The Path of Woe
Students of Theosophy, having grasped the tenets of Reincarnation, Karma, and the Path to the Masters, naturally endeavour to make practical application in their own lives and circumstances. They want to live. Earnestly they attempt to manifest in their daily actions the results of their mental acquisitions of the great teachings. Seeing the sweet reasonableness and merciful justice of the laws of manifested Nature, they desire to co-operate with the Divine Will in evolution. Let us apply Theosophy, they say, and forthwith they begin.
A dozen things instantly overpower their budding enthusiasm. A hundred small things of life conspire to defeat their earnest purpose. Girding their loins and more determined than ever they stand up, Arjuna-Iike, resolute to fight. Between petty triumphs and many failures, blaming their own Karma and doing what they can, most of them spend their days hugging small satisfactions and hoping that something sure will happen some day—and they add, if not in this life, then in the next.
Long experience and continued observation of such Theosophic efforts of earnest and devoted individuals enable us to answer, albeit partially, the question that is sometimes asked: “What is wrong with us?”
Let us try to find an adequate reply.
That the Spiritual Path is uphill and steep, that it is the Path of Woe, that the gateway to it is strait and narrow, that it is sharp as the razor’s edge and can shave human natures all too fine, is not fully comprehended by the enthusiastic neophyte. All have read these statements but each one of us thinks that by some special decree of Providence “it will be different with me.” We profess belief in brotherhood, but with most it is profession and not life; for in this, too, as in all else, we, are brothers and the Path of Woe is for all; the razor, will shave all. When the Buddha instituted shaving the head for his mendicants, he did not make himself an exception, nor say to his favourite disciple, “Ananda, thou mayst retain thy lovely locks.” The Law of Brotherhood manifests everywhere at all times, but more than at any other place does it, work its miracle in the heart of the would-be aspirant to Perfection and Wisdom and Sacrifice and Service. That great Law is at once the expression and the gauge of spiritual unfoldment. It sings its perfect song in the Hearts of Compassion of the Great Ones. Next, naturally, it envelops men and women who desire to be Their disciples and servants. We who are resolved to tread that Path must expect not to be exceptions; if our path is all smooth for us then it is not the Path of Woe. Each one on the Path gets his share of woe, and it is an equal share; for all those who are aspirants to Wisdom, who have resolved to tread the Path, have to learn the initial lesson that there is but one melting-pot of Karma in which all the Karma, good, bad and indifferent, of every true aspirant is thrown. To “stand alone and isolated” but at the same time to “kill out all sense of separateness” is a truth to be practised, and this is not grasped.
If at the very beginning the above is understood, many unnecessary heart-burnings will be avoided. The way is difficult — the Path is the Path of Woe. We need not take it if we do not desire. “None else compels.” Each one in his freedom of choice elects to tread it, and it would be the part of wisdom to recognize that henceforth woes are our lot, that when we have conquered our own woes, we have got to help others to conquer theirs, and that under the Law of Brotherhood the individual weal is dependent on the common weal and in proportion as we overcome our woes others are helped to overcome theirs.
Thus we learn so to behave that the quantity and quality of Karma in the great melting-pot of aspirant-ship may react to the benefit and advantage of all, including ourselves. In this connection let us remember the admonition in the Gospel of St. Matthew (xviii: 7): “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” We often approach the problem of Karma from an individualistic point of view and find it an appalling prospect. We gain a new confidence when we see that there is a common woe and a common weal, that we affect and are affected by comrades as weak as ourselves and as virtuous, too. We are united by the bonds of brotherhood and the woes are our common property.
Thus spiritual life begins at once to unfold its basic Law-Brotherhood. As we practise yoga, union, with the energy and activity of that Law we succeed. The moment we give up the practice we are thrown out of the Occult world into the visible world. “Come out of your world into ours,” said a Master once. Here is the first step—Recognition of the Law of Brotherhood as it touches the woes of devotees, sacrificers, warriors for the Kingdom of the Spirit.
True Self-Expression
In our last article we spoke of the Path of Woe which all must tread without exception, and indicated that it is a common and a universal experience. But why, oh why, a Path of Woe?—ask a hundred good friends. Why not share our joys and our lights and calI it a Path of Weal?
It is the Path of Woe because what we have gathered in the past are seeds of anguish from which pleasure and peace do not sprout forth. The Path of Woe is the other half of the Path of Pursuit; to give up what we gathered with pain, labour and mighty effort is a Karmic retribution and in proportion as we pained others in gaining our ends, in securing our possessions, and using what was gained and secured, pain now comes back to us.
There is, however, another factor; our sincere desire for spiritual living, being an energy of the Occult World, where Life is eternal and immortal, forces into smaller fields of space and shorter spans of time the process of quick payment of debts incurred during generations of lives, all over the world. Spiritual birth is attended with its pangs, and inner growth has its pains of teething, walking and all the rest. For the earnest and enthusiastic aspirant these uncomfortable experiences are crowded together, and thus the sum total of previous Karma shows the balance in the currency of woe on our debit side.
