Annie Besant Quotes

No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.

The position of the Atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about ‘God’ and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it; what you tell me about your God is self‐contradictory, and therefore incredible. I do not deny ‘God,’ which is an unknown tongue to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.

The Atheist waits for proof of God. Till that proof comes he remains, as his name implies, without God. His mind is open to every new truth, after it has passed the warder Reason at the gate.

Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.

Just as the sun in the heaven is unchanged, but is mirrored as a thousand suns in ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans, so do you know the Sun of the Spirit within you from the broken reflections that you find in the lower self.

The moment a man uses a woman's sex to discredit her arguments, the thoughtful reader knows that he is unable to answer the arguments themselves.

This world is full of forms that are illusory, and the values are all wrong, the proportions are out of focus. The things which a man of the world thinks valuable, a spiritual man must cast aside as worthless.

I ask no other epitaph on my tomb but "'SHE TRIED TO FOLLOW TRUTH.

Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.

To see the Logos, the principle of consciousness, crucified on the cross of time and space in our own selves is not an evasion but among the most profound insights a human being can have.

Mysticism is the most scientific form of religion, for it bases itself, as does all science, on experience and experiment—experiment being only a specialised form of experience, devised either to discover or to verify.

To see, to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes—such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in man.

know for certain that millions, I say deliberately, millions, in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will save them from the hideous abyss of materialism into which modern money-worship is driving them headlong,

Religions are branches from a common trunk - Divine Wisdom.

My deeds must speak for me, for words are too poor.

We shower money on generals and on nobles, we keep high-born paupers living on the national charity, we squander wealth with both hands on army and navy, on churches and palaces; but we grudge every halfpenny that increases the education rate and howl down every proposal to build decent houses for the poor. We cover our heartlessness and indifference with fine phrases about sapping the independence of the poor and destroying their self-respect.

A profound impression was created by the discourses of Professor GN Chakravarti and Mrs Besant, who is said to have risen to unusual heights of eloquence, so exhilarating were the influences of the gathering. Besides those who represented our society and religions, especially Vivekananda, VR Gandhi, Dharmapala, captivated the public, who had only heard of Indian people through the malicious reports of interested missionaries, and were now astounded to see before them and hear men who represented the ideal of spirituality and human perfectibility as taught in their respective sacred writings.

Over against those who laud the present state of Society, with its unjustly rich and its unjustly poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life than that of being first in the race for wealth, most successful in the scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that health, comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual are far more desirable than breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, to be handed down to those who had done nothing to earn them.

hell never came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in "Paradise Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned and hoofed horror, but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always hoped that Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end.

The peril was pressing; the menace unmistakable. The

What Religion has to face in the controversies of to-day is not the unbelief of the sty, but the unbelief of the educated conscience and of the soaring intellect;

The Comparative Mythologists contend that the common origin is the common ignorance, and that the loftiest religious doctrines are simply refined expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses of savages, of primitive men, regarding themselves and their surroundings. Animism, fetishism, nature-worship, sun-worship — these are the constituents of the primeval mud out of which has grown the splendid lily of religion. A Krishna, a Buddha, a Lao-tse, a Jesus, are the highly civilized but lineal descendants of the whirling medicine-man of the savage. God is a composite photograph of the innumerable Gods who are the personifications of the forces of nature. And so forth. It is all summed up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common trunk — human ignorance.

How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognise the light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were no resistance?

voice of the Congress was supposed to be the voice of sedition and of class ambition, instead of being, as it was the voice of educated Indians, the most truly patriotic and loyal class of the population. In

Even the outer God must hide, ere the Inner God can manifest; the cry of agony of the Crucified must be wrung from the tortured lips; "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" precedes the realisation of the God within.

To look at food and say that it is good will not satisfy a starving man; he must put forth his hand and eat. So to hear the Master’s words is not enough; you must do what He says, attending to every word, taking every hint”.

