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(April 1890)
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- The Path, vol. V, no. 1, April 1890, pp. 2-7
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DATA
Title for references: Fullerton A - The Missionary Function of Theosophy
Short description: Argues that Theosophic missionary work should avoid controversy and simply disseminate Theosophy as ...
2 We Theosophists can prosecute our work far more intelligently and hopefully if we understand just what we have to do, just how we ought to do it, and just what results we have a right to expect. Theosophic effort, like every other effort, is ineffective if it defies facts or laws, and, conversely, bears fruit in proportion as all such facts or laws are heeded. Theosophic truth, like every other truth, is wasted if cast on soil unfitted to receive it; and Theosophic hope, like every other hope, must wither from disappointment if it is irrational or rootless. Only as we perceive the conditions of the problem, and then conform to them, are we justified in looking for success.
The great public work which Theosophists at this era have to do is to disseminate a knowledge of Theosophy. In our hemisphere it is a new system; old, older than anything else, as it really is, here it has the interest, as also the opprobrium, of entire novelty. On the side of its interest, we have to aid us the insatiate thirst of the present day for all that is fresh or strange or promising, together with the vigorous rivalry of the press to furnish draughts of each; and on the side of its opprobrium, we see the host of those who are indifferent or contemptuous to any system of spiritual vigor, backed-up by the churches and religionists who cherish petrifactions as heirlooms, and who are horrified and embittered when Truth appears as a 3sprightly youth, rather than as a palsied centennarian with one book chained to his waist. A great preparatory step is gained when either the free-thinking are caused to inspect Theosophy from curiosity, or the orthodox to attack it from dislike, for in each case it secures publicity and notice. But there is also a third class,—those who desire satisfaction for the higher instincts in man, who cannot find it in the artificial theologies of the sects, who distrust anything bearing conventional or worn-out names, and who have an open mind for a teaching which gives intelligent solution to the questions of life and adequate answer to its aspirations. As we have no means of discerning the members of this third class and of communicating solely with them, our only course is to scatter Theosophy broadcast through the land, fill the air with it, make it as familiar a word as Christianity or Spiritualism. When the whole social atmosphere is suffused with it, it will come in contact with every nature fitted to receive it, and so there will be no hungry soul unfed, no ready recipient unsupplied. When the secular press expounds it and the religious press analyzes it, and when its terms are understood and its distinctive marks perceived, joining the Theosophical Society will be as easy a thing as now is joining a church, and Branches will be as numerous as, and far more co-operative than, the very churches themselves.
As has been said, there is only one way to effect this,—it is to spread everywhere a knowledge of what Theosophy is. In the simple form of elementary tracts, in the fuller statement of pamphlet or document, in the copious exposition of detailed treatise, all phases of the topic are presented, all queries duly met, all degrees of intelligence provided for. There is absolutely no limit to the possible literature of Theosophy, for it embraces every department of being and has the promise of a continuous revelation from its Adept teachers. As fast as Their present teachings are popularized and absorbed, new and richer ones will be given. The peculiar duty of the day is to give the utmost clearness to what is known, to make it intelligible and attractive to the masses, to promote its circulation with energy,—prodigality even, to ensure that it shall be a theme for conversation, perusal, research, study. One hardly overstates the case when one avers that the one pre-eminent work of Theosophists at this era is to sow Theosophic seed in every quarter and with abundant measure.
But there were two other questions raised at the beginning of this paper,—just how we ought to work, and just what results we have a right to expect. They may be called the Method and the Rationale of our mission.
