From the few facts that I have recalled in the preceding chapter, it is pretty clear that there are no cruelties in ancient history — no Assyrian horrors, no Carthagenian horrors, no old Chinese horrors, — which the inventiveness of our contemporaries of East and West, aided by a perfected technique, has not outdone. But cruelty — the violence of cowards — is merely one expression of violence among many, though admittedly the most repulsive one. Aided and encouraged by more and more staggering scientific achievements, which can be put to use for any purpose, man has, throughout history, become more and more violent, — and not less and less so, as people fed on pacifist propaganda are often inclined to think! And, which is more, it could not have been otherwise; and it cannot be otherwise at any period of the future, until the violent and complete destruction of that which we call to-day “civilisation” opens for the world a new “Age of Truth”; a new Golden Age. Until then, violence, under one form or another, is unavoidable. It is the very law of Life in a fallen world. The choice given us is not between violence and non-violence, but between open, unashamed violence, in broad daylight, and sneaking, subtle violence — blackmail; between open violence and inconspicuous, slow, yet implacable persecution, both economic and cultural: the systematic suppression of all possibilities for the vanquished, without it “showing”; the merciless “conditioning” of children, all the more horrible that it is more impersonal, more indirect, more outwardly “gentle”; the clever diffusion of soul-killing lies (and half-lies); violence under the cover of non-violence. The choice is also between selfless ruthlessness put to the service of the very Cause of truth; violence without cruelty, applied in view of bringing about upon this earth an order based on everlasting principles, that transcend man; violence in view of creating, or maintaining, a human State in harmony with Life’s highest purpose, and violence applied to selfish ends. The two parallel alternatives are indeed one and the same. |
For it is a fact that, the more disinterested be its aims and the more selfless its application, the more frank and straightforward violence is; while, on the other hand, the more sordid be the motives for which it is in reality used, the more it is, itself, hidden, nay, denied; the more the men who resort to it boast of being admirers of non-violence, thus bluffing others and sometimes also themselves; acting as deceivers and being deceived — caught in the network of their own lies. As time goes on and as decay sets in, the keynote of human history is not less and less violence; it is less and less honesty about violence. Only an “Age of Truth,” in which all is as it should be — a world in which the social and political order on earth is a perfect replica of the eternal Order of Life — can be nonviolent. And in the eloquent legends of all old nations, ideal society at the dawn of Time is said to have been naturally so. There was, then, nothing to be changed; nothing for which to shed one’s own or other people’s blood; nothing to do but to enjoy in peace the beauty and riches of the sunlit earth, and to praise the wise Gods — the “devas,” or “shining Ones,” as the ancient Aryans called them — Kings of the earth in the truest sense of the word. Every man and woman, every race, every species was, then, in its place, and the whole divine hierarchy of Creation was a work of art to which and from which there was nothing either to add or to take away. Violence was unthinkable. Violence became a necessity from the moment the sociopolitical order in this world ceased to be the undistorted reflexion of the eternal cosmic Order; from the moment a man-centred spirit, exalting indiscriminately the whole of humanity at the expense of glorious living Nature, on one hand, and at that of the naturally superior individuals and naturally privileged races, on the other, arose, in opposition to the life-centred Tradition which had been sanctioning, for no one knows how many happy millenniums, the harmonious, divinely ordained hierarchy of peoples, animal species and vegetable varieties; from the moment a vicious tendency to uniformity — ultimately |
leading to disintegration — set in, in opposition to primeaval Unity within infinite, disciplined diversity. From that moment onwards, we repeat, violence became the law of the world, for good and for evil. The only way to avoid resorting to it was, henceforth, either to cut one’s self off, entirely, from the world, as it is, to turn one’s back to life and to move about in an artificial, dream-like time — the illusion of an illusion — or else, to live outside Time altogether. Pretty few individuals were sufficiently foolish to take the first course, and fewer still sufficiently evolved and, at the same time, sufficiently indifferent, to take the second. But violence is not a bad thing in itself. True, it set in as a necessity only after the world had become, to a great extent, “bad” i.e., unfaithful to its timeless archetype; no longer in keeping with the creative dream of the universal Mind, that it had once expressed. The very appearing of violence was a sign that the “Age of Truth” was irretrievably closed; that the downward process of history was gaining speed. Yet, violence cannot be judged apart from its purpose. And the purpose is good or bad; worth its while, or not. It is worth its while when those who pursue it do so, not merely unselfishly — with no primordial desire of personal glory or happiness, — but also in keeping with an Ideology expressing timeless, impersonal, more-than-human truth; an Ideology rooted in the clear understanding of the unchanging Laws of life, and destined to appeal to all those who, in a fallen world, still retain within their hearts an invincible yearning for the perfect Order as it really was and will again be; as it cannot but be, at the dawn of every recurring Time-cycle. Any purpose which is intelligently, objectively consistent with the war-aims of the undying Forces of Light in their age-old struggle against the forces of Darkness, i.e., of disintegration, — that Struggle illustrated in all the mythologies of the world, — any such purpose, I say, justifies any amount of selfless violence. Moreover, as the “Era of Gloom” in which we are living proceeds, darker and darker and fiercer and fiercer year after year, it becomes more and more impossible to avoid using violence in the service of truth. No man, — no demi-god — can bring about, to-day, even a relative amount of real order and justice in any area of the globe, without the help of force, specially if he has |
but a few years at his disposal. And, unfortunately, the further this world advances into the present age of technical wonders and human abasement, more the great men of inspiration are submitted to the factor of time, as soon as they attempt to apply their lofty intuitive knowledge of eternal truth to the solution of practical problems. They just have to act, not only thoroughly, but also quickly, if they do not want to see the forces of disintegration nip their priceless work in the bud. And whether they like it or not, thoroughlyand quickly means, almost unavoidably, with unhesitating violence. One can say, with more and more certainty as the “Dark Age” goes on, that the god-like men of action are defeated, at least for the time being, not for having been too ruthless (and thus for having roused against themselves and their ideas and their collaborators the indignation of the “decent people”), but for not having been ruthless enough — for not having killed off their fleeing enemies, to the last man, in the brief hour of triumph; for not having silenced both the squeamish millions of hypocrites and their masters, the clever producers of atrocity-tales, by more substantial violences, more complete exterminations. From all this it is quite clear that, to condemn violence indiscriminately is to condemn the very struggle of the Forces of Life and Light against the Forces of disintegration, — struggle, all the more heroic and all the more desperate, also, as the world rushes on towards its doom. It is to condemn that struggle which, at every one of its age-long, varying phases, and even through temporary disaster, has been securing for the world, beyond its deserved doom, the glorious new Beginning, which the few alone deserve. Within the bondage of Time, specially within this “Kali Yuga,” one cannot be consistently non-violent without contributing, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, to the success of the forces of disintegration; of what we call the death-forces. As for that violence which is used to forward the war-aims of the death-forces, it is, and has always been twofold: directed on one hand against Life itself — first, against the whole of innocent living Nature, then, against the vital interests of higher mankind, in the name of “the common plan” — and, on the |
