Annie Besant

“ And how could it be that the Master of Compassion, who wins human hearts by the tenderness of His love, could be a Revealer of God, if there were not in God a compassion mightier than His own, and profounder than His humanity, as God is greater than man? But the splendor of the truth dazzled the eyes of those to whom it was presented, and their own ignorance, and fear, and limitation, imposed upon that perfect sacrifice the terrible aspect of a sacrifice to God—an aspect which it assumed, not only in Christianity, but in other faiths as well. ”

“ In the past the world would have none of the Masters. They slew the Christ; they made the prophets outcasts. And until in our heart the love of the Master awakens, until with passionate longing, with continual insistence, we call to the divine Men the welcome, without which They may not come, They must remain hidden. Only when there comes up from heart after heart one vast chant of devotion and appeal, only then will They come to the many as They have already come to the few, and show out the visible splendor of Their manhood, as the glory of Their divinity has ever been upon the earth. ”

“ For all who study the world's unfolding and believe that this world is not alone, but is a part linked with other worlds, and that other beings above humanity take their share in humanity's evolution—all who thus look at history and see the powers that lie behind the veil and that pull the strings of those whom we call kings, and statesmen, and generals, and the mighty ones of earth, they know that no great human experiment can be void of its value, and no great human experiment but has some fruit of wisdom to be gathered from it. ”

“ You can no more quench that thirst of the human Spirit by anything but individual experience of the Divine, than you can quench the thirst of the traveller parched and dying in the desert by letting him hear water go down the throat of another. Human experience, and that alone, is the rock on which all religion is founded, that is the rock that can never be shaken, on which every true Church must be built. ”

“ I do not believe that the study of the hidden side of Nature is so perilous a study as some think. All researches at first hand in the early days of a science have some danger: chemistry, electricity, had dangers for their pioneers, but not dangers from which wise people and brave should shrink; and I fear for the future of the Theosophical Society if it follows the track of many of the religions and lets go its hold of knowledge of the other worlds, and comes to depend on hearsay, tradition, belief in the experience of others, and the avoidance of the reverification of experience. ”

“ And yet if you and I, in our tiny personalities, repeat in miniature the life of the Logos in the vast sweep of His creative activity, who shall say that in a movement such as ours there is not similarly a retracing of the lines along which humanity at large has to grow? And who shall say whether we may not understand our movement better, and guide it more wisely, if we recognise these correspondences of the great growth of the world to the small growth of our Movement—a world-reflection in a tiny mirror? ”

“ The Spirit is deathless as God is deathless, and in that deathlessness of the Spirit lies the certainty, the immortality of religion. And Theosophy, in appealing to that immortal experience, points the world of religions—confused by many an attack, bewildered by many an assault, half timid before the new truth discovered every day, half scared at the undermining of old foundations, and the tearing by criticism of many documents—points it back to its own inexhaustible source, and bids it fear neither time nor truth, since Spirit is truth and eternity. ”

“ That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of the love, and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are found in our movement, however little developed to-day. And the fact that we recognise it as duty, as ideal, is the promise for the future. We are what our past has made us; we shall be what our present is creating ”

“ There is no instinct known in plant, in animal, in man, to which nature does not answer; nature, which has woven the demand into the texture of the living creature, has always the supply ready to meet the demand; and strange indeed it would be, well-nigh incredible, if the profoundest instinct of all in nature's highest product on the physical plane, if that ineradicable instinct, that seeking after God and that thirst for the Supreme, were the one and only instinct in nature for which there is no answer in the depths and the heights around us. ”

“ He comes not into the Brotherhood, nor can he be cast out from it. His Spirit, his Life, places him in it: it is a fact beyond us, above us. We have no power either to create it or to destroy. We recognise the great fact, and we do not call ourselves the Universal Brotherhood, but only a nucleus in it—a very different thing; the Brotherhood is as universal as humanity, that is our fundamental doctrine, and it implies that Brotherhood is as universal as Life. So also with Masonry, where it is rightly seen and understood—no barriers of creed, all men equally welcome within the Masonic Lodge. ”

“ What a privilege to know that those generations in the future, rejoicing in the light, will feel some touch of thanks and gratitude to those who brought it when the days were dark, to those whose faith in the Self was so strong that they could believe when all other things were against it, to those whose surety of the divine knowledge was so mighty that they could proclaim its possibility to an agnostic world. ”

“ Only as barrier after barrier is broken down, only as wall after wall is levelled to the ground, will the freedom of the Spirit become possible in manifestation on every plane and in every world. The Spirit is ever free in his own nature and his own life, but, confined within the barriers of the body, he has to learn to transcend them, before, on these planes of matter, he can realise the divine freedom which is his eternal birthright. So long as you feel yourself separate from others, so long are you shut out from the realisation of the unity ”

“ There will be so many in the days to come who will see the truth, so many in the unborn generations who will live from the hour of their birth in the light of the Divine WISDOM. And what is it not to know that one is bringing that nearer? to feel that this great treasure is placed in your hands for the enriching of humanity, and that the bankruptcy of humanity is over and the wealth is being spread broadcast on every side? ”

“ You cannot be amongst us without sharing that inspiration; you cannot be a member without sharing the life which is poured out unstinted through all the vessels of the Theosophical Society. Outside it is not worth while to say this, for that is not a reason for inducing people to come in; but you may rejoice that good karma in the past has brought you into the Society in the present. It has given you the right to have this opportunity of a nobler birth in the coming time, has given you the opportunity of taking part in that great work which is beginning to be wrought among humanity. ”

“ So long as you leave your people ignorant they are not fit to rule. The schools should come before the vote, and knowledge before power. You are proud of your liberty; you boast of a practically universal suffrage—leaving out, of course, one half of humanity!—but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of the voters who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know anything of economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for the guiding of the ship of the State through troubled waters? ”

“ But if you value your physical sight, why not value the astral sight—it is a stage higher—as well? and the mental sight—which is a stage higher yet—as well? Why denounce astral and mental, and praise up the physical? Why admire the power of sight of the painter, who sees more shades than you can see, and denounce the sight of the clairvoyant, who sees very much more than the cleverest painter? They all belong to the object world; they all lead the Self away from the realisation [19] of himself, and they are all exactly on the same level. ”

“ Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern ideal, and when you have found it you can build buildings that will defy time. But you have not found it yet; the artist amongst us is too much of a copyist, and too little of an inspirer and a prophet. We do not want the painter only to paint for us the things our own eyes can see. We want the artist eye to see more than the common eye, and to embody what he sees in beauty for the instruction of our blinded sight. ”

“ For the creed can be repeated by the lips, but the seeing of truth as true can only come from the intellect and the spirit, and to build on the intellect and the spirit is a firmer foundation than to build on the breath of the lips. Hence our Society has no dogmas. Not that it does not stand for any truths, as some people imagine. Its name marks out the truth for which it stands: it is the Theosophical Society; and that shows its function and its place in the world—a Society that asserts the possibility of the knowledge of God ”

“ And every one of you—no matter what your faith may be, Christian, Hinḍu, Buḍḍhist, Theosophist, what matters it?—every one of you who makes the Master of your own faith a living reality, part of your life, nearer than friend and brother, every such believer and worker is hastening the day of joy when the world shall be ready for the open reception of the Masters, that They may move visibly amongst humanity once more. ”