The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of C Jinarajadasa
The Law
of Renunciation
First Published 1915
The joy of life! Is it not everywhere? In plant and animal and man, do we not
see an instinct for happiness which impels all creation to rise from good to
better, from better to best? Since God said, “Let there be light!” are not all
men seeking to step out of darkness into light – blindly, dimly feeling that
happiness must be their goal? Yet how few find happiness in life! It is easy to
sing:—
God’s
in his heaven,
All’s right with the world!
But to sing so for long, one must be
blind to the facts. Life is a tragedy to many, and far more truly is it
described by Tennyson:—
Act
first, this Earth, a stage so gloom’d with woe
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes,
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.
Nevertheless all feel that happiness must
be the goal of life, and humanity never errs in its deepest feelings. But then
why should not the attainment of happiness be easier than it is
?
MAN AN EVOLVING SOUL
There is a philosophy of life which holds that man is an immortal soul,
living not one life on earth but many, growing through the experiences which he
gains in them manifold capacities and virtues. This philosophy further
postulates that all men are the children of One father, who has created a
universe, in order that working therein His children may know something
of Him, and come to Him in joy. According to this theory, the purpose of life
is not to achieve a stable condition of happiness for any individual, but
rather to train him to work in a Plan of an Ideal Future, and find in that work
an ever-changing and ever-growing contentment.
From the standpoint of the Theosophist, all men are indeed working for a
foreordained ideal future ; but they work at different
stages, according to their differing capacities. A
recognition of these stages, and the laws of life appropriate to each,
makes life less the riddle that it is. There are three broad stages on the Path
of Bliss which leads to the Highest Good, and they are happiness, renunciation,
and transfiguration.
THE STAGE OF HAPPINESS
God calls upon all His children at this stage to co-operate with Him, by
offering them happiness as the aim of life. He has implanted in them a craving
for happiness, and He provides work for them which shall make them happy. Love
of wife and child and friend, fame and the gratitude of men, success and ease —
these are His rewards for them that serve Him. Many are the pleasant paths in
life for the young souls at this stage, to reap happinesses
as they prove those pleasures.
That
hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
Useful up to a point as men are in the Great Work at this stage, yet so long as
a man deliberately seeks happiness, his capabilities as a worker are soon
exhausted. For soon he “settles down in life” ; the
precious gift of wonder slowly fades away, and his happiness ceases to be
dynamic. Self-centred, he calls on the universe to
give. But the Path to Bliss is by work, and if he is to go ever on, he must fit
himself for a larger work than has so far fallen to his share. He must
enter on the next stage, but for that he must change utterly. Hither-to he has
measured men and things by the standard of his little self; henceforth the
Great Self must be his measure. He must break the sway of himself, and realize
that evermore what is important in life is not he, nor his happiness, but a
Work. Before this realization can begin, there must be a conversion.
CONVERSION
In many ways are men converted from the interests of the little self
to the work of the Great Self. Some, loving Truth in religious garb, open their
hearts to a Personality who dazzles their imagination. Thenceforth they must
serve Him, and be like Him, and gone forever is the standpoint of the little self.
Some study science and philosophy, and discover a magnificent plan of
evolution, with the inevitable result that they know that the individual is but
a unit in a great Whole, and not the centre of the cosmos. If they set to study
rightly, they see, too, that there is a Will at work, and that, cost what it
may, they must co-operate with that Will. A few there are to whom comes some
mysterious experience from the hidden side of things, and life speaks to them a
transforming message. Out of the invisible comes a “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” and a
persecutor of Christians is changed into an Apostle of Christ. Manifold are the
ways of conversion, the same in all lands and in all faiths. One factor is common : the old personality is disintegrated, and a new one
is reintegrated in the service of a Work.
When, through conversion, the new personality is ready for a larger work, the
tools which he uses must be made pure. They are his thoughts and feelings, and
slowly a process of purification is begun. Disappointment and pain and grief
are his lot – the sad harvest of a sowing of selfishness in the unseen past of
many lives, for we reap as we have sown. When the worker is ready, swift is
Nature’s response to free him from the burden of his past, in order that he may
be fit to achieve the great work which she has prepared for him.
THE MEANING OF PAIN
With some, sorrow hardens the character, but with those who are ready to
enter on the second stage, it ever purifies. Does not the very texture and the
flesh of a sufferer, who has in patience and resignation borne his pain, seem
luminous and pure, as though through every cell there gleamed the light of a
hidden fire? How much more so is it with mental suffering? Are we not
irresistibly drawn to reverence one who has suffered much and nobly, and
sometimes to love, too?