other, against those particular men who, more and more conscious of the tragic realities of a darkening age, put up a stand in favour of the recognition of Life’s eternal values and of the restoration of order upon its true, eternal basis. In the attempt to bring about the triumph of the worthless and the slow but steady disintegration of culture, in fact, less and less violence is needed. The world evolves naturally towards disintegration, with accelerated speed. It might have been, once, necessary to push it on along the slippery path. It has no longer been so, for centuries. It rolls on to its own doom, without help. In that direction, therefore, the champions of disintegration enjoy an easy task. They only have to follow and flatter the vicious tendencies of the increasingly despicable majority of men, to become the world’s darlings. But in their war against the few, but more aware and practical exponents of the higher values, — the upholders of the natural hierarchy of races; the worshippers of light, of strength, of youth; — they are (and are bound to be) more and more violent, nay, more and more relentlessly cruel. Their hatred grows, as history unfolds, as though they knew — as though they felt, with the sharpness of physical perception, — that every one of their victories, however spectacular it be, brings them nearer the final redeeming crash in which they are bound to perish, and out of which their now persecuted superiors are bound to emerge as the leaders of the New Age, — the supermen at the beginning of the next Time-cycle, — more like gods than ever. Their hatred grows, and their ferocity too, as the redeeming crash draws nigh, and, along with it, the dawn of the universal New Order, as unavoidable as the coming of spring. As the history of the last three years has shown,1 — as the history of darkest Europe (and of proud, unfortunate Japan) would show to-day, if only its hidden horrors were revealed — nothing surpasses in violence the persecution of the world’s best men and women by the agents of the death-forces, during the last period of the “Era of Gloom.” Like the children of Light, these too — though for contrary reasons, — act under the inexorable pressure of time. They have but a few years to try to stamp out the undying, divine Ideology; to crush as many of its votaries as they can, 1 This chapter was written in 1948. |
before they are, themselves, ground to dust in a fratricidal war of demons against demons. They are in a hurry — not, as the heroic “élite,” out of generous impatience; not out of any longing to see the “Age of Truth” re-established before its time, but out of feverish lust; out of the will to snatch from the world, for themselves, all the material advantages and all the satisfactions of vanity they possibly can, before it is too late. And as time goes on, their hurry amounts to frenzy. The one obstacle that stands in their way and still defies them — that will always defy them, till the end — is precisely that proud élite that disaster cannot discourage, that torture cannot break, that money cannot buy. Whether consciously or unconsciously, whether they be, themselves, thoroughly wicked, or just blind, through congenital stupidity, the workers of disintegration wage war upon the men of gold and steel, with unabated, hellish fury. But theirs is not the frank, unashamed violence of the inspired idealists striving to bring forth, speedily, a lofty sociopolitical order too good for the unworthy world of their times. It is a sneaking, creeping, cowardly sort of violence, all the more effective that it is, outwardly, more emphatically denied, both by the scoundrels who apply it, or condone it, and by the well-meaning fools who actually believe that it does not exist. It is prompted by such feelings as one cannot possibly exhibit, even in a degenerate world, without running the risk of defeating one’s own purpose: by bare hatred, rooted in envy — the hatred of worthless weaklings for the strong, for no other reason that they are strong; the hatred of ugly souls (incarnated, more often than not, in no less ugly bodies) for the naturally beautiful ones; for the noble, the magnanimous, the selfless, the real aristocracy of the world; the hatred of the unhappy, and, even more so, of the bored, — of those who have only their pockets to live for, and nothing at all to die for, — for those who live, and are ready to die, for eternal values. Such is, more and more, the wide-spread violence of our times, less and less recognised, in its subtle disguise, even by the people who actually suffer through it. The Ancients knew better than our contemporaries who were their friends and who were their enemies. And this is natural. In a world rushing to its doom, there is bound to |
be increasing ignorance — ignorance precisely of those things one should know the best, in order to survive. The Ancients suffered, and knew whom to curse. Modern men and women, as a rule, do not know; do not really care to know; are too lazy, too exhausted, too near the end of their world to take the trouble to enquire seriously. And clever rascals, themselves the authors of all the mischief, incite them to throw the blame of it upon the only people whose unfailing wisdom and selfless love could have saved them, had they but wanted to be saved; upon that hated élite that stands against the current of Time, with the vision of the glorious new Beginning beyond the doom of the present-day world, clear and bright before its eyes. The whole amount of nonsense written and spoken since the end of the Second World War (and already before its end, in the newspapers and from the radio stations controlled by the Democratic Powers) about the sufferings of the European people, is the latest glaring instance of this broad-scale systematic lying, more and more common as the forces of disintegration become, with time, both more successful and snore sneaking. Europe lies in ruins — the consequence of six years of inhuman bombing. The United Nations did the bombing, in order to stamp out National Socialism — the only thing that could have restored order and sanity in Europe, if absolute selflessness, coupled with genius, were able to turn the tide of time, in a doomed world. And now the people are told that National Socialism is responsible for all the evils that bombing has occasioned, and that its inspired Founder is the greatest selfish megalomaniac who ever trod this earth. Some people believe it — even in Germany; or were prepared to believe it in 1945 before they got a taste of the substitute which the Democracies offered them in the place of the much criticised régime. Most people believe it in the rest of Europe. The cunning rogues, utterly dishonest about violence, who set the tune to this propaganda, have an easy task: they work in the sense of Time: for disorder, leading to disintegration; for the destruction of all that is still strong and valuable in present-day humanity; of all that is destined to survive, in spite of all, their coming destruction. And they exploit the very characteristics of a decaying epoch: the hatred of all obvious discipline and of all visible and tangible (and responsible) leadership, allied to increasing |
conceit, increasing imbecility, and, consequently, increasing gullibility. We have spoken of two sorts of violence. Nowhere is the difference in the very nature of the two more apparent, perhaps, than in the attitude of the upholders — or condoners — of each, towards living creation outside mankind. The frank and courageous violence, which any idealist with real vision is snore or less bound to use as soon, as he attempts to translate his intuition of eternal truth into action, in a stubbornly degenerate world, bent on its own destruction, that violence, we say, is never exercised — and can, logically, never be exercised, save, perhaps, in certain cases of vital emergency, — against any living creatures other than people. Its only purpose is to crush, as quickly and completely as possible, all resistance to a socio-political order imposed too soon to be appreciated by all those whom it affects. As we shall see, it does not, in fact, affect human beings alone. It concerns, and must concern, also, in the long run, all the living. If it did not, it would not be an order based upon everlasting truth, and the violence displayed to impose it would not he justified. But human beings alone can and do oppose such an order. They alone arc, therefore, to the extent they become obstacles to its establishment or continuation, the victims of the necessary violence of those whose duty it is to defend it. As a consequence of the fact that they have nothing to do with the shaping of human society, innocent animals are never tormented by men who believe that, if at all, torture can only be excused when applied to forward such impersonal political ends as are in harmony with eternal principles. Such men can never tolerate the infliction of pain upon living creatures for the sake of researches destined, in the minds of the torturers and of their supporters, to alleviate the sufferings of diseased humanity or to satisfy a mere lust for “scientific” information. For if they really be the exponents of Golden Age ideals, — men of action, with an awareness of everlasting Truth and a burning love of perfection, — they cannot possibly share, either about humanity or about disease, or about the |
