74. “The Path of Discipleship”

Four lectures by Annie Besant, delivered at the twentieth anniversary of the Theosophical Society at Adyar near Madras, December 27-30, 1895, authorized translation by Countess H. Scheler, Leipzig, published by Max Altmann, 1905.

It is with great satisfaction that we welcome this translation of these lectures into the German language. In them, Annie Besant described almost ten years ago the steps that the disciple of higher life and knowledge has to take. For all those who have already received the great insights into the path of higher life to strengthen their spirit and mind in Annie Besant's book “In the Atrium”, this writing must also be a welcome gift. She presents these insights in a slightly different way.

Four great pictures pass before the mind's eye of the reader: 1. The first steps, 2. The qualities necessary for discipleship, 3. The life of the disciple, 4. The progress of man in the future.

The first of these images describes the transformation that must take place in the way of thinking and feeling of anyone who wants to enter the path of discipleship. The purpose of this transformation is to shape man's thinking and acting in such a way that henceforth his life no longer has the mere goal of self-gratification, but that it integrates itself into the great goal that the divine world plan pursues, and in which the individual becomes a co-worker. Man rises to the point of not just understanding it, but feeling and experiencing that everything he does has not just a temporal, transitory, but an eternal, imperishable meaning. Right at the beginning of the first lecture, Annie Besant points out how she wants to lead the gaze away from the everyday life in which every person is involved in one way or another, and towards this great goal. “I would like to show you how a person who is surrounded by family and social obligations, by the manifold demands of worldly life, can nevertheless prepare for union and take the first steps on the path that leads to the 'One'. I will try to show you the stages of this path so that you can see the goal to be achieved and the path to be taken. I begin with the life that pretty much every person leads and start from the point of view that most of you are probably standing at now. I would like to show you the path that probably starts from family life, from life in the community and the state, but which ends in that which is exalted above all thinking and ultimately guides the wanderer home, to that which is eternally his."

The lectures are significantly introduced with these words. For it must be emphasized that there can be no kind of life or occupation from which man cannot enter the path of discipleship. He does not become a life-hostile hermit, not a life-weary dreamer, when he enters the path in the true sense of the word. And many of us walk this path without the uninitiated being able to notice anything in our outward conduct that distinguishes us from our fellow human beings. The question is often asked whether this or that position in life, this or that occupation, is compatible with a higher life. The answer to this must be given again and again: the indications of the esoteric sciences first point the way to entering and walking the path. How each individual must then arrange himself in order to achieve what is necessary for him, that each one will certainly find out for himself in the course of his development. Should it be necessary for him to enter into a situation in life that is different from his previous one, he will be led to the means and ways to do so quite naturally in the course of his path.

Annie Besant also speaks about this in vivid terms. “The limits of each person's duty are set by the particular circumstances of his birth, which, under the good law of karmic guidance, give each person his sphere of activity and the right soil in which he can learn. Therefore, it is said that each person should do his own duty, his own dharma. It is better to do one's own dharma, even imperfectly, than to try to fulfill the higher dharma of another.” Karma and Dharma are two concepts that complement and determine each other. A person's karma determines their fate according to what they have done in their previous lives. However, Dharma is the law by which they should continue to live in the future, according to the qualities and abilities they have acquired in the past. And each person's dharma is determined by their karma. They will get the furthest, they will achieve the best for themselves if they stay within the limits of their abilities and the duties imposed on them by their circumstances. It is not right to cling to tasks that seem particularly appealing and worthwhile without considering these circumstances. These may be tasks that only someone with a completely different karma can solve. Annie Besant therefore continues after saying the above sentence: “That into which you are born is what you need, is the right means of education for you. Do your own duty without regard to the consequences, then you will learn the task of life and begin to walk the path of yoga.”

