Erwin Bomas – the Netherlands
Unity is a fact. Transcending manifestation, the Boundless is all, and all is the Boundless. But how can we realize unity in this manifested world and in our life?
Within the manifested world there are many unities within unities. However, we do not always recognize them. In The Key to Theosophy , H. P. Blavatsky gives some very clear examples of what humanity as a unity means. Damage to a leaf of a plant influences the well-being of the entire plant. A person might faint because of a cut in the finger. Similarly, H. P. Blavatsky writes, if one human being is hurt, humanity is hurt.
The realization of this fact, in conscious feeling, thought, and life, could release the majority of sufferings faced by humanity. How many conflicts and interpersonal struggles could be solved if people knew and felt that if they hurt others, they hurt all, including themselves. Moreover, the realization that every being is an integral part of a unity leads to self-forgetfulness. Selfish motives will make place for unselfish motives. And with an unselfish motive, people will soon realize and discover their true meaning and place in life through service.
To come to that realization, Theosophy presents us a perfect example we can follow. Every manifested unity is a hierarchy, led and inspired by a Silent Watcher. This wondrous being has learned all there is to learn in the hierarchy he leads. However, he identifies himself with this unity. He identifies with all beings below him in terms of evolved consciousness – making up that hierarchy.
Out of compassion for all those beings, he pauses at the threshold of a higher level in the hierarchy and with endless patience stays where he is, in order to inspire and help all other beings in their evolution upwards towards and beyond the level of his own evolved consciousness.
There are many Silent Watchers, as many as there are unities. There is a Silent Watcher for every Cosmos, every Planetary Chain, every Globe, every Kingdom of Nature, including humanity, every cell, and every atom. Indeed, we human beings are Silent Watchers for each of our bodies.
We can draw a lesson from this teaching. There is no unity without a summit, an apex, a leader working in or behind the whole, inspiring it. Every unity is a hierarchy. Some people regard “hierarchy” with suspicion or mistrust. But the Greek origin of the word literally means “holy rule.” And holy has a connection with whole ith the sense of “unity.”
The suspicion and mistrust arises from the many bad examples of so-called leaders who lead a hierarchy by force instead of by natural leadership. However, there are inspiring examples of natural leaders as well. Most of us have experienced such living embodiments of wisdom, in family, school, or neighborhood. They are people who present the right answers at the right time. They are able to answer or respond to challenges and make the necessary decisions they face, for which wisdom is needed.
These wise people or teachers are modest, often working in the background of a group, but they are natural leaders because of their wisdom. They are those who are most self-forgetting, most willing to serve the whole, no matter what challenges they encounter. Like the Philosopher-Rulers Plato describes. Leaders that naturally lead and never look for power themselves. Leaders that unobtrusively shift the opinion of the majority by their own moral example.
Examples are world leaders like Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi. They are those like the Silent Watcher, who have learned all that needs to be learned, who do not selfishly go on “looking for a new challenge” but will always focus their attention on those who know less than they, to help them hear and understand the basic principle of Theosophy, the law of laws that is compassion. They do so not by preaching, but by being a Silent Watcher, a living example of compassion.
We can all be such inspirers, because in essence we are the Silent Watcher.