morbid craving for idle knowledge at any cost, the common prejudices which have been developing, for centuries, as a result of growing degeneracy in this world. They cannot possibly believe that every human life, however debased, is necessarily worth saving. And they must believe that the best way to stamp; out disease is not so much to find out new treatments as to teach men and women to live healthier lives, and, before all, to strengthen the naturally privileged races through a systematical, rational policy, applied, in the first place, to the basic art of breeding. And they must feel a sane contempt for all forms of useless research, let alone for that criminal curiosity about the mystery of life, which has turned hundreds of men like Pavlov, or Voronoff — or Claude Bernard — into down right monsters. There is more. The very Ideology of the strong naturally goes hand in hand with repulsion for every form of cruelty towards helpless and beautiful beasts. Nietzsche has exalted kindness as the highest virtue of the superman — “the last victory of the hero over himself.” And kindness that does not embrace all life is no kindness at all. Kindness that prompts man to “love his enemies” without prompting him a fortiori to love the innocent creatures of the earth, which did him no willful harm; kindness that urges him to spare the former’s lives while allowing him to chase and eat the latter, and to wear their skins, is either hypocrisy or imbecility. The Ideology of the strong rejects that two thousand year-old contradiction, with utter contempt. This is so true that the only people who have, in our times, striven to create a socio-political order upon the basis of such an Ideology, and that, through the most frankly acknowledged ruthlessness; the people who uphold the most consistently that healthy, necessary violence which is inseparable from any selfless struggle against the forces of decay, — the makers of National Socialist Germany, are precisely the ones who have the most sincerely stressed love of all living Nature in their educational system, and done whatever they could to protect by law both animals1 and forests; it is so true, that the 1 In National Socialist Germany, not only was the horrid “kosher” killing of animals forbidden, but traps were also not allowed. Animals killed for food had to be dealt with by means of an automatic pistol bringing instantaneous death. And cruelty to any beast was severely punished. (I know of the case of a person having spent three and a half years in a concentration camp for having killed a pig “in a cruel manner.”) |
Leader who inspired them — Adolf Hitler, now so shamelessly slandered and so bitterly hated by a worthless world, — not only abstained from flesh in his own daily diet, but is, as far as I know, the only European ruler who ever seriously contemplated the possibility of a continent without slaughterhouses and actually intended to make that dream a reality as soon as he could.1 Contrast this with the treatment of creatures at the hands of the majority of those people who deny the superior individuals and races the right to be ruthless in their heroic struggle against Time; of those who would like us to believe they “love their enemies” and have a genuine horror of atrocities! We have seen, we see every day, how the hypocrites treat their enemies — when they catch them. And we know what atrocities they can perform on human beings — or order, or at least condone, — when it suits their purpose. They treat animals no better. They take the hidden crimes daily committed against them in this increasingly wicked world, as a matter of course, just as they do those committed against the men and women whom they look upon as “dangerous fanatics,” “war criminals” and so forth. Of course, they find good excuses for their attitude, — one always does; logic was granted to man in order that he might justify himself in his own eyes, whatever monstrosity he might choose to support. But their premises are entirely different from those of the selfless people who fight with consistent ruthlessness for ideals in harmony with the perfect cosmic order. Their basic argument is “the interest of humanity” — indiscriminately; the “interest of humanity” as a whole; of “the majority” of human beings, good bad and indifferent; and of 1 “An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Führer to the vegetarian question. He believes more than ever that meat-eating is wrong. Of course, he knows that, during the war, we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends to tackle this problem also. Maybe he is right. Certainly the arguments he adduces in favour of his standpoint are very compelling.” —The Goebbels Diaries, edit. 1946 (Entry of the 26th of April 1942) |
human beings alone. Their ideals — expression of the downward tendency of Time, which is hurrying man to his doom — are anything but Golden Age ideals. Which humanity indeed do our kind-hearted agents of the dark forces struggle to “save,” at the cost of untold suffering inflicted upon healthy, innocent and beautiful creatures in the torture-chambers of “science”? Surely not the strong and proud élite of mankind, waiting for its Day to start a new historical Cycle, upon the ruins of the present world. Such men and women as belong to that healthy minority need no such laboriously discovered medicine, and would not accept it, even if they did. No. The majority of our contemporaries who support the infliction of pain upon living creatures for the sake of “research” are concerned with the relief of “suffering” humanity. They are full of that morbid love for the sick and the cripple, for the weak and the disabled of every description, which Christianity has once made fashionable and which is, undoubtedly, one of the most nauseating signs of decay in modern man. Whether they be professed Christians or not, they all cling to the silly belief that it is a “duty” to save, or at least to prolong, at whatever cost, any human life, however worthless — a duty to prolong it, just because it is human. As a consequence, they are prepared to sacrifice any numbers of healthy and beautiful animals, if they imagine that it can help to patch up the failing bodies of people who, most of them, would not have been allowed to live or, rather, would never have been born, in a well-conceived and well-organised society. In their eyes, a human idiot is worth more than the most perfect specimen of animal or plant life. Indeed, as our species degenerates, its conceit grows! And that conceit helps to keep men satisfied, though they be completely cut off from the vision of glorious, healthy perfection that dominated the consciousness of the world in its youth and that still is, and will remain till the end, the inspiring vision of a decreasing minority. The account of the atrocities committed upon innocent animals in order to find out means to combat disease in a more and mote contaminated humanity, or even means to encourage |
vice in a daily greater number of outspent degenerates,1 would fill volumes. That of similar abominations performed out of mere scientific curiosity, would also. This is not the place to expatiate upon that gruesome subject. Yet, when one remembers that people who excused those and other horrors, nay, who approved of them — who admired such a fellow as Pasteur, and who had never spoken a word against other ones such as Claude Bernard or, in this century, Pavlov, — when one remembers, I say, that such people had the cheek to sit as judges in 1945, 1946, 1947,2 etc., and, with the consent of the world, to sentence to death German doctors, rightly or wrongly charged with having performed far less cruel experiments upon active or potential enemies of all they loved and stood for, then one is disgusted at the depth of hypocrisy that mankind has reached in our times. For never, perhaps, has such a theatrical exhibition of indignation over particular acts of violence gone hand in hand with such universal toleration of acts of violence by far more horrible. That general dishonesty about violence, which has been steadily increasing from the dawn of history onwards, is manifest to-day in the way people deliberately conceal from themselves and from others all the horrors which they condone but cannot possibly justify. Many of the atrocities performed on animals with a view to add to medical knowledge are so gruesome that, in spite of their alleged “justification,” it is “in the interest of science” — and in the interest of the commercial concerns dealing in patent medicines, — not to allow the public to know about them. And the public is deliberately kept in ignorance — induced to believe that the horrors do not really exist, or that they are not, in reality, half as blood-curling as they sound. A fortiori, the numberless cruelties committed for the sake of sheer curiosity or for the sake of luxury, or amusement, are all the more hidden — subtly denied. Thousands of well-meaning 1 We refer, here, to Voronoff’s experiments performed upon live monkeys, with a view to give back sexual potency to old men. 2 During the infamous Nüremberg Trial and other similar ones. |
fools who talk about “moral progress” in our times have no idea whatsoever of what goes on (behind the screens) in scientific institutes, in the fur trade and in circuses. Thousands of equally well-meaning and equally foolish people, who take for granted whatever they are given to read and enquire no further; have also no idea of the horrors perpetrated by their compatriots in other people’s countries as colonists or as members of occupying armies, nay, no idea of what goes on in their own country, behind prison bars, in torture-chambers for political investigation, and in concentration camps. Indeed, in England and in other democratic nations, many are under the impression thattheir government never tolerated such things as concentration camps and torture-chambers for human beings. Only “the enemy” had them — so they believe. Years ago, they would have thought nothing of admitting that “everybody has them”; must have them; that one cannot run a war without those unpleasant but extremely useful accessories. But now hypocrisy concerning violence has reached its pitch. Never has there been, in the world, so much cruelty, allied to such a general attempt to hide it, to deny it, to forget it and, if possible, make others forget it. Never have people been so willing to forget it, in externally “decent” and kindly surroundings — houses and streets in which no torture of man or beast can be seen or heard — provided, of course, it is not “the enemy’s” cruelty. The only time modern men and women do not try to minimise horrors but actually exaggerate them (and often deliberately invent them) is when these happen to be (or are intended to be presented as) “the enemy’s” horrors — never their own. And that is itself only a further instance of the world-wide characteristic of our times: the general love of lies. What has set the whole world so bitterly against the frank upholders of ruthless methods both in government and war, is not so much that these were violent, but that they were frank. Liars hate those who speak the unpleasant truth, and who act in accordance with it. The “unpleasant truth” is that pacifism, non-violence |
