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INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL CULTURE¹

Individual harmony is essential to family harmony; that of the family is essential to social harmony, social to national, and national to universal harmony among inhabitants of earth. The whole therefore proceeds from perfection in the individual and depends thereon. The individual consequently is moulded into a complete likeness of the whole. Now, there are two distinct classes of human beings, those who are victims of society, born under hostile circumstances and influences of past and present generations, and those who are born superior to circumstances—owing to favourable physical and mental organisations. Unhappy or evil consequences flow from unfortunately organised and situated individuals, while happy and good consequences are the outcome of those who are organised and situated fortunately. Being higher in the scale of development, the latter are receptacles of wisdom and knowledge, which it is their duty to impart to those less happily placed. The origin of social good and evil is here accounted for without reference to any complete or partial depravity of the human or the individual soul. If physical organisation is defective and progenitive dispositions are antagonistic to harmony, it does not follow that the soul itself is innately defective. If vitiating circumstances are overpowering to individual capacities and conditions, and if the person becomes their instrument, it does not

¹ See The Great Harmonia, Vol. II, pp. 123 et seq.

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follow that he is giving expression to carnal and depraved propensities. Nothing has been more misconceived than have the native capacities and attributes of our indwelling spiritual principle. Nothing trammels its impulses, or clouds the firmament of reason, like the hypothesis that all evil and disunity are developed by the perversity and inborn iniquity of the human heart.

There are three sources of evil: (1) Hereditary misdirection; (2) Educational misdirection¹; (3) Social misdirection. The disunity prevalent on earth is the result of conditions and circumstances which make affections evil rather than of evil affections. Man is an incarnated divinity; he is not intrinsically evil and cannot love anything intrinsically evil, though he may be bent or misdirected. The cure of evil can only be accomplished by removing these three causes of human misdirection. The indwelling forces of mind are pure and perfect in germ; they produce corresponding consequences in their proper development; but when a defective organisation, situation, or education urges the passion-forces into a state of inversion those evils are developed with which reformers contend. Hereditary

¹ The distinctions between false and true education are dealt with in Morning Lectures, on the symbolical theory that the human mind is a soil and is cultivated according to method. The truly educated are those who have come out from within, who have grown up from the condition of a mental quadruped by the development of their immortal faculties and attributes. The mind is liberated by true educational methods, not cramped and incarcerated, as happens too often in the case of a traditional curriculum. Its discipline has freedom for its object. It seeks to unfold and perfect from the properties and essences that are within. The true teachers are science and philosophy, which lead the mind into spheres of infinitude. The spirit is taught of these and becomes, under their auspices, its own instructor. There is a freedom herein, attainable by will-power and as a result of inward growth. Internal growth is the only real growth. We should start from this centre and so shall enter a region of higher convictions, which are gifts of the spirit to each, and all that belongs to bondage shall be put under our feet.—Op. cit., pp. 238-252.

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defects of organisation cannot be entirely removed, but those defects which grow out of vitiating situations or education may be overcome by natural and spiritual agencies, even as diseases are cured in the physical system. Happiness is the end of all human desire and endeavour, while spiritual culture is the agency by which it may be attained. The counsels are to work in all things for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, for the attainment of true happiness, for peace with oneself and the world; to be content with the past, thankful for the present, patient for the future and expectant toward all that it promises. To live thus is to live harmoniously; so living, each day will strengthen resolution, till a day will come when it shall be more difficult to go counter thereto than to obey its laws unfolding incessantly within. Live thus, and every morning the spirit will feel new and pure as an infant. Your companions will grow into your likeness, and discord will not enter your midst. Be simple-minded, willing to be taught, willing to forgive. Here lies the secret of harmony, and harmony is the most perfect form, the highest manifestation of wisdom and all her attributes. It is the guardian angel of universal love, who teaches that proper organisation, cultivation and direction of the soul, and her innate elements, which will unfold a just, beautiful and aspiring individual. When the individual is unfolded into harmony with himself he has grown into immediate connection with the spiritual world, into communion with its Maker. Harmony proceeds from God into the universe; the individual unfolds into harmony, and thus the animal becomes human; the human becomes the Divine, God and man unite, completing the chain of sympathy, and develop into one harmonious whole.

It requires little time to learn what is useful and just; and beauty, aspiration, harmony are explained in the fields of universal Nature, as in humanity. An harmonious individual is a revelation of Divine Mind. The science,

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chemistry and mechanism of creation are represented in the human form; the holy elements and attributes of God are incarnated in the human spirit. To be like heaven, let us aspire to heaven; to be like God, aspire to God. Harmony must begin with the individual, whence it will spread over families, societies and nations. Then the whole will represent the individual; the individual will reflect the whole; and God will be all in all.¹

¹ The question as to the mode in which individuality is attained by man is mentioned in one place. It is through a marriage of male and female, of the cerebrum and cerebellum. This marriage makes the soul an immutable unit or oneness, wherefore the soul lives when the body perishes. Again, the perfect marriage between cerebrum and cerebellum settles the question of the soul's individuality.—The Present Age and the Inner Life, pp. 408, 409.