CULTURAL UNITS
Will the Soul of Europe Return?

B. P. WADIA

© 2000 Online Teosofiska Kompaniet Malmö 

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PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

 

Cultural Units forms the last part of a paper offered by the late Mr. B. P. Wadia to the first World Congress of the Theosophical Society held in 1921. The paper was entitled "Will the Soul of Europe Return?"

It is twenty-one years since Wadiaji passed away and it is fifty years since the first centre of the United Lodge of  Theosophists was founded in India.

Students of the wisdom-religion can seek and will find fresh inspiration in this little pamphlet which is being offered in memory of late Mr. B.P. Wadia.

20th August 1979

HIMALAYA PRAKASHAN
BANGALORE

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 CULTURAL UNITS

IN this Aryan Race, mind development in seven stages is taking place. The principles of human constitution relate themselves to races and sub-races of the human kingdom. In the new international state, a sub-layer of the mind principle of the race will operate. We are not here concerned with the beginnings of the next sub-race; I am referring to the Aryan-European-family- race growth in terms of mind. The advance sixth sub-race is related to and to a certain extent dependent on the mind unfoldment of our fifth sub-race in all its ramifications of family-races. The advance guard of that family is passing out of the stage in which the use of the scientific mind is made, to that in which the philosophic mind operates. The front-rank pioneers of that advance guard are getting even beyond that – passing out of the philosophic to the use of the archetypal mind. The bulk of the European race is still in the two lower stages of  Kama-Manas. We of the Theosophical Society have to help the manifestation of the philosophic mind and aid the early expression of the archetypal.

At the beginning of a race, a certain seclusion takes place by the advance-guard of the race for the proper introduction of the activities of the new principle which is to operate in that race; in other words, the fixing of the type of the race takes place. What is true of a race is also true of its sub-divisions. The early work of the unfoldment of the principle which will operate in the new world now coming into being, will take place in seclusion. But seclusion, not as it is ordinarily understood by the world or even by the generality of our members in the T. S. To enable the new world to proceed on the right roads of its many-sided evolution, it has to be convinced of certain fundamentals. We cannot convince people save by imparting the right knowledge about those fundamentals. A new culture must mould and shape the new civilisation. Who is to bring forth into being this new culture? It will not drop from heavenly regions; it has to be imbibed and assimilated by higher mind-processes, and gradually and steadily and healthily it has to be brought down from the sphere of mind to that of action. Our politicians will have to possess the faculty of looking heavenward to do the work referred to by Plato. (1)

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(1) Plato speaks of the artists in his Republic who imitate the heavenly pattern. "Herein will lie the difference between them and every other legislator--they will have nothing to do either with individual or state, and will inscribe no laws, until they have either found or themselves made, a clean surface." The making of the 'clean surface' is the immediate task in hand, and then must be taken up the 'filling in' work. "And when they are filling in the work, as 1 conceive, they will often turn their eyes upwards and downwards: 1 mean that they will first 1ook at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human copy; and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the image of a man; and this they will conceive according to that other image, which when existing among men, Homer calls the form and likeness of God."
 

The new Nobility of Culture cannot come to birth in the slums of space, of struggling, cursing, unhappy Europe. The new society, with varied capacities to supply the common needs in the spirit of sacrifice and true altruism, cannot arise unless a few begin to live that life. To sacrifice for the benefit of others we must possess something worthy of sacrifice; to be capable means to possess some faculty. I have referred to a new Revolution, in terms of law, order, harmony; a new crusade for a spiritual kingdom; a new message from the Ancient Seat to guide the band of European humanity, not by the way of war but by that of wisdom, to a realisation of a new commonwealth affording opportunity to all to be kings unto themselves. But the Eternal Hermitage must yield new sages for the spiritual crusade to precipitate the new kingdom. Therefore the Eternal Hermitage must be reproduced in the world of men.

What are required now, immediately, are a few Cultural Units or centres where men and women, of the international world, may strive with all the powers of their souls to create and work out, as fully as may be possible, with the help of their philosophic and archetypal minds, the many phases which will enable the international state to come to fruition in the course of time.

The cultural centres must be focal points at which the international state in miniature may exist. A new politics must replace the struggles of politics-- "where all are for the State and none for the party"; where representative government ceases, for all govern and take part in government; where capacity is taxed in terms of the common need and the currency of culture and not of coin obtains; where worship is offered not in dimly lighted churches and with gorgeously-clad priests by lip-mummery to man-created half-gods, but in the open expanse of Nature to the God within us, who keeps company with the true gods in heaven, as we mortals of this world keep company with mortals; where the creator using the language of art does not suffer from the fret and fever of material life, but undergoing an inner conversion, impelled by a divine discontent followed by a spiritual realisation, works with a deeper motive and a profounder suggestion, "seeking to wean humanity" from the obvious and the external reality of the senses "to a higher view of life, work and world," by holding forth to its vision "significative forms to suggest the formless infinity which is hidden behind the physical world of forms." Where, in short, may be gestated a race of humans who could not conquer others because they have conquered themselves, who do not hate others because they have cast out fear from themselves, who teach by life and not by words, who create by life and not by brains, who work with life and not with hands, who perceive by life and not by senses. These are not symbolical, allegorical or paradoxical phrases; they must be taken as simple truths of a higher world. To an animal our language of mind culture might appear so, for it works with instinct-culture. To it a new sun rises every morning, which is rank ignorance to us; but for us a new spring rises every March – which may be, nay, is rank ignorance to creatures of a higher realm.

