Listen to the March of the Future

JOY MILLS
International Vice-President, The Theosophical Society

In 1575, four hundred years ago, a French scholar, Louis Le Roy, published a book in which he gave voice to his despair over the changes and dislocations caused by the social and industrial innovations of his time, a period we now refer to in the history books as the European Renaissance. “All is pell-mell, confounded, nothing goes as it should,” he wrote. We, in 1975, are inclined to echo those words and indeed to believe that the situation is even far worse than it could have been four hundred years ago. Our inventory of despair grows longer every day: the earth overpopulated, with its resources depleted; an environment destroyed by pollution, with its inevitable damage to human health; the gap in living standard between the rich and the poor continually widened; the arms race accelerated, etc. The list of our present woes could be continued almost indefinitely.

But is the future ever an extrapolation of the past? Must trend become destiny? Oris it possible for human beings, no longer subject as are animals to the tyranny of biological evolution but blessed with the freedom of social evolution, to chart a new direction, remake the present, and build a future in which the world is a safe place for life’s full growth and development? A mood of gloom pervades the world. Yet it is always true that people who fear the worst usually invite it, and those who walk with heads down cannot scan the horizon for a break in the clouds. If we constantly look to the past, we will be pushed wards into the future.

Undoubtedly the problems facing humanity today do not have easy answers. I do not propose that a Pollyanna¹ attitude will resolve them. But neither will an attitude of despair nor a sense of the inevitability of final catastrophe remove the causes which have produced the problems. While newspaper headlines, seldom if ever, relate the happy events, the positive achievements, in human existence, it is still possible to discern amid today’s gloom the faint rays of tomorrow’s light.

About a year ago, Dr Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the U. N. Conference on the Human Environment, suggested that there is a case for hope. He outlined six indicators for the existence of such a case: “There is hope in the dawning realization of our basic interdependence. There is hope in the attitudes of young people. There is hope in the courageous experimentation of some people with new, simpler, more human life-styles. There is hope in the growing number of positive examples of the creative uses of technology. There is hope in many parts of the developing world where traditional values and cultures have been harmonized with modern technology. There is hope in the nature of man himself.”
And Dr Strong concluded his arguments for a case for hope with these words, “It is possible to opt for a future of unparalleled promise and opportunity for the human species.”

The latest discipline that has emerged in the world of academia is known as futuristics, futurism or futurology. This discipline proposes a new way of thinking about tomorrow, seeking a holistic view of human evolution. It takes up the case for hope, along lines similar to those suggested by Dr Strong, and urges that we concern ourselves not so much with predicting the future as with attempting to design alternative futures. In this, all of us can become creators, inventors and designers of our collective futures. We need not wait on events to overtake us, but we can act with a calm confidence in the full potential of our humanity and with an unswerving determination that the human spirit will ultimately triumph.

I do not propose that we should engage in what has been termed in some circles, “future-games,”–that is, games that merely create different models of tomorrow as one would build fantasies of utopia or dream of impossible achievements. Rather, I would suggest that we must examine the Theosophical case for hope, design the future in accordance with a philosophy that comprehends the ageless verities of existence, and lend our full and undivided weight to the realization of that ideal of brotherhood, a world community in which all men and women may live together in harmony and in freedorn. For in thiswatershed year of 1975, a year that ushers in the last quarter of this 20th century, we can either stand in numbed horror before the awesome fact that the two major powers on earth today possess between them enough nuclear explosives to represent the equivalent of 50,000 pounds of destructive force for every human being on the planet, or we can accept the challenge laid down for this Society 100 years ago–“to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood” without any distinction whatsoever. It may not be without significance that this Society was founded by individuals whose homelands were those same two countries which today confront each other and the world with so much destructive force.

