Some Collected Theosophical Articles and Verse of George Cardinal LeGros

Oh, not the men of pomp and guile,

The crafty and the bold,
The haughty men who never smile,
And men who live for gold;

But broken men with hands that bleed

And souls by anguish rent
'Tis they who in this book will read
The Mystic Testament

- G. C. Legros (1905 - 1988)

Contents

- Preface to Hard-copy "Collected Writings - 1992, Jaqua"

- The Splendor That Is (verse)
- The Theosophical Seal
- The Cult of the Vampires
- Divine Willingness
- Wild Splendor (verse)
- The Snow Lily (verse)
- The Oracles Foretell (verse)
- The Duty of a Theosophist
- The Land of No Return
- The Sacred Season
- The Quest
- A Point Loma Memory (verse)
- Invocation (verse)
- The Great Pyramid
- "God" and the Universal Mind
- The Final Visitor
- Man's Enduring Hope
- The Ending Year
- The Gulls (verse)
- White Magic
- The 'Miracle Motor'
- Immensity!
- The Great Illumination
- Questions Answered
- The Universal You
- Let the Savior In (verse)
- Autumn Trails (verse)
- The Path (verse)
- Our Natural Diet
- Little Lives
- The Amazing Monads
- Autumn Night
- One Road
- The Greatest Curse
- What is Initiation?
- Renascence (verse)
- Nocturne (verse)
- Up Heart!
- Songs Like Flowers (verse)
- Loving Our Enemies
- Free (II) (verse)
- Free Choice & Destiny
- Autumn Afternoon
- The Heart-Light
- Theosophists Versus Nice People, etc.
- Theosophy and Quantum Physics
- The UFO Mystery
- Proofs, Faith,, Knowledge
- The Foundation of Wisdom
- The Lighthouse in the Storm
- Chelas and Human Beings
- Short-Cuts to Shamballa
- Are You a Beatnik?
- The Pleasure-Mad-Hatter
- A Field of Daisies
- The Point of No Return
- Cabbage Heads and Kings
- On Forgiveness
- Ondra (verse)
- Group Souls and Soul Mates
- Eternal Life
- What is Our Duty?
- The Real and the Unreal
- Pyramid Power
- Bright Moment (verse)
- Man After Death
- Though it Be Spring (verse)
- Be a Propagandist
- Look Homeward, Pilgrim
- You - The Disciple
- The Eternal Now
- Sex and Occult Science
- Turn the Golden Key
- From Letters
- Armageddon Coming Up?
- Darwin Bombed by Beetle
- The Secret Doctrine on the Problem of Sex
- Other Autumns (verse)
- Free (I) (verse)
- The Duty Before Us
- The Path Ahead
- Ambition Versus Attainment
- The 'Messiah'-Person
- You Are You Forever
- Lemuria and Atlantis
- The Demon Gods
- Other Wonders
- Sthula-Sarrira (verse)
- What Teachings Should We Stress?
- The Golden Chalice
- There is No Door
- Prisoner of the Clouds
- Twenty Years an Ex-Chela
- The Traveler
- Never Despair!
- LeGros Obituary
- As Another Year Begins
- The Detroit Convention
- The Incarnation of an Ideal
- Letter on Sexual Desire
- The Disciple (verse)
- Pledge Fever (verse)
- The Land Without A Name (verse)
- Elfinmead (verse)
- The Hungry Men (verse)
- Springtime (verse)
- The Seven Laws of Success (article)
- The Voice (verse)
- The Web of Dawn (verse)
- Two Worlds (verse)
- Song to the World (verse)
- 1975 (verse)
- The Tiger (verse)
- To Eclectic Theosophist (letter)
- Hallelujah!
- The Famous Forgery
- Chaos or Cosmos
- "I Die Daily"
- The Splendor of Immensity
- Sunset Prayer
- Nirvana Now!
- Peace (verse)
- Return (verse)
---------
- Sources

PREFACE

The following is an ad hoc compilation of published material by George Cardinal LeGros.

It is a collection of exceptional material, the compiler believes, as being from an individual of mystic
temperament and insight and also a student of technical Theosophy. His articles are also rare in that
he was not one to avoid difficult conclusions the study of original Theosophy may lead one to in
regard to much that passes for "spiritual" in our times.
As to personal life, I do not know a great deal about G. C. LeGros. I know he ran a study
group in Chicago for some time and also one in Detroit. I know he was a friend of Boris De Zirkoff
and made at least one visit to Wheaton T.S. headquarters with him (and unsuccessfully tried to get
Boris to participate in throwing a prominent portrait of Bishop Leadbeater into a pond!) His
published articles and verse span from the 1930's in Theosophical Forum magazine of the Pt. Loma
Community, to many articles in Zirkoff's Theosophia and other publications, and until 1988 in his
Messiah. He carried on an extensive correspondence course in Theosophy, and this is continued by
Marcheta Henry. He worked in a nightclub in Greenwich Village for a short time reading Tarot
Cards, but then quit card-reading for occult reasons. He lived in the Ozarks for some time. Recently
someone sent me a news clipping of a lecture he gave in this writer's home town (area) of Toledo,
Ohio. He was actively involved in astrology and partially made his living from it. Someone
knowledgeable called him "one of the best" of astrologers. In a letter he refers to a "sweatshop" he
worked in for ten years and hated. While not one of the larger public figures of the Theosophical
Movement, he was one who carried on a large work below publicity, so to speak. It was due to his
efforts and correspondence that the writer got actively involved in Theosophy. A typical day,
perhaps, was indicated by the off-hand remark in a correspondence that he had another dozen letters
to answer that day. Both his Messiah and correspondence course were carried on free of charge with
voluntary donations.
All specific quotes within the text have been checked for accuracy. Where a book is cited but
no direct reference given, the quote has been allowed to stand as is. A few of the following articles
consist largely of quotations - a method Blavatsky herself often used in order to get across a
particular idea. The central idea of the compilation is the important aspect in an article of this type,
regardless that much of the material is not original.
There has been no editing of the material. (Editing, unchecked, a deceased person's material
is presumptuous to say the least.) It is printed just as originally appearing with the exception of
correcting obvious typographical errors. Sources of the articles given in the Appendix are the
compiler's sources, notwithstanding that many articles originally appeared in earlier publications.
 Thanks to Marcheta Henry for informational aid and more of Cardinal LeGros' articles printed
in "Messiah" - which she has continued after his passing, and also thanks to Emmett Small and Point
Loma Publications Archives for a number of flyers from Cardinal LeGros' Chicago Study Group.
It is hoped that this volume will be followed in the future with a further compilation of G. C. LeGros'
material.

- M. R. Jaqua, 27 August 1992

------------------------

THE SPLENDOR THAT IS

Where shall we stand, amid the thunders of Time;

What shall we cling to, weary, empty of dreams;
What shall we follow when sweet music and rhyme
Fade like the final leaves on autumn streams?

What shall we seek when the Void and the Silence come,
And Life for a moment is death, and the earth we know
Is gone, and nothing remains but the hollow drum
Of soundless space, with never a wind to blow?

Only the Splendor that Is, the Light and the Flame
Ever abiding, the Essence of Spirit and Soul,
Cosmic Compassion, Love beyond knowing or name,
Limitless, formless, eternal, the Heart of the Whole.

-------------------------

THE THEOSOPHICAL SEAL

The Serpent swallowing its tail is a symbol of the return of cycles upon themselves, and the
union of ends and beginnings. It also means Divine Wisdom and Creative Intelligence. Mercury or
Hermes carries a wand with the Serpents entwined on a staff. The Chinese made the Serpent the
emblem of their emperors. And Quetzalcoatl was the Serpent-deity of the ancient Mexicans. The
Serpent can also represent the two polarities of human nature: Spirit and Matter.
The interlaced triangles form a six-pointed star often called the Seal of Solomon. It is found
in India, whence it was probably adopted by the Hebrews as a Kabbalistic symbol. It signifies the
duality of manifestation: positive and negative, fire and water, male and female. The number six
relates to the manifested Logos: the six planes, six principles, etc., synthesized by the seventh. The
snow flake is a good example of this sixfold principle. It also represents the six primary axes in the
cubical system of crystallization. If a glass cube is held up in a certain position, its twelve edges will
show the double triangle within the hexagon.
Six has been called the "perfect number" because it is the only digit divisible by both odd
and even numbers. Itself a multiple of three - which represents the Divine Trinity of Atman-Buddhi-
Manas - six is also a pivotal number in the symbology of the Sacred Tarot, ruling Temptation, or
man choosing between the Two Paths. Twice six is twelve - the complete number. There are twelve
constellations in the celestial zodiac, twelve classes of monads, twelve principles in man's
constitution, and ten hierarchies in Nature which, with the Seed and Root Manus, equal twelve
divisions.
The Ansated Cross within the double triangle symbolizes the "Word made Flesh," or the
incarnation of Divinity - the Christ or Buddha in every man - which is said to have been crucified
on the Cross of Matter, or to have taken up the Cross - terrestrial life - in order to redeem the animal
nature. The two lines of the Cross also represent the active and passive creative potentials in Nature
-the duality of Spirit and Matter, Force and Form, Energy and Inertia, which pervades the universe.
The Swastika within the little circle represents the eternal motion of the elements and show how
equilibrium is attained by maintaining a neutral center amid continual change. Above the Seal are
four Devangari characters of ancient Sanscrit indicating the esoteric "AUM."

----------------------

THE CULT OF THE VAMPIRES

For many years all occultists of the Right Hand Path have agreed that the term "Spiritualism"
as applied to the psychic movement known by that name is a misnomer. A more appropriate word
would be "Astralism" or "Necromancy" because ninety-nine percent of the phenomena produced by
mediums and sensitives is born of the so-called "etheric" realm which interpenetrates our physical
globe. They point out that there is nothing "Spiritual" in that gray, gloomy domain, and everything
of a negative, macabre nature. It is the World of Death.
Occult Science and Theosophy teach that man has a physical body that dies and decays on
the physical earth, and an astral body that dies and disintegrates in the astral world, while he - the
Reincarnating Ego - passes on to a higher state of consciousness which is entirely spiritual (and
beyond the reach of mediums), leaving behind, along with his two bodies, the lusts and passions
which informed the living man of flesh.
It is these cast-off remains of the dead, say the occultists, with which "spiritualism" concerns
itself, mistaking them for the "spirits" of once-living mortals. Therefore, is it surprising that
mediums and others who make contact with the "departed" suffer from physical and psychological
diseases? It could hardly be otherwise when they identify themselves with the worst possible
elements of corruption and decay in the "Charnel House of Nature."
According to psychopathology, the personality of the average medium is sadomasochistic, with the
death-wish strong. He is temperamentally oriented to the delusions of the astral plane, whose
glamour and mystery assume the shape of objective reality, while terrestrial, physical life becomes
progressively devoid of significance and meaning.
On pages 45-46 of Light on the Path, one of the great occult classics, the Adept-author
Hilarion states: "The 'medium' or 'spiritualist,' who rushes into the psychic world without
preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of super-nature. Those who break Nature's laws
lose their physical health; those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health.
'Mediums' become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral sense; and often end as
unbelievers, doubters even of that which their own eyes have seen."
In The Ocean of Theosophy, pp. 149-50, by William Quan Judge (H.P. Blavatsky's successor
as Leader of the parent Theosophical Society), he writes of a terrible danger which threatens
mediums and all who dabble in necromancy.
 "Definite, coherent entities, human souls bereft of the spiritual tie, now tending down to the
worst state of all, avitchi, where annihilation of the personality is the end. They are known as black
magicians. Having centered the consciousness in the principle of kama, preserved intellect, divorced
themselves from spirit, they are the only damned beings we know. In life they had human bodies and
reached their awful state by persistent lives of 'evil' for its own sake; some of such already doomed
to become what I have described are among us on earth today.
"They may and do last for many centuries, gratifying their lusts through any sensitive they
can lay hold of where bad thoughts give them an opening. They preside at nearly all seances,
assuming high names and taking the direction so as to keep the control and continue the delusion
of the medium, thus enabling themselves to have a convenient channel for their own evil purposes.
Indeed, with the shells of suicides, of those poor wretches who die at the hands of the law, of
drunkards and gluttons, these black magicians living in the astral world hold the field of physical
mediumship and are liable to invade the sphere of any medium no matter how good.
"This class of shell has lost higher Manas, but in the struggle not only after death but as well
in life the lower portion of Manas which should have been raised up to godlike excellence was torn
away from its lord and now gives this entity intelligence which is devoid of spirit but power to suffer
as it will when its final day shall come."

On page 284 of The Mahatma Letters the Adept K.H. defines "Spiritualism" as "the most
insane and fatal of superstitions." And on page 35 points out that "ninety-nine hundredths of
supposed spiritual communications are prima facie false."
On pages 109-10 he explains that "... suicides and those killed by accident... have to remain
within the earth's attraction, and in its atmosphere - the Kama-Loka - till the very last moment of
what would have been the natural duration of their lives... it is a sin and cruelty to revive their
memory and intensify their suffering by giving them a chance of living an artificial life; a chance
to overload their Karma, by tempting them into open doors, viz, mediums and sensitives...
"Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are
enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford, to gratify them vicariously. They are the
Pisachas, the Incubi, and Succubi of medieval times... demons of thirst, gluttony, lust and avarice, -
elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes,
and reveling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires,
borne along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last, at the fixed close of their natural period
of life... are carried out of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering
and end with entire destruction. But if the victim of accident or violence is neither very good, nor
very bad - an average person - then this may happen to him. A medium who attracts him, will create
for him the most undesirable of things: a new combination of Skandhas and a new and evil Karma."
And on page 113: "Were the mediums and Spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with every
new 'angel guide' they welcome with rapture, they entice the latter into an Upadana which will be
productive of a new series of untold evils for the new Ego that will be born under its nefarious
shadow, and that with every seance - especially for materialization - they multiply the causes for
misery, causes that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a worse
existence than ever - they would, perhaps, be less lavishing their hospitality."
On page 176 the Adept K.H. speaks of "half successful sorcerers" and "very wicked persons"
whose disintegrating astral body after death "will cling so tenaciously to its semblance of life that
it will seek refuge in a new organism in any beast - in a dog, hyena, a bird, when no human organism
is close at hand - rather than submit to annihilation." This is Lycanthropy - possession of an animal's
body by the decaying shell or remains of a dead human being.
The theme of the novel Dracula is based on no fiction. Vampires are very real, whether alive
in graves or not. They roam the world, searching for victims - which the ignorant "Spiritualist"
unwittingly becomes.
In an effort to maintain a dubious status before the world, "Spiritualism" masquerades as a
"religion" - something which, because of its corrupt psychic character, it can never be. The Cult of
the Vampires is an institution of Black Magic - sustained and guided by the Brethren of the Shadow.

-------------------

DIVINE WILLINGNESS

"And that power which the disciple shall covet is that which shall make him appear as
nothing in the eyes of men," says that wonderful little book, Light on the Path.
It means, as I understand it, to become "as Nothing" in the sense of proud, vengeful, self-
seeking Personality, and at the same time to become, or strive to become, "everything" in the sense
of the God Within.
This may be a great key to liberation - evoking the Divine Willingness to let go forever of
personal life and its illusions, and rest at last "between the wings of That which is not born, nor dies,
but is the Aum throughout eternal ages."
Surely the true glory of man is that he represents the promise of a supreme triumph over his animal
nature, a triumph which comes when he surrenders the self-conscious, thinking, "choosing" aspect
of himself to the Ineffable.
This is not easy here in the west because we have had dangerous teachers. We have been
assured of the all-importance of personal achievement, coaxed into competitive strife in the
schoolrooms of childhood, taunted by parents and teachers alike to outdo our companions - to "stand
at the head of the class."
This must go, must be left far behind if we are to experience the surrender of all that we are to the
Higher Self.
How beautiful it is to say, in the stillness of the night, "Here am I, gods and universe; here
is everything that I know myself to be, offered back to you for whatever service you designate. I
renounce personal, independent existence; I no longer desire anything for myself - not power, not
knowledge, not peace. I want only to give myself back to you, completely, absolutely,
unconditionally, and become a nameless, impersonal energy ceaselessly working in harmony with
Eternal Purpose."
Perhaps the above "prayer to the universe," based upon the Divine Willingness, can help Us
to "give ourselves back" to the Infinite Vastness from which we came, and where all veils and
limitations of Personality vanish forever.

------------------------------

WILD SPLENDOR

Come, let us sing not of these days that die,

The spectre-nights, the shadow-web of dreams,
But of the Spirit soaring to the sky
 On wings of flame, amid the white star-beams.

Let us forsake the prison-ground of Earth,

Command the Power that will set us free,
Dissolve the phantom-chains of Death and Birth
In the wild splendor or Eternity!

-----------------

THE SNOW LILY

A legend tells that in the long ago,

On some forgotten hillside far away,
A sacred lily blossomed in the snow On Christmas Day.

And -- so the legend goes -- whoever fills

His heart with love may find that flower anew.
(Oh, may it blossom on a thousand hills For you . . . and you.)

--------------------

THE ORACLES FORETELL

All the oracles foretell

What's awaiting me in Hell:

Bible thumpers, screaming brats,

Hemorrhoids and bureaucrats.

Hell may be a boring curse

But up here it's even worse:

Rambo Reagan, cutesy Carson,

Murder, mugging, rape and arson,

AIDS and Amy, jocks and jive.

Only crazies stay alive.

--------------

THE DUTY OF A THEOSOPHIST

What may be the duty of a Theosophist to himself? To control and conquer, through the
Higher Self, the lower self; to purify himself inwardly and morally; to fear no one, and nought, save
the tribunal of his own conscience; never to do a thing by halves - i.e., if he thinks it is the right
thing to do, let him do it openly and boldly; and if wrong, never touch it at all.
--------------------------------

THE LAND OF NO RETURN

How merrily we roll along, looking forward through the hours to the next pleasure that lies
ahead, trying to forget our sorrows, hoping and praying that, though disaster visit the rest of the
world, we shall somehow escape and continue to enjoy life in a little Shangri-la of our own.
How blind we are! Don't we know that each one of us is like a grain of sand on a vast ocean
shore, that the sunlight shines down upon us all with the same impersonal majesty, and that the
winter wind must chill us all alike? Are we not Children of the same SELF, Sparks of One Infinite
Flame?
Shall we not harken to the Great Truth of the Ages before we die again? Shall we not listen
to the Timeless Voice which says: "Dreamer in the playground of the senses, eventually the day
must come when, by reason of growth and experience, you will behold a Path before you -- A Path
(by which) you will reach the Land of No Return, where all the Past becomes a Darkness you must
renounce, and all the Future a Glory you must become."
"Can you escape? Ah, no, because 'the principles of thy nature will impel thee to engage-'" You
will be unable to recapture the Past, to cling to that which is dead and which sickens the very soul
of you. ...Your self will drive you to the SELF, the Past will tear you from the Past, and you will
reach with the desperation of a drowning man for the Promise of the Future.
"You will gaze back in horror at the nightmare of Yesterday; and you will shudder at the
mire still clinging to your feet: you will tremble before the flaming horizon of Tomorrow that towers
in the distance. But there will be a new strength in your soul, a new courage and a new hope,
because you will know that the Great Ones once stood where you will then stand, and that someday
everyone must reach that Land of No Return."

-----------------------

THE SACRED SEASON

Once more the Summer Solstice comes, and from that Center of Truth where dwell the Holy
Ones a wave of Compassion flows forth and spreads over the world. It is like a gentle wind from a
strange Somewhere, breathing hope and peace to all mankind.

And deep in our hearts - unknown to us perhaps - there is a response, an answering call from
the SELF in us that knows and remembers... that holds fast eternally to a Reality beyond all time and
space -- to THAT whose Being is the Being of All, radiant forever with Love which is the Cement
of the Universe.

May we lift our hearts and minds in reverence to that Inner Divinity, welcoming it once more
into our lives, surrendering to it, becoming it, and acting upon the Power which is Itself -
Compassion, Mercy, Pity for all that lives.

------------------------------
THE QUEST

The Divine Quest leads one to the Gates of illumination. The dreaming soul awakens to the
larger life and demands of the universe that it be shown the way to wisdom. It is the Voice of the
Eternal speaking in the heart, and it must be heard.
The Great Voice speaks, assuring him of victory, whispering the secret of triumph:
"Disregard entirely the question of failure or success. Forget self utterly; fling all that you are upon
the altar of service to the world: dedicate yourself to the good of others."
As he does this, self-concern falls away, and he is free. He becomes an impersonal
instrument of service in the hands of Divine Will and Intelligence, and shares in its invincible power.
That is the whole secret. When a man or woman wholeheartedly surrenders selfhood at the
Threshold, drops all SELF CONCERN, and makes the motive one of service to others, with NO
EXPECTATION of reward, the first battle is won without striking a blow.
What is the Threshold? Is it symbol or reality? Occultism teaches that it is an actual frontier
or boundary line of consciousness in the heart and mind of the disciple-to-be. It marks the point of
separation between his higher and lower natures - the mystic bourne from which no traveler, once
pledged to his journey, ever returns.

-----------------------

A POINT LOMA MEMORY

They tell me that Point Loma is no more,

That all my friends have vanished from the Hill;
But, thinking of its pathways and the shore,
I close my eyes and see Point Loma still.
I hear the winds that cry along the sea,
I know again the skies of morning blue,
The meadows and the blossoms blowing free,
The words we said, the things we used to do.

They tell me all is gone, and yet somehow

The Glory that was Yesterday is there
Triumphant in a bright Eternal Now
That sparkles on the joy-enchanted air
As, one by one, we all go Home to rest
At old Point Loma in the Golden West.

---------------------

INVOCATION

Spirit in me, O Splendid Light

That shines from Paradise,
Illumine now this World of Night
Make me thy sacrifice.
Triumphant and eternal Power
Of earth and sky and sea,
Possess me in this sacred hour,
That I may follow Thee.

Pervade my being, part by part,

O Self, that I may find
Forevermore within my heart
A love for all mankind.

-------------------------------

THE GREAT PYRAMID

The Great Cheops Pyramid - the tallest structure in antiquity - covers 13 acres, and is 481
feet high and 756 feet wide at each side of its square base. It has been estimated that more than
2,300,000 stone blocks of an average weight of two and one-half tons went into its construction.
It was built by mechanical means, but with Magic in the highest sense of the word making
the achievement possible. Great Initiates were its architects. According to The Secret Doctrine, the
pyramids were constructed some 75,000 years ago by Atlanteans from the Isle of Poseidonis, a
remnant of the Atlantean continental massif. Before the island sank, immigrants left it and settled
on what was then newly forming Egypt.
The doom of Atlantis struck four and a half million years ago. The large island Ruta
submerged 850,000 years in the past, and 650,000 years later a second island, Daitya, sank. The last
island, named Poseidonis, mentioned by Plato, went down some 12,000 years ago.

-----------------------

"GOD" AND THE UNIVERSAL MIND

"... neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are
proper subjects for divine honors or worship. All are entitled to the grateful reverence of Humanity,
however, and man ought to be ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to
the best of his ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and
incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on
the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart - invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through
'the still small voice' of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it ought, to do so in
the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls; making their spirit the sole mediator between
them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only
visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence."
- The Secret Doctrine (H.P. Blavatsky), 1, 280

In that book of books - The Mahatma Letters - a few facts of Esoteric Science apparently
deserve emphasis at the present time.
"... we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists... we know there is in our system no
such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable
law... The idea of God is not an innate, but an acquired notion..." (The Mahatma Letters, p. 52)
Referring to infinite Space or eternal Substance as "matter," the Adept K.H. explains:
"... we believe... in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible
omnipresent omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature draws
from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can exist... The existence of
matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or
indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence -give it
whatever name you will - is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity." (Ibid, p. 56)
K.H. also points out that man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum with its two
hemishperes at the frontal part of the head - the source of the voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum,
situated at the back portion of the skull - the fountain of the involuntary nerves which are the agents
of the unconscious or mechanical powers of the mind to act through. (Ibid. p. 137)
This is one instance where the microcosm (Man) does not mirror the macrocosm (Kosmos)
because the Infinite or Universal FORCE - miscalled by many the "Universal Mind" - exhibits but
the functions of a "cerebellum," displaying no more than the regular unconscious throbbings of the
eternal and universal pulse of Nature throughout the myriads of worlds within and without our solar
system.
Nowhere in the vastness of Immensity has even the insight of a Buddha been able to discover
anything beyond this awful, unconscious, involuntary Motion. Therefore, a remarkable and
illuminating conclusion becomes evident - the human cerebrum has no counterpart in Nature, and
is the seat of the only divine creative power in existence, a potentiality which ultimately can make
of every man a god. (The "cerebrum" activity which guides the evolution of worlds and universes
is, of course, made possible by the Dhyan Chohans, who are, as The Secret Doctrine states, ex-men.)
"Intelligence as found in our Dhyan Chohans, is a faculty that can appertain but to organized
or animated being - however imponderable or rather invisible the materials of their organizations."
(Ibid., p. 55)
K.H. points out that the possibility of a voluntary or conscious attribute in reference to
"Universal mind" must remain forever a mere hypothesis since the highest Planetary Spirits are as
ignorant of it as they are. It will remain even in Nirvana no more than an "inferential possibility."
There is, then, in the frontierless reaches of Infinitude only this mysterious and inconceivable
FORCE "as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless Will, as subtle as the essence of Life." But
this FORCE - unconscious, involuntary in its action, and eternal - is not "God" because the Initiate
learns to subject it to his will.
"We recognize but one law in the Universe, the law of harmony of perfect EQUILIBRIUM."
(Ibid., p. 141). Compassion or Love Eternal, as H.P.B. states in The Voice of the Silence, is this
"Law of LAWS" - eternal harmony.

------------------------

THE FINAL VISITOR

We are visited by may things as the years go by, and the final visitor is Death. Turn where
we may, we cannot escape him. Into life's happiest hours his gray shadow falls, reminding us of his
inevitable coming. All men must bow before him and yield up their treasures - the emperor his
scepter and throne, the fool his cap and bells. In a world of vivid Life, Death is King.
We have a choice: we can let die now the insatiable thirsts and appetites of our personalities -
starve the false hungers out of them until they are translucent, clean-washed, emptied of all
poisonous debris, and thus fit to serve the gods that we essentially are. We can do it, or let death do
it for us - perhaps thousands of deaths repeated through the ages.
Why does death hold such terror for man? Because he still identifies himself with that part
of his nature which death must strike down. To fear death is to be submerged in the animal self that
was born to die, and should die because it represents nothing worthy of immortality. Transcend the
beast and you will not fear death. You will stand free on the plateau of Eternity.
Learn to love the Divine Self in the one YOU love, and help him or her to love the Divine
Self in you. Then death's cold shadow will never fall between you because you will live, now and
hereafter, in the world of the Undying. There is no separation in the Eternal. We are One Life, One
Radiance, One Glory! You are I, I am You, and we are the ONE forever!

---------------------------

MAN'S ENDURING HOPE

Although men of science are contemptuous of the "exploded medieval superstitions" which,
in their opinion, represent the entire field of esoteric science and philosophy, they move merrily on
toward the day when those "superstitions" will topple their proud towers of half-truth and make-
believe.
As Light on the Path (p. 57) says: "The Mysteries no longer rule the world of thought and
beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies beyond it. But the scientific workers
are progressing, towards the far line which divides things interpretable from things uninterpretable."
When we consider the brilliant achievements of so-called "exact" science together with the
curses accompanying those achievements, it is well to recall the words of the Adept K.H. (The
Mahatma Letters, pp. 156-7) to the effect that when our present Fifth Root-Race "...will have
reached at its zenith of physical intellectuality, and developed the highest civilization (remember
the difference we make between material and spiritual civilizations); unable to go any higher in its
own cycle - its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested as its predecessors the Lemurians and
Atlanteans, the men of the third and fourth races were arrested in their progress toward the same)
by one of such cataclysmic changes; its great civilization destroyed..."
Taking the short view, the future is dark; but taking the long view is to see, in the Magic
Mirror of Destiny, that wondrous time when, after millenniums of suffering and failure, the elect of
mankind will walk the Path as gods.
In the meantime, Theosophy offers its Message of Hope to a world where creeds and dogmas
crumble by the hour; and millions of disenchanted souls and technology are destroying us in their
progress toward that "absolute evil" of which the Master speaks.
But Hope endures, and humanity will survive because the anguish and heartbreaks we bring
upon ourselves are the redeemers of the soul. And the multitudes now burdened with passion and
hatred will yet discover the Divinity in their hearts, and follow it.
And we who already know of that Divinity are like the chela in Light On the Path who comes
"within the grip of an iron law. If he demands to become a Neophyte, he at once becomes a servant"
whose first act of service is giving what is proper of his knowledge to "those who are not yet fit to
stand where he stands."
Self-salvation is one thing; but working for the salvation of others is everything.
----------------------------
This Longer version appeared in Theosophia #129, Winter 1971:

MAN'S ENDURING HOPE

Although men of science are contemptuous of the "exploded medieval superstitions" which,
in their opinion, represent the entire field of esoteric science and philosophy, they move merrily on
toward the day when those "superstitions" will topple their proud towers of half-truth and make-
believe.
As Light on the Path (p. 57) says: "The Mysteries no longer rule the world of thought and
beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies beyond it. But the scientific workers
are progressing, towards the far line which divides things interpretable from things uninterpretable."
But it would be fatuous Pollyannaism to predict that upon their ultimate acceptance of
occultism, they will blossom into great-hearted altruists dedicated to the welfare of humanity. G.
de Purucker said that were the deeper esoteric wisdom made public, ninety-nine out of every
hundred men would become black magicians on the spot. So it won't be a happy day for the world
when our brain-minded scientists and their idolaters stumble through the Door of the Mysteries. It
will be the beginning of the end of civilization.
When we consider the brilliant achievements of so-called "exact" science together with the
curses accompanying those achievements, it is well to recall the words of the Adept K.H. (The
Mahatma Letters, pp. 156-7) to the effect that when our present Fifth Root-Race "...will have
reached at its zenith of physical intellectuality, and developed the highest civilization (remember
the difference we make between material and spiritual civilizations); unable to go any higher in its
own cycle - its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested as its predecessors the Lemurians and
Atlanteans, the men of the third and fourth races were arrested in their progress toward the same)
by one of such cataclysmic changes; its great civilization destroyed..."
But Doomsday will pass; and Root-Races Six and Seven will follow our fifth, both holding
brighter promise than can presently be realized. And the coming Fifth Round will separate the
workers from the drones, the doers from the Dreamers.
Taking the short view, the future is dark; but taking the long view is to see, in the Magic
Mirror of Destiny, that wondrous time when, after millenniums of suffering and failure, the elect of
mankind will walk the Path as gods.
In the meantime, Theosophy offers its Message of Hope to a world where creeds and dogmas
crumble by the hour; and millions of disenchanted souls and technology are destroying us in their
progress toward that "absolute evil" of which the Master speaks.
But Hope endures, and humanity will survive because the anguish and heartbreaks we bring
upon ourselves are the redeemers of the soul. And the multitudes now burdened with passion and
hatred will yet discover the Divinity in their hearts, and follow it.
And we who already know of that Divinity are like the chela in Light On the Path who comes
"within the grip of an iron law. If he demands to become a Neophyte, he at once becomes a servant"
whose first act of service is giving what is proper of his knowledge to "those who are not yet fit to
stand where he stands."
Self-salvation is one thing; but working for the salvation of others is everything.

-------------------------------
THE COMING YEAR

As another year of human Time draws to a close, let us reflect upon the esoteric teaching that
there is no Time, but only Boundless Duration, in which Past, Present, and Future exist as One
Reality - an Eternal Now.
Ages come and go, kingdoms rise and fall, and still, abiding always in the Heart of Things,
is the Hidden Glory, the Ineffable Beauty, the Joy, the peace, and Compassion which are the
foundation of All.
Strange to our human minds is the stupendous Thought - that now and forevermore, as
pilgrims following a mysterious Path leading more and more inward to the Heart of the Universe,
we are at one with that Infinite Splendor which is the essence of the atom and the light of the farthest
star!
Let us open our hearts and minds to that Radiance which permeates all life. Let us affirm that
man shall know the Truth which alone can set him free from the prison of illusion and sorrow. Let
us resolve anew to spread that Truth in the world.
May you be happy and complete with Wisdom before you, and may the coming years be
beautiful and bright is the sincere wish of the writer to you.

-----------------------

THE GULLS

I saw them in the cold, bright winter air:

The long-winged sea gulls flying, tipping the waves
With their white wings; and I though of Death and I said:
There is no Death in this, there is no Death
To come. It is the Essence and the Spirit
Of That Which Is, the Thought in me which knows,
The Hand in Darkness, Silence, the Flame blowing,
The Question that is given, and the Answer
Unspoken in the Void; and then once more
The whiteness of their wings, flashing and falling
Over the waves, the blue and brilliant air;
And then again the thought: there is no Death
In this, nor Time, nor Ending, nor Beginning -
Only the Ceaseless Motion, the Eternal
Pulse in the Wind, the Flame invisible
Blowing forever over the waves, the Breath
Beating in me, the sea gulls and the waves
Again, and yet again...

------------------------

WHITE MAGIC

The Second World War had ended, and the medical unit to which Dr. Ritchie belonged was
ordered to help out at a concentration camp near Wuppertal, Germany.
He states that "to see the effects of slow starvation, to walk through those barracks where
thousands of men had died a little bit at a time over a period of years, was a new kind of horror. We
lost scores every day in spite of all the medicine and food we could rush to them."
The doctor was drawn to one Polish Jew who had been a prisoner in the camp for six years,
during which he lived on the same starvation diet, slept in the same airless and disease-ridden
barracks as everyone else, and yet showed not the slightest physical or mental deterioration.
According to Dr. Ritchie, "His posture was erect, his eyes were bright, his energy boundless.
We came to him with all sorts of problems: the paper work alone was staggering in attempting to
relocate people whose families, even whole hometowns, might have disappeared. But, though this
Polish man worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day, he showed no signs of weakness. His
compassion for his fellow prisoners glowed on his face; and it was to this glow that I came when my
own spirits were low."
The man explained that he had lived in Warsaw with his wife and five children. Then the
Germans came, and, when they reached his street, lined everyone against a wall and machine gunned
them to death. Because he happened to speak German and a few other languages, they placed him
in a work camp.
"I had to decide right then whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. I was a lawyer,
and in my practice had often seen what hate could do to people's minds and bodies. Hate had just
killed the six people who mattered the most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend
the rest of MY life loving everyone with whom I came in contact."
Without knowing it, he had performed a supreme act of White Magic. The power of
compassion that he invoked by his resolve to love everyone brought about a phenomenal occult
condition affecting his body, the food and environment in such a way that perfect health and well-
being became for him a reality.
Dr. G. de Purucker always said that "Love is the cement of the universe. Learn to forgive.
Learn to love. " I wonder why we don't take those words to heart, and, like the lawyer, throw hate
out of our lives, and love everyone we meet? It shouldn't be a problem. After all, what else is there
to do?

-----------------

THE "MIRACLE" MOTOR

The newspapers of the world may soon carry the headlines: "Free Energy From
Revolutionary Super Magnet Invention. Utopia is Here!"
Wilhelm Muller of Pendicton, British Columbia, has created a proto-type magnetic motor-
generator that produces more electricity than it takes to run it. The underlying concept is called
"over-utility" by Muller. It develops radio frequency (RF) energy rather than practical alternating
or direct electrical current. The RF energy is then converted into usable electricity.
One machine could easily produce all the electrical requirements of eight three-bedroom
houses; and, in production, should cost less than $1,000. The magnetic field itself being
inexhaustible, the only maintenance would be the bearings of the flywheel shaft.
The generator is so economically feasible that it obviously poses a threat to the world's most
powerful monopoly - that of electric power. Therefore, the real "miracle" would be the willingness
of the great vested interests to permit the invention to solve all the power needs of the world.
 It would mean unpolluted earth, air and water, along with material peace and fulfillment in
every area of international life. The age-old dream of Utopia would become a reality at last. But will
the power interests allow the invention to become an actuality? That is the question.
Looking Theosophically at this incredible work of genius, we are reminded that, as Dr. G.
de Purucker said in Fountain-Source of Occultism, p. 558: "What we call magnetism and electricity,
each being the alter ego of the other, are but pranic or vital psychomagnetic flows of life. In the
manifested cosmos, they are two aspects of the vital activity of our solar hierarch."
Mankind may well hope that Wilhelm Muller will be protected, and that his tremendous
invention will be patented and welcomed by the heads of science and industry, and thus bring the
promise of peace and prosperity to a strife-torn world.

