The Path of Discipleship · 1

FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARYOF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, AT ADYAR, MADRAS,DECEMBER 27, 28, 29 AND 30, 1895 SECOND EDITION BENARESTHE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY1899

FIRST STEPS.

KARMA –YOGA. PURIFICATION

1. BROTHERS, - When first I spoke in this Hall two years ago, I led your attention to the building of the Cosmos as a whole, to the steps through which that evolution took place, the methods, as it were, of the vast succession of phenomena. Last year I dealt with the evolution of the Self, the Self in man rather than the Self in the Cosmos, and tried to show you how from sheath after sheath the Self gained ex­perience and obtained sovereignty over its lower vehicles - still with the man as with the universe, still with the individual as with the Cosmos, seeking ever reunion with the Self, seeking ever That whence it had come. But sometimes men have said to me when discussing these lofty topics: “What bearing have these on the life of men in the world, sur­rounded as we are with the necessities of life, surrounded as we are with the activities of the phenomenal world, continually drawn away from the thought of the one Self, continually forced by our Karma to take part in these multifarious activities? What bearing then has the higher teaching on the lives of men, and how may men in the world rise upward until the higher life becomes possible also for them?” It is that question that I am going to try to answer this year. I am going to try to show you how a man in the world, surrounded with family obligations, with social duties, with all the many activities of worldly life, may yet prepare himself for union and take the first steps on the path that leads him to the One. I am going to try to trace for you the steps of that path, so that beginning in the life that any man may be leading, starting from the standpoint where most of you may be stand­ing at the moment, you may recognize a goal to be reached, you may recognize a path to be trodden - ­the path which begins here in the life of the family, of the community, of the state, but which ends in that which is beyond all thinking and lands the traveller ultimately in the home which is his for evermore. Such is the object then of these four lectures, such the steps along which I trust you will accompany me; and in order that we may understand our subject let us glance for a moment at the course of evolution, at its meaning, at its object, so that from what must be but a bird’s-eye view of the whole, we may be able, appreciating the whole, to understand the congruity of the steps which one by one we are to take. We realize that the One has become the many. Glancing backward into the primal darkness that shroudeth all, we can hear out of that darkness but a whisper­ - a whisper: “I will multiply”. That multiplication is the building of the universe, and of the individuals who live within it. In that will to multiply of the “One which is without a second”, we see the source of manifestation, we recognize the primal germ, as it were, of the Cosmos. And as we realize that beginning of the universe and as we see the com­plexity, the multiplicity, that result from the primal simplicity, from the primal unity, we realize also that in each of these phenomenal manifestations there must be imperfection, and that the very limi­tation which makes a phenomenon possible is also the inevitable mark that it is less than the One, and therefore by itself imperfect. So we understand why there should be variety, why there should be this vast multiplicity of separate and living things. And we begin to understand that the perfection of the manifested universe must needs lie in this very variety; that if there be more than the One then there must be well-nigh infinite multiplicity, in order that the One, which is as a mighty sun sending forth beams of light in all directions, may send beams everywhere, and in the totality of the beams will be the perfection of the lighting of the world. The more numerous, the more wonderful, the more vari­ous the objects, the more nearly, though still imper­fectly, will the universe image forth That whence it comes.

2. The first effort in the evolving life must be to make many, to make separated existences - apparently separate - so that looked at from without there shall seem many, although looked at in their essence we see that the Self of all is One. Realizing that, we understand that in the process of multiple individual­izing, the one as individual comes into manifestation as a faint and limited reflection of the Self. And we begin to understand also what is to be the outcome of this universe, why it is that these many individuals should be evolved, why it is that this separateness should be a necessary part in the evolution of the whole. For we begin to see that the result of the universe is to be the evolution of the LOGOS of an­other universe, of the mighty Devas who are to be the guides of all the cosmic forces of that universe in the future, and of the divine Teachers whose duty it will be to train the infant humanity of another Cosmos. What is going on today in all these worlds of individual existences is a steady process of evolution, by which one universe gives to a future universe its LOGOS, its Devas, the earliest of its Manus, and all those great Ones that will be necessary for the building, for the training, for the governing, for the teaching of the universe which is yet unborn. Thus are the universes linked together, thus does Manvantara succeed Manvantara, thus are the fruits of one universe the seeds of the universe that succeeds it. In the midst of all this multiplicity there is being evolved a yet vaster unity which shall be the framework of the unborn Cosmos, which shall be the Power which in the future Cosmos shall guide and rule.

