Boris de Zirkoff – USA
Unique photo of the author while visiting the Cathedral (Il Duome) of Milan-Italy, accompanied by Axel von Fielitz-Coniar, a former General Secretary of the Adyar TS in Germany. Photo taken on May 26, 1959. (special thanks to Kenneth Small)
[Note from the editor. Theosophy Forward regularly publishes articles written by Boris de Zirkoff. The author is primarily known in theosophical circles as the compiler and editor of the Collected Writings which is to be considered to be his “life’s work” Compiling H.P.B.’s work undoubtedly was a phenomenal achievement, but there was so much more de Zirkoff should be recognized for. He was an outstanding speaker, travelled to and lectured in various countries, he wrote a number of books and edited his own magazine Theosophia from 1944 until his death in 1981. Your editor finds that this part of his legacy is surprisingly current and apt still, taken the fact that it was written decades ago. The article below is based upon a tape recording of a private talk given by Boris de Zirkoff. It was initially transcribed on June 30, 1973, by Eldon Tucker, then later edited for publication].
For more on Boris de Zirkoff follow this link: https://theosophy.wiki/en/Boris_de_Zirkoff
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I was thinking the other day, friends, about the practical value of the Ancient Wisdom, the practical application of its Teachings. I think we're all prone, only too often, to indulge in a great deal of intellectual thought, which is good in its place, no doubt, and to forget or disregard or perhaps minimize the fact -- the important fact -- that the power of the Teachings consists in their practical application. By practical application I mean the utilizing of the philosophy of the Ancient Wisdom in the event that's before us in life. It is similar to the ability to use tools to produce mechanical work or results.
Whether you use tools of the psychological, the intellectual, or the spiritual part of our constitution -- regarding which we do not know very much -- regarding which, of course, we are far behind as compared with the considerable success we have reached on purely mechanical and material lines in the utilization of material tools. Essentially the idea is the same.
When a problem arises in mechanical lines, it cannot be solved unless you know what the problem is all about, and unless you have the tools with which to solve it. Suppose it was a question of building something, or of repairing something, or of starting something new. It is also impossible to solve a psychological, an intellectual, or a spiritual problem unless you can define it first, unless you can see it at a distance, unless you can be detached enough from it and look upon it impartially enough to see it in all its various facets, even though imperfectly. Then, it cannot be solved without finding the necessary tools with which to work at it.
Now there are certain things in the human character which very few people would consider -- unless they are students -- to be definite tools to work with; nevertheless, they are. One of them is a calm attitude toward the problem. Some people would interpret to be almost a negative attitude: instead of going and doing something we are told to become calm about it. That is a very important tool of operation: an attitude of serene and calm observation, the attitude of a spectator who doesn't get enmeshed in the problem, but looks upon it from the high vantage point of the real individuality within himself. The problem is something that may involve other people, or it may involve no one but you. It usually does involve other people, and therefore of course you cannot become completely detached, but you can be detached at least to some extent.
Now just think. If you are so completely attached to and involved in the problem, or in the thing that happens to you, you cannot have a perspective of it; you are too close. It is the case of a man coming up to look at a picture that hangs on the wall, and he is two inches away from it. He doesn't see the picture. But if he goes at a certain distance, he has a perspective of that picture. Therefore if we can disentangle our emotions from the problem that is facing us, we begin to see it in perspective. And then we see aspects of it which we didn't see otherwise when there was no perspective.
There are paintings that are painted with no perspective; they make no sense. There are others which are marvels of perspective in which everything stands out in its right proportion. As soon as we are able to see our problem in perspective by having detached ourselves from it -- relatively speaking, not wholly -- it has assumed a different proportion. That's one point.
The other point is that we have seen in it, we're beginning to see in it, aspects and factors which we didn't see before. We also see that problem in its relation to other things in life. That is very important because everything is related with everything else. If we can see the relation of that problem to other facets or events in our own life and in the life of others, we have acquired already a certain mastery over the problem. We have gathered aid; we have understood, or are about to understand a deeper meaning attached to it.
