Theos-Talk Archives (October 2010 Message tt00188)

Recently, I saw a passage in Secret Doctrine which struck me as important
and very relevant today as it has been all along.

In this passage, HPB clearly points out that the constant presence in our
midst of every element of strife and opposition is the root cause of all the
troubles we face. In addition, HPB points out that if one breaks the laws of
Harmony, one must be prepared to fall into chaos one has oneself produced.

When we look at the activities of theosophical leaders especially outside
India, since the start of the election in 2008, one clearly sees the
presence of the above factors. Even though, the election is a settled issue,
still we have not seen any vigorous attempts from the leaders in attempts to
bring about better harmony and eliminate opposition.

If this trend continues, how do you convince potential new recruits to
theosophy that we practice what we preach. Many leaders have written and
lectured and continue to lecture on the varied fine aspects of the
theosophical classics such as Voice of Silence, At the Feet of the Master,
Mahatma Letters, etc. Not only there are causes detrimental to Harmony, all
the efforts to broadcast theosophy to potential audience will be seen as
idle talk and no one will pay any serious attention.

If our message has to move forward, then the leaders should show leadership
and find ways to improve the Harmony and reduce actions which are productive
of strife and opposition.

We hope soon the leaders who meditate every day will wake up and be spurred
into real action.

Here is the text of the passed from SD:

âWith right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our
neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them,
the two-thirds of the Worldâs evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man
to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor
weapons to act through.

It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and
opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and
individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause
of the âways of Providence.â We cut these numerous windings in our destinies
daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on
the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those
ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery
of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then
accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident
in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced
back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of
Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, âthe laws of life,â one
must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself produced. For,
according to the same writer, âthe only conclusion one can come to is that
these laws of life are their own avengers; and consequently that every
avenging Angel is only a typified representation of their re-action.â

Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not
ourselves, the artificers of our destinies, but rather those angels, the
guardians of harmony. Karma-Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual)
dynamical effect of causes produced and forces awakened into activity by our
own actions. It is a law of occult dynamics that âa given amount of energy
expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater
results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of
existence.â

This state will last till manâs spiritual intuitions are fully opened, which
will not happen before we fairly cast off our thick coats of matter; until
we begin acting from within, instead of ever following impulses from
without; namely, those produced by our physical senses and gross selfish
body. Until then the only palliative to the evils of life is union and
harmony â a Brotherhood in actu, and altruism not simply in name. The
suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but a variety of
bad effects. And if a Brotherhood or even a number of Brotherhoods may not
be able to prevent nations from occasionally cutting each otherâs throats â
still unity in thought and action, and philosophical research into the
mysteries of being, will always prevent some, while trying to comprehend
that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional
causes in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma gives
the conviction that if â

    â. . . . virtue in distress, and vice in triumph
    Make atheists of mankind,â*

it is only because that mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth
that man is himself his own saviour as his own destroyer. That he need not
accuse Heaven and the gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice
that reigns in the midst of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat
this bit of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to forbear accusing That which â

    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    âJust, though mysterious, leads us on unerring
    Through ways unmarkâd from guilt to punishment . . .â

â which are now the ways and the high road on which move onward the great
European nations. The Western Aryans had, every nation and tribe, like their
Eastern brethren of the Fifth Race, their Golden and their Iron ages, their
period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while
now, several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali-Yuga, an age
Black with Horrors. . . . .â


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