JUNE 2011
ON THE NATURE OF WISDOM
[The use of the term ‘Man’ refers to the real man who is the thinker. Therefore, it includes men and women, the young and the old.]
There is no end to the search for wisdom.
There are two kinds of wisdom: the terrestrial (lower) and Spiritual (Higher).
Wisdom can be shared; it cannot be imparted. Only the path to Wisdom can be imparted.
Knowledge is learned from the outside; Wisdom comes from within.
Wisdom is the child of experience and must be lived in order to be realized.
The Higher Wisdom is beyond Space and Time; it is eternal and universal; it illuminates every part of life.
A Wise Man knows that the Divine Spirit is within himself. He is not separate from It, even if he is unaware of Its presence. He knows that the Divine Spirit is within all beings and therefore we are all brothers from One Divine Source.
A Wise Man knows that all men are Divine in essence; he does not merely believe it. The realization comes from living accordingly and loving and serving all beings as our brothers.
A Wise Man knows that hope and responsibility are based on an eternal divine law that moves to good, justice, harmony and balance.
A man may be ignorant of this law and act in opposition to it and suffer accordingly. But a Wise Man knows this law and lives according to this law and serves it. He prospers accordingly. “As a man sows, so shall he also reap.”
A Wise Man knows that hope and responsibility are not merely high sentiments. They are facts. He has hope because he knows that if he acts in harmony with Divine Law, there is no power on earth that can prevent the accomplishment of his goal. He has responsibility because he knows that being one with the Divine Source and Origin of Divine Law, he must act accordingly.
A Wise Man realizes this hope and responsibility because he has tested, checked and verified this law for himself. There is not a moment of our lives where we cannot be checking and applying this law.
A Wise Man knows his purpose in life. He knows that there are no special gifts or privileges. All is earned through self- induced and self-devised effort. If one seems to be favored, it is the result of previous effort.
A Wise Man knows that is he is responsible for his destiny, he must know his purpose in life. His purpose in life is not merely to have fun, and to aspire to gain the most toys, money, power and fame.
Life is a school. A Wise Man knows that his purpose is to learn. He needs to learn his unity with the Divine Spirit, all Men and beings and all of life. He also need to learn how to help and teach others to realize this wisdom.
The highest mark of wisdom is not what one knows, but how well one can lift others to the realization of wisdom.
~~~~True wisdom of a spiritual kind is freedom from self-esteem, hypocrisy, and injury to others; it is patience, sincerity, respect for spiritual instructors, purity, firmness, self-restraint, dispassion for objects of sense, freedom from pride, and a meditation upon birth, death, decay, sickness, and error; ... it is a never-ceasing love for me alone, the self being effaced, and worship paid in a solitary spot, and a want of pleasure in congregations of men; it is a resolute continuance in the study of Adhyâtma, the Superior spirit, and a meditation upon the end of the acquirement of a knowledge of truth; this is called wisdom or spiritual knowledge; its opposite is ignorance. - The Bhagavad-Gita
~~~~The discoveries of the age are already whole centuries in advance of its ethical culture, and the knowledge that should place still further power in the hands of a few individuals whose ethical code is below, rather than above, that of the ignorant, toiling, suffering masses, could only minister to anarchy and increase oppression. On these higher planes of consciousness the law of progress is absolute; knowledge and power go hand in hand with beneficence to man, not alone to the individual possessors of wisdom, but to the whole human race. The custodians of the higher knowledge are equally by both motive and development almoners of the divine. - W.Q.J.: Synthesis of Occult Science
~~~~Not only in the Theosophical Society, but out of it, are tyros in Occultism. They are dabblers in a fine art, a mighty science, an almost impenetrable mystery. The motives that bring them to the study are as various as the number of individuals engaged in it, and as hidden from even themselves as is the center of the earth from the eye of science. Yet the motive is more important than any other factor. ....Meanwhile the world of real occultists smiles silently, and goes on with the laborious process of sifting out the living germs from the masses of men. For occultists must be found and fostered and prepared for coming ages when power will be needed and pretension will go for nothing. - W.Q.J.: Occultism: What Is It?