Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

Page 79

69
choose to utilize the science of the soul, they may take the evidence of experts on this subject; they may take the moral precepts of the great religious Teachers of the world, and by obedience to these precepts to which their intuition responds although they may not understand the method of their working—they may effect in the doing that which also may be effected by distinct and deliberate knowledge. So devotion and obedience to a Teacher may work towards liberation as knowledge might otherwise do.
Applying these principles in every direction the student will begin to realize how man is handicapped by ignorance, and how great is the part played by knowledge in human evolution. Men drift because they do not know; they are helpless because they are blind; the man who would finish his course more rapidly than will the common mass of men, who would leave the slothful crowd behind “ as the racer leaves the hack”, he needs wisdom as well as love, knowledge as well as devotion. There is no need for him to wear out slowly the links of chains forged long ago; he can file them swiftly through, and be rid of them as effectively as though they slowly rusted away to set him free.