Now the other thing about this subject is that whatever takes place in our lives is called forth into manifestation by ourselves and by no one else. We may be experiencing the seeming onslaught of inimical forces; that's an illusion. That is an absurd philosophy which is no philosophy at all, suitable to thoughtless people. Thoughtless people are also weak people. They have discovered no cause or causes for things and therefore no causes for their lives. They do not think. They emote.
So you are faced with an onslaught of inimical forces. Why should we make the capital philosophical mistake of imagining that such a thing exists? It is a pure delusion. There isn't a thing that can come our way that isn't our own. The very natural and automatic reaction of the imperfect personality through which we all function is to put up an opposition, an instinctive psychological opposition to something unpleasant that is taking place around it and that is directed toward it, an automatic erecting of a battlement, of an embankment, of a fortification to protect oneself against the seeming onslaught.
But suppose we were to practice the very subtle, spiritual psychology of nonresistance, so that at least intellectually we would welcome the unpleasant event, forces, circumstances, or people as merely an extension of ourselves, as merely something that we have set into operation at one time or another, and which at this particular point is coming into fruition, but is our own.
What would be the result of that attitude? First of all, our emotions would become quiet. We would resign ourselves or accept a fact of nature. Second, we would be able to generate, within ourselves, the quality of forgiveness of wrong, which is one of the basic powers of the spiritual Self.
It is difficult for me to find the words to express this subtle idea unfamiliar to the Western mind. When I chafe against something, when I fret against something, when I am deeply hurt and resent it, I build a barrier between it and myself. When I refuse to feel resentment, and build deliberately an attitude of mind which is characterized by understanding of the weaknesses of others, pity for their ignorance, regret for their selfishness, and determine that I will deliberately practice nonresistance, I'm generating within myself a center of spiritual force which through the subtle alchemy of nature has a tremendous effect upon the so-called, the seeming forces and people who are leading an onslaught against me.
Remember than there is no separateness in nature, there is absolutely no separateness anywhere. You can't say if you are a philosopher: "This is I, and that is he, or she, or other." There is no such separateness. They are the extension of myself and I am an extension of them. They may be perfect brutes, or they may be silly asses, or they may be more intelligent and wiser than I -- either way -- or we may be fairly equal with each other, and similar, but the point is that there is no separation between us, there are only degrees of knowledge, which means also degrees of ignorance.
There is a very profound Buddhist Esoteric Doctrine regarding the great emptiness. They call it in Sanskrit sunyata, emptiness or vacuity. It has many aspects. That Teaching has some aspects of the cosmic kind, pertaining to the nature and structure of worlds.
But another aspect refers to you and me, our consciousness. If we can transcend, or try to transcend, the conception of the personal "I," to transcend our limitations and strongly imagine ourselves to be completely empty, empty of all personal limitations and infinite in consciousness, we can take the mental attitude something like this: that nothing seemingly coming to me from the outside can hurt me, because I'm so immense in consciousness that I can absorb it and a thousand times more than it into the infinite depth of my being, swallow it up because it is my own anyway, and move on.
It undermines the Western view of the necessity of a struggle, that life is a struggle. Life is not a struggle; the reaction of us, our reaction to many things that take place in Nature is such that it eventuates in a struggle, but life, cosmic life, is not a struggle. There is nothing in cosmic life than fights something else. On a small, little human scale we have erected barriers of ignorance and selfishness which Nature in its wisdom is trying to level down, and the process is so unpleasant to our personalities that we experience suffering and pain when Nature in its totality is trying to level down our self-erected barriers, which are only barriers of an illusory nature.
Now does that mean that an out-and-out student of Theosophy who is trying to live the Teachings to the best of his ability is absolutely, irretrievably, and forever opposed to fighting anything, or fighting for anything? No. Is he supposed to be constantly dedicated and devoted to peace? Yes. The point is that the word "fight" has to be defined. The word "peace" has to be defined.