3. And then the question arises - as I know it arises in many minds, for it has been put to me both in the East and in the West over and over again - why so much difficulty in the evolution, why so much apparent failure in the working, why should men go wrong so much before they go right, why should they run after the evil that degrades them instead of following the good that would ennoble them? Was it not possible for the LOGOS of our universe, for the Devas who are His Agents, for the great Manus who came to guide our infant humanity - was it not possible for Them to plan so that there might be no such apparent failure in the working out? Was it not possible for Them to guide so that the road might have been a straight and direct one instead of so devious, so circuitous?

4. Here comes the point that makes the evolution of humanity so difficult, having in view the object which is to be gained. Easy in truth would it have been to have made a humanity that might have been perfect, easy to have so guided its dawning powers that those powers might have travelled towards what we call the good continually, and never have turned aside towards what we call evil. But what would have been the condition of such an easy accomplish­ment? It must have been that man would have been an automaton, moved by a compelling force without him which imperiously laid upon him a law which he was compelled to fulfil, from which he could not escape. The mineral world is under such a law; the affinities that bind atom to atom obey such an imperious com­pulsion. But as we rise higher we find greater and greater freedom gradually making its appearance, until in man we see a spontaneous energy, a freedom of choice, which is really the dawning manifestation of the God, of the Self, which is beginning to show itself through man. And the object, the goal which was to be attained, was not to make automata who should blindly follow a path sketched out for their treading, but to make a reflection of the LOGOS Himself, to make a mighty assemblage of wise and perfected men who should choose the best because they know and understand it, who should reject the worst because by experience they have learnt its inadequacy and the sorrow to which it leads. So that in the universe of the future, as amongst all the great Ones who are guiding the universe of today, there should be unity gained by consensus of wills, which have become one again by knowledge and by choice, which move with a single purpose because they know the whole, which are identical with the Law because they have learned that the Law is good, who choose to be one with the Law not by an outside compulsion, but by an inner acquiescence. Thus in that universe of the future there will be one Law, as there is in the present, carried out by means of Those who are the Law by the unity of Their purpose, the unity of Their knowledge, the unity of Their power - not a blind and unconscious Law, but an assemblage of living beings who are the Law, having become divine. There is no other road by which such goal might be reached, by which the free­will of the many should reunite into the one great Nature and the one great Law, save a process in which experience should be garnered, in which evil should be known as well as good, failure as well as triumph. Thus men become Gods, and because of the experience that lies behind them, they will, they think, they feel, the same.

5. Now in working towards this goal the divine Teachers and Guides of our humanity planned many civilizations, all moulded towards the end that was in view. I have no time to go back to the great civilization of the Fourth Race that preceded the birth of the mighty Aryan people. I may only say in passing that there was a great civilization which was tried, which for a time under its divine Rulers succeeded; then the divine Rulers withdrew their immediate guiding - as a mother withdraws her hand from her babe that is learning to walk, in order to see if without her supporting arm it is able to make its own steps, it is able to use its own limbs, so for the same purpose They withdrew into the darkness - the divine Guides and Rulers - to see if the child-humanity making these early steps would walk or would stumble on its way. And that infant humanity stumbled and fell, and the great civilization -mighty as it was perfect in its social order, glorious in the strength and the wisdom by which it was builded - broke into pieces under the selfishness of man, broke into pieces under the yet unconquered lower instincts of humanity. Another attempt had to be made, and the great Aryan race was founded - again with divine Rulers, again with divine Guides, with a Manu who gave it its law, founded its civilization, sketched out its polity, with the Rishis who gathered round Him, who administered His laws and guided the infant civilization; thus again humanity was given a pattern, again the race was shown a type towards which it should evolve. Then once more the great Teachers drew back for awhile to let humanity again try its own strength, again experiment if it were strong enough to walk alone, self-reliant, guided by the Self from within, instead of by outer manifestations. And again, as we know, the experiment has largely been a failure. Again, as we know, glancing backward, we see this civilization originally divine gradually degenerating under the still unconquered lower nature of man, again going downward for a while under the still uncurbed passions of humanity. Looking back, as we now do, to the India of the past, we see its perfect polity, its marvellous spirituality, and we trace its degradation millennium after millennium as the guiding hand withdraws out of the visible sight of man, and once more humanity blunders and fails as it tries to walk. We see how in each case there has been the failure of the realization of the divine ideal. We glance over the modern world and we see how the lower nature of man has triumphed over the divine ideal which was set before him at the beginning of the Aryan race. We see how in that day there was the ideal of the Brahmana, an ideal that might be summed up as that of the soul approaching liberation, which asks no longer for the goods of earth, which asks no longer for the enjoy­ments of the flesh, which asks no longer for the gifts of wealth, of power, of authority, of earthly pleasure, the type of the Brahmana being that he was poor, but wise; whereas today we too often find the man who bears the Brahmana name not poor and wise but wealthy and ignorant. There in that caste you have one of the signs of the degeneration by which the ancient polity fell; and the same with each of the four castes.