Therefore, a new and finer asceticism must be practiced, which will awaken that aspect of the spirit in us which is also to manifest, in course of decades, in the new civilisation now coming to birth.* That is why we must start the work of building spiritual centres, cultural units. The Pythagorean unit made Greek culture; the monks retired to their monasteries when the 'barbarians' began the invasion of the Roman Empire and later gave to Europe their Christian culture. Who is to give to the young world, which is now being born, the necessary culture it will require in economic, political, artistic, religious and philosophic spheres?

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* Incidentally it may be mentioned that the archetypal mind unfoldment ultimately brings about the illumination of the mind; in other words, Buddhi-Manas begin to blossom, the mind which has to operate in the sixth sub-race. Thus will the fifth sub-race begin to merge into the sixth sub-race and become one with it. Just as the first became the second, so will the fifth become the sixth, as H.P.B. has clearly shown in her "Secret Doctrine".
 

The world has to be educated – the international world. Not a narrow world of a few thousands, but a wide world of millions upon millions. "What is the use of a few cultural units?" people might exclaim.

It is the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump. From five loaves and two fishes the Christ fed a whole multitude. A few Theosophists may function as the leaven. But we must possess that which we desire to give. Let us acquire that which we want to possess.

Ever the Dawn breaks in the East.

The "circling path of time" has brought us to a new dawn. 'The clock of Karma' indicates the beginnings of a new day.

Modern tendency in commerce, art, philosophy or religion is towards the East. Soul-forces sometimes utilise the material instincts and the psychic urge to achieve their own purpose. The collapse of the West is like unto a night; the gloom of its darkness surrounds us and penetrates into our very being; but it inspires hope, for the morn is coming and our gaze stretches far on the Eastern horizon.

 Those who are sustained by that hope are active supporters of the idea that adequate use should be made of the night, its darkness and its gloom.

 A careful study of the great message of H.P.B. points to the necessity of a labour of love on the part of a few who should endeavour to gain an inner conversion in personal consciousness and then be possessors of the culture which will enable them to precipitate in the physical world of action the new international state. To attain this, what 1 have called cultural units are necessary. Small community life-centres where people will learn the art of spiritual self-expression, in an atmosphere of freedom of thought, discriminative study, profound contemplation on the Society-to-be; where the knower of the field will till the field, till the latter is full of green and gold crops sufficient to feed the hungry world; where soul will contact soil.

The Soul and the Soil!

In a new manner, at a different time, the old teaching of the 13th discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita has to be applied. In the midst of carnage was the message delivered then; in the midst of desolation and suffering its wisdom holds the inspiration for a few now. Not for all, but for a few so that they can serve all –

"The wise, who soar, but never roam,
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

But those who soar to heaven will descend to homes to sing the Song of the Life of the Real.

Let us as souls contact our soil – our real swadesh, our true patria. Let us weed out the elements of discord, the selfishness of patriotism, the strength of egotism, the glamour of the psyche within the body, the blinding power of the senses, the automatic rule of the sense-organs, the brain-power which enchains the mind-faculty, instincts which interfere with aspirations, impulses which mar the expression of intuitions, binding activities, many and varied, which stifle the manifestation of the One Spirit.

The higher asceticism will purify and transform our modern 'goodness into strength, our modern charity into brotherliness, our modern virtues into their heavenly prototypes. It is not the wickedness of men that is so dangerous to civilisation as what Passes off for virtue. The fire of meditation will burn to ashes the self-hood of personality made respectable by adornments of knowledge from the books and brains. of others, and bring into being the soul individuality which lives by the sacrifice of wisdom, by the joy of service dependent on its own inherent divinity and on its own spiritual vision.

A few such soul-individualities will produce a new religion of life in the place of creeds, a new art on which a new morality will be modelled, a new politics to legislate for an international state with politicians of the type Plato referred to as quoted above. They will make the philosophic mind operate; a few among them will begin to use the archetypal mind and work towards the illumination of buddhi and the realisation of atma.

We are at the parting of the ways : a false turn, and we may enter the dreary long lightless road of a dark age; a right turn, and we may march into the avenue of beauty and harmony of a new day. The former, by a circuitous, exhausting and weary travel may bring us after a time to the latter, but we can avoid much suffering and gloom by a right understanding of the situation, a right interpretation of the signs and tokens nature and her laws give, and a right application of knowledge to the conditions of today.

 The message which the Great Eastern Masters gave through H P B in the last century, contains wisdom which will enable us to help the advance of human progress, if we make that wisdom our own. We of the theosophical society must not offer something which satisfies our competitive civilisation, and our greedy and grabbing humanity. Let us not, like clever tradesmen, produce goods for sale, and pamper to our customer's idiosyncracies and try to make them buy by making them happy. Let us give humanity a chance by speaking and living the truth and wisdom those Eastern Masters gave. Thus, perhaps, we will succeed in leading our fellow men on to that peak of spirituality from which they can perceive for themselves the grandeur and beauty of divine will working out in evolution, and where clarity of atmosphere will give them the power of right valuation.

 If the Theosophical Society, true to its original impulses, does this work it will be instrumental in saving the European humanity of today. If it does not achieve that, it will be because it has proven false to those impulses. We, the present day members, are some of the trustees in this world of the wisdom which H P B brought. Shall we be found worthy of the trust when the recorders of destiny's page write their judgement? Time alone will tell. May their blessings help us to earn the privilege of rendering unto god the things that are god's, and thus be chosen again as such trustees in a future day and generation. Let us courageously, with an honesty of purpose, a purity of motive, and a single eye to truth as we perceive it, live striving for the precipitation of the kingdom to which H P B belonged, and from which she came to help this race to realise it for itself.

 B. P.  WADIA

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