BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTHThe great antique heart, how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth's business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God 's messages among men.... A great law of duty, high as these two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else – it was a reality, and it is one: the garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity! Rounds and Races are integral to cosmic and human evolution. This septenary teaching is of crucial significance to the conceptual framework of the Gupta Vidya. Metaphysics and ethics are fused in one unbroken series of instinctual and intuitive states of unfolding monadic consciousness in slowly evolving material vestures. Of the seven planes of Kosmic consciousness, the lower four rupa planes provide the seemingly objective matrix for the seven globes of the Earth Chain. The upper three arupa planes are almost incomprehensible by the uninitiated and are closely connected with the ineffable mystery of Mahatic self-consciousness, at once the source and support of universal progress upon the seven globes of human evolution. These seven planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three "seats" to life and activity. Any human being who is truly serious about activating these dormant spiritual centres and selflessly attuning them to the three higher planes of Kosmic consciousness must think away entirely from the enveloping vestures and move upon the "waters of Space", the empyrean of "airy nothings", the Akashic void within the Hebdomadic Heart, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. In the alchemical process of progressive self-attenuation the enlightened person makes fruitful discoveries about the limits and possibilities, the tendencies and tropisms, of all the varying classes of elementals in the illusory vestures. If any seeker of truth is Buddhic regarding the broad scheme of evolution, which is triple in function and sevenfold in the great circlings of globes by the Monadic Host, then the voluntary assumption of incarnation by Divine Self-consciousness at a certain critical stage of global evolution yields a richer view of the true stature of being human, God in actu. If any sensitive person fully thought out what it means to be a self-conscious being, making meaningful connections in reference to all aspects of life and death, then one would verily become capable of cooperating with the evolutionary scheme by staying in line with those gods and sages who are the unthanked Teachers of Humanity. No such fundamental revolution in consciousness is possible without becoming intensely aware of both motive and method. Motive has to do with morality in the metaphysical sense, the rate of vibration of one's spiritual volition. Is the individual soul consciously seeking to help, heal and elevate every single life-atom? Or, owing to fear, ignorance, suspicion and doubt, is the fugitive soul trapped in a mechanical repetition of moribund hostilities inimical to those whom it irrationally and unintentionally injures? Through unremitting attention to such internal obstructions, one could rise above the lower or lunar planes of consciousness, seeing compulsive tendencies for what they are, and thus introduce by renewed acts of noetic will a strong current of spiritual benevolence. This would be the basis of Bodhisattvic ethics, a joyous mode of relaxed breathing. In pursuing this Aquarian life-style, one is certain to encounter various difficulties in the realm of the mind in regard to one's permeability to astral forces, one's personal vulnerability to reversals, perversion and pride, and also a strange susceptibility to distortions and awkwardnesses that come between what is spontaneously felt at the core of one's being and its deliberate enactment in the chaotic context of social intercourse. One would have to become mathematically objective about the fluctuating patterns of mental deposits and tendencies that have cut deep grooves in the volatile vestures of personal existence. One would have to see all this in relation to human evolution as a whole, asking relevant questions about the uncouth Fourth Race as well as concerning what one really learnt in the first sub-race of the Fifth Race of original thinkers and theophilanthropists who were effortlessly capable of creative ideation and concentrated endeavour. In asking such questions one has to lift ethical sensitivity beyond the level of the individual monad, through active concern with all humanity, to cosmic planes of cognition. In so doing one could gradually come to make fundamental readjustments in the elusive relationship between one's lower and higher centres of perception, volition and empathy. Although such a prospect of self-sovereignty may seem to be an enormous evolutionary advance, in retrospect, once it is attained, it will be seen as no more than a self-conscious restoration of the primeval modes of moral awareness of the Third Root Race. Soon after the descent of the gods, the pristine Sons of Wisdom who incarnated into the Third Race, they engendered through Kriyashakti the sacred progeny of the truly twice-born, the fabled Sons of Ad, the mythic "Sons of the Fire-Mist", the immaculate Sons of Will and Yoga. What they emanated in unison was a wondrous collective being (Bodhisattvic Golden Egg), a mysterious Bodhi-Tree and deathless fountainhead, the