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Frasi di Annie Besant
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Annie Besant è stata un'attivista, saggista, esoterista, oratrice socialista e teosofa britannica; fu una sostenitrice dei diritti delle donne e dell'autogoverno irlandese e indiano.

Nel 1867, all'età di vent'anni, sposò l'ecclesiadtico anglicano Frank Besant ed ebbero due figli, ma le opinioni sempre più anti-religiose di Annie portarono ad una separazione legale già nel 1873. Divenne in seguito un'oratrice di primo piano per la National Secular Society , scrittrice ed amica stretta dell'attivista propagandista dell'ateismo Charles Bradlaugh. Nel 1877 vennero perseguiti per aver aiutato a far pubblicare un libro sulla contraccezione di Charles Knowlton: lo scandalo rese entrambi famosi e Bradlaugh fu eletto parlamentare per Northampton nel 1880.

Venne coincolta con le azioni del sindacato, tra cui la dimostrazione denominata "Sabato di sangue" nel 1887 e lo sciopero londinese delle lavoratrici della manifattura l'anno seguente. Fu una relatrice di alto rango del fabianesimo e della "Social Democratic Federation" affiliata al marxismo; venne eletta alla "London School Board" per Tower Hamlets, riuscendo a superare brillantemente l'elezione anche se ben poche donne fossero qualificate al tempo per votare.

Nel 1890 incontrò Helena Blavatsky e nel corso degli anni succesivi il suo interesse nei confronti della teosofia crebbe sempre più, mentre la sua partecipazione alle questioni secolari diminuì fino a scomparire del tutto. Divenne membro della Società teosofica e un docente di spicco sulla materia. Come parte del suo lavoro in relazione alla teosofia viaggiò nell'impero anglo-indiano. Nel 1898 aiutò a costruire la "Central Hindu School"a Varanasi e nel 1922 promosse l'istituzione dell'"Hyderabad National Collegiate Board" a Mumbai.

Nel 1902 fondò la prima loggia estera dell'"Ordine internazionale co-massonico" Le Droit Humain. Nel corso degli anni seguenti istituì nuove loggie in molte parti dell'impero britannico. Nel 1907 divenne presidente della Società teosofica, la cui sede centrale si trovava a Adyar .

S'impegnò anche attivamente nella politica dell'India, giungendo a far parte del partito del Congresso Nazionale Indiano. Quando nel 1914 scoppiò la prima guerra mondiale aiutò a lanciare l'"Indian Home Rule movement" nella sua campagna per la democrazia in India e per fargli ottenere lo status di dominion all'interno dell'Impero. Questo fatto condusse alla sua elezione come presidentessa del "Congresso" verso la fine del 1917. Alla fine degli anni venti viaggiò negli Stati Uniti d'America assieme al suo protetto nonché figlio adottivo Jiddu Krishnamurti, che sosteneva fosse il nuovo Messia ed una nuova reincarnazione del Buddha: Krishnamurti rigettò tali affermazioni nel 1929.

Dopo la guerra continuò a spendersi nelle campagna a favore dell'indipendenza indiana e per le cause della teosofia, fino alla sua morte avvenuta nel 1933.

✵ 1. Ottobre 1847 – 20. Settembre 1933
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Annie Besant Frasi e Citazioni

“Parlerò del piccolo al grande e del debole al forte.”

Annie Besant

in AA.VV., Il libro del femminismo, traduzione di Martina Dominici, Gribaudo, 2019. ISBN 9788858022900

Forte

Annie Besant: Frasi in inglese

“Many, perhaps most, who see the title of this book will at once traverse it, and will deny that there is anything valuable which can be rightly described as "Esoteric Christianity."”

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There is a wide-spread, and withal a popular, idea that there is no such thing as an occult teaching in connection with Christianity, and that "The Mysteries," whether Lesser or Greater, were a purely Pagan institution. The very name of "The Mysteries of Jesus," so familiar in the ears of the Christians of the first centuries, would come with a shock of surprise on those of their modern successors, and, if spoken as denoting a special and definite institution in the Early Church, would cause a smile of incredulity.
Origine: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter I. The Hidden Side of Religions

“Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man 1923, p. 148

“May you be able to overclimb the obstacles custom, tradition, thoughtlessness, and habit have built up; may even such poor words as mine win you to the realization that there is no joy in life like the joy of discipleship, no so-called sacrifice that can be made which is not as the dross cast into the fire where gold comes out instead; oh! that in the hearts of even a few of you — one here and there scattered through this vast audience — the feeble words may light the eternal flame, and the passing movement caused by speech may grow into resolute will and a determined endeavor. Oh, then for you, too, in the near future there awaits the Finding of the Master, for you also who seek shall find; if you knock with the hammer of these Qualifications, surely the door shall swing open before you, that you may find Him, as I have been blessed enough to find Him, that you may know that service which is perfect freedom, that joy which is in the presence of the Master.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 83

“And so this great Teacher has traced out for us the Qualifications demanded for passing through the first portal of Initiation, for that Birth of the Christ in the human Spirit, which is the passing of that doorway. I have run over, roughly and inadequately I know, the wonderful teaching which comes from Him to illuminate us, but none the less you can see it is an exacting demand, none the less you will see how you must shake yourself free from many prejudices, customs, thoughtless ways of life, if you would find the Master and be reckoned by Him among His disciples. p. 82”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“Quickly or slowly, according as that probation is lived nobly or poorly, another summons comes to him, when the Master sees that he has gained to a considerable extent the Qualifications which are necessary, and needs a further fuller teaching in order that he may apply his knowledge more efficiently to life. Again he is called; again he sees his Master. And then the Master accepts him as disciple, no longer on probation, but accepted and approved; now his consciousness is to begin to blend with the consciousness of his Master, and he is to feel His presence more clearly.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923), p.63

“When a man has sufficiently distinguished himself by service, and by acquiring and accepting the theoretical views that were glanced at in 'Seeking the Master' then he finds his Master — or rather his Master finds him. During all the time of his struggle those gracious eyes have been upon him watching him progress; in many lives in the past he has come under the same influence which now is to become the dominant influence in his life. He has reached a point where the Master can reveal Himself, can place him definitely on probation, can help to prepare him for Initiation. That is the first stage: a particular Master chooses a particular aspirant and takes charge of him, in order to prepare him for Initiation; for you must remember that Initiation is a quite definite thing, that only Those who have already attained can enable others to enter on the Path which They Themselves have trodden.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 61

“Learn, then, that the service demanded is that unselfish service that gives everything and asks for nothing in return; and if you find that in you it is a necessity of your nature, not a choice but an overmastering impulse, then you may be sure that you are one of the men of the world who are taking the first steps towards the Path. (I need hardly say that when I say men I mean women too, but I cannot keep on saying "man and woman each time..)!”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man 1923, p. 29

“There is no distinction here between the kinds of service, provided they are unselfish, strenuous, moved by the ideal to help and serve... I cannot give you one by one the numerous divisions of the Way of Service. Anything that is of value to human life is included on that way. Choose then what way you will, because of your capacities and your opportunities; it matters not as regards the treading of the first steps.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 20

“There is the first condition, the sine quanon. For the selfish no such advance is possible; for the unselfish such advance is certain. And in whatever life the man begins to think more of the common good than of his own individual gain, whether it be in the service of the town, of the community, of the nation, of the wider joinings of nations together, right up to the service of humanity itself, every one of those is a step towards the Path, and is preparing the man to set his feet thereon.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“The first step of all, absolutely necessary, without which no approach is possible, by which achievement ever comes within reach of realization, may be summed up in four brief words: the Service of Man.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“These are the great facts in Nature, existing, whether recognized or not, on which the possibility of treading the Path depends: Reincarnation, the law of Karma, the fact of the Path, the Existence of the Teachers.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man 1923, p. 15

