Soul-service is True Service

The ideal of social service arose with the decline of religion and the rise of science. Though involved in laudable projects, most advanced social institutions are, however, finding out that there is something lacking in many of their schemes – slum-clearance, housing for the poor, rehabilitation of prostitutes, rescue homes for homeless boys and girls, etc. Social-service experts are not yet unanimous as to the real cause of the problems they are trying to solve, but almost all are of the view that every effort to reform produces its own problems. Clear the slums, and immediately social problems of a new type arise; rescue prostitutes, and they offer new difficulties; build homes for abandoned children, and educational problems arise; have institutions for the mentally ill, and psychologists disagree as to what is to be done with them! On every hand people are finding out that to render service to the poor in mind or the maimed in heart is no easy task. The most ardent among social workers find that paucity of money is not their greatest difficulty. Social settlements and institutions, richly endowed and having help and guidance from experienced experts, yet complain of paucity of understanding, lack of soul-vision, ignorance of the true purpose of life and living.

Many among us are eager to serve our fellow-men; a hundred good causes surround us on every side, inviting our sympathy and our aid. But it must be realized first that mere change of outer circumstances without a change in inner attitudes will not solve the problems; that psychology is needed more than physiology for treating social issues; that even education of the mind does not help in finding a final solution, but only raises new problems. In other words, the problems of humanity are not merely economic. Passion, anger, greed are as much in the tenement houses we call chawls as in the villas we call bungalows. The university graduate has to wrestle with his own psychic nature, his own weaknesses, which are the same as those of the illiterate and the ignorant. More and more the attention of the thoughtful is directed to the supreme truth of ancient Indian philosophy, that for real, lasting and all-round reform of human nature and of earthly conditions, each one must begin to grapple with his own soul. The ancient ideal of service was self-improvement, which brought each the power to help others. We are often incapable of rendering correct aid to others because we do not know the roots of the trouble; those roots are deep and invisible, and their very existence is not suspected.

© "The Theosophical Movement" (February 2003), published by Theosophy Company (India) Private Limited, 40 New Marine Lines, Mumbai 400 020. Reprinted with permission.

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