The New Cycle
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We cannot inaugurate this first issue of an official and strictly Theosophical Magazine without giving our readers some information that seems essential to us. Indeed, the ideas held to this day with regard to the Theosophical Society in India, as it has been called, are so vague and so varied, that even many of our members entertain very erroneous views concerning it. Nothing could show more convincingly the necessity of making well known the goals we pursue in a Magazine devoted exclusively to Theosophy. Also, before asking our readers to become interested in it, or even to take up its study, they need to be given some preliminary explanations. What is Theosophy? Why use this pretentious name, we are asked at the outset. When we answer that Theosophy is Divine Wisdom, or the Wisdom of the Gods (Theo-Sophia), rather than that of a God, a still more extraordinary objection is raised: "Then, are you not Buddhists? Yet we know that the Buddhists believe neither in a, nor several Gods. . . ." Nothing could be more correct. But, in the first place, we are no more Buddhists than we are Christians, Mussulmans, Jews, Zoroastrians or Brahmins. Furthermore, concerning the question of Gods: we hold to the esoteric method of the Hyponia taught by Ammonius Saccas – i.e., to the occult meaning of the term. Did not Aristotle say: "The Divine Essence permeating nature and diffused throughout the entire Universe (which is infinite), that which the hoi polloi call Gods, is simply . . . the first principles" – in other words, the creative intelligent forces of Nature. From the fact that Buddhist philosophers admit and know of the nature of these forces as well as anybody, it does not follow that the Society – as a Society – is therefore Buddhist. The Society, in its capacity as an abstract corporation, believes in nothing, accepts nothing, teaches nothing. The Society per se cannot and must not have any religion, for it contains all religions. Cults are, after all, but external vehicles, more or less material forms and containing more or less of the essence of the One and Universal Truth. In its essential nature Theosophy is the spiritual as well as the physical science of this Truth – the very essence of deistic and philosophical research. As visible representative of the universal Truth, since it contains all religions and philosophies, and since each of them contains in its turn a portion of this Truth – the Society could not be sectarian, have preferences, or be any more partial than, say, an anthropological or geographic society. Do the latter care to what religion their explorers belong, so long as each of their members bravely carries out his duty? Now, if we are asked, as has been done already so many times, whether we are deists or atheists, spiritualists or materialists, idealists or positivists, royalists, republicans, or socialists, we can only answer that each of these opinions is represented in the Society. I have but to repeat what I said just ten years ago in a lead article in the Theosophist, to show how much that which the general public thinks of us is different from what we really are. Our Society has been accused from time to time of the most baroque and contradictory misdeeds, and has been charged with motives and ideas that it has never had. What has not been said of us! One day we were an association of ignoramuses, believers in miracles; the next day, we were declared to be thaumaturgists; our aim was secret and entirely political, it was said in the morning – that we were Carbonari and dangerous Nihilists; then, in the evening, we were found to be spies salaried by autocratic and monarchic Russia. At other times, without any transition, we were believed to be Jesuits seeking to ruin French Spiritism. American Positivists saw in us religious fanatics, while the clergy of all nations denounced us as emissaries of Satan etc., etc. . . . Finally, our good critics with impartial urbanity divided all theosophists into two categories: charlatans and dupes. . . . Well, men slander only those they hate or "fear." Why should we be hated? As to fearing us, who can say? Truth is not always welcome and, perhaps, we utter too many real truths! Yet, since the day our Society was founded in the United States, fourteen years ago, our teachings have received wholly unhoped-for attention. The original program had to be enlarged, and the territory of our researches and combined explorations now extends towards unlimited horizons. This expansion was made necessary by the ever growing number of our members, a number still increasing daily; the diversity of their races and their religions requiring ever deeper studies on our part. However, although our program was enlarged, nothing was changed as to the three main objects, except, alas, with regard to the one dearest to our heart, the first, that is: Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race, color or creed. Notwithstanding all our efforts, this object has almost always been ignored, or has remained a dead letter, in India especially, thanks to the innate superciliousness and national pride of the English. Except for that, the other two objects, that is to say, the study of Oriental religions, especially of the ancient Vedic and Buddhistic scriptures, and our researches into the latent powers of man, have been pursued with a zeal that has received its reward. Since 1876 we have been compelled to deviate more and more from the main highway of general principles, originally laid down, and to take ever widening subsidiary paths. Thus in order to satisfy all Theosophists, and to follow the evolution of all religions, we have been forced to travel clear around the globe, beginning our pilgrimage at the dawn of the cycle of nascent humanity. These researches have resulted in a synthesis which has just been sketched in The Secret Doctrine, certain portions of which will be translated in this Magazine. The doctrine is barely outlined