and so forth are, most of the time, just rackets in the service of the forces of disintegration; dishonest tricks to bluff the fools, to emasculate the strong, and to set millions of cowards and hypocrites (the bulk of the world) against the few people whose inspired policy, pursued ruthlessly to its logical end, could perhaps, even now, arrest the decay of man. And if they are not that, then, they are nonsense. As we have said in the beginning, non-violence can only exist in a world in which the temporal socio-political order is, on the human scale, the replica of the eternal Order of the Cosmos. Any effective preaching — and any partial practice — of pacifism in politics; i.e., within Time, outside such a temporal order, only leads, ultimately, to greater violence; to a greater exploitation of living Nature and a greater oppression of man at the hands of those who work for the death-forces. But, for millenniums already, that perfect earthly order has ceased to exist. It has to be created anew before peace can reflourish. And it cannot, now, be created anew, without utmost violence, exerted, this time, in a selfless spirit, by men of vision. The best course for those who sincerely desire a just and. lasting peace would, therefore, naturally be to do all they can to give over the world to those men of vision, as soon as possible; at least, not to try to prevent them from conquering it. Unfortunately, most pacifists either do not really want peace at all, but merely pretend to, or else, want it, but only under certain ideological conditions which are incompatible with its establishment, now, and with its duration, and which will only become more and more so, till the end of the present historical cycle. Any obvious violence directed against human beings shocks them. People who openly support the use of force — be it in the most disinterested spirit and for the best of purposes, — are, for that very reason, anathema in, their eyes. Helpthem to conquer and to rule the world? Oh, no! Anything but that! The ideals of the ruthless men of vision may well be Golden Age ideals; but their methods! — their cynical attitude towards human life; their relentless chase and pitiless disposal of even potentialobstacles to the rapid attainment of their selfless aims; their “appalling logic” (to quote the words |
of a French official in occupied Germany, after this war)1 — our pacifists could never stand for these! As a result, they stand for far worse, — generally without knowing it. For, through their refusal to face facts and take the only reasonable attitude that a true lover of peace should have, today, they become tools in the service of the forces of disintegration. For one cannot have it both ways: whoever is not for the everlasting Forces of Light and Life, is against them. Unless one lives “outside” or “above” Time, one either walks in the sense of the unavoidable evolution of history — i.e., towards decay and dissolution, — or one stands against the current of centuries, in a bitter, apparently hopeless, but nevertheless beautiful struggle, one’s eyes fixed upon those perennial ideals which can be fully translated into material reality only once, at the dawn of every successive Cycle, by every successive new humanity. But it is true that the bold minority of men of action who fight, “against Time,” for Golden Age ideals, is bound to become, as time goes on, more and more ruthless in its effort to overcome an increasingly well-organised, increasingly elusive, and increasingly universal opposition. And for that very reason, it will become more and more difficult for the squeamish pacifists to follow it. In all probability, they will continue to prefer identifying themselves with the lying agents of the Dark forces. And this is natural. Again it is within the law of Time. The forces of death must have practically the whole world under their grip, before a new Beginning can start as a re-assertion of Life’s triumph. And thus, day after day, year after year, now and in the future, the conflicting Powers of light and darkness cannot but carry on their deadly struggle, as they always did, but more and more fiercely as time goes on. And as time goes on, also, the struggle will more and more be between openly acknowledged and openly accepted violence and violence dishonestly disguised, the former being put to the service of Life’s highest purpose on earth — namely, the creation of a perfect, or “Golden Age” humanity — and the latter, to that of the enemies of Life. It has to be so until, after the final crash, — the 1 “Cette logique effroyable” was the expression used by Monsieur R. Grassot, of the French Information Bureau in Baden-Baden, in his conversation with me on the 9th October 1948. |
“end of the world” as we know it, — the leadership of surviving mankind falls to that victorious élite who, even in the midst of the long, general decay of man, never lost its faith in the everlasting cosmic values, nor its will to draw from them, and from them alone, its rule of action. That élite will, then, no longer be compelled to resort to violence in order to impose its will. It will rule without opposition in a peaceful world in which the New Order of its age-old dreams will appear to all as the only natural and rational state of affairs. Until man again forgets unchangeable Truth, acts as though the iron Laws of cause and consequence did not concern him — God’s darling! — and again decays. Nothing can stop the wheel of Time. |
All men, inasmuch as they are not liberated from the bondage of Time follow the downward path of history, whether they know it or not, and whether they like it or not. Few indeed thoroughly like it, even at our epoch, — let alone in happier ages, when people read less and thought more. Few follow it unhesitatingly, without throwing, sometime or other, a sad glance towards the distant lost paradise into which they know, in their deeper consciousness, that they are never to enter; the paradise of Perfection in time — a thing so remote that the earliest people of whom we know remembered it only as a dream. Yet, they follow the fatal way. They obey their destiny. That resigned submission to the terrible law of decay — that acceptation of the bondage of Time by creatures who dimly feel that theycould be free from it, but who find it too hard to try to free themselves; who know before hand that they would never succeed, even if they did try, — is at the bottom of that incurable unhappiness of man, deplored again and again in the Greek tragedies, and long before these were written. Man is unhappy because he knows, because he feels — in general — that the world in which he lives and of which he is a part, is not what it should be, what it could be, what, in fact, it was at the dawn of Time, before decay set in and before violence became unavoidable. He cannot whole-heartedly accept that world as his — specially not accept the fact that it is going from bad to worse, — and be glad. However much he may try to be a “realist” and snatch from destiny whatever he can, when he can, still an invincible yearning for the better remains at the bottom of his heart. He cannot — in general — will the world as it is. But few people — as rare as the liberated ones, for whom Time does not exist, and perhaps rarer, — can and do; and act up to that will. These are the most thorough, the most mercilessly effective agents of the Death-forces on earth: — |
supremely intelligent, and sometimes extraordinarily farsighted; always unscrupulous to the utmost; working without hesitation and without remorse in the sense of the downward process of history and, (whether they can see or not as far as that) for its logical conclusion: the annihilation of man and of all life. Naturally, they do not always see as far as that. But when they do, still they do not care. Since the Law of: Time is what it is, and since the end must come, it is just as well that they should draw all the profit they possibly can from the process that is, anyhow, sooner or later, to bring about the end. Since no one can re-create the primeaval lost Paradise — no one but the wheel of Time itself, after it has rolled its full course — then it is just as well that they, who can completely forget the distant vision, or who never had a glimpse of its dying glow; they, who can stifle in themselves the age-old yearning for Perfection, or rather, who never experienced it; it is just as well that they, I say, should squeeze out of the fleeing moment (whether minutes or years, it matters little) all the intense, immediate enjoyment they can, until the hour copses when they must die. It is just as well that they should leave their stamp upon the world — force generations to remember them, — until the hour comes for the world to die. So they feel. It makes little difference what suffering they might cause to men or other living creatures, by acting as they do. Both men and creatures are bound to suffer, anyhow. Just as well through them as through others, if that can forward the aims of these people. The aims of these people — of the men within Time, par excellence, — are always selfish aims, even when, owing to their material magnitude and historical importance, they transcend immeasurably any one man’s life, as they actually do, sometimes. For selfishness, — the claim of the “part” to more place and to more meaning than is naturally allotted to it within the whole, — is the very root of disintegration, and therefore a characteristic inseparable from Time. One can practically say |