------------------

IMMENSITY!

As L. Gordon Plummer writes in his Star Habits and Orbits, p. 12, "...ours is not the only
Galaxy in the heavens. Astronomers have found that there are millions of them, separated by vast
distances, and all of them composed of billions, if not trillions of stars. ...It is yet a matter of
speculation even among astronomers, and quite in line with Theosophical study, as to whether all
these galactic systems may not form a stupendous super-universe. Furthermore, there is no reason
to suppose that the number of these galaxies is limited, for how can there be a point in space beyond
which there can be no more island universes?"
And this awful, incredible Vastness is forever unfolding, unrolling, unwrapping from within the
depths of its undying essence more and more of that essential Reality which is the heart of every
atom of the Whole. Everything IS, eternally, imperishably, and always WAS, back into the unknown
Yester-ages of universes nameless and forgotten. And we were THERE in those tremendous
eternities, part of their own history and at one with the ever-enduring life-substance without
beginning or end. Man and Kosmos are, have been, and forever will be ONE.

-------------------

THE GREAT ILLUMINATION

Mystics of all ages are in agreement that one of the most remarkable experiences possible
while in the physical body is a sudden, transcendental awareness of a realm of Reality beyond. It
is often called "Cosmic Consciousness" or "The Great Illumination."
A modern mystic, Arthur Koestler, while in prison during the Spanish Civil War, and expecting
any moment to be taken out and shot, writes with rare beauty of the illumination that came to him
in his lonely cell. "...a wordless essence, a fragrance of eternity, a quiver of the arrow in the blue...
I was floating... in a river of peace, under bridges of silence. It came from nowhere and flowed
nowhere. Then there was no river at all and no I. The "I" had ceased to exist... dissolved in the
universal pool."
It is a brief at-one-ment with the Kosmic Heart, a sublime and often terrifying moment of
"self-nakedness" when everything personal and transitory, of form and feeling, drops away, or is
over-passed, leaving only the spark of individual selfhood awake and conscious in what G. de
Purucker used to call "boundless infinitude."
 It is an excursion into Vastness, Immensity, No-Thing-Ness. One becomes momentarily the
All-ness Itself, and knows nothing but an omnipresence of pure and eternal Harmony. He floats, as
Koestler says, in "a river of peace, under bridges of silence."

-----------------------

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Q. We are told that earthly affection must be transmuted. Why? And how is it possible to
do so?
Ans. Fundamentally love is a divine quality, an expression of the Self within. We are not to
crush it out but rather to purify it of all dross, deepen and expand it. What we call earthly love is not
pure because it asks for a response. We give our love expecting a return and are disappointed or
resentful when it does not come. And not only is earthly love selfish, in that it seeks a return, but it
bestows its favours arbitrarily and not in terms of abstract justice.
Human love is bestowed not in terms of deserts but in terms of Skandhaic attraction, of the
mutual affinities of the elemental beings that compose our personal vehicles and those of the people
whom we love. Real spiritual love or compassion has little to do with such affinities.
Compassion is love entirely free of these taints of a spirit of barter and injustice. Instead of
limiting Their affection to those to whom it naturally flows out, the Masters subordinate every
preference for individuals to a love for the race as a whole. The Great Compassionate Ones love
because it is Their natural expression, not in order that others shall give Them love and reverence
in return. Their love flows out to all, to good and bad alike, though the extent to which it profits each
depends upon his own purity and receptivity.
But Their all-enfolding love far transcends our present possibilities. Their love is universal
and impersonal. If we seek to cultivate impersonality without simultaneously broadening our
sympathies the result will be hard and unlovely, and even farther from true Compassion than
ordinary human love, with all its blemishes. Eliminating all selfishness from our attitude does not
call for hardening our hearts. On the contrary, we must seek constantly to expand our circle of
sympathy and love, not to limit our affection to the favoured few to whom we are naturally, i.e.,
materially drawn. Nor must we repel the love that we receive, but only avoid depending on it or
being swayed by it.
Our love will become more universal and impersonal as we cultivate in ourselves the quality
of reverence. It is natural to feel reverence towards the Masters, as towards all those whom we
recognize unmistakably as our spiritual superiors. We must have reverence for all Souls, even for
those who seem to us at an inferior stage of evolution, for in all dwells the Mightiest, the Highest,
the Holiest. We must see that in the sinner is the potential saint, that in our dull and erring brother
of today may slumber the future sage.
Reverence comes from recognizing the Soul in each, compassion from sympathy with the
obstacles and difficulties that handicap its unfolding of its potential strength and beauty. By patient
effort to foster that reverence and that compassion we can gradually but surely purify our earthly
affection and transmute it into the pure gold of an impersonal and all-embracing love.

----------------------

THE UNIVERSAL YOU

 Theosophy tells us that there is a lot more to man than the person who lives out a little life
of hopes and dreams and heartbreaks. It says there is also an Inner Self, a compassionate
Individuality that wants to reach out and do something for others. And - more than this - there is a
Divine Splendor, a Power and a Glory forever, a God-Flame at one with all life everywhere - THE
UNIVERSAL YOU!
How can one tell if he is on the way to becoming this Splendor? Dr. G. de Purucker
answered that question when he explained what it was that makes a chela: "A growing indifference
to himself, and an increasing interest in all that is. There we have the path of morals, of ethics, of
wisdom; and we have the life: a man who has completely lost interest in himself has no pleasure in
evil-doing, because all evil-doing is selfish, for personal, selfish ends. It is just as simple as that. Not
my will, as the great Syrian Chela and Master said, but Thine, his inner god's, a Ray of the spirit of
the Universe, the law of infinite love and compassion and harmony and pity and wisdom and peace.
Man, when he thus loses interest in himself, grows progressively greater. His former and present self
becomes uninteresting. The world, all mankind, the Universe, he loses himself in, and becomes it;
and there is the secret of all initiations, from the greatest to the least. Indeed no man can pass
through an initiation until he can do this in some degree. He cannot simply because he cannot lose
himself. He cannot enter into other things. That is all there is to it. The chela is he who is becoming
uninterested in himself and accordingly more interested in others, in the world. The greatest Buddha,
the greatest teacher, the greatest man or woman, is he who is uninterested in himself and loses
himself in what we call others. That is chelaship. It is a reversion of feeling, to embrace the Universe
and recognize it. The 'I' is no longer 'I,' it is ALL."

------------------------

LET THE SAVIOR IN

The Savior who abides in you

Is like the morning star
That makes the world forever new
With splendor from afar.

He glorifies the hearts of men

And blesses them by name;
The poet with a golden pen,
The hero with his fame.

And all the men who lived in doubt

But found a way to win
When they had thrown negation out
And let the Savior in.

-------------------------

AUTUMN TRAILS

I know the way that the Autumn comes,

With her ghostly flames and her phantom drums,
And a sudden hush on the valley's breast
And a golden light in the purple West.
And I drink her wine and I dream her dream,
And I die her death on meadow and stream.
I die her death, but I never know,
With the fallen leaves and winds that blow
Why a loneliness and strangeness fill
The open field and the barren hill.
I only know, with the autumn-tide,
That the world is round and the skies are wide
That the nights are long and the dawns are cold
And that something of me, like the Autumn wind
Must follow the trails that never end.

--------------------

THE PATH

Tonight a holiness descends

Across the leagues of pine.
The snow is unimprinted pearl,
The air enchanted wine.

Tonight the world is calm and bright,

And stars look down to bless
And shine upon a Path where we
May walk in holiness.

-----------------------

OUR NATURAL DIET

Meat-eating is one of the horrible things common to our present stage of humanity. It is a
great misfortune, and everyone who can abstain from it should do so. In fact, it is pretty close to
cannibalism because the animal kingdom is next door to ours, and we as evolving spiritual beings
spent millions of years incarnating in beast bodies before graduating to the human hierarchy.
Anatomically, physiologically, and biochemically we were not meant to eat meat. We were
meant to be frugivores. That doesn't mean eating "fruit" only. Just as the higher primates, we must
have chlorophyll from the leaves and stems of plants. Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruit of the
tomato and cucumber plants, but we call them vegetables because they are not sweet. Nuts are the
fruit of the nut trees, botanically speaking. Thus our natural diet should consist of vegetables, fruits,
nuts and seeds.
Our teeth are not the teeth of carnivores. The front incisors are flat and designed to cut. They
help us to bite fruit or snip leaves and stems. Our molars have wide cusps and are spaced close
together, thus adapted for grinding nuts, seeds and roots. Carnivores, on the other hand, have sharp,
pointed front teeth adapted for tearing flesh. Their molars are sharp, pointed, narrow and very strong.
They are good for chewing on cartilage and bones. Their jaws are powerfully hinged.
The adult human digestive tract is between 25 and 30 feet long. It was never meant to have
putrefying meat and fish traveling through it to irritate the mucous lining and produce poisons that
enter into the blood stream. carnivores have very short digestive tracts in proportion to the size of
their bodies when compared to humans.
When we eat the flesh of an animal we eat the end-products of the animal's life processes;
urea, uric acid, dead cells and toxic waste. Humans do not have the enzyme uricase to deal with the
dead animal's uric acid. Carnivores do. This places a heavy burden on our detoxifying organs - the
liver and kidneys.
Meat is a hazardous source of protein. First, because we are not equipped to handle the
metabolic waste of the dead animal. Second, because the profit hungry cattlemen and poultry raisers
make the proteins more dangerous by confining the animals and giving them foods that are unnatural
to them. This changes their metabolism, producing extra toxins and making them disease-prone. The
beasts are then fed or inoculated with antibiotics and tranquilizers. To fatten them, they are given
a powerful synthetic estrogen hormone which is absorbed into the blood stream and enters the
tissues. Animals and meat-eaters alike are thus scientifically poisoned. Illness, disease and shortened
life-spans follow.

-----------------------

LITTLE LIVES

In Dialogues III, pp. 207-9, Dr. de Purucker states: "...the animals suffer from two causes:
first, because they prey on each other... The other reason is that because of evil karman sown in a
former cosmic manvantara by these very creatures, evil karman then unbalanced, unpaid for, not yet
wiped out, they entered the present cosmic manvantara in the lowest stage, and are now working
their way upwards. ... all these various classes of monads, from the most evolved to the least, have
to begin that manvantara at the beginning... Those whose karman had been high, lofty, beautiful,
pass through the lower kingdoms, the lower stages, without realizing it; just exactly as the human
monad passes through preliminary uterine phases of its growth without self-consciousness. But those
Monads which were karmically evil in the last life, or imperfectly developed, have a more or less
awakening consciousness... in the lowest phases through which they have to pass... the Elemental
Kingdoms, Mineral Kingdom, Plant Kingdom, Beast-Kingdom... So the suffering of the lower
creatures depends from old, unexpended karma not atoned for in the previous cosmic manvantara,
which they now have to work out, plus their present bestial, predatory instincts."
In Fountain-Source of Occultism, p. 418, he points out that in a past cosmic manvantara
"they were living their careers then much as we men do. Just as the reincarnating ego of man must
for a time lose its sublime self-consciousness during its embryonic stage before it can become a man
again, so even the animals have been full-grown self-conscious entities in a former manvantara ..."
"Full-grown self-conscious entities" that were "living their careers then much as we men do"
are obviously quite different from our present animals. Therefore the only reasonable deduction one
can make is that the Monads informing the present beast hierarchy have occupied human forms or
their equivalent in some past manvantara.
And from the same book, p. 617: "That which reincarnates in the animals is a ray from the
spiritual monad expressing itself... as the animal monad. As the animals have no awakened mind,
no... power of abstract thought, such as we have, they have evolved as yet no true ego which would
allow them to have a devachan... They reincarnate after a time period of a few days to possibly a
year. The lower in development, the sooner the reimbodiment."
Also, on pp. 658-9: "...the modern method of animal experimentation, vivisection, claims that
the knowledge so gained, with its supposed resulting benefits, justifies the means employed. A
strange doctrine - for it is not possible that such knowledge can ever be of permanent benefit to
mankind. Inhuman, cruel, and selfish acts do but bind the doers thereof, and shut the doors of both
mind and heart to the acquirement of truth.

----------------------

THE AMAZING MONADS

The foundation is the MONAD, which may be called a divine-spiritual life-atom, eternal,
unitary, indivisible, ageless, unborn, undying. Every monad - and their number is infinite - is,
metaphysically speaking, the CENTER OF THE ALL, of the BOUNDLESS, which has its center
EVERYWHERE, and its circumference NOWHERE.
Monads are spiritual-substantial entities, self-motivated, self-impelled, and self-conscious
in infinitely varying degrees. Each Monad produces other Monads as a seed engenders other seeds.
As basic centers of consciousness-life-substance, each Monad clothes itself in a garment or vesture
known as an EGO - a vehicle of energy which in turn clothes itself in a "SOUL" a corporeal or
manifest "body" or form.
Man is representative of a group or hierarchy of Seven Monadic CENTERS, each with its
EGO and SOUL aspects. The first is the Divine Monad, whose home is the Vastness of Space, and
whose field of experience is the Milky Way. Its energic and corporeal aspects are the Divine Ego
and the Divine Soul.
In the second position is the Spiritual Monad, born of both the Divine Monad and of the
Solar Divinity which we call the Sun. Its field of experience is the Solar System. Its energic and
corporeal aspects are the Spiritual Ego and the Spiritual Soul. The planet Mercury is its symbol.
In the third position is the Higher Human Monad, or Reincarnating Principle, which is a
ray or spiritual child of the Spiritual Monad. Its field of experience is our Earth and the six invisible
(to us) companion-globes which make up our Earth-Chain. Its energic and corporeal aspects are the
Higher Human Ego and the Higher Human Soul. The planet Venus is its symbol.
Fourth is the Lower Human, or Personal, Monad, born of and involved with earth life
experience. Its field of activity is the terrestrial globe on which we live. Its energic and corporeal
aspects are the Lower Human Ego and the Lower Human Soul. The planet Saturn is its symbol. This
Monad occupies the critical and pivotal position in man's sevenfold constitution. More will be said
about it later on.
Fifth is the Beast Monad, which is imbodied in the strictly animal part of our nature. Its
energic and corporeal aspects are the Beast Ego and the Beast Soul. The planet Mars is its symbol.
Sixth is the Vital-Astral Monad - the animated form, pattern, or basis for our physical life,
together with the principle of vitality. Its energic and corporeal aspects are the Vital-Astral Ego and
the Vital-Astral Soul. The Moon is the symbol for the form or astral body, and the Sun symbolizes
the vitality.
Seventh and last is the Physical Monad - the objective body itself, a living organism under
the dominance of the person who inhabits it. Its energic and corporeal aspects are the Physical Ego
and the Physical Soul. As we shall learn later on, it is not under the rulership of any particular planet.
-----------

Atman, the Divine Monad, is the highest part of man - pure consciousness per se. It is
Universal Selfhood, the sense of awareness and being which is the same in everyone, even, in
varying degrees, in the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. Atman is the inmost link with the
Nameless, Incomprehensible ABSOLUTE - the eternal mystery, of which worlds and universes are
as fleeting shadows cast on the Screen of Infinitude. In the diagram on the following page, Atman
towers above and beyond the circumscribing boundaries of our, or any, solar system. In the same
diagram it will be noted that the physical body, being merely concreted astral substance, is not
recognized in occultism as a true principle of man's constitution, and therefore cannot have a
planetary correspondence. The Vital-Astral soul or body is our true vehicle of self-consciousness.
Saturn, as already shown, rules the Lower Human Monad or Human Personality which is
enlightened by the Manasic Ray or Radiance from the Immortal Trinity (Atman-Buddhi-Manas).
The success of any incarnation depends upon the Personality's ability to overcome the downward
pull of Kama or the animal nature, and to place itself under the redeeming influence of the Trinity
above. After death, whatever is spiritual and undefiled in the Personality is drawn upward and
absorbed into Atman-Buddhi-Manas, thus making possible the blissful Devachanic interlude before
the next rebirth.

---------------------

AUTUMN NIGHT

Now it is Autumn and the early snow is falling on the hillsides of my youth. But I remember
Spring far away and the frogs' chorus at night. I stood beneath a huge oak by the crawfish shallows
and looked up at the stars. They danced like great fireflies between the branches. A soft wind was
creeping over the Western hills where budding elms were brown-webbed across the sky. The valley
where the plum trees grew was like a gulf of foam. April was not far away.
I was very young then and sensitive to everything. It was enough just to be alive. The coming
years did not exist because I had not learned to look ahead. I knew an abiding happiness that was
mine merely by receiving it. It was not necessary to reach out and possess it. It entered into me like
the air I breathed. It became a portion of myself, like the wind's song, or the frogs' chorus. I had no
fear that it would not always be mine. It seemed a lasting thing, permanent as the stars, the wind,
the night-sounds, the enfolding peace that was life itself.
What more was there to know? What more did one need to know? Here was complete and
quiet joy that had always been mine, even before I had been born, I thought; and somehow I did not
wonder or worry about the time before birth. I knew that the same stars had been shining there, that
the same hills had been there, and I knew that somewhere I had been knowing that same happiness.
I did not question life, or accuse it, or try to see into the future with hope and fear. Perhaps that is
why the past spoke to me, not in words, not in any way that I could describe. I think it shone out in
a greater light from the stars, in a gentler caress from the wind, in a lengthening of the shadows cast
by the budding elms. But it came to me; I knew; I recognized the lastingness of life, the eternity of
it. I felt suddenly stirring within myself another self, within my boy's body an ancient and greater
identity that had always been. It was I and yet it was not confined to me; it reached out and around
me and became the unseen reality of all that I knew. It was a tremendous moment: earth and sky
grew strangely luminous as though a great light from nowhere had suddenly flooded the world. The
elms on the hillside seemed to vibrate with living fire, and the shallows blazed gold. I saw all this
and yet saw more. I saw other ages, and they too were bathed in that strange glow. I saw myself ,
or found myself, living in those far-off times. There was no detail, no particular places or persons.
It was like a thousand flashes of light in a familiar darkness that covered a vast landscape. It was a
sudden nearness to more than the mind could embrace, a swift rebecoming of all that had been
before and before eternally. It was like plunging into the sky, sweeping onward into a forever that
became oneself, into a vastness of joy and peace beyond all comprehension.
Now it is Autumn, and the early snow is falling on the hillsides of my youth. I am far away
and many years have passed, but not that enchanted Spring. It blossoms on wherever I may be. Stars
shine down on the old oak boughs and the ivy vines and the shallows. Soft winds are creeping over
the Western hills. April is not far away.

------------------------

ONE ROAD

"There is but one road to the Path; at its very end alone the 'Voice of the Silence' can be
heard. The ladder by which the candidate ascends is formed of rungs of suffering and pain; these can
be silenced only by the voice of virtue. Woe, then, to thee, Disciple, if there is one single vice thou
has not left behind. For then the ladder will give way and overthrow thee; its foot rests in the deep
mire of thy sins and failings, and ere thou canst attempt to cross this wide abyss of matter thou hast
to lave thy feet in Waters of Renunciation. Beware lest thou should'st set a foot still soiled upon the
ladder's lowest rung."
- The Voice of the Silence

Anyone who reads Theosophy comprehendingly soon finds stirring within him an urge,
sometimes a compulsion, to begin rearranging his life in keeping with the ethical principles upon
which its doctrines are based.
He finds himself, as a personality, standing apart from most of his fellows who recognize no
law other than that of the social order to which they belong. They admittedly follow a line of least
resistance in the human drama; lying, cheating, hating, lusting, grabbing and accumulating what they
can of the world's goods.
"What else is there to do?" they will say. "I didn't ask to be born. God made me as I am, so
why shouldn't I make the most of it?"
It is a difficult task to answer the man of the world's questions because he is a supreme realist
who understands quite clearly the complex machinery of that small part of life where he lives and
moves and has his being. He is far from being the fool that some philosophers would make him.
So is the student of Theosophy because he is an ex-man of the world himself, a graduate of
the same school of delinquency. The chief difference is that he has obtained some advance
information his worldly brother lacks.
He observes that he is somewhat of a monstrosity, a travesty of the nobler creature he could be; and
from that humiliating knowledge is born a desire to rise, to change... to conquer.
Then war begins - which may have actually begun in a past life. He is once more Arjuna on
the battle field, with a new-born old Self struggling into life within him.
He stands - the student of Theosophy where everyone someday must stand: between the devil
of the lower self and the deep, blue sea of Divine Discovery. There is no escape, no escape for the
self but in the SELF; no way out but the way in - to the deathless God-Parent of which he is the
child.
And that is why the great teachers, the holy Adepts of Wisdom and Compassion, sent their
Messenger, H.P. Blavatsky, into this dark Kali-Yuga world of ours to point the way for all whose
eyes can see the Truth.
It can be made very complex - this Wisdom but if you look at it calmly, leaving prejudice
and pettiness behind, it will flame like a great star into your consciousness, comforting and blessing
you, healing and restoring you, and bringing back a lost splendor that was yours long ago: a
knowledge of yourself as a God, a Divinity, a Glory to the world, and a Light to all men.

----------------------

THE GREATEST CURSE

In his Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, pp. 342-6, Dr. G. de Purucker states: "... sex
is but a passing phase in racial evolution and, strictly speaking, is not normal to mankind on Globe
D of our planetary chain. This method of procreation actually was copied from the beasts, which
'separated' before 'man' ... As a matter of fact, the Atlantean and Atlanto-Lemurian karma has
weighed so heavily upon us, the fifth race, that we are actually belated, and have not at the present
date, the middle point of the fifth race, reached that stage as regards the evolving of the physical
body which otherwise we should have reached.
"As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of our own fifth race, men and
women will be disappearing as opposite sexes; and that by the middle of the Sixth Root Race (the
race to come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer.
"The humans of that period (the Sixth Root-Race) will produce children by meditation and
by will; during the Seventh Root-Race, the last to come on this Globe, during this Fourth Round -
a race which to us now would seem glorious - the humans of that race will produce their kind in the
same general manner; but by consciously exercised will and meditation...
"The main point... is to realize that this present physiological state of sex is a passing racial
and evolutionary phase; and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or what the
world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the evolutionary 'law'... and that while it is true
that the present method is the one which nature has evolved at the present time, as said before it is
not really the method which primordial humanity might have followed... Nature has followed that
line, as it were, under protest, through the evil doing involved in our past karma, as the only way
souls can find incarnation at present ..."
Sexual reproduction for humanity definitely was not in Nature's original plan. On page 262,
Vol. II, The Secret Doctrine, we read: "As has been shown in the present volume... it is the
speechless animal that first started sexual connection... Nor was it intended by Nature that man
should follow the bestial example ..."
Ambition is the first curse says Light on the Path; but sex is the greatest, says The Secret
Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 412: "... the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element,
and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and
sensuality. It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall." It has degraded man into
"a helpless, scrofulous being, who has become the richest heir on the globe to constitutional and
hereditary diseases."
 The deliberate profanation of sex in Atlantis led to the worship of the physical body (the
Easter Island statues attest to this), and finally to the sex principle in itself. Phallic Sorcery followed,
with half of the Atlantean civilization falling into Black Magic practices which survive today in
African Voodoo, Tibetan Dugpa Lamaism, Hindu Tantrika, and many branches of Western
metaphysics.
"The question is often asked" - The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 295-6 - "Why should
celibacy and chastity be a sine qua non rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development
of psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary... During human life the
greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga
powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action being closely connected, by
interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain..."
From H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. XII, pp. 700-2: "Humanity will become once
more hermaphrodite, male-female, and then there will be two Spinal Cords in the human body.. Ida
and Pingala will be joined with sushumna and they will also become one. Thus the Sympathetic
Cords, which are concerned so largely with the glandular system, developed more in the female than
in the male, and the Cerebrospinal Axis, connected with the muscular system, developed more in
the male than in the female, will reach equality or equilibrium, and with this the Androgyne becomes
the typical Humanity.
"The sexual creative power of man is not natural... It was an abnormal diversion from the
course of human or divine nature, and all tends to make away with it. Man at the end of the Sixth
and Seventh Races will not have sexual organs.
"...no one can properly or safely enter on the study of Practical Occultism, in the real sense
of the word, unless he or she is a celibate... any who get hold of some of the Hatha-Yoga exercises,
and who begin to practice them in the midst of an ordinary family life, or while living in a loose way
sexually, must, if to any extent successful, bring upon themselves physical disease, and very often
madness... Therefore all sexual intercourse is forbidden to the students of Practical Occultism."
Messiah entertains no grand hope that the foregoing will transform its readers into an
assembly of celibates, but it does expect the Purucker-Blavatsky material to clear the air, and show
that the Sexual Revolution now raging is no holy crusade for man's liberation from Puritanism, but
a campaign of moral corruption conjured by demon hands from the lowest pits of Hell.
The Man of Tomorrow must see himself as a potential god imprisoned in the body of a beast,
but with the wisdom and power to train it to serve him in his work for Universal Brotherhood. Either
that, or he will lose his godhood and revert to something less than human, to a dwindling caricature
of the Self he might have been.

------------------------

WHAT IS INITIATION?

"Man is made in the image of God." That is, man - the Human monad-Ego - is an outflowing
from the immortal Atman-Buddhi-Manas Trinity or the Divine Self. Therefore, as a Human entity,
he contains within his being the essence of Godhood.
Initiation is an intensification or hastening of the normal evolutionary process. It telescopes
within a short period what the multitudes of human souls will experience over an immense cycle of
time, covering a great many incarnations.
Initiation is not a testing of the Divine Self, or the Spiritual Monad, or even the Manasic
Monad. These superior parts of our composite nature have long ago triumphed over the things of this
lower world. Initiation is a testing of the Human Monad, the Human YOU, which has yet to bring
forth its own Divinity. We are taught that everything "has all within it." This means that the Human
Monad has, locked up within it, the essence of Divinity - its own Inner God - which must be brought
forth from within itself. It is this God within the heart of man that Initiation summons forth.
As Human Monads we can begin today to prepare for the inevitable hour when Nature itself
will force us to move forward along the evolutionary pathway. It may be a deliberate, conscious step
into Initiation, or it may come about in the ordinary course of human experience.
There are those who say that this preparation for Initiation (which involves a struggle with
our lower nature) is all right, but why not wait until another incarnation?
But the question is: if one is aware of the great duality in his being does not that awareness
indicate that the time has arrived to begin the overcoming?
That the struggle MUST COME for every one of us is as certain as the turning of the earth on its
axis. And can we begin too soon? It seems not. Man as a morally responsible, reasoning being has
been walking the world for eighteen million years. Surely in that long period he has plumbed the
depths of all sensual experience, strengthened his animal nature enormously, and refined his
sensibilities to such a degree that he now stands at the crossroads of Spirit and Matter.
Anyone who has begun the struggle must feel a tremendous compassion and pity for every
soul on earth because he knows what everyone must someday face. There is no way out of it; no one
to pay off; no one to bribe. Each one of us in the deep silence of self-realization must yet recognize
what he has built up in the past, knowing that as the author of all that he is, he alone will have to
readjust the pattern of being within which he lives and moves. Then the teaching that every man is
his own Karma becomes understandable. Everything that he is he at some time chose to make a part
of himself.
The Teachers tell us that the best and safest way to overcome the lower self is to forget it.
This means to so fill the heart and mind with the thought of service and devotion that the life-
energies are drawn up from the animal self and centered in the higher principles. In other words, the
lower part of us is starved to death. A wise procedure in view of the well-known fact that the animal
self can always out-argue us if we meet it on its own ground. By getting above it we can always win.

------------------------

RENASCENCE

When the Night is gone, and the Deva Dawn

Is spreading her plumes of gold,
And the Morning Star on her throne afar
Sings out to the Gods of old;

When the world is bright with Compassion's Light,

And the fires of Mara give
But a dying spark in the fading dark,
Then -- only the Truth will live;

And a Song will rise in the happy skies

When the joy-enchanted Spring
Returns to birth on a brighter earth,
And the God in man is King.

--------------------

NOCTURNE

I conjure thee, O Voices of the Night

And bid thee tell the legends that were told
In ages past, before the world was old
And broken by the tyranny of Might.

O savage winter wind, I summon thee,

Awhile thy swift and icy pinions beat
Against the walls of darkness, to repeat
The mighty mantrams of Antiquity.

And thou, O gentle snowflakes, as ye fall

On silver meadows, whisper once again
Of Buddhic Splendor in the hearts of men,
And Love Eternal in the Heart of All.

------------------------

UP, HEART!

Up Heart! - give thyself to the great Heart, the Universal Heart that beats forever, and will fail
thee not. Give thyself to the Heart of the world. Dry its tears. Offer to its sorrow, through thy own
free soul, the Compassion of the Innermost. Thou shalt live in the love that thou givest.
When one has touched the Flame, there can be no doubt. When one has glimpsed, for a flying
instant, THAT which he is, he can never return the same to that which he is not. He has seen his
HOME. He has heard the Sacred Melody whose muffled whispers are the symphonies of life. He
has tasted of the Divine Waters beyond the shores of death. He has found the Timeless, he has found
HIMSELF, the vast I AM, wherein is Peace, for IT is PEACE.

All things I AM. All things must cease

To be, in re-becoming ME:
The RADIANT IDENTITY
Of Nameless, Boundless, Timeless PEACE.

----------------------

SONGS LIKE FLOWERS

Now let them fall: my songs that were like flowers.

In the Winter silence let them be covered with snow.
I must forget those far, bright April bowers,
And my sweet dreams. With my songs I must let them go.

So brief they were, and frail, in a world that is fleeting!

Like pageantries of Spring that quicken and die,
My songs like flowers a little while were beating
Their May-fly wings against the eternal sky.

And now I must let them go, seeking a duty

In silence, hearing a voice that is Silence call:
Seeking and finding and serving a greater Beauty
That lives in the deep, compassionate Heart of all.

-------------------------

LOVING OUR ENEMIES

In the Christian New Testament Jesus is quoted as saying that we should love our enemies,
bless them that curse us, and help them that hurt us. These injunctions are paralleled in various
Eastern scriptures. On page 200 of The Key to Theosophy H.P. Blavatsky states: "Resist not evil, and
render good for evil."
She then goes on to say that these Buddhist precepts were "first preached in view of the
implacability of Karmic law." Man may restrict the evil doer from performing future evil actions by
institutionalizing him and thus protecting society from his menace, but may not punish him because
punishment is the business of Karma, not man.
"...a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury,
thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the
man who wronged him, by seeking to afflict an additional punishment on his enemy, he, who instead
of leaving that punishment to the great law adds to it his own mite, only begets thereby a cause for
the future reward of his own enemy and a future punishment for himself."
This is an extraordinary passage, and well worth pondering over. It appears that by conducting
oneself according to this policy he acts in harmony with the actual processes and operations of
Nature itself whose Heart, as we understand it, is a center of pure Harmony, Peace, Compassion.
To "forgive" must be exactly what Nature is forever doing as man and all sentient beings
consciously or unconsciously upset or disturb the cosmic equilibrium by discordant thoughts and
deeds. If Nature did not constantly "forgive" us, that is, mercifully affect a restoration of the
harmony that we violated, she would be acting contrary to her own being.
Perhaps we can better understand this matter of "loving our enemies" by reading what Dr.
G. de Purucker says about "judging" - the next thing to "hating" - in his Studies in Occult
Philosophy, page 442.
"...the man who judges others warps, shrivels, distorts, twists, his own mind; because usually
when we judge our brothers, adversely that is, unkindly, we imprint on our own souls a mark of
unkindness, and distort the fabric of our consciousness equivalently. We are playing with fire that
burns us. Do not judge others, for by your own judgement YOU will be judged, because you are
imprinting on your soul memories of your judgments, and distorting your character which thereafter
will act in a distorted way; and the same thing you will become."
"If, for instance, I judge my brother as being a dishonest man - I will use this as an example -
then on my own soul I leave a print of dishonesty because I had this thought so strongly in my mind
it prints itself in my own mind, in my own soul; and my own mind becomes dishonest because I
think so much about it, and because it automatically follows the psychic twist that I have given it.
I warp, distort, twist, my own soul. And if you do this repeatedly and continuously and do not do
other noble acts, kindly acts, that at least will balance or neutralize, Nature's own judgment-balance
will lean down and you will thus be weighed in your own scales of judgment, and found wanting."
"By your own acts you will be judged. Karman will find in the mind which has misjudged
others continuously, a distorted, warped, twisted, weakened character. Thoughts of love make us
beautiful. Thoughts of hatred make us ugly.
Consequently, when we judge others unkindly, because these are thoughts of evil and hatred,
we become ugly inside. Therefore the rule is: judge not others. Be very severe with yourself, but
forgive others their trespasses against yourself as you hope others will forgive you. Learn to love
and learn to forgive. This brings about a beautiful, symmetrically shaped character."
And so with judging, so with acting. To strike back and injure another physically is to
imprint upon our own mind the picture or image of the destructive action, and Karma, ever returning
to us exactly what we give, will cause the image sooner or later to take physical form involving our
own person, which will then suffer the same violence that we visited upon our enemy.
So also with evil thoughts directed towards another. As they are born in us, reinforced by the
will, their unholy images are likewise impressed upon the plastic screen of the mind, there to exude
their poisonous influence throughout the whole Lower Quaternary and the Manasic Ray which
informs it, and going out, return like boomerangs to harass us.
But this is the dark side of the picture. There is a beautiful side too. Thoughts of love, of
kindness, of forgiveness, of mercy and compassion, go out from us like gentle doves to carry
blessings of healing harmony to others, later to return like angels of peace and happiness.
The Great Teachers tell us that Life is Joy, if we will but realise it - that the Heart of Things
is Celestial Peace, and that from this Heart flow never-ceasing tides of Spiritual Strength into the
worlds of men. Even now in the darkness of our Kali Yuga the luminous waters of Compassion run
strong, and the glorious Sun still shines, and the Hierarchy of Wisdom still watches over the
destinies of men. There is hope for us all if we hold fast to our conviction that Divinity is the
foundation of everything, and so live that its Radiance finds a home in our hearts.

---------------------

FREE (II)*

Stand not beside my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the meadows white with snow.
I am the sunlight on the grain.
I am the autumn's gentle rain.

When you awaken in the hush of early dawn,

I am the rush of joyous wings in eager flight.
I am the stars that gem the night.
Stand not beside my grave and sigh.
I am not there,
I did not die.