I
saw my lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In those fair eyes where all perfection keep.
Her face was full of woe: But such a woe (believe me) wins more hearts
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts,
Sorrow was there made fair,
Passion wise ; tears a delightful thing;
Silence beyond all speech a wisdom rare.
She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move
As made a heart at once both grieve and love.
THE STAGE OF RENUNCIATION
Life seems full of evil
days to those who come to the end of the first stage, but its lesson is clear.
That lesson is, “Thou must go without, go without!” That is the everlasting
song, which every hour, all our life through, hoarsely sings to us. Truly does
Carlyle voice the wisdom of the ages when he says, “The Fraction of Life can be
increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening
your denominator. Nay, unless my algebra deceive me, unit divided by a zero will give infinity. Make
thy claim of wages a zero then ; thou hast the world
under thy feet.”
THE LAW OF RENUNCIATION
All great workers know that the Law of
renunciation is true, and that “it is only with renunciation that life,
properly speaking can be said to begin”. There are no great souls who are
completely happy, can ever be! Once more let the great apostle of Work speak to
us: “the happy man was never yet created; the virtuous man, tho’
clothed in rags and sinking under pain, is the jewel of the Earth, however I
may doubt it, or deny it in bitterness of heart. O never let me forget it!
Teach me, tell me, when the Fiend of Suffering and the base Spirit of the World
are ready to prevail against me, and drive me from this last stronghold.”
Take whom you will who has done a great work, and he knows that renunciation is
the law. In bitterness of heart Ruskin cries out : “I
have had my heart broken ages ago, when I was a boy, then mended, cracked,
beaten in, kicked about old corridors, and finally, I think, flattened fairly
out”. But he persevered in his work all the same. There is no greater name in
the world of art than Michael Angelo, “this masterful and stern, life-wearied
and labor-hardened man”, whose history “is one of indomitable will and almost
superhuman energy, yet of will that had hardly ever had its way,
and of energy continually at war with circumstance”. It is the same with all
who have been great.
THE MEANING OF LIFE
But through renunciation the soul on the threshold of greatness discover’s life's meaning. If religious, he will state it,
“Thy will be done” ; if scientific or artistic he will
say, “Not I, but a Work”. He is now as Faust who sought happiness in knowledge,
and failed ; sought it in the love of Marguerite, and reaped a tragedy ; and
only as he planned to reclaim waste lands for men, and lost himself in the
dream of that work, found that long-sought-for happy moment when he
could say, “Ah, tarry a while, thou art so fair!”
So, renouncing live the souls of the second stage, lovers of
a Work. Sad at heart they are; but if they are loyal to their work, then
comes to them in fleeting moments more than happiness ;
it is the joy of creation. Such wonders they now body forth that to themselves
their masterpieces are enigmas. In fitful gleams they see a Light, and know
that now and then it shines through them to the world. Perfect masters of
technique they are now, in religion, in art, in science, in every department of
life. But alas! Just as they have discovered what it is to live, what it is to
create, they are old, and life comes to a close, before it seems hardly begun.
Shall the path of renunciation bring nothing but despair?
Despair
was never yet so deep.
In
sinking as in seeming;
Despair
is hope just dropp’d asleep
For better chance of dreaming.
THE STAGE OF TRANSFIGURATION
“Hope just dropp’d asleep for better chance of dreaming” – that,
truly, is death. The great worker leaves life but to return again, with every
dream old and new nearer realization. He returns, with the inborn mastery of
technique of the genius, to achieve now where once he only dreamed. The joy of
creation is now his sure and priceless possession, that wondrous joy which only
those who know can offer all gifts of heart and mind, and stand apart from
them, while a Greater than they creates through them. “Seeking nothing, he
gains al ; foregoing self, the universe grows I”. Now
has he found that life which he lost in the stage of renunciation
; henceforth, in all places and at all times is he become “a pillar in
the temple of my God, and he shall no more go out”.
THE PATH OF BLISS
So life gives of its best to all —
happiness to some, renunciation to others, and, to a few, transfiguration. What
if now most of us, who love Truth, must “do without”? Let us but dedicate heart
and mind to a Work, and we shall find that renunciation leads to
transfiguration. There is but one road to God , for
all to tread. It is the Path of Bliss. It has steps — happiness, renunciation,
and transfiguration. Whoso will offer up all that he is to a Work, though he
“lose his life” thereby, yet shall he find it soon, and “come again rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.”
History
of the Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society,