Initiation, The Perfecting of Man E-Book

Annie Besant

• Herausgeber: anna ruggieri
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

From the Foreword: 'There is nothing new in these lectures, but only old truths retold. But the truths are of such vivid and perennial interest that, though old, they are never stale, and, though well known, there is always something to say which seems to throw on them new light and new charm. For they touch the deepest recesses of our being, and bring the breath of heaven into the lower life of earth.'

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

THE MAN OF THE WORLD, HIS FIRST STEPS

SEEKING THE MASTER

FINDING THE MASTER

THE CHRIST LIFE

THE CHRIST TRIUMPHANT AND THE WORK OF THE HIERARCHY

WHY WE BELIEVE IN THE COMING OF A WORLD TEACHER

INITIATION, THE PERFECTING OF MAN

ANNIE BESANT

FOREWORD

THERE is nothing new in these lectures, but only old truths retold. But the truths are of such vivid and perennial interest that, though old, they are never stale, and, though well known, there is always something to say which seems to throw on them new light and new charm. For they touch the deepest recesses of our being, and bring the breath of heaven into the lower life of earth.

Constantly immersed as are most in the affairs of daily life, they are apt to lose sight of “the things which belong to their peace”, and so any call to “lift up their eyes unto the hills” is welcomed by the earnest and the aspiring. The eternal verities are always restful, as is the view of snowy peaks to those toiling along the dusty roads of valleys far below.

May these reminders of the ancient facts of discipleship and Masterhood nerve some to effort; encourage others to perseverance. May they help some to realise the possibility of obeying the command: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

ANNIE BESANT.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD, HIS FIRST STEPS

THERE is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recognised in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussalmans in the Sufi - the mystic - teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision.1

But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of names you choose as best attracting or expressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine. Through thousands upon thousands of years some of our human race have trodden it; for thousands and thousands of years which are yet unborn, some of our race shall tread it to the end of our earth story, to the conclusion of this special cycle of human time.

It is the Path which, stage by stage, enables man to fulfil the command of the Christ: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”. It is the Path whereof that same great Teacher declared “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. I know that in later days, when most men had forgotten the existence of the Path, they changed those true words into words that are utterly false, that make the gate and the way narrow that lead unto a heavenly life, and broad and wide the way that leadeth to an everlasting condemnation; but that is a distortion of the occult teaching. It is a twisting of the words of the Christ, for surely He, whom His followers call the Saviour of the world, could never have declared that only few should be the ranks of the saved, practically numberless the crowds of the lost. In dealing with the Path we are not in those regions of exoteric faith which speak of heaven and hell. The life to which the Path leads the pilgrim is not the life of the passing joys of heaven; it is that life spoken of in the fourth gospel, where it is written “The knowledge of God is eternal life” - life which is not counted by endless ages, but which means a change in the attitude of the man; which means not time, but a life that is beyond time; which is not counted by the rising and setting of suns, even though those dawns and sunsets were in an immortal life; but which means that perfect serenity, that unity with God, in which time is only a passing incident of existence, and an ever-present reality is understood as the true life of the Spirit.

And so the Path that we are to study through the coming Sundays, through these brief and poor descriptions of what that Path may mean to man, is the short though difficult way by which man evolves more rapidly than in the ordinary course of human and natural evolution; it is the Path by which, to use a simile often used, instead of going round and round the mountain by an ever-climbing spiral, man climbs straight up the mountain-side regardless of cliff and precipice, regardless of gulf and chasm, knowing there is nothing that can stop the Eternal Spirit, and that no obstacle is stronger than the strength that is omnipotence, because it has its source in Omnipotence itself.

Such is the Path, then, that you and I are to try to study, not for the mere interest of what is indeed a fascinating and enthralling subject, but rather, at least on the part of the speaker and I hope on the part of some at least of the hearers, a study that is meant to change the life, a study that gives birth to a determination to tread the Path, to know it not only theoretically but by a practical realisation, and to understand something of those hidden Mysteries by which man, ever potentially divine, realises his inner Divinity and becomes perfect, rising above and beyond humanity.

Such is the scope, then, of our study, and, in order that the study may be practical, we must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first steps towards the Path, need either know or recognise these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path. It is enough that the facts are there, and that the man unconsciously is allowing those facts to influence his inner and his outer life. It is enough that the laws exist; although the man may not know of their existence. Sunshine does not cease to warm you because you may not know anything of the constitution of the sun. Fire does not cease to burn you, because, unknowing its fierceness, you thrust your hand into the flame. It is the security of human life and human progress that the laws of nature are ever working and carrying us on with them, whether we know of them or not. But if we know them, we gain a great advantage. If we know them, we can co-operate with them as we cannot co-operate as long as we are in the darkness of ignorance. If we know the facts we can utilise them, as we cannot utilise them when we know not they are there. To know is the difference between walking in the darkness and in the light, and to understand the laws of Nature is to gain the power of quickening our evolution by utilising every law that hastens our growth, by avoiding the working of those that would retard and delay.

Now, one of the great facts which underlie the whole possibility of a Path of Human Perfecting, that I must take for granted throughout the lectures - for to deal with it as matter for argument would lead us far away from our subject - one of the fundamental facts in Nature, is the fact of reincarnation. That means the gradual growth of man through many lives, through many experiences of the physical world, of the intermediate world, and also of the world called heaven. Evolution would be too short to enable a man to grow from imperfection to perfection, unless he had many opportunities, a long, long road to lead him upward. And our man of the world who will take the first steps, who is ready to take them, must have behind him a long, long course of human evolution, in which he has learned to choose the good and to reject the evil, in which his mind has been evolved and trained, his character has been built up, from the ignorance and non-moral state of the savage to the point where the civilised man is standing today. The fact of reincarnation, then, is taken for granted, for not one of us could possibly tread the whole of that long course, could reach divine perfection, in the limits of a single life. But our man of the world need not know of reincarnation. He knows it in his spiritual memory, although his physical brain may not yet have recognised it, and his past, which is a fact, will push him onwards until Spirit and brain are in fuller communication, and that which is known to the man himself becomes known in the concrete mind.

The next great fact, necessary and taken for granted, may be put into a single phrase of your own Scriptures: “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. It is the law of causation, the law of action and reaction, by which Nature brings inevitably to the man the results of that which he has thought, which he has desired, which he has done.

Next, the facts that there is a Path and that men have trodden it before us; that the swifter evolution is possible; that the laws of it may be known, the conditions of it understood, the stages of it be trodden; and that at the end of that Path there are standing Those who once were men of the world, but now are the Guardians of the world, the Elder Brethren of our race, the Teachers and the Prophets of the past, stretching upwards in ranks of ever-more dazzling light from the ending of the Path for man to the highest Ruler of the world in which we live. Poor would be our hope if none before us had trodden the Way, if none had walked upon the Path. But They who in the past have come as Teachers have in an earlier past accomplished this mighty pilgrimage. Those whom today we honour as Masters exist in touch with our world that They may take pupils, and guide them in the treading of the Path.

These are the great facts in Nature, existing, whether recognised or not, on which the possibility of treading the Path depends: Reincarnation, the law of Karma, the fact of the Path, the Existence of the Teachers. Those are the four facts I must take for granted - not saying that they may not be shown to be true by argument one after the other, but for the purposes of this course taking them for granted because without each of them the very lectures themselves would be impossible.

What steps, then, is our man of the world to take, or what steps is he taking, if he is really approaching the entrance to the beginning of the Path?