Ananya Sri Ram – USA

Ananya is since January 2025 the director of the Krotona School of Theosophy 

Some twenty years before Louis Pasteur or Joseph Lister made their name in the field of germ theory and antiseptic practices made its way into our lives, there was a Hungarian doctor from Vienna named Ignaz Semmelweis. Having graduated from Vienna Medical School in 1844, he became an assistant to Johann Klein, a professor of obstetrics at the same medical school. At the time, many mothers were still delivering their babies at home with midwives assisting them despite the new practice of mothers delivering in hospitals. The hospitals however, routinely reported that as many as 25% to 100% of the mothers delivering were dying due to “childbed fever,” known today as postpartum infection. The number of mothers who died after delivering at home or at the hospital with a midwife was much lower. No one really understood why at the time but there were many theories.

[Based on two of Pekka Ervast's talks on HPB on 8^th May, 1932 (White Lotus Day)
Compiled and translated into English from Finnish by Antti Savinainen.] 

We are celebrating the commemoration of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (HPB), who started the Theosophical movement and died on May 8, 1891. HPB was a spiritual mother to many people. Many are the hearts that acknowledge that she has helped them in their spiritual life. I think she was the most incredible human being to have appeared on this earth in our times. Though I saw that Jesus Christ was a miraculous being and that Gautama Buddha was another ideal being, HPB was to me a living person who never wanted to appear as a saint or anything special. On the contrary, she wanted to conceal all that was great in her and preferred to appear imperfect since she abhorred all worship. I knew this in some mysterious way in my youth. I did not understand her as well as I did when I was older, but I admired and loved her.  I felt that if we lived in a knighthood, I would always wear her colors on my shoulder or helmet, and fight for her.

David Grossman – USA 

      At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

                                                                              Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot    

At a recent lecture titled “True Sacrifice” a presentation in the ongoing “Aquarian Series” at the United Lodge of Theosophists,  San Diego many meaningful ideas were explored. One was that true sacrifice is the process of “restoring ones’ relationship with the Universe consciously.” To put it another way sacrifice is the process of giving up the ever fleeting on behalf of the ever lasting.

The word Sacred is found at the root of Sacrifice and usually refers to something religious or spiritual as in the idea of sacred texts. So true sacrifice from a Theosophical and/or esoteric standpoint is an action that dedicates itself to the higher life or the good of the whole rather than our personal desires, wishes or aims. 

An archetypal example of sacrifice is found in The Secret Doctrine (SD) by H.P. Blavatsky which presents the ideas of  The Initiator and The Great Sacrifice. 

Red poppies, symbol of Sacrifice 

She speaks of higher beings, that is, souls who have evolved far beyond our present humanity in this evolutionary cycle, termed the fourth round in theosophical nomenclature. Much earlier in this round these more progressed beings from the (Lemurian) “third race” performed interestingly enough what she calls “The Great Sacrifice.” It involved igniting the spark of individualized self-consciousness, referred to as “the lighting up of Manas” or mind. This marks the point of the “Promethian gift and sacrifice” (See Myth of Prometheus) that allowed for the continued spiritual evolution of man, fully incarnated into material form, which is the most physical point (the middle of the fourth round) in this manvantara or great cycle.  

Recently, a court in India sentenced a convict in the rape and murder case to life imprisonment until death. However, people across the country wanted capital punishment. This has raised certain questions: Does capital punishment have a place in a civilised society and is that the deterrent to heinous crimes? There are some countries that have abolished capital punishment, and the Arab Islamic nations still decapitate the convicts in the public. And yet rapes, murders and highway robberies happen periodically in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Then, what purpose does capital punishment serve? Why do masses insist upon the same? “There is a fine line between justice and vengeance. It is easy to cross that line when you are consumed by anger and grief. While justice aims to restore order and uphold righteousness, vengeance is driven by anger and desire for retaliation….It is important to exercise caution and restraint…and act with a clear mind and a sense of fairness in the pursuit of justice, rather than let emotions cloud our judgment,” writes Sumit Paul. The struggle for existence can bring out peaceful and ethical approach in some, while in others, violent and ruthless approach. “