“Next, the facts are that there is a Path and that men have trodden it before us; that the swifter evolution is possible; that the laws of it may be known, the conditions of it understood, the stages of it be trodden; and that at the end of that Path there are standing Those Who once were men of the world, but now are the Guardians of the world, the Elder Brethren of our race, the Teachers and the Prophets of the past, stretching upwards in ranks of ever-more dazzling light from the ending of the Path for man to the highest Ruler of the world in which we live.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“The fact of reincarnation, then, is taken for granted, for not one of us could possibly tread the whole of that long course, could reach divine perfection, in the limits of a single life. But our man of the world need not know of reincarnation. He knows it in his spiritual memory, although his physical brain may not yet have recognized it, and his past, which is a fact, will push him onwards until Spirit and brain are in fuller communication, and that which is known to the man himself becomes known in the concrete mind.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“Now, one of the great facts which underlie the whole possibility of a Path of Human Perfecting, that I must take for granted throughout the lectures — for to deal with it as a matter for argument would lead us far away from our subject — one of the fundamental facts in Nature, is the fact of reincarnation. That means the gradual growth of man through many lives, through many experiences of the physical world, of the intermediate world, and also of the world called heaven. Evolution would be too short to enable a man to grow from imperfection to perfection, unless he had many opportunities, a long, long road to lead him upward.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“To know is the difference between walking in the darkness and in the light, and to understand the laws of Nature is to gain the power of quickening our evolution by utilizing every law that hastens our growth, by avoiding the working of those that would retard and delay.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“Sunshine does not cease to warm you because you may not know anything of the constitution of the sun. Fire does not cease to burn you, because, unknowing its fierceness, you thrust your hand into the flame. It is the security of human life and human progress that the laws of nature are ever working and carrying us on with them, whether we know of them or not. But if we know them, we gain a great advantage.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“We must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first step towards the Path, need either know or recognize these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“It is the Path by which, to use a simile often used, instead of going round and round the mountain by an ever-climbing spiral, man climbs straight up the mountainside regardless of cliff and precipice, regardless of gulf and chasm, knowing there is nothing that can stop the Eternal Spirit, and that no obstacle is stronger than the strength that is omnipotence, because it has its source in Omnipotence itself.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“The Path of Purification is the Probationary Path, on which certain qualifications must be developed; the Path of Illumination is the Path of Holiness, subdivided into four stages, each of which is entered by a special Initiation, symbolized among Christians as the Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, and Passion of Christ; the Path of Union is the attainment of Masterhood, Liberation, Final Salvation.”

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Annie Besant

Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“There is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recognized in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussulmans in the Sufi — the mystic — teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision. But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of names you choose as best attracting or expressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine.”

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Origine: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“There is nothing new in these lectures, but only old truths retold. But the truths are of such vivid and perennial interest that, though old, they are never stale, and, though well known, there is always something to say which seems to throw on them new light and new charm. For they touch the deepest recesses of our being, and bring the breath of heaven into the lower life of earth...
May these reminders of the ancient facts of discipleship and Masterhood nerve some to effort, encourage others to perseverance. May they help some to realize the possibility of obeying the command: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."”

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Origine: Foreword, Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of Hill Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?”

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Origine: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

“Study in one school of psychology came to what seemed a terrible conclusion. It was the school of Lombroso in Italy. He declared, and many others followed him, that the visions of the prophets, of the saints, of the seers, all their testimony to the existence of superphysical worlds, were the products of disordered brains, of diseased or over-strained nervous apparatus. He went further, and he declared that the manifestation known as genius was closely allied to insanity, that the brain of the genius and the brain of the madman were akin, until the phrase "genius is allied to madness," became the stock axiom of that school.”

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Origine: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

“A man who is a spiritual man--a religious teacher--regards the universe from the standpoint of the Spirit from which everything is seen as coming from the One. When he stands, as it were, in the centre, and he looks from the centre to the circumference, he stands at the point whence the force proceeds, and he judges of the force from that point of radiation and he sees it as one in its multitudinous workings, and knows the force is One; he sees it in its many divergencies, and he recognises it as one and the same thing throughout. Standing in the centre, in the Spirit, and looking outwards to the universe, he judges everything from the standpoint of the Divine Unity and sees every separate phenomenon, not as separate from the One but as the external expression of the one and the only Life. But science looks at the thing from the surface. It goes to the circumference of the universe and it sees a multiplicity of phenomena. It studies these separated things and studies them one by one. It takes up a manifestation and judges it; it judges it apart; it looks at the many, not at the One; it looks at the diversity, not at the Unity, and sees everything from outside and not from within: it sees the external difference and the superficial portion while it sees not the One from which every thing proceeds.”

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Origine: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

“There is one thing that is eating the heart out of India, and that is modern materialism. There is one thing which is poisoning the mind of India, and that is the kind of science which is the teacher of materialism and works against Spirituality in the mind. How should I be able to tell you of the moral regeneration of India unless first I can strike at that which is piercing her heart and sucking out her very lifeblood. So--as I have been trained in the science of the West, trained in the knowledge of the physical Universe which is so much used to make men believe that nothing but the physical remains--I take for my first subject this undermining of materialism by science, and I attack it with the weapons that were once used to build it up.”

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Origine: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

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