Annie Besant

“ Only those who have realised hell, and realising it, have believed in it, know the awful shadow with which it darkens the world. There are many who laugh at it, but they have not felt its power, and they forget that a dogma which is only ludicrous to them is weighing heavily on many a tender heart and sensitive brain. Hell drives many mad: to others-it is a life-long horror. It pales the sunlight with its lurid flames; it blackens the earth with the smoke of its torment; it makes the Devil an actual presence; it transforms God into an enemy, eternity into an awful doom. ”

“ The agony of the struggle was in the first nineteen months—a time to be looked back upon with shrinking, as it was a hell to live through at the time. For no one who has not felt it knows the fearful anguish inflicted by doubt on the earnestly religious soul. There is in life no other pain so horrible, so keen in its torture, so crushing in its weight. It seems to shipwreck everything, to destroy the one steady gleam of happiness "on the other side" that no earthly storm could obscure; to make all life gloomy with a horror of despair, a darkness that verily may be felt. ”

“ It is the witness of the Self within you to his own supreme reality, and that unshakable conviction, which is shraddha, is necessary for the treading of this path. It is necessary, because without it the human mind would fail, the human courage would be daunted, the human perseverance would break, with the difficulties of the seeking for the Self. Only that imperious conviction that the Self is, only that can cheer the pilgrim in the darkness that comes down upon him, in the void that he must cross before—the life of the lower being thrown away—the life of the higher is realised. ”

“ But we—who, having caught a glimpse of the beauty of Truth, deem the possession of her worth more than all the world beside; who have made up our minds to do our work ungrudgingly, asking for no reward beyond the results which spring up from our labour—we will spread the gospel of Freethought among men, until the sad minor melodies of Christianity have sobbed out their last mournful notes on the dying evening-breeze, and on the fresh morning winds shall ring out the chorus of hope and joyfulness, from the glad lips of men whom the Truth has at last set free. ”

“ There are no failures for the divine Husbandman, no seed which is not living, which falls from His hands into the ground. And near us the Masters stand ever, the living truth of what man can be—nay, what he shall be in the centuries to come. They are proofs of what you and I shall be, the finished copies of the statues which lie as yet so rough, so unhewn, in the marble of our humanity. That is Their value for all men, and part of Their work is to help us to become what They are, to foster in us every shoot of the spiritual life, to strengthen in us every effort and struggle towards the light. ”

“ But not devotion alone marks this great One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I ́shvara is, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love for men—nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow—unless within him burns the flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in this universe of God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supreme whose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out of His eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing," says the Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;" ”

“ I have spoken of a few of the gifts of science; what shall I say of those of art, of politics, of commerce, of friendship, the other "moonlike things" so contemptuously regarded by Miss Cobbe? Better the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of Turner and of Long, than the jangling of angels' harps and the pearl-gemmed gates of the New Jerusalem. Better the efforts to raise the poor and to bind in brotherhood the nations, than the dull contentment with misery preached by the believers in God. Better the commerce which unites than the religion which divides the nations. ”

“ As the sun floods the earth with his radiance so does that Life enlighten all, only that Sun of the world never sets to any part of it. We shut this light out of our consciousness by our selfishness, our heartlessness, our impurity, our intolerance, but it shines on us ever the same, bathing us on every side, pressing against our self-built walls [Pg 322] with gentle, strong persistence. When the soul throws down these excluding walls, the light flows in, and the soul finds itself flooded with sunshine, breathing the blissful air of heaven. ”

“ Is this horror a divine working? What is this that Varuna has done? Varuna is working for evolution. His thought is not fixed on the forms in which the life is cabined, but on the life that is evolving within them, which can make for itself new forms. When those men are swept away, it is only the breaking of the forms that happens; the life up-springs uninjured and set free; for the body is the prison-house of the evolving life, and if the prison doors were never thrown open, we should be in jail all our lives and make no progress for the future. ”

“ This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact. The man who feels such devotion as this is one who knows in whom he has believed; the man who makes such a thought-form as this is one who has taught himself how to think. The determination of the upward rush points to courage as well as conviction, while the sharpness of its outline shows the clarity of its creator's conception, and the peerless purity of its colour bears witness to his utter unselfishness. ”

“ The worst enemy of the martyr and the hero is the inner enemy, not the outer—the love that pleads with you to falter in your duty; worse than all, the inner doubt. "Can I really be Right, when every one around me tells me I am Wrong? Can I alone see what ought to be done? All these good men and women, honourable, faithful, good citizens of the world, tell me that I am mistaken and headlong. Is it not conceit, is it not vanity, to set my solitary choice against the wisdom of the aged, against the experience of my time?" ”