They who cannot face the world have not the strength to face the difficulties of Yoga practice. If the outer world out-wearies your powers, how do you expect to conquer the difficulties of the inner life? If you cannot climb over the little troubles of the world, how can you hope to climb over the difficulties that a yogi has to scale? Those men blunder, who think that running away from the world is the road to victory, and that peace can be found only in certain localities.

There was a time when any idea of voluntary limitation was regarded by pious people as interfering with Providence. We are beyond that now, and have become capable of recognising that Providence works through the common sense of individual brains.

looking at man in upside-down fashion, it [56] has been possible for us to ask whether he has a Spirit, whether he survives death, whereas really the question that we might very well ask is: “Why has this immortal Bird of Heaven plunged down into the ocean of matter, into mortal life?” Thus

put the facts very briefly, but they are indisputable. Education. The percentage to the whole population of children receiving education is 2.8, the percentage having risen by 0.9 since Mr. Gokhale moved his Education Bill six years ago. The percentage of children of school-going age attending school is 18.7. In 1913 the Government of India put the number of pupils at 4-1/2 millions; this has been accomplished in 63 years, reckoning from Sir Charles Wood's Educational Despatch in 1854,

For though I was then kneeling beside her bed, heretic and outcast, the heart of me was religious in its very fervour of repudiation of a religion, and in its rebellious uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason and did not satisfy the soul. I went out into the darkness alone, not because religion was too good for me, but because it was not good enough; it was too meagre, too commonplace, too little exacting, too bound up with earthly interests, too calculating in its accommodations to social conventionalities.

Hundreds, each with a similar tale to tell, came to Trafalgar Square to lay their head against the paving stones. It did not take long for political agitators to recognize that this congregation of the downtrodden was a ready-made army of the angry with nothing to lose. Londoners had long realized that Trafalgar Square sat on an axis between the east and west of the city, the dividing line between rich and poor; an artificial boundary, which, like the invisible restraints that kept the disenfranchised voiceless, could be easily breached. In 1887, the possibility of social revolution felt terrifyingly near for some, and yet for others it did not seem close enough. At Trafalgar Square, the daily speeches given by socialists and reformers such as William Morris, Annie Besant, Eleanor Marx, and George Bernard Shaw led to mobilization, as chanting, banner-waving processions of thousands spilled onto the streets. Inevitably, some resorted to violence. The Metropolitan Police and the magistrate’s court at Bow Street, in Covent Garden, worked overtime to contain the protesters and clear the square of those whom they deemed indigents and rabble-rousers. But like an irrepressible tide, soon after they were pushed out, they returned once more.

Garibaldi; the England that is the enemy of tyranny, the foe of autocracy, the lover of freedom, that is the England I would fain here represent to you to-day. To-day, when India stands erect, no suppliant people, but a Nation, self-conscious, self-respecting, determined to be free; when she stretches out her hand to Britain and offers friendship not subservience; co-operation not obedience; to-day let me: western-born but in spirit eastern, cradled in England but Indian by choice and adoption: let me stand as the symbol of union between Great Britain and India: a union of hearts and free choice, not of compulsion: and

Children of India, I am here to speak to you to-day about some practical things, and my object in reminding you about the glories of the past is simply this. Many times have I been told that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true. But out of the past is built the future. Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, march forward, and make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our ancestors were great. We must recall that. We must learn the elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins; we must have faith in that blood, and what it did in the past: and out of that faith, and consciousness of past greatness, we must build an India yet greater than what she has been. And

It therefore becomes the duty of every one who fights in the ranks of Freethought, and who ventures to attack the dogmas of the Churches, and to strike down the superstitions which enslave men's intellect, to beware how he uproots sanctions of morality which he is too weak to replace, or how, before he is prepared with better ones, he removes the barriers which do yet, however poorly, to some extent check vice and repress crime.... That which touches morality touches the heart of society; a high and pure morality is the life-blood of humanity; mistakes in belief are inevitable, and are of little moment; mistakes in life destroy happiness, and their destructive consequences spread far and wide. It is, then, a very important question whether we, who are endeavouring to take away from the world the authority on which has hitherto been based all its morality, can offer a new and firm ground whereupon may safely be built up the fair edifice of a noble life.

