British activist & theosophist (1847-1933)
Death is nothing more than the putting off your overcoat, in which you wandered through the street, when you come inside your house and no longer need its protection. It is nothing more than that--the putting off of a garment because it is no longer wanted, because it is no longer useful for the high purposes of the Spirit.
ANNIE BESANT
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There Is No Death
My heart revolts against the spectre of Almighty indifferent to the pain of sentient being. My conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality that surrounds me on every side.
ANNIE BESANT
Indian Political Thought
Thus the Rights of Man have become an accepted doctrine, but, unfortunately, they are only rights of man, in the exclusive sense of the word. They are sexual, and not human rights, and until they become human rights, society will never rest on a sure, because just, foundation. Women, as well as men, "are born and remain free and equal in rights;" women, as well as men, have "natural and imprescriptible rights;" for women, as well as for men, "these rights are--liberty, property, safety, and resistance of tyranny." Of these rights only crime should deprive them, just as by crime men also are deprived of them; to deny these rights to women, is either to deny them to humanity qua humanity, or to deny that women form a part of humanity; if women's rights are denied, men's rights have no logical basis, no claim to respect; then tyranny ceases to be a crime, slavery is no longer a scandal; "either all human beings have equal rights, or none have any."
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
The warmest feelings of Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and he, the crucified one, is adored with passionate devotion, not as martyr for truth, not as witness for God, not as faithful to death, but as the substitute for his worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath of God, and the punishment due to sin.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
We must notice also that God, who is said to love righteousness, can never crush out righteousness in any-human soul. There is no one so utterly degraded as to be without one sign of good. Among the lowest and vilest of our population, we find beautiful instances of kindly feeling and generous help. Can any woman be more degraded than she who only values her womanhood as a means of gain, who drinks, fights, and steals? Let those who have been among such women say if they have not been cheered sometimes by a very ray of the light of God, when the most. degraded has shown kindness to an equally degraded sister, and when the very gains of sin have been purified by being; poured into the lap of a suffering and dying companion. Shall love and devotion, however feeble, unselfishness and sympathy, however transitory in their action, shall these stars of heaven be quenched in the blackness of the pit of hell? If it be so, then, verily, God is not the "righteous. Lord who loveth righteousness."
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Creeds are like iron moulds, into which thought is poured; they may be suitable enough to the way in which they are framed; they may be fit enough to enshrine the phase of thought which designed them; but they are fatally unsuitable and unfit for the days long afterwards, and for the thought of the centuries which succeed.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Yoga is a matter of the Spirit and not of the intellect. For just as water will find its way through every obstruction, in order to rise to the level of its source, so does the spirit in man strive upwards ever towards the source whence it came.
ANNIE BESANT
Yoga: The Hatha Yoga and the Raja Yoga
But through this Armageddon the world will pass into a realm of peace, of brotherhood, of co-operation, and will forget the darkness and the terrors of the night in the joy that cometh in the morning.
ANNIE BESANT
The Theosophist, October 1914
But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample down these superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Anyone who has reached a certain stage of intellectual knowledge will recognise the unity of mankind.... That intellectual recognition of the unity is practically universal among educated people; but very few are prepared to carry out the intellectual recognition into practical life and practical training.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "Psychism and Spirituality", June 16, 1907
It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight.
ANNIE BESANT
Cultural and Religious Heritage of India: Islam
Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires.
ANNIE BESANT
Annie Besant: An Autobiography
To me in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls were as really children as I was myself a child.
ANNIE BESANT
Autobiographical Sketches
It may be urged: if divorce is to be so easily attainable, why should there be a marriage contract at all? Both as regards the pair immediately concerned, and as regards the children who may result from the union, a clear and definite contract seems to me to be eminently desirable. It is not to be wished that the union of those on whom depends the next generation should be carelessly and lightly entered into; the dignity and self-recollection which a definite compact implies are by no means to be despised, when it is remembered how grave and weighty are the responsibilities assumed by those who are to give to the State new citizens, and to Humanity new lives, which must be either a blessing or a curse. But the dignity of such a course is not its only, nor, indeed, its main, recommendation. More important is the absolute necessity that the conditions of the union of the two adult lives should be clearly and thoroughly understood between them. No wise people enter into engagements of an important and durable character without a written agreement; a definite contract excludes all chance of disagreement as to the arrangements made, and prevents misunderstandings from arising.
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
The whole Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature, and shielding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Belief in hell stifles all inquiry into truth by setting a premium on one form of belief, and by forbidding another under frightful penalties.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
What is important to you is simply this for the moment: that being surrounded by the astral and mental worlds, contacts from these are continually touching you, continually causing changes in your consciousness. If your astral body were thoroughly organised like your physical, the impressions made would be clear and sharp like the physical.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "Psychism and Spirituality", June 16, 1907
So long as you feel yourself separate from others, so long are you shut out from the realisation of the unity; so long as you say "my" and "mine," so long the realisation of the Spirit is not yet possible for you.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "Psychism and Spirituality", June 16, 1907
But happily many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from this idea of salvation from the God in whom they say they place all their hopes. They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they prefer not to speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and is moulding the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its own cruel side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not yet spread, does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain, in Mexico, we see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is too strong for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The old wine is being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We may, however, rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to prevail, and are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His revenge. The Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine out from His world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts about Him are fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever, and when men perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly and horrible must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular Christian ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the limbo of rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already dead, and their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass the souls of living men.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's wife, we would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths of His hell rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at their despair.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism