The direct effect of an appreciation of theosophy is to make those charitable who were not so before. Theosophy creates the charity which afterwards, and of its own accord, makes itself manifest in works.

—H. P. Blavatsky

During any age, there take birth a few aspiring Souls who bring back with them fragments of the true knowledge which they had gathered in other lives. Born with this heritage from a forgotten past, they do not require the tardy processes of reasoning to be convinced that the perennial knowledge exists and is in the custody of the wise among men. They readily understand that re-embodiment and reincarnation are universal and that where life evolves, there, within it, resides an intelligence that retains in its memory the programme and the plan for that life. The more discerning among them find that there is a law which is unerring, the workings of which though hidden from sight display an intelligence all their own. This law works through all forms—seen or unseen, active or seemingly inert—to synchronize evolutionary impulses with the grand ultimate purpose towards which each must contribute and each gravitate.

The natural impulse which propels the lower kingdoms towards their evolutionary objectives is in man replaced by a motive power that is both self-induced and self-devised. Man alone has the right to choose, the power to discriminate the right from the wrong, and the freedom to exercise his will to achieve ignoble ends. He may thus choose to embrace evil and go counter to the universal plan. Because of his wrong choices, he may in time be pulverized and his puny personal force crushed and dissipated by the onrush of the great and overwhelming tides of the force that moves in tune with the universal will. Nevertheless, freedom of choice exists and it is this which makes him man. In general, a person's actions are a mixed fare of reflexes, impulses, emotions, desires, thoughts and feelings. At various times, he portrays the sly fox, the frolicking lamb, or the venomous serpent. But he is also in rare moments the humble devotee, the ardent searcher for truth, the defender of the weak, and the seeker for that which he calls god. No life below the human can cognize the eternal nor have a concept of the infinite. It does not possess the instrumentation that can make such perception possible. No animal-man can differentiate between the eternal and the non-eternal till the pain and torture of lost quests for happiness make him subdue the animal part of himself. He can then look inward for that which alone will help him to transcend the ephemeral pleasure and pain.

Both Patanjali and Vyasa show—the one in the Yoga Sutras, the other in the Bhagavad-Gita—that true knowledge wells up within the individual the moment that the impediments to its inflow are removed. This knowledge which is sui generis deals with the essence that resides at the core and centre of all things visible or invisible to the eye. Very few possess the one-pointedness that will enable them to penetrate to that inner essence. Man in this age is too prone to choose the easier road of evaluating all things by the familiar norms of sense-perception. The mortal aspects are thus probed, analysed and meticulously tabulated with no attention paid to that energy which inhabits the form analysed and which being non-matter becomes imperceptible to instruments of matter. Matter cannot understand Spirit and any effort on its part to do so must culminate in the distorted forms of an earthy imagining. The non-eternal mind of man, when it attempts to ponder on immortality, vests it with the robes of mortality. So doing, he does the reverse of what he is expected to do. instead of raising his consciousness to spirit, he tries to drag the Spirit down to the level of matter.

The evolutionary progress of man cannot be achieved by a mere movement from one incarnation to another. Neither can the man of flesh abandon his earthly garments and invest himself with heavenly raiments by the aid of material things, which include the help of bell, book, and candle of any religion. To advance, he has to shed his animal aspects. To get the desired effects, he has to generate such causes as can produce those effects. Therefore is it said that for man evolution is through ways and means that have to be induced and devised by his Self. The first such means is the building up of an unshakable conviction that the goal can be reached and that if in the past men have reached the terrace of enlightenment, he too may, incarnations hence, achieve what they did. This conviction and the courage that it brings with it must remain through all circumstance and be present during the hours that follow upon defeat, failure and death. Such conviction if rooted in blind faith will not be able to stand up to ordeals such as these. The conviction has to be immortalized in true faith, that faith which Light on the Path describes as a great engine, an enormous power, a covenant or an engagement between man's divine part and his lesser self. The man has to realize that something of him does survive the interludes between death and life and that in the unknown part of himself he is immortal and of the nature of the infinite.