Tree of Noetic Knowledge, from which arose all the initiated Adepts and god-men, gurus and sages of the human race in subsequent epochs of evolution. The arcane teachings affirm that Dakshinamurti, the Initiator of Initiates, was the original Jagadguru (Amitabha), Rishi Narayan or Shri Krishna, the Ancient of Days who stood as Shiva (Avalokiteshwara) behind Buddha, Shankara, Pythagoras and Plato, Confucius and Lao Tzu, Christ and Paul, Count St. Germain and Claude St. Martin, Cagliostro and Mesmer, H.P. Blavatsky and W.Q.Judge. There have always existed on earth the secret mystery-temples in which the whole life of the neophyte through a series of preparatory initiations must eventually lead to grateful prostration before the Great Sacrifice (Adhiyajna) and a Host of Hierophants, the Buddhas of Contemplation, silently sustaining the whole world, the Wheel of Samsara, the Great Chain of Being. It was H.P. Blavatsky's accredited privilege to transmit this ancient and sacred teaching in a memorable hymnody in The Secret Doctrine, from which every Lanoo may derive inspiration and strength in reawakening the mighty power of sacrifice, the invocation of Adhiyajna through Agniyoga by the grace of Adi Sanat, the Mahat-Atman. The "BEING" just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane – the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the "Nameless One" who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the "Initiator," called the "GREAT SACRIFICE." For, sitting at the threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not know – aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE. This sublime portrait must speak to the imperishable spiritual intuition in the inmost heart of every human being who seeks to cross the threshold. It is truly a theme for reflection, and if used as the basis of deep and daily meditation, it should act upon the sovereign spiritual will. It should lend hidden strength to the capacity to marshal and concentrate in one's divine sphere all sacrificial thoughts, feelings, energies, words and acts. It should also give the indestructible strength to remain like the solitary watcher totally bound to his self-chosen post. The very idea of any shadow of turning or variation from one's sacred commitment would be deeply repugnant to one's nature. The esoteric teaching given above was always whispered but only enacted within the sanctum sanctorum of the Mystery Schools. It is a theurgic teaching meant to fire a human being through Agniyoga and arouse soul-memories (anamnesis) from pre-manvantaric aeons in cosmic evolution. To be able to incarnate such a therapeutic teaching is to light up the rising flame of resolve such as will never be extinguished in the mighty task of universal enlightenment. Many seekers have genuinely attempted such an authentic and generous discipline but have still been unable to extricate themselves from their own inane servitude to their shadow, their envy and suspicion, their compulsive expansion of that shadow of inherent inferiority through fear and doubt, through obsessional thinking and delusional feeling, and the overwhelming chaos of undeliberate, undiscriminating responses to the worlds of form. This is not only fatal but also like a terminal case of cancer in a human being who has used the priceless boon of truth for blocking the door to the humanity of the future. Regardless however, of the mistakes and failures of most neophytes, there must come a decisive moment of choice when one is prepared to combine solemnity and simplicity in a joyous acceptance of one's own spiritual mission as a pilgrim-soul, as a true disciple upon the Path, as a vigilant listener to the utterance of Divine Wisdom, as a Happy Warrior in the Army of the Voice, and as a creative restorer of the natural order of spontaneous fellow-feeling towards the whole of humanity. One must cherish constantly the light of daring, the moral courage to take the Kwan Yin pledge – an irrevocable decision that confers true dignity, spiritual wakefulness and the resonance of responsibility. For such a sacred resolve to be an exemplar of spiritual strength, all of one's being must be involved, without withholding any asset or evading any obligation. Nature is by no means ungenerous in affording seasonal opportunities for honest rededication to self-renewal and service. The fortnight commencing with the winter solstice and culminating on the fourth of January, consecrated to Hermes-Buddha, marks the potent seed-time for the coming year. Soren Kierkegaard once observed that "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." It is important that a sensitive person should prepare for the future by taking a firm, all-inclusive, unconditional position gestated out of deep reflection. One should set apart abundant time for that noble purpose to be truly able to generate the permanent basis of alchemical resolution and spiritual will. Then as one comes down from that exalted state of samadhi, enriched by constant meditation and manvantaric sleep, one could renew and resume this profound preparation in the dawn and the dusk, using all the precious time available to "get ready for Dubjed". If this is done between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five, then the time between the solstice and fourth of January could be used annually to light the fires in all souls of the irrevocable and effortlessly selfless