INSPIRATIONAL

 

 

 

If Eastern comparisons may be permitted, Theosophy is the shoreless ocean of universal truth, love, and wisdom, reflecting its radiance on the earth, while the Theosophical Society is only a visible bubble on that reflection. Theosophy is divine nature, visible and invisible, and its Society human nature trying to ascend to its divine parent. Theosophy, finally, is the fixed eternal sun, and its Society the evanescent comet trying to settle in an orbit to become a planet, ever revolving within the attraction of the sun of truth. It was formed to assist in showing to men that such a thing as Theosophy exists, and to help them to ascend towards it by studying and assimilating its eternal verities.  

H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 4

 

 

To our minds then, these motives, sincere and worthy of every serious consideration  from the worldly standpoint, appear — selfish. (You have to pardon me what you might view as crudeness of language, if your desire really is that which you profess — to learn truth and get instruction from us — who belong to quite a different world from the one you move in.) They are selfish because you must be aware that the chief object of the T.S. is not so much to gratify individual aspirations as to serve our fellow men; and the real value of this term “selfish,” which may jar upon your ear, has a peculiar significance with us which it cannot have with you; therefore, and to begin with, you must not accept it otherwise than in the former sense. Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow of desire for self benefit or a tendency to do injustice, even when these exist unconsciously to himself. Yet, you have ever discussed but to put down the idea of a universal Brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the T.S. on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism. This, my respected and esteemed friend and Brother — will never do!  

  The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Letter 2, chronological order.

 

 

 

MOTHER INDIA

A poem by Dwijendraial Roy
Translated by Sri Aurobindo in 1941.

 

India, my India,
where first human eyes awoke to heavenly light,
All Asia’s holy place of pilgrimage,
great Motherland of might!
World-mother, first giver
to humankind of philosophy and sacred lore,
Knowledge thou gav’st to man, God-love,
works, art, religion’s opened door.

India, my India,
who dare call thee a thing for pity’s grace today?
Mother of wisdom, worship, works,
nurse of the spirit’s inward ray!

To thy race, O India, God himself
once sang the Song of Songs divine,
Upon thy dust Gouranga danced
and drank God-love’s mysterious wine,
Here the Sannyasin Son of Kings
lit up compassion’s deathless sun,
The youthful Yogin, Shankar,
taught thy gospel: “I and He are one.”

India, my India,
who dare call thee a thing for pity’s grace today?
Mother of wisdom, worship, works,
nurse of the spirit’s inward ray!

Art thou not she, that India, where the Aryan Rishis chanted high
The Veda’s deep and dateless hymns and are we not their progeny?

Armed with that great tradition
we shall walk the earth with heads unbowed:
O Mother, those who bear that glorious
past may well be brave and proud.

India, my India, who dare call thee a thing for pity’s grace today?

Mother of wisdom, worship, works, nurse of the spirit’s inward ray!

O even with all that grandeur dwarfed
or turned to bitter loss and maim,
How shall we mourn who are thy children
and can vaunt thy mighty name?

Before us still there floats the ideal of those splendid days of gold”

A new world in our vision wakes,
Love’s India we shall rise to mould.

India, my India, who dare call thee a thing for pity’s grace today?

Mother of wisdom, worship, works, nurse of the spirit’s inward ray!