Joy Mills – USA
This unique photo of Joy is from the mid 1940's as close as we could authenticate, she must haven around 23 years old. The photo was taken at a camp ground she was visiting in Shebogan, Wisconsin, USA
Our emphasis has been on The Secret Doctrine, simply because this year (written in 1988-editor)marks the centenary of its publication. But whether one thinks of one hundred years or one thousand years, these are mere numbers that have no intrinsic meaning. What is important is that we have considered together some of the fundamental principles that characterize that Wisdom Tradition. I have not intended that this would be a simple intellectual exercise. My emphasis has been on the central consideration, that what is called for is a transformation in human consciousness. This is not just a new way of thinking, although that is involved, but it is a new way of being in the world. And that means that it is not simply that we have been talking about abstractions, but about extremely practical matters.
We must look very deeply into what is the nature of our action. It sometimes appears to be easier to rearrange the furniture of the world, to shift things about a bit, than to deal with ourselves. We would like to reform everyone else and we fail to recognize that the reformation must take place within.
I think very often of the situation that is so well described in THE BHAGAVAD GITA. Arjuna represents every man, we are the modern Arjunas – the whole universe is a kind of Kurukshetra. It is a field on which all existence takes place, the field of the KURUS. And we are engaged, I think, in this battle. Now THE BHAGAVAD GITA opens with a remarkable statement. And I think it is something of which we need to be aware. Arjuna is at first at just one side of the field and this is often where we are, you see, at one side. We look across the field and see what appears to be an army arrayed against us, and we have projected unto that army feelings of hostility. Now Arjuna recognized that in that army were friends and relatives – that were elements in himself. And the armies that we face today are indeed the elements of our own nature. Arjuna had a charioteer, that is to say he recognized that there was an inner authority to whom he could turn. It is time that we recognize that in each one of us there is a similar interior authority and that if we listen closely, we will understand what is the nature of right action.
Now at the very opening therefore, Arjuna takes a dramatic step. He says to the charioteer: “Take me to the center of the field, and there stays my chariot.” It is only when one moves to the center that one may see the entire field. And we have to learn to come to the center. In fact, I would suggest that this is the
fundamental principle enunciated in The Secret Doctrine – that one must come to the center, to truly observe the field of existence. And then of course, his main question is: “What shall I do? How shall I handle the situation in which I find myself?”
Isn't this the question all of us ask at some point or other? Of course the charioteer, which is the interior guide or authority, introduces him to that field. Now we may become just as impatient as Arjuna did. Along about the sixth chapter of the Gita, Arjuna says, in effect – this is my own Joy Mills translation – “Look here Krishna, cut out all this philosophy. All I want to know is what is it that I am supposed to do!” And this is the situation in which many of us find us. I think some of you may have said: “Cut out all this metaphysical business you have been talking about! The world out there is burning and let's get out and do something to put out the fire!”
Krishna gives the only answer that the wise can ever give: “You must be responsible for your own actions.” In my own very rough translation of the Sanskrit, Krishna says to Arjuna: “My boy, you
are on your own.” Because we have created the situation in which we find ourselves today, we must know how to solve it. We become self-responsible. All that Krishna could do was to show the fundamental basic principles which govern all action. How we apply those principles is for each one of us to determine. The Gita ends in the eighteenth chapter with a remarkable statement of Krishna, and it is a statement we should all remember. In effect he says to Arjuna, “You will act because the very nature
of your being is to act.” That is, the very nature of being human is to act. Even inaction is an act! You cannot say “Stop the world. I want to get off!” You are the world and you must act. You must recognize that in a phenomenal universe, this Kurukshetra, this field, every action is clouded – and he uses a
marvelous analogy here – by smoke. So the task before us is the same task that faced Arjuna, to know how to produce the least smoke. That is, to act in such a manner as to bring about the maximum benefit for all. It is neither to withdraw from action, which is actually impossible, nor to rush blindly, rashly into
action, but to know what we are doing – to be aware at every moment what we are doing.
