METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS
Tat tvam asi
It is natural for us to make a firm distinction between our
study and our application of Theosophy, between theory and
practice. As a result, we contrast the capacities of the head and
the heart, and assume that we seek and secure different kinds of
nourishment from The Secret Doctrine and The Voice of the Silence.
At the same time, we also know that Theosophy is essentially the
Heart Doctrine, distinct from the head-learning with which our
world abounds. What is more, the whole purpose of Theosophical
discipline is to blend the head and the heart, to broaden our
mental sympathies and to awaken and direct the intelligence of
the heart. Does this simply mean that we need for conceptual
clarity the dualistic view of the spiritual life as long as we
remain as inwardly divided as we are, and that this dichotomy is
made only so that it may be destroyed as we become rooted in the
holiness that reflects an inner wholeness? It is certainly
convenient to regard all conceptual distinctions and
classifications as mere scaffoldings and to choose the best
available at any particular stage of our growth. But in order to
appreciate the distinctive significance of Theosophical
classifications, we cannot merely regard them like the maps of
early mariners, whose explorations needed as well as corrected
their initial cartographical knowledge. We need, in fact, to
acquire an entirely new and original view of the relation between
true metaphysics and enduring ethics and to appreciate the
profound epistemological nature and the peculiar therapeutic
value of Theosophical statements as indicated in the First Item
of The Secret Doctrine.
Metaphysics, as normally understood, is speculative rather
than gnostic and is often the product of the propensity to
subsume existing knowledge under a complete system, an imposing
pattern that is then ascribed to reality with a dogmatism that
pretends to a certainty that it cannot possibly possess. It is in
accord with cyclic law that this kind of metaphysical system-
building is suspect today and has even led to an extremist and
naively positivistic reaction among die-hard empiricists.
Similarly, ethics, in the everyday sense, consists of injunctions
and imperatives that are rarely susceptible of rational enquiry
and are either endowed with spurious absoluteness or are regarded
as relativist and subjectivist preferences, from which we choose
as from a menu. Given the pretentious nature of ordinary
metaphysics and conventional ethics, we can understand the
insistence of Hume, the sceptical Scot of the eighteenth century,
that metaphysical statements are a priori assertions that are
incapable of verification, that we cannot logically derive any
ethical imperatives either from them or from statements of fact,
and that our ethical preferences cannot possess certainty or
universality or freedom from arbitrariness. The metaphysical
assertion that "X is true or must be true" cannot help us to
answer the question "Why ought I to do Y?" It is indeed not
surprising that the speculations of most metaphysicians do not
give us a basis for moral conduct and moral growth, and that the
injunctions of many conventional ethical codes do not have their
basis in the moral and spiritual order of our law-governed cosmos.
In Theosophical literature, however, every metaphysical
statement has an ethical corollary and connotation, and every
ethical injunction has a distinct metaphysical basis. It is
impossible to grasp the force of any of the seven paramitas of
The Voice of the Silence without a comprehension of the Three
Fundamental Propositions regarding God, Nature and Man that
underlie the order of reality intimated by the Stanzas of the
Book of Dzyan, on which The Secret Doctrine is closely based.
Theosophical literature assumes, as shown especially by Light on
the Path, the truth and validity of the Socratic axiom "Knowledge
is virtue." For example, to know, with the heart as well as the
head, and to be fully aware that the sin and the shame of the
world are verily our own must totally transform our actions as
well as our attitudes in relation to all our fellow men and also
to our own sins and lower self. We cannot rely on that which is
not real, in an ultimate and philosophical sense. Theosophical
ethics teaches the only possible reliance — on the Divine Ground
of all Being and beyond — that is available to those who become
aware of the degrees of reality in an ever-evolving universe that
is itself only a relatively real emanation from the Eternal
Reality. Our conduct consists of emanations that cannot but harm
us and others if they are not emanated in the creative and
impersonal manner and with the conscious control that marks the
ceaseless process of cosmic emanations from a single source —
Life of our life, Force of our force. Until we are free from the
dire heresy of separateness (attavada), we cannot claim to have
grasped the doctrine of samvriti or of the nidanas that teaches
us about the origins of delusions and chains of causation. To
know is to become, and to become is truly to know.