“ Because our friend was loyal and true, prison had to him no dread. It was far, far less of dishonour to wear the garb of the convict than to wear that of the hypocrite. The society we represent, like his society in America, pleads for free thought, speaks for free speech, claims for every one, however antagonistic, the right to speak the thought he feels. It is better that this should be, even though the thought be wrong, for thus the sooner will its error be discovered—better if the thought be right, for then the sooner does the gladness of a new truth find place in the heart of man. ”

“ Virtue is a service man owes himself; and though there were no heaven, nor any God to rule the world, it were not less the binding law of life. It is man's privilege to know the right and follow it. Betray and prosecute me, brother men! Pour out your rage on me, O malignant devils! Smile, or watch my agony with cold disdain, ye blissful gods! Earth, hell, heaven, combine your might to crush me—I will still hold fast by this inheritance! My strength is nothing—time can shake and cripple it; my youth is transient—already grief has withered up my days ”

“ To the savage everything is divine; he hears one God's voice in the clap of the thunder, another's in the roar of the earthquake, he sees a divinity in the trees, a deity smiles at him from the clear depths of the river and the lake; every natural phenomenon is the abode of a god; every event is controlled by a god; divine volition is at the root of every incident. To him the rule of the gods is a stern reality; if he offends them they turn the forces of nature against him; the flood, the famine, the pestilence, are the ministers of the avenging anger of the gods. ”

“ And there lies the future, there the basis of the coming civilisation.
I said, in the beginning, it would be built on self-sacrifice, and that was the thought that lay behind the words. I see, spreading through the comfortable, through the rich, those who are well dowered with the goods of earth, a spirit of noble discontent, not for themselves but for others, not for themselves but for the poor. I come across the rich and highly-placed who ask, “What can we do to relieve the misery we see?”—who suffer by sympathy, not by compulsion; and it is from them the redemption of society will come. ”

“ Thus India had the duty of spreading the idea of Dharma, Persia that of Purity, Egypt that of Science, Greece that of Beauty, Rome that of Law. But to render its full service to Humanity it must develop along its own lines, and be Self-determined in its evolution. It must be Itself, and not Another. The whole world suffers where a Nationality is distorted or suppressed, before its mission to the world is accomplished.
The Cry for Self-Rule.
Hence the cry of a Nation for Freedom, for Self-Rule, is not a cry of mere selfishness demanding more Rights that it may enjoy more happiness. ”

“ Come in to give, to work, to be enrolled amongst the servants of humanity who are working for the dawn of the day of a nobler knowledge, for the coming of the recognition of a spiritual brotherhood amongst men. Come in if you have the spirit of the pioneer within you, the spirit of the volunteer; if to you it is a delight to cut the way through the jungle that others may follow, to tread the path with bruised feet in order that others may have a smooth road to lead them to the heights of knowledge. ”

“ In its lower phases, it is the experience just noted, where the withdrawal of the consciousness into a sheath not yet recognised as a sheath is followed by the beginning of the functioning of that sheath, the first indication of which is the dim sensing of an outer. You feel as though surrounded by a dense mist, conscious that you are not alone but unable to see. Be still; be patient; wait. Let your consciousness be in the attitude of suspense. Presently the cloud will thin, and first in glimpses, then in its full beauty, the vision of a higher plane will dawn on your entranced sight. ”

“ What is life or consciousness—for the two terms are synonymous? It is the power to answer to vibrations, the power to respond—that is consciousness. Evolution is the unfolding of a continually increasing power to respond. The whole universe is full of the vibrations of Íshvara, of God. He sustains and moves the whole. Consciousness is the power in us to answer to those vibrations. All powers lie hidden within us as the oak tree lies hidden in the acorn. But it is in the process of evolution that the sapling slowly grows out of the seed. ”

“ What a dull, tire-some world it was that I had to live in, I used to think to myself, when I was told to be a good child, and not to lose my temper, and to be tidy, and not mess my pinafore at dinner. How much easier to be a Christian if one could have a red-cross shield and a white banner, and have a real devil to fight with, and a beautiful Divine Prince to smile at you when the battle was over. How much more exciting to struggle with a winged and clawed dragon, that you knew meant mischief, than to look after your temper, that you never remembered you ought to keep until you had lost it. ”

“ For where religion is a matter of authority, of books, of successions, of historical events, there criticism must always destroy; the form changes, and cannot remain stable in a transitory world, and we find the ancient documents shorn of their ancient value; we find inspiration, limited and fettered to words instead of the spirit, failing to hold its own against the critical scholarship of the day. One defence after another is thrown up, only to be abandoned before the approaching tide, as children throw up castles in the sand, dreaming that sand castles can stop the flow of waves. ”