Now we must realize that action is not only physical action. Action is a movement on whatever level of existence, and action moves from a certain condition of the mind. When that condition is obscured and colored by all that is perceived, then the action is inevitably obscured and colored. When the mind is swayed by desire and passion, then the action becomes indeed action that is colored by those desires and passions. Again it is a matter of the transformation of the mind so that consciousness is a clear field, so that it is in a condition of its own purity of nature. And for that alone we are responsible.
Truth is not a possession of the mind. It is not one possession among others, but a mind that is established in its own essential nature. A consciousness that is established, stable, in its own interior center of being, is a mind in which truth reveals itself. And that truth, that very nature of the truthfulness that is revealed recognizes that there is a rightness that is beauty everywhere, that everywhere there exists a natural order
of existence. When one is in harmony with that natural order or beauty, then one acts to bring about the good. These indeed were the three characteristics of the stable individual in Plato's philosophy: the true, the beautiful, the good. So that when one is established in the truthfulness of existence, one perceives
the beauty or order of existence recognizing that it is always what one may call a right proportion of things – never fully expressing the Ultimate because the phenomenal can never fully express the noumenal. There is always a kind of cloud, but perceiving that right proportion, one performs the good.
So we may suggest that the simple story told in the Gita is the total story of our work. We are all aware of the grave crises that humanity faces today. These crises have been enumerated so often. Like Arjuna we may often wonder whether we are simply pawns in some gigantic cosmic game. But the Theosophical
worldview indicates that we can choose to act meaningfully to bring about a brotherhood of humanity. There are hopeful signs everywhere around us.
Let me tell you a story that may or may not be apocryphal. It concerns the writing or establishment of the constitution of my own country. We have just celebrated in the United States the bicentennial of the founding of my nation. There were many problems following the declaration of independence of thirteen
states, and a constitutional conference was called to see if there could be some way in which unity among these very separate and diverse states could be achieved. George Washington was elected the president of that convention, and the meetings continued in a hot summer in the city of Philadelphia. Interestingly, that is the city whose very name means “brotherly love.” That is why Philadelphia was so named; it was the city of brotherly love, you see. During that period of the constitutional convention there were quarrels and arguments over many, many matters. But finally out of it emerged the document that has guided my country during the past two hundred years. Among the participants was perhaps one of the wisest men that have ever lived, Benjamin Franklin. He was a member of the “Illuminati” of that day, which was the theosophical organization of that time. And undoubtedly because he had been the ambassador
in France, he had come into contact with certain great beings, adepts.
At the conclusion, when the document had finally been signed by all the participants, Benjamin Franklin pointed to the symbol that was carved on the back of the chair on which Washington had been seated throughout the convention. The symbol that had been carved on the back of the chair was of a half sun, with rays projecting out. And Franklin said to the assembled delegates of the convention: “There were times during this week when I looked at this symbol, and I thought it was a setting sun. But today I
know it is a rising sun.”
Now when you consider the matter, there is no difference in how one would paint a setting or a rising sun. But how you view it may make all the difference in the world . . . We can face the burning ruins of an outworn social and economic order and we can say that our civilization, as we have known it, is a setting sun. Or we can recognize that out of that may be arising a global society and see that it is a rising sun. I suggest that our responsibility is to help to bring to birth such a global society, and to participate to the best of our ability in bringing about that new order – which is brotherhood.
There is the beautiful myth of the Round Table. In one of the great myths of the Grail legend, it is said that the knights of King Arthur's Round Table were seated about that table in the usual order, when into the castle came Galahad, the voice of that realm of pure being, that would awaken those that were willing to leave the comfort at that table and proceed out into the forests of confusion and bewilderment of the world about them to seek for true wisdom, for that Grail whose very nature is wisdom and compassion and in which there is that healing presence that leads to wholeness. And so the call comes to each one of us today, to leave the established comfort and security of a past way of life – to seek in the ways of the world, not by withdrawing in the mountain vastness of the Himalayas, but to seek among humanity on
the streets and avenues of our modem cities in the midst in all of the clashing of arms and the misery of human sorrow for that which will heal all human wounds.
