THE NEW CYCLE: Extracts from an Article Written by H. P. Blavatsky, the Foundress of the Theosophical Society, for the first number of "La Revue Théosophique," 1889
THE principal aim of our organization, which we are laboring to make a real brotherhood, is expressed in the motto of the Theosophical Society: "There is no religion higher than truth." As an impersonal Society we must be ready to seize the truth wherever we find it, without permitting ourselves more partiality for one belief than for another. This leads directly to a logical conclusion. If we acclaim and receive with open arms all sincere truthseekers, there can be no place in our ranks for the bigot, the sectarian, or the hypocrite, enclosed in Chinese Walls of dogma, each stone bearing the words "No admission." What place indeed could such fanatics occupy in them, fanatics whose religions forbid all inquiry and do not admit any argument as possible, when the mother idea, the very root of the beautiful plant we call Theosophy is known as—absolute and unfettered liberty to investigate all the mysteries of nature, human or divine!
With this exception the Society invites everyone to participate in its activities and discoveries. Whoever feels his heart beat in unison with the great heart of humanity; whoever feels his interests are one with those of every being poorer and less fortunate than himself; every man or woman who is ready to hold out a helping hand to the suffering; whoever understands the true meaning of the word "Egoism"; is a Theosophist by birth and by right. He can always be sure of finding sympathetic souls among us.
We have already said elsewhere, that "Born in the United States the Theosophical Society was constituted on the model of its mother country." That as we know, has omitted the name of God from its Constitution, for fear, said the fathers of the Republic, that the word might one day become the pretext for a state religion: for they desired to grant absolute equality to all religions under the laws, so that each form would support the State, which in its turn would protect them all. The Theosophical Society was founded on that excellent model....
Each Body, like each member, being free to profess whatever religion and to study whatever philosophy it prefers, provided all remain united in the tie of solidarity or Brotherhood, our Society can truly call itself a "Republic of conscience."
Though absolutely free to pursue whatever intellectual occupations please him the best, each member of our Society must, however, furnish some reason for belonging thereto, which amounts to saying that each member must bear his part, small though it be, of mental or other labor for the benefit of all. If one does not work for others one has no right to be called a Theosophist. All must strive for human freedom of thought, for the elimination of selfish and sectarian superstitions, and for the discovery of all the truths that are within the comprehension of the human mind. That object cannot be attained more certainly than by the cultivation of unity in intellectual labors. No honest worker, no earnest seeker can remain empty-handed; and there is hardly a man or woman, busy as they may think themselves, incapable of laying their tribute, moral or pecuniary, on the altar of truth....
In the present condition of the Theosophical history it is easy to understand the object of a Review exclusively devoted to the propagation of our ideas. We wish to open therein new intellectual horizons, to follow unexplored routes leading to the amelioration of humanity; to offer a word of consolation to all the disinherited of the earth, whether they suffer from the starvation of soul or from the lack of physical necessities. We invite all large-hearted persons who desire to respond to this appeal to join with us in this humanitarian work. Each co-worker, whether a member of the Society or simply a sympathizer, can help. We are face to face with all the glorious possibilities of the future. This is again the hour of the great cyclic return of the tide of mystical thought in Europe. On every side we are surrounded by the ocean of the universal science—the science of Life Eternal—bearing on its waves the forgotten and submerged treasures of generations now passed away, treasures still unknown to the modern civilized races. The strong current which rises from the submarine abysses, from the depths where lie the prehistoric learning and arts swallowed up with the antediluvian Giants—demigods, though with but little of mortality—that current strikes us in the face and murmurs: "That which has been exists again; that which has been forgotten, buried for aeons in the depths of the Jurassic strata may reappear to view once again. Prepare yourselves."
Happy are those who understand the language of the elements. But where are they going for whom the word element has no other meaning than that given to it by physics or materialistic chemistry? Will it be towards well-known shores that the surge of the great waters will bear them, when they have lost their footing in the deluge which is approaching? Will it be towards the peaks of a new Ararat that they will find themselves carried, towards the heights of light and sunshine, where there is a ledge on which to place the feet in safety, or perchance is it a fathomless abyss that will swallow them up as soon as they try to struggle against the irresistible billows of an unknown element?