commitment to the whole of life and to all the solar and lunar ancestors. If anyone truly performed this yajna in the sacred name of the Guru of Gurus, the Hierophant of Hierophants, the Initiator of Initiates, one would receive untold benefits from the service of Krishna, the Purna Avatar, the Logos in the Cosmos and the God in man. Those who wish to enjoy this sanctification might well look back calmly at the lost years and wasted lives, not in self-serving images in elaborate detail but philosophically in terms of ingrained tendencies and fear-ridden preoccupations. Even through looking back over one year, one could make many discoveries about human vulnerabilities, excuses and rationalizations. One may also see in one's pseudo-Promethean struggles the neglected hooking-points that support one's better self in surviving the pralaya of a disintegrating bimillennial epoch and in widely sharing all one's truest perceptions and finest perspectives. While venturing upon this meditative retrospection, one must recognize that one is only seeking the sacred tribe of those who have effortlessly renewed their Bodhisattvic pledges in recurring cycles of descent and incarnations of ascent for the sake of all. One is imbibing strength from those to whom this is as natural as breathing, as effortless as meditating upon the mantrams of Lanoos and Arhats. Having assimilated the sacred teaching of Jnana Yajna, one must deeply desire (Itchasakti) to insert one's own labours of love and acts of devotion into the Great Sacrifice (Maha Yajna). People are both cursed and blessed by being told these things, because if they listen to Krishna's secret teaching and do nothing about it, then their karma is needlessly burdensome. There is always a risk assumed in intoning Brahma Vach. In general, Gandhi's axiom is fundamental: human nature is such that it must either soar or sink, and whether one goes forward or backward is determined by the benevolent use of modern knowledge and ancient Wisdom. When spiritual knowledge is made the enduring basis of deep reflection, where it is moistened by the liquid fire of devotion to Universal Good and by the concentrated current of aspiration, then it becomes a breakthrough into inner space. With noetic insight, one can burn out at the core all those defeatist devices of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting which continually toss the initiative back to the illusory self, thereby making spiritual life seem a wearisome, defensive and cheerless struggle, with tension and tightness, and little sweetness or light. In fact, the taking of a Vow during a rising cycle of immense promise for mankind means the restoration of the reins of kingship to the Sovereign Self, and the firm refusal to allow the initiative to be smothered in the ashes of vain hopes and burnt-out ideals. This requires a period of intense tapas, a time of mental and physical fasting, self-renewal through silence, abstention and calmness: otherwise, one remains compulsively caught up in muddy streams of sterile emanations and the accompanying flotsam of fuzzy elementals that crowd in and clog the nerve-currents of noetic will. At the root of this dismal predicament is the false idea of who one is and a delusive image of oneself as the egocentric pivot of a world upon which one may make myriad claims. The sacrificial, humane, adult, mellow and mature outlook is the exact opposite. Dag Hammarskjold once wrote that human life involves a bringing together of oil and air, and then there is a spark. The moment one thinks of rights, there is no spark; the oil and air will never come together. Sadly, human beings repeatedly abort, murder or damage their own chances as souls because they cannot get rid of this fundamentally false idea of a separate self, and even more sadly, in the light of divine teaching, they sometimes cling to it with melodramatic versatility. This is such piteous karma that it is all too poignant to contemplate – on behalf of a single human soul. Therefore one should, for the sake of all, awake, arise and seek the Great Sacrifice, and seek a pellucid reflection in the waters of wisdom. Thus the soil of the brain-mind is stirred, washed and prepared to receive the hidden seed of moral resolution, releasing the spiritual will in silence and secrecy, strengthened by inner humility and true courage during the seed-time of the golden harvest that will feed the hungry. Those who are dedicated to serve Krishna should meditate upon the hymnody to the Great Sacrifice, or the rhapsody of the Self-Governed Sage in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, or on any one of the magnificent portraits of Avatars (Magus-Teachers) in any sacred text, each of which is a great gift which Rishis (Sages) are ceaselessly beatified to hear and chant. If this is the endearing characteristic of all Mahatmas and Bodhisattvas, surely the least any human being can do who has the golden opportunity to use such a text is to become somewhat worthy of the sacred privilege. It is now time to awake from preparatory slumber and truly meditate upon those mantramic texts (in Sanskritic English or German and Russian) and taking even a few sentences, think deeply about their meaning and use. All sacred texts will suggest to their ardent devotees the different stages in reference to mind control, the method of collecting the mind, and the infallible means for removing the delusion and