The ideal of social service arose with the decline of religion and the rise of science. Though involved in laudable projects, most advanced social institutions are, however, finding out that there is something lacking in many of their schemes—slum-clearance, housing for the poor, rehabilitation of prostitutes, rescue homes for homeless boys and girls, etc. Social-service experts are not yet unanimous as to the real cause of the problems they are trying to solve, but almost all are of the view that every effort to reform produces its own problems. Clear the slums, and immediately social problems of a new type arise; rescue prostitutes, and they offer new difficulties; build homes for abandoned children, and educational problems arise; have institutions for the mentally ill, and psychologists disagree as to what is to be done with them! On every hand people are finding out that to render service to the poor in mind or the maimed in heart is no easy task. The most ardent among social workers find that paucity of money is not their greatest difficulty. Social settlements and institutions, richly endowed and having help and guidance from experienced experts, yet complain of paucity of understanding, lack of soul-vision, ignorance of true purpose of life and living.

Many among us are eager to serve our fellow-men; a hundred good causes surround us on every side, inviting our sympathy and our aid. But it must be realized first that mere change of outer circumstances without a change in inner attitudes will not solve the problems; that psychology is needed more than physiology for teating social issues; that even education of the mind does not help in finding a final solution, but only raises new problems. In other words, the problems of humanity are not merely economic. Passion, anger, greed are as much in the tenement houses we call chawls as in the villas we call bungalows. The university graduate has to wrestle with his own psychic nature, his own weaknesses, which are the same as those of the illiterate and the ignorant. More and more the attention of the thoughtful is directed to the supreme truth of ancient Indian philosophy, that for real, lasting and all-round reform of human nature and earthly conditions, each one must begin to grapple with his own soul. The ancient ideal of service was self-improvement, which brought each the power to help others. We are often incapable of rendering correct aid to others because we do not know the roots of the trouble; those roots are deep and invisible, and their very existence is not suspected.

The modern world is fast coming to accept the philosophical principles of the old world. Those principles are two in the main: (1) By serving the souls of others we render the best service. (2) By unfolding our own soul-powers we are able to render right service.

It is recognized that our mind plays an important part, but it also needs to be known that in our make-up there is something more than the mind and that to really transform ourselves we must touch that something. The realization is dawning that unless our very soul is lighted up, there cannot be a real and permanent transformation. But what is soul, whence it came, how it is evolving—modern science has not yet come to those inquiries. Ancient sages and philosophers, however, have the answers.

Real service is the service of human souls. It does not mean that we refuse to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the ailing; or that we deny education to the mind and bar it from useful and necessary knowledge. But it does mean that we recognize the soul as fundamental and most important. Educate the soul, and the mind gets educated; renovate the soul, and the heart and character get renovated; and that education and renovation are permanent in their effects.

How to educate and to render help to human souls? Is there a method that will enable us to do this? Our second proposition answers these questions and offers the method: "By unfolding our own soul-powers we are able to render right service."

In this proposition we come across both a noble motive and a true method. We are not to evolve soul-powers for our own benefit, we are not to attempt soul-growth for our own salvation, but we are to improve ourselves with a clear vision of the goal—to render right service. We want to learn so that we may teach; we desire to be strong so that the weak may lean on us; we aspire to unfold our soul so that we may serve all other souls. Unless this goal is ever kept in view, and this motive constantly remembered, we shall fail. Says The Voice of the Silence:

The selfish devotee lives to no purpose. The man who does not go through his appointed work in life—has lived in vain.

Follow the wheel of life; follow the wheel of duty to race and kin, to friend and foe, and close thy mind to pleasures as to pain. Exhaust the law of Karmic retribution. Gain Siddhis for thy future birth.

If Sun thou canst not be, then be the humble planet. Aye, if thou art debarred from flaming like the noon-day Sun upon the snow-capped mount of purity eternal, then choose, O Neophyte, a humbler course.

Point out the "Way"—however dimly, and lost among the host—as does the evening star to those who tread their path in darkness. (pp. 38-39)

Here in this passage a whole philosophy of service is enshrined. We have to learn to point out the "Way" to those who are caught up in the darkness of their own sorrows; but unless we become like Venus, the evening star, and shine by our own inner light, we cannot remove the darkness of others.