Yes, “It is time for Theosophy to enter the arena.” We can neither delay nor postpone the assignment which has come to us, we who are the heirs of those founders and today’s stewards of that priceless heritage which is the wisdom of the ages, the Ageless Wisdom. We dare not become merely arm-chair Theosophists, speculating about Parabrahman and Pralaya, the nature of Maya and the composition of the Skandhas. Speculation must give way to knowledge; knowledge must be transmuted into insight; insight must be transformed into compassion. This is the age-old alchemical process whereby we move from the personal to the trans personal, merging the little Self into the One Self. The Theosophical case for hope lies in our willingness to undertake this process in full self-consciousness. W. Q. Judge. writing on “The Future and The Theosophical Society,” in March 1892, stated: “Our destiny is to continue the wide work of the past in affecting literature and thought throughout the world, while our ranks see many changing quantities but always holding those who remain true to the programme…..” And in her conclusion to The Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky spoke of the work of this Society as it lives into and through the twentieth century: “It will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of thinking and intelligent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of Religion, Duty, and Philanthropy...it will open the way to the practical realization of the Brotherhood of all men. Man’s mental and psychic growth will proceed in harmony with his moral improvement.”

The task, then, is clear before us. If we would hear the drum-beat of the future, taking that sound and shaping it into form, we must accept the task before us and become, not only in name, but in fact, Theosophists, knowers of the wisdom, following in the footsteps of Those who have gone before us on the ancient way to illumination. For the Theosophical case
for hope culminates in the knowledge of man’s infinite potential for growth into superhumanhood. And that case rests ultimately on the irresistible fact that there have been and are those who have achieved such realization, actualized the potential of man’s deific powers, attained to the status of perfected men, Masters of the Wisdom. The fact of the existence of a Brotherhood of such Adepts and the way to Them are among the priceless jewels in the crown of Theosophical teachings. That there is a Brotherhood of “just men made perfect”, that there is a path that leads to Them, that there is a way of life which enables the earnest aspirant to find that way and that enables humanity finally to tread that path: these concepts give purpose and meaning to man’s future, for they lend to the fact of biological and social evolution, the ennobling realization that man will not only endure, he will surpass himself.

The future that calls us, the future to which we must devote ourselves, the future whose possibility we must proclaim to all who are seeking for the faint rays of light in the present gloom, is a future of mankind’s own awareness of its Potential. In her monumental work, The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky gave in outline the entire course of human evolution, designating each step in the unfolding of consciousness as a “race” and charting the physical, psychic and spiritual development of humanity in accordance with universal lawfulness. So she presented the vision of the future: “The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded by the Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny and not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden of its co-operative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after race perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. (III, p. 444, Adyar Edition)

What, then, is the next step? How may we proceed to move from darkness into light? According to The Secre Doctrine, four major stages in the development of consciousness, four “races”, lie behind us. We today are in the fifth stage, with the focus on the battleground of the mind itself. Wars today are fought less over territorial claims than over ideologies. As the Charter of UNESCO so aptly states the issue: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be built.” Today’s kurukshetrais man’s psychological nature, the kama-manasicfield of the personal Self. Here must be waged the good fight; here the victory must and will be achieved. If we would “listen to the march of the future”, to use the words of one of the Society’s founders, William Q. Judge, we must understand what it is to be fully human and then live out our humanity as responsible moral agents in a universe of law. A clue has been given to us in The Secret Doctrine where, speaking of the present development, H. P. Blavatsky has stated: “...the Humanities developed co-ordinately, and on parallel lines with the Four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element–call it interstellar ether, if you will–which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics.” And one of the great Adept Teachers who helped to inspire this Movement 100 years ago wrote on one occasion, in a letter to A. P. Sinnett, “We have offered to exhume the primeval strata of man’s nature, his basic nature, and lay bare the wonderful complications of his inner Self...” Surely the next and immediate step, as we look towards that glorious future which is our cyclic destiny, is to undertake, in full self-consciousness, the transformation of ourselves.

