Angels Weep at the Sight of Human Sorrow

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 13 pages

A thirteen-page compilation opened by an abstract rather than a train of thoughts, the abstract being unusually a piece of continuous prose rather than a list of headings. Please note that this file is not linked from the Higher Ethics and Devotion section list at present; it has been given a description page like the rest of the section, but no line has been added to the list, since that is a decision for the publisher.

The abstract sets out the whole argument in a page. It begins by cataloguing the occasions of tears — smiles of benevolence, joy, sadness, bitterness; that we weep in gladness and weep in pain; and that those chained to previous actions rejoice and weep from life to life. It then describes what fear of pain drives people to: seeking asylum from the world and from themselves in the living god within, their tears moving others and propelling them to action, like the swan song that moves man and beast. Tears are called the moisture of sentient life, and the line from Light on the Path is brought in — that before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears — with the gloss that tears watering the parched soil of pain and sorrow bring forth the fruits of karmic retribution. The distinction the file turns on is then made exactly: when the mind rises above the illusion of separateness and remains calm at all times, the eyes become incapable of tears for self but tearful for the woes of others — so the injunction is not against feeling but against a particular direction of it. The title image closes the abstract: that angels weep at the sight of human sorrow, their tears imparting virtue to precious stones and metals and irrigating the fields of charity immortal. The body then develops the opening proposition that tears for self are an overflow of the superfluous possessions of self.

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