A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical Principles

by Jane Hume Clapperton

The pilgrim soul pressing forward through a long series of births and deaths has a chequered career of conquest and defeat, until, experience guiding effort and overcoming waywardness, the animal stage of existence has been distanced and left behind. But each of these pilgrim souls pursues a path specifically its own, that is, differing from that of every other pilgrim soul. The paths pursued are divided by Eastern thought into three distinct classes. First, that of action; second, that of devotion; third, that of wisdom. In the first class are to be found men and women of infinitely varied powers taking part in all the activities of the world, and striving with keenness to attain certain desired results. Commencing, it may be, with low, selfish, narrow motives of action, these gradually alter and improve, till motive and action alike have become pure, unselfish and directed to the widest beneficence. Such types of humanity tread the first path, that of action, and in it are harvesting precious experience. They are developing interiorly the powers that make for righteousness.

To the second class belong all the world’s sincere religionists, those beings whose regard—whether of fear or love—goes out to an ideal person. The person, observe, may be of low or of high grade in accordance with the subjective development of the individual worshipper. As the object of devotion becomes purified, love casts out fear, and advance on this path proceeds. Men and women adoring their conception of Krishna, or Buddha, of Ahura Mazdao, or of Jesus Christ, are treading the path of devotion, and may rise to the highest emotions of altruism, the most selfless service of the Supreme, thus harmonizing ever more and more the human will and the Divine will.

Pilgrims of the third and smallest class are men and women whose constant desire and endeavour is to search out the truth of things. In the earlier grades of this path will be found scientific investigators of physical phenomena; more advanced on the path are materialist philosophers and all individuals directing their efforts to an examination of man in the regions of emotion and mind. Above these again are the men and women whose search is into the innermost nature of things, and who, in the intensity of that search, lose more and more their feeling of self, and merge themselves in Divine knowledge.

To summarise the three paths: The first is a progress through human activities from motives of self to motives of highest altruism. The second is a progress through religious emotions, from fear of an invisible demon, to the most selfless love of an ideal person and unswerving devotion to true ideals. The third is a progress from the simplest efforts to discover truth to the acquisition of Divine wisdom by means of the immensely increased faculties of the perfected man.

These three paths, like different ways up a mountain, meet at the top, where pilgrims attain to the qualities of all, and not only of the one path mainly traversed by each. All attain in the end to the fullest development of human power and faculty, and to complete liberation from the chain of births and deaths. That personal goodness and religious zeal are the measure of spiritual development is only the Church’s view, and it ignores a large part of human efforts and activities. Without personal goodness certainly no spiritual life is possible, but beyond the acme of personal goodness to lofty heights of knowledge, of wisdom, of transcendent love and benevolence, rises the pilgrim human soul under Divine tuition.

We have now to inquire wherein the pilgrims resemble one another? The feature common to all is the inner attitude of self-surrender. It may spring from impulse or a half-unconscious sense of duty. Or, it may result from the reasoning faculty, from reason controlling and directing conduct with a full consciousness of responsibility. Again, it may be allied with all the sacred aspirations and inspirations that follow upon a long course of development, but whatever the cause and degree, this attitude of mind makes it possible for the spiritual forces working in and through humanity as a whole to manifest there, expanding the heart and mind, and creating a further soul-evolution.

There is a law in nature which has been well called the pulse of our planetary system, a law of giving out. It involves no absolute and ultimate sacrifice; and it is the only law by which progress and exaltation in nature can be actually achieved. Now this law is a central part of the teaching of every great religion. The Logos, we are told, in bringing into existence an infinitude of centres of consciousness, made the voluntary sacrifice of limiting His own boundless life. This thought is expressed in the Christian Scriptures thus: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This first great outbreathing of the life of the Logos is the earliest presentation of the law of sacrifice—that law which prescribes that at every stage of evolution life and energy shall be given out for the benefit of some consciousness on a lower grade than the giver. This great principle of evolution is manifest in the unselfish benevolence of all good men and women; even when they are working as yet in blind obedience to the scarcely articulate impulses of their awakening spiritual natures. (I refer my reader to p. 452 of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s The Growth of the Soul.)

To our minds pain seems necessarily connected with sacrifice, but pain proceeds wholly from discord within the sacrificer, i.e. from antagonism between the higher part of his nature which is willing to give, and the lower part whose satisfaction lies in grasping and keeping. The process required in each case is a turning from the selfish, individualistic attitude to that of a social, altruistic giving—a giving joyfully for love’s sake. The transition naturally involves some pain, for the conscious will has to gradually master the animal part of the nature, and subordinate it to the higher self.

Man is, in the order of evolution, primarily subject to animal desires. His consciousness moves on the sensuous plane of existence, and he clings to the physical elements in nature. By-and-bye he learns to relinquish an immediate material good for a future good equally material—it may be a greater worldly prosperity for himself or his family. This sacrifice is not essentially noble, but it prepares the way for a harder lesson, and one that calls out a deeper faculty within him. Here again the process is one of exchange, but not of one form of sensuous good for another. It is the exchange of material possessions or sense pleasures for something of an entirely different order in nature—a reward not visible, nay, possibly far off beyond the tomb.

When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace when outward conditions were adverse and dark.