Quest Magazine

by Betty Bland
National President

Originally printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "The Truth." Quest  99. 1 (Winter 2011): 6.

I am drawn to the simplicity and beauty of the motto of the Theosophical Society: There is no religion higher than Truth. What is truth? Does it change? Is it absolute? Is it relative? In our lives we often have to determine the truth of a situation. Are we seeing all sides clearly? In the midst of our own personal prejudices, propaganda from friend and foe, and our inherent need to be "right," it is most difficult to determine what is actually true. We might be able to string together certain facts, but do they reveal the truth?

     We use accumulated facts to develop our sense of purpose in life—our sense of what is really true and meaningful. But truth keeps moving and growing. Is a two-year-old wrong to think that its mother"s primary function in life is to see that all its needs are met? What about the same person at age seven, or ten, or fifteen? How about at ages twenty-one, thirty-one, or fifty-one? At some point a supposedly unchanging truth becomes totally erroneous.

     This may seem to be a simplistic example, but it points to an important principle. The set of ideas that we consider to be true creates our worldview, our sense of all existence and its purposes. Human beings seem to be the only creatures on earth that demand to find meaning in existence. A part of our makeup as a soul on its "obligatory pilgrimage," as the third fundamental proposition in the Secret Doctrine tells us, is to acquire individuality, and then to grow beyond that individuality, "first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts . . . through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations." The search for understanding, meaning, and truth is a part of our very nature. We cannot get away from it. We are endowed with a discerning consciousness that seeks to understand.

     Yet paradoxically, this very structure of consciousness tends to keep us from getting at the truth. Consciousness becomes set in its own patterns, developed through long ages of evolution and influenced by every experience of this lifetime. Once we start thinking along a certain track, we set grooves of thinking that reinforce themselves. We are not as free as we like to think, because our consciousness sees reflections of itself wherever it looks. Some have described  aspects of these grooves or patterns as our paradigms—the set of assumptions through which we filter all information.

     A good example of an outworn and blinding paradigm can be seen in the Swiss watchmaking industry. In the 1960s Swiss inventors were the first to develop the concept of a quartz timepiece, but it was not accepted there. The craftsmen viewed this innovation with disdain, considering it inferior to the long-respected skill of making watches with finely intermeshed gears and gems. Their paradigm didn"t allow for a totally different mechanism. And so the idea was perfected by the Japanese, who sold the first commercial quartz movement timepieces by Seiko. Soon thereafter American entrepreneurs developed and began marketing inexpensive quartz watches; particularly notable was the flood of cheap Timex watches on the market. Now there is little call for the fine skills of crafting small, gear-driven timepieces, and a whole industry has long since collapsed and had to reinvent itself.

     Another example is the extensive use of stenographers in the last century. What seemed to be a stable profession was quickly made obsolete, first by dictating machines and then by the rapid expansion of computer technology. Today even executives manage much of their own correspondence through e-mail, and recently even through the ever-improving voice recognition software that is now available. The realities of our world and culture are constantly in flux—particularly in this age of technological advances.

     Although we need to be able to develop flexible thinking, our thought patterns are so deeply ingrained that that they are present even at the cellular level. Writing in Theosophy in Australia (September 2009), Edi Bilimoria recently cited an amazing example from Paul Pearsall"s book The Heart"s Code. Shortly after receiving a heart transplant from a ten-year-old girl who had been murdered, the eight-year-old recipient began having recurring nightmares about the man who had murdered her donor. She was sure that she could identify the murderer. According to the documentation, "the time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him...everything the little heart transplant recipient reported was completely accurate," and led to the killer"s arrest.

As Theosophists, we are not surprised to realize that memories are recorded even in the physical body. The idea that the emotional and mental fields are permeated by thought forms and habitual thinking is central to the Theosophical understanding of the human makeup. These memories and patterns of thought are ever with us, coloring all that we know of life. Our memories and repeated thoughts about them are the building blocks of our patterns of consciousness, our vrittis as they are called in Sanskrit. These patterns or vrittis are such an important inhibitor to seeing clearly that in the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali tells us that the essential purpose of yoga is their cessation—and thus the stilling or clearing of the mind. To begin to rid ourselves of these restrictive patterns is to begin to open our consciousness to the perception of truth.

     H. P. Blavatsky outlined some of the steps required for this clearing in her text "The Golden Stairs." The steps include a clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, and a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction. She referred to these qualities as some of the "golden stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the temple of divine wisdom."

Vincent de Paul, a French Catholic priest of the seventeenth century who was later canonized, was deeply concerned about the search for truth in the lives of his monastics and congregants. He urged them to practice discernment using a three-step method. The first requirement was to have an unrestricted readiness. This could be defined as an unprejudiced open mind, with a willingness to see beyond any personal agenda. Then with this clear mind, one is to carefully weigh the evidence and to seek counsel from sources one deems wise. I would add to that a large dash of common sense—the sense within us that can perceive the clear ring of truth.

