Sunrise

Anybody's Man

Hannah Berman, England
[image]Nature spews the Lukewarm out of her mouth

In a world of tragedy and unhappiness, for that is the stage to which humanity has brought itself today, there is nothing so futile as a negative mind. The man who does not know which 'side he is on,' and who flounders about in a wobbly sort of way from here to there, is anchored nowhere, a danger to himself, and a potential enemy of himself and of all mankind.

People on the whole can be roughly divided into three classes. Firstly, those who stand positively for universal brotherhood and truth and loyalty and compassion and all those ideals that emanate from the higher part of man. Secondly, those who, just as sincerely, believe in the opposite ideals, and have a religion which spells a desire for power and a God which spells Force. These two classes are very positive and definite, but comprise comparatively few in numbers.

The great mass of humanity belongs to the third class — the negative class. Here one finds the individual who is not particularly one thing or the other; who, in short, does not know his own mind. As a rule he takes pride in proclaiming his open-mindedness.

Actually he is anybody's man; like the dog who is so generally friendly that he would carry a lantern round for the burglar. Unfortunately there are those who know how to use these 'open-minded' individuals to swell their own ranks. Our weak, negative friend is easily 'talked over,' easily convinced and converted to this point of view or that, and alas! if we take a look around today, we can see the result of thousands, nay millions of people of this type, having been 'roped in,' because like sheep they have been passively led and convinced and so have followed some persuasive orator. They now find themselves in a deplorable and even tragic position of helplessness; in many cases even actively being forced to carry out a policy which they loathe, but in which they find they are entrapped. One day such an individual wakes up and says, "What have I done to get myself into this awful mess?" That is exactly the point. He did nothing — nothing at all. The question he should ask himself is, "What did I omit to do?" He omitted to think, to use his mind, and to place a guard around himself of positive ideas on fundamental issues.

The mind is a marvelous and precious possession capable of untold miracles and latent possibilities. No one would allow a priceless picture or a precious jewel to be mishandled by others. And yet there are millions of individuals, each possessing a mind and not using it: not only not using it, but actually allowing anybody who has the power to do with it anything at all — to mold it, to impress it with ideas and, in millions of cases, to allow it to be taken possession of and imprisoned.

The Brutus and Mark Anthony of today play games with the mob mind as in Julius Caesar. Those who have become experts toy in the same way with minds in the mass. He who does nothing to prevent his own mind from being captured in this way is committing a 'crime of inaction' which is just as terrible as a positive criminal act, and even more destructive in its ultimate results.

To one who has even an intuition of the potentiality of the human spirit, this imprisoning of the mind is the most dreadful thing that can happen, taking away from the individual his chance of making his incarnation worth while.

(From Sunrise magazine, September 1953; copyright © 1953 Theosophical University Press)



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