Kenneth Small – USA
Spirit in Crisis – an Eighty Year Retrospective Overview
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change
the Buddha
The Challenge of Spiritual Renewal
A spiritual malignancy is loose (2025) that has evoked nihilistic advocacy and reactions. Some would argue that this is a counter reaction to the unbridled materialism and consumerism of the day. Yet the genuine counter evolutionary force needed is that of the resilient spiritual center of all life. The sacred brought back into its central position in daily living is the healing element for both nihilism and consumerism and their resultant outcome in global conflicts over land, resources, conflictive cultural issues tied to territory and ideologies. From what source is the restoration to bring healing and harmony?
An Inner Paradigm Shift
The courage to break through our habitual personal, national and cultural biases requires invoking within the inner depths of each of us, a profound spiritual renewal and inner paradigm shift. All ethics are rooted in our metaphysical views which arise out of our inner experience of innate empathy and compassion. What is our view of compassion? … is compassion and universal love, spiritually innate in the essence of our human being? The inner Perennial Traditions affirm this view. A contrived or manufactured pseudo compassion is often reflected in increased ‘group think’ and fixed ideas or even rigid dogmatism. The Zen saying “The good men of the village are the thieves of virtue” reflects this truth. When a metaphysical view arises that is dualistically based, it creates a repressed inner ‘shadow’, and the results are to automatically create external blame, that is projected onto a dehumanized rejected ‘other’. This inner spiritual denial unavoidably opens the door to self-justification and conflict. Dualistic ethical frameworks designed to exalt and justify dominance or even conquest, whether individual, group or national, only bring the result of perpetuating and maintaining a conflictive world. Authentic solutions with a concomitant universal view are found within the pervasive foundations of the inner spiritual traditions. Meister Eckhart gives the foundation where inner contemplation is seamless with its expression or activity; authentic contemplation spontaneously manifests the activity of great compassion. Eckhart’s eloquent aphorism on the paradox of the seamless view of self and ‘other’ succinctly expresses this:
The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love. [i]
From this same universal tradition within modern Theosophy, is a small book, Spirit in Crisis, which was written during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War 2 from 1940-45.
This short spiritually powerful document contains the deep reflections from the daily journal of Henk Oosterink[ii], who was the head of the Point Loma Theosophical Society in the Netherlands at that time. I am not aware of any other writings in modern Theosophy that give insight from the wisdom tradition of Theosophy within the contemplative experience of daily life within an occupied war and conflict zone. The wisdom and spiritual insight contained in its pages are deeply relevant for today’s (2025) conflicted world.
Herko Groot[iii] the Dutch astronomer, astro physicist and Theosophist, known for his insightful commentary on Plato writes in the introduction (1945) as follows:
The book places before its readers a curious paradox.
It was begun as an almost desperate attempt of the individual to keep his foothold in the sudden rapid flow of the events of time, which dragged with it so many reliable and seemingly well-founded certainties. The author who saw the world totter about him, wondered whether nothing that was really valuable and full of sense would remain. In the whirligig of the outward facts and events of the horrible war years he turned towards his own inward self and tried to ascertain if there perhaps the stability and certainty were to be found which had appeared to be a delusion in outward life. So the plan of the book might be called subjective and personal.
Moreover, there was no small danger that the book might degenerate into a flight from reality to a dream-world which would have few or no points of contact with daily life.
However, this danger was always distinctly present to the author's mind, and he immediately declares: "This book is no flight from reality."
No, its object, on the contrary, is to make use of reality - however hideously it might present itself as of a fixed point of support, on which the ladder of a higher spiritual consciousness can safely rest.
The author does not want to disguise or ignore the world-picture, but to grow above it by fixing his eyes upon that which is the timeless background of the eternal circle of creation, existence, decay -- a circle which forms the only reality with which our senses can bring us into contact.
However, how many people know and acknowledge the existence of this timeless background?
