Theosophical Study Paper No 03

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

Page 13

services given. They are bound to send out life into pipes that will carry it everywhere and distribute it, and They seek, in order that They may serve humanity, those whose lives are one long service to the race. I do not mean by service only those great acts of service done by the martyr or the hero. Whenever you serve one man or woman in love, you serve the race. In India every truly religious man offers five sacrifices every day. One of those sacrifices is the “sacrifice to men"; as we might say, the sacrifice to humanity. The application of that is that before the householder eats his own food he must feed some one who has need of food. Only when he has fed another may he take his own. We serve the race in serving our nearest neighbour, and we may glorify every pettiest act of service by seeing behind the recipient the great ideal: “In serving you I serve the race, and you are the race's hand”.
Life becomes great when we look at it from this wider outlook, when we see things as they are, instead of being blinded by the outer appearance. Let our lives be great, and not petty. The great life is the happy life, and the one whose ideals are great is himself great; for matter shapes itself to the will of the informing Spirit, and a life petty from the outer standpoint may be made great by the splendour of the ideal that ensouls it. If we cannot do great things let us do small things perfectly; for perfection lies in the perfection of every detail and not in the size of the act. There is nothing great, nothing small, from the standpoint of the Self. The act of the King whose will shapes a nation is no more great from the standpoint of the Self than the act of the mother who nurses a crying child. Each is necessary, is part of the Divine activity. Because necessary, it is great in its own place, and the whole, not any one part, is the life of the Self. It is like a mighty mosaic, and any fragment which is not in its own place makes a blot on the perfection of the whole. Our lives are perfect as they fill the appointed gap in the great mosaic, and if we leave our work undone while we yearn after some other, two places may be left empty, and the whole ill-done.
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