It is the natural right of every human being to be happy to escape all

the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as

the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is

only because of our ignorance that we do suffer.

Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to

comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship

of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape

every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.

Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being

forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that

alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles

that lie before us.

Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it

suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is

complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and joy is

replaced with agony.

Today we have a friend.

Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago

we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change and

now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason

why this should be.

There was a time when we had health and strength;

but they have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside

from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser

consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches.

We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until they

strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them.

The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to

look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and

revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can but

reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably

and swiftly.

It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture

promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow

and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that would

turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly and

with perfect safety and comfort.

The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or

supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior

polish to the personality.

The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human

being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with

information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the

native ability he happened to be born with.

The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that constitutes

his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of the

self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and

wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical

world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together

constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved

and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious

effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be

achieved and wisdom attained.

Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the

evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering.

Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those

we love. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear isbecause

we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human

evolution.But the moment our ignorance gives way to comprehension such

fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place.

Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer? Because in

our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all

life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us

through other people a situation from which there is no possible escape

except through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time

when the causes we have already generated are fully exhausted.

When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of

ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever.

Why do people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blunder

ing ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we

do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude

to assume toward them.

Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they

are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer.

When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish.

And so it is with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once

reactions from our ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out

the better way. When we have comprehended the lessons they teach they are

no longer necessary and disappear.

It is not by the outward acquirement of facts that men become wise and

great. It is by developing the soul from within until it illuminates the brain

with that flood of light called genius.