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.
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