The second is to cease from desiring for oneself even such abstractions as power, knowledge, love, happiness, or fame; for they are but selfishness after all.
Life itself teaches these lessons; for all such objects of desire are found Dead Sea fruit in the moment of attainment. This much we learn from experience. Intuitive perception seizes on the positive truth that satisfaction is attainable only in the infinite; the will makes that conviction an actual fact of consciousness, till at last all desire is centred on the Eternal.
THOUGHTS ON THEOSOPHY.
“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” this is the keynote of all true reform. Theosophy is the vehicle of the spirit that gives life, consequently nothing dogmatic can be truly theosophical.
It is incorrect, therefore, to describe a mere unearthing of dead letter dogmas as “Theosophic work.”
When a word, phrase, or symbol, having been once used for the purpose of suggesting an idea new to the mind or minds being operated on, is insisted upon irrespective of the said idea, it becomes a dead letter dogma and loses its vitalising power, and serves rather as an obstruction to, than as vehicle of the spirit; but, alas, this insistance[insistance] upon the letter is too often carried on under the honoured name of “Theosophy.”
A man cannot acquire an idea new to him unless it grows in his mind.
The mere familiarity with the sound of a word, or a phrase, or the mere familiarity with the appearance of a symbol, does not, of necessity, involve the possession of the idea properly associated with the said word, phrase or symbol. To insist, therefore, on the contrary cannot be theosophical; but would be better described as untheosophical.
It would certainly be theosophical work to point out kindly and temperately how certain words, phrases and symbols appear to have been misunderstood or misapplied, how various claims and professions may be excessive or confused as a consequence of ignorance or vanity, or both. But it is quite another thing to condemn a man or a body of men outright, for certain errors in judgment or action; even though they were the result of vanity, greed or hypocrisy; indeed such wholesale condemnation would, on the contrary, be untheosophical.
The one eternal, immutable law of life alone can judge and condemn a man absolutely. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”