6. Let us now see how it was proposed by the great Teachers that man by experience should learn to choose of his own free will the ideal which was placed before him, and from which he turned aside how the great Teachers endeavoured to build up from the imperfect humanity towards the perfected ideal manifested in the beginning for the guidance of the race, and unrealized in evolution by the weak­ness and the childishness of men.

7. In order that, in the course of ages, this might be achieved, what is called Karma-Yoga was taught to the people - Yoga, or union, by action. That is the form of Yoga which is fitted for the men of the world, beset with life’s activities; it is by these very activities, by the training afforded by them, that the first steps towards union must be taken. And so you find laid down for the training of men this Karma-Yoga.

8. Note the juxtaposition of the words “action” and “union”. Action so performed that union may result, action so carried out that union may be the outcome. It is a thing to remember that it is our activities that divide us, it is our actions that separate us, it is all this changing and multifarious activity by which we are drawn and kept apart. It seems almost a paradox then to speak of union by action, union by that which was ever a means of division, union by that by which separation was brought about. But the wisdom of the divine Teachers was equal to the task of reconciling, of ex­plaining, the apparent paradox. Let us follow the steps of the explanation and see what it is.

9. Man runs wild, runs wild in every direction, under the influence of the three energies in nature, the gunas. The dweller in the body finds himself under the domination of these gunas. They are at work! they are active, they make the manifested universe, and he identifies himself with these activities. He thinks he is acting when these are acting. He thinks he is busy when these are bringing about results. Living amongst them, blinded by them, under the illusions which they produce, he loses entirely all recognition of himself, and is taken here and there, blown hither and thither, carried away by the currents, and so the activity of the gunas is all that the man sees in life; clearly he is not fit under these conditions for the higher forms of Yoga. Clearly until these illusions are at least partially conquered the loftier steps on the Path will be beyond his treading. He must begin then by un­derstanding the gunas, by separating himself from these activities of the phenomenal universe. And the great scripture of Yoga, as it may be called, the scripture of this Karma-Yoga, is that which was re-proclaimed by Shri Krishna on the field of Kuruk­shetra, when he taught this form of Yoga to Arjuna, to the prince, to the warrior, the man who was to live in the world, to fight in the world, to rule the state, and take part in all external activities; here is the eternal lesson for men who are living in the world, how gradually they may rise beyond the gunas and so reach union with the Supreme.