Says The Voice of the Silence: "All is impermanent in man except the pure bright essence of Alaya. Man is its crystal ray; a beam of light immaculate within, a form of clay material upon the lower surface." Several important considerations follow upon an acceptance of this statement. The chief of these is that all search restricted to forms of clay must necessarily remain frustrating and futile. The forms of clay are mortal and lie shattered at death. Thus go the mortal possessions of the mortal brain, the mortal junk gathered over a long lifetime, money and fame included, as also the fruits of charity, sacrifice and austerities if these were motivated by a selfish and therefore a mortal desire. To come out from among the multitude, the disciple has to make his obeisance to the crystal ray that is within him and which he himself is in the inmost essence. He has to remove his gaze from the clay forms on which it is riveted and centre it on the immaculate beam of light which is within him as it is within the other forms which make up humankind. Like Narcissus of the classics, man adores his own form, adorns it, tries to give it the greatest comfort, is most exercised at its illness and dreads the coming on of death. Adoring his own form, he gets into the habit of adoring the forms that surround him and that through affinity attract him. As long as his gaze is firmly fixed on these forms, he remains of the earth earthy, a student of the deceptive knowledge that his senses can supply. Unfornutately, to the one intoxicated by the heady wine of matter, the sense-knowledge acquired is real, something of which he is proud and which he is apt to parade forth at each opportunity. The wise one sees in such knowledge only an amassing of false learning, a treasuring of that which would be of no value beyond death. The drunkard descending to low levels of consciousness conjures up fantastic images which to him are real but which to the average person appear as bizarre and grotesque.

No mere poring over books, no self-imposed ascetic practices, no plodding service over the years can culminate in the person gazing upon the one true Light, unless he turns his back upon the ephemeral and concentrates the energies of his body, mind and soul in the endeavour to reach the Supreme. If to identify himself with the immaculate beam, wealth, fame, fortune, family and name have to be given up, then they have to be surrendered with no regrets. In fact, by the dedicated man as by the "man of meditation" the shedding of these trappings is considered no high achievement because it comes as a natural outcome to his endeavours. Others may wonder how the great feat must have been achieved in anquish and pain. To him, it is a natural and an unhurried flowering of his life's desire, a majestic sweep of flowing waters that rising in far-off sources, move in measured flow to pour and merge themselves into the starlit sea.

To reach to his high estate, he has to start his ascent from lowly levels. But even at the initial stages of his endeavour, the goal has to be clearly defined, the footholds that lead to the higher elevations planned and cut in the rising perilous slopes that have to be conquered all the way from the foot-hills to the icy summits. The Sixth Chapter of the Gita is eminently suited to aid the student in defining his goal and in providing guidelines for his efforts for the future. In it, the steps in discipline are clearly marked, the goal set out in unmistakable terms. The quest is shown to be that of the Supreme Spirit. The ways to reach it are indicated to be through a steadfast devotion to that ideal. Krishna says that this devotion is possessed only by him who has spiritual knowledge and discernment, who, having controlled his senses, stands upon the pinnacle, and who in the company of sinners or the righteous remains of equal mind. Krishna goes on to say that this degree of devotion can be achieved by the man who ascends to meditation through the renouncing of all intentions and through severance of attachments to such actions as would lead to the involvement of the senses.

It is at the stage when the neophyte tries to free himself from the thraldom of the senses that he finds himself denuded of power to raise an impregnable barrier between himself and the spell that the sense-images cast upon him. He needs must fail and abandon quest and conquest if in ignorance he places sole reliance on himself—the little self that represents the personal animal-man of moods, passions and little aspirations. The lower self has not the strength to leap across the threshold to that place of peace which lies a jump ahead. No amount of service, questioning or humility can work the wonder unless, yearning for the higher light, he turns his back upon matter and the mortal aspects of the manifested. When the scripture says (VI, 5) that "he should raise the self by the Self," it postulates a call for help from the lower and a response from the higher. Without the help that only the higher can give, the lower can achieve no ends.

The knowledge of the lower and the higher egos within man is essential for him who would seek the upward way. It is a sign of the degeneration of our times that although this knowledge is now readily available, the youth of today is not given this wisdom in the formative years of his life. The mortal aspects are all too familiar; the immortal, remote and almost unattainable; and thus years chase sordid years with wild and miry feet, till late in the life the individual assesses his past and recognizes how futile it all has been. But then it all seems too late. The fire of youth burns low or is extinct and the soul to dare is too often on the wane or at its lowest ebb. It is therefore a primary duty of the student of Theosophy to pass on the priceless knowledge to the young in age as to the young in heart and turn them from sense-intoxicated souls into beings striving towards the Light. Blessed are they who help in the endeavour.