The essential principle in the Method of Theosophic work, I take to be 4the avoidance of controversy. This is not merely because argument is a battle in which passions are roused, and the desire to conquer overcomes the desire to learn, or even because the consequent inflammation unfits the mind for such a topic as Theosophy, but because, as all experience shows, of the futility of argument in changing conviction. Nothing in literature is more dead than the patristic and scholastic controversies, whereas the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius will have perennial life. And it would seem that what is needed in Theosophy is a perspicuous exhibition of its tenets, supported, indeed, by all props from reasoning and analogy, but free from conflict with opposing faiths, and set forth rather as a suggestive and plausible explanation of facts than as a dogmatic system vying with others. This holds equally of the verbal statements Theosophists are constantly called upon to make. If their tone is that of infallible assurance, of a combative readiness to defend, to attack, and to impugn, a like spirit will be evoked in the questioner; whereas, if they are given as the solutions found satisfactory by the holder, though in no way obligatory on any other thinker, if they are commended as interesting rather than urged as final, the spirit of antagonism is disarmed at the outset, and the genial influence of a gentle unobtrusiveness extends itself from speaker to hearer. Beliefs can hardly be argued away. They may crumble or melt under the quiet effect of more potent considerations, or they may simply fade out all better ones come to view, just as the pictures of a dioptric lantern grow less vivid and disappear when their successors are disclosed, but they will gain obstinate rigidity through any attempt to displace them with violence. The tactful presentation of Theosophy therefore means that each written or spoken word should be pacific, uncombative, gently proffering an idea rather than pronouncing a dictum, letting the hearer himself contrast the opulence of Occult Science with the penury of Christian isms, seeking no rebuttal, inviting no contest, striving for no victory.
The other question,—the Rationale of our mission—goes to the root of the whole matter of that mission. If Theosophy is to be promulgated in every direction and through every channel, if a very large part of the community is indifferent to it or hostile, and if controversy is to be foresworn, what gains may we really expect to make?
Fitness to receive Theosophy is pre-eminently a case of Evolution. As the wave of life has passed through the several kingdoms of nature, lifting to various heights of development the different individuals in them, effecting an infinite diversity in progress from the shell-fish to the anthropoid ape, so the Spiritual wave exhibits in the countless multitudes of men the equally countless degrees with which it has been received. There are human beings in whom hardly a trace of spiritual feeling can be detected; there are innumerable graduations in which it expands from a feeble sentiment to a ruling principle; and there is a small but exalted class in which it has overmastered and overcome every other impulse and desire. Intelligence, too, has like differentiations, and when this and the spiritual principle are united in every 5possible combination of degree, intensity, and power, we see the infinitude of variety, the measureless complexity, exhibited in the status of men.
Now while Theosophy is truly a system of the highest intellectuality, feeding the loftiest minds produced in the race, this is not its primary function. That function is the supply of spiritual pabulum, the furnishing to aspiration a justification, a method, an assurance. Its note is responded to by the devout and the ardent, unheard or unheeded as it may be by the clever. And so it comes to pass that no small part of the members of the Theosophical Society are very poor in intellectual gifts, little competent to seize much more than the elements of the system, powerless to analyze or to combine or to express its truths, a feeble folk as to brain or tongue, and yet sound in purpose and in conviction, resolute in aim and life, clear of vision into the eternal realities. They feel far more than they can state; they are strong, gigantic even, in a conscientiousness which knows no paltering, and a devotion which knows no sleep. And to this they have come through incarnation after incarnation.
Precisely what stage of spiritual evolution must be reached before Theosophy is acceptable, who can say? Yet evidently there is needed some real, even if vague, conviction of the greater value of the unseen, and some decided, even if flexible, desire for its attainment. If there is neither, Theosophy is a meaningless babble, a sound without import or significance. To some point the spiritual principle must have been evolved, the spiritual interest grown. Before that, there could be no comprehension and no response.
In respect to this, receptivity to the Theosophical idea is exactly like receptivity to any other idea,—it is an affair of evolutionated readiness. If you tell a young man in his teens that the loftiest reach of human happiness is not in converse with an undeveloped girl, and that insipid talks and unfledged affections are only the contents of a stage and a class, he will probably smile at your little knowledge of life and your little ability to comprehend it. And yet the mature man, rich in experiences of varied tendernesses, knows how faint and flimsy are the sentiments of such youths. Still, each attitude is proper to its time. You could not expect sage discrimination in a boy, or appreciation of other things which are in advance of his period. If you speak to a small tradesman of the forces governing international commerce, and of the happy day when an understanding of them 6shall sweep away every obstacle raised by ignorant cupidity, his eye will glaze and his mouth open. If, forgetting your hearer in your topic, you discourse to a common-place person on the mental triumphs of the century, and how intelligent thought is asserting itself in civic ideals and in legislation, you will soon perceive his incapacity to understand you. I once travelled in Italy with an acquaintance who gave no eye to its architecture, galleries, or scenery, but was alert for horses, dogs, and women. All these things mean simply that the individual has not reached the point where higher themes become conceivable. To present them is to appeal to a blank; the faculty is not there. Give the topic appropriate to the development, and you have response at once. It could not be otherwise. Men are what they are, not what they will be. To expect perception of things out of sight, or to blame for devotion to those only which are perceived, is to be unphilosophical and unpractical.