institutions. The Aryan emigrants, who spread over the lands of Europe, carried with them the seeds of liberty sown in their blood in their Asian cradle-land. Western historians trace the self-rule of the Saxon villages to their earlier prototypes in the East, and see the growth of English liberty as up-springing from the Aryan root of the free and self-contained village communities. Its growth was crippled by Norman feudalism there, as its millennia-nourished security here was smothered by the East India Company. But in England it burst its shackles and nurtured a liberty-loving people and a free Commons' House. Here, it similarly bourgeoned out into the Congress activities, and more recently into those of the Muslim League, now together blossoming into Home Rule for India. The England of Milton, Cromwell, Sydney, Burke, Paine, Shelley, Wilberforce, Gladstone; the England that sheltered Mazzini, Kossuth, Kropotkin, Stepniak, and that welcomed Garibaldi; the

The Education Department controls the education given, and it is planned on foreign models, and its object is to serve foreign rather than native ends, to make docile Government servants rather than patriotic citizens; high spirits, courage, self-respect, are not encouraged, and docility is regarded as the most precious quality in the student; pride in country, patriotism, ambition, are looked on as dangerous, and English, instead of Indian, Ideals are exalted; the blessings of a foreign rule and the incapacity of Indians to manage their own affairs are constantly inculcated. What wonder that boys thus trained often turn out, as men, time-servers and sycophants, and, finding their legitimate ambitions frustrated, become selfish and care little for the public weal? Their own inferiority has been so driven into them during their most impressionable years, that they do not even feel what Mr. Asquith called the "intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke." India's

Now, I suggest four tests to judge whether the Government is progressive, and, further, whether it is continuously progressive. The first test that I would apply is what measures it adopts for the moral and material improvement of the mass of the people, and under these measures I do not include those appliances of modern Governments which the British Government has applied in this country, because they were appliances necessary for its very existence, though they have benefited the people, such as the construction of Railways, the introduction of Post and Telegraphs, and things of that kind. By measures for the moral and material improvement of the people, I mean what the Government does for education, what the Government does for sanitation, what the Government does for agricultural development, and so forth. That is my first test. The second test that I would apply is what steps the Government takes to give us a larger share in the administration of our local affairs—in municipalities and local boards. My third test is what voice the Government gives us in its Councils—in those deliberate assemblies, where policies are considered. And, lastly, we must consider how far Indians are admitted into the ranks of the public service. A

Heaven is not far away from us, but surrounds us on every side, and we are shut out from it by our incapacity to feel its vibrations, not their absence.

At a session on the first day, Annie Besant was shouted down by the delegates, because of her opposition to the policy of non-cooperation. Gandhi stood up on a chair and with folded hands asked the hecklers to quieten down. Every speaker, he said, must be given a patient hearing. This was a handsome gesture, since, back in 1916, Mrs Besant had demanded that he stop speaking in Banaras when his words offended her.

Las divisiones adoptadas en el curso de estas conferencias son: l° El indivisible Brahman o el Todo; 2° La más elevada manifestación, que verdaderamente es el mismo Brahman manifiesto en atributos, es decir, el Saguna, el Supremo Ishvara; 3° Los Jivátmas, esparcidos por todos los mundos en donde existe la conciencia (y todo es conciencia); 4°. La manifestación que hemos llamado Pranatma, el ser vital, la conciencia ordinariamente despierta del hombre, de los brutos, plantas y piedras, en la rueda de nacimientos y muertes.

Cuando se conocen el gozador (el Jivatmá), los objetos de goce (el Maya del universo) y el Director (Ishvara), queda revelado el Todo en este trino Brahman 11. Estos tres resumidos en Uno (la A, la U y la M pronunciadas como una sílaba) son Brahman. El procedimiento interpretativo de las Palabras Sagradas es familiar para los estudiantes de historia antigua. En el Chhándogyopanishad encontraríamos una y varias veces repetidas palabras de tres letras, cada una de ellas con significación particular, conteniendo en conjunto alguna verdad capital12. Esta manera de formar palabras no se contrae únicamente a los Upanishads, pues se echa de ver en todas las grandes religiones de la antigüedad.

