. . . in order to become a divine, fully conscious god — aye, even the highest — the Spiritual primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to mortals that inhabit any world, i. e., to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root-Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine, through self-experience. — The Secret Doctrine, I, 106
The above passage contains in brief compass the whole meaning of evolution as it applies to the human race. And it throws, does it not, a new emphasis upon ourselves. It illumines for us with a divine dignity this erring, bewildered, selfish and yet aspiring creature we call Man. And at the same time it gives us a new interest in ourselves and in this difficult life we are trying to live today.
If it were not for men and women — for us, in fact — there would be no gods. Wonderful thought! Something to lift up our hearts. Something to urge us to renewed efforts to be the kind of human beings from which gods can be developed. The daily task takes on a kind of humble splendor. The small conquests of self that make our halting steps on the path of Occultism are golden milestones on that invisible cosmic highway which all mankind are unconsciously, and some of us indeed consciously, pursuing.
Here too is a perfect definition of what it means to be human — "to have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit." This brings out a point which we do not perhaps often enough consider. It is the matter of choice. Do we choose here and now to impel the scales upward or downward? Are we alive to the fact that almost every moment of our lives is such a moment of choice?
Many of us may think of this moment of choice as something to be met only at the middle of the Fifth Round. Then human beings will reach the point when they are strong and pure enough to continue upward along the Ladder of Life, or must fail to make the grade for this chain manvantara. But in so thinking we forget that our power successfully to face the Great Choice will rest upon the innumerable small decisions which confront us now. It is the cumulative power of these daily conquests or failures which will be the deciding factor then. Tomorrow, today perhaps, we are thinking and saying and doing the kind of things that will have a vital influence in helping us to drop out of the picture when the supreme moment comes. Is not this a thought to carry always with us?