Founding
of the Brotherhood
by Thesosophical Society Pasadena (US)
Theosophical
University Press©
Millions upon millions of years ago in the darkness of prehistory,
humanity was an infant, a child of Mother Nature, unawakened, dreamlike,
wrapped in the cloak of mental somnolence. Recognition of egoity slept;
instinctual consciousness alone was active. Like a stream of brilliance across
the horizon of time, divine beings, manasaputras, sons of mind, descended among
the sleeping humans, and with the flame of intellectual solar fire lighted the
wick of latent mind, and lo! the thinker stirred. Self-consciousness wakened,
and man became a dynamo of intellectual and emotional power: capable of love,
of hate, of glory, of defeat. Having knowledge, he acquired power; acquiring
power, he chose; choosing, he fashioned the fabric of his future; and the
perception of this ran like wine through his veins.
Knowledge, more knowledge, and still greater knowledge was required by
the maturing humans who looked with gratitude to the godlike beings who had
come to awaken them. For many millennia they followed their guidance, as
children lovingly follow the footsteps of their mother.
As the ages rolled by, a circulation of divine instructors succeeded
these primeval manasaputras and personally supervised the progress of
child-humanity: they initiated them in the arts and sciences, taught them to
sow their fields with corn and wheat, instructed them in the ways of clean and
moral living — in short, established primeval schools of training and
instruction open and free to all to learn of things material, intellectual, and
spiritual. At this early period there were no Mystery colleges: the ancient
wisdom was the common heirloom of all mankind, for as yet there had been no
abuse of knowledge, and hence no need for schools kept hid and sacred from the
world. Truth was freely given and as freely accepted in that golden age. (Cf.
H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings 14:248-9.)
The race was young; not all were adept in learning. Some through past
experience in former world periods learned quickly and with ease, choosing
intuitively the path of spiritual intellection; others, less awake, were good
though wayward in progress; while a third class of humans, drugged with
inertia, found learning and aspiring a burden and became laggards in the
evolutionary procession. To them, spiritual apathy was preferable to spiritual
exertion.
Mankind as a whole progressed rapidly in the acquisition of knowledge
and its subsequent use. Some obviously wrought evil — others good. What had
been latent spirituality now became active good and active evil. Suffering and
pain became nature's most merciful method of restoring the heart to its
primeval instinct, that of spiritual choice. As mind developed keener
potentialities and the struggle for mental supremacy overcame the spiritual,
the gift of intellect became a double-edged weapon: on the one hand, the
bringer of spiritual awareness and undreamed of intellectual ecstasy; and on
the other, the wielder of a weapon of destruction, of horror and, in the worst
cases, of deliberate spiritual wickedness — diabolism. As H. P. Blavatsky
wrote:
The
mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their celestial
teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays
from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an
uncongenial, because too material soil. With the masses they degenerated into
Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of
superstitions, . . . — The Secret Doctrine 2:281
Nature is cyclical throughout: at one time fertile in spiritual things,
at another barren. At this long-ago period of the third root-race, on the great
continent of Lemuria, now submerged, the cycle was against spiritual progress.
A great downward sweep was in force, when expansion of physical and material
energies were accelerated with the consequent retardation and contraction of
spiritual power. The humanities of that period were part of the general
evolutionary current, and individuals reacted to the coarsening atmosphere
according to their nature. Some resisted its down- ward influence through
awakened spirituality; others, weaker in understanding, vacillated between
spirit and matter, between good and evil: sometimes listening to the promptings
of intuition, at other times submerged by the rushing waves of the downward
current. Still others, in whom the spark of intellectual splendor burned low,
plunged headlong downstream, unmindful of the turbulent and muddy waters.
As the downward cycle proceeded, knowledge of spiritual verities and
living of the life in accordance with them became a dull and useless tool in
human hearts and minds. Such folly was inevitable in the course of cosmic
events, and all things were provided for. Just as there are many types of
people — some spiritual, others material, some highly intelligent, others slow
of thought — so are there various grades of beings throughout the universe,
ranging from the mineral, through the vegetable, animal, and human kingdom, and
beyond to the head and hierarch of our earth.
During these first millennia the spiritual head and guardian of the
earth had been stimulating wherever possible the individual fires of active
spirituality. Gradually as knowledge of divine things became abused by those
strong in will but weak in morality, truth was increasingly veiled. The
planetary watcher now felt the need of selecting a band of co-workers to act as
bodyguard and protector of the ancient wisdom. Alone a handful of spiritually
illumined human beings, in whom the divine fervor burned bright, acknowledged
wholehearted allegiance to their planetary mentor — the spiritual hierarch of
humanity. Through long ages certain individuals had been watched over and
guided, strengthened and tested in innumerable ways, and those who passed the
test of self-knowledge and self-sacrifice were gathered together to form the
first association of spiritual-divine human beings — the Great Brotherhood. As
G. de Purucker elaborates:
Then was
formed or established or set in operation the gathering together of the very
highest representatives, spiritually and intellectually speaking, that the
human race as yet had given manifestation to; . . .
. . .
the Silent Watcher of the Globe, through the spiritual-magnetic attraction of
like to like, was enabled to attract to the Path of Light, even from the
earliest times of the Third Root-Race, certain unusual human individuals, early
forerunners of the general Manasaputric "descent," and thus to form
with these individuals a Focus of Spiritual and Intellectual Light on Earth,
this fact signifying not so much an association or society or brotherhood as a
unity of human spiritual and intellectual Flames, so to speak, which then
represented on Earth the heart of the Hierarchy of
Compassion. . . .
Now it
was just this original focus of Living Flames, which never degenerated nor lost
its high status of the mystic center on Earth through which poured the supernal
glory of the Hierarchy of Compassion, today represented by the Great
Brotherhood of the Mahatmans, . . . Thus it is that the Great
Brotherhood traces an unbroken and uninterrupted ancestry back to the original
focus of Light of the Third Root-Race. — The Esoteric Tradition
2:1048-9n
Hence the elder brothers of the race remain "the elect custodians
of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers . . . and
tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect
were the germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period" (Secret Doctrine 2:281) — since the foundation and establishment of the Great
Brotherhood some 12 million years ago. From this center for millions of years
have been streaming in continuous procession rays of light and strength into
the world at large and, more specifically, into the hearts of those whose lives
are dedicated to the service of truth. From this Fraternity have gone forth
messengers, masters of wisdom, to inspire the grand religions of the past, and
they will continue to send forth their envoys as long as mankind requires their
care.
by Thesosophical Society Pasadena (US)
Theosophical
University Press©