And so it is in Theosophy. Exhibit it to the sectarian, the conventionalist, the mere business-man, the gourmet, and its broad doctrines and high impulsions seem but fanatical raving. Tell its principle of unselfishness to the monopolist who seeks for opulence through oppression, or the religionist who hopes for glory through gore, and you might as well speak in Arabic or Hindoostanee. In fact, any one of its spiritual sides is unintelligible to the man who has not within him a counterpart to that side. If the faculty has not evolved, it obviously cannot act. And this, too, is another reason why one should not attempt to argue or persuade into Theosophy. To do so implies the presence of an interest or an aspiration which argument or persuasion can arouse, whereas it is the absence of them which makes the attempt hopeless.
Sketching the area of human evolution, we may say that each human being passes through successive stages of thought, conviction, and emotion, and that certain habits are appropriate to each. Whatever may be the dominant interest of the life, there are topics and practices which match it. These are natural. They may not be elevating or elevated, but at least they are fit. One need not marvel to find obtuseness as to spiritual things any more than as to art or literature or science. The whole question is set to rest by the simple explanation that the individual is still on a lower plane. There is no use in worrying over it, for the matter is beyond all other remedy than that of limitless time, which will in its course bring about through many incarnations the stage of spiritual interest. Then Theosophy will attract.
These facts show what is the philosophy of Theosophical missionary effort. The method has been stated to be the widest possible circulation of Theosophical information, the filling the atmosphere with Theosophical truths and ideas. Why? Not because it is supposed that to any considerable proportion of the community they will be either intelligible or welcome. Not because their intrinsic value can be perceived by souls which as yet are not percipient. Not because that any cogency of argument or felicity of diction will evoke interest or gain adhesion. Not because they hold out inducements which, like Sunday School picnics or Church sociables, may avail to entice outsiders. Not at all because it is believed that more than perhaps one out of many hundreds is ripe for a welcome to them. But 7then there is that one. He has in former embodiments risen through eras of struggle and solicitude, and stands now ready, open-eared for the note of Theosophy. He may be a member of some great family in the metropolis and come in touch with Theosophy through the gilded libraries which are ever open to him; he may be a journeyman in a factory and stumble on a paragraph of revelation in the only newspaper he sees; he may be a merchant in a far-off city, or a doctor in a country town, or a blacksmith in an inland village; he may be a miner in Colorado or a herdsman in Texas or a pioneer in a Western hamlet; but if prepared in past incarnations for Theosophy in this, it needs but a line to transmute him into a Theosophist. Perhaps yours may be the hand which has guided it to him, Karma conferring on you the privilege and on him the benefit of adding another to the ranks of the illuminated. What if scores of editorials and hundreds of editorial items and thousands of circulars die straightway and fruitless! Who can say, indeed, that they do? But if they did, there is always the one upon whom we may count, the one who has a right to our treasures, the one who will spread them in his turn, the one who will be the nucleus for further strength coming from the unseen powers. Nor must we forget the stimulus which a diffused knowledge of Theosophy has upon forming, growing souls. They are not ripe for it yet, but acquaintance with it helps to make them so. A seed may be lodged in thought which will grow no less surely than do the seeds scattered by the sects about us, and, as they expect fruitage in years to come, so may we in incarnations to come. Probably we shall not need to wait so long. There are indications that every effort now has promise of a soon result. The very name "Theosophy" was strange but a few years ago; now it is a common sound. The topics collateral to it and which point to it were formerly in disrepute; now they are investigated as legitimate studies. Once a "fad" or a "craze," Theosophy has now established itself as a recognized form of religious belief, and, while the Society disclaims being a "Church," it will very likely in time receive all the distinction of such. We may not be covetous of that; we may not even gauge our progress by the membership we can show; but we can certainly do our very utmost that Theosophic truth shall be sped throughout the land and pervade the thought of the age. We shall not expect to make "converts" or to pillage on the preserves of sect or Church; we shall not look for accretions through any process of argument or persuasion or teasing; but we shall enjoy the right to make the positions of Theosophy everywhere clear and understood, and the certainty of believing that no intelligent effort to enlighten and stimulate the human conscience can be, will be, a failure.
Alexander Fullerton.
Footnotes