Printed in the Summer 2025 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editors Desk" Quest 113:3, pg 2
These are times of great anxiety—“men’s hearts failing them for fear.” Even the slightest glimpse at the international press will show that these fears are by no means limited to the United States.
Those with some Theosophical training may wonder how to respond to the general malaise.
Everyone knows what the problem is. It’s them. They’re no good. They make this world lousy. The earth would be a wonderful place if not for them. Everybody agrees on these points, although there is some controversy about just exactly who constitutes this them.
This attitude, so far from solving anything, may be the ultimate source of the present difficulties.
We can look to the esoteric tradition to free ourselves from this impasse. For me, the most useful ideas in this context come from the classic Kybalion.
The Kybalion is a mysterious book. First published in 1908, it has remained popular ever since. The authors claim to be “Three Adepts,” although it was certainly written by the American esotericist William Walker Atkinson (1862‒1932; for more on this issue, see The Kybalion: The Centenary Edition, with my introduction).
By its own testimony, the present book is not really The Kybalion, which we are told, is “a compilation of certain Basic Hermetic Doctrines, passed from teacher to students.” It is “a collection of maxims, axioms, and precepts, which were non-understandable to outsiders.” The book we know as The Kybalion merely quotes and explicates some of these maxims.
The ideas most relevant here are, first, “the Principle of Polarity,” which “embodies the truth that all manifested things have ‘two sides’; ‘two aspects’; ‘two poles.’” The most obvious example is the magnet, with its north-south polarity.
There is also “the Principle of Rhythm,” which “embodies the truth that in everything there is manifested a measured emotion; a to-and-from movement; a flow and inflow; a swing forward and backward; a pendulum-like movement; an ebb and flow . . . Rhythm manifests between the two poles established by the Principle of Polarity.”
History shows countless examples of this polarity. Take Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the tsarist state was the cruelest and most repressive in all of Europe. The debacle of the First World War led to the overthrow of the tsar, followed by a period of anarchy and civil war. Out of this emerged the Soviet revolutionary superstate, which was even more repressive than the tsars.
Seventy years after its establishment, the Soviet order crumbled as a result of its own inner contradictions, to be replaced by a republic accompanied by a decade of social and economic disorder.
Out of this melee emerged Vladimir Putin as autocrat, who to all appearances is trying to recreate the old tsarist-Soviet empire with his invasion of Ukraine. Russian history is a back-and-forth between tyranny and anarchy.
I could draw a picture of similar polarities and reversals in the history of the United States, right up to the present. But I suspect it would be too inflammatory to discuss current events here.
The temptation to leap onto this seesaw at one end or the other is almost irresistible, no matter which end you jump on.
The Kybalion addresses this problem. It says that there are “two general planes of Consciousness, the Lower and the Higher.” Understanding this fact, we are told, enabled the old adepts “to rise to the higher plane and thus escape the swing of the Rhythmic pendulum which manifested on the lower plane.”
The book calls this process “the Law of Neutralization. Its operations consist in the raising of the Ego above the vibrations of of the Unconscious Place of mental activity, so that the negative-swing of the pendulum is not manifested in consciousness . . . It is akin to rising above a thing and letting it pass beneath you.” (The term “Ego” is used here in the old sense of the higher Self.)
This can look like mere escapism: after all, one feels the need to do something. But it is extremely difficult to act in such situations without jumping on one end of the pendulum, in which case you become part of the problem. Action may well be warranted, but if it is not illumined and motivated by a higher perspective, it has every chance of ending up as futile or harmful.
In this issue’s interview, Carol Orsborn says, “I think you need to know where you stand. You need to know what your values are, and you need to know when you’re up against values that you find abhorrent . . . Now that said, I believe very much in people listening to their own heart in terms of their callings. Are you called to be a protester? Are you called to write books? Are you called to go to jail for your principles?”
I agree—with one difference. Orsborn says you need to listen to your heart, but I would add that it is also necessary to listen to your head and your gut. All three are essential components of human intelligence, and all of them must be consulted in any matter of importance.
That’s the trick. The only aspect of yourself that is connected to all three of these entities is your higher Self. If it can listen to—and integrate—the insights of heart, head, and guts, it may lead to insights about the action (or inaction) that is right for you. This process also strengthens the connection of the conscious self with the higher Self.
These may be the times we have been training for.
Richard Smoley