in our volumes; and yet the mysteries unveiled therein concerning the beliefs of the prehistoric peoples, cosmogenesis and anthropology, had never been divulged until now. Certain of its dogmas and theories are in conflict with scientific theories, especially with those of Darwin; yet they explain and throw light on what to this day had remained incomprehensible; and fill more than one gap, left open, nolens volens, by official science. But we had to present all these doctrines, such as they are, or never to broach the subject at all. He who is frightened by these infinite prospects and would seek to reduce them by using the shortcuts and the "flying bridges" artificially constructed by modern science over its thousand and one gaps, will do better not to enter the Thermopylae of archaic science. Such has been one of the results our Society has achieved; a poor one, perhaps, but one that will certainly be followed by further revelations, exoteric or purely esoteric. If we speak thereof it is to prove that we do not preach any religion in particular, leaving each member utterly free to follow his own particular belief. The prime object of our organization, of which we strive to make a real brotherhood, is fully expressed in the motto of the Theosophical Society and of all its organs: "There is no Religion higher than Truth." Hence, as an impersonal Society, we must welcome Truth wherever it may be found, without partiality for any one belief as against another. This leads directly to a quite logical deduction: if we acclaim and welcome with open arms every earnest seeker after truth, it follows that there is no place in our ranks for the ardent sectarian, for the bigot, or for the hypocrite surrounded by a "Chinese wall" of dogmas, each stone of which bears the inscription: "No one may pass here." What, indeed, could be the position in our midst of a fanatic whose religion forbids all research, and does not admit the free use of reason – when the original concept, the very root from which grows the beautiful plant that we call Theosophy, is free and complete research into all the mysteries, natural, divine, or human! Except for this restriction, the Society invites everyone to participate in its investigations and discoveries. Whoever feels his heart beating in unison with the great heart of humanity, whoever feels his interests at one with those who are poorer and less fortunate than himself; whoever, man or woman, is ever ready to lend a helping hand to those who suffer, whoever is fully conscious of the real meaning of "Egoism," is a Theosophist by birth and by right. He can always be sure of finding sympathetic hearts amongst us. Our Society is in fact a small, special humanity, where, as among mankind at large, one may always find his counterpart. If it is objected that in it the atheist rubs elbows with the deist, and the materialist with the idealist, we answer: "What of it?" If an individual is a materialist, that is, discerns in matter an infinite potency for the creation, or rather for the evolution of all terrestrial life; or else a spiritualist endowed with a spiritual perception the other one does not have, why should this prevent one or the other from being a good Theosophist? Besides, those who worship a Personal God or Divine Substance are far more materialistic than the Pantheists who reject the idea of a carnalized God but who perceive the divine essence in each atom. The whole world knows that Buddhism recognizes neither a God nor Gods. And yet the Arhat, for whom each atom of dust is as full of Swabhavat (plastic substance, eternal and intelligent, though impersonal) as he is himself, and who tries to assimilate this Swabhavat by identifying himself with the All in order to reach Nirvana, must in order to reach it follow the same Path of sorrows, of renunciation, of good works and of altruism, and has to lead as saintly a life, although less selfish in motive, as the beatified Christian. What matters the passing form if the goal pursued is the same Eternal Essence, whether that Essence appear to human perception under the guise of a Substance, of an immaterial Breath, or of a No-thing! Let us admit the PRESENCE, whether called Personal God or Universal Substance, and let us admit a cause, since we all see effects. But these effects being the same for the Buddhist atheist as for the Christian deist, and the cause being as inscrutable for the one as for the other, why should we waste our time pursuing an illusive shadow? In the final analysis, the greatest of materialists, as well as the most transcendental of philosophers, admits the omnipresence of an impalpable Proteus, omnipotent in its ubiquity throughout all kingdoms of nature, including man – a Proteus indivisible in its essence, without form and yet manifesting itself in all forms, which is here, there, everywhere and nowhere, which is the All and the Nothing, which is all things and always One, Universal Essence which binds, limits and contains everything, and which everything contains. What theologian can go beyond that? It is enough to recognize these verities to be a Theosophist; for such a confession amounts to admitting that not only humanity – even though consisting of thousands of races – but all that lives and vegetates, all that in one word is, is made up of the same essence and substance, is animated by the same spirit, and that, therefore, there is solidarity throughout nature, on the physical as well as on the moral plane. We have already said in the Theosophist: "Born in the United States of America, the Theosophical Society was constituted on the model of its mother country. The latter, as we know, omits the name of God from its constitution, lest, said the Fathers of the Republic, this word someday afford the pretext for a State religion; for they wanted to grant absolute equality in its laws to all religions so that all would support the State and all in their turn would be protected." The Theosophical Society was established on this beautiful model.
