New Winds Can Heal
and Transform
The Way One Sees the
Ocean of Karma
Carlos Cardoso
Aveline
The testing of honesty is a central topic in
Shakespeare
The soul’s process
of probation in its loyalty to its own higher self has been well investigated
in William Shakespeare’s plays.
In order to better
understand the often tumultuous history of the theosophical movement, which
sometimes resembles a Shakespearean drama or comedy, one must “read” its
evolution from the viewpoint of the probationary challenges.
The path is better
seen as a dangerous collective journey, for treason is a possibility,
especially for lukewarm souls and as soon as they are submitted to tests.
No blind obedience
is demanded in theosophy. Loyalty should be given mainly to universal
principles, not so much to personalities. Once facts are examined and as long
as leaders and teachings resist the verification, they deserve one’s loyalty to
the end. Especially so if one wants to be able to learn the higher levels of
the teaching. No Judas can understand
the beauty of the New Testament. No one who betrays Helena Blavatsky or
distorts her philosophy while using her name and the name of the theosophical
movement can know anything reliable about discipleship or esoteric wisdom.
Someone who comes
to disagree and leaves the movement deserves full respect. Attacking the
movement from within and in disguised ways is something different.
There have been a
few significant traitors in the theosophical movement since 1875. This happens
to give the movement and each theosophist a reasonable amount of probationary
events, which are necessary for the movement and its students to be tested,
thus acquiring the necessary firmness and discernment.
It is important therefore
to look at the behavior of traitors and “judases”, as they were called by
Helena Blavatsky. One can have access to valuable insights by studying the
pattern of action followed by undeclared enemies of theosophy, who at times have
occupied leading positions in theosophical associations. Key lessons can be
learned from the crises and opportunities that unethical and untruthful
individuals create within the movement.
Honest students get
stronger as they stand firm, facing difficulties and actively defending the ideals
they adopted. Only deeply sincere students can preserve the source of the Teachings
which are studied by all. They have the ability to do so because they have wide
horizons and a long-term view of life. It is thanks to this fact that they are
able to endure short term suffering. They have confidence in the Law: they can
afford acting with altruism. They know that they will lose nothing by
giving up things which belong to the lower realms of reality.
Individuals having “a
difficulty to be loyal”, on the other hand, have shallow short-term minds. They
can only see small things. They look for immediate rewards and think they are very
clever for that.
Ethical students
can’t teach loyalty to those who are unable
to have a long-term view of Life, or who can’t understand the actual Dynamics
of the One Law.
Individuals who
lack this understanding are the slaves of blind immediacy. Their search for
happiness is self-defeating, but they don’t know any other way to look for satisfaction.
Most of them are poor misguided souls who had no access to a sane pedagogy of
Theosophy.
A lasting loyalty
to Ethics emerges from a strong Antahkarana - the bridge between higher self
and lower self. A stable strengthening of Antahkarana occurs from within, not
from the outside world.
However, the more
experienced students can mark and show the way for those who have less
experience regarding inner challenges. They must demonstrate to everyone - as
much as possible - that it is not worthwhile to abandon Ethics; that those who
betray are unmasked perhaps even in the short term; that liars can be shown as
such any time, as soon as evidence is sought, gathered, and shared among those
concerned.
There is nothing
like example to teach theosophy. In this way true students help establishing
the general karmic tide of events on the
basis of ethics and self-responsibility.
Such students are
never too numerous. H. P. Blavatsky called them “The Few”. Yet they can do
their job, and usually succeed. They learn their lessons from every obstacle
along the path.
Each time the
teachers and the teaching are firmly defended, disloyal people who thought they
would gain short term advantages by attacking in an unjust way the Source of Sacred
Learning start to change their minds, and begin to adapt themselves to the new winds. This
adaptation, of course, is circumstantial
and short term. It is blind: vigilance is necessary at all times. Yet the
general atmosphere improves and the spiritual souls of new students arriving to
the movement will find it easier to breathe.
Of course, visible disloyalty
regarding the teaching and the teachers can only happen if the karmic tides are
difficult enough to turn weaker souls unable to stand on their own feet. From
this point of view, there are no traitors really. Disloyal “esotericists” can
be seen as only weak and blind souls who are trying to convince themselves -
and trying to convince others - that they are clever. This is a childish goal indeed: still, it is a
dangerous process which cannot be accepted.
Each time there is
a vigorous defence of ethics in the theosophical movement, a change for the
better occurs in the karmic tide, and the “floating objects” get ready to adapt
their outer behavior to new winds and new oceanic currents, more favourable to
sincere truth-seekers.
This is good for
such “floating objects”, in the short term. It is also beneficial for them in
the longer term. In fact, this is helpful for everyone. It is the duty of loyal
students who happen to have a degree of discernment to help put before souls
real opportunities to enter the good Path.
They also must reduce opportunities for neophytes to “learn” disloyalty or
“unlearn” Ethics.
The task of marking
the need for ethics must be done in an open and transparent way. There are
always those who can understand the several layers of meaning present in the
cycles of the modern theosophical effort, and they will learn better with
transparency. The movement is still very young, having been inaugurated less
than two hundred years ago; yet its historical experience is rich already, and constitutes a source of decisive lessons.
000
The above article was written a
few years before the foundation of the Independent
Lodge of Theosophists. By then book “The
Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature” was being prepared and our first
e-groups and associated websites were entering into action in English language,
quickly getting a significant readership.
The text was updated in January 2017.
000
In September 2016, after
a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students
decided to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
000