So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy, each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those who know;

The prophet—coming forth from time to time with the divine word hot as fire on his lips—speaks out the ancient truth and illuminates tradition. But they who cling to the words of tradition are apt to be blinded by the light of the fire and to call out “heretic” against the one who speaks the truth that they have lost.

The word “Avatâra,” as you know, has as its root “tri,” passing over, and with the prefix which is added, the “ava,” you get the idea of descent, one who descends. That is the literal meaning of the word.

But not devotion alone marks this great One who is climbing his divine path. He must also be, as I´shvara is, a lover of humanity. Unless within him there burns the flame of love for men—nay, men, do I say? it is too narrow—unless within him burns the flame of love for everything that exists, moving and unmoving, in this universe

He finds in them many texts that do not fit into the narrow framework that he has made; and because he too often cares for the framework more than for the truth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in, in some dislocated fashion.

Veiling Himself in the form of an outcaste—for to Him all forms are the same, the human differences are but as the grains of sand which vanish before the majesty of His greatness.

You always look at the things of the spirit with the eyes of the flesh. What you ought to do is to look at the things of the flesh with the eyes of the spirit.

The more ignorant the man, the more he thinks he can grasp. The less he understands, the more he resents being told that there are some things beyond the grasp of his intellect, existences so mighty that he cannot even dream of the lowest of the attributes that mark them out.

The Lord comes forth to restore that which had been disturbed of the balanced interworking of the three gunas and to make again such balance between them as shall enable evolution to go forward smoothly and not be checked in its progress.

The evolution of force can only be made by struggle, by combat, by effort, by exercise, and inasmuch as I´shvara is building men and not babies, He must draw out men's forces by pulling against their strength, making them struggle in order to attain, and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life that otherwise would remain enfolded in itself.

Were everything around us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. It is the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain undeveloped.

That is why there are forces which you call evil. In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes to us from I´shvara, but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that, by opposing it, we may draw out our strength.

Las verdades fundamentales de la religión pueden resumirse así: 1º- La Existencia real, única, eterna, infinita e Incognoscible. 2º- De ella procede el Dios manifestado que desenvuelve su unidad en dualidad, y ésta en trinidad. 3º- De la Trinidad manifestada proceden las innumerables inteligencias Espirituales, guías de la actividad cósmica. 4º- El hombre, reflejo de Dios manifestado, es, por lo tanto, fundamentalmente trino; y su “Yo” interno y real es eterno y uno con el “Yo” universal.               5º- Evoluciona por encarnaciones repetidas, a las cuales le impele e deseo y de las que se liberta por el conocimiento y el sacrificio, llegando a ser divino en acto como lo ha sido siempre en potencia.

El Espíritu del hombre ama la pureza, pero su pensamiento le trastorna.  El pensamiento del hombre ama la tranquilidad, pero sus deseos le arrastran.  Si pudiera deshacerse constantemente de sus deseos, su pensamiento se tranquilizaría.  Si su pensamiento queda limpio, su espíritu se purifica........ La razón por la cual los hombres son incapaces de llegar a ese estado, estriba en que no limpian su pensamiento ni abandonan sus deseos.  Si el hombre llega a eximirse de sus deseos, cuando mira interiormente su pensamiento no es él; cuando exteriormente su cuerpo no es él; y cuando dirige sus ojos más lejos, hacia las cosas de fuera, nada hay de común entre ellas y él.

El Taoísmo insiste mucho en la abdicación del deseo.  Un comentador del Clásico de la Pureza observa que la comprensión del Tao depende de la absoluta pureza, y que “la adquisición de esa pureza absoluta depende enteramente de la abdicación del Deseo; urgente lección práctica que surge de este tratado.” El Tao Teh Ching dice: “Siempre sin deseos hemos de hallarnos si queremos profundizar todo el misterio, pues poseídos por el deseo, sólo podremos conocer lo externo.