In an illuminating passage in The Secret Doctrine on the
Causes of Existence" and on the Buddhist concept of nidana and
the Hindu concept of maya, H.P. Blavatsky said that science and
religion, in trying to trace back the chain of causes and effects,
jump to a condition of mental blankness much more quickly than is
necessary,
for they ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only
conceivable cause of physical concretions. These abstractions
become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of
existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the
material Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into
physics.
The Secret Doctrine, i 45
If we consider this even as a logical possibility, then
clearly the knowledge of these metaphysical abstractions gained
and given by trained Initiates is epistemologically prior to the
external order of reality in the material universe. Such
metaphysics, the product of intuitive apprehension and capable of
patient verification by the extrasensory experiences of
independently acting individuals, is different in kind from the
speculative metaphysics of the ordinary variety and is more
analogous to the methods of investigation of the greatest natural
scientists. This is why we are told that
it is difficult to find a single speculation in Western
metaphysics which has not been anticipated by Archaic Eastern
philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is all a more or
less distorted echo of the Dwaita, Adwaita, and Vedantic
doctrines generally.
The Secret Doctrine, i 79
The very nature of Theosophical metaphysics is such that we
cannot approach it merely with the head, independently of the
heart. The purely ratiocinative and intellectualist approach to
ordinary metaphysics is itself the result of "the inadequate
distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western
metaphysicians", so that "the philosophy of psychic, spiritual,
and mental relations with man's physical functions is in almost.
inextricable confusion". Our metaphysical conceptions are clearly
conditioned by our own mental development and cannot have the
absolute validity that we claim for them. This is especially true
of the evolution of the GOD-IDEA. Hence, says Theosophy, for
every thinker there will be a "Thus far shalt thou go and no
farther", mapped out by his intellectual capacity.
Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary religious
thought must always have their wings clipped and remain unable to
soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and
even free-thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product
of their respective environments and periods.
The Secret Doctrine, i 326
Not merely does modern metaphysics fall far short of the
truth, but even its basic concepts and usages of terms like
'Absolute', 'Nature' and 'matter' are shallower and cruder than
their corresponding concepts propounded by the Theosophical
Adepts. Initiation into Theosophical metaphysics is more than an
intellectual or moral enterprise; it is a continuous spiritual
exercise in the development of intuitive and cognitive capacities
that are the highest available to men, a process that includes
from the first a blending of the head and the heart through the
interaction of viveka and vairagya, discrimination and detachment.
Even our initial apprehension of a statement of Theosophical
metaphysics involves an ethical as well as mental effort, just as
even the smallest application of a Theosophical injunction to our
moral life requires some degree of mental control and the deeper
awareness, universal and impersonal in nature, that comes from
our higher cognitive capacities. Moral growth, for a Theosophist,
presupposes the silent worship of abstract or noumenal Nature,
the only divine manifestation", that is "the one ennobling
religion of Humanity.
Despite its contempt for metaphysics and for ontology,
materialistic science is honeycombed with metaphysical and
contradictory implications, and even its 'atoms' are 'entified
abstractions'. "To make of Science an integral whole necessitates,
indeed, the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as physical
Nature." But although real science is inadmissible without
metaphysics, and those scientists who trespass on the forbidden
grounds of metaphysics, who lift the veil of matter and strain
their eyes to see beyond, are "wise in their generation", H.P.
Blavatsky declared towards the end of The Secret Doctrine that
the man of exact science must realize that
he has no right to trespass on the grounds of metaphysics and
psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts
that fall under his direct observation; to profit by the
experiences and mistakes of the Past in endeavouring to trace the
working of a certain concatenation of cause and effects, which,
but only by its constant and unvarying repetition, may be called
A LAW. . . . Any sideway path from this royal road becomes
speculation.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 664
It is a sign of advance that scientists today are less given
than their predecessors in the latter half of the nineteenth
century to "metaphysical flights of fancy". Bad metaphysics is
clearly worse than none. On the other hand, as modern psychology
becomes less materialistic and as race evolution proceeds, a
greater appreciation of the higher intuitive and cognitive
capacities will emerge and may enable the most intuitive
scientists to venture more effectively into metaphysics.