-------------------------------
* This was found by M. Henry on Cardinal's writing desk the day after he died. Originally
it was thought to be Cardinal's poem (and referred to as so in a flyer), but later in some of his
correspondence found to be a revision of a poem by Robert Hepburn that can be found in National
Enquirer, June (?) 1985. Reference: Letters from G. C. LeGros to Emmet Small: 11 June, 21 June,
and 23 June 1985. LeGros writes: "....The other day my daughter sent me the memorial poem
below, which I though worth fooling with in an effort to fix it up a bit..... Better sign that poem
'author unknown' as I have no right to claim it as my own....Just learned that the original of the
revised poem I sent you appeared earlier this month in The National Enquirer, written by a Robert
Hepburn...."
------------------------

FREE CHOICE AND DESTINY

Is man helpless in the grip of an iron destiny, with every move and action fated? or is he the
possessor of boundless free will - and absolute master of immediate circumstance? Between the
horns of this ancient dilemna philosophers and theologians have struggled in vain.
The fiction of an anthropomorphic deity - the personal god of sectarianism - has strengthened
the idea of a rigid, implacable Fate decreed for each soul from on high, with man born in Adam's
sin and the gates of perdition yawning ahead, Atheism - the other extreme - denying Spirit, sees man
as a rudderless ship on an uncharted sea of fortuity.
The truth is, as Theosophy has taught from the beginning, that man has a destiny, and he also
has free will and choice. The twin doctrines of Fate and Free Will work hand in hand with the
teachings of Reincarnation and Karma.
All men have lived many lives, and will live many more on this planet. In each life man sows
seeds for another life's reaping, initiates multitudinous causes, makes innumerable decisions and
moves, all of which, collectively, as life follows life, establish a particular trend that finally
crystallizes into a destiny-pattern which thereafter exerts a characteristic influence or compulsion
upon him.
This is destiny, but it is self-made destiny, created by him, born of him, shaped by his
desires, and forged by his will. Sometimes, like a Frankenstein monster, it virtually rules him, holds
him in its iron embrace and dictates his new choices. He finds himself trapped in an intricate web
of his own weaving the prisoner of his own Karma.
 But he need not struggle indefinitely. The fact that he struggles at all proves the existence
of free choice - a Divine Prerogative. Just as he involves himself in a tangled destiny, so may he free
himself - by the power of Spiritual Will. The only beings utterly lost and doomed are the black
magicians who have divorced themselves from Spirit, and therefore have no Spiritual Will with
which to overcome the tyranny of their self-imposed fate.
The exercise of free choice is actually a form of White Magic because it involves the
influence or agency of the Higher Trinity of Atma-Buddhi-Manas. Mr. Victor Endersby writes
brilliantly on the subject; "For free will you have to look to something outside the line of cause and
effect." Theosophy alone shows where to look. The Higher Ego is outside the line of cause and effect
because it exists outside of time and space though conscious and perceptive thereof. It presides over
a personality and its circumstances with a detached perception and a detached will, - a will which
is not concerned with the welfare of that personality but a cosmic consideration, which may
sometimes interlock with the welfare of the personality if the latter is going in the right direction at
the moment. The personality arrives again and again at a moment of possible choice of some kind
or other, and if the balance is delicate enough, the Higher Ego can throw a switch and decide the
issue, but mostly the choice is made within the personality, automatically as far as the personality
is concerned, but from the basis of habits set up by innumerable past choices in which the Ego has
been instrumental.
One may ask: "Is not the Ego itself, on its own plane, subject to the same law of cause and
effect, and its effect on the Personality dependent on the forces acting on itself?" No, for two
reasons. One is that the phase of it outside time and space cannot be spoken of as choosing or not
choosing; those are strictly time-space words. What the real situation is we cannot comprehend at
our present stage other than to see that it cannot be a situation depending on time-space
rationalizations. It is the old mystery of past, present and future.
"The second reason is that all individuality is an illusion on the cosmic plane; both personalty
and Ego are manifestations of the ONE, the former on the time-space plane, the latter beyond it. You
might say that free will is the quality of the totality, existing there only, and that our own free will
struggles are mosaic glimpses of the total free will; our conviction that it exists being a direct
perception of the Self. Our range of choice depends on power, knowledge, and circumstance. Those
are variables of Karmic evolution and some have more than others."
Madame H. P. Blavatsky pointed out that each man has his ruling destiny, made up of the
aggregate Karmic forces past and present, and that he has the choice of two paths leading him in the
given direction. It would appear that two streams of will and desire operate in our lives, one
correlating to the "Perfect Way" of the Higher Trinity (Atma-Buddhi-Manas), and the other to the
"false destiny" of the Lower Quaternary (Physical and Astral Bodies, Kama and Prana), the former
representing the Divine World of Harmony and Freedom; the latter the material realms of discord
and illusion.
Self-direction of destiny depends, actually, upon our many small choices. WE can see very
clearly that our ability to select the train of thought which we at any moment desire is always
present. Regardless of the compulsions arising from the past experiences, we can, and do, decide
what thoughts we shall entertain at any given moment. This is free choice; and from these
innumerable free choices we lay our foundations for the future. The time will come - far away,
surely, for most of us - when we shall exercise no personal choice at all, but act only as expressions
of that Divine Love or Compassion which is the Heart of the Universe.

------------------------
AUTUMN AFTERNOON

It is an Autumn afternoon and the streets are brown with leaves. Children are coming home
from school, calling to each other in the cool, windless air. I think of other Autumns that have come
and gone: each like a strange, wonderful symphony: The Autumns of childhood, boyhood, manhood.
I wonder what this Autumn will mean to me, what I shall think of when the memory of it returns to
me in the years to come?
There was a time when the Autumn days seemed to me the most beautiful of all the year:
something unseen and ancient whispered to me from the falling leaves, called to me from the wild
geese overhead. I had only to go out and walk and dream and wonder, and the strange, precious
glory dwelling in the mystery of Autumn would steal into my heart and make me one with all.
What will this Autumn mean to me? I think that I know: the cycles of the old years have
turned, a new path is being traced by the wheel of time, my life of reveries is fading into the quiet
past. I feel that my place is not to be in loneness and dreams, but out among men, searching in their
hearts for something precious, something to answer the mystery in my own.
Yes, I think that I know: there is divinity in the Inmost of men; there is something in me
which knows that it is there. And so I have a new work, a new duty, of trying to see, to recognize,
to encourage the divinity in men to come forth, to flame out and illumine the dreary dream that too
many of us mistake for life. This Autumn can be the most wonderful of all; it can be the luminous
veil of an inner, spiritual Autumn. Behind its beauty can shine the beauty of a divine universe.

-----------------------

THE HEART-LIGHT

O my Divinity! thou dost blend with the earth and fashion for thyself temples of mighty power.

O my Divinity! thou livest in the heart-life of all things and dost radiate a Golden Light that shineth
forever and doth illumine even the darkest corners of the earth.

O my Divinity! blend thou with me that from the corruptible I may become Incorruptible; that from
imperfection I may become Perfection; that from darkness I may go forth in Light.
- Katherine Tingley

In every human heart burns a Mystic Flame whose Light is Truth and Love and that secret
Strength which in many a crisis we call upon, perhaps not knowing whence it comes. Our lives are
journeys out of a vast Unknown into realms of even greater Mystery, and it is the Heart-Light alone
which can guide us safely on our way.
Theosophy (the True Theosophy as given to the world by Madame H.P. Blavatsky) is a
formulation in human language of those Sacred Doctrines which explain man's divine origin,
destiny, and ever-enduring relationship with all other lives.
What can be more important than the search for deeper understanding of our true nature and
purpose in the great Scheme of Being? Theosophy provides the keys which unlock the giant doors
of that Divine Reality behind the veils of terrestrial existence. Then we know that the Flame in our
hearts is in truth the Deathless Spirit of All Life.
There is a cry and a call from the Gods, and it is this: "Come up higher! Forsake the shadow-
world of sorrow and illusion. Follow the Light of your heart and press onward forever along the
Luminous Pathway which leads to the Heart of the Universe!
"Theosophy will bring something to you that can never pass away: the consciousness of your
Divine, your Inner Self; a conviction of your inherent power to conserve your energy along the
highest spiritual lines. For man cannot find his true place in the great scheme of human life until he
has ennobled and enriched his nature with the consciousness of his Divinity." (Katherine Tingley)
"Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to shore of the evolution of
sentient beings; unfathomable in it deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope, yet,
shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the understanding of a child." (William Quan
Judge)

----------------------

THEOSOPHISTS VERSUS NICE PEOPLE, ETC.

"With thy heart place all thy works on me, prefer me to all else, exercise mental devotion
continually, and think constantly of me. By so doing thou shalt by my divine favor surmount every
difficulty which surroundeth thee; but if from pride thou wilt not listen to my words, thou shalt
undoubtedly be lost."
- The Bhagavad-Gita

We in Theosophy and metaphysics are always being reminded of how bad we are compared
to the nice people at the corner church. But our critics don't know that the nice people at the corner
church are unawakened souls drugged on the verbal narcotics of Billy Graham and Bishop Sheen
or their imitators, and that we are people who because of greater suffering, experience, age, or
reasons we know nothing about, face a show-down with the demon that lurks in every human heart.
To approach the ancient Path means taking steps which cause the poisonous debris of the lower
nature to surface. It is not a lovely sight. Some chelas, we are told, present anything but an attractive
appearance, and may even be mistaken for horned devils. Discrimination is needed if we are to judge
others rightly - if there is a right way to judge anyone, which is doubtful.
All of which brings up an interesting question; how are the people making up the
Metaphysical World to be classified? Suppose we try. Group one: Genuine Theosophists who in past
lives won some major battles with kama-manas and now walk confidently on, or toward, the Path.
Group Two: Genuine Theosophists who are fighting for their lives (or souls) and who may resemble
the aforementioned horned devils. Group Three: Potential Theosophists who are trying to make up
their minds - the troubled Arjunas. Group Four: Mystical intellectuals like Manly Hall who have
a wonderful time romping about the frontiers of the arcane world. Group Five: Serious students
determined to master Nature's forces for evil ends - future black magicians. Group Six: Members
of the occult lunatic fringe: "I AM" decreers, Neo-Theosophists (followers of Annie Besant and
Bishop Eggbeater), Alice Baileyites, Rosie Dawners, AMORC "Rosicrucians," Great White
Brotherhooders, Mount Shastaites, Edgar Cayceites, Unityites, Christian Scientists, Religious
Scientists, maybe Nuclear Scientists, Spiritualists, past life readers, astral projectionists, and
dabblers in Yoga, Hypnotism, and the misunderstood Occult Arts. Group Seven: Harmless hangers-
on who don't know where they are nor how they got there, but have no other place to go. Perhaps
seven is the right number, but we might throw in one more: the half-Christian-half-mystic who
makes up Norman Vincent Peale's following.
 It goes without saying that One, Two, and Three are the only safe groups. All others are
dangerous because they call for no discipline, no striving, no effort to become any better than one
already is. Nothing in Nature stands still: we go either up or down. There is a dual momentum in the
Occult World, and every one of us is eventually swept into the ascending or descending current, -
one leading to Godhood and the other to the Pit. A good way to start moving in the right direction
is to memorize the above quotation from the Gita and say it regularly, and EVERY TIME someone
comes running to tell you about the marvelous Yogi who just arrived in town to lecture on Health,
Love, and Abundant Living.

------------------------

THEOSOPHY AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

Albert Einstein once confessed: "I cannot bear the thought that an electron exposed to a ray
should by its own decision choose the moment and the direction in which it wants to jump away."
He also was disturbed by the claim of quantum mechanics that the objective physical world consists
of basic building blocks such as the electron and the proton, whose individual actions defy the laws
of cause and effect.
Einstein apparently knew nothing about the Secret Doctrine* given by the gods to early
humanity millions of years ago. Had he been acquainted with those teachings he would have known
that electrons and protons are indeed the "building blocks" of the universe, and that free will is a
property of the Whole.
As Dr. G. de Purucker wrote (Fountain-Source of Occultism, p. 415): "Any entity, because
it is identical in substance and essence, in energy, destiny and origin, with the hierarchy to which
it belongs, has all the qualities, powers, faculties and substances of this hierarchy and therefore of
the universe. Man has free will because the universe has. Every monad, because it springs from the
universe, has its quota of free will, and thus is individually responsible for what it does."
In 1915, a friend of physicist Niels Bohr's, the Danish psychologist, Edgar Rubin, wrote a
classic monograph on visual perception in which he discussed a class of patterns known as figure-
ground images. One of these is the famous "Reversible Chalice" shown above - an optical illusion
which contains the crux of the celebrated Einstein-Bohr debate over the nature of matter.
It is obviously impossible to detect the profiles and the chalice at the same time, a fact which
psychologists interpret as reflecting a basic limitation in the brain's ability to process visual
information. Bohr claimed that in quantum mechanics it was likewise impossible to know the
position and momentum of an electron simultaneously.
Bohr interpreted the quantum mechanical paradoxes as reflecting basic limits to the mind's
ability to conceptualize reality. According to him, in one experiment the physicist "sees" a particle-
like electron, and in another setup that is complementary he "sees" a wave-like electron!
Another physicist, Werner Heisenberg, showed that nature herself confirms quantum theory's
schizophrenic description of subatomic behavior in the most striking way possible. No matter how
the physicist tries, his act of measuring an electron's momentum prevents him from obtaining an
equally precise measurement of its position at the same instant, and vice versa.
Thus, the uncertainty principle seemingly defines a technical barrier to ever obtaining the
precise information about position and momentum that is the crucial precondition to all causal
explanation in physics. Quantum theory therefore offers no explanation whatever of why individual
electrons behave as they do, and it compounds this omission by eliminating the clean line between
what we know about Reality and Reality itself.
Quantum theory's equations postulate that electrons behave in ways that defy commonsense -
that is, they act like particles whenever they possess definite position and a range of equally real
momentums, but behave like waves when they move with a definite momentum while somehow
being in many different places at once! This astonishing mathematical postulate prevents present
quantum theory from proving cause-and-effect explanations for any individual electron's actions.
Quantum theory is to physics what a bookie is to horse racing. It calculates odds, not causes,
and does so with uncanny accuracy. Given information about a group of electrons, its equations can
predict the exact percentages of individual electrons that will be detected at different places an
instant later, but are unable to predict what any individual electron will choose to do! WHY?
Because the electrons are exercising free will! When physicists condescend to open The Secret
Doctrine, more than one tormenting question will be answered.
Some physicists surprisingly lean toward Jung's fascinating theory of synchronicity which
claims that the entire universe must be taken into account when considering any given physical
event. In keeping with this idea, quantum theory postulates a kind of long-range Siamese twin effect
whenever two electrons meet in space and then continue their different ways. Even when they are
halfway across the universe from each other they instantaneously respond to each other's actions.
And in so doing, they violate Relativity's ban on faster-than-light velocities, but at the same time
prove the solidarity and interdependence of the Whole - one of Theosophy's fundamental teachings.
Science, with reluctant feet, plods on toward the horizon of primordial Truth. As Light on
the Path said a hundred years ago, "...the scientific workers are progressing, not so much by their
own will, as by sheer force of circumstances, toward the far line which divides things interpretable
from things uninterpretable. Every fresh discovery drives them a step onward,..."
Perhaps there is hope for them after all, and for us too.

-------------------------------
*Actually Einstein is said to have had Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine on his work table all the
time. See ULT ad in NY Times reprinted in The Eclectic Theosophist, #62, pp. 4-5 - Ed.
-------------------------

THE UFO MYSTERY

"The refusal to admit in the whole solar system of any other reasonable and intellectual
beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit of our age. All that science has
a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we
do. It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of their being worlds within worlds, under totally
different conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may
be a certain limited communication between some of those worlds and our own." (The Secret
Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 133)
From time immemorial man has beheld "wonders in the sky," and our present age is no
exception. According to well-authenticated evidence tens of thousands of persons, including the
writer, have seen, during the past thirty years, a great variety of flying objects which have been
given the collective name of UFOS.
There are many theories as to their places of origin and their true identity. Generally,
however, all the suppositions are finally reduced to the central issue of whether the UFO
intelligences are essentially nonphysical entities from an invisible realm in our own world, or
whether they are physical beings who can materialize and dematerialize their bodies and vehicles.
Some investigators wonder if the UFO "minds" come from higher dimensions all around us
which represent different vibratory levels, just as there are various radio frequencies in our
environment. The different entities would therefore travel on various frequencies, according to their
vibratory rates.
Other explorers of the UFO world lean toward the theory that the strange aerial objects may
be our neighbors "just around the corner" in another Space-Time continuum. In other words, the
"space ships" and "saucers" may be the minds or intelligences themselves!
Furthermore, they may have the ability to telepathically influence the human mind in order
to project what may appear to be three-dimensional images to the UFO observers. If so, these images
may depend in large part upon the preconceptions the witnesses already have about alien life forms,
and thus the reported accounts run the gamut from Red-Eyed Monsters to Little Green Men,
Venusian World Saviors, etc., etc.
UFO witnesses who have clearly observed the objects in the process of appearing and
disappearing (materializing and dematerializing?) report that usually at first there is a reddish glow
as the objects emerge from the invisible band of the spectrum into infrared and then into the narrow
band of visible light. Or, if the UFOs are passing through the visible band to the higher frequencies
they are cyan (bluish-green) before fading into blue and then entering the ultraviolet range. This
phenomenon holds a great key to the ultimate understanding of the UFO mystery.
There is another possibility that some of the "Flying Saucers" do have an earth origin. Going
back to The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 426, we learn that from the Atlanteans our early Fifth Root-
Race received valuable instruction. "It is from them that they learnt aeronautics, Viwan Vidya (the
knowledge of flying in air-vehicles), and, therefore, their great arts of meteorography and
meteorology."
In the COMMENTARY which follows (p. 428) we read about the use of flying machines at
the time of the destruction of Atlantis (four and a, half million years ago) when "the nations that
were led away, were as thick as the stars of the Milky Way."
Years ago in his magazine Theosophia Mr. Boris de Zirkoff presented some very valuable
material along these lines. In the first part he pointed out that a large number of the Mahatma letters
sent to A. P. Sinnett were not "written" in the way most people understand the word, but
"...precipitated, by means of a thorough knowledge of occult dynamics, upon material which
together with the 'writing substance,' was equally precipitated from the surrounding astral
'storehouse.' The process, moreover, was accomplished at varying distances of hundreds or
thousands of miles, with or without the intermediary of a regular postoffice at the point of
destination. The envelopes were produced in the same manner.
"In the light of the above facts, a question or two suggest themselves. If it is possible for
living men, with a very advanced knowledge of Nature's laws, to send to any distance whatsoever
matter or substance in a state of sublimation yet unknown to modern science, and to re-integrate it
at the point of destination in any desirable form, with words impressed upon it, expressive of certain
thoughts - would it not be equally possible for beings far in advance of terrestrial mankind to project
earthward substances which would temporarily appear to our senses as 'flying saucers' or other
objects unfamiliar to us? Would it not be possible for such beings to withdraw these temporarily and
only partially materialized objects or forms, and to gather from their substance, or from the field of
their magnetic energies, whatever information may be required of them regarding this terrestrial
sphere of life and its inhabitants?
"It should be carefully borne in mind that the majority of 'flying saucers' and other similar
objects sighted in various parts of the world have had a tendency to disappear with great suddenness,
a suddenness which may have been interpreted by observers as a sudden acceleration of speed. This
fact appears to us as being of primary importance, and might well be directly connected with the
actual 'dematerialization' of the object at one or another point in space.
"It is a well known fact of occult dynamics that unless a materialized object is properly 'fixed'
it will not remain substantial and tangible for any length of time. If 'fixed,' however, it remains
permanently as objective and material as any other.
"On the basis of existing facts, such as those connected with the Letters from the Adept-
Brothers, it becomes quite plausible to speculate on the possibility of 'flying' saucers being
objectivized currents of some extra-terrestrial substance, projected and guided by highly intelligent
beings for purposes best known to themselves. These currents of substance, however, do not have
to come necessarily from the well known physical planets officially studied by astronomers. Such
a view would limit Nature and its storehouse of possibilities. There may be scores of planetary
bodies in surrounding space whose substance cannot be perceived by our physical senses, or even
our psycho-spiritual senses, unless trained to do so by severe spiritual disciplines over long periods
of time.
"That such invisible bodies actually exist in space and maybe far nearer to us that imagined
is fully authenticated today by the research of that new science which is gradually developing under
the name of Radio-Astronomy. Scientists engaged in it testify that many centers in space have been
localized from which definite sound-patterns issue, although nothing can be seen there by means of
telescopes. It is suspected that bodies of one or another kind are located in those regions, whose
vibratory rate makes it impossible for our senses to perceive them." On page 170 of The Mahatma
Letters to A.P. Sinnett the Adept K.H. states: "Science will hear sounds from certain planets before
she sees them. This is prophecy..."

------------------------

PROOFS, FAITH, AND KNOWLEDGE

(What do you regard as your authority for your Theosophical belief? Have you yourself
contacted , any of the Masters about which frequent reference is made? - D.C.)

....It is only natural for us to wonder about these things, and it is the duty of members of the
Theosophical Society to endeavor to answer these questions in a satisfactory way. In regard to your
first question, let me first ask, What is proof? Proof is that which brings conviction to the mind. A
man reads something in a book and instantly his intuition says: that is true! So he accepts it and
endeavors to harmonize his life with that conviction. Another man may read the same thing and not
find it true. Why? Because the two men are different in their respective abilities to use their
intuition. If a thing is true it will stand as true whether we believe it or not. What is proof for one
may not be proof for another. So we have to open our hearts and minds so that the pure, clear Light
of intuition - which is a spiritual faculty - may shine into our consciousness and thus illuminate the
world about us. Then we shall know. This is a Theosophical teaching and I have personally found
it to be true.
Therefore, after all is considered, anyone who accepts the Theosophical doctrines as the truth
does so because his inner faculty of intuition, discrimination, embraces them as Truth. The true
Theosophist does not accept things on blind faith. He regards blind faith as a very bad thing. He
accepts things on what we may call intuitive conviction. He depends upon the voice of the Spirit
within him - not upon the authority of any human being. Let me here quote from a public lecture
given by Dr. G. de Purucker:

"Let me remind you that it is one of our Theosophical teachings that any statement made by
a Theosophical lecturer must be taken or rejected according to what the hearer finds of truth or of
falsehood within it. ...Take nothing from me that you hear me tell you unless your consciousness
leaps in recognition of it, and you feel that the statement made is true. Then take it, and hold to it
like men. But in any case, test it; probe it; prove it, by all that you have within you - spiritual vision,
intellectual power, and thus analyse it. Reject it if your consciousness disapproves of it, for that is
only honest."
"H. P. Blavatsky, with others, founded the Theosophical Society at New York City in 1875.
She came as the Messenger of the Great Teachers. There have been others after her. Such is my
belief. The same Light of Wisdom, Compassion, and Peace shines into the world today to help us
on as lived in the early days of the Theosophical Society. There is help to be had, and hope. Such
also is my belief . The duty of the Theosophical student is to help others in their study of the Ancient
Wisdom. It is his joy. It is the greatest thing in his life.
"Now to your second question: Have you yourself contacted any of the Masters about which
frequent reference is made? I reply: I believe that many men and women contact the masters
although they may not be aware of it. Whenever we think a high and beautiful and self-forgetful
thought, whenever we let go of personality and aspire to give our strength for the benefit of
humanity, are we not living in those lofty, sublime planes of thought where the love and wisdom of
the Masters are? If we endeavor to lift ourselves to the realms of spiritual service and devotion,
aspire to give ourselves for the benefit of others, without desire for reward, in sheer self -
forgetfulness - who is to say that we do not contact our Elder Brothers?
"The present Leader of the Theosophical society was once asked this question regarding the
Masters: 'What is to be done in order to meet one of them?' And his reply was: 'Live the life which
they teach you to live, and then you will meet them; live a life of kindliness, of brotherhood, of love,
of pity, of compassion, and of earnest and unremitting exercise of the intellectual and spiritual
faculties. Analyse, discriminate, study, aspire, yearn to become greater than you are; and the Masters
will instantly and instinctively feel the call of your heart - and you will soon know of their actual
existence.'"

--------------------------

THE FOUNDATION OF WISDOM

No Theosophist or "occult student" should be unfamiliar with the Three Fundamental

Propositions of the Secret Doctrine. Too much time and mental energy are wasted in speculating on
past lives, astral projection, and whether or not Jesus and the Count Saint Germain are living on
Mount Shasta. The years between now and 1975 (when the next Messenger from the White Lodge
starts the last-quarter century effort) will be important years in which every true Theosophist should
be doing the work of fifty men. Let us get busy with the true teachings. There is no time to waste.
H. P. Blavatsky said that without an understanding of the Three Fundamentals we would never know
Theosophy. Here they are.
1. "An omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable Principle on which all speculation
is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any
human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought - in the words of
Mandukya, 'unthinkable and unspeakable.'"
2. "The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically 'the playground
of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,' called the 'manifesting stars,'
and 'the sparks of Eternity."'
"This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity,
of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has recorded in all departments of nature.
An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, sleeping and Waking, is a fact so
common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we
see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe."
3. "The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal over-Soul, the latter being itself
an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul - a spark of the former
- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or 'Necessity') in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during
the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent
(conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth
principle, - or the OVER-SOUL, - has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal
world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-
induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of
intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, UP to the holiest
archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges
or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout
a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations."

--------------------------

THE LIGHTHOUSE IN THE STORM

Human existence is a baffling journey through realms of illusion where every bush can be
a bear and every lovely flower a poisonous serpent in disguise. It is really a wonder that we survive.
But there is guidance at hand. We don't have to stumble blindly, hoping that when calamity strikes
it won't be us. There are sure, time-tested rules by which to live in relative harmony within our self-
woven patterns of destiny. We need not be like disaster-haunted mariners lost on angry seas. We can
voyage safely, serenely, even joyfully through the fierce tempests and black nights that every soul
must know because there is something mightier than they - the Truth of Life which the Masters have
given. Sorrow can be the key that opens your heart to compassion, and your greatest trial can be
your greatest victory if you make that Truth your own - if you make Theosophy your lighthouse in
the storm.
"Yes, 'our destiny is written in the star!' Only the closer the union between the mortal
reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external conditions and
subsequent reincarnations - which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition,
least of all is it Fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, and man is
a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has a choice of two
paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery - if such is decreed to him,
either in the snowy white robes of the Martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the
iniquitous course; for, there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of
our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. Those who believe in
Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving thread by thread
around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice
of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner, man, who is but too
often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one
of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable
law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the
last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds
himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert
shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own
actions, and this is - KARMA."
- H.P. Blavatsky

-------------------

"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation. Never will I enter into final peace
alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature
throughout the world."
- Kwan Yin Pledge
-------------------------

CHELAS AND HUMAN BEINGS

"The enemies which rise within the body, Hard to be overcome - the vile passions - Should
manfully be fought; who conquers these Is equal to the conqueror of worlds."

Someone has remarked that the immediate duty of a Theosophist is not to become a Chela,
but a human being. It is more truth than epigram. We were awakened mentally by the Manasaputras
some nineteen million years ago, and since then have been struggling along, part human and part
animal, mostly the latter. The force of our Lunar nature is terrific, having behind it a whole
manvantara of experience in the beast kingdom of the Moon Chain. We hit rock bottom in
materiality at the middle of the 4th sub-race of the Atlantean Root Race, and from that time have
been steadily rising (let's hope) on the Luminous Arc of Ascent. We are now in the 4th sub-race of
the 5th (Aryan) Root Race, behind schedule, of course, but on our way.
The time is near (and has already arrived for some Theosophists) when in many (or, at least,
some) individuals the Divine Nature will make itself felt to such a degree that a head-on clash
between the animal and the man is inevitable. With this also comes the beginning of wisdom;
understanding of self and its relation and responsibility to all other selves. A mystical threshold is
reached, and the man or woman glimpses the outlines of the Gates of Gold. This may or may not
mean that the person is ready for chelaship. That depends upon the progress made in previous lives.
Wrote H.P. Blavatsky:

"Now there is a terrible law operative in nature, one which cannot be altered, and whose
operation clears up the apparent mystery of the selection of certain 'Chelas' who have turned out
sorry specimens of morality, these few years past. Does the reader recall the old proverb, 'Let
sleeping dogs lie? There is a world of occult meaning in it. No man or woman knows his or her
moral strength until it is tried. Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never
put to the pinch. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to
desperation every sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle
for the mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, 'To be, or Not to
be'; to conquer, means ADEPTSHIP; to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride,
avarice, vanity, selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if
measured by the standards of true manhood.
"The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his nature, but, in
addition, the whole volume of maleficent power accumulated by the community and nation to which
he belongs. ...let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow mockery of social life, its
hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself
up to a higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, or bigoted, or malicious nature sends at him
a current of opposing will power.
"If he is innately strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the current
that would bear a weaker one away. But in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden
blemish, do what he may, it shall and will be brought to light. The varnish of conventionalities
which 'civilization' overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and the Inner Self, naked. The
habits of society which hold men to a certain degree under moral restraint, and compel them to pay
tribute to virtue by seeming to be good whether they are so or not, these habits are apt to be all
forgotten, these restraints to be broken through under the strain of chelaship. He is now in the
atmosphere of illusions - Maya. Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions try
to lure the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement.
"Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a 'psychic resolvent, which eats
away all dross and leaves only the pure gold behind.' If the candidate has the latent lust for money,
or political chicanery, or materialistic skepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or
sensual gratification of any kind, the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as
regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly,
then, for any one to leave the smooth path of commonplace life to scale the crags of chelaship
without some reasonable feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him?"

It seems obvious that the question of deciding on the try for chelaship becomes, in every
case, a distinctly personal one, and mixed motives are very likely to be present. But there can be no
doubt that, as Blavatsky says, "The real man comes out." It is something like looking into the fabled
Magic Pool where one sees himself as he actually is. Many are said to die of shock upon beholding
their true appearances. The Adept K.H. says in The Mahatma Letters that every candidate for
chelaship is warned of the dangers attendant upon entering the Path. It is certainly a perplexing
question, with strong reasons for both trying and not trying.
Blavatsky also wrote: "Let him aspire only to that which he feels himself able to accomplish.
Let him not take upon himself a burden too heavy to carry. Without ever becoming a 'Master,' or a
Great Saint, let him study the Philosophy and the Science of Soul, and he can become one of the
modest benefactors of humanity, without any 'superhuman' powers. These last are only for those
who are able to lead the life, to comply with the terrible sacrifices required for such a training, and
to comply with them to the very letter. It must be remembered always that true Occultism is the
'Great Renunciation of Self' - unconditionally and absolutely, in thought as in action. It is
ALTRUISM, and it throws him who practices it out of calculation of the ranks of the living
altogether. 'Not for himself, but for the world he lives,' as soon as he has pledged himself to the
work. Much is forgiven during the first years of probation. But, no sooner is he 'accepted,' than his
personality must disappear, and he must become a mere beneficent force in Nature."

----------------------------

SHORT-CUTS TO SHAMBALLA

Between now and 1975 (when the next Messenger from the White Lodge of Adepts launches
the spiritual project for this century) the opposing Powers of Evil will increase their efforts to
bewilder and mislead mankind. What are these Powers? You know - the Black Magicians who work
for the destruction of human souls. On the way to annihilation themselves, they want to take you
with them. And will, too, unless you affect a positive stand on the side of Right, Truth, and
Compassion, which the Masters who sent H.P. Blavatsky into the world represent.
Because this paper is written for Theosophists or readers interested in Theosophy it is
unnecessary to list all of the pernicious "Spiritual" and "Occult" groups and organizations that infest
the United States. You probably know them all, from Christian Science and "I Am" to the AMORC
"Rosicrucians" and Subud. You know them for what they are, but does the innocent inquirer into
Esoteric Philosophy have your knowledge? Of course not. He occupies the same boat wherein you
rocked precariously years ago. And haven't you a duty to him?
Light on the Path states that when you have knowledge it becomes your duty to share it. "He"
(that's you) "has come within the grip of an iron law. If he demands to become a Neophyte, he at
once becomes a servant. ...his first act of service is to give some of that knowledge to those who are
not yet fit to stand where he stands."
No matter how little you know, you know more than the starry-eyed beginner, and unless you
warn him of the dangers ahead, and steer him toward pure Theosophy, he may be victimized by the
first creep who hands him a copy of The Psychic Observer, Science and Health, or an application-
blank from the Third Eye Development League promising a short-cut to Shamballa in ten easy
lessons. If he falls into these traps, the next thing can be obsession or insanity.
Don't think that because you live a married life and eat meat you escape the responsibility
of chela-service. The fact that you have spiritual knowledge and can discriminate between the true
and the false means that you have a duty to those who grope in darkness. Don't forget about that iron
law mentioned in Light On The Path. Start working today. Order some of the following items from
The Theosophy Company, 245 West 33rd Street, Los Angeles, California (90007), and use some of
your cleverness in getting them into the right hands. What if you are tagged a propagandist? So were
Christ and Buddha.

----------------------

ARE YOU A BEATNIK?

Probably not. Beatniks aren't interested in Theosophy. They aren't interested in anything,
Beatniks are children of despair, submerged in tamas - the worst of "the three qualities sprung from
nature." The first is sattva; peace, truth, virtue. The second is rajas: passion, desire, ambition. The
third - tamas - is sloth, indifference, darkness. In Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita William Q. Judge says
that the sattva quality "binds to rebirth through attachment to knowledge and that which is pleasant;
the fruit of righteous acts appertains to sattva. Ra as is of the nature of desire, producing thirst and
propensity; it binds the soul through action and its consequences. Being separative and compelling
in quality, its fruit is gathered in pain. Tamas is... the deluder of all creatures; it imprisoneth the Ego
in a body through heedless folly, sleep and idleness."
Judge goes on to say that "Every human being is attached to physical existence through these
qualities. ...The differences in human beings are found in the degree of attraction which each one
has for one or other of the qualities. As the chapter recites, 'when tamas and rajas are overcome, then
sattva prevaileth;' 'when sattva and tamas are hidden, then rajas prevaileth; ' 'when sattva and rajas
diminish, then tamas is chiefly acting."'
We identify ourselves with the qualities to such an extent that we mistake them for ourselves.
The saint becomes a trembling conglomerate of virtue. The business tycoon becomes a walking
nightmare of ambition. The Beatnik becomes a pale phantom of futility. All are deluded, but the
miserable Beatnik groping in intellectual chaos is no blinder than Bill Graham wallowing in self-
righteousness. And less of a nuisance.
What the Theosophist or "occult student" should strive for is separation from the qualities
because all three blind man to reality and chain him to earth. "Even sattva," says Judge, "May be of
that kind which expresses a harmless selfishness; the love of knowledge, righteous acts for the
reward which follows them. While these bring a fair and pleasant existence, the results obtained
from them are temporary, and at the same time bind one to physical existence." Light On The Path
advises us to "live in the eternal" where "there is neither reward nor punishment, good nor evil."
Says the Bhagavad-Gita: "He... who, like one who is of no party, sitteth as one unconcerned
about the three qualities and undisturbed by them, who being persuaded that the three qualities exist,
is not moved by them; who is of equal mind in pain and pleasure... with those who like or dislike...
and the same whether praised or blamed; equally minded in honor or disgrace; the same toward
friendly or unfriendly side, engaging only in necessary actions, such an one hath surmounted the
qualities." And is on his way to becoming an impersonal instrument of service in the hands of Divine
Harmony.

---------------------

THE PLEASURE-MAD-HATTER

He who takes to his heart a joy

Doth its winged life destroy,
But he who kisses a joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
- William Blake

Isn't it a fact that almost everyone lives for pleasure? Even when the average person works
hard his object is earning money with which to buy pleasant indulgences or things that provide him
with pleasure. And this average person would regard you as a lunatic if you questioned his
philosophy of life. "You live only once. Eat, drink, and be merry," is the advice he would give you,
or "Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think."
But let us not condemn the pleasure-mad-hatter, or feel superior and self-righteous. We "may
have been him yesterday," and may be him tomorrow if we let pride take over. But perhaps we can
drive in a little wedge of enlightenment. If he can be helped to understand that pleasure and pain are
actually twin-vibrations, polarities, companion-sensations which always go together and can never
be separated, he may learn a great truth. And that truth will lead to other truths, and finally to a
conviction that the immediate purpose of his existence is the conquest of self.
Through the Gates of Gold tells us that the desire for sensual pleasure and excitement is an
irrational urge born of the animal self - and vital-astral-physical nature. The man without knowledge
is deluded into thinking that the animal's desires are his, and therefore serves them. As long as this
state of mind persists, how can he be expected to do anything about it? He truly believes that he
wants what the animal craves, and proceeds to follow a course of debauchery and exhaustion until
the body breaks down, becomes diseased, or dies.
The animal in league with the human is many times stronger than the creature of the wild -
an intellectualized beast willing to kill itself with pleasure. And this it will do unless the man
chooses to seize control and check its course to destruction. But will he ever so choose without self-
knowledge? And where is this knowledge to be found except in Theosophy? And how do people
find Theosophy?
Here is your path, companions, and here is your peace, and the courage to work for
Theosophy to the end, despite failure, sorrow, disappointment, despite even yourselves, knowing
that in the Eternal Now the victory of all who strive for man's enlightenment is already won.

----------------------

A FIELD OF DAISIES

The little girl had wandered away from her parents and sister who were having a picnic on
the meadow. She stood alone in a great field of daisies. It seemed like an ocean of daisies with their
tiny, look-alike faces nodding in the gentle breeze. A strangeness came over her which she did not
understand, but to her child-mind it seemed that she became the flowers and the wind and the blue
sky and everything that was so beautiful around her.
And then, deep in her mind another mind moved and awakened: a mind that was hers and
still not hers, and she heard herself saying: "I will remember this scene forever. I will take it with
me to the end." The words were so strange that they frightened her. She knew that they were her
words, that she had uttered them, but it was not she, the little girl, who had thought and spoken, but
someone else who had stood amid the daisies before and had walked the familiar meadows.
The past rolled back like a dazzling curtain on which she saw herself as a little child in the
long ago - as a thousand little children who had played on meadows, gathered wild flowers, and ran
beneath the sun. And she saw each one grow up into manhood or womanhood and take its place in
the world, and grow old, and die, and sleep the deep sleep of spiritual rest, and then return again to
the earth for another lesson, another experience. But she was not these children, these people who
had come and gone, and yet she was, and she was also someone else - the timeless being who had
spoken within her.
The winds were still now and the field of daisies was quiet in the soft evening light. The little
girl turned and walked slowly back toward the place where her parents and sister were waiting. But
she was not returning as the child she had been. There was a difference now because another self,
another identity walked beside her, and they walked with feet that touched no twilight meadow but
the bright and glorious highways of Eternity.