As of today its one hundred seventy-three [173 branches are grouped
into several Sections. In India these sections are self-governing
and self-supporting; outside of India there are two large Sections,
one in America, and the other one in England (American Section
and British Section). Thus each branch as well as each member,
having the right to profess the religion and to study the sciences
or philosophies it or he prefers, provided that the whole remains
united by bonds of solidarity and fraternity – our Society may
be truly called the "Republic of Conscience." While being free to engage in those intellectual pursuits that
please him the most, each member of our Society must, however,
give some reason for belonging to it, which means that each member
must do his own chosen part, however small it may be, by way of
mental work or otherwise, for the good of all. If he does not
work for others, he has no reason for being a Theosophist. All
of us must work for the liberation of human thought, for the elimination
of selfish and sectarian superstitions, and for the discovery
of all the truths that are within the reach of the human mind.
This goal cannot be attained with greater certainty than through
the culture of solidarity on the plane of mental work. No honest
worker, no serious seeker, has ever returned therefrom empty-handed;
and there are hardly any men or women, however busy they may be
thought to be, unable to lay their moral or pecuniary mite on
the altar of Truth. Henceforth it will be the duty of the Presidents
of branches and Sections to see to it that there be no such drones
who do nothing but buzz in the Theosophical beehive. One further word. How many times have not the two founders of
the Theosophical Society been accused of ambition and autocracy!
How many times have they not been reproached with a pretended
desire to impose their will on other members! Nothing could be
more unjust. The founders of the Society have always been the
first and humblest servants of their co-workers and colleagues;
always showing themselves ready to help others with the feeble
lights at their disposal, and to support them in the fight against
the egoists, the indifferent and the sectarians; for such is the
first battle for which everyone must be prepared who enters our
Society, so little understood by the general public. Besides,
the reports published after each Annual Convention are there to
prove this. At our last convention, held in Madras, in December
1888, important reforms were proposed and adopted. Anything resembling
a financial obligation was discontinued, even the payment of 25
francs for the cost of a diploma having been abolished. Hereafter
members will be free to donate what they wish, if their heart
is set on helping and supporting the Society, or, not to give
anything. Under these conditions, and at this moment of Theosophical history,
it is easy to understand the goal of a Magazine devoted exclusively
to the spread of our ideas. In it we would like to be able to
open up new intellectual horizons, to trace unexplored paths leading
to the amelioration of humankind; to offer words of comfort to
all the disinherited of the earth who suffer from a spiritual
void, or from an absence of material goods. We invite all noble-hearted
persons who would respond to this appeal to join us in this humanitarian
work. Every contributor, whether a member of our Society or merely in
sympathy with it, can help us to make of this Magazine the only
organ of true Theosophy in France. We are now facing all the glorious
possibilities of the future. Once again the hour has struck for
the great periodical return of the rising tide of mystic thought
in Europe. We are surrounded on all sides by the ocean of universal
science – the science of life eternal – bringing in its waters the
buried and long forgotten treasures of vanished generations, treasures
still unknown to the modern civilized races. The powerful current
rising from the submarine abysses, from the depths where lie the
learning and arts engulfed with the antediluvian Giants – demi-gods,
though mortals hardly yet formed; 'this current blows us in the
face, murmuring: "That which was, still is; that which is
forgotten, buried for æons in the depths of Jurassic strata,
may once again reappear on the surface. Prepare yourselves." Happy those who understand the language of the elements. But,
where are those heading to whom the word element conveys no other
meaning than the one given to it by materialistic physics and
chemistry? Will the great waters carry them toward familiar shores
when they will have been swept off their feet in the oncoming
flood? Will they be carried toward the summit of a new Ararat,
toward the heights where are light and sun and a safe spot to
stand on, or toward a bottomless abyss that will engulf them as
soon as they attempt to fight against the irresistible waves of
a new element? Let us prepare, and let us study Truth in all its aspects, trying
not to ignore any of them, if we do not wish, when the hour will
