Our Leader and Teacher, Katherine Tingley, has declared that "Unbrotherliness is the Insanity of the Age," and although most people recognize the beauty of Brotherhood as an ideal and a state devoutly to be wished, yet as a rule they do not look upon Unbrotherliness as insanity.
We all understand to some degree what is meant by unbrotherliness and what by insanity, but the two are not usually connected in our minds. Insanity is non-health, or disease of the mind, and anything that is to us abnormal we class as insane. But there are many things which appear to us abnormal which among others are considered normal and right. Many of the practices among certain tribes and so-called savages are regarded by them as being sacred and right, but which if carried out by any one in our modern civilization would render him liable to be confined in a lunatic asylum. According to the standards of the world, unbrotherliness is considered perfectly normal and sane and the statement, "Self preservation is the first law of nature" is regarded as a proper, and, indeed, the only right basis on which civilization is built. A business man and, indeed, almost every one will say that he must guard his own interests and attend to them first, that later he can attend to the interests of others. This is pretty normal as things go, and by the majority of people is not considered insanity.
But let us look at the little children, when they come fresh and sweet and pure from the other world. It is natural to them to make friends, to make other people happy, to be no respecter of persons, except of those who are base inside — and many a little one knows when this is so; but speaking broadly, the attitude of the little people is one of brotherhood until they are educated out of it. This education usually begins in the family. They are taught to discriminate, not in accordance with the inner character, and most children have keener perceptions in regard to this than the grown-ups, but in accordance with the outer appearance; they are told not to go with this or that one of their little friends with whom perhaps there may be the deepest bonds of sympathy. This education, if such it can be called, is continued in school, where the key-note is competition, and getting ahead of the others; then finally in the broader school of life's experience it is again competition, each man for himself. Thus it is that the seed of unbrotherliness is sown and nurtured.
It may exist in the child's own nature, but it is dormant and usually does not become active until made so, and instead of being repressed and checked, it is awakened and fostered both by precept and example, and that which is at first abnormal to most children, becomes later the mainspring in their lives, and the result is unbrotherliness.
Unbrotherliness has become normal to our civilization. It has become a custom and the only sane course to pursue, but we must go further back than custom; we must judge by a deeper standard. Is unbrotherliness a part of the scheme of nature or a part of the plan of God? If it is not, then ultimately it is abnormal, it is insanity, and if we were to inquire into nearly all the misery in the world we should find that its source lay in unbrotherliness.
The idea that man must look after himself and guard his own interests comes from the supposition that he stands alone and separate from others and hence, if he does not take care of his own interests, nobody else will. This is a fallacy from beginning to end as it is ordinarily conceived, although paradoxically there is an element of truth in it. To look after oneself and guard one's own interests is to isolate oneself and to become an Ishmael., whose hand is against every man's and every man's hand against him. But man does not stand alone, he cannot stand alone, though he may foolishly base his actions upon the idea that he does. Yet, if he will think about it he will see that no man or community, nation or race, can stand alone, that this very earth itself depends for its very existence upon the sun and other heavenly bodies. Everywhere is there interdependence, and it is only because of this as a fact and basis that it has been possible to open up intercommunication among all peoples and races of the earth, each man and each race contributing something to the general life and receiving an exact equivalent in return. The world cannot live without you or me. The universe could not exist if you or I were not in it. Every one is in a sense the centre, the keystone in the arch. If this is true, then indeed we have a place in the universe which some day we shall find and know. This will be as we realize our interdependence one upon another, that is, brotherhood.
How comes it that there is so much unbrotherliness, that there is such a crying need for brotherhood, that though we may admire such as an ideal, we fail to make it an actuality in our lives? Yet Nature insists that we shall recognize brotherhood either in one way or another. If we will not do it willingly, she compels us to recognize it unwillingly. If we will not recognize the brotherhood of joy and happiness, of compassionate helpfulness, she compels us to experience the brotherhood of pain, of suffering and disease. Nature forces us to recognize that if one of our brothers is suffering from disease we must care for him, otherwise the disease will spread. Just now she is teaching a lesson on brotherhood through the bubonic plague which threatens even the civilized western world in spite of all precautionary, sanitary methods.
If this is true of disease on the outer plane, it is true also on the inner. What is true of the physical nature is also true of the moral. There is but one law that governs all planes alike. Each one can experience this for himself. If we go into certain districts of any great city, simply passing through them, we feel their influence. We rejoice to be near certain people; we are depressed, even repelled by others, and if we do not recognize this, if we do not care for and aid our brothers who are morally diseased just as we care for and aid those who are physically diseased, the time will come when the moral disease will burst its bounds and as the plague threatens to invade our civilized countries so will moral disease invade our homes. Thus Nature forces this brotherhood upon us because we will not recognize the brotherliness that she herself desires. Brotherhood is a fact from which we cannot escape, and through it we reap joy or woe, according as we give or refuse to give our willing co-operation to Nature and work with her. Brotherliness is in accordance with the purposes of nature. It is health, sanity — unbrotherliness is disease, insanity.