Manifestado, próximo, moviéndose en lo secreto, permanece grave donde reposa todo lo que se mueve, todo lo que respira y cierra los ojos.  Entiende que hay que adorar.  Esto, a la vez ser y no ser, lo mejor, más allá del conocimiento de todas las criaturas.  Luminoso, más sutil que lo sutil; de El han salido los mundos con sus habitantes.  Esto es el imperecedero Brahman; Esto es también Vida, Voz y Pensamiento...  En la diadema de oro más elevado, está el inmaculado, el invisible Brahman; es la pura luz de las Luces, conocida por los que conocen el yo...  el imperecedero Brahman esta delante, detrás, a la derecha, a la izquierda, arriba  y abajo, penetrando todas las cosas.  Brahman es en verdad Todo y lo mejor”.

La idea de que el hombre en su yo interior es idéntico al yo del universo (“Yo soy Aquél”), esa idea, impregna tan profundamente todo el pensamiento indo, que comúnmente se designa al hombre como: “la ciudad divina de Brahma”, “la ciudad de las nueve puertas”, y se dice “que Dios reside dentro de su corazón”. “No hay más que una manera de ver el Ser indemostrable, eterno, inmaculado, más elevado que el éter, sin nacimiento, la gran Alma eterna... Esa gran Alma, sin nacimiento, es la misma que reside como alma inteligente en todas las criaturas vivas, la misma que mora como el éter en el corazón.  ¡En él duerme!  A ella están sometidas todas las cosas; es el Soberano Señor de todas ellas. No puede acrecentarse por las buenas obras ni disminuirse por las malas.  Quien todo lo gobierna es el Soberano Señor de todos los seres, el conservador de todos, el puente y el soporte de los mundos que les impide caer y destruirse

Cuando se considera a Dios como Aquel que desarrolla el universo, aparece con toda claridad su triple carácter, en Shiva, Vishnu y Brahma, o también en Vishnu durmiendo sobre las aguas.  El Loto nace de su seno y en el Loto Brahma.  El hombre es igualmente triple según el Mundakopanishad, el yo está condicionado por el cuerpo físico, el cuerpo sutil y el cuerpo mental, elevándose luego, fuera de todos esos medios, en el único sin dual.  De la Trimurti (Trinidad) proceden los numerosos dioses encargados de dirigir el universo, y de ella se dicen en él: “Adorad, ¡OH dioses!, a Aquel que, imagen del año, cumple el ciclo de sus días.  Adorad esa Luz de las luces, como la eterna vida.” (VI –iv – 16.).

Así un buen pensamiento se mantiene como una fuerza activa y benéfica, y uno malo como un maléfico

This is the India of which I speak - the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother - they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life.

He was now looking at one of the best of them. The name of Ettore Bugatti has the same magic to the motoring enthusiast as do those of Annie Besant or Karl Marx to other circles of believers. Bugatti was

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world.

Gnosticism, Hermeticism and certain forms of Occult Research such as the type conducted by Manly P. Hall, Annie Besant, Leadbeater, Franz Bardon, Rudolf, Steiner, books such as “Kybalion” and the works of people like Robert A. Monroe make it all the way up to 505. Robert Monroe was an author and teacher of Out-of-Body-Travel, creator of Hemi-Sync audio-technology and Founder of the Monroe Institute which has taught many thousands how to leave their body. Such is the ability of a single 500-person. Monroe was aware of the lower astral (0-200) and the mid and higher astral (200-500), but he himself also touched the celestial (500+). The near-death-experience itself measures at 515. If you die at above 500, you will not find yourself in the astral-realms and soul-waiting-halls and soul-group areas and neither will it be recommended you reincarnate in order to learn more.

Estas páginas tienen por objeto ayudar a los fieles de cada una de las siete religiones a reconocer la valía y belleza de las otras seis, al paso que demostrar la unidad fundamental de las siete doctrinas.