10. It will then first be in what we may call the train­ing and regulation of the activities of the gunas that this Karma-Yoga will consist. There are, as you know, three gunas, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, the three gunas out of which all around us is builded and combined together in various ways, mingled in various fashions. Here one is acting and the other is working in every direction. They have to be brought into equi­librium; they have to be reduced to subjection. The dweller in the body, the lord of the body, must be­come sovereign master and distinguish himself from the gunas. That, then, will be the work that has to be done; their functions must be realized, their activities must be controlled and directed. You cannot at once rise above them, you cannot at once cross beyond them - any more than a child can do the work of a full-grown man. Can humanity in its unevolved and in its imperfect state accomplish perfection of Yoga? Nay, it is not even wise that man should try; for if the child be put to the work of the full-grown man, he will not only fail to ac­complish it, but he will overstrain his powers in the attempt, and the result will be not only failure in the present, but also failure in the future. For the task too great for his powers will thwart and distort them. They must be trained to strength before they can accomplish, and the child must grow to man­hood before manhood’s work should be his. Take for a moment the function of Tamas - translated dark­ness, or sluggishness, or inertia, or negligence, and so on. What function can that play, if it is to be used for human evolution? What use has this particular guna in the growth of the man, in the liberating of the soul? The particular use of that guna, the use to which it will be put in Karma-Yoga, is to act as a force which is to be struggled against and overcome, so that strength may be evolved in the struggle, power of will may be developed by the effort, self-­control and self-discipline may be accomplished by the attempt. It may be said to serve in the evolu­tion of man as the club or dumb-bell serves the purpose of the athlete. He could not strengthen his muscles unless there was something against which he exercised them. He could not gain muscular vigour unless there were opposing weights by strug­gling to lift which the muscles should grow strong. The value is not in the weight itself, but in the use to which it is put, and if a man wants his physical muscles, the muscles of his arms, to grow very strong, the best way to strengthen them is to take a club or dumb-bell and daily exercise the muscles against that opposing force. In this way Tamas, negligence or darkness, plays its part in the evolution of the man; he has to overcome it, he develops his strength in the struggle; the muscles of the soul grow powerful as he overcomes the negligence, the sloth, the indifference which is the tamasic quality in his nature.

11. So you will find for the overcoming of these the rites and ceremonies of religion are ordained, part of their function being to train man to overcome the sloth and the laziness and the indolence of his lower nature, and by placing before him certain duties to be done at a particular time - whether at that time he is inclined to do them or not, whether at that time he is feeling active or feeling lazy - by imposing on him duties at a particular time he is trained to overcome the sloth and heedlessness and obstinacy of his lower nature and to compel it to walk along the path that the will has determined it should follow.

12. And so if we take Rajas: you will find the activities of man are guided in Karma-Yoga along certain definite paths which I now propose to follow, so that you may see how this quality of activity, which is so much at work in the modern world, which is manifesting itself in every direction, which leads to hurry, bustle and constant effort to accom­plish things in the lower life, material manifestations, material results, material phenomena - how this shall be gradually directed, trained and purified until it no longer has the power to hinder the real manifesta­tion of the Self. The object of Karma-Yoga is to substitute duty for self-gratification; man acts to gratify his lower nature; he acts because he wants to get something; he acts for fruit; he acts for desire, for reward. He works because he wants money in order that he may enjoy. He works be­cause he wants power in order that the lower self may be gratified. All these activities, these raja­sic qualities, are set going with the purpose of ministering to his lower nature. In order that these activities may be trained and regulated to serve the purpose of the Higher Self, he is to be taught to substitute duty for self-gratification, to carry on work as work because it is his duty, to turn the wheel of life because it is his function to turn it, that he may do as Shri Krishna said He does Himself. He does not act because there is anything for Him to gain either in this world or in any other; but He acts because without his action the world would cease, He acts because without His action the wheel would no longer revolve. And those who accomplish Yoga must act in the spirit of His acting, acting for the whole and not for the separated part, acting for the carrying out of the divine will in the Cosmos and not for the pleasure of the separated entity that imagines itself to be independent when it ought to be a co-worker under Him. This object is to be gained by gradually raising the sphere of these activities. Duty is to be substituted for self-gratification, and religious rites and ceremonies are ordained to train men gradually towards the true life that is their function. Every religious ceremony is but a way of training men into the true and higher life. A man meditates in the early morning and at the going down of the sun, but ultimately his life will be one long meditation. He meditates for an hour to prepare himself for meditating always. All creative activities are the result of meditation, and you will remember that it is by Tapas that all worlds are created. In order then that man may reach that mighty and creative power of meditation, in order that he also may be able to exercise that divine power, he must be trained towards it by religious ceremonies, by intermittent thought, by Tapas taken up and laid down again. Set meditation is a step towards the accomplishment of constant meditation; it takes a part of daily life in order to permeate the whole, and men practise it daily in order that gradually it may absorb the life. The time comes when for the Yogi there is no fixed hour for medi­tation, for all his life is one long meditation. No matter what outer activities he may be doing he meditates; and he is ever at the Feet of his Lord although both mind and body may be active in the world of man. And so with all other forms of action; first a man learns to perform action as a sacrifice to duty and a paying of his debt to the world in which he is - the paying back to all the different parts of Nature of that which they give to him. And then later, sacrifice becomes more than the paying of a debt; it becomes a joyful giving of everything the man has to give. The partial sacrifice is the debt that is paid, the perfect sacrifice is the gift of the whole. A man gives himself, with all his activities, with all his powers, no longer paying part of his possessions as a debt but all of himself as a gift. And when that stage is reached Yoga is accomplished and the lesson of Karma-Yoga has been learned.

