Theos-Talk Archives (July 2007 Message tt00230)

Frank,

I plan to respond to one or two of your points.  But first I want to 
present a number of documents for you and other interested readers to 
consider.

In this posting (Part 1) I give what HPB writes about 
FUTURE "agents", "torch-bearers", etc.

FIRST STATEMENT:

The first passage is from October 1888, that is, when THE SECRET 
DOCTRINE was published, readers would have read the following at the 
beginning of volume I:

"In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far better 
fitted [than H.P.B.], may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give 
final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-
Vidya; and that . . . the source of all religions and 
philosophies . . . has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, 
but is at last found." S.D., 1888, Vol I, p. xxxviii (original 
edition) 

SECOND STATEMENT:

Only TWO MONTHS LATER (Dec. 1888) H.P. Blavatsky wrote the following 
to her esoteric students: 

"Let every member [of the Esoteric Section] know . . . that the time 
for such priceless acquisition is limited. The writer of the present 
is old; her life is well-nigh worn out, and she may be 
summoned 'home' any day and almost any hour. And if her place is even 
filled up, perchance by another worthier and more learned than 
herself, still there remain but twelve years to the last hour of the 
term - namely, till December the 31st, 1899. Those who will not have 
profited by the opportunity (given to the world in every last quarter 
of a century), those who will not have reached a certain point of 
psychic and spiritual development, or that point from which begins 
the cycle of adeptship, by that day - those will advance no further 
than the knowledge already acquired." 

"No Master of Wisdom from the East will appear or send any one to 
Europe or America after that period, and the sluggards will have to 
renounce every chance of advancement in their present incarnation - 
until the year 1975. Such is the LAW, for we are in Kali Yuga - the 
Black Age - and the restrictions in this cycle, the first 5,000 years 
of which will expire in 1897, are great and almost insuperable." 
HPB's Collected Writings, Vol XII, pp. 491-492.  

THIRD STATEMENT:

Some six months later (that is, June/July 1889), one could read in 
the newly released KEY TO THEOSOPHY the following:

". . .during the last quarter of every hundred years an attempt is 
made by those 'Masters' . . . to help on the spiritual progress of 
Humanity in a marked and definite way. Towards the close of each 
century you will invariably find that an outpouring or upheaval of 
spirituality - or call it mysticism if you prefer - has taken place. 
Some one or more persons have appeared in the world as their agents, 
and a greater or less amount of occult knowledge and teaching has 
been given out . . . . .

"If the present attempt, in the form of our Society, succeeds better 
than its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an 
organized, living and healthy body when the time comes for the effort 
of the XXth century. The general condition of men's minds and hearts 
will have been improved and purified by the spread of its 
teachings . . . . but besides a large and accessible literature ready 
to men's hands, the next impulse will find a numerous and united body 
of people ready to welcome the new torch-bearer of Truth. He will 
find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for 
him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organization 
awaiting his arrival . . . ." Original edition, pp. 306-7.   

Daniel
http://hpb.cc