We must prepare ourselves and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike. It is useless to leave it to chance and to await the intellectual and psychic crisis which is preparing, with indifference, if not with crass disbelief, saying that at the worst the flowing tide will drive us all in the course of nature towards the farther shore; for it is far more probable that the tidal wave will cast up nothing but a corpse. The strife will be terrible in any case between brutal materialism and blind fanaticism on the one hand, and philosophy and mysticism on the other—mysticism, that veil of more or less translucency which hides the eternal Truth.
But it is not materialism that will gain the upper hand. Every fanatic whose ideas isolate him from the universal axiom that "There is no religion higher than Truth" will see himself by that very fact rejected, like an unworthy stone, from the Archway called Universal Brotherhood. Tossed by the waves, driven by the winds, reeling in that element which is so terrible because unknown, he will soon find himself engulfed....
Yes, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise when the chilly and artificial gleam of modern materialism will disappear for want of fuel. Those who cannot form any idea of a spiritual Ego, a living soul and an eternal Spirit within their material shell (which owes its very existence to these principles); those for whom the great hope of an existence beyond the grave is a vexation, merely the symbol of an unknown quantity, or else the subject of a belief sui generis, the result of theological and mediumistic hallucinations—these will do well to prepare for the serious troubles the future has in store for them. For from the depths of the dark, muddy waters of materiality which hide from them every glimpse of the horizons of the great Beyond, there is a mystic force rising during these last years of the century. At most it is but the first gentle rustling, but it is a superhuman rustling—"supernatural" only for the superstitious and the ignorant. The spirit of truth is passing over the face of the waters, and in dividing them, is compelling them to disgorge their spiritual treasures. This spirit is a force that can neither be hindered nor stopped. Those who recognize it and feel that this is the supreme moment of their salvation will be uplifted by it and carried beyond the illusions of the great astral serpent. The joy they will experience will be so poignant and intense that if they were not mentally isolated from their body of flesh, the beatitude would pierce them like sharp steel. It is not pleasure that they will experience but a bliss which is a foretaste of the wisdom of the gods, the knowledge of good and evil, of the fruits of the tree of life.
But although the man of today may be a fanatic, a sceptic, or a mystic, he must be well convinced that it is useless for him to struggle against the two moral forces at large today engaged in the supreme contest. He is at the mercy of these two adversaries and there is no intermediary capable of protecting him. It is but a question of choice, whether to let himself be carried along on the wave of mystical evolution, or to struggle against this moral and psychic reaction and so find himself engulfed in the maelstrom of the rising tide. The whole world, at this time, with its centers of high intelligence and humane culture, its political, artistic, literary, and commercial life, is in a turmoil; everything is shaking and crumbling in its movement towards reform. It is useless to shut the eyes, it is useless to hope that anyone can remain neutral between the two contending forces; the choice is whether to be crushed between them or to become united with one or the other. The man who imagines he has freedom, but who, nevertheless, remains plunged in that seething caldron of foulness called the life of Society—gives the lie in the face of his divine Ego, a lie so terrible that it will stifle that higher self for a long series of future incarnations. All you who hesitate in the path of Theosophy and the occult sciences, who are trembling on the golden threshold of truth—the only one within your grasp, for all the others have failed you one after the other—look straight in the face the great Reality which is offered you. It is only to mystics that these words are addressed, for them alone have they any importance; for those who have already made their choice they are vain and useless. But you Students of Occultism and Theosophy, you well know that a word, old as the world though new to you, has been declared at the beginning of this cycle. You well know that a note has just been struck which has never yet been heard by the mankind of the present era; and that a new thought is revealed, ripened by the forces of evolution. This thought differs from everything that has been produced in the nineteenth century; it is identical, however, with the thought that has been the dominant tone and key-stone of each century, especially the last—absolute freedom of thought for humanity.
Why try to strangle and suppress what cannot be destroyed? Why hesitate when there is no choice between allowing yourselves to be raised on the crest of the spiritual wave to the very heavens beyond the stars and the universes, or to be engulfed in the yawning abyss of an ocean of matter? Vain are your efforts to sound the unfathomable, to reach the ultimate of this wonderful matter so glorified in our century; for its roots grow in the Spirit and in the Absolute, they do not exist, yet they are eternally. This constant union with flesh, blood, and bones, the illusion of differentiated matter, does nothing but blind you. And the more you penetrate into the region of the impalpable atoms of chemistry the more you will be convinced that they only exist in your imagination. Do you truly expect to find in material life every reality and every truth of existence? But Death is at everyone's door, waiting to shut it upon a beloved soul that escapes from its prison, upon the soul which alone has made the body a reality; how then can it be that eternal love should associate itself absolutely with ever-changing and ever-disappearing matter?