13. Take as one step towards this those five daily sacrifices which are familiar in name at least to all of you, and realize what underlay the ordination of those sacrifices. Each one of the five is the payment of a debt, the recognition of what man as a separated individual owes as a debt to the whole around him. And if you consider them for the moment one by one, however hastily, you will see how thoroughly each is this payment of a debt. Take the first: the sacrifice to the Devas. Why is that sacrifice ordained? It is because man has to learn that his body owes a debt to earth and to the Intelligences that guide the processes of Nature by which earth brings forth her fruits, by which she produces nourishment for man; as man takes the nourishment for his body, his body owes back, in payment of the debt, the returning to Nature an equivalent for that which has been given it through the instrumentality of those kosmic Intelligences, those Devas, who guide the forces of the lower world. And so man was taught to pour his sacrifice into the fire. Why? The phrase that was given as an ex­planation was: “Agni is the mouth of the Gods”, and people repeat the phrase and never try to understand its meaning, nor to go below the surface of the external name of the Deva to His function in the world. The real meaning of course that underlies the phrase is that all around on every side there are the conscious and sub-conscious workers in Nature in grade after grade, a great kosmic Deva at the head, as it were, of each division of that vast army; so that below the Deva as a Ruler in fire, in air, in water, in earth, below that particular Deva come a vast number of lower Gods who carry on the different and separated activities of the natural forces in the world, the rain, the productive powers of the earth, the fertilizing agencies of various sorts. And this first sacrifice is a feeding of these lower agencies, a giving to them of food by fire; and fire is called “the mouth of the Gods” because it disintegrates, because it changes and transmutes the solid and fluid things which are placed in it, turns them into vapour, dis­integrates them into finer materials, and thus passes them on into etheric matter to become the sustenance of those lower grades of elemental lives that carry out the commands of the kosmic Devas. And in this way a man pays his debt to them, and then in return in the lower regions of the atmosphere the rain falls, and the earth produces, and nourishment is given to man. And that was what Shri Krishna meant when he bade man “nourish the Gods and the Gods shall nourish you”. For it is that lower cycle of nourish­ment, as it were, which man has to learn. At first he accepted it as a religious teaching; then came the period in which he thought it superstition, knowing not the inner working and seeing only the outer appearances; and then comes deeper knowledge when Science, which tends first to materialism, by deeper study rises towards recognition of the spiritual realm. Scientific knowledge begins to say in scien­tific terms what the Rishis said in terms of the spirit, that man may rule and regulate the working of the lower powers of Nature by action that he himself performs, and in this way growing knowledge justifies the ancient teaching, justifies to the intellect what the spiritual man sees by direct intuition, by the spiritual sight.

14. Next, there is the sacrifice to the ancestors; the recognition of what man owes to those who went before him in the world, the payment of the debt that he owes to those who worked in the world ere his last coming, the gratitude and veneration which are due to those who partly made the world for us, and brought about improvements that we should inherit them. That service is a debt of gratitude due to those immediately before us in human evolution, who took their part in it during their earthly lives and bequeathed to us the result of their labours. As we reap the benefit of their work, we pay back the debt of grati­tude. And so this is one of the daily sacrifices, the recognition of this debt of gratitude to those who have gone before.

