Theos-Talk Archives (January 2004 Message tt00328)

Jan 20 2004

The Present and the FUTURE ?

Re: PHOTO : SUNSET OVER EUROPE (sent a few days ago)


Dear Friends:

The following seems an interesting corollary to this picture .

Note that underneath the ocean surface of the Atlantic appear some of
the main topographical features -- indicating how the great Atlantic
continent sank.

Best wishes,

Dallas

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PS If you did not get a connection over INTERNET to the photo, please
let me know. 
 
I will re-send. D

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ON THE FUTURE: A FEW REFLECTIONS

[Written in 1892]


Although I am an American citizen, the place of my birth was in Ireland,
and in what I am about to say I cannot be accused of Columbia-mania, for
no matter how long might be my life I could never be an American. For
that perhaps it is right, since it is compulsory, to wait for some
distant incarnation.

Now, either H. P. B. was right or she was wrong in what she says in the
Secret Doctrine about the future of America. If wrong, then all this may
be dismissed as idle speculation. But, if right, then all thoughtful
Theosophists must take heed, weigh well, mentally appropriate and always
remember what are her words as well as the conclusions to which they
lead.


5 CONTINENTS

In the first pages of the second volume she speaks of five great
Continents. First, the Imperishable Sacred Land [this is at the North
Pole, W.Q.J.]; second, the Hyperborean, now part of it is in Northern
Asia; third, Lemuria, sunk long ago, but leaving some remains, islands,
the points of high mountain ranges; fourth, Atlantis, presumably in the
Atlantic Ocean, now below the level of the water, but with perhaps
Teneriffe and Atlas as reminders; and fifth, "was America."


6th RACE TO EMERGE

>From a survey of the book, digging in notes and culling from the text
here and there, the conclusion is irresistible that although the present
America is not the actual Continent as it is to be, it is a portion of
it; and certainly is now the nursery for the race that will in the
future occupy the sixth Continent, which for the sixth Great Root-Race
will emerge from the waters. Where? Perhaps when the present America has
been split up by tremendous cataclysms, leaving here and there large
pieces on its western side, it is in the Pacific Ocean that the great
mass of the new one will come up from the long sleep below the sea. 

Rightly then will the great far western ocean have been named Pacific,
for that Race will not be given to contest nor hear of wars or rumours
of war, since it will be too near the seventh, whose mission it must be
to attain to the consummation, to seize and hold the Holy Grail.


AMERICA TODAY

Turn to page 444 and onward of the second volume [S D]. Read there that
the Americans have become in only three hundred years a primary race pro
tem., in short, the germs of the sixth sub-race, to blossom in a few
more centuries into the pioneers of that one which must succeed to the
present European fifth sub-race in all its characteristics. 


IN 25,000 YEARS

Then after about 25,000 years, which you will note is meant for a great
sidereal cycle of a little over that length of time, this new race will
prepare for the seventh sub-race. Cataclysms will then fall upon you;
lands and nations will be swept away, first of all being the European,
including the British Isles - if not gone before - and then parts of
both North and South America. And how puny, mongrel, indeed, will be the
remains of the scientists of today, great masters of microbes now, but
then to be looked upon as strange remains of the Nineteenth Century,
when, as the people will tell each other then, so many, with Truth
before them, laughed at it and stoned its apostles, dancing a fantastic
dance meanwhile around the altar of invisible matter.


NEW RACE TO EMERGE

It seems as if some power, deliberately planning, had selected North and
South America for the place where a new primary root-race should be
begun. These two continents were evidently the seats of ancient races
and not the habitat of wild undeveloped men. 

The red man of the Northern one has all the appearance and beliefs of a
once great race. He believes in one God, a Devachan of happy hunting
after death. Some tribes have diagrams of how the world was formed and
peopled, that strangely resemble Hindū cosmogony, and their folklore
bears deep marks of having come down from an older and better time. 

Following the course of exploration southwards, we find accumulating
evidences all the way of a prior civilization now gone with the cyclic
wave which brought it up. Central America is crowded with remains in
stone and brick; and so on south still we discover similar proofs. In
course of time these continents became what might be called arable land,
lying waiting, recuperating, until the European streams of men began to
pour upon it. The Spanish overflowed South America and settled
California and Mexico; the English, French, and Spanish took the North,
and later all nations came, so that now in both continents nearly every
race is mixed and still mixing. Chinese even have married women of
European blood; Hindūs are also here; the ancient Parsī race has its
representatives; the Spanish mixed with the aborigines, and the
slaveholders with the Africans. I doubt not but that some one from every
race known to us has been here and has left, within the last two hundred
years, some impression through mixture of blood.