that, more a person is thoroughly, remorselessly selfish, more he or she lives “in Time.” But, as we have said, that selfishness is manifested in many different ways. It can find expression in that mere lust for personal enjoyment, which characterises the shameless voluptuary; or in the miser’s insatiable greed for gold; or in the individual ambition of the seeker of honours and position; or in the family ambition of the man who is ready to sacrifice every interest in the world to the welfare and happiness of his wife and children. But it can also be brought out in the exaltation of a man’s tribe or country above all others, not because of its inherent worth in the natural hierarchy of Life, but just because it happens to be the tribe or country of that particular man. It can be, nay, and often is, brought out in the undue exaltation of all human beings, however debased, above all the rest of living creation, however healthy and beautiful — the passion which underlies the age-old tyranny of “man” over Nature; the “love of man” not in harmony with the God-ordained duties and rights of each and every species (as of every race and of every individual) according to its place, but in a spirit of mere solidarity with one’s kith and kin, good or bad, worthy or unworthy, solely because they are one’s own. Men “in Time” only know what is “their own” and what is not, and they love themselves in whatever istheirs. As there are men “in Time,” so there are, also, philosophies and religions — “ideologies” — “in Time”; false religions, all of them, for true religion can only be above time. Such doctrines are more and more numerous, more and more varied, and more and more popular as the world proceeds nearer to the end of every historical Cycle. There was an epoch when they did not exist; an epoch in which a man “in Time” was necessarily against all professed doctrines. To-day, nearly all interpretations of age-old, true religions, and nearly all the “isms” that have replaced religions, are of the type “in Time.” Their function within the scheme of things, at this stage of world-history, is just to deceive the well-meaning weaklings and fools — the hesitating people, who want an excuse, |
a justification for living “in” Time without the unpleasant feeling of a guilty conscience, and who cannot find one for themselves. These are only too glad to catch hold of a philosophy loudly professing to be unselfish, which allows them, nay, encourages them, to work under its cover for their selfish ends. The ones who use a really unselfish doctrine, — an originally “timeless” philosophy, — for that purpose, lie all the more shamelessly to themselves and to others. And, by doing so, they help in reality to forward the great tendency of history: to hasten the decay which leads to the great End and, beyond — to the following new Beginning. But the actual, typical men “within Time” need no justifying ideology in order to act. Their thoroughly selfish attitude is, in all its glaring shamelessness, far more beautiful than that growing tendency of the tiny men to slip down the path to perdition while hanging unto some “noble” ends such as “liberty, equality, fraternity” or “the rights of international proletariate,” or unto some misunderstood religion. Whatever they may tell the people whom they wish to deceive, — whom they have to deceive, in order to succeed, — the real men “in Time” never deceive themselves. They know what they truly want. And they know the way to get it. And they do not care what it costs to others or to themselves. And, specially, they do not, at the same time, want anything else, which is incompatible with their aims. And so, — whether on an ordinary scale, like the consistent voluptuary or the single-purposed miser, or on a nation-wide or continent-wide scale, like those who stir millions and sacrifice millions of people, that they might impose their own will, — they act, in a way, as gods would act. And, both in the grandeur of their achievements and in the beauty of the first-rate qualities of character which they put to the service of their purpose, a few of them really have something god-like — as, for instance, that greatest conqueror of all times, whose extraordinary career forms the subject-matter of a part of this book: Genghis-Khan. They possess the awful splendour of the great devastating forces of Nature; of the roaring sea, rolling out |
of its bed over the land; of a lava stream, burning its way through all obstacles; of the lightning, that men used to worship, when they still understood what is divine. Naturally, this can be said only of those men whose action exceeds, by its very magnitude, the limits of what is “personal.” It is difficult to imagine any mere seeker of physical pleasure, or even of individual riches, attaining such a grim, god-like greatness. The importance of the men “in Time,” as such, depends upon the nature of their action itself and upon the breadth of the surroundings which it influences, no less if not more than upon the way in which, and the one-sided, cynically selfish purpose for which, they act. And this is understandable, for reasons other than the sheer aesthetic impression which the true story of a mighty life can leave upon the reader or the bystander. It is the consequence of the fact that, like the great forces of Nature which we mentioned, real men “in Time” are blind powers, serving unknowingly the purpose of the Cosmos. The same is true, of course, of the petty seekers after small profits, in their limited sphere of activity. They too are blind powers of destruction. But small ones, at our scale at least. We experience the awe of the Divine in presence of the big ones only — as we do, for instance, before a storm upon the Ocean, while the sight of a pool of water disturbed by the wind leaves us indifferent. When the ends, — however petty and personal in themselves, — are masterfully served through such action as stirs the whole world; when, in order to attain them, a man “in Time” displays, upon the international stage, superhuman qualities worthy of much higher ends, then, one feels one’s self in presence not of a man “in Time” but of the divine Destroyer — Mahakala; Time Itself, — everlastingly rushing the Thing that seems to annihilation followed by new birth and then again by further decay and annihilation. The man “in Time” can have any aim, with the exception of a disinterested one (which would at once raise him “above Time”). He himself is always like a blind force of destructive Nature. (That is the reason why so many thoroughly “bad” characters in literature and in the theatre are so attractive, in their forceful evil.) He has no ideology. Or rather, his ideology is himself, separated from the divine Whole — i.e., it is the |
disintegration of the Whole (of the universe) for the benefit of himself, and, ultimately, the destruction of himself also, although he does not know it or does not care. And that is the case in every instance. But under certain conditions, when his action takes, in human history, the permanent importance that a great geological cataclysm has in the history of the earth, then, as I said, the man “in Time” disappears from our sight, and in his, place — but still bearing his features, — appears, in all His dramatic majesty, Mahakala, the eternal Destroyer. It is Him Whom we adore in the great lightning individuals such as Genghis Khan — Him; not them. They are only the clay images inhabited by Him for a few brief years. And just as the clay image hides and suggests the invisible God or Goddess — Power everlasting — so does their selfishness both hide and reveal the impersonal purposefulness of Life; the destructive phase of the divine Play, in which already lies the promise of the new dawn to come. And just as volcanic convulsions or invading sea-tides prepare, in the course of centuries, a new growth, in a re-shaped physical universe, so do the great men “in Time” bring us nearer the liberating end and thereby prepare the way for the next glorious Beginning. “Scourges of God,” in a way, they are also blessings in disguise. Far better their frank, brutal destructiveness for selfish ends than the silly patch-work of the ordinary well-meaning people who try to “do good” in this fallen world, without having the courage to strike and burn and tear; who have only “constructive” schemes — all useless! For destruction and creation are for ever linked. That is why we adore the Lightning as well as the Sun, and are overwhelmed by a feeling of sacred awe at the thought of the grand-scale exterminators without ideologies, human likenesses of great Mahakala. But there are also men “outside Time” or rather “above Time”; men who live, here and now, in eternity; who (directly at least) have no part to play in the downward rush of history towards disintegration and death, but who behold it from above — as one beholds, from a strong and safe bridge, the irresistible rush of a waterfall into the abyss — and who |