have struck, to fall into the abyss of the unknown. It is useless
to rely on chance, and to await the approaching intellectual and
psychic crisis with indifference if not with total incredulity,
saying to oneself that if worse comes to worst, the tide will
carry us quite naturally to the shore; for there is a strong likelihood
of the tide stranding but a corpse! The battle will be fierce,
in any case, between brutal materialism and blind fanaticism on
the one hand, and on the other philosophy and mysticism – that
more or less thick veil of the Eternal Truth. It is not materialism that will have the upper hand. Everyone
fanatically clinging to an idea isolating him from the universal
axiom – "There is no Religion higher than Truth" – will
find himself separated like a rotten plank from the new ark called
Humanity. Tossed by the waves, chased by the winds, buffeted by
this element so terrible because unknown, he will soon find himself
swallowed up. Yes, thus it must be, and it cannot be otherwise when the flame
of modern materialism, artificial and cold, will be extinguished
for lack of fuel. Those who cannot conceive of a spiritual Ego,
of a living Soul, and of an eternal Spirit, within their material
shell (which owes its illusory life only to these principles);
those for whom the great wave of hope in a life beyond the
grave is a bitter draught, the symbol of an unknown quantity,
or else the subject of a belief sui generis, the result
of mediumistic or theological hallucinations – those will do well
to be prepared for the keenest of disappointments the future could
have in store for them. For, from the depths of the muddy black
waters of matter, hiding from them on all sides the horizons of
the great beyond, a mystic force is rising towards the closing
years of this century. A mere touch, at the most, until now, but
a superhuman touch, "supernatural" only for the
superstitious and the ignorant. The Spirit of Truth is at this
moment moving upon the face of these black waters, and, separating
them, forces them to yield their spiritual treasures. This spirit
is a force that cannot be either checked or stopped. Those who
recognize it and feel that this is the supreme moment of their
salvation, will be carried by it beyond the illusions of the great
astral serpent. The bliss they will experience will be so sharp
and so keen that were they not in spirit detached from their bodies
of flesh, this beatitude would wound them like a sharpened blade.
It is not pleasure that they will feel, but a bliss which is a
foretaste of the wisdom of the gods, of the knowledge of good
and evil, and of the fruits of the Tree of Life. But whether the man of today be a fanatic, a skeptic, or a mystic,
he must realize that it is fruitless to struggle against these
two moral forces now unleashed and engaged in a fight to the finish.
He is at the mercy of these two adversaries and there is no intermediary
power capable of protecting him. It is but a matter of choice:
to let oneself be carried away naturally and without struggle
by the flood of unfolding mysticism, or else to struggle and react
against the stresses of the moral and psychic evolution and to
feel oneself swallowed up in the Maelstrom of the new tide. At
this very time the whole world with its centers of great intellect
and of human culture, with its political, literary, artistic and
commercial centers, is in turmoil, everything is tottering, falling
apart, and now tending to re-form. It is useless to blind oneself
to this, useless to hope one will be able to remain neutral between
these two warring forces; one can only be crushed, or has to choose
between them. The man who thinks he has chosen freedom and who
nevertheless remains submerged in this seething and foaming cauldron
of filth called social life, utters the most terrible lie to his
Divine Self; a lie that will blind this Self through its long
series of future incarnations. All of you who waver on the path
of Theosophy and of the occult sciences, who tremble on the golden
threshold of Truth, the only Truth still open to you, since all
the others have failed, one after the other – look the Great Reality
now offering itself to you straight in the face. These words are
for the mystically inclined only, for them alone they will be
of some importance; for those who have already made their choice
they will prove vain and useless. But you Occultists, Kabalists
and Theosophists, you know well that a word as old as the world,
though new to you, has been sounded at the beginning of this cycle,
and lies potentially, although not articulate for those others,
in the sum of the ciphers of the year 1889; you know that a note,
never before heard by the men of the present era, has just been
sounded, and that a new kind of thought has arisen, fostered by
the evolutionary forces. This thought differs from all that has
ever been produced in the 19th Century; yet it is identical with
what was the keynote and the keystone of every century, especially
the last one: "Absolute Freedom of Human Thought." Why try to kill, to suppress, that which cannot be destroyed?