When taking the first steps on the path of discipleship, one must always bear in mind the great power of certain thoughts and feelings in and of themselves. Thoughts that are directed towards the genuine fulfillment of one's duty, that are directed towards man's eternal destiny, towards the divine plan of the world, contain within themselves the power to uplift and transform man. Just as one gives a plant water so that it may grow, so one should give the soul thoughts of eternity: and it will grow. Just as you cannot make a plant grow by grabbing it at the top and tugging, so you cannot make the soul grow by any earthly means. You must rather, with patience and perseverance, fill it with thoughts of eternity, and growth will surely come. Nothing that is a great ideal, a divine truth, passes through the soul, remains unused by it.

Annie Besant beautifully describes how the inner life of the soul becomes independent of the outer professional and worldly life, and yet how the two are in harmony and compatible: “They are human beings, living in the world and bound by worldly ties, human beings who lead a social and political life. But in the depths of your hearts you long for true yoga, for knowledge that is lasting and does not belong only to this fleeting life. In the heart of every one of you, if you get to the bottom of it, you will find the longing to know more, the desire to live more nobly than you do now. Outwardly, it may appear that you love the things of the world, and with your lower nature you do. But in the heart of every true Hindu who is not completely apostate and denies his religion and homeland, there is still an inner longing for something more than the things of the earth, still a faint desire, even if only a remnant of past traditions, that India would be nobler than it is today and its people more worthy of their past."

The last sentence also points to something that must not remain unspoken here when discussing this book. Annie Besant's lectures are addressed to the Indian people. They indicate the path of discipleship for this people. Now, although truth is a unifier, and the highest summit of knowledge and life is also a unifier for all times and all peoples, one must not believe that the path of discipleship in form can be exactly the same for the man of present-day Europe as for the Indian. The essence remains the same; the forms change in this area as well. Therefore, it is only natural that in the articles of this journal “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” is said differently in some places than it is given in Annie Besant's lectures for the Indian people. The path described in this journal is the one that has been developed in the secret schools of Europe since the fourteenth century as the right one, adapted to the life in the West and to the stage of development of the European human being. And the European can only be successful if he walks this path as outlined by his own secret teachers. He cannot copy the path of the Indians. For the Indians are the descendants of a very different tribe from the European people. Their physical and psychological peculiarity is different. In the world, everything is in development. And the Secret Schooling must also follow this path of development. Only a travesty of a disciple could exist if a European soul wanted to follow the same yogic paths that the Indian people once followed under the guidance of the holy Rishis. But the latter must again betrain its own ways if it wants to make progress. The aim of the Theosophical World Movement is precisely that every nation, every part of humanity, should seek the truth in its own ways. We would be very poor Theosophists if we wanted to graft the Indian teachings onto the very differently constituted European humanity without further ado. This must not be done with regard to the outer teachings, nor with regard to the secret training for discipleship.

This is not to say that it would be useless for Europeans to get to know what is appropriate for India. The stage at which the European stands is precisely the one that makes it necessary for him to get to know everything intellectually. In order to progress, the mind must compare and measure its own against that which is further away. It must listen to what is said to fellow human beings in the Far East for their own good. Therefore, not because the same could be done in Europe, one has to greet such books as the present one with satisfaction. But it is also necessary to know that in Europe, those who have knowledge and are searching for secrets have been trying for centuries to show the right path to today's discipleship to those who can and, above all, want to listen to them. The signs of the times clearly indicate that in Europe, too, the number of those who “yearn in their hearts for true yoga” will grow ever greater. For what Annie Besant so aptly expresses towards the end of the first lecture also applies to the peoples of Europe: “There is no great nation without great individuals, no mighty people if the individuals are low, poor and selfish in their lives.”