have repudiated the law of violence which is the law of Time. Of such men, most live a very special life, away from the world; a life of which the whole inner discipline, spiritual, moral and physical, is systematically devised to keep them in constant union with the great Reality beyond Time: the Thing that is, as opposed to the Thing that seems. They are the real ascetics (in the etymological sense of the word: those who have “trained” themselves to live in eternity). Others — far rarer — live in eternity without a particular “training,” even while living, outwardly, the life of the world; while being husbands and wives, parents and educators of children, manual or intellectual labourers, citizens, soldiers, rulers, etc. Of those who live “outside” or “above” Time, some are saviours. Others just leave things and people go their way, feeling that they are not called to intervene in anyone’s destiny and knowing that, in the course of centuries, all souls that care to be saved will, anyhow, evolve towards the timeless life of the saints. The distinction between these two types of “liberated” people corresponds, in Buddhist terminology, to that between the Bodhisattvas and the Arhats. Both these are free beings, outside the law of birth and rebirth — the bondage of Time. But, while the Arhat remains completely aloof from the fallen world, the Bodhisattva is born over and over again, of his own free will, in order to help living creatures to work themselves out of the ocean of life within Time. But the salvation which the men “above Time” offer the world is always that which consists in breaking the time-bondage. It is neverthat which would find its expression in collective life on earth in accordance with Golden Age ideals. It is the salvation of the individual soul, never that of organised society. For the men “above Time” know fully well that that cannot be saved before the beginning of a new Time-cycle — specially not by peaceful preaching or even edifying examples. And even when they do, to some extent, try to bring a certain amount of organisation into being among a restricted number of disciples, — in monastic communities, for instance, — they know that, however saintly it be, the community as such is bound to degenerate sooner or later. The Buddha foretold the corruption of his sangha “after five hundred years.” |
It is true that some — though extremely few — men, of those whom we have characterised as “above Time,” have been (or have tried to be) reformers in the worldly sense, by non-violent means. But none of them were “saviours” of society, really speaking. The saviours in the worldly sense of the word — those who set out to perfect not merely men’s souls but men’s collective life and government, and international relations — are what we call men “against Time.” And they are necessarily violent, although not always physically so. They may be, — in fact, they should be, — personally free from the bondage of. Time, if they are to act with the maximum of foresight and efficiency. But they have to take into consideration the conditions of action “within Time” to live “in” Time, also, in a way. The others — the men “above Time” who appear to have been reformers — have not really tried to remould the world according to their understanding of eternal truth (otherwise, they would not have remained non-violent). What they did was to live inthe world their own timeless philosophy. And to the extent that they occupied a position of importance — like that most remarkable of them all, Akhnaton, King of Egypt, who was in his days the most powerful man on earth — their lives could not but have a repercussion upon those of their contemporaries. It might seem strange that the Founder of a State-religion — for the cult of the “Heat-and-Light-within-the-Disk” was that, undoubtedly — should not be counted among the “saviours” of the world, but rather among those extremely rare men “above Time” who have lived the life of this earth while stubbornly remaining foreign to this earth’s grim realities. But appearances are deceptful. And we shall see, further on, in examining the nature of the much misunderstood Cult of the Disk and the life of King Akhnaton, its Promoter, that this view is the right one. The most distinctive trait of the men “outside” or “above” Time, as opposed to those who live “in” Time or “against” Time, is perhaps their consistent refusal to use violence even in order to forward the most righteous cause. Not that they are at all squeamish about violence, like the weaklings, neither |
good nor bad, who compose ninety per cent of mankind at our epoch. They could not possibly disapprove of the warrior-like ideal of detached, selfless violence preached by Lord Krishna — the divine Preserver of the Universe, Himself — in the Bhagavad-Gita; for that ideal is in harmony with ever-lasting truth, which any man who has transcended Time is bound to acknowledge. Only they are not Kshattriyas by nature, whatever be their race, their social position, their inherited responsibilities; they are not men of action, by nature, let alone fighters. Their action, like that of the Sun, lies essentially in their personal radiation of power, beauty and goodness. What they do is, of course, the integral reflexion of what they are, nothing more; nothing different; nothing which is foreign to them, for they are fully conscious of their being. And if they have any substantial influence at all, it is, like that of the Sun, an influence from above and from afar, characterised by its absolute impartiality, its indiscriminate and impersonal goodness. They do nothing to compell others — nothing, at least, beyond certain limits, even if they live in the world. They know they cannot force the evolution of things, nor suppress the part played by Time in the lives of those who are still submitted to its iron law. Again, like the Sun, they shine. If the seed is alive, it will ripen sooner or later, never mind when, Violence would only help to produce an artificial growth. And if the seed be dead? Let it be! There are new seeds; new creations, for ever and ever. The people who live in eternity can wait. We have said: those who remain “above Time” do not resort to violence. This does not mean that all men who abstain from violence are necessarily liberated souls, living “above Time.” First, an immense number of cowards are non-violent for fear of taking risks. And they are- anything but free from the bondage of Time. Then, that which one often takes for non-violence, — that which actually goes under that name, — is, in reality, but a subtler form of violence: pressure upon other people’s feelings, more oppressive and — when one knows, in each case, what feelings to appeal to, many a time more effective than pressure upon their bodies. Late Mahatma Gandhi’s much admired “non-violence” was of that type: moral violence; not: “Do this, or else I kill you!”, but: “Do this, or else I kill myself!” Knowing |
that you hold my life as indispensable. It may look “nobler.” In fact, it is just the same — apart from the difference in the technique of pressure. It is, rather, less “noble” because, precisely on account of that subtler technique, it leads people to, believe that it is not violence, and therefore contains an element of deceit, an inherent falsehood, from which ordinary violence is free. Late Mahatma Gandhi was by no means what we have tried to define as a man “above time.” He was what we shall call a man “against Time,” aiming now — far too late or... a little too soon, — at the establishment of a tangible order of justice (Ram raj) on this earth. But, inasmuch as it lacks the frankness of brutal force, his so-called “non-violence” — moral violence — is characteristic of our epoch of dishonesty (however honest and sincere he might have been himself.) It is, perhaps, the first instance in history of a disguised form of violence applied, on a broad scale, in a struggle for a good purpose. Its popularity in India can partly be credited to the fact that it was, or seemed to be, the only practical weapon in the hands of totally disarmed and, to a great extent, naturally apathetic people. But it enjoyed abroad, also, a tremendous publicity, quite out of proportion with its real value (and late Mahatma Gandhi’s tremendous reputation of “holiness” is no less out of proportion with his real place among the great men of India). The foreigners who have done the most to popularise it are people typical of our degenerate age: people who recoil at the mere thought of any healthy and frank display of force, but who cannot even detect moral violence; men and women (especially women) of the Western Democracies, the most hypocritical half of the world. It appealed to them precisely to the extent that it was violence in disguise. Even English people (some of whom had lived in India; some of whom had, nay, occupied a high position within the ranks of British colonial officialdom) could not help admiring it. It was not that hated brutal force which other great men “against Time” had used in, the course of history (or were using at our epoch) to bring about an age of justice. Oh, no! But it surely was not, either, the non-violence of the men “above Time” who, if they cared at all to take an occasional stand against the unavoidable fall of mankind, would either use no real pressure at all to enforce their good laws — and |