It is obvious of course than we as students of Theosophy are not going to use violent means of struggle, violent means. Peace and goodwill are not achieved by doing nothing. Therefore, there is nothing negative in the concept of peace: peace is a positive spiritual force. You cannot achieve peace by not fighting. If you do not fight all that can be said of you is that you are holding to a condition of armed waiting. That is not peace. Peace is not the opposite of "fight." Peace is a spiritual force which is outgoing, dynamic, harmonious, and can outdo, outwit, and counteract anything that is disharmonious, an evil, without the slightest struggle, because it is a powerful spiritual force.
Now the idea of fighting simply has to be reconsidered in the case of us students of the Ancient Wisdom. We should never allow ourselves to be walked over. That is not peace. The point is that if we can arouse within ourselves an attitude detached enough, impersonal enough, strong enough in spiritual conviction in what is true, we are saturating the actual aura, the actual auric atmosphere surrounding us with a positive spiritual force which on its outer peripheries repels any inimical energy directed toward it without doing the slightest thing in the nature of a struggle.
These are all -- I grant you -- a number of paradoxes, but they are well worth thinking over and meditating about. They are paradoxical. They are subtle. Truth is paradoxical and very subtle. Only the brain-mind conceptions of the Western type are fairly clear-cut. Because they are clear-out and definite, they are limited. Because they are clear-out and limited, they are insufficient. They are too clear. They are too simple. Anything that is paradoxical simply shows that there are many aspects to a truth. And everything that is subtle simply shows that there are many levels to its understanding. I personally would be very chary about anything that is too clear, too definite, too well outlined, because I would know that it would be unsatisfactory and would fail me sooner or later because it is incomplete.
Now the other point is that we as students should never lose sight of the fact that our difficulties are originated by us, and it would be the greatest injustice for some third party to blame us for originating our own difficulties. That is not a matter of blaming. It is rather a subject for higher esteem and consideration.
I'll put it now somewhat differently. If you find a student whose life is harmonious and nothing particularly startling happens in it, there are no great problems and nothing occurs over a period of time, you can be dead sure that individual is passing through a period of relative stagnation. If you look a little closer into his life, why, he has moss growing all over him. The student whose life exhibits from time to time periodically cycles of struggle, sudden or progressively rising and falling and rising again, you can be sure that the student is growing, because every struggle is self-brought about, every struggle is the result of a challenge he has pronounced or stated or made within himself, a challenge of the higher toward the lower within himself. That kind of a challenge is not a matter of words. It is an inner attitude. A challenge is an inner spiritual, intellectual, and also psycho-magnetic attitude, an attitude which brings to the fore, brings forward and exteriorizes elements of unspent, delayed karma.
The individual who has the power to make the challenge, or a number of successive challenges which will result in periodic cycles of struggle, is an individual who is a strong character, or he is about to gain now strength. Therefore, as a deduction, no troubles, no struggles and no great problems ever arise in the lives of weaklings. It would be utterly illogical and utterly impossible in the very workings of universal laws to find any problem in the lives of weaklings because they wouldn't have the strength to meet them. There is nothing in our lives that ever comes into fruition except parallel and simultaneous with the appearance of a greater strength within us with which to meet the problem that has just been exteriorized. Do I make myself clear on that?
Now when a problem or event or struggle is exteriorized from within our inner consciousness as a part of our own consciousness, it's got to come through somebody else. It's got to appear in the illusory form of other people. Illusory, I said, because other people are an extension of ourselves, and there is no separateness between them and me. None. The illusory impression is an onslaught from without: loss of fortune, loss of work, death of loved ones, impossible psychological tangles, physical disease, terrible accidents, a combination of them, or perhaps an inner struggle to the death that others do not know anything about and do not even notice. An inner struggle; no outside complications, but nevertheless brought about by something seemingly from outside of us which people may not know a thing by looking at you.