The world is desperately in need of spiritual alchemists; a new psychology that recognizes man’s true source in the realm of the Universal must arise to clear away the mental confusion and emotional fog which obscure that inner reality. Splendid guide-posts exist to mark the way, to aid us in performing the ancient alchemical work of transmuting the lead of personal self hood into the pure gold of the Transcendent Self. “Three halls, O weary pilgrim, lead to the end of toils.” So says The Voice of the Silence, the great and final gift to the world of that messenger from the Brotherhood of Adept Teachers to our age and time, H. P. Blavatsky. These halls mark the stages on the upward path of unfolding consciousness. “The name of the first hall is Ignorance–Avidya. It is the hall in which thou saw’st the light, in which thou livest and shalt die.” Here, in the phenomenal world of the senses, the world of terrestrial consciousness, as it has been called, we perceive the first glimmer of light; here we must begin. Behind and beyond all the transient display of existence, we must learn to see, however faintly and far off the light may seems, the rays of that one Reality in which even the transient and changing is rooted. We have no other place to begin than here; we have no other time in which to begin but now. “Out of the furnace of man’s life and its black smoke, winged flames arise, flames purified, that soaring onward, ‘neath the karmic eye, weave in the end the fabric glorified...” So is the promise given, and we can move from Avidya towards Vidya, from non-seeing towards the full vision of the Light; never again can we “unsee” the future, never again can we fall wholly into darkness. “Fix thy Soul’s gaze upon the star whose ray thou art.”

Having now perceived the possibility of our future attainment, we cannot turn or turn aside from the task before us. Onward we must travel, performing our appointed cyclic pilgrimage. In the language of The Voice of the Silence, we move into “hall the second...the Hall of Learning. In it thy Soul will find the blossoms of life, but under every flower a serpent coiled.” For this is the realm of trickery, the psychic world of supersensuous perceptions and of deceptive sights. How many today are caught up in this realm of psychism, mistaking the flashing fireworks of psychic powers for the genuine light of the Spirit. How many today long for the awakening of those powers, failing to recognize that man’s great need and destiny is to unfold the essential powers of love and compassion, those powers which alone make of man a saviour of world. Yet here, in the “Hall of Learning” we may learn much; here we may become aware of the great needs of suffering humanity; here we may be awakened by the cry of those who are caught in the enslavement of the personal Self. And in the unreal we begin to see the flickering ray of the Real. “Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning Sun. Let not the fierce sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast wiped it from the sufferer’s eye. But let each burning human tear drop on thy heart and there remain; nor ever brush it off until the pain that caused it is removed.”

The way through the “Hall of Learning” is not an easy way, but even to be human is a dangerous and risky business. “Chafe not at Karma, nor at nature’s changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.” For the universe is one of lawfulness, and we must learn to work with and not against that lawfulness. Then indeed, as again the promise is given, “...nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance. And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chamber, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom. Unsullied by the hand of matter, she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit...”

Learning finally to move from the unreal to the Real, to look with the eye of Spirit upon the things of matter, to hear the cry of humanity’s deep sorrow, to work in accordance with nature’s laws, the great laws of Karma and cyclic necessity, we enter “the third hall...Wisdom, beyond which stretch the shoreless waters of Akshara, the indestructible fount of omniscience,” the region of full spiritual consciousness. It is that “hall which lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of truth shines with unfading glory.” And now thy Self is lost in Self, thyself unto Thyself, merged in that Self from which thou first did radiate.” In that “state of faultless vision,” as it has been called, we do not rest inert, inactive. “Shalt thou abstain from action? Not so shall gain thy Soul her freedom. To reach Nirvana one must reach Self-knowledge, and Self-knowledge is of loving deeds the child.” So we must go “armed with the key of charity, of love and tender mercy.” For, “Thou hast to be prepared to answer Dharma, the stern law...‘Hast thou attuned thy heart and mind to the great mind and heart of all mankind? Hast thou attuned thy being to humanity’s great pain, O candidate for light? Now bend thy head and listen well...compassion speaks and saith: “Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?”