fail, from a worldly point of view, as King Akhnaton did, — or else, exert “against Time” any amount of violence that might be necessary, in the spirit of the God Who speaks, in the Bhagavad-Gita, to the Fighter for a just cause (provided the latter happens to be, like Arjuna, a Kshattriya, i.e., a warrior by race and by nature). The men who remain “above Time” seem to be those who have the least influence of all upon the course of events in this world. And that too is to be expected in a world which is sinking deeper and deeper every day into the abyss. In the Age of Truth, and even in later ages pictured in the sacred books of India, the men “above Time” — the true Brahmins, in union with eternal Reality — were the natural and actual counsellors of kings; genuine spiritual authority then backed legitimate temporal power. But as the temporal order on earth became more and more unlike the ideal heavenly Order, kings were less and less inclined to act according to the commands of an increasingly rare timeless wisdom. And what is true of kings is, also, here, true of commoners. As a result, men “outside Time” or “above Time” enjoy less and less authority as the world proceeds towards the end of every Time-cycle. Even when, — like King Akhnaton — they themselves happen to be rulers endowed with absolute power, their lives do not — cannot — in what the Hindus call the “Kali Yuga,” leave upon the sands of time the trace which they normally should. Moreover, sometimes, — and that, even if they be ascetics, apparently separated from the world, — men “above Time” can, like the Sun, with which we have constantly compared them, be destructive, indirectly. Their light, indiscriminately shed upon the righteous and the unrighteous, can have the most varied and unexpected effects amidst a humanity evolving from bad to worse. One can think of the destructiveness of King Akhnaton’s “Golden Age” attitude to international affairs, viewed from the Egyptian side. One can think also of the true religions, conceived by such men “above Time” as were not in possession of temporal power, and then distorted by clever people who lived, most of them, entirely “within |
Time,” and used by them in the service of the most selfish, the most destructive of all worldly ends. It is, naturally, “not the fault” of the men “above Time” — any more than it would be “the fault” of the Sun, if, in some land where the heat of the sun-rays is unbearable, a man were to tie his enemy to a pillar in a shadeless place and leave him to die there. Truly speaking, it is not “the fault” of the men “within Time” either. It is a consequence of the law of general decay, inseparable from life in time: as the world becomes less and less capable of penetrating their eternal meaning, even the best things are misunderstood, and, either hated and rejected or else put to some criminal use. Exiles of the Golden Age in our Age of Gloom, the men “above Time” either live entirely within their own inner world, or else live and act in this one also, but as though it were still in its Golden Age. They either renounce this world or ignore it — or, better, forget it, as a man forgets the scars of sin and sickness upon a once beautiful face, which he still loves, in spite of all. They see the everlasting and unchangeable behind the downward rush of the stream of time; the Thing that is, behind the thing that seems. Even when they live in the world of forms, colours and sounds as earnestly and intensely as King Akhnaton — that supreme artist — did, still those impressions take on, for them, a meaning entirely different from that which they retain in the consciousness of people submitted to the bondage of Time. Men “above Time” enjoy with detachment, as people who know they will never die. They also suffer with detachment, being constantly aware of their blissful real Self, which is beyond pleasure and pain. And the fallen world can never understand them, i.e. know them, any more than they can understand the fall of man, in which they have no part, as others, who share it, can, and do. And yet, untiringly, — like the Sun, far away and omnipresent — they shed their light; that light which is, in our growing gloom, like a glimpse of all the past and future dawns. But, as we have said, there are also people with a Golden Age outlook, — fully aware of what a splendid place this world |
could be, materially and otherwise, — who can, however, neither renounce life “as it is” nor ignore it; people who, in addition to that, are endowed with what the Hindus would call a “Kshattriya” nature: born fighters, for whom difficulties exist only to be overcome, and for whom the impossible has a strange fascination. These are the men “against Time,” — absolutely sincere, selfless idealists, believers in those eternal values that the fallen world has rejected, and ready, in order to reassert them on the material plane, to resort to any mea within their reach. As a consequence of the law of Time, those means are necessarily all the more drastic and all the more brutal as every historical Cycle draws nearer to its end. The last Man “against Time” is, in fact, no other than He Whose name, in Sanskrit Tradition, is Kalki, — the last Incarnation of the divine Sustainer of the universe and, at the same time, the Destroyer of the whole world; the Saviour Who will put an end to this present “yuga” in a formidable display of unparalleled violence, in order that a new creation may flourish in the innocence and splendour of a new “Age of Truth.” Men “outside Time” or “above Time,” at the most saviours of souls, have, more often than not, disciples who are definitely men “against Time.” (Sometimes even men “in Time”; but we do not speak of these, for they are mere exploiters of religions or ideologies for selfish ends, not sincere disciples of saints.) The true disciples — and, in some rare instances, the Masters themselves — who are “against Time,” thorough organisers, unscrupulous propagandists and ruthless fighters, are the actual founders of most of, if not all, the great Churches of the world, even when the religions preached by those Churches are doctrines originally “above Time,” as they generally are. And this is unavoidable inasmuch as a Church is always or nearly always, not only itself a material organisation, but an organisation which aims at regulating the lives of thousands, when not millions, of people in this world — in Time. Apparently, the one exception to that law is Buddhism, the only important international religion which has conquered over half a mighty continent without the help of men “against Time” and without the use of violence; the one in the name of which persecution of other faiths was never carried on but twice in the whole course of history, — and that, by men “in |
Time,” and for reasons decidedly political, not religious.1 But then, we must remember that this creed is, more than any other, dominated by the yearning to escape the bondage of Time, and that it is, in fact, not intended at all for life in Time. A person who accepts its postulates cannot possibly think of a better world, except if it be “outside” or “above Time.” But, as a result of this, there is perhaps a more shocking disparity between the high ideals of the religion and the life of the faithful in Buddhist countries than anywhere else. The religions that have spread and maintained themselves partly through violence, have had, in spite of many shortcomings, and of less high moral standards, a greater practical influence upon the lives of their followers as a whole, strange as this may appear. One does not always realise this clearly enough, when one criticises the great active disciples for being inconsistent with “the spirit” of their contemplative masters. One does not realise that, without the ruthless passion of those men, the organisations that have, one must admit, kept to some extent “the spirit” alive, would just not exist, in, many places where they still flourish, and that many “spiritual treasures,” that one values so much, would be lost to the world. If one really values those “treasures,” one should not find fault with the men “against Time” or, more often than not, “in Time,” who recoiled from nothing so that they might be put, and kept, within man’s reach. Without the brutal methods of Charlemagne, the Saxon-slayer, so obviously anything but “Christ-like,” the Germans would perhaps, to this day, have remained attached to their old gods; so would have the Norwegians, without the drastic sort of evangelisation imposed upon them by King Olaf Tryggvason. Without the equally sincere, equally fanatical, and even more brutal activities of many men “against” or “in” Time, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, half Goa, and the whole of Mexico and 1 Once in Central Asia, in the early thirteenth century, by the “Gurkhan” of the Kara-Khitai, against both Islam and Nestorian Christianity, and another time, in seventeenth century Japan, by the first Shoguns of the Tokugawa Dynasty, Iyeyasu, Hidetada and Iyemitsu, against Christianity. |
Peru would probably not be, to-day, professing the Christian faith. Christianity owes a lot to men “against Time” — and perhaps still more to men “in Time.” We, who are not Christians, may — and do, — deplore it. We are aware of the fact that many spiritual treasures other than those contained in the Gospels — the truths contained in the old European Paganisms, or long preserved in the solar cults of Central and Southern America; treasures of which, to-day, one knows much too little, — were lost to the world precisely through the impersonal zeal of religious-minded men, by nature “against Time” (or through the wanton destructiveness of men “in Time”) such as those we have mentioned. But we believe that, wherever such losses were suffered, there was something wrong not with the forgotten truth (which is eternal) but with the people who should have managed to stand for it against the new and hostile doctrine; we believe, in fact, that there were not enough men “against Time” among those people — not enough persons in whose Eyes the now lost teachings were, then, sufficiently alive to be made a basis for the organisation of human society against the growing current of decay; not enough who, in order to defend them on those grounds, were prepared to be as ruthless and as perseverant as the Christians were in order to destroy them. The relation between the Master, permanently “above Time,” and the ardent realist “against Time” — builder and defender of all militant Churches — who happens to be his disciple, has never been so perfectly pictured as in the words addressed to the Christ by the grand Inquisitor, in Dostoyevsky’s famous episode of “The Karamazov brothers.” “Thou hast resisted the three temptations of the Devil” — refused the means to rule, offered to Thee by the! One who knows men and time, better than any other. “Thou hast refused to turn stones into bread” — to give the multitudes material goods; “Thou hast refused to throw Thyself from the height of the Temple” — to give the people astonishment and awe; “Thou hast refused to bow down to Me — the Master of lies; the |
