Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00012)

Study material for students:

"Is This Theosophy ... ?" - Ernest Wood (remainder of chapter 5)

[There are two UK pound signs in this file which may not
transmit well to the USA and other countries]
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The next day my brother was puffing away as hard as ever at the
same old pipe.

I never smoked. I preferred the money. I was very careful about
money - except on one occasion when I was travelling on the top
of a tramcar at night, and on reaching home I found that in the
dark I had given the conductor two sovereigns in mistake for two
halfpennies to pay the penny fare.

2

After Mrs. Besant's lecture the chairman announced that there
was a branch of the Theosophical Society in the city and there
would be a meeting on Tuesday evening at which the public were
invited to ask questions. My father and I attended. We were both
thoroughly dissatisfied with the answers to the half-dozen
questions put by members of the public.

My father asked: "if there were a good power or principle as
the basis of all things, how could there be imperfection, pain,
cruelty or any evil in the world ? "Several people tried to
answer this - quite hopelessly. One illogical answer was that God
had given man free will and it was man who produced the evil -
quite innocent of the obvious implication that God must have
produced man as an evil being and therefore have produced the
evil.

The only man there whom we appreciated and respected was the
chairman, a venerable gentleman (afterwards to be my
father-in-law) who explained that members of the Theosophical
Society were only students, and that though man could not yet
solve such ultimate questions, it was still worth while to study
and find out what we could. He himself felt that were there not
some good principle gradually emerging and increasing its sway,
there could be no good at all in man, since no purely material
being could be unselfish or could rise to the heights of
self-sacrifice. Such a thing would mean that matter could
overstep the nature of matter. And besides there was that
mysterious divine discontent which at last left no one
completely satisfied with any material pleasures or gains. He
begged the audience not to go to extremes in any way, but to use
reason just as far as it would go with the very limited data at
our disposal. My father was very much taken by this old
gentleman who was old enough to be his father. We went to the
meeting a second time, only to find a man reading an extremely
dull and futile paper. We went no more, but decided that we
would hear Mrs. Besant whenever she came to the city.

It was not long before I obtained a copy of The Light of Asia.
It affected me so deeply that I had to read it in the privacy of
my own room. Here at last was true religion, from my point of
view. The life of Buddha, as given in this poem, was supremely
gentle, beautiful, unselfish; but what was it that Buddha had
discovered which brought hope into the world? It was the law of
karma. Why? Because it showed that man was making himself
through a series of lives, and if it was somewhat hard that such
a puny being was faced with such a Herculean task - that he
could obtain nothing except by his own efforts - there was at
the same time the assurance that he could never suffer in the
least except by his own doing, that present cruelty and
injustice to himself was but the payment for his own past
cruelty and injustice to others, and that the door was open for
him to make of his own future just what he liked. Here was no
capricious God who, if capable of creating cancer on earth,
would be equally capable of providing dreadful hells hereafter.
No blind unmoral chance also, which could so easily bring to
naught in a moment the most strenuous endeavours.

I still thought of Mrs. Besant in connection with all this
Buddhism. It was one thing to have a theory or a voice from the
past, however beautiful and eminent. It seemed quite another to
have at hand a living person, a noble, trustworthy, and
unselfish character, who could add to that theory the living
testimony of direct super-sensuous vision, who could declare
these things to be true, certain, scientifically sure, in a
ringing convincing voice.

3

In the new building, I invited my elder brother to join me in
the business. He left the shop that he was then managing, and we
opened new departments in the upper floor of the office. We
started making rubber stamps, and by following the methods that
I had already found successful, succeeded in developing a large
postal business, importing most of our raw materials and small
mechanisms from America and Germany. We opened out also in the
sale of picture post cards, and luckily got in right in the
height of the craze, selling especially Continental views, most
beautifully collotyped in Germany. We missed, however, a good
trade in safety razors and some other small articles, through
over-caution.

In my new offices on the ground floor I had partitioned off a
portion as private office. Here I used to attend to my account
books and also retire occasionally to practise various mental
and physical exercises which I had found in Mrs. Besant's book,
and in some books on hypnotism and cognate subjects which I had
obtained elsewhere, particularly one called Your Finer Forces
and How to Develop Them.  I practised breathing exercises but
not of the Hatha Yoga kind. I had had for some time after my
experiment in breathing at the shop a romantic notion of curing
large numbers of variously afflicted people in practically no
time by means of mesmeric passes.

Some months after the visit to the Theosophical Lodge I began to
desire more knowledge about it. I remembered to have seen a
small library there and thought it might possibly be open to the
public. I was determined to read extensively, if I could find
suitable books. So one evening I went again to the Theosophical
Lodge premises. I found there, sitting at a table, an oldish
gentleman with a bald head, a small "horse-thief" beard, and a
snuffle. Later I learned that he was by profession a knocker-up.
He lived in the mill area and made his living by going round the
streets in the early mornings and rattling on the bedroom
windows of his clients with a long stick. This occupation gave
him plenty of time to indulge in his hobby - the study of Greek
and Neo-Platonic philosophy, in which he had read profoundly.
Anyone would have taken him for a university professor of the
old style, or a second-hand bookseller.  I also found a notice
saying that books could be borrowed for a penny a week, or two
shillings and sixpence a year.