Why fight when one has no other choice than either to allow oneself
to be lifted up to heaven on the crest of the spiritual tide,
beyond stars and universes, or to be swallowed in the gaping abyss
of the ocean of matter? Vain are your efforts to plumb the unsoundable
in search of the roots of that matter so glorified in our century;
for these roots grow in Spirit and in the Absolute, and do not
exist, though being eternal. This continuous contact with flesh,
blood, and bones, with the illusion of differentiated matter only
blinds you; and the more you advance in the realm of chemical
and impalpable atoms the more will you become convinced that they
exist only in your imagination. Do you believe that you will really
discover all truths and all the realities of being there? But,
death stands at the door of all of us, ready to close it on the
soul of the beloved escaping from its prison, on that soul which
alone gave reality to the body; and is love eternal to be likened
to the molecules of that matter which changes and disappears? But perhaps you are indifferent to all this; if so, of what importance
to you are the love and the souls of those whom you loved, since
you do not believe in these souls? Be it so. Your choice is already
made. You have entered the path that crosses but the arid wastes
of matter. You have doomed yourself to vegetate there through
a long series of lives, content henceforth with feverish hallucinations
instead of spiritual perceptions, with passions instead of love,
with the rind instead of the fruit. But you, friends and readers, who aspire to something more than
the life of the squirrel in its ceaselessly revolving wheel; you
who are not satisfied with the cauldron which is ever boiling
without producing anything, you who do not mistake hollow echoes
as old as the world for the divine voice of Truth, prepare yourselves
for a future that few of you have dreamed of unless you have already
set your feet upon the Path. For you have chosen a way which,
in the beginning lined with thorns, will soon widen, and lead
you straight to the Divine Truth. You are free to doubt at first;
free not to accept on someone's word what is taught concerning
the source and the cause of this Truth, but you can always listen
to what the voice is saying, you can always watch the effects
produced by the creative force which emerges from the depths of
the unknown. The arid soil upon which our present generations
are moving at the close of this age of spiritual starvation and
material satiety, is in need of a sign, of a rainbow – symbol of
hope – above its horizon. For, of all past centuries, the nineteenth
is the most criminal. It is criminal in its fearful selfishness,
in its scepticism that scoffs at the mere idea of something beyond
matter; in its idiotic indifference to all that is not the personal
"I" – far more so than any of the centuries of barbaric
ignorance and intellectual darkness. Our century must be saved
from itself before its last hour strikes. Now is the time for
action by all who see the sterility and foolishness of an existence
blinded by materialism and so ferociously indifferent to the fate
of others. It is for them to devote their best energies, all their
courage and all their efforts to bring about an intellectual reform.
This reform cannot be accomplished except through Theosophy, and,
let us say it, Occultism, or the Wisdom of the East. Many are
the paths leading to it, but Wisdom is forever one. Artists foresee
it, those who suffer dream of it, the pure in spirit know it.
Those who work for others cannot remain blind before its reality
even though they do not always know it by name. It is only the
light-headed and empty-minded, the selfish and vain drones deafened
by the sound of their own buzzing who can ignore this high ideal.
They will live until life itself becomes an unbearable burden
to them. Let it be known, however, that these pages are not written for
the masses. They are neither a call for reform nor an effort to
win over to our views those who are happy in life. They are addressed
only to those who are ready to understand them, to those who suffer,
to those who are thirsty and hungry for any reality in this world
of shifting shadows. And why should those not have enough courage
to give up their frivolous ways of life, above all their pleasures
and even some of their business interests, unless the care of
these interests is a duty owed to their families or to others?
No one is so busy or so poor that he cannot be inspired by a noble
ideal to follow. Why hesitate to blaze a trail toward that ideal
through all obstacles, all hindrances, all the daily considerations
of social life, and to advance boldly until it is reached? Ah!
those who would make this effort would soon find that the "narrow
gate" and "the thorny path" lead to spacious valleys
with unlimited horizons, to a state without death, for one rebecomes
a God! It is true that the first requisites for getting there
are absolute unselfishness and unlimited devotion to the interests
of others, and complete indifference as to the world and its opinions.
To take the first step on this ideal path requires a perfectly
pure motive; no frivolous thought must be allowed to divert our
eyes from the goal; no hesitation, no doubt must fetter our feet.
Yet, there are men and women perfectly capable of all this, and
whose only desire is to live under the aegis of their Divine Nature.
Let these, at least, have the courage to live this life and not
to hide it from the sight of others! No one's opinion could ever
be above the rulings of our own conscience, so, let that conscience,
arrived at its highest development, be our guide in all our common
daily tasks. As to our inner life, let us concentrate all our
attention on our chosen Ideal, and let us ever look beyond
without ever casting a glance at the mud at our feet. . . . Those capable of such an effort are true Theosophists; all others
are but members more or less indifferent, and quite often useless.
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