15. And then of course comes the sacrifice of knowledge, that of study, in order that by the study of the sacred words men may be able to help and train those more ignorant than themselves, and may also evolve in themselves the knowledge necessary for the manifestation of the Self within them.

16. Fourthly, the sacrifice to men, the payment to some particular man of the duty owed to humanity, the feeding of some particular man as a recognition that men owe to each other all kindly deeds in the physi­cal world, all the assistance that brother can give to brother. The sacrifice to men is the formal recognition of this duty, and in feeding those who are hungry, and in showing hospitality to those who are in need of it, while you feed one man as a concrete fact you feed all humanity ideally and in in­tention; when you give hospitality to one man who comes past your door, you open the door of your heart to humanity as one great entity, and in help­ing and sheltering one you give help and shelter to humanity as a whole.

17. And so also with the last of the five sacrifices, that to animals; food is to be placed on the ground by the householder that any passing animal may take. In this you recognize your duty to the lower world, your duty of giving help, of giving food, of giving training to them. The sacrifice to animals is meant to impress on his mind that we are here as trainers, as directors, as helpers, of the lower creatures that stand beneath us on the ladder of evolution. Every time we sin against them by cruelty, by harshness, by brutality of any sort, we sin against Him who is dwelling within them and whose lower manifestations they also are. And in order that man might recognize the good within the brute, in order that he might understand that Shri Krishna is in the lower animal, although more veiled than He is in man, man was bidden to sacrifice to the animals, not to the outer form but to the God within. The only way we can sacrifice to them is by kindness, by gentleness, by compassion, by training, by helping forward the animal evolution, and not by beating it back by the brutality and by the cruelty we see around us on every side.

18. Thus man was taught by these outer rites and ceremonies the inner spiritual truths, by which his life was to be permeated. And when the five sacri­fices were over, he was to go out into the world of men still to sacrifice by other forms of action, still to sacrifice by the performance of his daily duties. And his daily life that was begun by these five sacrifices passed out consecrated into the outer life of men. With gradual carelessness as to the five sacrifices has grown carelessness of duty in that outer life of men. Not because these sacrifices in them­selves will be for ever necessary, for a time comes when a man rises above them. But remember this he only rises above them when his whole life has become one long and living sacrifice. Until that is accomplished, these formal recognitions of duty are necessary for the sake of the raising of the life,

19. And unhappily in India today these have largely dropped out of account, not because men have risen above them nor because all their lives are pure, spiritual and lofty, so that they have no need of the lower training and the continual reminder; but be­cause they have become careless and materialistic, and have fallen so far below the ideal of their Manu. They refuse all dutiful recognition to the Powers above them, and therefore they fail in their duty to the men around them.

20. Let us consider next the outer daily life - the duty of the individual in the world. Wherever it is, he is born into some particular family; that marks his family duties. He is born into some community; that marks out his communal duties. He is born into a particular nation; that marks out his national duties. For each man the limitations of duty are set by the circumstances of his birth, which, under the good Law, under the karmic direction, give to each man the place of his working, the training ground on which he is to learn. Therefore is it said that each man should do his own duty, his own Dharma. Better to do your own, although imperfect, than to try to do the higher Dharma of another. For that into which you are born is that which you need; that into which you are born is your wisest training. Do your own duty careless of results, and then you will learn the lesson of life, and you will begin to tread the path of Yoga. At first of course action will be done for its fruit; men will do it be­cause they desire to gain its reward. And here we understand their early training, where men were taught to work for results in the world of Svarga. The child-man is trained by rewards; Svarga is held out to him as a thing to be gained by work; as he accomplishes his religious rites and duties he ensures their svargic recompense. And in this way he is in­duced to practise morality, just as you induce a child to learn its lessons by giving it some reward or some prize. But if action is to be used for Yoga and not for the gaining of reward, either here or in any other world, then it must be done only as duty.

21. Consider for a moment the four great castes and see how each of these was meant to be used. The Brahmana was to teach in order that there might be a succession of wise teachers to guide the evolution of the race. He was not to teach for money, he was not to teach for power, he was not to teach for any­thing he got for himself; he was to teach in fulfilment of his Dharma, and he was to have knowledge that he might in turn hand it on to others. Thus in a well-regulated nation there would be always teachers to instruct, able to guide and advise un­selfishly and without a selfish object; thus nothing would be gained by him for himself, but everything would be gained by him for the people. In this way his Dharma would be accomplished and the soul set free.