---------------------------
THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Every serious student of Theosophy who examines the problem of human duality must
realize that a time will come when all compromise between the higher and lower natures is no longer
possible. This takes place in a lifetime when, as Light on the Path points out, "the man has
accumulated unto himself innumerable existences," and the appetities and urges of the human-
animal self reach fruition and threaten to absorb the entire conscious being. At the same time, in
keeping with Nature's Law, the Higher Self makes its presence known, and the man or woman is
fired by a supreme resolve to follow it. To do less means falling back into the dread abyss of Matter.
To go forward means following the Luminous Arc of Spiritual Ascent and doing what is right and
in keeping with Universal Harmony.
To reach this stage, which MUST come for every human being, is to cross the Mystic Point
of No Return. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita: "And if, indulging self-confidence, thou sayest
'I will not fight,' such a determination will prove itself vain, for the principles of thy nature will
impel thee to engage." In other words, the principles and elements of BOTH the higher and lower
selves have become so strong that one must prevail over the other, and the man or woman is forced
to choose between them. This choice, as stated above IS identification with the Higher Self, but so
powerful is the lower nature that the harassed mortal may feel that the struggle is hopeless. It is a
time of terror and desperation when fear of failure descends like a black cloud over the mind of the
Disciple-to-be. However, we can take comfort in the fact that we have Light on the Path and the
Bhagavad-Gita to guide us safely through these terrible hours.
"Stand aside in the coming battle, " says Light on the Path, "and though thou fightest be not
thou the warrior. Look for the Warrior, and let him fight in thee. Take his orders for battle, and obey
them. Obey him, not as though he were a general, but as though he were thyself, yet infinitely wiser
and stronger than thy self. Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass
him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. If thy cry meet his listening ear, then will
he fight in thee, and fill the full void within. And if this is so, then canst thou go through the fight
cool and unwearied, standing aside and letting him battle for thee. Then it will be impossible for thee
to strike one blow amiss. But if thou look not for him, if thou pass him by, then there is no safeguard
for thee. Thy brain will reel, thy heart grow uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield thy sight and
thy senses will fail, and thou wilt not know thy friends from they enemies. He is thyself. Yet thou
art but finite and liable to error; he is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has
entered thee and become thy Warrior, he will never utterly desert thee; and at the day of the great
peace he will become one with thee. You can stand upright now, firm as a rock amid the turmoil,
obeying the Warrior who is thyself and thy king. Unconcerned in the battle save to do his bidding,
having no longer any care as to the result of the battle; for one thing only is important, that the
warrior shall win, and you know he is incapable of defeat."
The Warrior is the Higher Self, the Inner Divine Being of which we are the expression on
the material plane. Victory is assured by the glad surrender of human consciousness to this Immortal
companion whose strength and peace become ours once we give up our slavish allegiance to the
senses. But this "giving up" of the self to the SELF must be wholehearted and complete; we dare not
attempt any compromise with the self-indulgent lower nature. We don't want to, actually, but so
subtle and insidious are its appeals that great caution and discrimination must be used. It is
suggested that the following passage from the Bhagavad-Gita be memorised and repeated as often
as possible.
"With thy heart place all thy works on me, prefer me to all else, exercise mental devotion
continually, and think constantly of me. By so doing thou shalt by my divine favor surmount every
difficulty which surroundeth thee; but if from pride thou wilt not listen to my words, thou shalt
undoubtedly be lost."

"Seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the
devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak
must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout
the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. He who
will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed,
and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured; it may come
at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life; it may not come until the last.
But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the
task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the Eternal. This giant weed cannot flower
there: This blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought."
- Light on the Path

"There dwelleth in the heart of every creature, O Arjuna, the Master - Ishwara -who by his
magic power causeth all things and creatures to revolve mounted upon the universal wheel of time.
Take sanctuary with him alone, O son of Bharata, with all thy soul; by his grace thou shalt obtain
supreme happiness, the eternal place."
- The Bhagavad-Gita

"The Self of Matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear;
there is no place for both."
"Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or satiated, for this is an
abomination inspired by Mara. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes strong, like to the
worm that fattens on the blossom's heart."
- The Voice of the Silence

--------------------------

CABBAGE HEADS AND KINGS

Some readers think that comments made in these papers on Billy Graham, Bishop Sheen,
Manly Hall, and others, are inspired by hatred.
Heavens, no! Rather than hate anyone, the writer would prefer drowning himself in nearby
Lake Michigan. Let us try to explain. When Billy Graham states that Vicarious Atonement and
Salvation by Grace are true, and Bishop Sheen points to the Roman Pope as Christ's representative
on earth, and we in turn say that both men are either liars or near-lunatics, we are simply expressing
in strong language an observation on their spiritual blindness and mental perversity or vacuity. This
is not hatred; it is not necessarily condemnation; it is honest description.
We have heard a thousand times the old cliche; "Try to see some good in everyone." But
what "good" is accomplished by dwelling on some trivial, unimportant "good" (perhaps Graham
doesn't beat his wife) and ignoring the great evil that such a man does in deluding and misleading
millions of trusting people? Manly Hall does some "good" by rewriting the teachings of H.P.
Blavatsky and selling the product to his admirers, but he also does great harm by endorsing the
practice of hypnotism. Let us be realistic. When a rattlesnake hisses and coils to strike, shall we say
that it is a nightingale singing "Home, Sweet Home" just because it is one of "God's creatures" and
has life-atoms made of divine substance? And because there must be some "good" even in a
venomous reptile?
In line with our subject of Cabbage Heads and Kings, we observe (WITHOUT hatred) that
the Russians and Red Chinese made unprovoked attacks upon our unarmed planes over international
waters in 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, and now again in 1959. The most outrageous of these
crimes was the shooting down of an unarmed United States air force transport over Armenia in
September 1958. 17 men were aboard. The Russians surrendered the bodies of six of the victims,
but have refused from then to now to account for the other 11. Has Eisenhower, the head of our
government, done anything more than protest? And if we point to him as a man of weak character,
whose chief interests in life are Scotch and soda, poker, and golf, does this mean that we "hate" him?
on the contrary, we are fools if we don't pity him because the karma he is making for himself is
pretty terrible. And so with thousands of other eminent men and women who enjoy positions of
power and influence - the educators, ministers, authors, scientists, etc., etc. Many are Cabbage
Heads, but a few are Kings, and it is the latter who keep civilization from falling into chaos before
its time.
There isn't much hope for the world, actually, because we are in Kali Yuga, the Black Age
of Horrors. Not much hope, but some hope, and that little rests upon the fact that behind the real
Kings among us stand the Masters of the Sacred Brotherhood that sent Blavatsky and Judge into the
world. Either the Light of Truth (and you have it in pure Theosophy) will dispel enough of the
darkness overhanging Eternal Right - or we're done for. But even if the worst comes, remember that
you are an immortal soul with many lives ahead of you - lives that will be lived in better times, when
there are fewer Grahams, Sheens, Halls, and Eisenhowers to disappoint us and add to life's misery.

-----------------------

ON FORGIVENESS

The late G. de Purucker, last leader of the no-longer-existing Point Loma Theosophical
Society, was always saying: "Learn to forgive; learn to love." Why did he put "forgiveness" ahead
of "love?" Perhaps because if we truly learn to forgive, love follows as a matter of course. Come to
think of it, people everywhere seem able to "love" or put up with each other and at the same time
nurse bitter resentments or even plot revenge. So maybe this business of forgiving is the key to
righting the wrongs in our own little world, and later on in the great world around us.
What does it mean to forgive? Let us take an example of two egos reincarnating through the
ages. In a far past life ego A lost his temper and kicked ego B. In a later birth they met again, and
B, feeling an old resentment for A, returned the compliment. A then kicked B, B kicked A, and so
on. Life became a monotonous series of kick-backs. Then, finally, ego A chanced to open a book
on Theosophy and read about hatred not being overcome by hatred, but by love, or forgiveness. And
so, upon meeting his kicking partner again, instead of reviving their ancient pastime he decided to
be kind - to forgive - and make a friend of B. It turned out splendidly. B even became interested in
Theosophy and, to give our story a happy ending, they started a Theosophical study class which
grew and grew until there were hundreds of members. Why did all this happen? Ego A simply
awakened to a great truth of life: Love is the Cement of the Universe, and Forgiveness is the Power
that molds it.
 Naturally anyone who has been professional hater for many lives will find it difficult to
reform overnight because hatred, anger, passion, pride, and the whole host of demons, are part and
parcel of the lower animal self which ever tries to pull man down from the god-estate where he
belongs. But Light on the Path tells us that "the vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one,
as they are surmounted." Sooner or later we have to go to work on them, and it well may be that
forgiveness is the important first step. Consider what you would do, and would NOT do, if
forgiveness became an unbreakable habit. A hundred and one OTHER habits and tendencies would
automatically fall away. If a man forgives all injuries, can he then be critical, spiteful, greedy,
envious? Can he harm anyone by thought, word, or deed? What do you think?
To forgive obviously means that we rise to a higher degree of oneness with the Higher Self,
and from that level of consciousness understand WHY people injure us, and in thus understanding
the cause are able to feel pity and compassion. It is an occult law that the man who wrongs you
wrongs himself much more, and guarantees you a proper karmic adjustment later on. Try it out and
you'll find that there is an actual joy in forgiving others. You will feel an inflow of peace and
happiness and realize that you are at last obeying that "Law of Laws - eternal Harmony," and are
becoming a more spiritually awakened human being.

--------------------

ONDRA

Ondra, I thought, is like the autumn sea

Within whose timeless mystery the rain
Cries in a hallowed loneliness until,
Far in the dread Immensity of night,
Fearless and proud and free her spirit is.

Challenger her not with words.

She listens only To the deep thunder of the broken waves
Along whose massive wilderness her feet
Follow the wind. Look not with gentle eyes
Upon that world of darkness and the sea.

Now in this heartbeat of eternity,

While universes wake and sleep again,
Her spirit wanders in the flowing night:
Immaculate, austere, inviolate
Forevermore along the starlit way.

----------------------

GROUP-SOULS AND SOUL MATES

In his Studies in Occult Philosophy, pp. 591-3, G. de Purucker comments on the above
topics.
 "... 'group-souls' is an unfortunate term... all monads belong to or are affiliated with, one or
other of the seven or ten or twelve Solar Logoi, or what are called 'Rays' by some... any animal at
any time is an expression of the indwelling monad just as much so as man is, just as much so as a
plant is, just as much as a chemical atom is. But the farther back we go towards the chemical
elements, the more closely are such monads bound together in families. We see this... in the
minerals, which are much more alike... than are the plants, which again are much more alike ... that
are the beasts. And again the beasts ... are more alike each other than are human beings.
"...it is entirely wrong... to say that the monad of a beast, for instance, sinks back into an
ocean of soul, or into a group-soul, and never again issues forth, but that merely new differentiations
of the ocean issue forth, new droplets. Keep the monad traveling through time and space constantly
in your mind, struggling ever to express itself more fully as its vehicles become more greatly
individualized... the monad is an individual from its earliest appearance in any manvantara as an
unselfconscious god-spark ..."

The doctrine of Twin Souls or Soul Mates "has caused mischief in the Theosophical Society
in past times... I do not like this term 'twin souls,' because ... the human race is divided into families
... certain portions of mankind belong as it were to certain respective spiritual energies or forces,
which in their aggregate make the Spiritual Sun. Some Theosophists call these energies,
Rays...certain races of mankind, or certain bodies of men belong to the same Energy, to the same
Ray; other bodies of men belong to other Forces or Rays. There are ten principal Forces or Rays,
and we can thus divide mankind into ten principal families... How did this idea of Twin Souls arise?
Simply from this fact: That between two human beings who belong to the same Energy of the Sun,
the same particular Solar Force, there is a quick and instant sympathy, a feeling as if they had always
known each other... It is a very dangerous doctrine as commonly understood, because it can be so
easily misused."

---------------------

ETERNAL LIFE

The fields and hillsides throb with life

That is my own! The winds, the sky
Become myself, - no more apart;
And everywhere an answering cry Rings out!
The harmonies of Spring
Are woven in the azure air;
And life is song! and life is joy!
And faith to hold, and faith to share.

Do you ever think of the far reaches of space and let you heart go out to them, give back the
aspiring part of you to the boundless silence of beauty and mystery out of which you came? It is
true: the Reality that we seek is there, - the golden, beginningless past, the richness of all eternities,
all that was and is.
It speaks to us not only from the skies. In the flower and the leaf it answers us. In all nature
shines the sacred wisdom, beats the wondrous heart of eternal life. Its promise and its peace are
woven in the dawn, and its soft tranquility falls upon the gardens of the setting sun. All nature lives
in a constant rejoicing, in at-one-ment with the harmony of Spirit.
Shall we not choose the pathway leading homeward, the way of quietude and love, where
breathes a balm to heal all wounds and banish all distress? It is there: the path for everyone to
follow, the path of service, of self -forgetfulness, of the finding of the Self, the path to a greater and
greater awareness of the eternal life, of that Compassion which is the light of suns, the poetry of
cloud and wave, the beating of each human heart.

-------------------------

WHAT IS OUR DUTY?

Our duty, I believe, is to show the world that Theosophy is far more than a set of teachings,
grand and indispensable as they are. We must throw out into human life the vital spirit of our faith,
the fire of our determination to surrender self to the All. We must help others to realize that the heart
of the universe is divine love, and that the practice of true brotherhood is an absolute necessity in
the life of human being.
When a man knows that he is not alive without a purpose, but that he is an eternal part of
cosmic reality, a manifestation of the Great Life itself, evolving and advancing forever, he finds a
foundation for hope, and begins to look within himself for truth. And he will find it, and in finding
it will learn that much that he had worshiped as reality was utter and poisonous illusion.
He will discover another great thing by looking within himself; the heart of the universe has
a mystic Voice that pleads with him to rise up out of the shadows of selfishness and draw closer to
it, to make an increasingly larger place in his life for the joy and love that flow from the universal
heart.

The Ancient Pathway

And in stepping forward towards this new and more beautiful life he will find that there are
others who have taken the step before: individual persons whose happiness it is to help him.
If the world knew this it would not be the world we know. How? By living Theosophy. By
being true to the teachings. By brooding upon the fact that this is the Master's Work, something a
million times more important than ourselves, something worth living for and dying for.
Fellow-students of Theosophy, we know another world that is lofty and bright, a Lotus-
Hearted world, where Truth is and Brotherhood is, and where an eternal Sun shines. Is not our duty
to help raise the consciousness of all men to the level of this luminous world, to help men plant his
feet upon that ancient pathway which leads upward to the Eternal Sunshine and inward to the god
who lives in each man's heart of hearts? Is it not our duty?

----------------------

THE REAL AND THE UNREAL

Every thoughtful mind must, sooner or later, reach the stage of contemplation where various
aspects of that which is enduring, lasting, and Real stand out in strong contrast to that which is
impermanent, temporary, and Unreal. This is the dawn of discernment, of discrimination between
the true and the false, the actual and the illusory.
Further contemplation indicates a new course that the individual may follow; he may seek
to identify himself with those thoughts, ideas, and actions which involve the Real, and to
disassociate himself from attachment to the Unreal. Why? Because his Central Self, the deep,
indwelling spark of self-conscious being which he knows himself to be, is responsible for its future
destiny. It must go the way that its essential nature indicates. It must become, in the final sense, the
exact product or embodiment of its own meditations.
Consider the world around us, with its many varieties of experience, its alluring temptations
and attractions. How much of it represents the Real, the lasting values of life? And yet it is to these
illusions that the millions of humanity pay homage, and for which they sacrifice the very blood of
their hearts.
The pursuit of material riches and possessions, fame, social position, and the gratification
of bodily appetites, are looked upon as the end and all of existence. And yet, without exception,
these things belong to the realm of the Unreal, to the world of death.
How much better then if, during man's sojourn on the physical plane, he gives thought to the
things of the Real World - the World of Spirit - where the Light of Truth, Peace, and Compassion
ever shine! How much happier will he be when, abandoning his attachment to objects of sense, he
strives to become one with the true beauty of life, learns to forgive and love with unselfish devotion,
and to enjoy the companionship of his Divinity.
Man's deliverance from evil and misery comes not through a righteous annexation of noble
and virtuous qualities to a still worldly self, but by a total surrender of concern with that part of life
which must die, and a joyous identification of his self-conscious being with that which goes on with
him through Eternity.

---------------------

PYRAMID POWER

There is a lot more involved in the so-called 'pyramid power' than even its champions
suspect. Great occult mystery is present. The pyramids, whether in Egypt, Cental America, or
elsewhere, are records constructed for the preservation of sacred knowledge through the dark ages,
to be available to posterity. The mighty Initiates perform their great works and leave ever-lasting
monuments. Under their supervision the pyramids were built.
In seeking to explain their meaning we are faced with the difficulty of interpreting an ancient
science into terms of modern ideas. The science of these legendary days was a comprehensive
whole, which has been decomposed into sundered fragments, seemingly unrelated to each other. The
single purpose in the minds of the builders seems to us like a number of different purposes
competing with one another.
Were the pyramids initiation chambers? Were they records of astronomical data, or of
mathematical truths, or of standards of measurement? They were all these, and perhaps they could
not be any one without being the others also. When the candidate passed through the processes of
initiation he enacted in his own person the selfsame processes which occur in Kosmos; therefore the
size, shape, and orientation of the passages and chambers signify at once Kosmic and human
mysteries. A profound lore of numbers and measures and their relation to the Kosmic Plan enabled
the architects to build their records according to these forgotten mathematical principles. Many
investigators have discovered fragments of this lore, but have not been able to reconstruct the whole
out of the fragments. The age of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, by the way, is hinted by H.P.
Blavatsky to be at least three precessional cycles, which is about 78,000 years; the evidence for
which is explained in The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 432.

-----------------------

BRIGHT MOMENTS

It was a moment magical and bright.

A golden gate swung open, and I said:
I have been here before; this have I known
Before. Here there is neither Present, Past, Nor Future.
Time is banished; and I know
That this has been my Home; that this is I,
My Innermost -- a peace without beginning,
A Freedom and a Glory without end.

And then the gate was closed. On earth I stood:

Its tumult rose about me, and the cry
Of life beat loudly in my heart again;
But I remembered still the Golden Light,
The Radiance that's neither life nor death,
But That which is the Universe and I.

-----------------------

MAN AFTER DEATH

Let us begin this subject of Man after Death by remembering that he is a Divine being, an
eternal pilgrim, now journeying Homeward through the labyrinths of matter, learning in pain and
sorrow, and sometimes in joy, the truth about himself and the universe, learning to obey the 'Law
of laws' - Compassion, realizing that he must become a co-worker with Nature's supreme laws.
I do not think that this can be repeated too often: man is in his heart of hearts a God, a Divine
Being. This is his Rock, against which nothing in the universe can prevail, because it implies his
own eternal oneness with the Heart of the universe, his oneness with Harmony, Compassion, and
the imperishable Life of all things.
We may live in suffering and misfortune: - "the Karmic progeny of all our former thoughts
and deeds": - but always with us is the fearless, mighty Inner God, whose Peace we can share. He
is ever-present. In the deepest darkness he abides with us. Even in death he lives with us. What
illusions are the so-called securities of the world compared to him! The wheel turns, and they are
gone, and we wander empty-handed; but indestructible and constant endures this Divinity in our
hearts.
By impersonal love and forgiveness Man opens himself to the beneficent influences
streaming from the Cosmic Heart, and thus steps into, partakes of, the Eternal Peace.
The Masters of Wisdom and Compassion are individuals who have become more at one with
the Inner God than we, who have unfolded into vital manifestation the powers and faculties latent
in us all. They feel keenly the pulsing of the great Universal Heart. It was they who gave this
wisdom we call Theosophy, a fragment of which will be considered in this paper.
 The seven principles of man are seven aspects, expressions, reflexions, manifestations, of
the consciousness-life-substance which is, in its totality, the Boundless. The man whom we know
at present is but a reflexion - a sorry one - of his "only abiding principles" - Atman and Buddhi. He
is a stream of consciousness flowing down from above, a radiance, a ray of Spirit-Mind, incarnated
in matter, pulled this way and that by conflicting desires.
But here let us pause and think. These seven principles are not the last word regarding the
teaching of man's constitution. According to the Esoteric Wisdom, there are, beside these seven
principles, three more, belonging to the higher, unmanifested planes of Nature. And moreover, since
the part contains everything that the whole has, each of these seven principles, considering man as
a sevenfold being, is itself septenary.
But we will here consider man in his sevenfold division because this is relatively simple, and
because it harmonizes with the septenary manifestations that we observe throughout all Nature.
The seven principles that go to make up the constitution of man are as follows: the physical
body of Linga-sarira, the life principle or Prana, the element of desire or Kama, mind or Manas, the
Spiritual soul or Buddhi, the Spirit or Atman.
The physical body is a gross, dense form, itself without moral responsibility as an entity,
serving man as a vehicle or garment on the terrestrial plane.
The astral body is composed of substance more attenuated than the physical, but still
material. It is the pattern for the physical body, is formed before birth, and acts as a link of
communication between the mind and physical body.
The life principle or Prana is physical vitality, drawn from the ocean of life for the
specialized use of forms, after the disintegration of which it returns to the ocean of life.
The element of desire or Kama is the fourth principle, aspect, of the consciousness-life-
substance. It is that in us which desires, moving into action the will. Without some kind of desire
we should stagnate and cease to be. Desire is the driving power in life. It permeates the universe.
Mind or Manas is the thinking principle, a spark of the universal Mind, in the beginning un-
self-conscious, which to obtain self-consciousness must undergo experience in matter. Manas is the
link between the god and animal in man because it has two aspects: the first is the Higher Manas,
aspiring upward to its source, which is Buddhi the Spiritual Soul. The second aspect is the mortal,
Lower Manas, a ray from the Higher Manas, "working through the physical brain and senses." This
lower part of Manas, informing the perishable quaternary: physical body, astral body, life, and
desire, constitutes the terrestrial personality enduring from birth to death. This personality is the
mask of the Higher Self. This Lower Manas is really a false consciousness, an entity that goes to
pieces, disintegrates, after the passing of the body, giving up to its source only that of it which is
worthy of survival, its pure, self-conscious, spiritual essence or aroma: the high dreams of beauty
and harmony, the aspirations lofty and sublime. But if during incarnation on earth it was gross,
materialistic and a denier of soul and immortality, it will then have nothing in it to rise, after death,
to the spiritual plane from which it came. In such a case there will be no Devachan for it, and the
Higher Nature will draw from it nothing at all.
Regarding the majestic themes of Buddhi and Atman, little can be said. However, in the
Bhagavad-Gita we read the following which is helpful: "The senses and organs are esteemed great,
but the thinking self is greater than they. The discriminating principle is greater than the thinking
self, and that which is greater than the discriminating principle is He." He is Atman, the Supreme
Spirit, the Divine Monad or Ego, the Inner God. The discriminating principle is Buddhi, the Spiritual
Soul or Monad, the inner Buddha. The thinking self is Manas or mind, the Reincarnating Ego, the
Human Monad or Soul.
 At death the physical body is deserted, and the life principle or Prana returns to the ocean
of life from which it came. This reduces the number of man's principles from seven to five. They are:
Atman, Buddhi, Manas, Kama, and the Linga-sarira or astral body, The entity man is now in the
region of Kama-loka, or place of desire, a locality in and about the earth, in a vehicle or vesture
called the Kama-rupa, or body of desire. Perhaps here we should consider what the Kama-rupa is.
On earth during incarnation man's desires infill his being; they are not independent of him; indeed
he is their master because he decides what desires to encourage and follow. But after death and the
abandonment of the physical body, the desires coalesce with the astral body, forming the Kama-
rupa, or body of desire.
This Kama-rupa is made up of all the lower desires and selfish impulses that the liberated
soul leaves behind, and is therefore wholly bad, being an evil influence of living persons who
unwisely permit themselves to become mentally negative, thus making possible the invasion of
astral forces. A good man, after death, leaves behind him a relatively weak Kama-rupa which soon
goes to pieces, and becomes no menace to the living. But a bad man will leave a strong, coherent
Kama-rupa which will hold together for a long time and cause untold trouble in the world. There is
a great moral implication here, because the soul is always responsible for whatever evil its
abandoned Kama-rupa may do, even if the soul be in Devachan.
The separation of the heaven-bound soul from the Kama-rupa is called the 'second death,'
an event quite painless to the good man, but a period of great suffering for those who in life
persistently identified themselves with the lower nature.
Devachan is not a place or location like Kama-loka, but a state of spiritual consciousness.
And it is Karman - spiritual Karman - which leads the individual soul to Devachan. While on earth
in the body man aspires to noble things, thinks sublime thoughts, and dreams lofty dreams, few of
which can be realized here. But they have to come to fruition somewhere, because every cause must
produce its effect. And that 'somewhere' is Devachan.
Each man's Devachan is of his own making: it is his own spiritual creation: - an ideal world
of happiness and peace wherein the tired soul takes rest and assimilates the purified aroma of mortal
experience. Devachan is over when the spiritual causes which led the soul there are exhausted; and
the soul is brought back to reincarnation on earth by causes, initiated in past lives, which require
earthly conditions in which to manifest.
At the time of death the soul sees the complete panorama of the incarnation just ended, and
before birth the conditions that will have to be faced in the coming life are revealed to its inner sight.
To summarize: Devachan is a spiritual state, the efflorescence of spiritual forces engendered
by the individual during incarnation. If there was in the life of a man much aspiration to the nobler
side of things, hopes for the betterment of the world, effort in the direction of the "good, the True,
the Beautiful," then the Devachan will be long, rich, and full. On the other hand, if he lived mostly
for the material aspects of life, giving little attention to the Real, his Devachan will be brief and
almost colorless. And in some cases, as mentioned before, there may be no Devachan at all.
Now it has been said that Atman and Buddhi are the "only abiding principles" in man; but
although abiding, permanent, and imperishable, they are not changeless in an absolute sense.
Everything is growing, evolving, changing: atoms and stones, worlds and men, universes and
galaxies. The highest pinnacle of perfection that we can visualize is but one more horizon against
the eternal skies. The farthest range of harmony and perfection attainable in this our present
manvantara will be over-reached in our next manvantara; and so on forever, "sublime ultimate after
sublime ultimate" attained and surpassed, in Boundless Infinity, which is our Home.
Much has been omitted in this study of Man after Death, and all that has been said is very
fragmentary. We should not permit our minds to crystallize around any aspect of these teachings
because they are always subject to enlargement, and as we evolve intellectually, morally, spiritually,
we shall see and understand more than we do now. There is an old saying: "Stand ready to abandon
all thou has learned." And this is good advice to the Theosophist. Theosophy is the Eternal Truth
of man and universe, but it has no final bourn, no absolute ultimate. How could it? Everything is
growing, advancing, and as we follow the turning wheel of time, striving to realize more and more
of our essential Divinity, we shall come into the possession of greater powers and faculties, and an
ever-widening perception. We shall gradually become more at home in our universe, more familiar
with its sublime mysteries, more serviceable to our fellows.
When we are studying these magnificent teachings and appreciating them with our intellects,
let us not forget, even for an instant, the Source of them, the Eternal Foundation from which they
spring! Let us not close our hearts for one moment to the ever-abiding Spirit that moves in the
Silence, bringing peace to our hearts and illumination to our minds. For this is the great thing: the
Spirit behind it all, and the glorious vision that we see when we hold to this Spirit. The Spirit it is
that must stir and motivate us in our Theosophical life. For Spirit is the heart of all, the Essence, the
Light, the Power, and the Guide. With the Spirit and the Vision within and before us we shall follow
the Ancient Path with certain feet. Indeed, there is no other way we can tread it, for the Path is the
Spirit, and the Goal the Vision!
The aim of evolution is the bringing forth in man of his essential Divinity; that he may
become it, that he may live and actually be the god that he is in his Inmost. The Messengers of the
Great Ones have all brought one Message, which is: "Man, know Thyself. Know Thyself for what
Thou truly art: A Divine Splendor, a Deathless God." Be this inner Glory, they have taught, and all
that the boundless universe contains will be yours because you yourself will have awakened to the
sublime realization that you are the universe, and the universe you! "As above so below."
The everlasting Divine Life flows through all things, holding all things in eternal keeping.
The Divine Life is the same in one as it is in another. The self-same identic Essence that makes us
brothers verily makes us ONE. For the whole human race is one grand unit, an organism electrified
and driven by Compassion which is, as The Voice of the Silence states: "no attribute" but the Law
of laws, - Eternal Harmony. We have only to open our hearts and minds to this holy verity, and let
the Power that moves behind and within all things stream in, and we shall be transformed, lifted to
heights where we shall breathe the air of the gods.
The destiny of the human race is to become a race of gods. It is a wonderful, glorious picture
that rises in the mind when we think of this: when we gaze on through the centuries at those grand
days when all men will be as brothers, each self-forgetful, each living and striving for the good of
the rest, with selfishness dead, and pity and compassion filling the heart. I think that one of the finest
things that we can do is to hold steadfastly in our minds this picture of Tomorrow.

--------------------

THOUGH IT BE SPRING

I thought of Spring, and said: soon they will come --

The flowers and the bright, dew-heavy leaves:
And some of will laugh, rejoice; and some
Will pray, give thanks; but always someone grieves.
Though it be Spring more beautiful than all
That we have known, always the hurt is there,
Always the bleak and bitter shadows fall,
For hand in hand with Beauty walks Despair.

I thought of Spring, and suddenly I knew

That all was Shadow in this spectre-world
Of phantom leaf and ghostly bloom uncurled;
But that above me, in the endless blue,

Was Truth and Splendor, and a mighty Breath

Transcending grief and gladness, birth and death.

-----------------------

BE A PROPAGANDIST!

"Give light and comfort to the toiling pilgrim, and seek out him who knows still less than
thou; who in his wretched desolation sits starving for the bread of wisdom and the bread which feeds
the shadow, without a Teacher, hope or consolation, and - let him hear the Law."
- The Voice of the Silence

If you don't, who will? The Masters are busy with their own work, having given the
teachings through Blavatsky and Judge. It's up to us now to be fearless propagandists and let that
sad, beat-up orphan - Humanity - "hear the Law." Of course, there is always the timid little mouse-
voice of Conservatism squeaking, "But the world isn't ready for Theosophy." To which Blavatsky
would probably have replied with the expletive - FLAPDOODLE! If the world wasn't ready for
Theosophy, wasn't crying and begging for the illuminating Truth of Life which Theosophy is, the
Masters would never have gone to the trouble (and it was BIG trouble) of making the teachings
possible.
Think of the state of the world today, with leaders of nations wrangling like juvenile
delinquents in an alley, lying, cheating, bribing, and thus laying the foundations for greater misery
to come. This would be impossible if the principles of Justice and Right,, based on the teachings of
Reincarnation and Karma, were only half understood. The climate of the world would change
overnight, and we would have a golden Age in the middle of Kali Yuga!
But this is wishful-thinking, you may say. Perhaps so, but we will continue wishing and
thinking like this till the Doomsday that may come because it is better than drifting idly through life
with a sweet smile in the smog of sattva serenity, sure (or maybe not Too sure) of the salvation of
our own little souls.
It is very puzzling (perhaps we just don't understand Theosophists) why people who study
these doctrines and transform their lives with them, and profit immeasurably as a result, aren't on
fire to share the teachings. Have we forgotten, or missed, that occult law about keeping, making
permanently our own, only that which we share or give away? The chela finds his life by losing it.
He becomes his divine self only by sacrifice. And you and I will possess and enjoy, under law, only
that richness which we, someway, somehow, manage to bestow upon others. The fruit of selfishness,
whether material or spiritual, is dead-sea fruit that turns to poison.
 Remember Blavatsky's words: "Be Theosophists. Work for Theosophy. Theosophy first, and
Theosophy last." Think of what that great-hearted woman did, suffering, hated, despised, martyred.
Can't we, in the light of what we know (and it is much compared to the ignorance around us) forget
personal considerations and ACT? Think of the time and expense we go to for passing pleasures.
Why not enter the path of Theosophical service instead? Make this work your joy. Join the sacred
Brotherhood that strives, in the hundred and one ways, to keep Theosophy alive in the world.
PLEASE MAKE THIS EFFORT, and we promise you - we guarantee it - that strange things will
happen, things that will make you know that what you are doing should be done, and that you are
building into your life a richness and power that will be yours through eternity.
"There is a destiny that shapes our ends" - a self-made destiny woven from innumerable
threads of past experience - and that destiny leads us on toward the mountain-peaks of spiritual
fulfillment where no clouds darken the sky and where the Sun is always shining. And as we journey
on our way, Theosophy, if we are wise enough to accept it - serves as a sure and infallible guide.
But there is more to life than saving our own souls and finding inner peace and happiness.
That is only half of it. The other - and undoubtedly the more important half - is the service which
we must, in keeping with Nature's law, render to others. The Gods and Masters strive continually
to raise us higher by instilling thoughts of pity, compassion, and understanding. Such is the way of
Nature and those who work with her sublime purposes. The higher is forever trying to elevate and
redeem the lower.
Therefore the few of us who are Theosophists, and the many who are aspiring to become
Theosophists, have a well-defined, inescapable duty to our fellowmen who, seeing no light at all,
wander helplessly in a miasma of ignorance and superstition, seeking escape from the apparent
injustices of life in sloth and sensation.

------------------

LOOK HOMEWARD, PILGRIM

One of the supreme truths we discover is that of our divine origin, heritage, and destiny. As
Dr. G. de Purucker states in his Golden Precepts, we issued forth out of the womb of Cosmic Being
as un-self-conscious god-sparks, divine pilgrims, and after wandering aeon after aeon through all
the various inner worlds, as well as passing at different stages through our own material sphere, we
became the self-conscious thinking entities we now are.
Future aeons of time, to continue Dr. de Purucker's thought, will ring forth even on this our
earth, into a far more perfect manifestation than at present of the locked-up faculties and powers
within us, and in those far distant days we will walk the earth as gods communing with our fellow-
gods.
And that, of course, is not all. This earth is merely one stopping-place, one of the countless
schoolrooms of experience; and someday we will leave it behind and return to the god-worlds from
which we came.

---------------------

YOU - THE DISCIPLE

Almost every member of the human family follows a pathway of destiny guided by selfish
instinct and desire. Seeing no good reason to behave otherwise, he completes his incarnation little
better, if not worse, than he was before.
This goes on life after life until by reason of suffering and misery he cries out for a solution, for an
answer. Then, one way or another, depending on the part of the world he lives in, the age, etc., the
eternal truth called Theosophy becomes, more or less, his way of life.
If you are such a person (and why would you be reading this if you were not?), make this
experiment: Imagine yourself a disciple of those Holy Adepts who sent H.P. Blavatsky into the
world a hundred years ago.
As a disciple, your life would no longer be your own; it would belong to the Brotherhood,
to the Universe, to Eternity. You would no longer be driven by instinct and desire, but by
compassion, duty, renunciation, and self-sacrifice.
Think what it would mean for a Member of the Brotherhood to take you in hand, and show you how
to bring forth your Hidden Splendor, your Inner divinity, your power and genius to give the All-of-
Yourself in glorious service to blind, suffering humanity!
Try it. Step out of yourself, out of your little human self into that vaster world of Wisdom,
Compassion, and Peace where the Masters dwell and the love of the bright gods shines like a
thousand suns! That world will be yours someday, so reach out, let go of everything here, and open
your being to that Divinity which speaks even now in your heart of hearts, in the heart of you -- the
Disciple.

