The Theosophical Forum – May 1948

THE BUDDHIC LIGHT — Gertrude Hockinson

Our Theosophical Teachers have told us that as man is an aggregate of entities composed of seven principles: Atman (Divinity), Buddhi (Spirit), Manas (Mind), Kama (Desire), Prana (Vitality), Linga-sarira (Astral Body), and Sthula-sarira (Physical Body), so is our Earth an entity composed of these same seven principles, and that Humanity is the Buddhic principle of the Earth. In considering this relationship between ourselves and our Earth, we must try to keep also in mind the duality of manifestation in man as an individual and in humanity as the sixth or Buddhic principle of our Earth. Spiritual and material forces, working together, manifest as the duality which makes us not only men and women on the physical plane, but also must be considered as operating throughout all the other six principles.

Most of us, I believe, in considering this problem of the duality of life, think of it as the struggle between spirit and matter, or spirituality and materiality, each with a vitality of its own, fighting for complete possession or control of the individual. Well, there is a struggle going on most of the time in our constitutions, but if we shift our point of view a little and see that it is a struggle to bring harmony between spirit and matter, somehow a great deal of the agony and desperation of the struggle are eased.

It is not difficult to see this duality at work in humanity on our Earth: nations waging wars with other nations for purposes of material supremacy, but all the time, behind the scenes, the healing forces of Universal Brotherhood, the Buddhic Light, are at work in the hearts of individual men and women and in groups of these.

The Founders of the Theosophical Society and all the men and women, through the years since its inception, who have gathered together from the four corners of the earth as co-workers in its Cause, the bringing forth again into the minds of men that fundamental truth of Universal Brotherhood, are those in whom the Buddhic Light has found a medium of expression on our physical plane, in varying degree. The Buddhic Light, impersonal and universal Love for all that lives, is more richly and more grandly expressed in the work and lives of those whom we know as the Masters of Wisdom, and above and beyond them we have caught glimpses of still nobler expressions of this Buddhic Splendor in the work and lives of the great Spiritual Teachers of the races of men through the ages.

With such inspiration as we have received so abundantly from these grand exponents of the Buddhic Light, our Spiritual Teachers, how can we possibly fail to carry on the work, by doing all we can to bring Their message of harmony and universal love into the hearts and lives of humanity, so that all men may share in the fuller realization of the purpose of life on our Earth? When all men shall have discovered that the riches of the spirit bring them greater joy than the acquisition of worldly treasures, then only can wars cease upon the face of the earth, and then, indeed, will we know the glory of the Buddhic Splendor.

In the Eternal Now it is accomplished!



Theosophical University Press Online Edition