I walked over to the table, and when the old gentleman looked up
at me I put down a half-crown and said I wanted to join the
library. He stared owlishly at the coin for a few moments, then
pushed it back towards me and said: "No, take a book; pay a
penny when you return it. Perhaps you will not want to read any
more."

This negative sort of salesmanship took me, a business man, very
much by surprise. But I had made up my mind.  Pushing the
half-crown back again I replied: "No, put me down for a year's
subscription. I am going to read them all."

It happened at that moment that two small middle-aged ladies
entered the room. One, I learnt afterwards, was the wife of the
president to whom my father and I had taken a liking on the
occasion of our first visit to the Lodge; the other kept a small
toffee shop in the mill area. They spoke to me - words of
welcome. I was shy, and wanted to get away with my book. Would I
not give them the pleasure of my company at the meeting that was
about to take place? I preferred not, I explained that I had
come only to obtain books to read, to find out more about Mrs.
Besant's philosophy. Oh! But it would give them so much pleasure
if I would stay. So I went with them into an adjacent, larger
room, which was by day a sort of board-room connected with a
solicitor's office. They sat me down on a large settee and
brought me a number of photographs to see.  "This is Mr.
Sinnett. This is Mr. Leadbeater. This is Mr. Mead. This is Mrs.
Mead. This is Mr. Keightley" - and so on.

I said: "Yes; yes; yes, yes," very politely, though full of
inward wonder at this sudden transition from an atmosphere of
rare philosophy to the intimacies of something resembling a
family album. And the persons represented in the portraits did
not resemble the perfect men or Mahatmas of whom I was in
search, though Mrs. Besant had done so to some extent, with her
priestessly robes and manner.

After several other people had drifted in and the chairman had
called the meeting to order with two minutes' silent meditation,
I listened to an hour's lecture by a parrot-faced and
parrot-voiced lady, on the theory that the earth came from the
moon and not the moon from the earth, and then went home, having
given a promise to attend again the next week.

4

Though the lodge-meetings bored me, the literature had the
reverse effect. At the beginning I read mostly books written by
Mrs. Besant, of which there were a large number, and five
largish volumes entitled: Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine,
by Madame Blavatsky, chief founder of the movement. With the
portrait of the author in Isis Unveiled I almost fell in love.

In both of these authors I read about Mahatmas. I was already
prepared for the main ideas of Theosophy (as this philosophy was
somewhat erroneously called) by my reading of The Light of Asia.
I was a worshipper at the shrine of Buddha as depicted therein.
I had read that other people could follow in his steps and bring
to an end the procession of their lives (or rather bodies) by
attaining Nirvana, a state which could not be defined, but
certainly bore no resemblance to any sort of heaven.

According to Buddha, this Nirvana was to be attained not by any
external means, not by breathings or posturings, not by prayer
or supplication, not by the aid of any teacher or guide, but
simply by surrendering absolutely all selfishness and turning
the full light of reason upon the imperfection of the world and
all human fancies, and thus reaching "illumination" and the
"true life kept for him who false puts by." I understood that
thousands had attained Nirvana, the state of Buddha, the Wise,
just as he himself had done, and had gone on into Nirvana.

But in these works I read of Mahatmas, men who had attained
Nirvana but were nevertheless actually living in human Indian
bodies in Tibet. Though they had attained perfection, they had
not accepted the full liberty of Nirvana, but remained in touch
with man on the threshold of that state, so that they might help
others to attain.

I wanted above all things to find one of these Mahatmas, to
serve him, to learn and practise at his feet. Notwithstanding my
coolness towards the celebrities of the Theosophical Society, my
lack of response to the contents of the family album, I was
completely captivated by the greater, though similar attraction
of the Mahatmas.

I found from conversation with my new friends that they were
very humble in these matters. They worshipped the Masters or
Adepts from afar. They said that if they behaved themselves in
the station in life to which they had so far attained, they
might hope, after some more lives, to approach the feet of the
Masters and begin to tread the Path which led - usually through
seven or fourteen lives of intense endeavour - to Their estate.
In the meantime they sat at the feet of those who were already
Their disciples.

This was not good enough for me. I had pictured myself as
another edition of the Buddha himself, a Nirvani in this life. I
was prepared to surrender everything, everything.  I wanted this
joy not only for myself. I wanted everybody to see that they
suffered from themselves, that none else compelled them to hug
the wheel of birth and death, and kiss its spokes of agony. The
Theosophical Society was founded by the Masters for the purpose
of spreading this knowledge of the open door to Nirvana above
and brotherhood on earth. I would work for it with every ounce
of my strength, with every gasp of my breath.

I gave my name for membership to the President, vowing in a
broken voice that I would do my best to help the great work. My
vehemence disturbed the members standing by; it was perhaps a
little unseemly to be so religious in public. My name went up to
higher quarters, and after several months' delay I received from
London a certificate of membership, though I was only at the age
of nineteen.  Their rule that minors could be admitted only with
the consent of their parents and guardians seems to have been
overlooked in my case.

In my reading I had pictured one of the Mahatmas as particularly
suited to myself. I wanted to go to him and learn. In the
privacy of my room