--------------------

THE ETERNAL NOW

We learn from daily experience that our "time-sense" can play odd tricks. Pleasant hours
seem like moments, and painful moments seem like hours. Remember the long, long summers of
childhood, and how fleeting they seem now?
Theosophy teaches that our sense of "time" is an illusion, that there is no such thing, but only
"boundless duration" extending forward and back without beginning or end.
We also learn that all things are forever rooted in an eternal consciousness whose
characteristic is NOW. From the standpoint of Matter, there is a Past, Present, and Future, but they,
like Matter, are illusions, reflections, having no existence in themselves. They merely seem to be
different things because we live in a time-illusion world.
But, one might object, Theosophy teaches that man enjoys free will and can choose from day
to day. Therefore, if all which to his limited consciousness "happens tomorrow:" is "already
happening" in the Eternal Now, where is free will?
The answer is that to fully understand the mystery one would have to ascend to the Buddhic
plane. To solve an infinite problem with finite intelligence would be like gazing into the sky and
"seeing the end of Space."
Theosophy teaches that each of man's principles, from Atman the highest to Sthula-sarira the
lowest, has its own sense of "time" or time-illusion, its own Past, Present, and Future. The will
descends to us from above, from Atman. It is not native to the Kama-manasic part of us in which
we unfortunately live to so great an extent. The will is enchained, as it were, by Matter; but we can
change our directions at any time, we can choose instantaneously - if we will.
 Why is this possible? Because every monad, being a part of the Universal Life, enjoys its
modicum of free will. Its inmost heart is Parabrahman - THAT, the Boundless. Our free will is
therefore the free will of Infinitude, in each individual becoming progressively freer as he transcends
humanhood and approaches the divine state, which means becoming more and more at one with the
Heart of the Universe.
Dr. G. de Purucker has some interesting things to say on this subject in Studies in Occult
Philosophy, pages 629-30-31.

"In occult philosophy, the past, the present and the future, blend together in eternity, or what
is called the ETERNAL NOW... Eternity, furthermore, is the fundamental - or as we might say,
eternity and infinity are the two sides of the same ultimate Reality, the fundamental, the ALL.
"What the spiritual Seer does is to rise from this plane on which past, present, and future
seem so positive and real to us, into as it were the ranges of his own spiritual being which bathe so
to speak in the Eternal Now: and in this way the past is unrolled before his eyes, and the present is
seen to be but a continuation of it into what we call the future, and both are glimpsed as an eternal
drama whose keynote is Now. Thus likewise should karman be viewed, the karmic past, the karmic
present, the karmic future; and in this way we avoid falling into the error of fatalism on the one
hand, and on the other hand into the equally great error of karmic indeterminance.
"As an illustration, from another angle: an atom in my body contains electrons, any atom
does. On these electrons let us say there are inhabitants, living their own tiny lives, but at an
enormous rate of speed compared with our time. Thus a whole cosmic solar system, so to speak, of
atomic size, can come into being, live its innumerable aeons, and vanish many thousand times in one
of our human seconds. In other words, one of our human seconds compared with electronic time,
is almost 'eternally' long.
"Now, imagine an inhabitant on such an electron, living at its tremendous rate of speed
which to us humans would seem incomparably quicker than a lightning flash. Yet to the electronic
inhabitant, long years would be going by. To him there would be a future which we, with our slower
time, would not appreciate except as a now. Thus the electronic inhabitant, because of his intense
tempo, immense speed, would be undergoing his past, present, and future; whereas we, with out far
more majestic time, with its slow rhythmic pulses, would scarcely realize it except by intellectual
thought. To us it would be just simply now.
"In exactly the same way, the gods, whose time-tempo is incomparably stately and to us
humans what we would call slow, look upon our past, present, and future, which to us seem so real,
as scarcely differentiated, because our time by comparison with theirs is so rapid. We have next
week, next year, a billion years from now, but these are our tiny little human years. To one of the
higher gods, the entire manvantara of our solar system would be scarcely a billionth part of that one
god's seconds in that god's time. So in our solar system we would be looking forward into millions
of years ahead, and looking back into millions of years of the past; whereas the god's consciousness
would scarcely be aware of the entire life-period of the solar system as other than a tiny fraction of
an instant."

------------------------

SEX AND OCCULT SCIENCE

The Secret Doctrine claims for man a polygenetic origin, followed by a variety of modes of
 procreation before he "desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of
an animal. " - Vol. II, page 187 - and fell into the animal method of reproduction.
To understand WHY this happened, we must begin by stating that the human Egos did not
all start equal on this planet, but were of various degrees of unfoldment in their last births on the
Moon-Chain. The history of Mankind in its present sexual form goes back about 18 million years
to the middle of the Third Root-Race on the continent of Lemuria. At that time the principle of
Manas or Mind began to operate. Until then, man was an empty shell, the product of two streams
of evolution: the Monadic-Spiritual and the Vital-Astral-Physical.
With the awakening of Mind at the midpoint of the Lemurian Root-Race, a third stream of
evolution was added to the Monadic and the Material. Until then, man was a mindless animal "over-
shadowed" by the Spiritual essence. He was unaware of his Divine origin because Mind was not
active to serve as the link between Spirit and Matter. The Manasic stream conferred self-
consciousness, reason, and moral responsibility.
It should be remembered at this point of our argument that the early Sub-Races of the Third
Root-Race evolved by sexless creative instinct an "intermediate race" in which the higher Dhyan
Chohans incarnated. They represented the full flowering of the Mind principle. A second class of
Egos did not incarnate fully at once, but waited, projecting only a "spark" of Mind; and it is these
who constitute the average humanity today.
A third class of Egos deferred incarnation until the Fourth or Atlantean Root-Race, in which
the worst sexual Karma was made because the Atlanteans renewed the "Sin of the Mindless" (see the
section on the Anthropoid Apes) with full knowledge and responsibility. The Secret Doctrine, Vol.
II, page 228, states: "As to those 'Sons of Wisdom' who had 'deferred' their incarnation till the Fourth
Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible
cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and
they became the carriers of that seed of impurity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to
inform had become defiled through their own procrastination."
We are now in the Fifth Root-Race of the Fourth Round. By the middle of the Sixth Root-
Race, men and women as separate sexes will exist no longer, and would not today if we had heeded
the warning of the Gods in the Third (Lemurian) Root-Race when we followed the example of the
beasts. The sexless form of reproduction - intended by Nature for man - will be re-attained, as said,
in the Sixth Root-Race. It should have continued from the Third, through the Fourth, and into our
present Fifth; and the sooner we get back to it the better.
The Chela and Master represent the first step toward that way of life in keeping with Nature's
true plan for humanity, and ABSOLUTE CHASTITY is a major requirement. As we approach this
ideal state, Nature will gladly make the procreative readjustment in the right direction just as she
reluctantly made it in the wrong direction in Lemuria when we followed the example of the beasts,
forced her hand, and had our fall.
We now deal with a Blavatsky quotation upon which our whole argument rests. We believe
that a karmic "X-factor" operated in Lemuria when "male and female babes" began issuing out of the
eggs and thus establishing a humanity committed to reproduction by sexual union. The Secret
Doctrine, Vol. II, page 262, states: "...it is the speechless animal that first started sexual connection,
having been the first to separate into males and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man
should follow the bestial example..." (Italics ours)
We do not think that the cleverest sophist could twist the meaning of that last sentence into
anything other than what is clearly stated: that "sexual connection" was not "intended by Nature" to
be man's method of reproduction. Therefore it is idle to claim that the bestial form was "ordained by
God" or any such nonsense. It was definitely NOT THE INTENDED METHOD FOR MAN.
On pages 177 and 178, Vol. II, The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky writes at length regarding the 'polyps"
(Invertebrate animals - corals, jelly-fishes, sea anemones, etc.) which pass alternately from
gemmation (budding) into the sexual form of reproduction. "Why not the primitive human polyp?"
she asks. "This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved - as in the
sexual Lemurians from Hermaphrodite parentage - quite unlike its immediate progenitors." And then
she drops a hint which we believe is the KEY to the separation of the sexes: "It is, moreover,
unquestionable, that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual,
overrides the subordinate tendencies of 'Heredity,' its servant." (Italics ours.)
In other words, as we interpret her lines, the Egos informing the Lemurian Third Race bodies
carried with them a Karma from the Past - a Karma of animal lust which forced a shift or switch-over
from the original Hermaphrodite state, in which sexual union was impossible, to that of male and
female, which accommodated it ideally.
Thus were the 'subordinate tendencies of 'Heredity' - obtaining with the Third Race -
overridden (as Blavatsky explains it) by "the law of Karma" in the case of "human incarnations."
What other conclusion can we possibly draw than that the Egos of the Third Root-Race - previously
embodied on the Moon-Chain - had there created a Karma of bestiality which came to fruition in
Lemuria, interfered with Nature's INTENDED PLAN for human procreation, and brought about the
separation of the sexes so that the Karma could be expended?

-----------------

TURN THE GOLDEN KEY

Are you satisfied with Life-as-it-is, Yourself-as-you-are? If so, you are one of Fortune's
favored, and good for you. But if you are sore beset by circumstance, and fed up with the person you
are, here's news. Here's practical Theosophy. Here's a Golden Key to turn, and Magic to be done.
Let's start by assuming that you know you are essentially Divine - a Deathless Splendor in
your heart of hearts. Let's also assume that you know this passage from the Bhagavad-Gita: "With
thy heart place all thy works on me, prefer me to all else, exercise mental devotion continually, and
think constantly of me. By so doing thou shalt by my divine favor surmount every difficulty which
surroundeth thee."
Have you ever pondered over that passage? Really pondered? If not, let's do so now. It says:
"by my divine favor." Who is speaking? Krishna, the Higher Self, YOUR Higher Self, the God within
you, of which you are the mortal expression.
Now then, on the plane of consciousness where Krishna dwells there is only harmony, peace,
wisdom, and compassion. There is no room on that plane for doubt, fear, sorrow, limitation - things
belonging to this lower world of lust and death. Krishna's world is the world of the Gods. Want to
go there?
If so, - here's how. Suppose you have a problem - a really BIG problem, a terrible one that you are
afraid you can't handle, which you know you can't handle. What will you do? Let the problem defeat
you, destroy you? It happens to people every day. Need it happen to you?
Not if you believe in the truth of Theosophy, of Occult Law. All you have to do is Turn the
Golden Key. Become a White Magician. Here is the Key. STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR
PROBLEM, AND THINK ABOUT KRISHNA, THE GOD WITHIN YOU, INSTEAD. To the
degree that you fill your heart and mind with a dynamic recognition of your Higher Self as the ALL-
POWER in your life will you flood your entire being with its healing force, with its magic to restore,
to bring order out of chaos.
Remember that there is no room for discord of any kind on the plane of Krishna, and that the
Gita guarantees a surmounting of "every difficulty which surroundeth thee" if you place all your
works on HIM to all else, exercise mental devotion continually, and think constantly of Him.
By so doing, you share in His harmony and wholeness, and your problem dissolves back into
the mists of Maya where it was born.
And how about you - the You you are tired of being? Does it remain the same? Never.
Because in drawing close to Krishna, your Higher Self, you are set on fire with a passion to become
more and more like Krishna, to act as He would act if He were suddenly you.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? And simple it is, like all the great occult Truths. We tangle our
minds with countless abstrusities and go on multiplying our everyday problems, and growing old and
dying in the same chaos that muddled our other lives.
But we don't have to anymore. Not if we believe what the Gita tells us; not if we are honest
enough, and courageous enough, to see our personalities for what they are, and welcome the entrance
of the Divine into them, and see them become obedient vehicles for the Higher Self to use.
Then we shall be whole, fulfilled, empty of self and replete with the ALL, free from problems
and limitations because we shall stand in the world of Krishna where eternal Harmony prevails.
Do you have a problem now? A lack? A difficulty? A heartbreak? Stop thinking about it.
Dismiss it. Think about the Divine within you instead. TURN THE GOLDEN KEY!

------------------

FROM LETTERS

... Through the Gates of Gold is a great work by Hilarion, who also authored Light on the
Path. ...a very high Adept of the Himalayan Brotherhood. There is a lot of nonsense in Cayce. He
states several times that Jerusalem artichokes contain insulin, which is not true. I wrote to them about
it & a woman answered who claimed to have taken down his trance talks and made the mistake
herself, thus freeing him of error. - He was mediumistic and no doubt under the influence of more
than one astral influence. I really don't think much of him & his work as anyone can see that a lot of
it is rubbish. I question most if not all of the "UFO contact" business, although I am convinced that
there are UFO sightings (in the sky & on earth. ) ... the "spiritual teachings" (Shirley's [Maclaine],
etc.) are right out of the M[amo] Chohan department, in which evil is O.K. and "God" is all.

... The Mineral Kingdom here on earth is in its sishta state & the Veg. Kingdom also to some
extent. The next life-wave coming to planet Earth (Globe D) is a Dhyani-Chohanic wave. You will
find all this in Dialogues. One of the conditions for membership in HPB'S Inner Group was absolute
celibacy. There were 12 members and I wonder how long the group lasted? I printed an article on
Tillet's book on the "Bishop." It could have been a lot harder on the rat. Leadbeater was one of those
Gays who go after boys in their puberty... He was a small time black magician -- the kind the big B.
Magicians look upon with contempt. Besant, according to HPB was "Not spiritual or psychic in the
least - all intellect." She was a set up for the con man Leadbeater and some Hindu sorcerer who got
control over her aura and caused her to wreck the society and damn poor old Judge. And the awful
thing is that the Adyar-Wheaton people publish Leadbeater's & Besant's phony books on their weird
perversions of original Theosophy and ignore Purucker and Judge & Tingley. Naturally they are not
going to encourage people to read the original teachings.

... Blavatsky said that the first step in chelaship was renunciation and the second sacrifice.
And that the chela had to become a mere impersonal force in nature. The personality had to
disappear. I remember when I met Purucker that he did not seem to have any "personality" as we
know it in humans. One time (at one of his lectures, I think) someone commented on his having "no
personality," and he said that if anyone ever saw any personality in him to please tell him so he could
cut it out. Personality is, of course, Lower manas-Kama. And this composite has to be cleaned up and
purified in the chela. In the Adept the two aspects of Manas become one, I think, so that there is
really no lower Manas left. Or if there is, it is so pure that it melts back into Higher Manas. From the
little I know about it, I would say that the human being, the human mortal, the pig-bobcat, has to die
in a sense and be reborn as a harmless, compassionate slave of his Higher Self. As to Olcott, he was
known to be a non-spiritual man who was not very accurate in what he wrote - He must have had
some wonderful qualities to have been selected by the Adepts to work for Theosophy & the old T.S.,
but he must have been hell to work with.

... You can't go wrong passing out the writings of Purucker as he was the Real Thing in the
occult field. ...That "Ramatha" thing is straight from the B. Lodge. "No such thing as morality" is an
Aleister Crowley viewpoint. They either know nothing about karma or simply don't give a damn for
consequences. It's a sad thing to see so many heading for the big path downward.

... the "dark night of the soul" [is something] that some of us experience as a result of pressing
on in the occult realms. Judge says that the "dark night" is caused by the "soul" or inner ego going
away into a world of its own, leaving the human-mortal-self without that inner Presence for a while.
It finally returns and we feel "complete" again, but while the "dark night" lasts it's sometimes
terrifying. You feel lost and alien in an empty-soulless eternity. ...it happens to most, if not all, who
are moving ahead on the path to the PATH. As you may have read, in one of the regular initiations,
the inner self leaves and the personality cries out: "Why have you forsaken me?" The teaching is that
eventually all of us must be able to call forth the Divine Self or Potential Divinity now dormant in
our personal ego - the human part of us. It is the human being who is initiated - not his Divine or
Inner Self, which is already beyond all that.

... the "Seth" business was from the dark side of things. And this "Ramtha" is obviously an
earth-bound ex-preacher of the "Occult." Many talk just like he does through an "inspired
messenger." The White Lodge Adepts never work in Spiritualism or through mediums. That is the
business of the other kind.

... one of the Adepts wrote that it doesn't matter what we call the Ancient Wisdom as long as
we promulgate it. He said it was "The Hermetic Philosophy" [and] as good a name as any for it.
"Theosophy" was something Olcott picked out of the dictionary.
Yes, the varying degrees of Substance (the Eternal "Stuff") are really infinite, extending in
both directions in Space. We live in a tiny range or dimension of the ALL. Below our planetary-chain
is another grosser one including the "Planet of Death" to which go the "lost souls" who find there a
degree of Matter more in keeping with their own degree of Substance.
Re. the Devas. They are really Elementals that will have to move through the human hierarchy later
on because every entity or evolving Monad must pass through our kingdom eventually. There is no
way around it regardless of what Leadbeater-Hodson said. We have HPB's word for it. Some Devas
are terrific creatures that b. magicians join with in order to survive till the end of the rounds. But they
lack enlightened self-consciousness, beautiful as some may be. ...that minor b. magician Yogananda.

... This "Ramantha" insanity shows the unbelievable capacity of people in accepting the
madness going around. Their Lower Manas is getting twisted all out of shape and maybe for good.
"Every failure is a success" if one gets right up and pushes on as before. ...for every step you take in
the direction of the Adepts, they take one toward you. ...I doubt that there will be anything left in
Christianity after the final breakup of the religion. It is doomed. See what is happening to the Catholic
outfit with the Pope & a lot of Jesuits ready for a fight.

--------------------

ARMAGEDDON COMING UP?

The Armageddon prophecy popularized by doom-haunted Christian revivalists has a certain

basis of truth. According to The Mahatma Letters, pp. 156-7, the Adept K.H. points out that in some
thousands of years when our Fifth Root-Race "will have reached its zenith of physical intellectuality,
and developed the highest civilization (remember the difference we make between material and
spiritual civilizations), its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested (as its predecessors the
Lemurians and Atlanteans, the men of the Third and Fourth Root-races, were arrested in their
progress towards the same) by one of such cataclysmic changes, its great civilization destroyed." The
British Isles will be "the first on the list of victims that have to be destroyed by fire (submarine
volcanoes) and water."
That the world's progress towards "absolute evil" is accelerating no one can doubt. Not in all
recorded history has any civilization embraced with greater enthusiasm every variety of sexual
depravity, drug addiction, crime, governmental corruption, 20 million abortions, and a spreading
contempt for every idea of truth, honor, and decency. In some fourteen years (two 7-year cycles) the
century's end may bring drastic developments. There will be no Second Coming nor Resurrection
with millions rising from their graves, but many now living may be descending into theirs.

---------------------

DARWIN BOMBED BY BEETLE

The bombardier beetle, commonly found near ponds and under rocks, is easily recognized by
its orange and blue coloration, and a unique defense capability possessed by no other creature. When
threatened or attacked, it ejects a noxious spray from a special "reaction chamber" located at the tip
of its abdomen. And not only is the well-aimed spray poisonous, but it is also literally as hot as
boiling water!
The beetle has two sacs that lie side by side in the abdomen, and by swiveling the gun-barrel-
like openings of the sacs it can aim the spray with uncanny accuracy at spiders, frogs, and other
predators.
The spray is produced by two special glands containing a mixture of hydroquinones and
hydrogen peroxide. A smaller outer compartment on each gland contains a mixture of enzymes that
catalyze a reaction when the mixture of the inner chamber is squeezed into the outer one.
 The reaction takes place in the form of an explosion, with oxygen and highly poisonous
benzoquinones being produced. The oxygen gas provides the propellant for the expulsion of the spray
which, due to the intense chemical reaction, reaches a temperature of nearly 100 degrees centigrade,
that of boiling water. Moreover, the spray is not continuous, but pulsed, like a rapidly firing machine
gun.
The question immediately arises: Could such an incredibly complex organism have slowly
evolved through countless ages as Darwinian evolutionary theory suggest? The inner compartments
containing the two potentially explosive chemicals must have always been securely isolated from the
outer reaction chamber holding the special enzymes that initiate the explosion. Obviously, unless
everything worked in perfect harmony with everything else from the beginning, the beetle could
literally have blown itself up, or boiled itself alive!
Any slow evolutionary changes in the anatomy of the beetle-to-be would have provided little
or no survival assurance, and the possibility or various chemicals mixing at the wrong time in the
wrong chamber would have been a constant danger. It is amazing how the various precursor
reactants, enzymes, storage compartments, reaction chambers, mixing muscles, diaphrams, and
expulsion nozzles have been combined in such an integrated whole.
The bombardier beetle is living proof of intelligent design. Nothing less than the engineering
genius of a superhuman intellect could have fashioned this tiny masterpiece of survival-efficiency.
Theosophy, of course, explains that the Dhyan-Chohans (ex-men become gods) cooperate
with Nature, refining and perfecting her works. Thanks to them, the beetle's intricate defense
mechanism must have been fully functioning from the very beginning. And now, with every "pop"
of the noxious spray, the bombardier beetle dispenses another blast to Darwin's crumbling theory of
evolution.

---------------------

THE SECRET DOCTRINE ON THE PROBLEM OF SEX

The writer sincerely hopes that nothing in the following pages will strike the reader as "goody
goody" moralizing, nor that he, the writer, will appear as a simpering "holier-than-thou" harlequin.
The Theosophical Movement has enough comic figures."*
But the fact is that we are living in the most sexually permissive age since the fall of Rome,
and only Theosophists or those familiar with the Eastern occult teachings know that sex is a cosmic
force greater than nuclear bombs, representing in every human destiny an ultimate challenge
involving immortality or annihilation.
Although regular chelaship and the chastity it demands are several lifetimes away for most
Messiah readers, the present is as good a time as any to consider what H.P. Blavatsky (the Masters'
Messenger in the last century and this) has to say on the matter.
We have no other court of appeal. One can expect little help from medical men, psychiatrists,
psychologists, marriage counselors, priests, preachers, and educators because, with, of course, a
number of happy exceptions, all are infected with the virus of the "New Morality" which would have
us abandon all sexual restraints and "liberate" ourselves from the "unhealthy repressions" of our
puritan ancestors.
A refreshing exception among medical men is Dr. Val Davajan, chief of the reproductive
biology section of the Medical Center at the University of Southern California. Says the doctor: "No
matter what the sexologists say, the New Morality is immoral. And I don't care what the Gay
Liberation people say, homosexuality is a perversion, and homosexuals are not normal."
One of the latest results of the "New Morality" was revealed by a Gallup survey of student
attitudes commissioned by Oklahoma Christian College. It was found that as students move along
from year to year they tend increasingly to approve smoking, drinking, legalized marijuana, abortion,
and pre-martial sex. Among freshmen, 30 percent identified their political philosophy as left-of-
center or far left. By the senior year the number had grown to 53 percent.
The foregoing is an exoteric picture. the esoteric is something else, and we can do no better
than begin with some highly illuminating material by Dr. G. de Purucker, himself an initiated chela
and the last Leader of the original Theosophical Society.

SEX A PASSING PHASE

In his Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, pp. 342-6, he states: "...sex is but a passing
phase in racial evolution, and, strictly speaking, is not normal to mankind on Globe D of our
planetary chain. This method of procreation actually was copied from the beasts, which 'separated'
before 'man'... As a matter of fact, the Atlantean and Atlanto-Lemurian karma has weighed so heavily
upon us, the fifth race, that we are actually belated, and have not at the present date, the middle-point
of the fifth race, reached that stage as regards the evolving of the physical body which otherwise we
should have reached.
"As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of our own fifth race, men and
women will be disappearing as opposite sexes; and that by the middle of the Sixth Root Race (the
race to come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer. The race will consist of beings
who are physiologically neither men nor women; ...
"The humans of that period (the Sixth Root-Race) will produce children by meditation and
by will; during the Seventh Root-Race, the last to come on this Globe, during this Fourth Round - a
race which to us now would seem glorious - the humans of that race will produce their kind in the
same general manner; but by consciously exercised will and meditation, but still more impersonally...
than the Sixth Race will do.
"The main point then, here, is to realize that this present physiological state of sex is a passing
racial evolutionary phase; and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or what the
world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the evolutionary 'law'... and that while it is true that
the present method is the one which nature has evolved at the present time, as said before it is not
really the method which primordial humanity might have followed... Nature has followed that line,
as it were, under protest, through the evil doing involved in our past karma, as the only way by which
souls can find incarnation at present..."

THE GREATEST CURSE

We find confirmation of Dr. de Purucker's views in The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 216: "From
the possession of the double principle in one, that is the Androgyne condition, the separation of the
dual principle was made, presenting two opposites whose destiny it was, for ever after, to seek
reunion into the original one condition.
"'The curse was this, viz: that nature, impelling the search, evaded the desired result by the
production of a new being, distinct from that reunion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing
to recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing process of a continued
curse that Nature lives."
In a footnote on the same page H.P. Blavatsky adds: "By which (human) nature lives,' not
even the animal - but the misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which man, not nature, created."
 This is abstruse metaphysics, but establishes that sexual reproduction for humanity was not
in Nature's original plan. On page 262, II, The Secret Doctrine, we read: "As has been shown in the
present volume (Anthropogenesis), it is the speechless animal that first started sexual connection,
having been the first to separate into males and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man
should follow the bestial example - as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their
species by the animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the women."
Ambition is the first curse, says Light on the Path, but sex is the greatest, says The Secret
Doctrine, II, p. 412: "...the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, and
consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and
sensuality. It is that which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall." It has degraded man into
a "helpless, scrofulous being, who has become the richest heir on the globe to constitutional and
hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals."
The deliberate profanation of sex in Atlantis led to the worship of the physical body (the
Easter Island statues attest to this), and finally to the sex principle in itself. Phallic sorcery followed,
with half of the Fourth Root-Race falling into Black Magic practices which survive today in African
Voodoo, Tibetan Dugpa Lamaism, Hindu Tantrika, and various corrupt "New Thought" branches of
Western metaphysics.
"The question is often asked" - The Secret Doctrine, II, 295-6 - "Why should celibacy and
chastity be a sine qua non rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and
occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary... During human life the greatest
impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers,
is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with
the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation."
IMPORTANT NOTE. At this point the writer wishes to emphatically state that the purpose
of these pages is NOT to rail against marriage and human love nor suggest that anyone take the
yellow robe of asceticism. Its purpose is solely educational and informative. It is believed that by
knowing the esoteric truth about sex and mankind's Tomorrow, one would be better able to deal with
the challenging human relation problems in our immediate experience.

THE "FALL OF THE ANGELS"

The history of mankind in its present form as separate sexes goes back about eighteen million
years to the middle of the Third Root-Race in Lemuria, when the Mind element began to function.
Until then man was "an empty, senseless Bhuta" (form or shadow), the product of two streams
of evolution: the Monadic or Spiritual, and the Physical or material. With the entry of Manas (Mind)
a third stream of evolution was added, conferring self-consciousness and a sense of moral
responsibility.
The early sub-races of the Third Root-Race (The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 275) evolved by
sexless creative instinct an "intermediate race" in which the higher Dhyan Chohans incarnated at the
time of the separation of the sexes. These were the Sons of Will and Yoga, representing the full
incarnation of the Mind principle.
A second class of Ego did not incarnate fully at once, but chose to wait, projecting only "a
spark." It is these (The Secret Doctrine, II, 167) who "constitute the average humanity which has to
acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution."
The "Sin of the Mindless" resulted when certain males of the "separated" humanity (before
Manas was awakened and also before sterility was established between the human and animal
kingdoms) had sexual congress with female beasts. Thus unconsciously the first misuse of the sex
force took place. (The Secret Doctrine, II, 185). "The sin of the brainless or 'mindless' Races, who
had no 'spark' and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty."
Thereupon, seeing this shameful Karmic result, the Sons of Wisdom endowed all men with Manas
"lest worse should happen."
A third class of Egos deferred incarnation till the Fourth or Atlantean Root-Race, in which
the worst sexual Karma was incurred because the Atlanteans renewed the Sin of the Mindless with
knowledge and moral responsibility. It is stated (The Secret Doctrine, II, 302) that in this case it was
"the Spiritual being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the 'Master' principle in man, in those
days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our
Monads."
The most significant statement of all in this connection is found on page 228, The Secret
Doctrine, II: "As to those 'Sons of Wisdom' who had 'deferred' their incarnation till the Fourth Race,
which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause,
the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they
became the carriers of that seed of iniquity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to inform
had become defiled through their own procrastination.
"This was the 'Fall of the Angels,' because of their rebellion against Karmic Law. The 'fall of
man' was no fall, for he was irresponsible."

CHELASHIP
"Behold the truth before you! A clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an
unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for one's co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive
advice and instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to the behests of
TRUTH, once we have placed our confidence in, and believe the Teacher to be in possession of it;
a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defense of
those who are unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection
which the secret science (Gupta Vidya) depicts - these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the
learner may climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom. Say this to those who have volunteered to be
taught by you." - Blavatsky's Teacher
Theosophy teaches that we are Spiritual Pilgrims imprisoned by Kosmic and Karmic necessity
in bodies of flesh informed by animal instincts and desires. The Spiritual Beings we essentially are
aspire toward the god worlds from which we came, while at the same time the "Call of the Wild"
would lure us back to the steaming jungles of animalhood.
It is the old story of the god and beast, one of which must ultimately absorb our being. which
brings us to the subject of chelaship. A chela is a man or woman who anticipates the crisis by
prematurely bringing it upon himself. It means a terrible battle in the heart and mind between the two
forces or polarities. Very few are ready for chelaship, but when one is, nothing on earth can stop him.
In The Theosophist of July 1883 H.P. Blavatsky wrote: "One who undertakes to try for
Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his animal
nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for the mastery in which quarter is never to be
given nor taken... in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden blemish - do what he may,
it shall and will be brought to light... He is now in an atmosphere of illusions - maya. Vice puts on
its most alluring face, and the tempting passions try to lure the inexperienced aspirant to the depths
of psychic debasement.
"If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic
scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind, the germ
is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The
real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly, then, for anyone to leave the smooth path of
commonplace life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable feeling of certainty that
he has the right stuff in him? Well says the Bible: 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall.' - a test that would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the fray!"

THE ANSWER OF SOCRATES

It's a fantastic situation. Apparently when we were awakened to Manasic self-consciousness
and were able to recognize our essential Divinity, it was in Nature's plan for us to carry on in an
androgynous state. With Mind - a godlike faculty - active within us we deserved to live free from
animality and beasthood.
But something went wrong, and Nature's plan had to be revised. So here we are - gods trapped in the
bodies of animals which too often we mistake for ourselves, with heartbreaking consequences.
When Dr. G. de Purucker was asked: "Do Theosophists approve of marriage?" he said, among
other things (Questions We All Ask, p. 137): "Theosophists most certainly approve of marriage,
decidedly so. The only trouble is that so many marriages are 'merely farces.' Marriage itself is
beautiful. The principle is holy; and if true marriage takes place, life is sanctified for those two human
hearts."
When H.P. Blavatsky was asked if a man must marry or remain a celibate (The Key to
Theosophy, p. 262), she replied: "It depends on the kind of man you mean. If you refer to one who
intends to live in the world, one who, even though a good, earnest Theosophist, and an ardent worker
for our cause, still has ties and wishes which bind him to the world, who, in short, does not feel that
he has done for ever with what men call life, and that he desires one thing and one thing only - to
know the truth, and to be able to help others -then for such a one I say there is no reason why he
should not marry, if he likes to take the risks of that lottery where there are so many more blanks than
prizes. Surely you cannot believe us so absurd and fanatical as to preach against marriage altogether?
On the contrary, save in a few exceptional cases of practical Occultism, marriage is the only remedy
against immorality."
There is the story about a young man who went to Socrates with the question of whether or
not he should marry. "It doesn't matter much one way or another," said Socrates. "Whatever you do,
you'll regret it."

-------------------------------
* Witness the ludicrous spectacle of T. S. official pontificating as "bishops" of a "Liberal
Catholic Church," or the California prankster solemnly claiming that UFO's are Atlantean aircraft
from Poseidonis some eleven thousand years submerged! Even the notorious science fiction hoaxer
C.W. Leadbeater never topped that. Nor did Geoffrey Hodson with his dainty spoof: Fairies at Work
and at Play. (G.C.L.)

----------------------------

OTHER AUTUMNS

Yes, we have walked by coral seas

In lives forgotten. We have known
Before the whippoorwill that sings
From branch to branch across the night,

The sound of leaves and blossoms blown,

And skies aglow with jeweled light.

From other lands and other climes

About the soul forever clings
A vision of the olden times

That call to us when barren trees

Are tremulous in Autumn rain,
When meadowlands are sere again,
And frozen are the golden streams.

O ancient days, at one with these,

O Death, at one with Life and Birth,
We are the children of our dreams,
The pilgrims of primaeval earth.

--------------------

FREE (I)

One day I thought That I was great

And strong and wise, and then I heard
The singing of a golden bird
Upon the garden gate.

And as I listened to his song

And felt its beauty fill my heart,
I yearned to be a living part,
Of him, and thus belong

To everything that's wild and free;

And cried, "Sing on! Forever sing!
The tiniest feather in your wing
Contains Eternity!"

-------------------------

THE DUTY BEFORE US

In times of discouragement we return again and again to those words in Light on the Path
about the disciple finding himself "compelled, by the nature of his position, to act in two ways at the
same time. He cannot send his voice up to the heights where sit gods, till he has penetrated to the
deep places where their light shines not at all. He has come within the grip of an iron law. If he
demands to become a Neophyte, he at once becomes a servant... For the Masters are also servants;
they serve, and claim their reward afterwards. Part of their service is to let their knowledge touch
him; his first act of service is to give some of that knowledge to those who are not yet fit to stand
where he stands."
There we have it. And whether we are chelas in the true sense, or simply Theosophists, or
students trying to become Theosophists, the duty before us is plain. We have "to give some of that
knowledge" to those who know less than we.
Our duty is to reach everyone who suspects there might be Truth in the world. We have to be
as alert as cats at mouse holes, ready with the right word, the friendly welcome, with everything that
can awaken man from his nightmare of horror, blackness, and despair.
It's something to live for. It's the greatest thing anyone can do, greater than amassing millions,
conquering continents, shaking the world. It's doing, in a limited way, what the gods do on a grand
scale. It's being part of all that really matters, all that counts, all that endures.
A man is what he is. He starts from where he is. He may progress, or he may retrogress. All
effort in his own behalf is a dead weight against him. All effort in behalf of others is a profit to
himself; notwithstanding which, unless he first improve himself, he can do nothing except harm to
others. There is no power in the universe, nor any form of intercession that can separate a cause from
its effect, action from reaction, or man from retribution for his deeds.

-----------------------

THE PATH AHEAD

We don't know if there is such a thing as a comfortable Theosophist. We hope not. A

comfortable Theosophist would be a monstrosity. Actually to be alive at all is to be uncomfortable
because Nature, Life, Universal Law, everything, is constantly nudging us to move on, to unfold,
expand and grow into something grander and nobler than we are, or think we are. There is no rest for
the wicked, and a lot less for those trying to shake off their wickedness.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter. Agreed that we have to be always on the move,
and free (let's hope) from the delusion that we can ever find a permanent corner in which to hide, how
can we best proceed? We can't very well leap into actual chelaship from the little pedestals of self-
esteem where most of us precariously perch, but we can begin thinking, acting, behaving in
accordance with some of the rules of chelaship.
These rules are several, and one of them stands out in that priceless treasure, Light on the
Path, where the Adept-author says that after one of the yearly ceremonies the Neophyte can never
again regard another man as one to be criticized or condemned.
When we criticize another it's really like saying, "I don't have your fault or failing, you
miserable wretch! Why aren't you wonderful like I?" And we hit right at the heart of his humanhood -
insult and outrage the very part of him that is crying for encouragement, understanding, a friendly
word. It's no wonder that we often turn him into an enemy and send him on his way damning others.
Yes, we are our brother's keeper, and there is no way under the sun of heaven to escape it. We
are linked, fused, merged together for all time to come, like the children of one mother, soldiers in
a common cause, citizens of one universe. We are in, and we can't get out; and when we choose to
criticize another we criticize ourself and go backward on the path that everyone and everything is
treading.
Buddha said that he would never enter Nirvana until the Divinity in every blade of grass had
attained to godhood; and that's the only way to look at it. We are all in the same boat, and the boat
is the Ark of Eternity sailing the Golden Seas of Greater-Becoming. And the best we can do is steer
by the star in our hearts - the deathless star of love and truth and brotherhood. What else?

