right, why this swimming in an
>    adverse current, as he said himself, why this attempt to show
>    that we can set aside karma and act as we please without
>    consequences following us to the end of time? I know not. I
>    prefer to follow the Adept, and especially so when I see that
>    what he says is in line with facts in nature and is a certain
>    conclusion from the system of philosophy I have found in
>    Theosophy.
>
>         I have never found an insistence on my so-called rights at
>    all necessary. They preserve themselves, and it must be true if
>    the law of karma is the truth that no man offends against me
>    unless I in the past have offended against him.
>
>         In respect to man, karma has no existence without two or
>    more persons being considered. You act, another person is
>    affected, karma follows. It follows on the thought of each and
>    not on the act, for the other person is moved to thought by your
>    act. Here are two sorts of karma, yours and his, and both are
>    intermixed. There is the karma or effect on you of your own
>    thought and act, the result on you of the other person's thought;
>    and there is the karma on or with the other person consisting of
>    the direct result of your act and his thoughts engendered by your
>    act and thought. This is all permanent. As affecting you there
>    may be various effects. If you have condemned, for instance, we
>    may mention some: (a) the increased tendency in yourself to
>    indulge in condemnation, which will remain and increase from life
>    to life; (b) this will at last in you change into violence and
>    all that anger and condemnation may naturally lead to; (c) an
>    opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will
>    remain forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be
>    in a tendency in the other person in any subsequent life to do
>    you harm and hurt you in the million ways possible in life, and
>    often also unconsciously. Thus it may all widen out and affect
>    the whole body of society. Hence no matter how justifiable it may
>    seem to you to condemn or denounce or punish another, you set up
>    cause for sorrow in the whole race that must work out some day.
>    And you must feel it.
>
>         The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant
>    forgiveness, wipes out the opposition from others, expends the
>    old enmity and at the same time makes no new similar causes. Any
>    other sort of thought or conduct is sure to increase the sum of
>    hate in the world, to make cause for sorrow, to continually keep
>    up the crime and misery in the world. Each man can for himself
>    decide which of the two ways is the right one to adopt.
>
>         Self-love and what people call self-respect may shrink from
>    following the Adept's view I give above, but the Theosophist who
>    wishes to follow the law and reduce the general sum of hate will
>    know how to act and to think, for he will follow the words of the
>    Master of H.P.B. who said: "Do not be ever thinking of yourself
>    and forgetting that there are others; for you have no karma of
>    your own, but the karma of each one is the karma of all." And
>    these words were sent by H.P.B. to the American Section and
>    called by her words of wisdom, as they seem also to me to be, for
>    they accord with law. They hurt the personality of the nineteenth
>    century, but the personality is for a day, and soon it will be
>    changed if Theosophists try to follow the law of charity as
>    enforced by the inexorable law of karma. We should all constantly
>    remember that if we believe in the Masters we should at least try
>    to imitate them in the charity they show for our weakness and
>    faults. In no other way can we hope to reach their high estate,
>    for by beginning thus we set up a tendency which will one day
>    perhaps bring us near to their development; by not beginning we
>    put off the day forever.
>
>         Path, February, 1896     W.Q. JUDGE
>
>
>
>
>--
>Nicholas <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles
>	Men must learn to love the truth before they thoroughly believe it.
>		HP Blavatsky
>
>