But you are perhaps indifferent to all such things; how then can you say that affection and the souls of those you love concern you at all, since you do not believe in the very existence of such souls? It must be so. You have made your choice; you have entered upon that path which crosses nothing but the barren deserts of matter. You are self-condemned to wander there and to pass through a long series of similar lives. You will have to be contented henceforth with deliriums and fevers in place of spiritual experiences, of passion instead of love, of the husk instead of the fruit.
But you, friends and readers, you who aspire to something more than the life of the squirrel everlastingly turning the same wheel; you who are not content with the seething of the caldron whose turmoil results in nothing; you who do not take the deaf echoes of the dead past for the divine voice of truth; prepare yourselves for a future of which you have hardly dared to dream unless you have at least taken the first few steps on the way. For you have chosen a path, although rough and thorny at the start, that soon widens out and leads you to the divine truth. You are free to doubt while you are still at the beginning of the way, you are free to decline to accept on hearsay what is taught respecting the source and the cause of truth, but you are always able to hear what its voice is telling you, and you can always study the effects of the creative force coming from the depths of the unknown. The arid soil upon which the present generation of men is moving at the close of this age of spiritual dearth and of purely material satisfaction, has need of a divine symbol, of a rainbow of hope to rise above its horizon. For of all the past centuries our Nineteenth has been the most criminal. It is criminal in its frightful selfishness, in its scepticism which grimaces at the very idea of anything beyond the material; in its idiotic indifference to all that does not pertain to personal egotism—more than any of previous centuries of ignorant barbarism or intellectual darkness. Our century must be saved from itself before its last hour strikes. This is the moment for all those to act who see the sterility and folly of an existence blinded by materialism and ferociously indifferent to the fate of the neighbor; now is the time for them to devote all their energies, all their courage to the great intellectual reform. This reform can only be accomplished by Theosophy we say, by the Occultism of the Wisdom of the Orient. The paths that lead to it are many; but the Wisdom is one. Artistic souls foresee it, those who suffer dream of it, the pure in heart know it. Those who work for others cannot remain blinded to its reality, though they may not recognize it by name. Only light and empty minds, egotistical and vain drones, confused by their own buzzing will remain ignorant of the supreme ideal. They will continue to exist until life becomes a grievous burden to them.
This is to be distinctly remembered, however: these pages are not written for the masses. They are neither an appeal for reforms, nor an effort to win over to our views the fortunate in life; they are addressed solely to those who are constitutionally able to comprehend them, to those who suffer, to those who hunger and thirst after some Reality in this world of Chinese Shadows. And for those, why should they not show themselves courageous enough to leave their world of trifling occupations, their pleasures above all and their personal interests, at least as far as those interests do not form part of their duty to their families or others? No one is so busy or so poor that he cannot create a noble ideal and follow it. Why then hesitate in breaking a path towards this ideal, through all obstacles, over every stumbling-block, every petty hindrance of social life, in order to march straight forward until the goal is reached?
Those who would make this effort would soon find that the "strait gate" and the "thorny path" lead to the broad valleys of the limitless horizons, to that state where there is no more death, because one has regained one's divinity. But the truth is that the first conditions necessary to reach it are a disinterestedness, an absolute impersonality, a boundless devotion to the interests of others, and a complete indifference to the world and its opinions. The motive must be absolutely pure in order to make the first steps on that ideal path; not an unworthy thought must attract the eyes from the end in view, not one doubt must shackle the feet. There do exist men and women thoroughly qualified for this whose only aim is to dwell under the Aegis of their divine Nature. Let them, at least, take courage to live the life and not conceal it from the eyes of others! The opinion of no other person should be taken as superior to the voice of conscience. Let that conscience, developed to its highest degree, guide us in the control of all the ordinary acts of life. As to the conduct of our inner life, we must concentrate the entire attention on the ideal we have proposed to ourselves, and look straight ahead without paying the slightest attention to the mud upon our feet.
Those who make this supreme effort are the true Theosophists.