THE CLOSING CYCLE
IN the November number the "expiring
Cycle" is referred to by Mr. Sinnett, and members are rightly warned not
to be so absurd (though that is my word) as to think that after 1897 "some
mysterious extinguisher will descend upon us."
Who is the person who gave out the concrete
statement that 1897 was to be the close of a cycle when something would happen?
It was H.P. Blavatsky. There is not the slightest doubt about it that she did
say so, nor that she fully explained it to several persons. Nor is there any
doubt at all that she said, as had been so long said from the year 1875, and
that 1897 would witness the shutting of a door. What door? Door to what? What
was or is to end? Is the T.S. to end and close all the books?
Nothing is more plain than that H.P. Blavatsky
said, on the direct authority of the Masters, that in the last twenty-five
years of each century an effort is made by the Lodge and its agents with the
West, and that is ceases in its direct and public form and influence with the
twenty-fifth year. Those who believe her will believe this; those who think
they know more about it than she did will invent other ideas suited to their
fancies.
She explained, as will all those who are taught
(as are many) by the same Masters, that were the public effort to go on any
longer than that, a reaction would set in very similar to indigestion. Time
must be given for assimilation, or the "dark shadow which follows all
innovations" would crush the soul of man. The great public, the mass, must
have time and also material. Time is ever. The matter has been furnished by the
Masters in the work done by H.P Blavatsky in her books, and what has grown out
of those. She has said, the Masters have said, and I again assert it for the
benefit of those who have any faith in me, that the Masters have told me that
they helped her write the Secret Doctrine so that the future
seventy-five and more years should have some material to work on, and that in
the coming years that book and its theories would be widely studied. The
material given has then to be worked over, to be assimilated for the welfare of
all. No extinguisher will fall therefore on us. The T.S., as a whole, will not
have the incessant care of the Masters in every part, but must grow up to
maturity on what it has with the help to come from those few who are
"chosen." H.P. Blavatsky has clearly pointed out in the Key,
in her conclusion, that the plan is to keep the T.S. alive as an active, free,
unsectarian body during all the time of waiting for the next great messenger,
who will be herself beyond question. Thereby will be furnished the well-made
tool with which to work again in grander scale, and without the fearful
opposition she had without and within when she began this time. And in all this
time of waiting the Master, "that great Initiate, whose single will
upholds the entire movement," will have his mighty hand spread out wide
behind the Society.
Up to 1897 the door is open to anyone who has
the courage, the force, and the virtue to TRY, so that he can go in and make a
communication with the Lodge which shall not be broken at all when the cycle
ends. But at the striking of the hour the door will shut, and not all your
pleadings and cryings will open it to you. Those who have made the connection
will have their own door open, but the public general door will be closed. That
is the true relation of the "extinguisher" as given by H.P. Blavatsky
and the Master. It seems very easy to understand.
"Many are called but few are chosen,"
because they would not allow it. The unchosen are those who have worked for
themselves alone; those who have sought for knowledge for themselves without a
care about the rest; those who have had the time, the money, and the ability to
give good help to Masters' cause, long ago defined by them to be work for
mankind and not for self, but have not used it thus. And sadly, too, some of
the unmarked and unchosen are those who walked a long distance to the
threshold, but stopped too long to hunt for the failings and the sins they were
sure some brother pilgrim had, and then they went back farther and farther,
building walls behind them as they went. They were called and almost chosen;
the first faint lines of their names were beginning to develop in the book of
this century; but as they retreated, thinking indeed, they were inside the
door, the lines faded out, and other names flashed into view. Those other names
are those belonging to humble persons here and there whom these proud aristocrats
of occultism thought unworthy of a moment's notice.
What seems to me either a printer's error or a
genuine mistake in Mr. Sinnett's article is on page 26, where he says:
"will be knowledge generally diffused throughout the cultured
classes." The italics are mine. No greater error could seem possible.
The cultured classes are perfectly worthless, as a whole, to the
Master-builders of the Lodge. They are good in the place they have, but they
represent the "established order" and the acme of selfishness.
Substitute masses for cultured classes, and you will come nearer
the truth. Not the cultured but the ignorant masses have kept alive the belief
in the occult and the psychic now fanned into flame once more. Had we trusted
to the cultured the small ember would long ago have been extinguished. We may
drag in the cultured, but it will be but to have a languid and unenthusiastic
interest.
We have entered on the dim beginning of a new
era already. It is the era of Western Occultism and of special and definite
treatment and exposition of theories hitherto generally considered. We have to
do as Buddha told his disciples: preach, promulgate, expound, illustrate, and
make clear in detail all the great things we have learned. That is our work,
and not the bringing out of surprising things about clairvoyance and other
astral matters, not the blinding of the eye of science by discoveries
impossible for them but easy for the occultist. The Master's plan has not
altered. He gave it out long ago. It is to make the world at large better, to
prepare a right soil for the growing out of the powers of the soul, which are
dangerous if they spring up in our present selfish soil. It is not the Black
Lodge that tries to keep back psychic development; it is the White Lodge. The
Black would fain have all the psychic powers full flower now, because in our
wicked, mean, hypocritical, and money-getting people they would soon wreck the
race. This idea may seem strange, but for those who will believe my unsupported
word I say it is the Master's saying.
William Q. Judge
Irish Theosophist, January, 1895
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