The Key to Theosophy
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
1831
-1891
_______________________
The Key to Theosophy
By
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
On Charity
Q. How do you Theosophists regard the Christian duty of charity?
A. What charity do you mean? Charity of mind, or practical charity
in the
physical plane?
Q. I mean practical charity, as your idea of Universal brotherhood
would
include, of course,
charity of mind.
A. Then you have in your mind the practical carrying out of the
commandments
given by Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount?
Q. Precisely so.
A. Then why call them "Christian"? Because, although your
Savior preached and
practiced them, the
last thing the Christians of today think of is to carry them
out in their
lives.
Q. And yet many are those who pass their lives in dispensing
charity?
A. Yes, out of the surplus of their great fortunes. But point out to
me that
Christian, among the most philanthropic, who would give to the
shivering and
starving thief, who
would steal his coat, his cloak also; or offer his right
cheek to him who
smote him on the left, and never think of resenting it?
Q. Ah, but you must remember that these precepts have not to be
taken literally.
Times and circumstances have changed since Christ's day. Moreover,
He spoke in Parables.
A. Then why don't your Churches teach that the doctrine of
damnation and
hellfire is to be
understood as a parable too? Why do some of your most popular preachers, while
virtually allowing these "parables" to be understood as you take
them, insist on the literal meaning of the fires of Hell and the physical
tortures of an
"Asbestos-like" soul? If one is a "parable," then the other
is.
If Hellfire is a literal truth, then Christ's commandments in the
Sermon on the
Mount have to be obeyed to the very letter. And I tell you that
many who do not
believe in the
Divinity of Christ-like Count Leo Tolstoi and more
than one
Theosophist-do carry out these noble, because universal, precepts
literally; and
many more good
men and women would do so, were they not more than certain that such a walk in
life would very probably land them in a lunatic asylum-so Christian are your
laws!
Q. But surely everyone knows that millions and millions are spent
annually on
private and public
charities?
A. Oh, yes; half of which sticks to the hands it passes through
before getting
to the needy;
while a good portion or remainder gets into the hands of
professional beggars,
those who are too lazy to work, thus doing no good
whatever to those who
are really in misery and suffering. Haven't you heard that
the first result
of the great outflow of charity towards the East-end of
was to raise the
rents in Whitechapel by some twenty percent?
Q. What would you do, then?
A. Act individually and not collectively; follow the Northern
Buddhist precepts:
Never put food into the mouth of the hungry by the hand of another.
Never let the shadow of thy neighbor (a third person) come between
thyself and
the object of
thy bounty.
Never give to the Sun time to dry a tear before thou hast wiped it.
Again Never give money to the needy, or
food to the priest, who begs at thy door, through thy servants, lest thy money
should diminish gratitude, and thy food turn to gall.
Q. But how can this be applied
practically?
A. The Theosophical ideas of charity mean
personal exertion for others;
personalmercy and
kindness; personal interest in the welfare of those who
suffer; personal
sympathy, forethought and assistance in their troubles or
needs. It is
important to note that we Theosophists do not believe in giving
money, if we had
it, through other people's hands or organizations. We believe
in giving to
the money a thousandfold greater power and
effectiveness by our
personal contact and
sympathy with those who need it. We believe in relieving
the starvation
of the soul, as much if not more than the emptiness of the
stomach; for gratitude
does more good to the man who feels it, than to him for
whom it is felt.
Where's the gratitude which your "millions of pounds" should
have called
forth, or the good feelings provoked by them? Is it shown in the
hatred of the
East-End poor for the rich? In the growth of the party of anarchy
and disorder? Or
by those thousands of unfortunate working girls, victims to the
"sweating" system, driven daily
to eke out a living by going on the streets? Do
your helpless old
men and women thank you for the workhouses; or your poor for the poisonously
unhealthy dwellings in which they are allowed to breed new
generations of diseased,
and rickety children, only to put money into the
pockets of the
insatiable Shylocks who own houses? Therefore it is that every
sovereign of all those
"millions," contributed by good and would-be charitable
people, falls like
a burning curse instead of a blessing on the poor whom it
should relieve. We
call this generating national Karma, and terrible will be its
results on the day
of reckoning.
__________________________
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