This question of new forces has a bearing at once wide and deep upon the welfare of humanity. In the understanding of them, to some extent at least, our present and our future hope is bound up, and a slight presentation of some of their aspects is here attempted, not with a view to instruction, but in order to lead up to thought on the subject, inasmuch as it is solely by thinking about them, frequently and consecutively, that the student will be enabled to experience their action. So far as the individual is concerned, this action is induced by one thing only — Thought. Meditation is the gateway through which they pass.
The first point is this: the new forces are cyclic. The close of two cycles has permitted their advent. Following in their train should be found the restoration of conditions, spiritual, psychic and even material, which, in relation to man and his world, have not been possible in the last 5000 years. The word "should" is used advisedly, the forces are here, liberated from the spiritual spheres; but man must do his part; his sphere has in turn received their impulse and has felt their impact; he must, in his turn liberate them, and, under conditions which will admit of the multiplication of their spiritual energies. Such multiplication is the secret of the Wise who "guard the home of nature's order and do excellent things in secret." This cyclic truth it is which forms the stable base of the hopes now being held out to man.
The next point has a vital bearing upon the human mind. That mind, the hell-maker, constantly endeavors to shut the new hope from view, and with reason; for the lower mind, like a composite entity, has a life of its own, a life largely partaking of the material and the animal. This life the new forces threaten to destroy as such and, by a spiritual act of transmutation, to cause this lower mind entity to become servant where it has so long been tyrant and master. Consequently the mind resists their full, free operation, closing the tentacles around its old hard formulas of thought.
In their cyclic return — and at the close of each century but in minor degree — the new forces first break up all dead forms, all moulds, all ruts; they scatter and disperse in order to reassemble and to build up new combinations. This may be seen in Life about us, in national crises and in convulsions of nature. Each student will find the same thing in himself, and that he is being impelled upon new paths of action, forced into new modes of thought. All the old methods and ideas appear shattered, and despair surges to the surface of the mind. Fear pictures man as being carried out upon a dark and storm-lashed sea towards regions unknown.
In all this is no Wisdom. The Ideals are the main point, and the Ideals are unchanged. Only the mode of approach has altered, and has altered precisely because the cyclic hour, the cyclic return and the loyalty of souls have opened up a wider path, have laid low many obstacles. We can now be better vehicles of higher forces than those hitherto in operation, and the free fluidic spirit strives to break up and to flux all forms and minds, to put all in fusion, recasting all into the living model of a stronger and a broader day.
Our part is to abandon the old conceptions which were but the personal garments with which we, each one of us, invested the Ideal, in order to dress up the Universal as a something all our own. It is no doubt hard for human beings standing upon the threshold of a new order of things, to realize this mighty moment, to cast aside their mental impedimenta and to pass on through the strange dawn into the new Light. At dawning mists arise, the shrouded world looks sinister and strange, but those who would not return to sleep and lethargy step boldly onward through the unfamiliar region and the first glimpse of the fresh, the glorified day is their reward.
Hitherto we have seen that the forces of over nature have been acting more or less from without, inward. They reached their fullest expansion in the 5000 year cycle and were being indrawn. We shall now find them to be acting from within outward, a point to be covered by meditation and earnest search. Each must discover the new action of the soul within himself. Just as America was newly discovered by a man impelled by a Master Soul, and was yet a land of ancient mystery, so we may newly find the Ancient within ourselves under that same guidance: the goal is the same but the physical conditions are new or renewed. No mental or physical disturbance should be permitted to hide this truth from the eye of Trust.
Lastly, the new forces are unifiers, harmonizers. A surface glance may dispute this when only the phenomena of external upheavals are seen. But look on awhile longer; everything is being rearranged, newly distributed and brought into line filled with a new vitality. What less would common sense expect on the advent of a new order? It is plainly to be seen that the workers everywhere have an identity of purpose and an interaction never before attained. Why is this? Clearly because the new forces are cyclic; that is to say, they act with the universal Law of Periodicity, they are the manifestations of Karma in action.
Those who go freely with them act in accord with the whole body of Nature, animated by the new breaths of the Over Soul. Hence their course is harmonious, united, — a course of power. Their minds are generators of force; their souls are regenerators of men. They are companioned by Mighty Ones; they have absolutely nothing to fear. They are blessed because they have believed without asking for sense manifestations; they have grasped the truth that a force has a real and a conscious being, and is not a mere name for something mysterious and unknown.
Intuition and not Intellect has kindled the light by which they have seen this truth, and while they act with these divine forces for the uplifting of the race, every moment brings them swiftly nearer to a realization too glorious to be profaned by the pen.