Whatever the problem may be, I see a shortcut to its solution. I think that the shortcut to its solution lies in the recognition that within the rough and barbed-wire appearance there is hiding itself a friend, a friendly force testing our weaknesses, trying to balance our disharmonies, testing the validity of our convictions, balancing the opposites. That friendly force is invariably a spiritual influx from your own inner Self, because there is nothing from outside, that could possibly reach you, that isn't your own. Therefore the only logical attitude in these conditions is to act with as much calm and quiet and composure and serenity as your spiritual will can command. The moment that an individual goes down to the level of emotion, he is as good if not worse -- as bad I should say if not worse -- than his seeming opponent.
If we can combine an attitude of inner serenity, great interest in what is going on, an attitude of welcoming the circumstance because it is one more link in the karmic chain to be harmonized, disentangled, made into a harmonious result and passed over and forgotten eventually. If we can welcome this thing as a means of growth, if we can add to this a certain degree of indifference -- you see the paradox, I said to be very interested in it, now I say to be indifferent to it. Now you'll have to figure that out for yourself. You can be interested in something -- very much -- but quite indifferent as to what might be the result of it. It's paradoxical, but if you'll think this out very carefully you'll find that there is something in it. Be interested in what goes on but be indifferent to the result.
We can add to this an attitude of resignation, an attitude which has nothing that is negative to it. It is simply the acceptance of the working out of the pattern of your own life. You cannot change that pattern to the extent to which you have already built it, but you can constantly build a new one. But the pattern, as far as it concerns past events, is unalterable. But your attitude to the event is in your hands, you can do anything with it, the attitude to the event.
Now there is something else, and that is the final thought on that. That is that, given any kind of a struggle or problem in your life, there is some principle involved which you have to defend. Don't forget that by defending an impersonal principle of justice or truth you have on your side the totality of universal forces which are working in that direction. No matter what might be the seeming-and-temporary, illusory outcome, you cannot lose. It has got to be a principle of universal justice or of truth, not a point of personal gain -- that's not the idea.
But if a principle of universal justice or truth is involved, you are bound to win. When? Tomorrow; next week; next year? Don't think in these terms. That's completely and utterly immaterial. You can win the thing in one minute, or you may not win it at all -- seemingly so -- only to find that your defeat became a victory and the seeming triumphant victory of the others has resulted in perfect and irremediable defeat, another paradox.
I love to see people triumphant, carrying banners of great glory, having defeated their enemy. I like to see it because I know that their hour has come. They are the losers. The individual who can say: "Well, that was a hard struggle, and I don't exactly know how I came out of this, but it was a valiant one. It looks as if -- well I wasn't very much of a success, yes I did win a few points but on the whole I was defeated." That man is the winner. Another paradox. Think it over. It works. It works particularly with students of the Ancient Wisdom.
And perhaps a final thought in that in every struggle that we as students have -- whether known to others or known only to ourselves, and especially in the case of those who are in dead earnest to become nobler, better, to become building bricks of a new age, particularly in the case of those, and through the various struggles that they go through, as though there's someone watching, invariably, invariably the student is under observation.
How is he going to act? Is he going to act according to the great principles that he professes or is he going to run under cover until the storm is over? What does the man on the ship do when the storm is on? He'll protect himself, yes, and if necessary he might even go down and close the hatch. He is not letting the ship run wild in the storm. He nevertheless continues to port if possible at all. To protect himself to some extent, yes, but he continues to port.
And what about us? Invariably we are under observation at those critical times, and that observation is always the kindliness, the most felicitous. If we allow, if we permit it, if we leave the channel open, an unexpected help comes just where it was the least expected. An unexpected help comes when it was the least expected showing that somebody else cares almost more than we do, almost more than we do, cares about the right outcome of a struggle wherein a principle is involved.
Don't confuse this now with any kind of a struggle that we may have because we have brought upon ourselves sickness, disease, and troubles by doing wrong. No. Nobody's watching to help us then, because we're just meeting the results of our own foolishness. I'm speaking now of nobler, higher things, contentions and struggles in our lives where principles are involved and where seemingly inimical circumstances -- seemingly -- exteriorize outwardly a climacteric point in our own personal karma, which point when passed over becomes a stepping stone to us and to some other people maybe so that we can look back and see and say: "Oh, yes, here instead of tripping on this thing, I stepped on it. I see my own skin that I threw off like a snake. My own leopard-skin; I am now in a fresher skin, a greater, better man. I stepped right through that struggle, and the road is clearer ahead." I hope I'm making myself understood, though I spoke on many points somewhat cryptically; yet I hope that it was clear enough to give you at least some food for thought.