commotion of worldly concern. Having learnt how to settle the mind in a state of calm so that it is like the still lagoon or swan lake, one can let it expand like the blue vault of the sky when enshrined in that serene state. In time, one will come to see the golden sphere of cosmic light within the hollow of the heart in the expanding universe of the Hiranyagarbha, the Egg of Brahma. This will reverse the polarities in the laya centres for those who persist in the discipline of selflessness. This secret teaching is jewelled in the hidden heart of every authentic tradition, is always given for the sake of all humanity to those who silently serve the City of Man. Since samsara is merely a mirage of the mind, the disciple must examine and expunge all thoughts that pollute the holy avenues of expression. To do this, one has to meditate upon mighty spiritual conceptions, readily forgetting oneself and thrilling with a feeling of universal gratitude and individual responsibility, reverence and renunciation. From within the spiritual heart, one must evoke the cool courage to look at one's faults with the unerring eye of Buddhic discernment. It is always crucial to growth that the positive meditations shall be far greater than the negative sacrifices, and that one should really savour the sheer joy of mental procreation and self-cancellation. One should lose one's morbid taste for self-righteous condemnation and image-crippling which is rooted in the paralysing fear of failure and sprouts into the cankerous weeds of an asuric and demonic way of life. Thinking in terms of votive offerings rather than death sentences could vitalize that vacuum in the brain and the heart where lies hidden the elixir of decisiveness and definiteness, a crispness and magnanimity which authenticate the true signature of selfhood. Too many human beings have repeatedly subverted their lives owing to their obsession with their own repulsiveness instead of learning the lesson that they must confront the lie in the soul which conceals the virginal beauty within the antediluvian monster. They have hugely enjoyed meditating upon themselves as total failures, thereby insulting the integrity of the Mahatmas and also doing immeasurable harm because they would have been able to do much good with even a little of this mental prostration to Krishna. One has to recover an exquisite sense of the sacred, the numinous and the unmanifest One has to reach out repeatedly to that light of the Logos which is above the cerebrum, that which is without any limits or reservations, that divine lustre which can never be mirrored except through Buddhi in Manas. This is the pristine ray of Mahat-Atman, the Universal Self of the Maha Yogin serenely seated upon Mount Kailas while dancing amidst the ghouls of the graveyard, releasing them from self-torture and their unending cruelty to gnomes and undines, sylphs and salamanders. Buddhi is latent in every atom, and yet as Buddhi mirrors Atman, there is an infallible result, a humbling decisiveness and sovereign assurance which comes from nowhere else than the transcendental Buddhas of Compassion. Nishchaya in Sanskrit means "without any shadow". When a true yogi, from the depths of his or her meditation upon human suffering and the need for Divine Wisdom, vitalizes that immaculate light of the Atman in the inmost brain, perfectly mirrored in the cells of the occipital lobe, there arises an ancient assurance and selfless certainty which is concealed and can never be erased. It can never be shown to the blasphemous even though it remains as a hidden lamp behind the borrowed mask. The light of true conviction engenders an irreversible current through Sachakriya, a sacred affirmation of the truth of a lifetime. Even though a fallen disciple has languished for long with wasted words, harsh sounds, violent speech, empty offerings, even though enormous karma has been generated by the Atlantean rakshasa (monster), all of which will have to be rendered in full account in future lives, nevertheless if he invokes the grace of Krishna-Christos through penitential meditations upon the Soundless Sound, he can place the demonic dwarf beneath the feet of the Divine Dancer and rescue from the debris of shipwreck the white dove of peace, the olive branch of humility, and the self-cancelled pledge of true service. All who take advantage of this matchless means of true self-renewal can inaugurate a fundamental change in the polluted Manas through Agniyoga, the sacred science of baptism through the fires of self-purgation. Kama manas, the inverted reflection of Manas, becomes constricted through the cohesion of the delusive image of personal identity bound up with intellectual autoeroticism, physical sensations, sights and sounds, deceptive externalities, and the knots of perversion tightening the myriad cords of foreshortened conceptions of space-time. Kama manas is the externalizing and rationalizing mind that needlessly negates others as well as oneself. It is the mediocre mis-educated insecure mind that cuts up everything and dismisses the divine with faint praise and the sneer of guilty derision! Kama manas is discontinuous and it creates a monotonous movement from one extreme to the opposite so that it cannot come to rest, but is constantly enslaved by restless caution and is constitutionally incapable of transcending its own meanness and spiritual sterility. All of this is the unnatural