It is the
natural right of every human being to be happy to escape all the miseries of
life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the
seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only because of our ignorance that
we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to
comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of
human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every
ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.
Why do we
suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in
evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way
and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us. Usually we
do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon
us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A
week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony. Today we
have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little
while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change
and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason
why this should be. There was a time when we had health and strength; but they
have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater
tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to
us little miseries and minor heartaches. We most earnestly desire to avoid them
but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our
ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination
that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human
suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can
but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably
and swiftly. It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with
furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be
slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that
would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly
and with perfect safety and comfort.
The old
method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed
facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the
personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human
being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with
information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native
ability he happened to be born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical
man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very
partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically
unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression
in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts,
which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are
evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious
effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be
achieved and wisdom attained. Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled
from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of
its suffering.
Why does
death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. The
only other reason why death brings grief or fear is because we do not understand it and
comprehend the part it plays in human evolution. But the moment our ignorance gives way to
comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place.
Why do we
have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer? Because in our limited
physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize
that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people a
situation from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to
think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already
generated are fully exhausted. When spiritual illumination comes, and we no
longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we
shall make no more forever.
Why do
people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering
ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not
comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume
toward them. Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why
they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer.
When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.
And so it is
with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our
ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we
have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and
disappear. It is not by the outward
acquirement of facts that men become wise and great. It is by developing
the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light
called genius.
Jim Pollard
