The Great Cause – Part two
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- Published: Friday, 08 July 2011 02:53
Nicholas Weeks – USA
[This article is based on a talk given in April 2010 at the Krotona Institute in Ojai, California by the author. References to Echoes of the Orient are from the revised version, 2009-2010.]
Now some thoughts on human perfectibility. Some object to spiritual perfection because it sounds like a final status, with all change or progress ended. I have not found this taught in the original Theosophy of HPB or WQJ. Even if this were the case, consider the many thousands of incarnations involved in becoming a Buddha or Bodhisattva, for example. Then, many manvantaras more helping the spiritual advance of all beings; boredom is not in the future.
Here is some of what William Quan Judge wrote on perfection:
“On this plane of ours the spirit focalizes itself in all human beings who choose to permit it to do so, and the refusal to permit it is the cause of ignorance, of sin, of all sorrow and suffering. In all ages some have come to this high state, have grown to be as gods, are partakers actively in the work of nature, and go on from century to century widening their consciousness and increasing the scope of their government in nature. This is the destiny of all beings, and hence at the outset Theosophy postulates this perfectibility of the race, removes the idea of innate unregenerable wickedness, and offers a purpose and an aim for life which is consonant with the longings of the soul and with its real nature, tending at the same time to destroy pessimism with its companion, despair.
In Theosophy the world is held to be the product of the evolution of the [Unknown eternal] principle..., from the very lowest first forms of life, guided as it proceeded by intelligent perfected beings from other and older evolutions, and compounded also of the egos or individual spirits for and by whom it emanates. Hence man as we know him is held to be a conscious spirit, the flower of evolution, with other and lower classes of egos below him in the lower kingdoms, all however coming up and destined one day to be on the same human stage as we now are, we then being higher still.” [Echoes II 136]
Among the items of curious lore in H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine are her references to a language called Senzar. Senzar is a mystery. According to Blavatsky, it is the original language of the stanzas of Dzyan, which are the core of her great book and also the original language of all humanity. Blavatsky calls Senzar “a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted” (SD 1:xxxvii), and so it is. The name of Senzar appears in none of the lists of the world’s languages that linguists have compiled, nor is it ever likely to. We know about Senzar only what HPB has told us, although in fact she has told us a good deal.
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.
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.]
