The Bearers of Truth Across the Ages

THE most intelligent being in the universe, man, has never been without a friend, but has a line of elder brothers who continually watch over the progress of the less progressed.

The term Mahatma has come into wide use as Mme. H. P. Blavatsky constantly referred to them as her Masters who gave her all the knowledge she possessed.

They were at first known only as the Brothers, but afterwards, when many Hindus flocked to the Theosophical movement, the name Mahatma was brought into use, inasmuch as it has behind it an immense body of Indian tradition and literature.

The ancients taught that the course of evolution is the drama of the soul and that nature exists for no other purpose than the soul’s experience.

There must be beings in the universe whose intelligence is as much beyond ours as ours exceeds that of the black beetle, and who take an active part in the government of the natural order of things.

They preserve the knowledge gained through aeons of trial and experience, and continually seek for opportunities of drawing the developing intelligence of the human race on this or other globes to consider the great truths concerning the destiny of the soul.

They keep the knowledge they have gained of the laws of nature in all departments, and are ready when cyclic law permits to use it for the benefit of mankind. They have always existed as a body, all knowing each other, no matter in what part of the world they may be, and all working for humanity in many different ways.

It would be subversive of the ends they have in view were they to make themselves public in the present civilization, which is based almost wholly on money, fame, glory, and personality.

For this age, as one of them has already said, “is an age of transition.”

Every system of thought, science, religion, government, and society is changing, and man’s mind is only preparing for an alteration into that state which will permit the human race to advance to the point suitable for these elder brothers to introduce their actual presence to our sight.

They may be truly called the bearers of the torch of truth across the ages. They investigate all things and beings.

They know what man is in his innermost nature and what his powers and destiny, his state before birth and the states into which he goes after the death of his body.

They have stood by the cradle of nations and seen the vast achievements of the ancients, watched sadly the decay of those who had no power to resist the cyclic law of rise and fall. While cataclysms seemed to show a universal destruction of art, architecture, religion, and philosophy, they have preserved the records of it all in places secure from the ravages of either men or time.

But, asks the busy man of the nineteenth century who reads the newspapers and believes in “modern progress,”  if these elder brothers are all you claim them to be, why have they left no mark on history nor gathered men around them? Their own reply, was published some time ago (First Letter):

“We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world’s cosmic relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other as day does night.

The major and minor yugas [cycles] must be accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents.”

Amazing Animal and Human Encounters

ANYONE who thinks Theosophy is only abstract metaphysics, invisible worlds, and mystical hierarchies might want to think again.

Theosophical philosophy, often referred to as the “Wisdom Religion,” teaches Universal Brotherhood to its students as the First Fundamental.

“Real Theosophy is Altruism,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in her heroic article Our Cycle and the Next — “and we cannot repeat it too often,” she emphasized — because its a direct application of that First Fundamental.

Theosophy always keeps in step with the ancients who were serious about nourishing and protecting Mother Earth, and every one of her creatures great and small. “Help Nature,” Blavatsky wrote in her rendition of The Book of the Golden Precepts,” and work on with her.”

“[Theosophy] is brotherly love, mutual help, unswerving devotion to Truth.”

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Individual conscious awareness develops gradually throughout the kingdoms of nature, peaking in the human stage.  Self-aware consciousness in some higher animals, Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:178), “comes almost to the point.” This short video clip dramatizes that “almost” point.

Be Cruelty Free, with a Universal Compassion for Life

THE spiritual sun of consciousness manifests by degrees, not in humans alone, but the  legacy of all kingdoms of nature as befits the plan of their particular hierarchy — from atoms to stars.

Samhain, origin of Halloween, for example, is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana — the Hindu God Krishna — all symbols of man’s Higher Diviner Nature.

It is such universal spiritual forces that manifest cyclically during mankind’s darkest times. And the whole of nature, visible and invisible, benefits from such cycles, it is taught in esoteric cycles — wisely appointed beneficent spiritual impulses.

It is no less than in the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), where Krishna, the Higher Self of all human beings, assures his disciple Arjuna that he is continually reborn as a a world benefactor.

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It is only selfish Buddhas, the “Pratyekas”, he taught, who remain in the their selfish state of personal Nirvana and refuse to reach out to help others. Corresponding examples of such evil separateness can be found in all walks of life in every culture and clime.

“I produce myself among creatures whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world,” says Krishna, “and thus  

I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

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Our daily sleeping and waking cycles correspond to this universal impulse which daily transports us to our true home. Dreamless sleep is a state “in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings, and enter into the spiritual plane,” wrote W. Q. Judge in Three Planes of Human Life.

Animals have many dream states too, and dreamless states where they commune consciously or unconsciously in varying degrees, depending on the kingdom to which they belong, with the spiritual hierarchies of their particular degree.

“It is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary, it is constantly salutary in its effect.”

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In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be the norm. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.

This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and

“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

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Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.

“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”