Theosophical Study Paper No 03

Author(s): Theosophical Society in Australia
Publisher: Theosophical Society in Australia

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fate is too strong for me.” You can sometimes trick destiny, when you cannot meet it face to face. When sailing against contrary winds, the sailor cannot change the wind, but he can change the set of the sails. The direction of the ship depends on the relation of the sails to the wind, and, by careful tacking, you can very nearly sail, against a contrary wind, and by a little extra labour reach your port. That is a parable about karma. If you cannot change your fate, change yourself, and meet it at a different angle, and you will go gliding away successfully where failure seemed inevitable. "Skill in action is yoga," and that is one way in which the wise man rules his stars instead of being ruled by them. The things that are really inevitable, and in which you cannot change your attitude-ENDURE. They are very few. When there is some destiny so mighty that you can only bow down before it and yield, even then learn from it, and out of that destiny you will gather a flower of wisdom that perhaps a happier fate might not have enabled you to pluck. And so in every way we find that we can meet and conquer, and even from defeat may pluck the flower of victory.
In that way we learn the Theosophic Life, and it becomes reality more and more with every week we live. The Theosophic Life must be a life of service. Unless we are serving, we have no right to live. We live by the constant sacrifice of other lives on every side, and we must pay it back; otherwise, to use an ancient phrase, we are but thieves and do not repay the gift. Service is the great illuminator. The more we serve the wiser we become, for we learn wisdom not by studying but by living. There is a sense in which the saying is perfectly true: "He who doeth the will shall know of the Doctrine." To live the life of service clears the mental atmosphere of the distorting fogs of prejudice, passion, temperament. Service alone makes the eye single, so that the whole body is full of light, and only those who serve are those who truly live. That theosophic ideal is one which must permeate the being of every one of us, for on the amount that we give in service to others can we claim the service of Those who are higher than ourselves. They who serve humanity serve in proportion to the
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