legacy of the Fourth Race of graceless giants. Whilst, in the economy of Nature, even such tendencies to grossness represent the tortured descent of the light of consciousness to the lesser hierarchies and lower emanations, the excess of humbug with which this self-assassination is perpetrated through cowardly speech is indeed abnormal. This is the origin of obsessive guilt and compulsive fear, arising from the degradation of the Holy of Holies, the desecration of the sacred tabernacle, the massacre of innocents, the endlessly evasive abdication of responsibility through pride in hypocrisy, self-torment, and the dressing up of moral blindness in the cloak of false modesty. On the other hand, all human beings of every race and tribe, every creed and nihilistic sect, innately enjoy a residual sense of decency, a feeling for tenderness, forgiveness and magnanimity towards the unloved. This is innate in all human beings because it was the great gift of the gods to the Third Race of Innocents. Without a spark of empathy there would be no conatus, no basis for a rational self-preservation except in the case of those soulless beings who behave like machines and robots. Knowing all this at some level, one can invoke the blessing of the Avatars to fan the faint spark of Buddhi buried within the burnt-out charcoal of a self-throttled Manas. Krishna hinted in the Uttara Gita that even the elongated shadow of self-betrayal could be slowly shrunk by self-attenuation through sacred speech and abstention from harm to the helpless life-atoms. Each and all must restore what is natural to the whole of humanity and was exemplified par excellence by the authentically initiated Brahmins of antiquity who had little to do with the India of recent millennia, but were true transmitters of the oral traditions of theurgic utterance until the time of betrayal of the Buddha except in cloistered sanctuaries of yogins and sannyasins. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators. As the child's first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and independent of him. DEVOTION arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us. . . . The Initiates of the deathless Race scattered the seeds of primordial wisdom among all the races of men and the Mystery Schools in cloistered gardens, caves and sanctuaries around the globe. The innate feeling of devotion throbbed in the sacred chamber of every human heart, but to be able to exemplify it naturally and instantly has become the lost art of magnanimity in the age of Varna Shankar or the Tower of Babel. The gift of graciousness cannot be bequeathed by external structures or physical heredity in Kali Yuga, the Age of Iron. The class of souls which delayed incarnation – owing to pride in purity, cowardly caution, fear of involvement in the mire of human fallibility, and a stubbornly selfish refusal to move into more differentiated realms – paradoxically became those very beings who, once they had incarnated, were captive to carnality, weakness of will, and fear-ridden worship of the printed word. The iron of self-contempt and false toughness, image-crippling and spiritual circumcision, entered into their souls, their blood and brain-cells. In the legends and myths of antiquity, the original fear of incarnation, owing to deficiency in active meditation upon the entire scale of ascent and descent, resulted in the perverse or compulsive pollution of the powers of thought, imagination and reverence for life. The resulting corruption of consciousness and simian imitativeness became the karmic burden of the Pratyeka Buddhas of spiritual selfishness. The atoms of matter were tainted by the double sin of the mindless and miscegenation. As a result, many gluttonous men and women are constantly caught up in those material particles, or become mediumistic through foul thoughts and fear of invasion. Among the sorcerers, traducers and traitors the power of the Aum was lost. The Third Eye closed, with a consequent suffocation of spiritual intuitions in the moral dwarfs of humanity. The therapeutic restoration of the porosity of the brain-mind to the light of Atma-Buddhi is possible. It depends upon the progressive exemplification of five criteria of what is natural to human self-consciousness. First is the irrepressible feeling of reverence for the unbroken line of descent of the Great Sacrifice of the Hierophantic Host under the eternal Initiator of Initiates, the Evergreen Trees of Knowledge, Enlightenment and Immortality. Honouring others is innate to the human heart: it would show as a true reverence for Nature, for the Spiritual Sun and its myriad rays among all humanity, for all the constellations and the seven kingdoms and the Illustrious Predecessors, Light-Bringers and Pathfinders, reverence that is natural. Anything less is unnatural and abnormal, a moral monstrosity. Secondly, there is a longing for the ideal forms and archetypes, a great joy in withdrawing from the pressure of concern with the concrete to the empyrean of invisible potentials, a pure love of Truth, Beauty and Goodness in all forms, selfless ideation on metaphysical paradigms, parapolitical ideals and Universal Good – the Agathon. Thirdly, and this is certainly a very decisive test, an innate, instructive and ineradicable conviction (regardless of culture) that the sexual act is sacred, that the Lesser Mysteries of Eros must mirror the pristine Light of the