This then is the pattern of the spiritual psychology which must be understood and applied today. This is the pattern of the age-old alchemical task, the magnum opus of being human. It is a growth in consciousness, an unfoldment of the latent powers hidden in the heart of every member of the human family, and to this joyous labour of self-conscious development we must devote ourselves wholly and unreservedly. It is only thus that Theosophy can enter the arena of human thought and affairs, impress its grand and noble ideas on every aspect of human behaviour–politics, economics, technology, science, religion, art, etc. Nor by tinkering with effects, but by recognizing causes does the Theosophist aid in world renewal and the bringing to birth of a new consciousness. He must be the knower of the fact of man’s being, for Theosophy is itself the gnosis, the wisdom of the fundamental Reality which underlies all existent things.

And what are the facts of our being? What is perceived of man in that “state of faultless vision” which is the consciousness of the Real? It is, first, quite simply that man is both being and becoming. In his essential nature, man is of the essence of eternal being; he is rooted in and participates in the essence of eternity, but in himself he represents the eternal order of becoming, experiencing the flow of reality as the time sequences of existence. In that sense, it is man who particularizes the universal in the transient, and so it is for man to recognize through the transient that reality which evermore endures. To be human is to become the burning-glass of the universal: in the human being and through him are focussed all the energies and forces of the creative process, the root cause is transformed into the efficient cause. As Krishna so magnificently reveals to Arjuna, on the Kurukshetra of daily existence, the primal reality of being, admonishing him then: “Be thou the outward cause,” so to be human means to be rooted in the One Reality but also to act in accordance with the Dharma, the truthfulness, of existence.

The first fact of our being, then, is that we are both essence and existence, being and becoming. From that emerges, the second fact of our being, the fact of a grand design fulfilling itself through the process of becoming a purpose inherent in the universe because the universe is through and through intelligent, though only in man can that intelligence become self-consciousness. Therefore, to be human is to be responsible, responsible for the fulfillment of the grand design of evolution. We must accept this moral responsibility, accept, in other words, the consequences of our choices. To awaken humanity to the awareness of this responsibility, this obligation, is to arouse a conscience of concern for the welfare of all life.

The third fact of our being is the principle of rhythmic growth, dynamic intent in the unfoldment of consciousness and the powers which that unfoldment confers. So we know the cyclic order of things, and move on our appointed cyclic pilgrimage in accordance with universal law. From this knowledge is born the fourth fact of our being, the principle of harmonization, and we learn the lesson of obedience to nature’s changeless laws. For no act can be without its reaction; no seeds can be sown without their eventual flowering, though it is for us to act without reacting, to perform the deeds of mercy without anticipating the fruits of such action. So our lives can actualize the great truths of our being, and having trod the ancient way of self-realization, passed from the Hall of Learning to the Temple of Wisdom, undertaken the great alchemical work of transmuting the consciousness of Self to the consciousness of the All-Self, we must share that which we know, infuse into the thought climate of our times those larger ideas which provide the basis for true ethics, a true morality, a genuine brotherhood.

As this 20th century moves into its final quarter, we may take up the task in all earnestness of purpose, fully aware of the Theosophical case for hope, active participants in the cyclic destiny of the human race. For the human self is not the actual self; it is always and forever the possible self, what the self ought to become and can become. Alongside the little self with which we greet each day, the petty self which all too often intrudes its needs and desires and concerns on to our attention, there is the Self of possibility, the Self which once glimpsed and known reveals itself as the Splendour of the One. Envisioning the actualization of that possibility, H. P. Blavatsky could forecast a new humanity taking birth, a new world of consciousness arising; at the conclusion or the volume on “Anthropogenesis” in The Secret Doctrine, she wrote: “Thus is it the mankind of the New World...whose mission and Karma it is to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know at present.” (III. p. 443) We can be that mankind of the “New World”, learning to heal the world because we are healed, learning to serve humanity’s deeper need because we have awakened the latent powers of love and compassionate understanding, learning to guide, as we have been told to do, the “crestwave of intellectual advancement into Spirituality.” Psychology today recognizes that whole masses of people can be pulled into the vortex of the inner disorder of a single powerful person. Whatever its origin, it is only in the individual that conflict and violence can be fought out. So also does psychology recognize that an ordered person, the fully integrated, psychologically whole individual, can create a vortex of power. History is full of the records of such individuals, and they constitute finally that grand Brotherhood of Adepts the path to whom is ever open.