The method of the payment of past debts is mercifully devised by Wisdom; it enables us to transform woes into joys in the very process of payment. That method, to be pursued as we tread the Path of Woe, is living the life of self-expression. In fact, the debt. in question cannot be met otherwise. Deliberate practice at living differently than we have hitherto done has to be undertaken. Leaving alone the life of the senses and the mind, refusing to be energized by feelings and emotions, ever watchful, continuously heedful, to live in terms of the soul is the high enterprise in which we are engaged. To pursue that task by the old method of haphazard and ever-moving, ever-changing existence is an error many of us commit. Self-collectedness is the watchword of the new method. To move in a deliberate manner from within, which is the region of the Soul, to the without, which is the sphere of sensuous existence, is the first necessary qualification. To collect together the scattered forces, and to reflect on them by the aid of the Light of the Higher Self, so that they are animated and enlivened by it, is our Dharma. All of us understand this in some measure, but what most of us do not seem to grasp is the fact that this process has to be regular, persistent and continuous. They are not religious ceremonies to be performed periodically nor are they like sacred festivals which fall on a few occasions in the year. They are not even like unto heroic acts which men perform to their glory and renown once, perhaps twice, in their lives. This watchfulness and this self-collectedness have to be observed and applied every hour of the day, fifty-two weeks in the Year; they must manifest their power in all our labour undertaken for profit or pleasure, in work or recreation, in small activities or in important ones. All the while to energize our environment by the Power of Wisdom within us is the first step which aspirants have to take. This no doubt is irksome, exhausting to the feelings and fatiguing to the mind. To persist successfully is to pass the first great test that the Wardens of the Portals of the Occult World present to us; they do so, because of our resolve, our enthusiasm, our earnestness, our sincerity—because we ourselves put ourselves on the Path, and are attempting to “force” the Masters to accept us as their pupils and servants.
We should so live and act, so love and labour that every experience is perceived by our Inner Ruler and is forthwith assimilated by him. All our experiences ought to be flowers from which the bee sucks the honey of knowledge and stores it away for feeding in sweetness and in strength the hungry and the weak. Here is another factor to be noted. Aspirants miss assimilating their experiences. How many of us truly assimilate what we contact in the world? To assimilate in as full a measure as possible what we contact, is a necessity of the spiritual life ; thus the life of self-expression begins.
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge
the throe!
For thence—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.
What is he but a brute Whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears, took in their dole; Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once “How good to live and learn”?
In these lines from Robert Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra” we come across the gospel of self-expression which is a requisite of the spiritual life. Pondering over them we see how mistaken are the notions in people’s minds who glibly talk of self-expression. It is not a matter of one of the fine arts—it is a matter of daily life, which people name drudgery, and desire to run away from. The life of self-expression is Drudgery made Divine.
The Tests
Our fitness or otherwise to enter the Occult World and maintain our position therein is tested definitely at an early stage of our inner Life. The test comes from the Great Law, Sifter of man’s Dharma, on the Path of Woe. The significance of this process can be understood by a correct reading of a few verses in the Gospel of St. Luke (Chapter 9). To different types of aspirants Jesus gives different answers. He rejects one eager to “follow thee whithersoever thou goest” by a diplomatic answer that. “the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” To a second he advises, “Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” To the third he says, “No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Here are three definite situations and all of us should enquire if we belong to any of them. Are we only lip-professors, and is our earnestness rooted in selfishness or egotism, and our devotion energized by personal ends and personal motives? For us, then, there is no place in the Occult World. Or are we half-hearted, yet desirous of trafficking in the shades of the shadow world of the dead? Have we very definitely come out from among them? Or do we belong to the third type — having abandoned earthly possessions we regret our step and yet are attracted by the Ideal, possess a desire to be like Them, so that we might help Them?
This test has to be passed.
Occultism speaks of the neophyte passing the tests of the elementals of earth, water, air, fire, when he enters the World of the Spirit. The correct understanding of this mystery emblem is naturally beyond most of us. But let us try to understand as best we can what it implies.
In the composition of our being are the four elemental forces which, on their material side, are spoken of by the Ancients as Elements of Earth, Water, Air, Fire. The four temperaments, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic; the four types of Nature-spirits, gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders; and several other quartets are related to and correspond with each other. For the purposes of our study, it will suffice for us to honestly ask and find answers in full and stern justice to these questions:— Are we of the earth earthy, so full of worldly belongings that we are thrown out by ourselves from the Occult World? Are we like unto that young man who “went away sorrowful” (note, he was not sent away) “for he had great possessions”? Or are we watery people, sentimental, goody-goody, wishy washy, desirous of observing customs and manners of the world of the dead? Or are we self-opinionated folk who must air our views in season and out of season and tell the world what we are doing or going to do, what we think and feel and who, like unto the third aspirant of Jesus, “first go to bid them farewell, which are at home, at my house,” and incidentally tell them what we are going to do, righteously and virtuously follow the Lord, and air our views on the subject, and other matters besides? Or are we the fiery type — who can burn up earth and dry up water, and whose only enemy is the gale of fury which sometimes overpowers the weak flame and the young fire?
There are fires which cannot be extinguished and there is the Spiritual Fire, which so subdues the breeze and gale of Ahamkara, that it burns steady and bright. This Fire is the controller; it too is the manifester and expresser of its nature.
Young aspirants sometimes forget that self-control and self-expression are not two processes but two phases of but one process. The co-ordination of these two has to be achieved. To eliminate the earthy-rigidity of the senses, the watery-mobility of the emotions, the airy velocity of the thoughts by proper, adequate and all-round control, and to use them as channels of the Fiery Soul which is our real Self, so that it can express itself in its true grandeur and glory, is the double work of every aspirant. To make our body of senses and limbs the stately mansion which puts forth the majesty and tenderness of Mother Earth; to make our emotions start from the spring of Love, glide forth in the river of gentleness and empty themselves in the Ocean of Compassion ; to make our thoughts harbingers of goodwill and like birds rise in the Ether of Space, singing their songs-joyous and clear and fresh; to transform ourselves into the steady-burning Flame of Nachiketas’s Fire-symbol of the Disciple; that is the task that lies before us.
Self-made is the Path, Self-determined is the effort to tread it. Treading the Path we realize the Self. In Self-realization we become the Path. Thus the Truth, the Way, and the Life are one.