It is, therefore, necessary for students of Theosophy to see
the fundamental difference between what goes by the name of
metaphysics and has rightly become suspect today, and the
"metaphysics, pure and simple", with which The Secret Doctrine is
concerned. We cannot, however, grasp the metaphysics given in
Theosophical teachings unless we perceive its close and
inseparable connection with Theosophical ethics. We are told in
The Secret Doctrine that the "highly philosophical and
metaphysical Aryans" were the authors of "the most perfect
philosophical systems of transcendental psychology" and of "a
moral code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Müuller the most perfect on
earth". Without a proper understanding of Theosophical psychology
and the teachings regarding the nature and constitution of man
and the working of karmic law, we cannot appreciate the
metaphysical basis of Theosophical ethics or the ethical
significance of Theosophical metaphysics. Hence the importance of
a careful study and application, from the first, of the Ten Items
from Isis Unveiled or the Propositions of Oriental Psychology,
and of the Aphorisms on Karma by W.Q. Judge. Until this is done,
we cannot begin to see the ethical import of the statements in
The Secret Doctrine or the metaphysical basis of the statements
in The Voice of the Silence and Light on the Path.
We are told explicitly in The Secret Doctrine that "to make
the workings of Karma, in the periodical renovations of the
Universe, more evident and intelligible to the student when he
arrives at the origin and evolution of man, he has now to examine
with us the esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal
Ethics". Our ethical progress depends on an increasing awareness
of the "cycles of matter" and the "cycles of spiritual evolution",
and of racial, national and individual cycles. The kernel of
Theosophical ethics is contained in the statement that "there are
external and internal conditions which affect the determination
of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow
either of the two". This contains a great metaphysical and
psychological truth, which is illuminated by the seminal article
on "Psychic and Noetic Action", written, late in life, by H.P.
Blavatsky, the Magus-Teacher of the 1875 cycle.
Theosophical ethics is in the end no easier to understand
properly than Theosophical metaphysics. It can no more be grasped
by the mentally lazy than Theosophical metaphysics can be
comprehended by the morally obtuse. There is nothing namby-pamby
about Theosophical ethics and it is as fundamentally different
from conventional ethics as Theosophical metaphysics is from
conventional metaphysics. Just as modern metaphysics is a shadowy
distortion of archaic metaphysics, modern ethics is a sad
vulgarization of the archaic ethics taught by the early religious
Teachers of humanity. It is to be welcomed that more and more
questioning people today are less and less prepared to accept
blindly conventional ethical codes merely because they are traced
back to so-called scriptural revelations, just as they have
little use for the metaphysical speculations of even the
formidable minds of the past. If the ethical nihilism of today is
even more repugnant to the Theosophist than sterile positivism,
he would do well to regard both as the karmic price we have to
pay for the moral and metaphysical dogmatism of the past.
Although we may talk of Theosophical metaphysics and
Theosophical ethics, and classify texts broadly under these heads,
we must get beyond the conventional distinction between
metaphysical and ethical statements and grasp central concepts,
such as Dharma and Karma, which are protean in scope and profound
in content, and incapable of being regarded as purely
metaphysical or exclusively ethical. It is significant that the
supposedly anti-metaphysical and superbly moral teaching of the
Buddha was centred in the complex concept of Dharma rather than
in Brahman or moksha, in the stern law of moral compensation and
universal causality, rather than in a conception of infinite
Deity constructed by the finite mind of man or in any notion of
salvation or redemption which caters to the spiritual selfishness
of the individual.
In the European tradition, a natural reaction to theocentric
systems of thought was the Cartesian affirmation of the autonomy
of the individual in relation to knowledge and the later Kantian
proclamation of the autonomy of the individual in relation to
morality. The Theosophist, however, holds to the Pythagorean and
ancient Eastern maxim that man is the mirror and microcosm of the
macrocosm. It is in this context that he must evolve from egoism
to egoity, from personal self-love to individual self-
consciousness, which is impossible without a heart-understanding
of the Law of Universal Unity and Moral Retribution. The close
connection between metaphysics and ethics in Theosophy is
ultimately based on the workings of Universal Law, which affects
the exact and occult correspondences between the constituents of
man and of the cosmos. This ancient doctrine of correspondences
has been ignored by modern metaphysicians and moralists, but it
was known to modern mystics and poets from Boehme to Swedenborg,
Blake to Baudelaire.
Hermes, May 1975
Raghavan Iyer
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