What we have touched upon today at the beginning of the meeting of course, friends, is applicable on a very large scale as well. The struggles that we have in our own lives are exemplified on a larger scale as the struggle between groups of mankind, fragments of the same humanity. Brothers fighting brothers, extensions of each other, unable to realize through the illusions of selfishness that they are practically identical with each other, that there is less difference among all of us the world over than there are between two species of a dog, much less. Yet, immersed in the ignorance, in the illusion of separateness, striving for practically the same ends, very similar ends, and not seeing it, we lambaste each other because we're not doing it exactly in the same way.
I really think that if there is such a thing as a man coming out of a flying saucer, and if he has the power to look upon our various motives and plans and objectives, he'll probably realize with a detached viewpoint, he'll see that we are all striving to achieve the same thing, the same sort of life: a life of abundance and peace and good will and integration and build something new and better. That we are doing it or trying to do so in various ways which are disliked by the respective people, and they are hurt by the way it's being done. It is the same thing that they are all trying to do.
There isn't a nation in the world that is trying to move backwards. There isn't a group of humanity anywhere that is trying to destroy everybody else, or that is trying to build up a civilization that would be the representative of the embodiment of every evil conceivable. They are all trying to better themselves. They do this mostly on the material plane, but not exclusively. Some do it more on the intellectual, some more on the artistic, some more on the social, and of course a great deal on the physical.
But they are caught, have been caught for a long time in the mistaken idea that each one, each one of the major ones has some kind of a holy mission to perform, and is the savior of mankind. The English have felt that way; the Germans have felt that way; the Russians have had that thing for more than 200 years in their reign; the Americans are feeling that way from another angle; the Hindus. How many more are there fired by some illusory idea that they have a special mission, a mission that cannot be duplicated by anybody, convinced that they are the builders of the one and only great civilization that is to be forced upon everybody else?
As a matter of fact, this thing can be traced over thousands of years as a national and universal delusion. If we could only find the means to make the great masses of people realize that they are all striving for exactly the same thing, barring minor differences, so that we can hold hands together and march together toward that great objective. It's bound to come. It's got to come.
How much easier it would be to do this peacefully than to do it eventually with bloody noses, flattened heads and worse. The struggles that we have in our own lives, they have an analogy in the lives of nations, they too are tested. They too bring out from within their national karma, these exteriorizations of delayed karmic action, which they have to meet. Nations are entities; they are entities; they build molds and these molds work certain forces.
Anyway, it's a big subject. I think that we would do very well if we took more seriously in our daily meditations the paramount thought that we all are but rays from the same Sun. That we are all not only brothers but actually manifestations of the same underlying spiritual reality. That the things that make us dislike each other at times are the limitations of our personalities and not the all-embracing oneness of our spiritual selfhood.
From one angle it's high metaphysics, from another angle it's applicable in the daily affairs of our lives. Some people might say: "Oh, what a strange idea that is." So what! All the great ideas have appeared strange at one time or another when they were unfamiliar to people. People have familiarized themselves with them, and the ideas have become -- certain ideas have become -- a household word.
And also never to lose sight of the thought, of the realization that in everything we are struggling for that involves a high and noble motive we are never alone, never at any time. The laws of the universe would be a sad, sad failure if we could disregard our struggle for principles and truth. As the world is based upon these laws, such a thing is impossible. Every time we reach out toward truth through a struggle, trying to obtain a stronger hold upon truth, every time we assert, quietly but firmly -- quietly but firmly -- conviction in a spiritual principle of action, you have in league with us the totality of the universal evolutionary stream that runs in that direction. What other allies can we wish for in addition to the totality of the universal forces that are working for the good of all that lives and for the embodiment of light and truth in that evolutionary journey?