But the last remnants of the fifth Continent, America, will not
disappear until the new race has been some time born. Then a new
Dwelling, the sixth Continent, will have appeared over the waters to
receive the youth who will tower above us as we do above the pigmies of
Africa. But no America as we now know it will exist. Yet these men must
be the descendants of the race that is now rising here. Otherwise our
philosophy is all wrong. 

So then, in America now is forming the new sub-race, and in this land
was founded the present Theosophical Society: two matters of great
importance. It was to the United States, observe, that the messenger [H
P B] of the Masters came, although Europe was just as accessible for the
enterprise set on foot. Later, this messenger went to India and then to
Europe, settling down in the British Isles. All of this is of importance
in our reflections. For why in America at first does she begin the
movement, and why end her part of it in England? One might be led to ask
why was not an effort made at all costs to give the last impulse
outwardly in the land of promise where she began the work?

Do not imagine for one moment, O ye English brothers of mine, that
London was selected for this because the beauties of your island called
her, or for that she had decided at the finish that after all a mistake
had been made in not going there first. It was all out of stern
necessity, with a wisdom derived from many older heads, having in view
the cycles as they sweep resistlessly forward. 

The point where the great energy is started, the centre of force, is the
more important, and not the place at which it is ended. And this remains
true, no matter how essential the place of ending may be in the scheme.
What, do you suppose India is not as important? and would not that land
have offered seemingly a better spot than all for the beginning of the
magnum opus? Adepts do not make mistakes like that.

America's discovery is ascribed to Christopher Columbus. Although it is
doubted, yet no one doubts that the Spanish people did the most at first
in peopling it, meanwhile working off some old and making some new
Karma, by killing many of the aborigines. Thus it is that doomed people
rush on to their doom, even as the troops of insects, animals and men
were seen by Arjuna to rush into Krishna's flaming mouths. But later
came the sturdy stock from England, who, in the greatest nation, the
most enduring on this continent, have left their impress indelibly in
the people, in its laws, in its constitution, its customs, its
literature and language. 

Perhaps England and Ireland are the gateways for the Egos who incarnate
here in the silent work of making a new race. Maybe there is some
significance in the fact that more lines of steamships conveying human
freight come to the United States from England, passing Ireland on the
way as the last seen land of the old world, than from anywhere else. The
deeds of men, the enterprises of merchants, and the wars of soldiers all
follow implicitly a law that is fixed in the stars, and while they copy
the past they ever symbolize the future.

Did H. P. B. only joke when she wrote in her book that Ireland is an
ancient Atlantean remnant, and England a younger Isle, whose rising from
the sea was watched by wise men from Erin's shore? Perhaps the people of
that old land may have an important influence in the new race of
America. It would appear from comparison that they might have had, and
probably will in the future. Perhaps, politically, since many expect
social disturbances in America. In such a case any student of character
will admit that the Irish, ignorant or not, will stand for law and order
- for her sons are not battling here with an ancient foe. 

Why, too, by strange freak of fate is the great stone of destiny in
Westminster Abbey fixed under the coronation chair on which the Queen
was crowned? Let us also be informed if there be any finger-shadow
pointing to the future in the fact that England's Queen, crowned over
that stone, is Empress of India, from which we claim the Aryans came,
and where their glorious long-forgotten knowledge is preserved? Her name
is Victory. It is the victory for "the new order of Ages"; and that new
order began in America, its advent noted and cut on the as yet unused
obverse side of the present seal of the United States Government. 

A victory in the union of the Egos from East and West; for England
stretches one hand over to the home of the new race, which she can never
own, with the other governing India, and completes the circuit. It may
be a fleeting picture, perhaps to be wiped out for a while in a stream
of blood, but such is the way the cycles roll and how we may learn to
read the future. For England's destiny is not complete, nor has the time
struck. 

None of us hug foolish delusions too long, and even if Ireland were once
a most sacred place, that is no reason why we should want to go there.
For in America those whose Karma has led them there will work for the
same end and brotherhood as others left in India and Europe. The
dominant language and style of thought in America is English, albeit
transforming itself every day. It is there that silently the work goes
on; there European fathers and mothers have gone, establishing currents
of attraction that will inevitably and unceasingly draw into
reincarnation Egos similar to themselves. And the great forward and
backward rush is completed by the retarded Egos as they die out of other
nations, coming meanwhile into flesh again among the older races left
behind.

* * * *

At least such seemed the view while the clouds lifted - and then once
more there was silence.


WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, F.T.S.
Lucifer, March, 1892
 
(1) It is an interesting fact that in India there is an important
ceremony called "mounting the stone."
 
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PS If you did not get a connection over INTERNET to the photo, please
let me know. 
 
I will re-send.

D