-------------------

AMBITION VERSUS ATTAINMENT

On the first page of Light on the Path we read the number one rule for disciples - "Kill out
ambition." The Adept-author explains that "Ambition is the first curse: the great tempter of the man
who is rising above his fellows. It is the simplest form of looking for reward. Men of intelligence and
power are led away from their higher possibilities by it continually. Yet it is a necessary teacher. Its
results turn to dust and ashes in the mouth; like death and estrangement it shows the man at last that
to work for self is to work for disappointment."
Ambition may even persist in the life of the occultists "...who fancies he has removed his
interest from self, but who has in reality only enlarged the limits of experience and desire, and
transferred his interest to the things which concern his larger span of life." We see this everywhere -
"astral projection," "psychic powers," "third-eye clairvoyance, " "hypnotic control over others, " etc.
Ambition is a hydra-headed thing.
In another book - Fragments of Life and Thought - the same Adept points out that "...not until
the man has triumphed again and again in one incarnation after another, not until success has become
tedious to him, and the high places of the earth all seem low and poor to him, is he beginning to be
ready to go beyond it. And only so can it be killed out. " Man must go on struggling for earthly prizes
until he reaches the point "...where the excelling of his fellows becomes suddenly and forever
contemptible in his eyes, beneath the dignity and greatness of his soul, and then he will kill out
ambition and cast it from him as a weed of earth. He will perceive that the strength which he has
developed must be used, not in order to excel, but in the endeavor to attain."
Attainment is different from Ambition because the latter fires one with a passion to
outdistance all others striving for the same goal. The ambitious man is by necessity personal, jealous,
envious, and ruthless - in other words, a menace to the world because he sows discord. To realize his
aims he will stop at nothing save that which imperils his own preservation. And sometimes he will
risk even that, like Shakespeare's soldier "... seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannons
mouth."
Attainment, on the other hand, is a reaching out from self to SELF, from the finite to the
Infinite, from the conditioned to the Unconditioned. The man who attains finds no rivals at his side,
no single prize waiting at the end of the race. He moves in Eternity, where there is room for all.
Ambition is the effort of man to add to himself some coveted fragment of Earth, hoping
thereby to exalt and increase his stature before others; but Attainment is the giving of oneself to the
Whole.
A good example is the poet who wins first prize in an important contest. At the reception
which follows, he receives honor and praise, and for a little hour feels as a god among men. But he
also looks upon the faces of other poets who had competed and lost. They regard him as a thief, a
usurper of the prize they sought, and which, in their opinion, they deserve.
He also thinks of next year's contest, and wonders if he will win again, or only receive
honorable mention, or no mention at all. Instead of rejoicing in his triumph, he finds himself under
a cloud of apprehension. Victory is not the splendid thing he had envisioned.
 Looking back, he sees that writing the poem was Attainment; but competing and winning the
prize was Ambition. In the joy of creating something beautiful, he reached out of himself into the
starry spaces where the Gods of Glory sing, and where, for a moment, he was one with their song.
But winning the prize and humbling his rivals, was an earthly thing that compressed his soul,
and imprisoned him in a little world made by the littleness of men, where Ambition is king,
demanding its terrible price.
The poet should sing as a bird sings - not for reward, but to Attain, to reach out from self to Infinity.
The poet can be taken as a symbol of all men because everyone strives to express what he is -
what is in him - either to win something from the world that may be added unto himself, or to give
something of himself to the world. Each man is, by nature, either a taker or a giver.
The taker, following the path of Ambition, loses with every step because he violates the
Supreme Order of the Universe, which is Duty, Service, and Cooperation. The giver, following the
path of Attainment, wins with every step because he acts in keeping with the Harmony of the Whole,
thereby enriching himself, because he is the Universe.
Attainment is the foundation of the Ultimate Discipline of Life. "Work as those work who are
ambitious." Make the utmost of the life that is yours; but seek no personal victories which, once
realized, crush those around you. Regard men not as rivals, but as fellow pilgrims walking beside you
on the Eternal Highway. Help them to attain with you, to become whole with you, and all the
treasures of the Universe will be yours!

--------------------

THE 'MESSIAH' - PERSON

William Quan Judge, who succeeded H.P. Blavatsky as Leader of the parent Theosophical
Society, predicted that she herself would serve as the Messenger in the last quarter of the present
century.
Writing in The Irish Theosophist, Vol. III, January 1895, p. 54, he stated: "H.P. Blavatsky has
clearly pointed out in the Key, in her conclusion, that the plan is to keep the T.S. alive as an active,
free, unsectarian body during all the time of waiting for the next great messenger, who will be herself
without question."
Dr. G. de Purucker, the last Leader of the parent Theosophical Society, agreed with William
Q. Judge on page 685 of Fountain-Source of Occultism: "...I think that Brother Judge was
perfectly right when he suggested that it is very likely that H.P.B. herself will be the new Messenger
who will come back at the end of this century. I think It will be H.P.B. or rather the spirit-soul who
in her last embodiment was known as H.P.B."
In his Studies in Occult Philosophy, pp. 427-28, Dr. de Purucker had more to say about the
Messenger:
"At the beginning of the 1st quarter of every hundred years our great Teachers make a special
effort in the world towards a new spiritual and intellectual awakening... the Messianic Cycle was
opened by H.P.B., and she was the beginner of the new Messianic Cycle - the power working through
her I mean, the Master's influence. She was the 'Messiah' -person, to use the old Jewish Christian
word, of our present cycle of 2160 years... But a special effort will be made by a chela at the end of
every hundred years until the 2100 odd years of the Messianic Cycle initiated by H.P.B. shall have
run its course.
"I think that the chela, the Teacher, the Messenger, who will come in the last quarter of this
century will be rejected by many Theosophists who now think they are very faithful to him who has
yet to come... because they will not understand him; they will look for a creature of their own
imagination.... and because this noble-hearted chela, this noble-hearted man, will appear quietly and
simply and give his teachings more or less as the other Messengers of every hundred-year period
have done, many will reject him; but I hope that in our society at least, due to the teachings that you
have had and will have, the one who comes... will find a home among us.

--------------------

YOU ARE YOU FOREVER

In Dialogues, Vol. II, pp. 164-5, Dr. G. de Purucker states: "...the center which never changes,
which is for each one through eternity the same, is not a body or a vehicle or a sheath or a veil or a
garment, but a center of consciousness, a focus of consciousness. That is the Monad. It is eternal. It
is not only always the I AM, but... it is always I-am-I... the limited part of it which will keep on
growing forever... but with constantly enlarging horizons. It is never for two consecutive instants of
time the same..."
Each one of us as a human individuality is an I-am-I Monadic core-self - a You that will be You
forever unfolding, changing, expanding, bringing forth more and more of the Divine Glory and
Wonder abiding within. It is not a crystallized immortality of changeless limitation, but an eternal
flowing forth of the Imprisoned Splendor!

--------------------

LEMURIA AND ATLANTIS

LEMURIA. Before delving into the fabulous history of Lemuria we should point out that the
life-term of a Planetary-Chain embraces seven circlings of the Life-Wave around the seven Globes,
on each Globe the Monad-Host enjoying experience in the seven Root-Races, each on a continent of
its own.
In the First Round our Earth-Chain and all the beings on it were ethereal. Gradually, as
Rounds Two and Three were in progress, consolidation took place, and in Round Four (our present
Round) Globe D (which we now inhabit) settled and hardened into what we know as Earth.
The continent of the First Root-Race was in the region of the North Pole - the "imperishable
Sacred Land" which will be our home at the end of this Planetary-Chain Manvantara. The continent
of the Second Root-Race was farther south, embracing part of Greenland.
Tremendous changes took place during the Third Root-Race on the continent of Lemuria,
which now lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. Here the human form passed through various
transformations, including the hermaphrodite or androgynous state, and finally division into the
present sexes.
But the most important event in the Third Race was the coming of the Manasputras or Lords
of Mind that had graduated from humanhood to godhood on the Moon-Chain in the previous
Manvantara. Three Rounds and nearly one-half of the Fourth had passed in preparation for this
tremendous event - the awakening of the dormant minds of the Lemurian humanity.
It is stated in The Secret Doctrine that without their help we should still be as little children
living in a day-dream. The Lords of mind, by quickening our sleeping Manasic faculty, raised us to
the state of reason and moral responsibility.
Lemuria appears to have been, in some respects, a wondrous fairyland of surpassing beauty
(the "Garden of Eden" of the old Testament) with cities of lava and stone which later expanded into
unbelievable magnificence. Under the direction of Divine Rulers who incarnated among them, the
Lemurians became adept at the arts and sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, and
architecture. Indeed, so glorious was their civilization that the splendors of Egypt, Greece, and Rome
were as nothing by comparison.
But all things are obedient to the great Law of Cycles and Periodicity, and the Third Root-
Race was on the Descending Arc of increasing Materiality or involvement in Matter. Therefore,
before the close of the Lemurian period the greater part of mankind had lost its earlier innocence and
spiritual purity and fallen into sin and selfishness.
The descent of the Manasaputras, and their infilling with the flame of intelligence the child-
like Third Race humanity, brought pain and suffering to the lower egos, but also the possibility of
advancing into self-conscious spiritual selfhood through the exercise of free choice. Man, who had
been a simple "nursling of Nature," was now a responsible being capable of directing his own
evolution through "self-induced and self-devised efforts." What had been an irrational animal was
now a potential god.
The doctrine of the Manasaputric Host is of paramount importance. In awakening our dormant
minds, they did not actually incarnate in us (the average humanity), nor did they become a permanent
part of our being. Nevertheless they became identified with us forevermore.
The human constitution is sevenfold, each part or principle derived from one of the seven
elements of the solar system. Thus we have a Solar element, as well as a Lunar element. Our Mind
or Manasic principle is, as we know, twofold. Its higher aspect (the Sun-part) will when evolved forth
make of us a Solar Deva or God, while its lower aspect represents merely the Lunar element which
came over with us from the Moon-Chain.
The Manasaputras, as said, were the advanced Monads from a previous Manvantara who had
attained to Dhyan-Chohanship or Godhood before the Moon-Chain entered into its Pralaya. They
waited in their own realms until we reached the Third Root-Race in the present Fourth Round and
were ready to receive the Divine Fire of mind.
In similar fashion we too shall become Manasputras when our Earth-Chain reaches its end
at the close of the Seventh Round (IF we run the race successfully), and it will then become our duty
to quicken the sleeping minds of the humanity of the next reimbodiment of our Planetary-Chain.
Where and what is this future humanity today? The answer is that this future Monadic Host is now
enjoying experience in the present beast-hierarchy just as we -as evolving Monads - were members
of the best-hierarchy of the Moon-Chain.
Each one of us was enlightened by some particular Manasaputra, and a karmic bond with that
sublime being will endure forever as it pursues its own evolutionary journey through the higher
kingdoms of Nature. And as it moves on, we too shall follow the ancient Pathway leading ever more
inward to the Heart of the Universe, becoming with each step less personal and more compassionate,
until, merging at last with the pure essence of Divinity, we find Nirvanic rest. And then, after long
eternities have passed, we shall awaken, and - re-emerge as shining Gods to build the worlds anew.
The early Third Race possessed spiritual vision, the organ of which is the Pineal Gland or
"Third Eye." But with the fall into generation the gland atrophied and receded into the middle of the
head. By the end of the Fourth Root-Race, due to sex and sorcery, it had ceased to function at all.
Only by a return to the purity of the early Third Race Will the "Third Eye" again function. It is the
loss of this spiritual faculty which prevents the remembrance of past lives. No sexually active person
enjoys spiritual clairvoyance. He "sees" only with the lower, animal clairvoyance of the solar plexus
chakra, and his "visions" are sporadic, confused, and largely meaningless.
ATLANTIS. The problem of Atlantis has always been a thorn in the side of Science because
its archaeologists, engineers, and physicists in particular find it painful to contemplate past
civilizations that outshine their own.
But if we are to respect the Esoteric Records as given in The Secret Doctrine, supported by
the traditions of Antiquity, Atlantis did exist, and Lemuria before it, each in its heyday bright with
a glory of accomplishment compared to which our own is crude and primitive.
What are these "Esoteric Records"? Says The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pages 272-3: "...the
system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted
record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test
and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and
exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity... No vision of one adept was accepted
til it was checked and confirmed by the visions - so obtained as to stand as independent evidence -
of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences."
As one tangible proof of Atlantis we can cite the great submarine mountain range running for
thousands of miles under the Atlantic Ocean and rising nine thousand feet above its bed. In the
Azores the mountains penetrate the surface to great heights. They are also volcanic, and geologists
note that the dredged-up lava was not crystallized under water. The mountain range appears to have
been the backbone of the Atlantean continent which joined some of the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres.
According to an archaic Commentary often quoted from in The Secret Doctrine, there are two
chief causes for the cataclysmic destructions of continents. One is the tilting of the earth from its
normal position. The other is a variation in the speed of the earth's rotation. By slowing down, the
"centrifugal" force is reduced, causing ocean waters in equatorial regions to fall and new lands to rise.
Simultaneously, lands in more northerly and southerly latitudes are submerged. Thus, Atlantis was
no chance happening, but an inherent part of orderly planetary processes obedient to Nature's
rhythmic pulsation and cyclic law.
The Masters tell us that it was some eighteen million years ago that humanity graduated from
the Third (Lemurian) Root-Race to the Fourth (Atlantean) Root-Race on the continent which
extended over the surface of what is now the Atlantic Ocean. It was a highly important period
because the Fourth Race midpoint marked one-half of the life-term of our planet, and also the closing
of the door between the human and animal kingdoms. Also at this time we experienced our lowest
descent into Matter, and began our ascent on the Luminous Arc of Spirit.
Unfortunately not all of mankind responded to the upward impetus of this Luminous Arc (nor
do all now), and the Atlantean Race separated into parts with two distinct tendencies - those who
followed the Pathway of Compassion, and those who, persisting in their worship of Matter,
descended into sorcery.
It should be mentioned that Root-Races overlap, and that our own Fifth Root-race had its true
beginning at the central point of Atlantean civilization, which was the Kali-Yuga of the Fourth Race,
some four and a half million years ago. (We are now 5,000 years into our own Kali-Yuga, which lasts
for 400,000 years, and the beginning of the Sixth Root-Race is already taking place.)
Our present Fifth Root-Race as a whole, will, before its close, develop Manas or Mind beyond
the highest point reached by the Atlanteans, but not until the Fifth Round will Mind be fully unfolded,
at which time humanity will be compelled to make a great choice between following the upward Path
to Godhood (to be reached in the Seventh Root-Race of the Seventh Round on our present Globe D),
or the downward path to annihilation.
It is interesting to note that we now have five senses, each developed in one of the Root-
Races. The First Root-Race corresponds to hearing, the Second to touch, the Third to sight, the
Fourth to taste, and the present Fifth Root-Race to smell. We will unfold two more senses in the sixth
and Seventh Races, which will be of a spiritual nature.
It was at the middle of the Fifth Sub-Race of the Fourth Race when, in keeping with cyclic
law, the doom of Atlantis struck. However, it was not destroyed over-night, but sank in parts.
Blavatsky mentions the sinking of the great Pacific Island Ruta 850,000 years ago, and the last island,
Poseidonis, referred to by Plato, sank some 11,000 years ago in one day and one night, with its entire
sorcerer population.
EASTER ISLAND. Easter Island is a remnant of Atlantis, and presents another problem to
irritate Science. In The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, page 224, we read: "The Easter Island relics are, for
instance, the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants... and one has but to
examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken on that island, to recognize
in them at a glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants."
On page 331 of the same volume we learn that most of the statues on the mysterious island
"are all between 20 and 30 feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost
twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders." And "We are told that it is after the
destruction of 'Lemuria' by subterranean fires that men went on steadily decreasing in stature..."
Easter Island's greatest mystery is probably the means of transportation of the huge statues
(some weighing up to fifty tons!) from the sculptor's workshops inside the steep walls of the crater
of the Rano Raraku volcano to their destined sites miles away. The makers of the statues and the
builders of the vast platforms on which some of them originally stood have left no trace of their
working methods, yet these ancient engineers performed feats which would tax the most powerful
machinery of modern times to equal.

-------------------

THE DEMON GODS

While Hitlers and Stalins, with famine and fire, destroy millions of lives, other criminals, with
Bibles and bunkum, corrupt millions of souls.
"God needs your money more than you do," thunders a local Shepard of the Hills. "Bring your money
to church and give it to God, or keep it in your pocket till God punishes you with sickness or an
accident and you give it to the hospital. Make your choice."
Many years ago one of the high Adepts of the order of Compassion stated: "The intellectual
portions of mankind seem to be fast drifting into two classes, the one unconsciously preparing for
itself long periods of temporary annihilation or states of nonconsciousness, due to the deliberate
surrender of their intellect, its imprisonment in the narrow grooves of bigotry and superstition, a
process which cannot fail to lead to the utter deformation of the intellectual principle; the other
unrestrainedly indulging its animal propensities with the deliberate intention of submitting to
annihilation pure and simple..."
The first class includes the followers of the racketeering evangelists, preachers, priests and
missionaries now stealing millions out of the pockets of the trusting and the blind.
In 1881 the Adept M. dictated to H.P. Blavatsky a very important letter known as "The Prayag
Message" - (The Mahatma Letters, pp. 461-4) - a powerful document regarding the Prayag Psychic
T.S. at Allahabad, India, which consisted mainly of high caste Brahmins whose interests were
psychism and phenomena. Selections follow.
"Faith in the Gods or God, and other superstitions attracts millions of foreign influences,
living entities and powerful agents around them, with which we would have to use more than
ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do not choose to do so. We do not find it either
necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war on the unprogressed Planetaries who delight in
personating gods and sometimes well known characters who have lived on earth.
"There are Dhyan-Chohans and 'Chohans of Darkness'... imperfect 'Intelligences'... who will
never belong to the 'builders of the universe,' the pure Planetary Intelligences, who preside at every
Manvantara while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralayas... These are the gods that the Hindus
and Christians and Mohamed and all others of bigoted religions and sects worship; and so long as
their influence is upon their devotees we would no more think of associating with or counteracting
them in their work than we do the Red-Caps on earth whose evil results we try to palliate but whose
work we have no right to meddle with so long as they do not cross our path.
"No more can the Dhyan-Chohans impede the work of the Mamo Chohans, for their Law is
darkness, ignorance, destruction, etc., as that of the former is Light, knowledge, and creation. The
Dhyan Chohans answer to Buddhi, Divine Wisdom and Life... the Ma-mos are the personification
in nature of Shiva, Jehovah, and other invented monsters with Ignorance at their tail."
Then on pp. 52-3 of The Mahatma Letters another Adept, K.H., points out:
"We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system
no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable
law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. The word
"God" was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired
or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to prove what we
claim - i.e. the knowledge of that cause and causes we are in a position to maintain there is no God
or Gods behind them.
"The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion... while we assign to all the
phenomena that proceed from the infinite and limitless space, duration and motion, material, natural,
sensible, and known (to us at least) cause, the theists assign them spiritual, super-natural, and
unintelligible and un-known causes.
"The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power... our chief aim is to deliver
humanity of this nightmare, and to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life depending
on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of
nearly all human misery."
On pp. 57-8 the Adept K.H. continues:
"...I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue
humanity ever since that cause became a power: It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever
nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man
looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great
curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took
advantage of opportunity... it is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is
religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect
without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-
thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretense of
saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his God or Gods demand
the crime?... The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving
and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the
weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land. . . Remember the sum of human
misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the
name of Truth, morality, and universal charity the altars of these false gods."
There we have the whole tragic story told by the wisest men on earth - Initiates of the order
of Compassion. True religion is love for the Divine Reality in man's heart of hearts, and obedience
to the spirit of self-sacrifice and service to all that lives. No priest or preacher can intervene to save
us from the results of our free-choice thoughts and deeds. No suffering savior can open for us the
gates of paradise. Each human spirit holds the key to its own deliverance. Each one of us decides
whom he shall follow: the Holy Gods of Wisdom and Love, or the Demon Gods of Darkness and
Death.

-------------------

OTHER WONDERS

The Peruvian city of Sacsahuman is located on top of a cone-shaped hill 12,000 feet above sea-
level. Its vast residential palaces, storehouses, inner forts, paved courtyards, and 50-thousand gallon
reservoir remains a constant puzzle to architects and engineers.
The quarries that yielded the massive stones for the building of the fabulous city are located nine
to 20 miles away, and some of the boulders are estimated at more than 200 tons, the largest being 12
feet thick and 25 feet tall. No two were alike, but all were fitted together without cement and so
precisely joined that a mechanic's thickness gauge cannot be inserted between the rocks.
The incredible Baalbeck Platforms in Syria are noteworthy for the 54 eight-foot-wide and 90-
foot-tall pillars that support flat stone slabs estimated to weigh 1,200 tons each. Modern engineers
admit that no contemporary derrick could hoist such a fantastic weight to a height of 90 feet without
collapsing.
India's famous Black Pagoda is another phenomenon that staggers the mind. On top of a 228-
foot-high temple rests a single stone slab 25 feet thick, with an estimated weight of 2,000 tons. No
conceivable mechanical means exist that could lift a 4-million pound monolith to a perch 228 feet
above the ground. It could only have been accomplished by occult power and knowledge employed
by the Initiates.*

-------------------------------
* In Playfair and Hills' The Cycles of Heaven (Avon, N.Y., 1979) a description by Henry
Kjellson - one of the pioneers of Sweden's aircraft industry - is given of his witness of some Tibetans
by a certain technique using sound to elevate blocks of stone 1.5 meters square to a hermitage on a
cliff. - Ed.

--------------------------------

STHULA - SARIRA

This body with its beating heart,

Like any living thing,
Rejoices when it hears anew
 The golden voice of Spring.

Rejoices in its world of dream

This child of Earth and Sky
And in the happy month of May,
Forgets that it must die.

-------------------------

WHAT TEACHINGS SHOULD WE STRESS?

No doubt all Theosophical workers become confused at times over the question of just what
to stress when presenting philosophy to those who know nothing about it.
Theosophy is certainly deep and complex: there is no end to it; it reaches out into Infinitude.
But William Q. Judge, comparing it to a shoreless ocean, pointed out that certain aspects of it would
not overwhelm the understanding of a child.
What are some of these aspects? It seems to us that in Blavatsky's writings there is always an
emphasis on the "twin doctrines" of Karma and Reincarnation. Perhaps these are the ones to stress
because they can be presented in a fairly simple way to the practical man and woman of the world.
For two thousand years, Christianity has been urging us to be good so that God would love
us, while we have been getting worse. But the teachings of Reincarnation and Karma assure us that
only by being good can we avoid suffering. They point out that we live under Universal Law which
cannot be placated or cajoled; that man is his own judge, jury and punisher when he violates the
omnipresent Harmony of Nature.
We cannot deny the hard fact that if the rulers of nations, along with their subjects, believed
and acted in keeping with these two doctrines, our world would be a Paradise instead of a screaming
Hell. But, mankind with few exceptions, knows nothing about the Esoteric Philosophy, and therefore
stumbles along in intellectual-animal darkness, living and dying and sinking deeper into the mire of
sensuality and delusion.
When we ask ourselves; what shall I stress in the teachings? Let us remember the world's
crying need for an Understanding of Rebirth and Karma which, according Blavatsky, alone can save
it.

------------------------

THE GOLDEN CHALICE

Before each soul, by day, by night,

The Golden Chalice gleams,
And all may know a strange delight,
Who taste its wine of dreams.

And all may glimpse a Vision far,

Beyond the bourne of Day.
And overhead a flaming Star,
That points a Secret Way.
It sparkles in the vital air,
And may be yours, or mine,
But hero-hearted all who dare
To drink that living wine.

And then the Vison to behold,

Beyond Avidya's brink,
For all who taste that Cup of Gold,
No other wine may drink

----------------------

THERE IS NO DOOR

I looked up into the clear blue dome of the sky and wondered if I could see there the face of
the Buddha, the Christ. But a voice within me said: He is in your own heart. And I knew that this was
true: that I, like every man, am the expression of this inner, secret glory, the child of a divine parent
who lives in higher spheres, and that the great purpose of my life, and all my lives, is so to live that
he may draw near to me, I to him, that MY part in the scheme of eternal growth and progress shall
be fulfilled.
Out of the heart of the divine universe pours forth a glory of hope and promise, wisdom and
peace. Why should we not look to this, and aspire? We know that this is true: that the reality is
within-above, not here in the objective prison-gloom of material life where empty dreams and
frustrations are. And should not our endeavor be to awaken the consciousness of all this in others?
Is it right, is it proper, is it in harmony with the whole, that we should hug this truth to ourselves, and
not share it with others? Perhaps one little word of ours, spoken from our hearts, will awaken in some
other an awareness of the divine life.
One feels that from this central fountain of reality emanates all that is; that we and all beings,
worlds and universes, are manifestations of the invisible. There can be no separation: we are one with
this boundless ocean of emanation: one vast expression of an inner infinite glory of birth and growth
and awakening. The thought is at once overwhelming and peace-giving; it draws one out of himself
and makes him one with boundless self, identifies him with the grand, sweeping all-ness within,
about, and yet beyond him.
We say "beyond" but is there truly a "beyond" when we realize that even that which looms
afar, and which we in this moment cannot reach, is still our self? - When we look inward to the
Buddha in our hearts and realize that between us and all the glory and magnificence of the universe
there is no door.

---------------------

PRISONER OF THE CLOUDS

Within the deep eternal sweep

Of mountain-peaks and sky,
I stand alone with wind and stone
And watch the clouds rush by.
The morning light is wild and bright
With Autumn-flame uncurled
And all my dreams, like mountain-streams,
Cascading down the world!

It is said that men who dwell for long on high mountain-ranges suffer great discomfort in
acclimating themselves to lower altitudes. The mystic who has learned to live in the higher aspects
of his being likewise suffers if he permits his center of active self-consciousness to descend into these
lower aspects of life which he has resolved to abandon. The life above the world's life is forever
sweet and clean: the winds of eternity blow there, and multitudinous clouds of iridescent hue weave
the poetry of paradise.
But the true mystic is not one lost in a selfish dream. Always upon him is the pressure of a
great duty: that of striving to acquaint all men with the knowledge of a grander world: where truth
abides in fulness, and compassion reigns, and the unfolding perfection of all things is a constant
reality. But to fulfill his duty he must breathe that larger air; he must hear the symphonies of heaven
while he teaches his. heart must beat in harmony with the divine heart. He dares not forsake the
higher altitudes of consciousness which, once attained, make him alien to the life below.
How grave and solemn are the steps by which we climb from the desert to the mountain-peak.
How bitterly die our human dreams when once the ascent is begun. How desperate and cunningly
beseeching are the myriad voices of the world's life around us when we mount. But what are they
compared to the Voice of Splendor speaking from the mountain-top? - "Lo! I have prepared a place
for you where you will be with Me forever." Only we who forsake the world's life are happy! Only
we who are prisoners of the clouds are free!

---------------------

TWENTY YEARS AN EX-CHELA*

(The article which follows was submitted to us under the above title, unusual to say the least,
by a friend in a distant city; one who has thrown himself with great energy and determination into
the service of Theosophy under very adverse conditions, and who has passed, under our own eye and
to our own knowledge, through several varieties of hell. His experience in search for truth, and in
disillusionment, parallel those of our own youthful years in a striking manner; the respective doors
to the solution opened in quite different ways. He prefers anonymity. [- Victor Endersby] )

I have always wanted to write something about my adventures into the world of the occult,
but postponed the earth-shaking event until now because I feared it would be just another vanity-
studded confessional recalling similar performances by Besant, Leadbeater, Olcott and other Neo-
Theosophical pretenders. But I suppose every man has a story to tell, and I can't think of a better
place to tell mine than in Notes.
Let's go back about 20 years to a mid-western town where a young bank clerk out of a job was
living in an attic writing poetry. He was a fair second-rater with the heroic couplet, and had begun
to realize that he would never be anything more than that. But poetry had been for years his magic
casement of escape from an awful awareness of life's seeming injustices, its senseless heartbreaks,
its sheer black horror. The poet believed, sincerely, that the best thing for the world would be its total
annihilation. What else? Why live as part of a mad cosmos devoid of all meaning and purpose?
 He had wandered the crowded highways of ambition and experimented with many forms of
sensation, and in them found no lasting satisfaction or peace. Poetry could carry the mind to a
beautiful, bright frontier of aesthetic happiness, but there the mind stopped, poised for a delicious
moment, and then plunged downward again into the wretched world of life-as-it-is. Philosophy
pointed to luminous vistas of self-knowledge, but its arguments, when examined, provided no keys
to final Truth.
Truth - that was it! If only the troubled mind could seize upon the actual, naked facts of being,
the cause of life and its myriad manifestations, behold the pattern (if there was a pattern) upon which
existence rested. But where was Truth? Surely not in bibles or creeds. The young man had talked with
preachers and priests, only to discover that they knew less than he. But there had to be a teaching or
doctrine somewhere to clarify the picture. How to find it was the problem. Perhaps Shelley's skylark
winging upward through the blue depths of space approached some abstract realm of reality, pouring
forth in a divine melody its joyous recognition of an infinite and wondrous harmony behind all. But
man was no skylark. He was a tortured mind imprisoned in flesh and bone through which swept
raging fires of lust, greed, and ambition. He was an intellectual animal, a brainy beast with fierce
hungers clamoring for gratification. And gratification brought only satiety.
The poet became occupied with a new obsession - to find truth at any cost. He laid aside his
verses and sat in libraries reading philosophy and religion with the faint hope that he had overlooked
some secret key to the great mystery. But it was all dead ground, a cemetery of decaying dogmas and
dreams born of minds no wiser that his own.
Then one night he was visiting at the home of a friend, an anaemic red-haired widow with a
mind like an IBM calculator and the disposition of a wolverine. "You like odd books," she said. "Try
this one." If human experience is linked with the movements of the stars, as astrologers claim, there
must have been extraordinary configurations in the heavens that might which excited sensitive zones
in his horoscope because when he opened the book and glanced at the lines on the first page, he was
suddenly lifted above all limitations of space, swept beyond time itself into a dazzling, indescribable
vastness of wonder and freedom.
"These rules are written for all disciples: Attend you to them.
"Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have
lost its sensitiveness. Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the
power to wound. Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in
the blood of the heart."
He had read these enchanted words before, but where and when he knew not. They awakened
within him a strange, far-off remembrance of other times, other lands, yes, of lives lived before!
Reincarnation was true. He had walked this earth in past ages. Like great doors bursting open, the
Present dissolved, the Past rushed in, reclaiming him for its own. He glimpsed a bewildering
pageantry of scenes - places and people, days and nights, months and years - flashing before him; and
through it all he moved like a lonely, unbodied intelligence aware of its unchanging identity.
Here at last was the Truth of life, or a big part of it. Man was immortal, deathless, ever
enduring. His body with its rioting passions was not himself, but a vehicle for the indwelling spirit
or soul or mind that was the Real Man. And that was how the apparent injustices of life were
explained: the soul had lived before, had created causes whose effects registered in succeeding births.
There was a rational Plan after all: the universe was a symbol of order, harmony, and law.
Man was a pilgrim of Eternity, an exile from some celestial home which was the Boundless Life itself
, and, whether he knew it or not, he followed always a strange, mysterious call.
The years went by. And out of many experiences, little triumphs and failures, dreams half -
realized and hopes destroyed, he gathered together a few pages of notes that he felt might be of some
benefit to other aspirants. They were from the writings of H.P. Blavatsky.
"Occultism is not magic. It is comparatively easy to learn the trick of spells and the methods
of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature; the powers of the animal soul in man
are soon awakened; the forces which his love, his hatred, his passion, can call into operation, are
readily developed. But this is Black Magic - Sorcery. For it is the motive, and the motive alone,
which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is
impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the
operator. For, unless the intention is entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the
psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it. The powers and forces of
animal nature can be equally used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-
forgiving; the powers and forces of Spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart - and
this is DIVINE MAGIC."
Alchemy, Astrology, Occult Physiology, Chiromancy, and many other Esoteric Sciences exist
in Nature, but occultism or DIVINE MAGIC, with its spiritual disciplines, is not to be acquired by
them. "It includes them all and may even use them occasionally, ...after purifying them of their dross,
for beneficent purposes, and taking care to deprive them of every element of selfish motive. Let us
explain: any man or woman can set himself or herself to study one or all of the above specified
'Occult Arts' without any great previous preparation, and even without adopting any too restraining
a mode of life. One could even dispense with any lofty standard of morality. In the last case, of
course, ten to one the student would blossom into a very decent kind of sorcerer, and tumble down
headlong into black magic.
"...But the interest of our readers will probably center on those who are invincibly attracted
toward the 'Occult,' yet who neither realize the true nature of what they aspire towards, nor have they
become passion-proof, far less truly unselfish.
"How about these unfortunates... who are thus rent in twain by conflicting forces? For it has
been said too often... that once the desire for Occultism has really awakened in a man's heart, there
remains for him no hope of peace, no place of rest and comfort in all the world. He is driven out into
the wild and desolate spaces of life by an ever-gnawing unrest he cannot quell. His heart is too full
of passion and selfish desire to permit him to pass 'the Golden Gates; he cannot find rest or peace in
ordinary life. Must he then inevitably fall into sorcery and black magic, and through many
incarnations heap up for himself a terrible Karma? Is there no other road for him?
"Indeed there is, we answer. Let him aspire to no higher than he feels able to accomplish. Let
him not take a burden upon himself too heavy for him to carry. Without ever becoming a 'Mahatma,'
a Buddha or a Great Saint, let him study the philosophy and the 'Science of Soul,' and he can become
one of the modest benefactors of humanity, without any 'superhuman' powers... [These last] are only
for those who are able to 'lead the life,' to comply with the terrible sacrifices required for such a
training, and to comply with them to the very letter. ...true Occultism or Theosophy is the 'Great
Renunciation of SELF,' unconditionally and absolutely, in thought as in action. It is ALTRUISM, and
it throws him who practices it out of calculation of the ranks of the living altogether. 'Not for himself,
but for the world he lives,' as soon as he has pledged himself to the work. Much is forgiven during
the first years of probation. But, no sooner is he 'accepted,' than his personality must disappear, and
he has to become a mere beneficent force in Nature. There are two poles for him after that, two paths,
and no midward place of rest. He has either to ascend laboriously, step by step... the golden ladder
leading to Mahatmaship... or - he will let himself slide down the ladder at the first false step" and fall
into sorcery.
 "All this is either unknown or left out of sight altogether. Indeed, one who is able to follow
the silent evolution of the preliminary aspirations of the candidates, often finds strange ideas quietly
taking possession of their minds... [Some imagine] that animal passions can be so sublimated and
elevated that their fury, force, and fire can, so to speak, be turned inwards; that they can be stored and
shut up in one's breast, until their energy is not expanded, but turned toward higher and more holy
purposes... [Therefore] they will not struggle with their passions nor slay them... They will simply,
by a strong effort of will put down the fierce flames... allowing the fire to smoulder under a thin layer
of ashes.
"The 'Master' in the Sanctuary of our souls is the Higher Self - the divine spirit whose
consciousness is based upon and derived wholly... from the Mind... [itself a compound] in its highest
form, of spiritual aspirations, volitions, and divine love..." while the lower aspects partake of the
animal desires and earthly passions. "It thus stands as a link and a medium between the animal nature
of man which its higher reason seeks to subdue, and his divine spiritual nature to which it gravitates,
whenever it has the upper hand in its struggles with the inner animal. The latter... is the hotbed of
those passions which, as just shown, are lulled instead of being killed, and locked up in their breasts
by some imprudent enthusiasts. Do they still hope to turn thereby the muddy stream of the animal
sewer into the crystalline waters of life? And where, on what neutral ground can they be imprisoned
so as not to affect man? The fierce passions of love and lust are still alive and they are allowed to still
remain in the place of their birth - that same animal soul...
"The 'Higher Self' or Spirit is as unable to assimilate such feelings as water to get mixed with
oil or unclean liquid tallow. It is thus the mind alone, the sole link and medium between the man of
earth and the Higher Self dragged down by those passions that may be re-awakened at any moment,
and perish in the abyss of Matter. And how can it ever attune itself to the divine harmony of the
highest Principle, when that harmony is destroyed by the mere presence, within the Sanctuary in
preparation, of such animal passions?....
"It is only when the power of the passions is dead altogether, and when they have been
crushed and annihilated in the retort of an unflinching will; when not only all the lusts and longings
of the flesh are dead, but also the recognition of the personal Self is killed out... that the union with
the 'Higher Self' can take place."
And these thoughts were the companions that walked with the young man in the bright,
happy, early years of his Theosophical life, that followed him down the winding avenues of destiny,
that haunt him even now when youth is gone and the rainbow-promise of long ago is a beautiful
memory. As Blavatsky so truly points out, there is no place of peace or rest in all the world for one
who has crossed the borderline of the occult, and if, as in the case of the poet, there is too much
passion and selfish desire in his heart to permit him to enter the Sanctuary, disaster seems inevitable.
But fortunately he found work to do - work for Theosophy, the spreading of its sublime truths among
others. And in this work he realized a certain freedom and joy. There seemed nothing else to do.
Chelaship, which at first seemed a glorious attainment, was recognized, upon failure to realize
it, something other than an end in itself. He saw that self-forgetfulness, service, help to others were
the true goals, and Chelaship as something which came as one of the aspects of maturity. So, in his
failure, his near madness, in the collapse of everything that the world counts as important, he
discovered another Truth: that man must grow as the flower grows, slowly, harmoniously, orderly,
with his eyes forever set upon the next horizon of service and giving. What a small thing is one's life!
encompassed by a few feet of flesh and bone with a little life-span to embrace. How quick is birth
and how fleeting are the human years! What better can one do, poised between two points in Eternity,
than give of himself to the fullest, pour out the life within him for the good of everything that lives?
What else shall he do with it? What can he carry away with him beyond the portals of death except
the knowledge that he has done his best with what he had? There is only one true joy - to know that
one is trying to do his best as part of the Eternal Life, and to leave all to Karma.

