Life as We Have It Is Only The
Raw Material For Life As It Can Be
S. Radhakrishnan
Mr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
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Editorial Note:
First published in 1939, the following paragraphs by
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan [1] are very much in tune with the
teachings of “The Secret Doctrine”. They point to universal
brotherhood as the natural future of present mankind. They
suggest that self-discipline and self-responsibility are part of
the way towards an enlightened community life in this planet.
Born in September 1888, S. Radhakrishnan was the first
Vice-President and second President of India after
independence. He was also a respected thinker and scholar.
He wrote several significant books on Indian philosophies, and
helped expand the cultural bridge between Eastern and Western
views. Many a theosophist knows that Radhakrishnan’s books
– among them “The Principal Upanishads”, “An idealist View of
Life” and “Indian Philosophy” (this in two vols.) – have a number
of points in common with the original theosophy of Helena P.
Blavatsky. Besides that, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan opposed
war and nuclear weapons. He defended the end of social castes
and social classes in India, and was a personal friend of Mr.
B. P. Wadia’s, one of the main leaders of the United Lodge of
Theosophists. [2] Being a true statesman, S. Radhakrishnan saw
that mankind is a planetary community made possible by mutual help.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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The fundamental truths of a spiritual religion are that our real self is the supreme being, which is our business to discover and consciously become, and this being is one in all.
The soul that has found itself is not longer conscious of itself in its isolation. It is conscious rather of the universal life of which all individuals, races and nations are specific articulations.
A single impulsion runs beneath all the adventures and aspirations of man. It is the soul’s experience of the essential unity with the whole of beings that is brought out in the words, “Thou in me and I in thee”. Fellowship is life, lack of fellowship death. The secret solidarity of the human race we cannot escape from. It cannot be abolished by the passing insanities of the world. Those who are anxious to live in peace with their own species and all life will not find it possible to gloat over the massacres of large numbers of men simply because they do not belong to their race or country. Working for a wider, all-embracing vision they cut across the artificial ways of living, which seduce us from the natural springs of life.
Our normal attitudes to other races and nations are no more than artificial masks, habits of thought and feeling, sedulously cultivated by long practice in dissimulation. The social nature of man is distorted into queer shapes by the poison poured into his blood which turns him into a hunting animal. Racialism and nationalism, which require us to exercise our baser passions, to bully and cheat, to kill and loot, all with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous and doing God’s work, are abhorrent to the spiritually awakened. For them all races and nations lie beneath the same arch of heaven. They proclaim a new social relationship and serve a new society with civil liberties for all individuals, and political freedom for all nations, great and small.
A High Purpose and Fine Resolve
The collapse of a civilization built on the audacities of speculative doubt, moral impressionism, and the fierce and confused enthusiasms of races and nations need not dishearten us, for it has in it elements of an anti-social and anti-moral character, which deserve to perish. It is directed to the good, not of mankind as a whole, but of a powerful privileged few among individuals as well as nations. Whatever is valuable in it will enter into the new world which is struggling to be born.
In spite of all appearance to the contrary, we discern in the present unrest the gradual dawning of a great light, a converging life-endeavour, a growing realization that there is a secret spirit in which we are all one, and of which humanity is the highest vehicle on earth, and an increasing desire to live out this knowledge and establish a kingdom of spirit on earth. Science has produced the necessary means for easy transport of men and communication of thought. Intellectually the world is bound together in a web of common ideas and reciprocal knowledge.
Even the obstacles of religious dogma are not so formidable as they were in the past. The progress of thought and criticism is helping the different religions to sound the note of the eternal, the universal, the one truth of spirit which life obeys, seeks for, and delights in at all times and in all places. We are able to see a little more clearly that the truth of a religion is not what is singular and private to it, is not the mere letter of the law which its priests are apt to insist on, and its faithful to fight for, but that part of it which it is capable of sharing with all others. Humanity’s ultimate realization of itself and of the world can be attained only by an ever-increasing liberation of the values that are universal and human.
Mankind is still in the making. Human life as we have it is only the raw material for human life as it might be. There is a hitherto undreamt-of fullness, freedom, and happiness within reach of our species, if only we can pull ourselves together and go forward with a high purpose and a fine resolve.
What we require is not professions and programmes but the power of spirit in the hearts of men, a power which will help us to discipline our passions of greed and selfishness and organize the world which is at one with us in desire.
NOTES:
[1] Reproduced from “Eastern Religions and Western Thought”, by S. Radhakrishnan, first edition, 1939, Oxford University Press, Third impression by Oxford India paperback, 1989, 396 pp., see pp. 32-34.
[2] The friendship between the statesman and the theosophist is recorded in Mr. Dallas TenBroeck’s text “B.P. Wadia, a Life of Service to Mankind”, which can be found at our associated websites.
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In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different dimensions of life.
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