Sunrise

In Us Await the Gods

Raymond Rugland
Oh! that every atom in my being were a thousand-pointed star to help men to see the divine everywhere, to know their limitless power, to feel while in the body the exhaustless Joy of Real Life, to wake and live instead of dreaming the heavy dreams of this living death, to know themselves as at once part of and directors of Universal Law. This is your birthright of Wisdom and the hour of attainment is now if you will. Tarry no longer in the delusion of the "Hall of Learning." Feel, Know and Do. — Katherine Tingley, Mysteries of the Heart Doctrine, p. 334

Katherine Tingley, Leader of The Theosophical Society from 1896 to 1929, had the magic presence and faculty of being able to address an audience drawn from all walks of life and inspire them to think and feel anew the call toward a greater life.

She knew the sacredness of the moment and the day. In The Gods Await, she tells of her meeting with H. P. Blavatsky's teacher near Darjeeling, India, and his words on this subject:

If you had to go from here to America, you would not sit still and dream about the place you wanted to go to, and think that was enough. The trouble with some theosophical aspirants is that they waste the strength of their lives looking at the goal ahead, rather than at the immediate moments and seconds of which the Path is composed, and so their better selves become exhausted. They should let the beaming thought pour itself into each arriving moment and be indifferent to the morrow. One can find in every instant of time, if one has the desire, the door into worlds of golden opportunity, the gateway to a glorious path stretching out into the limitless eternal. — p. 125

The magic key, simple to use, is to look for the good in others. A bolder soul might say look for the god in others. The word "god" is explained by H. P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine with great precision: "The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, — aye, even the highest — the Spiritual primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage" — even as our parents were once children themselves. "Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine through self-experience" (1:106).

Blavatsky — by means of the ancient texts known as the Stanzas of Dzyan — takes us back to the beginning of cosmogenesis as it takes place on seven planes of being. Stanza V reads in part: "The Primordial Seven, the first seven Breaths of the Dragon of Wisdom, produce in their turn from their holy circumgyrating Breaths the Fiery Whirlwind" (SD 1:106). To clarify the question of "gods," she comments:

The question will surely be asked, "Do the Occultists believe in all these 'Builders,' 'Lipika,' and 'Sons of Light' as Entities, or are they merely imageries?" To this the answer is given as plainly: "After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light and 'Mind-born Sons' of the first manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of spiritual man."

Does anybody have to tell us that the "secret" is out? That the gods (or angels) are inside of ourselves while blessing us on the outside? The words at the head of this article by Katherine Tingley are the words of an occultist. We are proud to use the word because such a one is satisfied with nothing less than being able to participate in the divine purpose — spiritual evolution. She pointed out the joy and justice of life. Being here is our idea; because the Highest dwelleth in us, we can identify with the supreme wheel — in other words, "be part of and directors of Universal Law."

Life for us is not "indulge," but "grow up": become adult, ripe, mature, responsible human beings and we will in time grow into godhood. This is what occultism is all about. Trust and acceptance are the virtues of infancy. With Browning we say: "God's in his heaven, / All's right with the world!" Let "God" take you by the hand when you have earned the right to stand by his side, and show you the marvels of Orion and the Pleiades as well as the perfection of the wings that propel a grasshopper! Be your own Hall of Learning; feel, know, do.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. We may gasp at the power and intelligence that produces a universe for the soul's experience, with love binding all things. We are declared to be at the midway point in our long evolutionary journey. With mind and its attendant self-consciousness comes responsibility. We learn, if we are open to learning, that "all things contribute to all things," and that in the process all the wheels within wheels mesh together.

(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)



As cycle succeeded cycle, and one nation after another came upon the world's stage to play its brief part in the majestic drama of human life, each new people evolved from ancestral traditions its own religion, giving it a local color, and stamping it with its individual characteristics. While each of these religions had its distinguishing traits, by which, were there no other archaic vestiges, the physical and psychological status of its creators could be estimated, all preserved a common likeness to one prototype. This parent cult was none other than the primitive 'wisdom-religion.' — H. P. Blavatsky

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