(Thus our friend, starting to write an article on his own struggles, as he thinks, his failures,
mostly writes an article by H.P. Blavatsky. Would that the rest of the "chelas," "Heads," and other
pretenders to holding the only keys to the Gates of Gold, would do the same!
Much is said about "tests," "Failures and successes." Much is said concerning pride and vanity
as the great obstacles, worse even than lust and drunkenness. To how many has it occurred that no
man can really know himself until and unless he has passed, not across the heights of occult success,
but through the abyss of failure, or seeming failure; that the true measure of devotion cannot be
known until one finds him struggling on with what is left to him out of the ruins of a seeming total
failure, through a valley of shadow in which there is nothing left for him to gain, nothing left of
possible reward, nothing left to hope for?
"South of the slot," the most able helper of the "Wino," is not the mission preacher in white
collar who cries to him from aloft to reform and abstain. It is his brother lying in the gutter, saying
unto him, "Behold me, and do not likewise!"
No man, we think, may finally reach the degree of real chelaship until, whether through active failure
or despair or simple humbleness, he abandons all hope of that state - and goes on with whatever is
left.
... He who is dear to the embattled immortals, is not one who, sniffing the incense of adoring
followers, says unto himself "Truly I have attained." It is the ragged, wounded man forsaken, dying
with his face toward the goal in his last crawl. Such a man may not be so "ex" as he thinks. - V.E.)

-------------------------------
* This article appeared in the December, 1957 issue of Victor Endersby's Theosophical Notes.
It was not signed, but is almost certainly G.C. LeGros'. Endersby's comments are included in
parentheses. - Ed.

------------------------------

THE TRAVELER

It was on an evening, I like to think, when there was nothing at all but the illimitable loneness
of the sea, and from the rim of it, and on into infinity, the rose-flame of the sky.
He was going to a far country, never to return, and his words drifted away with pale leaves
and delicate blossoms over the star-clear waters:

Brightest of all the bright

Blossoms along the sea,
Cradled in song and light, --
Bloom in the soul of me!

After the sunset-gleam,

Over the twilight-dew,
Gather me, dream by dream,
 Into the dream of you.

There had been a time, he remembered, in his childhood, when the flowers that he saw were
more than flowers and the songs that he heard were more than songs. The faces of people glowed
with a strange, beautiful light: there was hope in them and a remembrance of something ineffable.
But as the years passed, dark veils fell before his eyes. The flowers lost their bright enchantment,
becoming flowers, the songs songs. The light in human faces was gone. Towered in gloom, a
different world appeared: sunlessness and starlessness brooded over the cities and the mountains and
the sea. Only in memory, and slowly retreating, was the golden world with its luminous flowers and
living songs and faces that were not faces at all, but living souls.
The long music of the waters, whispering through the avenues of the waves, heard him and
listened; and then, strand upon beautiful strand, climbed slowly upward through the jewel-mist of the
stars.
And if it was the wind that made words, speaking to him, he did not know. And if it was the
loneness of the sea, or the sky above it that made words, speaking to him, he did not know. But he
heard, somewhere in the world, near him or afar he was never able to tell, words spoken not in time,
but in the vastness and quietness of eternity. And hearing them, he thought of waving flowers in the
morning, flowers of pale and delicate flame that reached upward to heaven, and he thought of songs
that rose like sunlight on swift wings, pouring melody over the world, and he thought of human faces
luminous with beauty and joy.
The whole world, with its mountains and seas, and sky above it, and him, became - and he
knew that it have always been so - a divine oneness of peace. Even the words of eternity were of him,
spoken by him, through the winds or the sky or the waters he was never to know. But wherever
flowers were, or songs, there was he. And wherever human hearts beat there he was also.
It was on an evening, I like to think, when there was nothing at all but the illimitable loneness
of the sea, and from the rim of it, and on into infinity, the rose-flame of the sky.

-----------------------------

NEVER DESPAIR!

There is so much pure joy in Theosophical work that by contrast our personal failures and
disappointments seem all the more distressing. But are they not the other half of experience? Do we
not learn and grow as much through them as through satisfactions and triumphs?
The thing to watch out for is the temptation to give up, to lose hope, to despair. Never despair!
We are on our way, and all Eternity lies before us with its millions of greater Tomorrows. There is
a god within, and the boundless love of a divine universe everywhere, and in our hearts a sweet
fountain of spiritual assurance forever flowing.
Let us say to ourselves: "No fall, no failure, no disappointment will ever prevent MY carrying
on, pressing forward, following always the Light of the Spirit within. And no power in heaven or hell
will ever stop me from working for Theosophy!"
H.P.B. had something to say about failure in The Voice of the Silence.
"If thou has tried and failed, 0 dauntless fighter, yet lose not courage: fight on, and to the
charge return again and yet again.
"The fearless warrior, his precious life-blood oozing from his wide and gaping wounds, will
still attack the foe, drive him from out his stronghold, vanquish him, ere he himself expires. Act then,
all ye who fail and suffer, act like him; and from the stronghold of your Soul chase all your foes away
- ambition, anger, hatred, e'en to the shadow of desire - when even you have failed. ...
"Remember, thou that fightest for man's liberation, each failure is success, and each sincere
attempt wins its reward in time. The holy germs that sprout and grow unseen in the disciple's soul,
their stalks wax strong at each new trial, they bend like reeds but never break, nor can they e'er be
lost. But when the hour has struck they blossom forth."
What a glorious thing it is to gaze into the infinitude of space and know that You -the real,
enduring YOU - is everlastingly at one with the limitless Beauty of being within all things. Perhaps
it is better to say that the REAL YOU is the Ineffable Mystery itself - that it can never be anything
less, and the visible aspect of it, the human You, is a Child of Eternity growing up in Time. How can
we make that blissful freedom which the stars above us know our own? How, but in the sweet release
of personal being from its bondage in the cold chains of separateness? Even as the Spirit in the stars
is actually the Spirit in us, so is the Spirit in all men our own.

-----------------------

G. C. LeGros Obituary

....The April-May issue of Messiah records the death of its founder Editor-Publisher, George
Cardinal LeGros on February 15, 1988. He was in his 83rd year.
Cardinal worked unstintingly for Theosophy for over half a century. His name appears in The
Canadian Theosophist as early as the 1930s, when he participated in the various international / inter-
organizational conferences held in that period. In 1959 he started his own independent journal, The
Theosophical Reminder. This ran for 60 issues until publication ceased in June, 1964. The first
number of Messiah appeared in March, 1974.
As well as these publishing activities, Theosophical correspondence courses were also
offered. This activity, and Messiah, are being carried on by his associate Marcheta Henry, to whom
we send best wishes for the continued success of Cardinal's work.
Messiah is published from Box 5, Weaubleau, Missouri, 65774 U.S.A.

- Canadian Theosophist, May-June, 1988

------------

AS ANOTHER YEAR BEGINS

Long ago I read an article entitled "Try Giving Yourself Away." The idea it presented was
a complete reversal of western psychology because from childhood on we are taught to compete, to
"get there first" and "get all you can" even if it means clawing our way to success over the prostrate
forms of vanquished rivals.
But the idea in this article stressed the opposite. It suggested that, instead of grabbing
everything in sight and trampling underfoot everyone in our way, we adopt a policy of self-
forgetfulness, co-operation, and service. We were to start thinking of others as extensions of
ourselves, seeing them as expressions of the same Essence of Being that abides in us, and is the
source of all we are. It was a revolutionary concept, and an illuminating one. It declared the Divine
Brotherhood of Man.
 Many years have passed since that idea entered into my thinking; and the older I grow the
stronger becomes the conviction that it is true. I have seen it work in a hundred ways. It also gave
birth to many attendant ideas. For example, I began to see my own life, not as a precious personal
thing to be guarded at any cost, but as something independent, as it were, of my inner thinking self.
It was merely a vehicle, a tool, a means, which I was temporarily using for a certain purpose. And
what was that purpose? I thought about it for a long time.
Then the answer came: my life was not really my own - a treasure to be personally loved and
cherished - but a possession of the universe. If I held it as a prize belonging to me alone, it would
wither and die, and I with it; but if I offered it back to the universe from which it came, I was at one
with the universe, at one with everything everywhere. And that made me free, happy, at peace, and
whole. Giving myself back to the All-Of-Things, I became at one with the humanity around me, and
I could begin to love that humanity.
"Try Giving Yourself Away" is what I tried to do, and am still trying, because it does away
with the limited, narrow, soul-destroying prison of thought wherein one dwells when he lives for
himself alone. Beyond self is the Greater Self, and all the stars, the vastness of Space, the glory of
Eternity, and the harmony that thrills in the inmost Heart of everything and everyone.
What a relief it is to drop the heavy burden of personal concern, personal strivings for power
and possessions, and go out into the frontierless expanses of universal life, merging all that one is
with the splendor of that Immensity! It means "going Home" while still here. It is something to think
about as another year begins.

- Eclectic Theosophist, Jan. 31, 1972

-------------------

THE DETROIT CONVENTION

Editor Canadian Theosophist: - Dear Brother Smythe: I hurriedly type this letter to you in
the hope that it will reach you in time for possible inclusion in the May number of The Canadian
Theosophist. These lines are by way of an appeal to all who read them to come, if possible, to Detroit
this September and attend the Theosophical Fraternization Convention which will be held at the Hotel
Fort Shelby. Because I happen to live in Detroit certain duties in connection with the coming
Convention become mine, and among them is the duty of urging, pleading, begging everyone with
even the faintest interest in Theosophy to be present and by being present share with, give to others,
some of the joy and hope and beauty that the wisdom of the gods has brought into his life. Everyone
who believes in the Theosophical teachings, and who endeavors to make the spirit behind them the
guide of his life, spreads a good influence wherever he goes. And he is needed at such a thing as a
Fraternization Convention. What is a Convention but a big Theosophical meeting? We go to our
meetings with joy in our souls because they are opportunities to strengthen ourselves and each other,
to fan to more glorious flame the divine fire that sustains our work, ourselves, the world, the universe.
We should let nothing stand in our way: here is another grand opportunity to overcome the personal
self and be the Higher Man - that One who lives but to pour out compassion and help to all. Here is
another chance for us to forget our whims and to love with all of our hearts everybody in the
Theosophical Movement, in Detroit and everywhere.
This Theosophical Fraternization work is a wonderful experience! Once you step into it, and
try to give some of your strength to it, you discover that the Great Light is shining in it, that the
powerful love that lived in the heart of H.P.B. lives on today, and lives in it! So let us go on with our
enthusiasm and our hope and our faith, because that which sustains this effort is that which is
deathless. Some of us may have passed on before the other Conventions come. Let's attend this one,
and give to 't all that we've got in brotherhood, in kindness to each other, in human nobility. Very
sincerely yours,
- G. Cardinal Le Gros.
Apt. 4, 1702 Delaware Ave.,
Detroit, Mich.,
April 28, 1939.

(Canadian Theosophist, May 15, 1939)

-----------------------------

THE INCARNATION OF AN IDEAL

On Saturday, September the second, of this year, the Fraternization Convention will
reincarnate in the city of Detroit, Michigan. This is the seventh embodiment of the Ideal of
Theosophical Fraternization in North America, and the joyous event will take place in the Hotel Fort
Shelby, to which all good fairy god-mothers are invited, which means, all good Theosophists.
An interesting programme has been prepared by Mrs. Kathleen Marks, of Toronto, and her
coworkers, for the two days of the Convention, Saturday and Sunday, September the second and
third. The Convention will open on the Saturday at 10 a.m., with a business meeting for the
appointment of the
Convention's chairman, officials and resolution committee, the hearing and consideration of reports
and the address of the incoming chairman. At 17 a.m. the first of the open forums, which are a
feature of the Convention this year, will be held. The subject on this occasion will be The
Fraternization Movement.
After lunch, at 1:30 o'clock an address will be given by Mr. Samuel Wylie, of Detroit, on The
Conquest of Illusion. The writer has heard Mr. Wylie, and considers him a fine speaker. Students
from outside will be anxious to hear him. After Mr. Wylie's address, there will be a talk on Astrology
by Miss M. Hindsley, of Toronto. She is an authority on this subject, with an Eastern background,
and should not be missed.
In the evening a public symposium will be given: The World of Yesterday, Today and
Tomorrow. Two of the speakers will be Mr. J.W. Vaughan-Corrie, of Detroit, and Mr. R.C.
Bingham, of Toronto. Mr. Vaughan-Corrie lived for many years in India and we anticipate
interesting comments from him. Mr. Bingham, formerly of India also, created a marked impression
at the Buffalo Convention. A Buddhist, Mr. Bingham has had one of those lives of adventure that
one reads about in books but whose heroes are seldom met with in real life. This promises to be a
colorful and inspiring evening.
On Sunday morning, at 10 o'clock, the sessions will again open with business. This time the
report of the resolutions committee will be heard, the new committee appointed, and unfinished
matters disposed of. At 11:15 a.m. Mr. Leslie Floyd, of Toronto, a forceful speaker, will give an
address on Practical Theosophy. After lunch another open forum will be held, at which anyone who
has something to say which will advance the Cause of Theosophy will be expected to speak. Then,
at 2:45 p.m. will come one of the highlights of the Convention: The "World of Tomorrow" will be
built by youth, so youth is given a special place on the program at this time. The Convenor is Miss
Margaret Kirshman of Brooklyn, New York, and an inspiring session is assured. At 4 p.m. Mr. G.
Rupert Lesch, of Erie, Pa., will speak on "The Inner Life." Mr. Lesch is a profound and spiritual
philosophic thinker who is able to convey his thoughts in simple and illuminating language. He was
and is one of the most popular of the earlier Convention speakers. At 6 p.m. will come the formal
dinner, and at 8 p.m a public symposium on Religion, Philosophy and Science. One of the speakers
will be Mr. Richard Heinemann, of Toledo, Ohio, who is noted for his interesting presentations of
scientific subjects.
Some details of the programme are still to be finally settled, and there may be some changes
in the order of the addresses, to suit the convenience of lecturers, but the foregoing will give readers
a preview of the Convention's programme.
Indications are that there will be sizable delegations from nearby cities in the United States
and Canada, and many visitors from more distant points, and it is confidently anticipated that the
Seventh Convention will set a new high mark ill the progress of this Fraternization effort.
As the Hotel Fort Shelby is placing its convention rooms at the disposal of the Convention
free of charge, students are urged to reserve rooms in the hotel. The charges are: single rooms,
$2.50; double, $3.50; three or four persons in a room, $1.75 and $1.50 each. Cars may be garaged
in the Hotel Fort Shelby garage.
The commingling of Theosophists from various parts of the United States and Canada will
be encouraged by a Reception Committee, whose chairman is Mrs. Ruth Somers, of Toronto. We
want to make this a Convention which will stand out for Fraternization of students, and under Mrs.
Somers' guidance it is bound to be a success in this direction. In fact, to let readers into a secret, Mrs.
Somers is planning some pleasant surprises.
Theosophical work is an effort to bring the sunlight of understanding and happiness into this
troubled world. Theosophical Fraternization is a vital part of this effort. It is sincerely hoped that
every one who loves the teachings of Theosophy and profits by them will in turn aid this work: - by
attending the Convention, by helping in some way, so that a little more of that sunlight may be
spread.
- G. Cardinal Le Gros.

(Canadian Theosophist, Aug. 15, 1939)

-------------------------

[Letter on Sexual Desire]

To the Editor of
The Canadian Theosophist:
At a recent Theosophical meeting someone asked if sex-passion could not be killed out by
simply working it to death! Naturally The Voice of The Silence was quoted from in answer to this
dangerous question: "Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or satisfied, for this
is an abomination inspired by Mara. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes strong, like to
the worm that fattens on the blossom's heart."
It started us talking about the teaching that sex belongs in the past, that humanity should have
reattained its androgynous state ages ago. That sex does exist - and dynamically so - is the result of
nothing but willful self-indulgence extending back to Atlantis. Our worst point, spiritually speaking,
was in the middle of the 4th sub-race of the 4th Root Race, and we face a similar turning point in the
middle of the 4th sub-race of our present Aryan Root Race. The number of human egos that will fail
when this cycle comes may be appalling, and it will be due primarily to an unnatural hunger for sex-
sensation.
The Bhagavad-Gita points out that ". . . if, indulging self-confidence, thou sayest `I will not
fight', such a determination will prove itself vain, for the principles of thy nature will impel thee to
engage." What does this mean except that the time must come when the awakening higher principles
can no longer maintain their link with the human ego unless it gives up its allegiance to the animal
nature? This critical stage will be forced upon us by time and experience "when the man has
accumulated unto himself innumerable existences." It will not be - as romantic occult novelists
would have us believe - a lovely hour when we happily decide to blossom into sainthood. It will be
a time of fierce desperation when the God within can no longer endure the coarse vibrations of lust
and selfishness. And then we shall either vanquish the beast at the Threshold and merge with
Divinity, or, if our link with the animal is too strong and we are too weak, share its fate of
disintegration.
It is not a pretty picture, - actually, a pretty terrible one, but something that the amateur
saviour of humanity should begin contemplating and, equally important, do something about. Too
many of us regard ourselves with pseudo-amusement as naughty little children who may deserve an
occasional spanking.
It is not enough to read Theosophical books, lecture, teach, and go about serene with higher
knowledge. We should evoke the will and determination to face ourselves in the stillness of the night
and conquer this demon
It must eventually be done; and with every passing day the lower nature, pampered and fed, -
perhaps reluctantly, but still fed, - grows stronger and more insistent. "Strive, with thy thoughts
unclean," wrote H.P.B. in The Voice Of The Silence, "before they overpower thee. Use them as they
will thee, for if thou sparest them and they take root and grow, know well, these thoughts will
overpower and kill thee. Beware, Disciple, suffer not, e'en though it be their shadow, to approach.
For it will grow, increase in size and power, and then this thing of darkness will absorb thy being
before thou hast well realized the black foul monster's presence." Is it not time that we were "about
our Father's business," which is doing, as the Adept-author of Through The Gates of Gold tells us,
the only thing really worth doing; studying ourself, seeing the animal nature for what it is, and taking
a final, do-or-die stand against it? That it can be conquered is shown by the existence of the Masters
and the Gods who, as men, fought the battle and won.
Dare anyone deny that the man who calls himself Theosophist and still entertains sex-passion
in his life is not reliving an abomination of dead Atlantis? How long must he grovel, spellbound,
before the dazzling jewel of Mara? He should be beyond it - tens of thousands of years beyond it -
breathing a new and richer air, walking shoulder to shoulder with his Inner God, blessing and serving
humanity with that Divine Love which is the heart of the universe. Over the Gates of the Path is
written the word "TRY". Let him try now, secure in the knowledge that, fighting beside him to the
end, is that Divine Warrior, the Higher Self, who can never know defeat.
- George Cardinal LeGros.

- Canadian Theosophist, Sept-Oct, 1959

--------------------------
THE DISCIPLE

The joy he gave is never lost;

The truth he shared belongs to all
Who falter not, nor count the cost
Of entering the Temple hall.

Rejoice with him who, part by part,

Gave up his life and all thereof
To be at one with Nature's heart
In self-forgetfulness and love.

Remember him -- no more in pain --

Whose happy voice tonight may be
The silver whisper of the rain,
The golden thunder of the sea.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, Jan-Feb, 1968)

----------------------------

PLEDGE FEVER

Hear me, O gods, who roam the azure heights!

Were you as I -- a beggar at the gate,
Lonely and lost through endless days and nights,
Crushed in the chains of pride and lust and hate?
And did you ask your soul: "Is it too late
To flee the horror of these sounds and sights?"
Were you as I -- the creature of a Fate
Forged in the demon-fire of hell's delights?
Hear me, O gods though he who speaks your name
Walks in a night of terror and of shame,
Yet knows within his heart the teaching true:
In ages long ago you were as he;
And when he learns to love, forgive, and be
The god within, he will ascend to you.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, Jan-Feb, 1968)

---------------------------------

THE LAND WITHOUT A NAME

I saw it in my boyhood dreams --

The Land without a Name:
(The meadow bright with azure streams
And flowers of white flame).

I heard sweet voices on the air,

Around me and above;
There was a Spirit everywhere
Of happiness and love.

And in that meadow -- dew-empearled --

Of fragrant leaf and vine
I felt at one with all the world,
And all the world was mine.

So little here Is really ours:

The blessings of each day --
The friends we have, the golden hours --
Must fade and pass away.

But In the Nameless Land, I know,

Still lives that little boy;
And there the bright gandharvas go
To sing their songs of joy.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, March 1968)

----------------------------

ELFINMEAD

'Tis said we pass by Elfinmead

A dozen times a day
A magic place of rose and reed
And towers tall and gray,

And verdant hills, August and grand,

And jasmine-scented air;
For Elfinmead is Fairyland,
Unseen, and everywhere!

Ah, happy they who come to know

That in the Opal Stream
The Soul may see, as long ago,
Eternity's bright Dream;

And blessed are they, of mortal men,

Who find the Golden Tree,
Becoming for a moment then
 The Gods we are to be.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, April 1968)

------------------------------

THE HUNGRY MEN

O hungry men, who love the taste of life,

How will you gormandize when life has ceased?
At what ethereal banquet will you feast?
What bloodless spectres will you take to wife?
(Self-martyred in a world of woe and strife,
Self-doomed to be of lesser men the least;
Beholden to the glamour of the Beast
In jungle lairs with pride and passion rife.)

O hungry men, who grovel in the dust,

Look up into the everlasting skies;
And from the burning ashes of your lust
Evoke the will to pardon and forgive.
Surrender love of self if you would rise;
Kill out desire of life If you would live.

Amen

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, March 1969)

----------------------------

SPRINGTIME

The stars look down upon an earth whose dream --

Bright with the blossoms of a million Springs --
Is both a vision of forgotten things
And one in which the vast and awful Scheme
Is mirrored, as within a forest stream
The sudden flesh of iridescent wings
Is both an image and a Voice that sings
Of Splendor with Divinity agleam!

Now in the time of tenderness and birth

When heaven's own music whispers from above,
And magic moves in every leaf and pod,
All Nature bows in reverence and love
As April stars look down upon an earth
Holy as flame -- the vesture of a god!

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, April, 1969)

-------------------------------

THE SEVEN LAWS OF SUCCESS

During the past twenty-four years, in my work as an astrologer, I have used The Seven Laws of
Success with excellent results. They have worked for me, and they will work for you, as they have
for thousands of others. But all seven of the laws must be used - especially the last one - if your
success is to be the real thing, and not a disappointing substitute.
In my professional career I have done work for several millionaires, all of whom practiced the
first six laws, but neglected the seventh. Their goal was money, social status, and the pleasures of the
senses.
They were the unhappiest people I have known. The more they acquired, the more they wanted,,
and the less contented they were. No matter how much wealth, status, and enjoyment they obtained,
it never was enough. They had disregarded the seventh all-important law - the one which alone makes
life worth living.
THE FIRST LAW is the Right Goal. As a person interested in astrology, you must make your
goal the mastery of the science, and then its honest and ethical application to the best interests of your
clients. The Right Goal comes first. It must be clearly visualized, and faithfully followed.
THE SECOND LAW is Preparation. To accomplish your purpose, and reach your goal, you must
learn the fundamentals upon which astrological science is based. The A.S.A. Course, with its
thoroughness and meticulous attention to detail, makes this possible.
THE THIRD LAW is Mental and Physical Health. You must condition yourself for success by
a opting a few simple time-proven rules of right thinking and right living. These are included with
The A.S.A. Course.
THE FOURTH LAW is Drive. You must not be half-hearted. You must be determined to reach
your objective. This calls for self-discipline, diligence, and unswerving tenacity of purpose.
THE FIFTH LAW is Resourcefulness. When obstacles, problems, and unexpected circumstances
arise, you must be ready to meet them with faith and courage,, and to keep right on going. This
requires a cool head, and an inner calm that nothing can disturb.
THE SIXTH LAW is Perseverance, You must never give up in the pursuit of your goal. You
must be ready to carry on in the face of all difficulties, knowing that your aim is a righteous and
honorable one,
THE SEVENTH LAW -- the all-important one - is Living In the Dynamic Realization that You
are Something More than a man or woman of flesh and bone. You must realize that you are, in your
heart of hearts, in the inmost core of your nature, a Godlike Being, a Divine Splendor shining with
Truth and Love and Compassion. You must realize that you are here on earth not only to attract and
enjoy the material good that is your birthright, but also - and far more important - to help your
fellowman, to brighten and glorify his life with the joys, the happiness, and the understanding that
are yours.
As an astrologer, practicing The Seven Laws of Success, you can become a blessing to everyone
you contact. You can become a Beacon Light of Truth, and a dedicated worker in the glorious ranks
of Those whose lives are completely given to the spiritual guidance and protection of mankind.
 - George Cardinal LeGros
Secretary, The A.S.A.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, Letter enclosure May, 1970)

-------------------------------

THE VOICE

Reach out, It said. You are Immensity,

Infinitude, the All, the endless surge
Of waves upon a dark and shoreless sea
Wherein all breath and being move and merge.

Dare you be less than That which ever is,

Or disavow the Vastness which is you
To starve the spirit-soul with earthly bliss
As brief and evanescent as the dew?

Reach out, It said. Surrender to the Whole

The self in you that glorifies this dream
That men call life. Awaken! For the goal
Of Sacrifice, eternal and supreme,

Is yours but in the giving, night and day,

Of all you are. There is no other way.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, December, 1970)

----------------------------

THE WEB OF DAWN

When you awaken in the web of dawn

To feel the heart-beat of Infinity,
And, rising, walk on dream-enchanted feet
Into the gardens of Eternal Now,

Oh, pity them who slumber, unaware

Of mystery and magic In the night . . .

Who never hear the horsemen of the wind

With rainbow swords aflame against the moon,
Or count the faery galleons that sweep
Across the meadows of the Morning Star.
O eyes that yet would see beyond the veil
Of Time-illusion, fingers that would touch
The holy substance of Immensity,

Be as the wind that never finds a home;

Be as the rain in which all voices call;
Be as the dawn and, with her coming, know
That Life is Love, and Joy the heart of All.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, February, 1971)

-----------------------------

TWO WORLDS

Two worlds I know: one ringed with golden fires,

Wherein Compassion reigns and Wisdom dwells.
'Tis there the soul, awakening, aspires
To tread the highway Destiny impels
All men to follow.

Deep in fairy gloom

The other world, with wide and open gates,
Invites the soul; and there, in scarlet plume
And ebon robe, a Tempter stands and waits.

Shall I be one who triumphs, or who plods

His way in darkness? Shall I know the sun,
Or to the moon's enchantment bow my head?
Two worlds I see, two Paths that beckon. One
Leads onward to the Kingdom of the Gods,
The other to the Valley of the Dead.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, August, 1971)

----------------------------

SONG TO THE WORLD

When the dawn is aglow',

And the stars are dim,
All the beauty we know
Is the Beauty of Him;

And afar and anear

From the sun to the sod,
All the music we hear
Is the Singing of God;

And the call of the dove,

In the morning dew-pearled,
Is the Song of His Love
To the heart of the world.

--------------

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, February, 1972 - 'With attached letter giving following
disclaimer: "As I am in the Bible Belt and suspect as one of Satan's henchmen, I wrote a "God" poem
for the local newspaper to lull the religious passions around me. What do you think of my
hypocrisy?)

------------------------

1975

Like dew upon the desert, or the rain

Upon an arid land where only weeds
Offer the dust their dry and bitter seeds,
Into the world a Message comes again --
A Wisdom to reveal man's purpose plain,
That he may triumph over cults and creeds.
And know within his heart a Path that leads
Beyond the bourn of ignorance and pain.

Within a world of fantasy and dream

A Voice will speak of that which is to be:
Of giant ages, -- luminous, agleam
With Heaven's Glory -- and Humanity,
Standing as one, self-conquered and supreme,
Upon the Threshold of Immensity.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, February, 1972)

---------------------------

THE TIGER

All day, behind the heavy, polished bars,

The tiger walks alone, remembering
His jungle trails, and nights aflame with stars;
And yet must look upon this human thing
That stands and watches by the iron cage --
A thing of pride, triumphant and supreme,
That mocks the silence of his secret rage,
And tramples on the ashes of his dream.

O captive monarch of a million Springs, --

Tameless and fierce and beautiful -- be true
To your Monadic Fire! Live on, apart,
Forgotten in a world where freedom rings, *
And Man, with godhood burning in his heart,
Becomes a beast more terrible than you.

(W.E. Small - LeGros correspondence, March, 1972)

* In Theosophia #133, Winter 72-73 reads: "Forgotten in a world of lesser kings,"

------------------------------

1 February 1987

To the Editor, The Eclectic Theosophist:

For a hundred years purblind Theosophists have failed to see in Leadbeater the clown, the con
man, the impostor.
He had no more "clairvoyance" than an oyster, and his scientific "findings" were straight out of
"The Wizard of Oz."
The creature was hardly human. He was closer to a gargoyle, a zombi, a lycanthrope swimming
in a sewer of homosexual lust. If he and Besant were alive today they would be in San Francisco
leading Gay Pride parades.
Let's extirpate them forever from Theosophical soil.

- George Cardinal LeGros

(This is an unpublished letter to W.E. Small's Eclectic Theosophist, written in response to

a positive article on C.W. Leadbeater submitted to the Eclectic (unpublished also) of which a copy
was sent to LeGros by Small.)

-----------------------------

HALLELUJAH!

The world agonizes over the poisoning of earth, air, and water, threats of nuclear destruction,
over-population, food shortages, crime, bureaucratic bungling and corruption, etc., etc. But all these
involve only the physical life of man. A thousand times more important is his spiritual life, committed
to the bizarre ministrations of pastor and priest.
The destruction of the physical body, by sickness, accidents, murder, old age, etc., has been
going on for millions of years. Bodies are a dime a dozen. But man's spiritual life, his Divine Being,
his God-Reality, is something designed to go on with him forever, through eternity and infinity.
And it is this spiritual life, spiritual selfhood, that is endangered by the racketeering evangelist
and religionist on fire with power-lust and greed. "God needs your money more than you do!"
thunders a local Elmer Gantry. "You have two choices: -- Bring your money to church and give it to
God and be happy and whole, or keep it in the bank until God punishes you with illness or an
accident and you have to give it to the hospital. Make your choice."
Many years ago one of the highest Adepts of the Order of Compassion stated: "The intellectual
portions of mankind seem to be fast drifting into two classes, the one unconsciously preparing for
itself long periods of temporary annihilation or states of non-consciousness, owing to the deliberate
surrender of their intellect, its imprisonment in the narrow grooves of bigotry and superstition, a
process which cannot fail to lead to the utter deformation of the intellectual principle; the other
unrestrainedly indulging its animal propensities with the deliberate intention of submitting to
annihilation pure and simple...."
This first class includes the followers of Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and other archangels
draining millions of dollars out of the pockets of the trusting and the blind. Why this madness? How
did it become mankind's greatest curse? Let us consider the explanations of Theosophy and
Occultism as given by the world's greatest Adepts.
It goes without saying that we who are active in Theosophy should understand the views of the
Adepts on religion in general. These were expressed most explicitly by the Adept M., who In 1881
(just one hundred years ago) dictated a letter known as "The Prayag Message" (The Mahatma Letters,
pp. 461-4) -- a powerful document given through H. P. Blavatsky regarding the Prayag Psychic T.S.
at Allahabad, India, which consisted mainly of high caste Brahmins whose chief interests were
psychism and phenomena. Selected passages follow.
"For ages we never corresponded with anyone, nor do we mean to. What has . . . or any other
of the claimants done to have a right to such a claim? Nothing whatever. They join the Society, and
though remaining as stubborn as ever in their old beliefs and superstitions, and having never given
up caste or one single of their customs, they, in their selfish exclusiveness, expect to see and converse
with us and have our help in all and everything.
"It is useless for a member to argue: 'I am one of pure life, I am a teetotaler and an abstainer from
meat and vice. All my aspirations are for good, etc., and he, at the same time, building by his acts and
deeds an impassable barrier on the road between himself and us. . . . There are 100 of thousands of
Fakirs, Sannyasis and Saddhus leading the most pure lives, and yet being as they are, on the path of
error, never having had an opportunity to meet, see, or even hear of us."
What is this "Path of error?" The Adept M. continues: "Faith in the Gods or God, and other
superstitions, attracts millions of foreign influences, living entities and powerful agents among them,
with which we would have to use more than ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do
not choose to do so. We do not find it either necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war to
the unprogressed Planetaries who delight in personating gods and sometimes well known characters
who have lived on earth.
"There are Dhyan-Chohans and 'Chohans of Darkness, . . . imperfect 'Intelligences' . . . [that]
will never belong to the 'builders of the universe' -- the pure Planetary Intelligences... preside at every
Manvantara, while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralayas. . . . These are the gods that the Hindus
and Christians and Mohamed and all others of bigoted religions and sects worship; and so long as
their influence is upon their devotees we would no more think of associating with or counteracting
them in their work than we do the Red-Caps on earth whose evil results we try to palliate, but whose
work we have no right to meddle with so long as they do not cross our path.
"No more can the Dhyan-Chohans impede the work of the Mamo Chohans for their law is
darkness, ignorance, destruction, etc., as that of the former is Light, knowledge, and creation. The
Dhyan-Chohans answer to Buddhi -- Divine Wisdom and Life, . . and the Ma-mos are the
personification in nature of Shiva, Jehovah and other invented monsters with ignorance at their tail."
There is no getting around it; here are the Master's own words. They -- the dread Chohans of
"darkness, ignorance, destruction" -- "are the gods the Hindus and Christians and Mohamed and all
others of bigoted religions and sects worship." Faith in them "attracts millions of foreign influences,
living entities and powerful agents which hold the victim in the iron grip of a black mesmeric spell
from which he can set himself free only by asserting his true spiritual selfhood. He must find "God"
within himself -- in his own Divinity.
Then on pp. 52-3 of The Mahatma Letters another Master, the Adept K. H., states:
"We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no
such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable
law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great illusion. The word
'God' was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired
or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to prove what we
claim -- i.e., the knowledge of that cause and causes we are in a position to maintain that there is no
God or Gods behind them.
"The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we have but one thing in common
with the theologians -- we reveal the Infinite. But while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed
from the infinite and limitless space, duration, and motion, material, natural, sensible, and known (to
us at least) cause, the theists assign to them spiritual, super-natural and unintelligible and unknown
causes. The God of the theologians is simply an imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach
expressed it -- a power which has never yet manifested itself. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity
from this nightmare, to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life depending on himself
instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all
human misery."
On pp. 57-8 the Adept K.H. continues:
"....I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of the evils that pursue
humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatever
nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches. It is in those Illusions that man
looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the causes of that multitude of evils which is the great
curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind.
"Ignorance created gods and cunning took advantage of opportunity. Look at India and
Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods
so terrible to man, It is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind
out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it.
"It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those
who deceive them under the false pretense of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind
of evil If told that his God or Gods demand the crime? . . . The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant
will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For
two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat on
the land, and today the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other's throats in
the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember that the sum of human
misery will never be diminished until that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the
name of Truth, morality, and universal charity the altars of these false gods."
There we have the whole sordid story as told by the wisest man on earth -- the Initiates of the
Order of Compassion. True religion Is love for the Divine Reality in man's heart of hearts, and
obedience to the spirit of self-sacrifice and service to all that lives. No priest or pastor can intervene
to save us from the results of our free-choice thoughts and deeds. No suffering savior can open for
us the gates to paradise. Each human soul alone holds the keys to its deliverance or obliteration. Man,
at one with the universe, yet stands alone in time and space with the chalice of Godhood in his hands
-- to cherish or shatter.

