Mysticism, The Immediate Future,
Initiation: The Perfecting of Man,
Superhuman Men, etc. etc.
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA
1915
I. REVELATION
II. INTUITION
III. UTILITY
IV. EVOLUTION
V. MYSTICISM
Must religion and morals go together? Can one be taught without theother? It is a practical question for educationists, and France triedto answer it in the dreariest little cut and dry kind of catechism evergiven to boys to make them long to be wicked. But apart from education,the question of the bedrock on which morals rest, the foundation onwhich a moral edifice can be built that will stand secure against thestorms of life—that is a question of perennial interest, and it mustbe answered by each of us, if we would have a test of Right and Wrong,would know why Right is Right, why Wrong is Wrong.
Religions based on Revelation find in Revelation their basis formorality, and for them that is Right which the Giver of the Revelationcommands, and that is Wrong which He forbids. Right is Right becauseGod, or a Ṛṣhi or a Prophet, commands it, and Right rests on theWill of a Lawgiver, authoritatively revealed in a Scripture.
Now all Revelation has two great disadvantages as a basis for morality.It is fixed, and therefore unprogressive; while man evolves, and at alater stage of his growth, the morality taught in the Revelation becomesarchaic and unsuitable. A written book cannot change, and many things inthe Bibles of Religion come to be out of date, inappropriate to newcircumstances, and even shocking to an age in which conscience hasbecome more enlightened than it was of old.
The fact that in the same Revelation as that in which palpably immoralcommands appear, there occur also jewels of fairest radiance, gems ofpoetry, pearls of truth, helps us not at all. If moral teachings worthyonly of savages occur in Scriptures containing also rare and preciousprecepts of purest sweetness, the juxtaposition of light and darknessonly produces moral chaos. We cannot here appeal to reason or judgmentfor both must be silent before authority; both rest on the same ground."Thus saith the Lord" precludes all argument.
Let us tak