Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00488)

Sept 17 2004


Friends:

Her are some more notes on THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY


THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT 2003 Nov. 17 128th anniversary

 

There is a very great difference between the Theosophical Movement and any
Theosophical Society. The Movement is moral, ethical, spiritual, universal,
invisible save in effect, and continuous. A Society formed for theosophical
work is a visible organization, an effect, a machine for conserving energy
and putting it to use; it is not nor can it be universal, nor is it
continuous. Organized Theosophical bodies are made by men for their better
cooperation, but, being mere outer shells, they must change from time to
time as human defects come out, as the times change, and as the great
underlying spiritual movement compels such alterations.

The Theosophical Movement being continuous, it is to be found in all times
and in all nations. Wherever thought has struggled to be free, wherever
spiritual ideas, as opposed to forms and dogmatism, have been promulgated,
there the great movement is to be discerned. .. One can therefore see that
to worship an organization . is to fall down before Form. . H. P. Blavatsky
herself declared that it were better to do away with the Society rather than
to destroy Brotherhood.

The real unity and prevalence, and the real internationalism, do not consist
in having a single organization. They are found in the similarity of aim, of
aspiration, of purpose, of teaching, of ethics. [From "The Theosophical
Movement," Path, August, 1895]

W Q J Articles Vol II, p. 124...

 

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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.

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."

>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.

Turn to page 444 and onward of the second volume. 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. 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.

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.
..

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 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. ..

 

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. [From "On the Future: A Few
Reflections," W. Q. Judge, Lucifer, March, 1892.]

W Q J Articles Vol. II, p 130.

 

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- - Where the Movement Really Began - - 

 

It came neither from the East nor from the West. The East has solidified,
crystallized, stood still; it would never have commenced such a movement.
The West did not know about such things; it did not want them. We are
wrapped up in material progress, and never would have started such a
movement. Where, then, was the movement really started? It was started in
the spiritual world above both East and West, by living men. Not by spirits
of dead men, but by living spirits, living spirits like yourselves, who have
risen above creeds and nations and castes and peoples, and are simply human
beings. They started this movement by giving the impulse and the message;
that is why we who have been in it so long have the confidence born of
knowledge, knowledge that it will succeed.

We began at the time under direction, when we knew that materialism was
spreading, not only over the West, but insidiously all over the East. ..

When the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 . . . There was nothing
else but laughter and jokes. . But we have succeeded always in remaining at
the post and saying just what we meant to say all the time despite all the
laughter. We took no salaries, but we had belief in the human heart.

The objects of the Theosophical Society having been explained to you, you
know the Society has but one doctrine, that of Universal Brotherhood. You
cannot belong to it unless you believe in that; you won't want to belong to
it unless you believe in that. But you are not required to believe anything
else. (From "Organized Life of the T.S."  

W Q J Articles Vol. II, p. 136-370

 

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