There is indeed I think a genuine call which we should hear, and again The Secret Doctrine points to the way in which we can search – that we too, like Perceval, one day will reach that goal. And as one version of the legend, that of Wolfram von Eschenbach points out, we will then enter into the kingdom of
priester John; that kingdom is the kingdom of adepts, this mighty brotherhood of “just men made perfect” whose very existence is the surety of humanity’s own achievement.
This is our responsibility. We cannot evade it. We can take it up and pursue it with happiness and lightness. The knights of the Round Table are present in us – like Galahad we can blunder our way through. Like Lancelot we can fall very frequently, and wander from the path that leads to the Grail. Like Boros we can plod steadily onwards; like Galahad we can ultimately achieve. When Galahad announced the quest to the knights gathered, it is recorded that each arose and went his own way into the forest, to
that place where he saw the way to be the thickest. What a wonderful statement of the great truth, that the ways are many, that each one of us has to find his own way of service, his own path of the quest where he sees that the need may be the greatest. But King Arthur, representative of that supreme Atman,
cautioned the knights as they departed: “Many will fall in the quest, and the end may not be achieved so quickly as you may think.”
There are many today who are seeking shortcuts on this path or who get ensnared in the forest of psychic phenomena and are caught on the brambles of the thickets in that kind of region. Indeed there are those who fall – failure is not to be dismissed however, for all we need to do is to pick ourselves up and
disentangle ourselves from the briars of psychic glamors that have ensnared us – and continue on the quest.
So the task is laid before us; it is a beautiful task. In the very beginning of THE SECRET DOCTRINE H. P. B. wrote a statement that is probably as descriptive of the present situation as it was of her own time. She wrote:
“The world of today, in its mad carrier toward the unknown, which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, is rapidly progressing on the material plane of spirituality. It has now become a true valley of discord and strife. It is a necropolis, wherein lay buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our spirit-soul.”
A necropolis is of course a city of the dead. We may say that we walk in such cities today. The living dead or the sleepwalkers are all about us, and it is given to us – we, incidentally, are the heirs to that great Wisdom Tradition, we who have been permitted even to glimpse a bit or fragment of this Wisdom
Religion – not to hold it to ourselves, not to be lost in arguments over details but rather to help awaken, or rather to reawaken those “highest and most holy aspirations of the human soul.”
That is a task that is far more difficult, and far more urgently needed, than the simple tasks of rearranging the world's furniture. It is to sacrifice all that we think we are, to really sacrifice the personal self on the altar of wisdom and compassion. This is, I suggest, what we are called upon to do. To recognize that, as one of the adept-teachers wrote to Mr. Sinnett, "Since there is hope for man only in man, I would not
let one cry whom I could save." And consequently he wrote further "It is our responsibility, it is the duty of every man who is capable of an unselfish impulse, to do something for its welfare." But what is it we are to do? It is not to eradicate the effects of wrong action, but to look for the causes, and the causes are in human consciousness. H. P. B. wrote in The Secret Doctrine:
“The only palliative to the evils of life, is union and harmony. A brotherhood in actuality, and ALTRUISM not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one but a
variety of bad effects. And if a brotherhood, or even a number of brotherhoods, will not be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each other’s throat, still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into the mystery of being will always prevent some from creating additional causes in a
world already so full of woe and evil.”
So to study The Secret Doctrine – both the volumes by that name, and even more that ageless tradition that is the doctrine – not simply to read books but to enquire, and to probe, to study in its genuine sense, is to engage us in that “philosophical research into the mysteries of being,” and therefore to recognize our profound responsibility to resolve the causes of misery. It is, as one of the great thinkers of my own country, Henry David Thoreau, put it:
“To place the imprint of our immortality upon every passing incident of daily life.”
I think that is the true commemoration of the centenary of The Secret Doctrine. That is an action that will change our world. That will make our setting sun into a rising sun . . .