The Theosophical Forum – May 1940

LIGHT THE WAY FOR THE "LOST" — Raymond Rugland

Look deep within your soul and bring forth that vast Love that you have kindled for mankind, and let it manifest. With the zeal that you seek the spiritually stronger for guidance and inspiration, look for the weaker — find them in the slums, the gambling halls, the prisons; look for the others led astray, and be not surprised if your search takes you within the austere gates of universities. Know that there is but one Way — the way of the chela. With the growth of your own soul, your love has reached out to embrace all, and call them "brothers."

Remember well those days when you groped for the Light in Darkness, when you were a "lost" pilgrim as are the struggling souls that you see about you. Justify your love for them by attempting to see once again the world as they now see it through their eyes. If the divine teachings surge within you, seeking expression and a chance to manifest themselves in helping others, then, remember to be honest with yourself first. Be so honest that you can weep again those tears of remorse that were shed as you stood on the threshold of a "new life," as you tasted the bitter-sweetness of shame and salvation. Were not those tears so stingingly bitter that they brought you, for the first time, face to face with your greater compassionate Self? Be glad that you rose from the mire of selfishness and temptations, if only to help those that you left behind. Recall the time when your whole existence was centered in a world of selfish ambitions and desires, when there was seemingly absence of the Light that you are now beginning to see. No being is so far removed from the Light of Reality that he cannot begin to see its feeble glow from whatever rung of the Ladder he may be standing on now. If you are to be a teacher, you must first know your pupil.

It would be difficult to prove that Night is coming to one who had never witnessed Night following Day; he would be content to live only in the Day that he knew. Do you remember when you prided yourself on your scepticism, when you lent a deaf ear to the man who could rationalize but who could not demonstrate the truth of his arguments? You looked "outward," but failed to look "inward." Perhaps vainly you totaled your limited and scattered "facts" of life, your "common-sense" valuations, yet you feared to step into the "unknown" to which those "facts" pointed, clinging desperately to your few straws of materialistic knowledge. You found that only in the greater Wisdom from Within did those scattered "facts" begin to take shape and conformity in the Mosaic Pattern of Truth. Who was that friend, that author — what spark was it that lit the wick of the mighty intuition which welded your scattered remnants of wisdom and understanding, binding them into a Becoming Whole, consistent with yourself and yet greater than yourself? No power outside of yourself led you to the Path to Reality. Knowing yourself in the light of your experience, realize that the others you would help must come the same Way.

Knowing this, then look at the world through the eyes of the man that you are trying to help. You must know each one of the "lost" as he knows himself, and armed with wisdom and compassion inspired by the Wisdom-Religion and the lives of great Teachers, realize that you can help him to find his inner self, possible because you are inspiring him to unfold his way and leading him to the conscious realization of the link between his human soul and his higher Ego. Realize that the "lost" soul is justified in being "lost" — both as a result of the limited experience that it has had, but more so because of the experience that it has not had. You can carry the torch of occult wisdom and inspiration wherever you go, its rays illuminating the Path and leading the pilgrim soul of the "lost" one to the field of new knowledge and experience. Just as the child knows its parent, so does the feeble light of the undeveloped intuition recognise the Parent Light from which it springs. The Light must be brought to the man so that he will be induced to follow the Path where its rays illumine. Bring the Light into the gutter if it be required, knowing that even in the fog of unholy places its dimmed rays can yet light the Way for the "lost."



Theosophical University Press Online Edition