We can look out on our age and time and see only the death-throes of the old; we can inventory our despair in lengthy recital of the woes of the present, pointing to the breakdown inmorals the increase of violence, the almost universal reign of terror. Or we can look beyond the darkness of the night, perceive the first faint streaks of dawn, and know that we are witnesses to the birth of a new day. The cry of agony we hear is the birth-pangs of a new order. And we, heirs, and stewards of the Wisdom-Religion of the ages, have both the privilege and responsibility to usher in that new day for humanity. Whatever may be the impulse which comes from beyond the snowy ranges of the Himalayas, the spiritual impetus that sets the keynote for the future, it must come through individuals who are open to it, whose eyes can see beyond the darkness of the present hour to the light that ever shines, the light of the human Spirit; it must be taken hold of and channelled by individuals who can hear amid the noisy clangour of conflict the quiet drum beat of the future. “Listen to the song of life”, says Light on the Path; “Life itself has speech and is never silent. And its utterance is not, as you that are deaf may suppose, a cry; it is a song. Learn from it that you are part of the harmony; learn from itto obey the laws of that harmony.”

So the cycles turn, and a new era lies before us. As H. P. B. puts it, in The Secret Doctrine: “Such is the course of Nature under the sway of kaarmic Law; of Ever-present and Ever-becoming Nature, For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:

‘The present is the child of the Past: the Future, begotten of the present, and yet, O Present Moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent nor canst thou have a child: that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say “I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,” thou hast become that past itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the present but verily that future. Thus, are the past, the present and the future the ever-living trinity in one–the Mahaamaayaa of the absolute is.” (III, p. 444, Adyar Edition)

Listen, then, to the march of the future.

All its possibilities are here today, as they were present yesterday. Not in time, but inconsciousness must be the journey we take. Not in some distant place, but in the space of the human heart, must come the realization that all life is one. The modern poet T. S. Eliot, once suggested that when we part from another, we should not say “Farewell,” but rather “Fare forward”. So as we part from our own past, embark on the path that will lead us to the heights, our work is to fare forward.

Tomorrow need not be simply an extension of today, lengthening the inventory of despair with further prognostications of gloom and defeat. We can, if we will, recognize the eternal truth of spiritual evolution, set our feet on the path that leads to the Himalayan heights of love and wisdom, following in the way taken by all the sages and seers and saviours of humanity. There are Those who have achieved, who stand forever as a “Guardian Wall,” that wall which invisibly shields mankind from still worse effects of causes set in motion here. It is for us to determine to lend our hands, our hearts, our talents and capacities, our full strength and all our energies and resources to the maintenance and strengthening of that “Guardian Wall”, to join with Them, the Adept Brothers and Teachers of humankind, who, still human are yet more than human, in the great work of building here on earth that true Brotherhood of Humanity which must one day be realized by all, that great work to which this Theosophical Society was and has been and must always be committed.

[Public Lecture delivered at
the hundredth Theosophical Convention, Madras.]

¹ Pollyanna: A girl of irrepressible optimism who finds good in everything, the heroine of stories by Eleanor Hodgman Porter (1868-1920).

True wisdom is a rare thing.
–N. SRI RAM Seeking Wisdom