(From Messiah #50, April, 1981)

-------------------------

THE FAMOUS FORGERY

The Christian Church is not unique in being the only playground for charlatans and imposters.
Our own Theosophical Movement has fared little better. In fact, it was not long after H.P. Blavatsky's
departure in 1891 that the Dugpas (Black Magicians) got busy and destroyed the careers of more than
one promising member, among them was a Mrs. Annie Besant, a former political agitator and free
love advocate (born 100 years too soon!) who succumbed to the insidious Brahmanical influences
then threatening the Society. As a result it was necessary for the Adept M. to have her removed from
the post she held, leaving the parent society under the leadership of Wm. Q. Judge, a chela of long
standing and one of the founders of the society. Mrs. Besant proceeded to carry on with a bogus T.
S. of her own until her death in 1933.
In order to humor her, and realize what value they could from her spurious society, the Black
Magicians duped her into believing that she was still a disciple in touch with the Masters. To bolster
the deception they occasionally sent her forged letters purporting to be from the Adepts she bad
betrayed. The following gem, by a not-too-bright Dugpa is full of ridiculous "occult" cliches that no
Theosophical Adept could possibly be guilty of. But it may fool a few readers, chiefly those still
belonging to the Annie Besant "Theosophical" society. It may have been the last forgery they sent
her because its 1900 date shows that six years had passed since she had broken her link with the T.
S. and the Masters.

"To Annie Besant:

"The T. S. and its members are slowly manufacturing a creed. Says a Tibetan proverb: 'credulity
breeds credulity and ends In hypocrisy.' How few are they who can know anything about us. Are we
to be propitiated and made idols of? The intense desire of some to see Upasika (Blavatsky)
reincarnate at once has raised a misleading-mayavic ideation. Upasika has useful work to do on
higher planes and cannot come again so soon. The T.S. must safely be ushered into the new century
. . . no one has a right to claim authority over a pupil or his conscience. Ask him not what he
believes... The crest wave of intellectual advancement must be taken hold of and guided into
Spirituality. It cannot be forced into beliefs and emotional worship. The essence of the higher
thoughts of the members in their collectivity must guide all action in the T. S. We never try to subject
to ourselves the will of another. At favorable times we let loose elevating influences which strike
various persons in various ways. It is the collective
aspect of many such thoughts that can give the correct note of action. We show no favours. The best
corrective of error is an honest and open-minded examination of all facts subjective and objective.
The cant about 'Masters' must be silently and firmly put down. Let the devotion and service be to that
Supreme Spirit alone of which each one is a part. Namelessly and silently we work and the continual
references to ourselves and the repetition of our names raises up a confused aura that hinders our
work.... The T. S. was meant to be the cornerstone of the future religions of humanity. To accomplish
this object those who lead must leave aside their weak predilections for the forms and ceremonies of
any particular creed and show themselves to be true Theosophists both in inner thought and outward
observance. The greatest of your trials is yet to some. We are watching over you but you must put
forth all your strength."

The letter is signed by "K. H." and the handwriting is a fair imitation of the Adept's. It appears
on pp. 99-100 of a little book -- Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom -- (1870 - 1900) transcribed
and compiled by C. Jinarajadasa, a well-meaning but somewhat simple-minded member of the Annie
Besant society. It is a pompous, pretentious composition with a forced style that cannot veil the
hollowness and mechanical artifice which stands out in every line. "Misleading mayavic ideation" --
"We let loose elevating influences" -- "We show no favours" "We are watching over you" -- and so
on. Blavatsky has "Useful work to do on higher planes" after practically killing herself doing useful
work on this miserable "lower plane." Hallelujah!

----------
(From Messiah #50, April, 1981. In the Sept-Oct, 1987 issue of The Eclectic Theosophist
(#101) this letter is printed in full. The above version has many excises made when published by
Adyar. I asked Eclectic editor W.E. Small how he came on the original of the letter sans all the
deletions, and he said that a copy was sent to them anonymously. The only final proof is the student's
intuition about the whole matter, and the full version of the letter certainly rings much truer than the
above shortened version. G.C. LeGros may have later changed his mind about the letter after seeing
the full version in The Eclectic. - Ed.)

--------------------------------------

CHAOS OR COSMOS

In a recent Theosophical article a curious phrase appeared - "Blavatskian theosophy." The author
seems unaware of the fact the doctrines presented by H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled and The Secret
Doctrine were no inventions of liars, but part of the eternal, universal Wisdom given by the gods to
early man, and preserved and disseminated through the ages by the Hierarchy of Compassion.
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 272-3, states: "But modern science believes not in the 'soul of
things,' and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the
system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted
record covering thousands of generations of seers whose respective experiences were made to test
and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and
exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of humanity."
The six schools of eastern philosophy and metaphysics (which hold much fascination for
dabblers in Theosophy), while containing various remnants of occult truth, are still imperfect from
the standpoint of the true Esoteric Philosophy which H. P. Blavatsky, an initiated Messenger of the
Masters, unveiled to the world. The universal truths she taught would never be described as
"Blavatskian theosophy" by any responsible authority. They belong to the ages.
The six Indian schools have suffered the fate of all past and present efforts made by the
Hierarchy of Compassion. Sectarian pride and exclusiveness, intolerance, ambition, and lust for place
and power, have drained away their spiritual life-essence, leaving only specters behind.
The tragedy in the lives of many students, and would-be students, of Theosophy is that they
forget or ignore those words in The Voice of the Silence, p. 12: "The Self of matter and the SELF of
Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear; there is no place for both." They find the war
between the Higher and Lower Self, God and Demon, Heaven and Hell, simply too much to wage;
and sink back into the passive, comfortable existence of the unenlightened.
In the fourteenth century, Tsong-Kha-pa, the great Initiate and Reformer of Tibetan Lamaism,
gave to the Adept Fraternity a commandment ensuring that in the last quarter of every century
thereafter a Messenger would be sent into the world to strike anew the keynote of ancient Truth.
With 1975 only a few years away, it is not surprising that efforts are being made by enemies
of Theosophy to discredit Blavatsky as an occult authority, and to dismiss the teachings she gave as
nothing more than brain-spun fancies and conjectures.
The student of metaphysics must take what appeals to him - fiction or fact, Chaos or Cosmos.
For long years past it was "Spiritualism" (the "most insane and fatal of Superstitions" -- The Mahatma
Letters, p. 284) that beckoned to him, promising the wisdom of eternity through the babbling lips of
obsessed mediums. Then came the catch-penny psychics selling health and prosperity affirmations;
and self-styled "clairvoyants" mistaking glaucoma for seership.
Now it is "psychology." According to Dr. G. de Purucker, the word -actually a misnomer is
currently used in Occidental seats of learning to signify a madcap study beclouded with doubts,
hypotheses, and guesswork - a variety of mental physiology limited to the working of the brain-mind
in the lowest astral-physical apparatus of the human mind. ( Fundamentals of the Esoteric
Philosophy, p. 123.)
In his Studies in Occult Philosophy, p. 404, he points out that from the Theosophical standpoint,
so-called modern "psychologists" are not genuine psychologists at all; because true psychology
takes in the entire intermediate and invisible constitution of man, while the present-day counterfeit
is merely physiological psychology; and its practitioners study from a strictly physical basis, cutting
off ninety percent or more of the entire range of human consciousness.
In a work attributed to Master Hilarion, Through the Gates of Gold, pp. 20-1, appears a very
pertinent statement: "We see men who are the flower of their age in intellect, who pass beyond their
fellows and tower over them, entering at last upon a fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield to
the innate indolence of the soul and begin to delude themselves by the solace of repetition."
Nowadays it is the so-called "psychologist" and his black sheep brother the "psychiatrist" who
succumb to this "indolence of the soul" and resign themselves to the status of intellectual parrots
chattering old pedagogical cliches that even the self-help paperbacks have discarded.
Just as the average medical doctor is obsessed with the phenomena, not of health, but of
disease, so the "psychologist" and "psychiatrist" are fascinated by the sordid and repulsive aspects
of the human psyche, and the vagrant and flitting thoughts of the lower brain-mind with its petty
hopes, wishes, loves, and hates.
What man must do is free himself from the bondage of the instinctual animal nature, fix his eyes
on the horizons of Spirit, and rise out of the filth and mire where our "doctors of the mind"
concentrate their attention. Instead of encouraging man to aspire toward wisdom, compassion, and
self-forgetfulness, these miseducated enthusiasts, like blind moles probing in darkness, unearth only
perversions of reality.
Modern "psychology" lulls man to sleep. Ageless Theosophy sets him on fire with a passion for
Truth.
Wrangling over the "mystery of man" is unnecessary and unprofitable because we have the
whole truth before us as given by the Masters through Blavatsky and her rightful successors. Man
in his essence is a spark of divine Fire - a "young god" using a body of flesh at the present stage of
his evolutionary journey, which is half-way between the undeveloped life-atom and the fully
developed cosmic spirit or god.
From another point of view, he is a sheaf or bundle of energies - a stream of consciousness
containing monadic "islands" corresponding to various manifestations of Spirit-Matter (Purusha-
Prakriti), or the One Universal Element-Principle.
He also can be considered as a being composed of three essential upadhis or bases: (1.) the
monadic or (divine-spiritual; (2) the intellectual-intuitive; and (3) the vital-astral-physical. These
three lines of evolution are the three fundamental aspects of man, and come from three different
Hierarchies in Nature: the lowest from the Earth (ultimately from the Moon); the intermediate from
the Sun; and the highest from the Kosmic Hierarchy itself.
Having free will, man can choose, at any given moment, the particular "island" of
consciousness on which he cares to dwell. He is not a child of inexorable "fate" nor a hapless victim
of astrological configurations.
Unfortunately, many "psychologists" and "psychiatrists" look upon the universe as a
phenomenon of chaos. Dismissing with contempt the "superstitions" of Spirit, they see in the whole
of Nature only a concatenation of causes and effects from which there is no escape - a "blind" cosmos
operating as a soulless machine, with man a chemical "accident."
According to Dr. de Purucker, and all Adepts and Disciples of the Hierarchy of Compassion, every
man, due to his spiritual faculty of choice, of free will in thought and in action, can change his course
of destiny at any time whatsoever, regardless of the positions or aspects of the celestial bodies.
Indeed, every monad, however evolved or unevolved, has a modicum of free will, which it has
brought forth by individual striving. Man's free will is essentially the free will of Infinitude, and
becomes progressively freer as he outgrows his humanity.
The secret of free will is that it is not native to the kama-manasic part of man (to which area the
speculations of "psychology" are limited), but descends to him directly from the Atman or Higher
Self. Therefore, while his will is enchained, imprisoned, and bound by his present karmic destiny in
this kama-manasic part, he can, by exercising the Atmic Svabhava of this lower part, say yes or no,
and thus change his course of thought and action instantaneously. This cannot at present be done with
total freedom because his will is still chained; but it can always rise into the higher part of itself, and
make that higher part operative here sooner or later. Man does have the power of free will or of
independent choice, but very few men ever exercise it.
To find himself, man must reach out of himself - transcend the limitations of an animalhood
that belongs to the past. He is now on the ascending Luminous Arc of spirit, soaring godward, with
all the Hosts of Heaven calling: "Come up higher!"
It was to show man his true place in the Mighty Scheme, and reveal to him the infinite treasures
of mind and spirit which are his, that, through all ages past, the Voice of Theosophy has spoken.
And to hear that universal Voice, to heed its Message of Hope and Promise, and make real
forever in our inmost being all that it represents, is your purpose, and mine.

(Theosophia, Spring 1972)

-------------------------------------

"I DIE DAILY"

 Taking priority over everything else (except service to humanity) in the lives of Theosophical
aspirants, is the war between Godhood and Demonhood.
If it isn't lust and anger, it's personal pride and ambition, or, worse, spiritual pride and
ambition. No one escapes. It is our heritage as half-evolved human beings.
And since we progress only through self-induced and self-devised efforts, we should move
Heaven and Earth to discover the best possible means of winning in the struggle.
After we have tried everything else, and failed, there are always those three words by the
Christian Adept Paul in I Corinthians xv, 31: "I die daily."
Our life-loving personality - the shrine of Demonhood - is terrified at the thought of death;
and to "die daily" is the last thing it cares to hear. But it is the very thing that humbles, weakens, and
otherwise impoverishes the persistent man-animal bent on enslaving us.
To "die daily" is to let one facet after another of our selfish nature wither and perish until the
lower human mind, purged of its corruption, is centered in the higher Individuality.
It also means to see the uselessness, the emptiness, the vainglory, of personal strivings for
place and power, gratification of ambitions and vanities, and preoccupations with the so-called
"rights" and "privileges" of human existence.
For that matter, we are, every one of us, "dying daily." Each breath we draw is one breath
less, and every heartbeat marks another moment of time forever gone. Why, then, do we so
desperately cling to this passing dream?
We cling because we prefer to ignore its brevity and evanescence, and because we still love
those alluring images of past delights flitting in through the windows of the mind.
But when we let enough of our personal self die, we glimpse the glory of horizons beyond life
- the splendor of those "Gates of Gold" which open to freedom and peace.
Often, when I am tormented by old longings and dreams, I conjure the vision of death. It isn't
pleasant, but it brings me face to face with the inevitable, and exorcises those phantoms of the past.
I once wrote a sonnet - too strong for any editor to publish - which began: "O hungry men,
who love the taste of life." It dealt with man's abandonment to the fleshpots, and his blindness to
spiritual realities.
The poem was born out of terror - terror that overwhelms the mind when one thinks of the
millions of human souls whirling in a dance macabre, deluded by superstition and ignorance,
drugged with animal lusts, and doomed to eventual dissolution, unless .......
Unless the sanity-restoring Wisdom of the Gods once more finds a place in the minds of men,
and redirects the attention of humanity to that Divinity which is the source and goal of all that lives.
To "die daily" means freedom from self-delusion, and knowledge and power with which to
light a few candles in the world's long and terrible night.
- Theosophia, #127, Summer, 1971

-------------------------------

THE SPLENDOR OF IMMENSITY

The thirty or forty billion suns with their attendant planets, which comprise what our
astronomers call the Milky Way, are collectively but a mere mathematical point in the frontierless
reaches of Immensity.
The greatest scientific minds of the age are humbled when considering the vastness of
Infinitude - that shoreless ocean of space, above, below, and around us. Children gaze into the
heavens, and ask: "Where does the sky end?" Adults ask the same question, and search endlessly
for an answer.
Through all time past, man, with his finite consciousness, has attempted to comprehend
Immensity. But has he tried with all of his faculties? Perhaps there is something within him which
can reach out and touch, if only for fleeting moments, the ineffable Veil of the Boundless.
If man, together with all living creatures, is a manifestation of Universal Life, must he not
possess, as part of his being, a spark of that Divine Flame which informs the Whole?
Is he not, essentially, the Whole Itself, as the raindrop, failing into the ocean, loses itself in
the vastness of the sea? Perhaps, like the raindrop, he can, by losing himself, regain a lost identity
with the Reality of a mightier Self!
Pythagoras, the Greek metaphysician, is remembered for his observation that as it is above,
so is it below; and as it is below, so is it above. Man, in a sense, may be looked upon as being
"below" the majesty of starry space, while, at the same time, all that represents the majesty "above"
him abides in his own being, for both are one.
We often are reminded that man is a miniature universe, a galaxy within himself, obedient to
the same cosmic laws that govern the Whole. And these laws - must they not in turn be subservient
to a great Central Law which mystics describe as Celestial Harmony?
In The Voice of the Silence a remarkable passage appears: "Compassion is no attribute. It
is the Law of LAWS - eternal Harmony...." In other words, this omnipresent Central Force, which
regulates the activities of the Whole, is a Spiritual Power - Divine Love!
There is beauty in this concept. The heart and mind instinctively respond to the assurance that
man is not alone, not an exile nor wanderer without guidance, but a voyager in Eternity capable of
understanding the universal laws and obeying them.
One sees himself at last as an indispensable part of the Whole, with the dignity of one who
can become a co-worker with the constructive and preservative forces of Nature. His objective body
and being reveal themselves as cloaks or coverings for a Spiritual-Divine Self within-above - a
deathless Self to which Time, as we know it, is illusory, and which dwells in an Eternal Now without
beginning or end.
That which to his earthly awareness is invisible and soundless, becomes a panorama of
celestial beauty and immortal melody. He transcends himself to become the SELF, abandoning the
heavy weight of selfishness and separateness from the Whole.
Man, one might say, is the Universe, and the Universe himself, even as a tiny flower is at one
with the farthest star. All life moves and breathes in him. There can be no separation between
himself and the surrounding glory of all that is.
The Splendor of Immensity is our Splendor; its beauty, truth, and goodness abide within us,
hidden by the garments of mortality. All is relative and comparative: there can be no final Ultimate
in the scheme of things. Beyond the farthest horizon is another still more wonderful, loftier, sublime,
and more challenging to the deathless Spirit in man. Our little solar system, floating in a seed-world
of stars, is only one of an incalculable number that we have visited in past eternities - one among
countless billions more that we shall visit in our endless journey of Self-becoming.

- Theosophia, #128, Fall 1971

--------------------
SUNSET PRAYER

Unfortunate it is that for many of us the great truths of life do not take hold until the sunset
years. It's been that way with me. Looking back, I see myself preaching Theosophy, and also
dreaming of wealth, power, fame, and the other baubles of self-aggrandizement.
How desirable they seemed, and how worthless now! Like dead leaves of autumn, scattered
by the wind, crumbling into dust. Now I know that it doesn't matter whether one is rich or poor,
honored or dishonored, loved or ignored. These are the externals of life.
What really matters, and what took me years to learn, is changing the heart and mind,
eliminating the black dross of selfishness, and transforming oneself into something the universe can
use for the betterment of the universe.
"Abstain because it is right to abstain, not that yourself shall be kept clean," says Light on the
Path. It is "right" to clean house and change the personal self into a temple where the Light of
Divinity can shine, but only if the self thereby becomes a servant to the Whole.
It means joining the Order of tile Yellow Robe, becoming "as nothing in the eyes of men,"
and working "as those work who are ambitious." Wonderful words; but how do you get people to
take them to heart and apply them?
One call spend a lifetime preaching and writing books on spiritual service, but unless
demonstrates it in his own life, few souls will be led through the gates of salvation.
I have been an eager beaver Theosophist for nearly forty years, and I know that if I had
worked one-tenth as hard reforming myself, as I did amusing audiences with fancy rhetoric, I might
have done some good.
It's the hardest thing in the world to hold, day after day, that resolution to change the heart and
mind. It's hard because it means repudiating almost everything one has been, and was happy to be,
in the Springtime years. But the old self has to go - not die, but be transformed - and that hurts, and
brings an awful loneliness.
It has to be done, or one is undone. The Two Paths are there - one leading to the gods, the
other to oblivion. I ask myself: are you aspiring to the god-worlds to save yourself, or to become
of some value to mankind? The snake of self would settle for heaven rather than cease to be!
Theosophists are not supposed to pray as good Christians do, but sometimes, waiting for
sleep, I pray to the Heart of the Universe. Perhaps it's foolish, but I do it anyway.
My prayer goes something like this: give me not comfort, happiness, possessions - none of
the things of earth - but help me to forget the little self, merge it in the splendor of the Greater Life,
and become a useful servant in the Divine Plan.
It is a prayer of no-compromise, of surrender to the Whole, a surrender without conditions,
a giving back of all that the Universe has given. It is my sunset prayer.

From Theosophia, #131, Summer 1972

---------------------------

NIRVANA NOW!

"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation. Never will I enter into final peace
alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature
throughout the world."
 - Kwan Yin Pledge.

Among the many things in human nature that make the angels weep is the universal desire
to find an "easy way" out of effort and responsibility, and into comfort and contentment.
Theosophists and pseudo-Theosophists are no exceptions. In fact, we may be the most guilty
of all. Years ago, in the pages of a Theosophical magazine, I debated points of doctrine with a
learned Ph.D. who claimed to have read Blavatsky. His chief argument was that the disciplines given
in The Voice of the Silence and Light on the Path were obsolete - that in our enlightened age it was
no longer necessary to be hard on ourselves. He was a dedicated apologist for the "easy way."
Finally, when he attempted to justify self-indulgence as a blessing by a "loving God" for "His
children," I gave up.
It still goes on. The world is teeming with fast gun Salvationists of every size and color from
Krishnamurti to Billy Graham assuring us that the Way to Heaven is an easy matter of canceling
Karma, abolishing Rebirth, accepting God's Grace, and spiraling right up among the angels.
Liberation is ours for the asking. Nirvana now!
As long as Blavatsky lived, the little people around her, with feigned humility, watched their
steps; but after her departure they revamped the teachings to make them more attractive to an "easy
way" world. Their success was phenomenal. Fanciful "commentaries" on The Secret Doctrine,
mutilated editions of The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of the Silence, plus tons of rehashed
Spiritualism and spooked-up science fiction, pour from some of the presses like water over Niagara
Falls.
Speaking of books, did you ever wonder why so many are written on the Bhagavad-Gita, and
none on The Voice of the Silence, Light on the Path, and Golden Precepts? The answer should be
obvious. The Gita, sublime though it is, stresses private, individual salvation (the goal of the "easy
way" dreamers) while the other three emphasize the "hard way" of self-forgetfulness and self-
sacrifice. Concentrating on the Gita alone is like quoting out of context, it means ignoring the
cardinal doctrine of the Hierarchy of Compassion - the giving of the self.
Says the Bhagavad-Gita in a famous passage: 'There dwelleth in the heart of every creature,
O Arjuna, the Master - Isvara - . . . Take sanctuary with him alone, O son of Bharata, with all thy
soul; by his grace thou shalt obtain supreme happiness, the eternal place." But Light on the Path (p.
79) tells the aspirant that "If he desires to become a Neophyte, he at once becomes a servant." The
Voice of the Silence (p. 31) states: "To live to benefit mankind is the first step." And on page 71:
"Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world
cry?"
Here we have two Paths clearly outlined: the "easy way" of doing your duty, minding your
own business, and becoming so pure and holy that you tumble right into heaven; and the "hard way"
of all-out service and sacrifice for others, with total indifference to personal comfort and "peace."
That is, unless you believe that the rules and disciplines of the Masters change with the weather, and
finally become obsolete.
The "hard" fact is that, unless studied in conjunction with the other books, a work such as the
Gita can easily induce a Pratyeka state of mind in which the aspirant drowses away into a beatific
dream, and forgets about the rest of the world. He becomes like the yogi who meditates till his hair
grows twenty feet long and his pride twenty feet long.
In the Spring issue of Theosophia, the editor mentions "The choice between self-complacent
intellectual gratification and an intelligent, purposeful, dynamic, but kindly and self-sacrificing work
for the Cause of Theosophy. . . ." That is putting it in a nut-shell. It is easy to sit comfortably in an
armchair turning out books and articles of innocuous whimsy with Theosophical titles, most of
which, as someone said the other day, is not "writing" at all, but merely "typing."
With all the exciting allurements of our swinging age, how can Theosophical literature hope
to win an audience unless it is alive, ensouled, provocative, and spiced with humor and anecdote?
The heavy material was written long ago by the Adepts and chelas - enough to last the world a
thousand years. We can't add to that. In fact, in The Mahatma Letters, p. 357, the Master K. H. states
that ". . . none but those who have passed at least their third initiation are able to write upon these
subjects comprehensively." And if there are any third-initiation chelas in the present Theosophical
Societies, it's news to me. There weren't any the last time I looked.
Self-complacency is the dry rot of the soul, and the easiest thing on earth to fall into: while
going out into the world, widening the sphere of one's affinities, and spending time, money, and life
itself for the Cause we talk so much about, calls for courage, daring, self-sacrifice, and contempt for
personal comfort. It means following the "hard way" that challenges manhood and spirithood, and
usually demands a painful price.
It all comes down to the question of whether one is to give to himself, or to humanity. Light
on the Path (p. 93) tells us that "Until a man has become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no
existence for those who are Teachers of disciples. And he becomes this by one method only - the
surrender of his personal humanity." Note that it is by "one method only" - not by a number of
methods, among which we might find the longed-for "easy way."
And what does this surrender of personal humanity amount to? It has to mean a lot more than
to give up cigarettes and pork chops, and stop telling lies. Our "personal humanity" is the whole of
us - not merely a few glaring vices that common sense tells us we have to do something about
anyway.
For that matter, many evil persons master their predominant shortcomings in order to become
more efficient and proficient in devilry. Years ago, Dr. Henry T. Edge, who had been a personal
pupil of Blavatsky, wrote about the individual who, finding some particular form of sensuality
oppressive, conquers it in the interests of his own selfish personality. In doing so, he does not ally
himself with the higher part of his nature, the Immortal Trinity, but simply strengthens his will and
becomes a greater menace than before.
I have met a few men who claimed proficiency in black magic; and I remember asking one
of them what he would do when the psychic powers he boasted of got out of hand. With a knowing
smile, be answered: "We prune our powers." What he didn't know was that eventually the Elemental
Forces involved would absorb all that he was, and then it would be too late for any "pruning." He
was another traveler of the "easy way."
We come back to the quotation from Light on the Path. The only safe and sure way to steer
our boat through the deep waters of the Occult is by the total surrender of all that we are. It can't be
a half-way or half-hearted surrender, nor the elimination of a few nagging faults or weaknesses.
There is no compromise between the God and the Demon.
Theosophists who have not yet been confronted by the power of the Demon have no idea
whatsoever of its strength and cunning. In his Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita Judge points out that ".
. . if we completely apprehended the enormous power of our passions and various tendencies, most
of us would throw up the fight in advance; for nothing could persuade us that any power within could
withstand against such overwhelming odds."
But there is a Power - the greatest in the universe - our Higher Self, the Divine-Spiritual
source of our being. The Masters have allied themselves with it, and so can we because we now
stand where they once stood. And everyone who has glimpsed the glory of the Path those mighty
souls tread, and determines to move toward it, has beside him, night and day, the faithful Presence
of that Higher Self.
But "He will not know thee unless thou knowest Him." The initial effort (how many times
have you heard it?) must be made by us; we must make His acquaintance. The Higher Self has no
awareness of the lower, animal-passional man absorbed in his pursuit of selfish gratifications
(including spiritual gratifications). The lower man must be dethroned, crucified on the Cross of
Renunciation and sacrifice, that the awakened and aspiring part of him may join hands with the God,
the Warrior, the Christos within-above.
As well as I can understand it, the secret of success lies in the total giving back of the self to
the ALL. It isn't easy to capture the thought in words because in making the effort - which is hardly
an "effort" but a wonderful "letting go" - one transcends the squirrel cage of the brain-mind, and
tastes a freedom that expands outward into a limitless "everywhere." One finds himself as part of
something more than himself - something ineffable, nameless, infinite, and eternal. Individuality is
on its way to Universality.
It is difficult to write on a theme such as this because the phrases one must use have been
cliches for a hundred years. But the teaching about the surrender of one's personal humanity is so
fundamental and all-important that unless it is taken to heart and acted upon the rest of the
Theosophical philosophy can be studied till Doomsday, and, at best, lead only to that Sattvic
complacency and quiescence which are next-door neighbors to Pratyeka escapism.

From Theosophia #132, Fall 1972

-----------------------

PEACE

IT WAS a moment magical and bright!

A golden Gate swung open, and I said:
"I have been here before, this have I known
Before . . . here there is neither Present, Past,
Nor Future: Time is banished . . . and I know
That This has been my Home, that This is I, -
My Innermost, - a Peace without beginning,
A Freedom and a Glory without end."

And then the Gate was closed. On earth I stood.

The tumult rose about me, and the cry
Of life beat loudly in my heart again;
But I remembered still the golden Light, -
The Radiance that's neither life nor death,
But THAT which IS, the Universe and I.

- Theosophical Forum, Sept., 1938

------------------
RETURN
by "An Ex-Chela"

There is a Spirit on the moving air

Which, from the mighty depths of Nature's heart,
Awakens in the inmost soul of man
A silver dream, an image made of stars
That reaches back across the deeps of time
To some far golden sunrise, half-remembered,
That shone upon an early day we knew
When mind celestial guided our young feet
On strange, forgotten shores by magic seas.
There is a spirit haunting us life-long
Which calls to something deep within the heart,
To something of Itself adream in us:
A moving Spirit like a ceaseless wave
That beats forever on dim shores where we
Stand waiting for a Voice we cannot name,
But which we know will speak, that whispers now
And always even though we do not hear
Its music on the winds of life, the loud
Relentless storm of sound that over earth
Has deafened us; but still we wait and know
That by the sweet surrender of the heart,
The giving back of life and love and dreams,
The Voice will speak again, the Spirit vast
And beautiful and wise and ever near
Will find our hearts, and be the breath, the life,
The love and every dream that we shall know,
Until, delivered of ourself and filled
With the bright essence of the Self Supreme,
We rebecome the One we always were,
In conscious glory and eternal joy;
And rise above the storm of sound, and rise
Above the dark into the Sunrise Gold
Of Mind Celestial, Spirit, Being, All,
The Voice Triumphant, Song that never ends.

----------------------

SOURCES

A
The Amazing Monads . . . . Messiah #68, December, 1986
Ambition Versus Attainment . . . . Messiah #62, November, 1985
Are You a Beatnik? . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Armageddon Coming Up? . . Messiah #66, Mid-Summer 1986
Autumn Afternoon . . . . . . . Theosophical Forum, October, 1941
Autumn Night . . . . Messiah #88, Autumn 1991
Autumn Trails . . . . Messiah #81, Autumn 1989

B
Be a Propagandist . . . . . . Messiah #79, April-May, 1989
Bright moment . . . Messiah, (date unknown)

C
Cabbage Heads and Kings . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Chelas and Human Beings . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
The Cult of the Vampires . . . . Messiah #73, February, 1988

D
Darwin Bombed by Beetle . . . . Messiah #72, October, 1987
The Demon Gods . . . . . . . Messiah #67, October, 1986
Divine Willingness . . . . . Messiah #68, December 1986
The Duty Before Us . . . . . Messiah#76, Autumn, 1988
The Duty of a Theosophist . . . . . Messiah #80, June-July, 1989

E
The Ending Year . . . . . . Messiah #89, Winter Solstice, 1991
Eternal Life . . . . Theosophical Forum, September, 1939
The Eternal Now . . . . . Messiah #70, March-April, 1987

F
A Field of Daisies . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
The Final Visitor . . . . Messiah #74, April-May, 1988
On Forgiveness . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
The Foundation of Wisdom . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Free (I) . . . . Messiah #76, Autumn, 1988
Free (II) . . . . . Messiah #85, January-February, 1991
Free Choice and Destiny . . . . . Messiah #78, February-March, 1989

G
"God!' and the Universal Mind . . . . Messiah #61, Autumn, 1985
The Golden Chalice (poem) . . . . Messiah #83, Spring 1990
The Great Illumination . . . . . . Messiah #59, Spring, 1985
The Great Pyramid . . . . . . . . Messiah #61, Autumn, 1985
The Greatest Curse . . . . . . . Messiah #66, Summer, 1986
Group Souls and Soul Mates . . . . Messiah #65, Summer, 1986
The Gulls . . . . . . . . Messiah #71, May-June 1987
H
The Heart-Light . . . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date Unknown)
The Hungry Men - Correspondence with W. E. Small

I
Immensity! . . . . Messiah #69, Jan-Feb, 1987
Invocation (poem) . . . . . . . Messiah #74, April-May, 1988

L
The Land of No Return . . Messiah #80, June-July, 1989
Lemuria and Atlantis . . . . . Messiah #64, May, 1986
Let the Savior In (poem) . . . . . Messiah #89, Winter Solstice 1991
From Letters . . . . . . . Correspondence 2/7/86, 5/28/86, 12/16/86, ½3/87
The Lighthouse in the Storm . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Little Lives . . . . . . Messiah #68, December, 1986
Look Homeward, Pilgrim . . . . . . Messiah #70, March-April, 1987
Loving Our Enemies . . . . . . . Messiah #85, Jan-Feb, 1991

M
Man After Death . . . Theosophical Forum (date unknown), originally read at
Fifth Int. Inter-Theosophical Convention at Niagara Falls, Ont., Canada, June 14-15,
1937
Man's Enduring Hope . . . . . . . Messiah #74, April-May, 1988
The 'Messiah-Person . . . . . . . Messiah #62, November, 1985
The 'Miracle Motor . . . . . . . . Messiah #71, May-June, 1987

N
Nocturne (poem) . . . . . . . Messiah #85, Jan-Feb, 1991
Never Despair! . . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)

0
Ondra (poem) . . . . . . . Messiah #65, Summer 1986
One Road . . . . . . . Messiah #62, November, 1985
The Oracles Foretell (poem) . . . . . . Correspondence 2/21/87
Other Autumns . . . . Messiah #76, Autumn 1988
Other Wonders . . . . Messiah #67, October, 1986
Our Natural Diet . . . . Messiah #68, December, 1986

P
The Path (poem) . . . . . . Messiah #77, December, 1988
The Path Ahead . . . . . Messiah #76, Autumn 1988
The Pleasure-Mad-Hatter . . . .Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
A Point Loma Memory (poem) . . . . Messiah #61, Autumn 1985
The Point of No Return . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Prisoner of the Clouds . . . . Theosophical Forum, Oct 1942
Proofs, Faith, Knowledge . . . . . Theosophical Forum, Oct 1939
Pyramid Power . . . . Messiah #60, Sept 1985

Q
The Quest . . . . . . . Messiah #86, Spring 1991
Questions Answered . . . . . . . Messiah #69, Jan-Feb, 1987

R
The Real and the unreal . . . . Messiah #75, Mid-Summer 1988
Renascence (poem) . . . . . . . Messiah #78, Feb-March, 1989
Return, by "Ex-Chela" . . . . . . . Theosophical Notes, Feb., 1958

S
The Sacred Season . . . . . . . . Messiah #80, June-July 1989
The Secret Doctrine on the Problem of Sex . . . Messiah #12, July 1975
Sex and Occult Science . . . Messiah #70, March-April, 1987
Short-Cuts to Shamballa . . . . . Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
The Snow Lily (poem) . . . . . . Messiah #82, December, 1989
Songs Like Flowers (poem) . . . . .Theosophical Forum, June, 1941
The Splendor That Is . . . . . . . Messiah #78, February, 1988
Sthula-Sarira (poem) . . . Messiah #83, Spring 1990

T
The Theosophical Seal . . . . Messiah #65, Summer 1986
Theosophists Versus Nice People, Etc. . . . .Chicago Study Group Flyer (date unknown)
Theosophy and Quantum Physics . . . . . Messiah #59, Spring 1985
Though It Be Spring (poem) . . . . . . Messiah #79, April-May, 1989
The Traveler . . . . . . . . . . Messiah #68 , October, 1986
Turn the Golden Key . . . . . . Messiah #63, February, 1986
Twenty Years an Ex-Chela . . . . . Theosophical Notes, Feb 1957

U
The UFO Mystery . . . . . . . . Messiah #59, Spring 1985
The Universal You . . . . . . . . Messiah #69, Jan-Feb, 1989
Up Heart! . . . Theosophical Forum, February, 1939

W
What is Initiation . . . . Messiah #66, Summer 1986
What is Our Duty? . . . . . . . . Messiah #66, Summer 1986
What Teachings Should We Stress? . . . . . . Messiah #83, Spring 1990
White Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . Messiah #71, May-June, 1987
Wild Splendor (poem) . . . . . . . . . Messiah#82, December, 1989

Y
You Are You Forever . . . . . . . . . Messiah #64, May, 1986
You - The Disciple . . . . . . . Messiah #70, March-April, 1987

-----------------------------------------------