The second lecture presents the laws of “mastering thought,” meditation and character development, which the disciple on the path must observe. Annie Besant gives us a glimpse of the rules that have been followed and tested by the disciples of the path for thousands of years. We may often shrink back from the demands that are made and say, “Yes, who can fulfill all that!” But such shrinking back is by no means justified. It is based on the fact that the things in question are taken much too superficially than they want to be taken. The higher world cannot be conquered in tumult or in storm, but in patience and perseverance. Many will find, for example, that there are so many rules and that the time needed to carry them all out is almost immeasurable. The only thing to say is: start at one end and you will soon find that the matter has many other difficulties, but almost none of those that you first imagined. You will gradually acquire practice in the correct use of the instructions, you will gradually become aware of the correct meaning of this or that message, and then come to a completely different judgment than you had before. In this regard, there is a very important passage in these lectures by Annie Besant (page 100): 'The question has often been raised as to how many lives pass between the first step and the final liberation, the attainment of Jivanmukti. I recall that Swami T. Subba Row, when he discussed with some friends the commonly held idea that seven lives must pass at this level of discipleship, made the perfect and true and meaningful remark: 'It could be seven lives or seventy, seven days or seven hours', meaning that the life of the soul is not measured in terms of earthly time. What matters is its energy, its strength, its will to achieve the goal. “A person can waste his time or use it to his advantage; that alone will determine the progress he makes.”

Time and again, we can refer to a saying of Goethe's when talking about the path of discipleship: “Although it is easy, the easy is difficult.” The only obstacles that arise are those that man himself puts in his way. In most cases these obstacles arise from his prejudices, or from the fact that he is not really serious about such things as, for example, controlling his thoughts or meditating. People simply do not believe that controlling one's thoughts and meditating, practised quietly in the innermost part of the soul, can be so successful in leading to the spiritual world. One expects this success from much more “tangible”, much more tumultuous things. Or one demands that the objects and beings of the higher worlds have the usual forms of the sense world and considers the forms in which they really appear to be little more than a nothing or an illusion. But one first learns through the “attributes necessary for discipleship” what the higher worlds actually look like. One must first mature, to see something quite differently, and this quite differently, than one is accustomed to from the sensual everyday life.

The third picture, “The Life of the Disciple”, opens up a wide perspective. Here the path of trial and the four initiations are described. It shows how man is led up through the stage in which he frees himself from the way of looking at things to which he has hitherto paid homage, and in which he completely casts off the fetters of doubt, superstition and narrow personality consciousness. Then the second step is indicated, on which the inner light, Kundalini, begins to shine, illuminating the things of the higher world as the spiritual sun does the objects and beings of the sensual world. The third step follows, on which the “true self” awakens, the self-awareness that embraces the world, making it possible to receive the keys to true knowledge. And finally, the dawn of the Arhat rises before the thought.

The last picture shows the “progress of man in the future”. All higher development of the individual is only a hastening on the path that all humanity must later traverse, albeit under the conditions of the earthly future, which will be quite different from those of the present. But only in this way can all humanity hasten towards this future, that individuals go the way ahead, rise out of themselves, so that, as teachers and guides, the others follow them. Instead of a brief description of the significant last chapter, which has real practical significance for every true thinker, only a few things will be emphasized here at the end of this discussion. For example, it is said about the human future: “In the whole sphere of knowledge, methods will change. The doctor will no longer have to draw conclusions about an illness from external symptoms, but will see the cause of it and be able to make a diagnosis based on that... Until now, the impermeability of the physical body has prevented the doctor from looking inside, but now he is already using the clairvoyant, whose vision penetrates the physical matter, who sees the disease and can recognize exactly what is wrong with any organ of the body... Imagine the boost that would be given to the whole of medical science if doctors were clairvoyant, and if what only a few people possess now became widespread, so that doctors could make their diagnoses with certainty and follow the effect of each remedy with the certainty that comes from seeing...

"The same applies to chemistry. How much more could the chemist achieve than is currently possible if his eyes were open and able to follow the various processes that occur when his substances combine, if he could see the effects of his compositions instead of having to guess at them and wait for the results of his experiments before he can be certain of the outcome. How many accidents could be avoided and to what extent could this knowledge accelerate the progress of science?"

“It is no different in the study of the mind. You will immediately see what this means for humanity, merely from the point of view of this lower world, when people can communicate with each other through thoughts, instead of having to use cumbersome mechanisms such as writing or printing, when a thought can travel from brain to brain and communicate without the complicated processes we use today.”

Thus Annie Besant's lectures end with a powerful outlook on the future of humanity.

The Germans, who have an understanding of these things, will have to be grateful to Countess H. Scheler for the translation.