Master of Time — to live “in Time,” to some extent at least. “As a result, the people have drifted away from Thy teaching and from Thyself, and Thou canst not save them. It is we” — we the unscrupulous, we, the violent, the men who stop at nothing to make the truth they love a reality in this world — “it is we, I say, who save them, in Thy stead, by doing all that which Thou hast refused to do and therefore by damning ourselves in Thine eyes. And we accept that damnation for the love of Thee — for Thy name to be praised.” This is the substance of the Inquisitor’s discourse, if not its textual wording. And the militant champion of the organised creed tells the Christ: “Do not come back! — do not destroy the work that we are doing in this fallen world, for Thy glory!” For no organisation can live “outside Time” — “above Time” — and hope to bring men back, one day, to the knowledge of the eternal, values. That, all men “above Time” have realised. In order to establish, or even to try to establish, here and now, a better order, in accordance with Truth everlasting, one has to live, outwardly at least, like those who are still “in Time”; likes them, one has to beviolent, merciless, destructive — but for different ends. Therein lies the tragedy of bringing into reality any dream of perfection. And the more perfect the dream — the further away from the conditions of success in this fallen world, — the more ruthless must necessarily be the methods of those who sincerely wish to impose it upon men, too late or... too early. Knowing this, the real men “above Time” are the first ones to understand and to appreciate the wholehearted efforts of their disciples “against Time,” however “awful” these ‘night appear to ordinary people neither good nor bad. The Christ, in Dostoyevsky’s famous page, says nothing. What could he say? There is nothing to be said which the leader of the militant Church could understand. To the Inquisitor, the Christ will always remain a mystery. But the Christ understands the Inquisitor and values his love. Before leaving the prison-cell — and the world of Time — he kisses him. As we have pointed out above, no man “outside Time” |
can enjoy any real influence upon human society unless he has such disciples, or unless he is himself prepared to become, also, a man “against Time.” For it is a fact that one can be both “above Time,” in one’s personal outlook, and “against Time” in one’s activity in the world. All the really great creative men “against Time” possess these two aspects: they are men of vision aware of timeless truths; but they are, also, men who have been stirred to the depth by the glaring contrast between the ideal world, built according to those truths, and the actual world in which they live; men who, after what they have seen and experienced, can neither remain any longer cut off from time, in their own inner paradise, nor act in life as though all were well, but who must devote their whole life and energy to the reshaping of tangible reality on the model of their vision of Truth. One such Man is the warrior-like Prophet Mohamed who dreamed a world-theocracy and succeeded in founding a great civilisation, lasting to this day. Another one, — whose unparalleled greatness is yet unrecognised, because his follow lost a war instead of winning it — is the tragic and beautiful figure that dominates the history of the West in our own times: Adolf Hitler. I have compared men “in Time” to the Lightning, and men “outside Time” or “above Time” to the Sun. Using the same metaphorical language, one can say that men “against Time” partake both of the Sun and of the Lightning, inasmuch as they are truly inspired by Golden Age ideals, rooted in timeless Truth, and as, — precisely in order to be able to stand for such ideals on the material plane, in the Age of Gloom, against the current of Time — they are compelled to display all the practical qualities of the men “in Time”; inasmuch as the only difference between them and the latter lies not in their methods (which are the same, and cannot but be so) but in their selfless, impersonal ends. They serve those ends with merciless realism but, to the extent they are “above Time” also, with the detachment preached to the warrior in the Bhagavad-Gita. In fact, the Teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita is nothing else but the philosophy of the perfect Man “against Time,” yogi in spirit, warrior in action; a Man like King Akhnaton, the Only-One of the Sun, free from the bondage of Time, and whose strength |
is cosmic Energy Itself, but... who uses that strength, on the material plane, in the service of his ideals, with all the remorseless logic of a Genghis Khan. Alone Kalki — the last Man “against Time,” at the end of every historical Cycle; the last Saviour, Who is also the greatest Destroyer — impersonates that double ideal perfectly, and succeeds completely. It is He Who restores to the world its primeaval health, beauty and innocence, thus opening a new Time-cycle. The other men “against Time” — before the very end of each humanity — succeed, and are recognised and exalted by millions, permanently, inasmuch as they, or their followers, abandon their spirit and work decidedly “in” Time, compromising with the forces of death; in other words, inasmuch as they have in them, — like the Prophet Mohamed,1 — more “lightning” than “sun.” Otherwise, they are defeated by the agents of the dark forces, broken in their might by the down-ward rush of history, which they are unable to stem. And such a fate awaits, always, until the very end of any Time-cycle, those who are too magnanimous, too trusting, too good; those who put too much confidence both in foreigners and in their sown people; those who do not “purge” their following often enough and thoroughly enough; who love their people too much to suspect ingratitude or actual treachery where it lies; who are not merciless enough, and sometimes spare their, fleeing enemies; in one word, those who, like Adolf Hitler, have, in their psychological make-up, too much “sun” and not enough “lightning.” Be He, himself, but the last one in date of these, come back with superhuman might after apparent annihilation, or a new one altogether, “Kalki” will avenge them and the people who struggled at their side, for no visible result whatsoever, in their days. And then, He will make their apparently impossible dreams the living reality of the next great Beginning! In every great Beginning, the men “above Time,” lonely ascetics, saviours of souls, or planners of an ideal order, too good for the fallen earth — Arhats, Boddhisatwas, or Rajrishis, to use the Sanskrit terminology, — meet the great Ones “against Time” on the material plane as on every other. Then, in 1 See the life of the Founder of Islam. |
a world in which violence is no longer necessary, nay, no longer thinkable; in which freedom and order go hand in hand, things are, according to the very law of manifestation in Time, what both the men “above Time” who cared to give a thought to collective life, andthe greatest men “against Time” wanted them to be. The City-of-the-Horizon-of-the-Disk as King Akhnaton dreamed it; the “Seat of Truth” which, even in his far-gone days, he failed to establish upon earth, and the world New Order which Adolf Hitler fought in vain to install in the midst of our present-day, worthless humanity, are, then one and the same living, tangible reality in time, — as long, at least, as unavoidable decay does not once more set in. And thus, through the perfect, impersonal — mathematical — justice of the Cosmos, each different agent of universal Destiny has the success which is due to him as a man. Those who work for the immediate result of their action, in a selfish spirit, obtain that result (and what a tremendous one, sometimes!) and play their part in the evolution of a world that must pass through degradation and death before it can experience the glory of a new birth and of a new youth. They bring that world nearer to its end. On the other hand, those who have renounced the bondage of Time and, purposely, either do not act, or else act in the selfless spirit of the warrior in the Bhagavad-Gita, get the glorious result of their life’s thought and work at the beginning of the following Time-cycle. And it may well be that the efforts of the men “against Time,” apparently wasted upon an ununderstanding and ungrateful world, actually do add to the beauty of every new Beginning, and that they even hasten its advent. For nothing is ever lost. And as we have said, Destruction and Creation are inseparable. Even the most destructive men “in Time” are creative in their way. Men “above Time” are also destructive in their way — indirectly, as the former are creative. Men “against Time” are actively, consciously, willingly both creative and destructive — like Lord Shiva Himself: the divine Principle behind all change; the Destroyer, Who again and again creates; and like Vishnu, the Preserver, Who, once at least in every Time-cycle, comes as Kalki, to destroy completely. |
In them, the Cosmos is for ever seeking its Principle, against the irresistible Law of Time, which steadily draws it away from It, from the beginning to the end of every successive material manifestation in time. Completed in Karlsruhe railway station on the 6th December, 1948 |
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