Logos invoked through Sound and Silence in the Greater Mysteries. Anything else runs the risk of ever-increasing desecration of the dignity of human beings, the sanctity of the Holy of Holies, as well as the fecundity of human potentials. Fourthly, there is devotion, the only feeling natural to the hearts of men and women of all races, common to the human babe and the young of animals. Devotion, understood rightly, shows in the Rishis and Sages as well as in a child's simplicity which co-exists with authentic solemnity and inner depth. Inherent in the human heart is the ever-present sense of the sacred and the feeling that everything in human worship of the Divine is worthy of minimal respect. This is magically shown in that which corresponds to Manas among all the senses, the synthesizing sense of touch. The fifth criterion of culture is a recognition of the human body as a temple, not a tomb, of the pilgrim-soul in every person. There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form. . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! . . . If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression . . . of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, – the great inscrutable Mystery. The pervasive sense of the sacred and universal respect for freedom of thought and choice have become obscured in many victims of modernity owing to a hypnotic fascination with corruption and evil, forgetfulness of the divine mission of the immortal Soul, alienation from others and oneself, especially through fear of failure, estrangement through loneliness, distrust of oneself, and possible misuse in former lives due to cowardice and false ideas connected with evasion of the laws of Nature. Corruption of consciousness must be healed, and what is natural must be restored through the Golden Rule of reciprocity. Already, since 1963, many souls have taken birth in diverse cultures who have a recognition of the need to restore the ethical foundation of human society. This transcends the claims of all cultures to pre-eminence. Such souls will increase in number until a time comes when there will be so many for whom this is so natural that any encouragement given them will help the regeneration of the human race. This will be a distinctly different class of souls from those who came mauled and tormented by the degradation of two world wars, which helped to make popular the works of the corrupt. The attempt to make normal what was abnormal has failed, so far. It was tried in every way, but once the alternatives are known, then what is abnormal had to become more and more desperate and self-destructive because it could not any more pretend to be normal. The twilight hour of sadists and masochists has now struck, and myriads of pilgrim-souls seek the Midnight Sun and the sacred constellation of the Aquarian Age, which began soon after the fin de siecle. The invisible dawn of the cosmopolis is summoned by the flute of the divine cowherd, beckoning home the matured innocents that dared to dream of a Golden Age. Meanwhile, Nataraja of Kailas and Kala-Hamsa enacts the Tandava Dance over the heads of epicurean giants, stoical dwarfs and cynical eunuchs. The age of sectarian religions, technocratic politics and cultural envy is dead. Kama manas has been dethroned by Buddhi-Taijasi, the Light of the Logos. The age of humanistic science, authentic spirituality and mini-communes has just begun, foreshadowing the end of the twentieth century and the emergence of the City of Man. The inevitable return of initiative to the scattered supporters of what is innate, universal and spiritual, merely suggests that no special pleading is needed for true gratitude and an authentic sense of the sacred. Despite the failures of so many, the philosophy of perfectibility, the religion of responsibility and the science of spirituality will spread far and wide, like the myriad branches of the Ashwatha tree, with its roots in heaven. The collective self-consciousness that has been perverted must be released through love and wit. If one sees clearly the sacredness of the indestructible teaching of antiquity, one can recognize the Kama Manasic self-interest of Arjuna as a necessary tool in the service of Krishna in the Great War between psuche and nous, the Tower of Babel and the New Jerusalem, the head and the heart of every human being on earth. The true spark of universal brotherhood, reverence for teachers, gratitude to the good earth, and reticent sanctity may, even from a spark, be fanned into the fires of creativity in the service of the civilization of the future. This is the great hope which hides the golden promise. If even a few theophilanthropists would now serve the Bodhi-Tree and the City of Man, the Isle of the Blessed would be grateful beyond measure. Every such sincere effort is assuredly of help in relieving the pain of the human heart, which is widespread today, and also in laying down the universal cornerstones of the academies and ashrams of the future. All cultures need to rediscover what it means to be truly humane. Builders of bridges between Heaven and Earth are few and far between, and always have been; they may be readily recognized by their unswerving fidelity to pledges on behalf of mankind. Citizens of the cosmopolis will unite when they have nothing to lose but their masks of misanthropy – or their fugitive souls, on earth as in heaven.
Hermes, December 1980 |