NEEDED: A LEAP FORWARD!
Boris de Zirkoff – USA
Universal Life, in all its multi-myriad forms and aspects, is in constant flux. Unalterable in its underlying essence, it is in perpetual outward change. As soon as any one of its temporary manifestations becomes rigid, decay sets in, which is but another aspect of life, breaking up the outworn form, in order to build a new and more adequate one.
Wherever there is flexibility, optimism, dynamic interest, vision, the search for the unknown, the urge to grow and to become, and the enthusiasm that scales new heights and attempts the seemingly impossible—there is youth and hope and the broad highway to all future yet unborn.
Wherever there is rigidity, pessimism, indifference, fear of the unknown, frustration and mental fatigue, doubt, anxiety and lack of vision, attachment to established routines and well-worn grooves of thought, crystallization of methods, and cherished traditions obscuring the distant horizons of the future—there is old age, decay, senility, and the loss of the vital fires that are essential to all becoming and all growth.
H. P. Blavatsky was a great psychological mystery to the world. She was a great psychological mystery even to her followers; ay, even to those who thought that they knew her best, and who met her daily and worked with her and were taught by her. To them, at least to most of them, she was an astounding paradox of what seemed to be conflicting and confusing traits of character. The intuitions of her followers and pupils told them that they were in the presence of a World-Teacher, the Messenger of other World-Teachers even greater than she was, who had sent her forth to strike the keynotes of a new age; and yet despite all this she puzzled these followers of hers most sadly, as much by those other traits of character which astonished and perplexed them because they had not the vision to expect to find such lofty and almost incomprehensible traits in a spiritual Teacher and Leader.
The careful analysis of external circumstances and difficulties that are gripping societies and countries at this moment in time, makes us understand how important it is to reaffirm the concept of the unity of life, which is at the heart of Theosophical reflection. A sense of separateness, selfish achievements—be they of a political or financial nature—refusal of philosophical and religious contact, personal achievement as the keystone of development, have shown, and are showing, that they are not capable of giving humanity a better future. Therefore even today there is the problem of knowing how to interpret the evolutionary momentum of humanity, and the conditions for its real development in an ethical and positive sense.
While in its earlier days the Theosophical Society was only one of the very few organizations to bring Eastern thought to the West, today it is one of the many voices in a vast choir. Yet, as a Society, we have as much right to exist as any other of its kind; and it is clear that we still have a strong, uplifting, and healing message to offer to the public at large, whose need for clarity and truth is ever-increasing. Even when at this moment some of the original reasons for establishing the TS have since long been achieved, much remains to be done to help one another convert parts of the outer and inner human wastelands into flourishing heavens of peace and sustainable spiritual prosperity.
Will is the exclusive possession of man on this our plane of consciousness. It divides him from the brute in whom instinctive desire only is active.
We speak of rendering homage. There are various ways of so doing. There is the homage of words, and there is the homage of the heart which leads to emulation. The homage of words is good when the heart is behind it; but the homage imitating grand action is finer and higher still. 
[The following article is based on a talk by Lorraine Christensen, given during the 2007 summer meeting of the Theosophical Society in America at Wheaton, Illinois.]
In my first article on universal brotherhood for Theosophy Forward, "Do We Truly Aspire to Universal Brotherhood," we saw that, according to the Mahatmas, universal brotherhood "is the only secure foundation for universal morality . . . and it is the aspiration of the true adept." And thus it provides the safe moral basis for the study of universal ideas which lead to a knowledge of the Laws of Life. This article will briefly examine how an understanding of the mystic aspects of universal brotherhood will help put our understanding of universal morality on a "secure foundation," that is, in line with the laws of life.
Even with a common slate of Theosophical teachings, students of Theosophy express doubt concerning their ability to recognize a true teacher should he suddenly appear. Have we established, then, as "pure" Theosophy a certain set of books, or perhaps doctrines, without examining them for the future guidance of our movement? Surely the Masters who fashioned a craft designed to negotiate the cyclical tides of centuries ahead, would provide enough ballast to carry it over the rough shoals it has met with from the very beginning. We have not only been given direct warnings, but devotional texts to fortify the heart-life and subdue the darker currents of our human personality. We have emphasis on motive and equanimity in the Bhagavad-Gita, a text so universal as to be adopted by the West as one of the world's great literary pieces. We have allegories too, which warn of the degradation of the esoteric schools into centers of black magic. They often show how the purity of one disciple can help keep a link unbroken.
Two great shadowy shapes remain fixed in the attention of the mind of the day, threatening to become in the twentieth century more formidable and engrossing than ever. They are religion and reform, and in their sweep they include every question of pressing human need; for this first arises through the introspective experience of the race out of its aspirations toward the unknown and the ever-present desire to solve the questions whence and why, while the second has its birth in the conditions surrounding the bodies of the questioners of fate who struggle helplessly in the ocean of material existence.
In July 1776, a group of fifty-six men, of whom at least fifty were members of the Masonic fraternity, signed a document that has come to be considered one of the great landmarks in human history. Largely authored by one of the most illumined and literate men of the eighteenth-century, Thomas Jefferson, that document—the Declaration of Independence—established the separation of the American colonies from England on the basis of certain philosophical premises current in the Age of Enlightenment. The significance of the Declaration has been said to lie in the fact that it translated concepts concerning the inherent rights that every human being was presumed to possess, simply by virtue of being human, from the philosophical sphere to the political arena. 
George William Russell (10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935), whose nom de plume was AE (from aeon, a Gnostic term for a divine emanation), was a leading figure in the Irish Renaissance, which also included James Joyce, Sean O'Casey, John Synge, and William Butler Yeats. Russell was a mystic, poet, painter, critic, clairvoyant, Irish nationalist, and leading member of the Theosophical Society in Ireland. In the following extract, kindly sent to us by a good friend, Russell is poetically describing a basic Theosophical principle: the contrast between the outer and inner worlds, the personality and the individuality, samsara and nirvana.
After a quick visit to Paris to view the new Eiffel Tower, Madame Blavatsky returned through Granville and Jersey, in 'an old washtub called a steamer'. To enter the tiny Channel Island ports the ships have to be small, and in the choppy seas, around the rocks, pitch about like nutshells. She recovered from her sea-sickness in St Helier, then in St Aubin.