22. Then there came the Yoga which was the fitting of the active man of the world for governing and regulating, the training of the dominant class, the Kshattriya. There you had the man who was to rule. Why? Not that he might gratify himself by power, but in order that justice might be done, in order that the poor man might feel secure and the rich man might be unable to tyrannize, in order that fairness and impartial justice might prevail in the struggling world of men. For in the midst of this world of struggle, in the midst of this world of anger and strife, in the midst of this world where men are seeking to gratify the spirit of self instead of the common good, they have to be taught that jus­tice must be done, that if the strong man abuses his strength the just ruler will restrain that unfair exercise of strength, that the weaker shall not be trampled upon, that the weaker shall not be op­pressed. And the duty of the king was to do justice between man and man, so that all men might look to the throne as the fountain from which divine justice flowed. That is the ideal of the divine king­ship that is the ideal of the divine ruler. Rama came to teach it, Shri Krishna came to teach it; but men were so dull that they would not learn the lesson. The Kshattriya used his strength to gratify himself and oppress others, and took their wealth for his own and used their labour for his personal advantage. He lost the ideal of the divine ruler who incarnated justice in the warring world of men. But he was meant to make that ideal the object of his life, and his duty, therefore, was to administer the land, to administer it for the good of the nation and not for the gratification of himself. And so also when his duty was the duty of the soldier. The nation was to carry on its functions in peace. Poor men and harmless men were to live secure with their households round them in happiness and prosper­ity. The merchant was to carry on the work of a merchant in peace. All the various avocations of life were to be carried on fearlessly, secure against aggression. And so the Kshattriya was taught that when he was to fight, he fought as the defender of the helpless and gave his life freely that they might enjoy their lives in peace. He was not to fight because he wanted gain. He was not to fight because he wanted land. He was not to fight be­cause he wanted power or dominion. He was to stand as an iron wall round the nation so that every attack should break itself against his body, and within the circle made by him all men should live in peace, in security and in happiness. If he was to follow Yoga within the duty of the Kshattriya, he must look on himself as the agent of the divine Actor, and therefore it was that Shri Krishna taught that He had done all and that Arjuna but repeated the action in the world of men. And when the divine Actor is recognized in every action of the man, then he can accomplish action as duty without desire, and it loses its binding power on the soul.

23. So again with the Vaishya who was to accumulate wealth. He was to do it not for his own gratifica­tion, but for the support of the nation. He was to be rich in order that every activity that needed wealth should find a store of wealth at hand and be carried out in every direction. So that everywhere there might be homes for the poor, everywhere rest­-houses for the traveller, everywhere hospitals both for men and beasts, everywhere temples for wor­ship, and everywhere the wealth which was needed to support these activities of perfect national life. And so his Dharma was this accumulation for the common good and not for individual self-gratification. In this way he too might follow Yoga, and by Karma-Yoga prepare himself for the higher life.

24. So also with the Shudra, who was to perform his Dharma in the commonwealth. His work lay in accomplishing the duty of forming the great hand o the nation, which brought into it what was wanted and carried on the serving external activities. His Yoga, if it were to be accomplished, lay in gladly discharging his duties, doing them for the sake of doing them and not for the reward that by doing them he might gain.

25. First men do action for self-gratification, in that way experience is gained; then they learn to do it as duty, and so they begin to practise Yoga in their daily life; lastly they do it as a joyful sacrifice for which they ask nothing back, but give every power they possess for the accomplishment of the work. And in this way union is accomplished.