“ We ought to be ready to acknowledge, also, that there is love in nature, although there is cruelty too; there is the sunshine as well as the storm, and we must not fix our eyes on the darkness alone and deny the light. In mother-love, in the love of friends, loyal through all doubt, true in spite of danger and difficulty, strongest when most sorely tried, we see gleams of so divine, so unearthly a beauty, that our hearts whisper to us of an universal heart pulsating throughout nature, which, at these rare moments, we cannot believe to be a dream. ”

“ And this is what every true Briton will feel is India’s Right the moment India claims it for herself, as she is claiming it now. When this right is gained, then will the tie between India and Great Britain become a golden link of mutual love and service, and the iron chain of a foreign yoke will fall away. We shall live and work side by side, with no sense of distrust and dislike, working as brothers for common ends. And from that union shall arise the mightiest Empire, or rather Commonwealth, that the world has ever known, a Commonwealth that, in God’s good time, shall put an end to War. ”

“ The man who has realised unity knows no difference between himself and the vilest wretch that walks the earth. He sees only the God that walks in the sinner, and knows that the sin is not in the God but in the sheath. The difference is only there. He who has realised the inner greatness of the Self never pronounces judgment upon another, knows that other as himself, and he himself as that other—that is unity. We talk brotherhood, but how many of us really practice it? And even that is not the thing the yogi aims at. Greater than brotherhood are identity and realisation of the Self as one. ”

“ The building goes on, and on, and on, till the new centre of life has grown strong, but not until that centre can hold itself together amid the vibrations of the outer universe, is the new form with its ensouling life sent forth on its own independent course. So does the brooding mother-life of Íshvara envelope the children of His love, and so does He nourish them, building them within Himself as the ages pass, until they are able to hold their own centres in the illimitable life of the One, the Supreme. ”

“ Behind us, the long centuries through which the great Aryan race has been sending out wave after wave of humanity in successive billows, sweeping over Asia and over Europe, one after another rising, growing, ruling, and then passing to its fall. During all the time of a sub-race, the world rolls down what have been called the grooves of change, steadily, quietly, without much of jolt or of trouble; the wheels running fairly smoothly, continuously, with little of shock. And then, again, the time comes when a new sub-race must be born, when another shall succeed and the old shall pass away. ”

“ Jesus, with worn and wasted body; with sad, thin lips, curved into a mournful droop of penitence for human sin; with weary eyes gazing up to heaven because despairing of earth; bowed down and aged with grief and pain, broken-hearted with long anguish, broken-spirited with unresisted ill-usage—such is the ideal man of the Christian creed. Beautiful with a certain pathetic beauty, telling of the long travail of earth, eloquent of the sufferings of humanity, but not the model type to which men should conform their lives, if they would make humanity glorious. ”

“ Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain all toils of inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and conscience; their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple of human faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the earthquake-shock of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love, by the direct inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and timber by timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall outlive all attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul as long as His own Eternity endures. ”

“ This entrance into a higher plane will repeat itself again and again, until your consciousness, centred on the buddhic plane and its splendouis having disappeared as your consciousness withdraws even from that exquisite sheath, you find yourself in the true cloud, the cloud on the sanctuary, the cloud that veils the Holiest, that hides the vision of the Self. Then comes what seems to be the draining away of the very life, the letting go of the last hold on the tangible, the hanging in a void, the horror of great darkness, loneliness unspeakable. ”

“ Just as you see the light of the sun broken up into many colours, and those colours giving all the beauty to earth which you see in the nature around you; just as you know that those colours that constitute white light can be recombined again into the white light whence they sprung, so is it with religions. The great truths, the great virtues are as one—the great white light of truth; they are broken up by the prism of the intellect, and the many religions ray out, each with its own colour; they are recombined by the prism of the Spirit, and once again are blended into the unity of truth. ”

“ Is it true that Atheism has no immortality? What is true immortality? Is Beethoven's true immortality in his continued personal consciousness, or in his glorious music deathless while the world endures? Is Shelley's true life in his existence in some far-off heaven, or in the pulsing liberty his lyrics send through men's hearts, when they respond to the strains of his lyre? Music does not die, though one instrument be broken; thought does not die, though one brain be shivered; love does not die, though one heart's strings be rent ”

“ Salvation? Yes, you need saviours, but the saviours must save you from earthly woes and not from the wrath of God; save yourselves, by thought, by wisdom, by earnestness. Redemption? yes, you need redeeming, but the redemption you want is from vice, from ignorance, from poverty, and must be wrought out by human effort. Prayer? yes, you need praying for, but the prayer you want is work compelling the result; not crying out for what you desire, but winning it by labour and by toil. The world stretches wide before you, capable of paying you a thousandfold for all you do for it. ”