Let us turn to the method of soul-development, never losing sight of the motive—service of human souls. The very first piece of instruction we need is that we are souls. The real "I," the soul that we are, being mistaken for what it is not, is an old, old problem. More than five thousand years ago, when Master Krishna began teaching his disciple, Arjuna, that was the very first problem he had to solve. The Bhagavad-Gita is the Song of Life, i.e., the Song of the Soul. When fear overtook Arjuna, and when he refused to do his duty to his own people and to serve his own race, Krishna taught him the true philosophy. His very first teaching was: "I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be" (Chapter II). Each one of us, high or low, young or old, whatever his station in life, whatever his beliefs, is a spiritual being, an immortal soul which is birthless and deathless. The body dies, the mind changes, the character undergoes a transformation, but the Spirit in the body never dies, never changes, never deteriorates. "It is without birth and meeteth not death; it is ancient, constant, and eternal, and is not slain when this its mortal frame is destroyed." That is the soul; it never came to birth; it never will collapse in death.

That is the first instruction. Naturally there arise in our mind the questions: Then what is death? What is evil? What is suffering? How does the soul evolve? Why is it here at all? It is here to learn, to overcome evil, to banish suffering, to radiate peace and joy—Ananda. Krishna next teaches that as the soul cannot achieve complete mastery and victory in a single life, we must learn to look at the great truth of many successive lives on earth. "As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new."

The next step is to realize that in each life, in all circumstances, whatever our conditions, we and we alone are the makers of our own destiny. The Hindus use the word Karma and the Muslims speak of Kismat. Karma means not just fate, but also action. Do not just sit down and say, "Karma!" but get up and act. That is the lesson the Gita teaches: "Stand up and fight"—fight the devil in you.

This devil has many faces, many aspects. First, there is the devil of conservatism. How many of us dislike to make any kind of a change—change of habit, or of mode of thought, or of opinion! To overcome conservatism means to give up mental lethargy. The devil of lethargy is powerful. In the Zoroastrian Vendidad this devil is described as having long hands and arms; it signifies that he is busy here, there and everywhere, putting people to sleep—the sleep of routine and conservatism. If by chance one awakes, then the devil puts on another face, and tempts the person to another routine, founded on imitation. "My friend did this, so must I; my neighbour has that, so I too must get it; this is in vogue now, and I must keep pace!" The enemy of the devils of conservatism and imitation is reason. If we want to overcome our Kismat or Karma, we have to learn to fight conservatism and imitation, and the weapon to defeat them is reason. But reason implies knowledge. One cannot conquer fate, cannot carve one's destiny, without a basis of right knowledge.

Here another difficulty arises. We are so enamoured of new books and new scientific knowledge that we do not even inquire if these new books are worthwhile, or, if science is right, why it is ever changing. That which is true is always and ever true. The first lesson, that each one of us is a soul, is ancient, universal, taught by every great philosopher and mystic; so is the second, that the soul incarnates again and again to learn lessons and to grow in perfection; and so is the third, that by self-effort humans evolve. Not by outer rites and ceremonies will our vices go; nor by mere reading of books will our virtue increase; but we have to "raise the self by the Self," says the Gita. Exactly the same teaching is given by the Buddha: "The Self is the Lord of self." Right knowledge is to be found in the Gita, in the Dhammapada, in Tao Te King, in the Gathas, in the poems of the Sufis. All these texts teach the same truth, impart the same lessons.

These are merely outline thoughts, but the principle to keep in mind is that as each one of us purifies himself he purifies the world. Growing ourselves in wisdom, we make the world wise; allowing the radiance of the soul to stream forth in us, we increase the light of the world. Our purity and knowledge and radiance enable us to serve the race of souls. By awakening our own soul we shall most efficiently serve the souls of our fellow-men.

"ALTRUISM"...is the keynote of Theosophy and the cure for all ills; this it is which the real Founders of the Theosophical Society promote as its first object—UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD.

—H. P. Blavatsky