26. We understand what is meant by purification, when we notice these stages of self-gratification, of doing duty as duty, of giving everything as a free­will sacrifice. These are the stages of the path of purification. But how shall such purification be made as shall lead to the higher steps, to the beginning of the discipleship for which all created activity is to be the preparation? Every part of man must be purified, body as well as mind. On the purification of the body I have not time to dwell, but I may remind you that according to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita it is by way of moderation that this purification is accomplished and not by self­-torturing asceticism, torturing the body and Him that dwells within it, as Shri Krishna says. Yoga is accomplished by temperate self-control, by deliberate training of the lower nature, by quietly choosing the pure path in food, by care and moderation in all physical activities, thus gradually training and regulating and moderating until the whole body comes under the control of the will and of the Self. Therefore the household life was ordained; for men were not fit for the hard road of celibacy, save here and there a few. Brahmacharya was not for all. By household life were men taught to control and moderate their sexual passions, not by crushing them out - which is for the mass of men impossible, and if attempted with unwise energy often result in a re-action that throws the unwise person into the worst profligacy of life - not by single effort which tries to kill and to uproot in a moment, but by gradual training in moderation, and by practising the self-denial of the home, where the lower nature should be slowly trained to temperance and be accustomed to be controlled by the higher, trained out of its over-activity and made utterly subordinate to the One. There is where this Karma-Yoga comes in. The householder has gradually to learn self-control, moderation, making the lower nature yield to the higher, training it day by day until it is absolutely subject to the will. In that way he purifies the body and becomes fitted for the higher paths of Yoga. Then again he must purify the passions of the lower nature all through. Take as an illustration of it - I want to give you three illustrations of this so that you may work it out in your lives - take the passion of anger, and see how it may be worked upon in Karma­-Yoga, in order that it may be transmuted in quality. Anger is an energy, an energy that goes out of man to fight his way. You see it in an undeveloped and untrained man as passion, showing itself in many brutal forms, beating down opposition, caring not what methods are used if he strikes out of his way all that which opposes the gratification of his will.

27. And in that form it is an undisciplined and destructive energy of Nature which he who would do Karma-Yoga must most certainly subdue. How shall he subdue and train the passion of anger? He gets rid of the personal element to begin with. When a personal injury is done to him he trains himself to cease to resent it. There is the duty which lies before many of you. Some man does you a wrong; some one does an injustice against you. What shall you do? You may let the passion of anger carry you away and you may strike at him. He has cheated you: you try to injure him in re­turn, and to take advantage of him. He has injured you: you try in turn to injure him. He has gone behind your back: you go behind his back and do him wrong in turn. And so the passion of anger rages, and destruction is seen on every side in what should be the society of men. How shall this passion be purified? You may take the answer from any one of the great Teachers who taught Karma-Yoga, who taught how action in the world of men might be used for the purposes of the Self. You may remember that amongst the ten-fold system of duty which Manu laid down, forgiveness of injuries is one of the duties. You may remember that when the Buddha was teaching He taught: “Hatred ceases not by hatred at any time, hatred ceases by love”. You may remember that the Christian Teacher followed the same line of thought and He said: “Be not over­come of evil, but overcome evil with good”. That is Karma-Yoga. Forgive the injury; give love for hatred; overcome evil with good. In that way you eliminate the personal element; you will no longer feel angry because you are wronged; you will have purified away the personal element, and anger in you will no longer be of this lower kind. But still a form of anger may remain of a higher kind. You see a wrong done to the weak: you are angry with the wrongdoer; you see an animal ill-used: you are wrathful with the person who is cruel; you see a poor man oppressed: you are angry against the oppressor. Impersonal anger - far nobler than the other, and a necessary stage in human evolution; far nobler and better to be angry with a wrongdoer than pass by in stolid indifference, because you have no sympathy with the suffering that is inflicted. That higher, impersonal anger is nobler than indifference, but it is not the highest. It also in turn has to be changed, and it has to be changed into the quality of doing justice to the strong and the weak alike; which compassionate the wrongdoer as well as the wronged; which sees that he injures himself even more than the person whom he hurts; which is sorry for him as well as for the person who suffers under him; which embraces all, wrongdoer and sufferer, in one embrace of love and of justice. The man who has thus purified the passion of anger stops the wrong because it is his duty to stop it, and is gentle to the wrongdoer because he also must be helped and trained; thus what was anger striking back against a personal wrong becomes justice which stops all wrong and makes the strong and the weak equally safe and equally protected. That is the purification which is done in the world of action, that the line of daily effort by which the lower nature is purified in order that union may be attained.