Large is the number of those who regard as an idle game of fancy, a beautiful but unreal dream, everything that is beyond sensory perception and not limited by time, space and mechanistic causality. To them the author says: "I do not write about unreal things. They are not far or strange." And indeed, he who allows the ever-rising flight of thoughts to act upon him, will come to the conclusion that this book deals not with unrealities, but with the most essential core of man.
And this is the paradox: the subjective, personal plan leads to views in which all personal experiences are raised to the level of the intimate union of man and man, nay, even of man and cosmos. Thus, the book ends in an emancipating statement, devoid of any personal sorrow or personal struggle, but which breathes quietude, and the certainty of him in whom sorrow as well as happiness have been transformed into a higher insight: "Though we seem separate beings, we form together the tissue of the universal consciousness; it pervades us, it raises us, it binds us. We are the facets through which the light shines in various colors and shades, in variegated diversity."
May this book, which comes straight from the author's heart, come into the hands of many searching, tired and mourning people, who have lost their way in the chaos of conflicting experiences in which the often cruel reality placed them; they will be able to find in it what is more than the opiate of consolation -- emancipating insight.
What follows are some excerpts from Spirit in Crisis[iv]:
People lack love. It is a spiritual poverty that is worse than material misery. Material poverty is its outcome.
There is a spiritual injustice that is worse than any social injustice.
Social injustice results from it, it is secondary. Let us then look for the primary causes and open our eyes to the world of the spirit by introspection, and when our eyes have opened, let us go to meet outward life with a word of love and understanding, ready to give a reply to the vital questions that are tormenting mankind, and to soften their grief.
Laotse as well as Jesus lived in a time that was as dark as the days in which we are living, and yet at their appearance a spiritual light was diffused in the hearts of men, and their lofty conception of life brought to millions a consolation they badly needed in their worst afflictions.
Forms disappear, life passes and destroys them, but above this passing life is the immortal eternal spirit, immutable, embracing and inspiring all alike, a light that shines forever.
Brotherhood, love of man for man -- in spite of social, cultural or spiritual differences, in spite of all sectarianism -- is the only basis for a just community.
Religion is a form in which religious man expresses his devotion to the supreme; what I have been looking for and have committed to paper is not the form, but the essence, the continuously renewed discovery of spiritual life, the holy joy flaming up from a growing realization of what man really is, an approach to, a closer contact with our true Self -- a penetration into the Kingdom of God, within ourselves.[v]
If man wants to create a better world, man must change himself, and he changes only through self-directed growth.
And this growth begins when man realizes who and what he is, when he allows himself to be affected by the powers of his soul, when he awakens himself and manifests what we call the beauty of the spirit. This is done by focusing all our thoughts on the spiritual splendor within ourselves, in other words by meditation.
A meditative life, a contemplative frame of mind does not lead us to a dream-world, nor does it mean an escape into other worlds; meditation may open up a real world, a world from which we can draw the power and certainty to overcome the difficulties of outward life that threaten to crush us.
Like the sunbeams which, touching the unruffled surface of a mountain lake, penetrate to the bottom, the light of the spirit illuminates the mind and heart of the man who sees life from a quiet and reflective standpoint.
When the storms of life rouse our emotions, carry us off and get a hold on us, we live helplessly in the shadows of a lightless existence.[vi]
Well, we, the part of us which has a name, our personality, which lives in the midst of these world-shaking events, we have to pass through this time. But with the knowledge of the boundless background of our being and the certainty of the unassailable peace of the spirit we shall try to be ourselves; that is, to be conscious in our highest Self.
We can find the way to it within ourselves and follow the still path which leads to the highest contemplation.
I want to work out this thought. I want to ask myself why life underwent this sudden change. Though people are startled and driven on by a sudden storm and life is still confused, these thoughts of the higher laws of life and the confidence in them will give us rest. We do not want to perish in a world of war, in a revolution.