The Universal Brotherhood Organization has for its main purpose to teach that brotherhood is a fact in nature and to make it a living power in the life of humanity.
What is man? Is man merely a physical being with a mind? Is he the outcome of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest? In one sense he is, for only the fittest can survive and that which will ultimately survive in him will be only the fittest and in accordance with the purposes of Nature. But what is the origin of man? Is he simply a product of evolution? Whatever the origin of man, that also is his destiny. Whatever the origin of anything that also is its destiny. Man is not only a physical being, man is not only a thinking being. There is something else higher and deeper than thought. A man is far more than a creature of passions and desires, of sensations or even of thought. Man is a divine being and we may know that he is in essence divine from the fact that it is possible for us to have divine aspirations, divine conceptions, which would be impossible were there not a divine essence within. On the other hand, he has the possibility of the lowest passions and the power to realize the awful depths of sin. At one time he reaches up to the heavens, then at another he finds himself in the deeps of hell. Which is the man? Whence his origin? The man who has the courage, the will, to assert that his origin is in the heavens will find himself slowly climbing from height to height to very divinity. He will know that his own nature is this divinity, and that the hells into which he still may fall are his own making, the result of his own thoughts and deeds.
All the great Teachers of the world have taught this. They have taught the same divine origin, the same divine destiny for all men. Christ's teachings on this are plain: "This is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." He commands: "Ye shall be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." His new commandment is: "That ye love one another." So, too, taught Buddha and all the great Teachers of the world. So, too, in these latter days, have taught our Teachers, for this age has not been left without its Teachers, and again the same message of brotherliness, love and compassion has been taught to the world.
In the light of these teachings and in the light of the processes and methods of Nature, unbrotherliness is insanity. All the great Teachers of the world base their teachings upon love, upon brotherhood. Their lives are an exemplification of it and if we look at them we can see how far we have wandered from the right way. The sun shines upon all, upon the evil and the good; the rain falls upon all alike, upon the just and the unjust. But there is this important fact, brotherhood does not mean equality.
There are some who ignorantly desire equality. They do not like that others should be regarded, or in fact be, greater, nobler or wiser than themselves. Even societies have been formed for the purpose of reducing all to a dead-level equality. But this is not Nature's brotherhood. There is an identity in essence, there is an equality of possibility, but there is no equality in attainment. There is no equality in Nature; no two men, no two blades of grass, no two stars, are equal, yet brotherhood exists between them all; it is a brotherhood of elder and younger.
Then there are others to whom the idea of brotherhood appeals but who think that the "other fellow" should begin first. Their idea of brotherhood is to get something, but the true brother is he who seeks to give and to help — not unwisely, for brotherhood is not sentimentality, but demands the use of all our powers with whatever knowledge and wisdom we may possess. It demands that we should first of all recognize the divinity that is in the hearts of all, but it demands also that we should recognize our own failings and the failings of our brothers; that we should recognize the duality, the higher and lower natures, the infinite potentiality for good and also the possibility for evil in ourselves and in others.
Brotherliness is not a blind sentimentality that refuses to see the weaknesses and failings of our brother, but on the contrary, it is that which checks and restrains and hinders the evil, not only in ourselves, but in others, evoking and calling out the higher and nobler side. Thus ever is it in our power, both to give and to receive help. We know that we have younger brothers whom we may help, and, too, we may take courage from the fact that there are also elder brothers who ever hold out the hand of love and helpfulness to us as we pass through the dark places in life.
That a man may perform his whole duty and perfect work demands that he shall be in perfect health, not alone physically, not alone mentally, and not alone morally, but throughout his whole being, spiritual, mental, moral and physical, — each part in perfect harmony with the others, guided and controlled from the divine centre and heart of his life. If in one part of his being he is sick or unbalanced, he so far fails in his perfect work. So, too, as long as there is discord, inharmony, unbrotherliness, in the great being, Humanity, Humanity will fail of its perfect work.
Brotherhood is not equality. It is harmony. It is as the harmony of a great orchestra, each player of which contributes to and is sustained by the harmony of the whole, and as the heights of music and of song of a great orchestra, so shall be the achievements and the progress of Humanity, when it recognizes brotherhood as a fact in nature, when it makes brotherliness the keynote of its life, and harmony the pathway of its attainment.
FOOTNOTE:
1. Address given at the New Cycle Unity Congress, New York, April 15, 1900. (return to text)