Now that life suddenly has assumed vivid colors and people do not want to understand and love any longer, it is now that we must try to rise above it.[vii]
Although a hurricane may rage on the ocean, tossing the waves, the deep sea remains unperturbed. Thus it is in human life. In spite of all the tumult which surrounds us, Creation works on in silence. And in this creation Man lives, partly mortal, partly immortal.
We see the existing form, the personality, which has a name in life, but we do not see behind it, the nameless world of Man, from which he rises, from which he originates and derives his essence, a nameless world, the background of which is the whole creation, the Boundless Self. In the spaceless depth of the core of his soul, Man is eternal. Spaceless because it does not occupy space, deep because it embraces everything. He who looks into this nameless, boundless world of himself sees everything clearly and knows — in all peace — that all is well.
This world is unassailable, and it is the foundation of the outward life which changes and passes away. There, where silence reigns, Nature builds a temple of living bricks; all entities that are created are used in it; their consciousness grows and reflects with increasing clearness the light that shines eternally.
This is the essence of life itself. The divine forces inherent in Man and Cosmos drive Man along with irresistible power. The forces of eternal laws, that no man can escape, control Man's growth from inside. The evil that happens to Man is of his own making; it results from the infringement of these laws. So why should we worry? Who is able to come into touch with this deepmost life within ourselves; who can penetrate into the silence and peace that reign there?
When these days or years of trial have gone by, we shall have gained in inward strength. The stream of life will flow with greater force, because it had to flow narrowly between the rocks of our sorrow. But behind the sorrow of this life the compassionate forces of the soul are preparing a new future of spiritual growth that will come when a new feeling will touch the hearts of humanity.[viii]
Postscript
The Buddha who succinctly states: “Compassion is the foundation of peace.”[ix] also gives a clear admonition on the unwholesomeness of empathy and compassion denied:
Greed, hatred and delusion of every kind are unwholesome. Whatever action a greedy, hating and deluded person heaps up by deeds, words or thoughts that is unwholesome. But whenever such a person overpowered by greed, thought and delusions and his thoughts controlled by them inflicts under false pretexts upon another by killing, imprisonment, confiscation of property, false accusations or expulsion, that is all unwholesome.[x]
This mindful care of what is unwholesome opens the central place within the Buddhist worldview of the essential place and value of human compassion.
Meister Eckhart’s aphorism that “What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.” [xi] resonates and aligns with this inner essential element necessary to nurture inner peace and outer harmony in our world today and opens a contemplative doorway through which empathy can be cultivated.
Our individual, small and large activity of compassion holds the key to humanity’s future. Each of us has the responsibility of being humanity’s bus driver and our care and concern are essential to navigate these times of precarious uncertainty and to both nurture and retore empathy and compassion in our daily activity wherever the opportunity arises. We are enjoined to: “Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition. Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.” within the view of the paradox that “Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child.” and the ultimate view envisioning: “Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of LAWS – eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.” [xii]
FOOTNOTES
[i] Eckhart - Sermons
[ii] Henk Oosterink 188? – 195?
[iii] Herko Groot 1890 – 1974 author of over 40 books, including Why Theosophy and Plato and His Significance for our Time available form Blavatskyhuis in The Hague.
[iv] “Spirit in Crisis” (1945) by Henk Oosterink The full text is available here: "Spirit in Crisis" by H. Oosterink
[v] Spirit in Crisis by H. Oosterink – Theosophical University Press 1946
[vi] Spirit in Crisis by H. Oosterink – Theosophical University Press 1946
[vii] Spirit in Crisis by H. Oosterink – Theosophical University Press 1946
[viii] Spirit in Crisis by H. Oosterink – Theosophical University Press 1946
[ix] Buddha
[x] Quoted by Gabor Mate’
[xi] Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328) quoted in Civilization’s Quotations: Life’s Ideal, edited by Richard Alan Krieger (New York: Algora, 2002) 185.
[xii] The Voice of the Silence p. 31 - Blavatsky