What then might serve as a measuring stick by which to test the efficacy of common sense? The only way to reduce the blinding effects of our personal prejudices is to move away from our focus on self. This is the way to develop unrestricted readiness, a willingness to drop old patterns, an openness to unfolding truth. The test of the truth of an idea is to consider what kind of person it makes you. If it is a mature view aligned with truth, it will be one that diminishes your sense of self-importance.

Master Koot Hoomi spoke to this point in an 1884 letter addressing problems that were occurring in the Theosophical lodges in Europe:

You do not find certain recent letters and notes of mine—including the one to the treasurer of the London Lodge, "philosophical" and in my usual style. It could scarcely be helped: I wrote but on the business of the moment—as I am doing now—and had no time for philosophy. With the L. L. and most of the other Western Branches of the T. S. in a deplorable state, philosophy may be invoked to restrain one"s impatience, but the chief thing called for at present, is some practicable scheme for dealing with the situation. Some, most unjustly, try to make H[enry] S[teel] O[lcott] and H. P. B., solely responsible for the state of things. Those two are, say, far from perfect—in some respects, quite the opposite. But they have that in them (pardon the eternal repetition but it is being as constantly overlooked) which we have but too rarely found elsewhere — Unselfishness, and an eager readiness for self-sacrifice for the good of others; what a "multitude of sins" does not this cover! It is but a truism, yet I say it, that in adversity alone can we discover the real man. It is a true manhood when one boldly accepts one"s share of the collective Karma of the group one works with, and does not permit oneself to be embittered, and to see others in blacker colours than reality, or to throw all blame upon some one "black sheep," a victim, specially selected. Such a true man as that we will ever protect and, despite his shortcomings, assist to develop the good he has in him. Such an one is sublimely unselfish; he sinks his personality in his cause, and takes no heed of discomforts or personal obloquy unjustly fastened upon him (The Mahatma Letters, chronological edition, no. 131).

 Now here is something that we can learn from the spotty history of our beginnings: to move forward for the purposes of our founders and their teachers, we must look first to ourselves—each one of us. Are we approaching all aspects of Theosophical work with "unselfishness, and an eager readiness for self-sacrifice for the good of others"? Do we avoid bitterness and fault-finding as we work onward for the higher cause? Are we more concerned about the good of the whole than about being right? Can we ignore unjust criticisms and backbiting and return gentleness and compassion? If each one of us can measure up to this high standard given in The Mahatma Letters, then we will be protected in spite of our shortcomings. And we will always be assisted in developing the good in ourselves and in our beloved Society. If we can carry this truth with us in all that we do for the Society, it will live as a flaming beacon for all humanity well into the future!

by Robert Ellwood

Originally printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Ellwood, Robert. "God and the Great Angel." Quest  99. 1 (Winter 2011): 30-31, 39.

Virtually all Theosophists realize that changes are afoot in the constituency of the Theosophical Society in America. Many of our groups are graying and diminishing. From a high of 8520 members in 1927, and a postwar high of 6119 in 1972, official American membership declined to 3546 in 2010. To be sure, nonmember friends, including younger people, visit our libraries, bookstores, conferences, and even our regular meetings, with seeming appreciation. Yet somehow not many seem ready to make the commitment of formal membership. What's going on?

First, we need to know we're not alone. The membership problem is, if anything, more calamitous in many other organizations. Nonmembership is symptomatic of a profound sociological shift in society as a whole. Sociologist Robert Putnam discusses this phenomenon in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000). The title comes from the precipitous decline of bowling leagues, once a standby in the social lives of many. From a peak in 1964, membership in the American Bowling Congress had fallen some 72 percent by 1997. A few other decline percentages over the same time span, out of the many Putnam presents: American Legion, 47 percent; Jaycees, 58 percent; Kiwanis, 42 percent; Masons, 71 percent. This is despite the fact that the total U.S. population grew by more than 50 percent in the same period.

Interestingly, two of the groups showing greatest decline of all in Putnam's charts were women's organizations: the American Association of University Women, by 84 percent, and the Business and Professional Women, by 89 percent—even though, as is well known, the number of women university graduates, and of women involved in business and the professions, surged dramatically in those same increasingly feminist years. The number of women receiving bachelor's degrees has tripled since the 1960s, and since the 1990s more women than men have graduated from institutions of higher learning each year. Evidently most women no longer feel a need for an organization concerned with their position as the feminine wing of an educated elite, or of a business and professional class. The Theosophical Society also has had, and still has, distinguished leadership by women; it did so at a time when very few comparable opportunities for leadership existed for women in mainline religious or educational organizations. But does that mark of honor still draw people to Theosophy?

The issue presumably is not lack of all interest in sports, education, or spirituality, but whether people choose to delineate who they are through joining an organization. If we like bowling, do we have to join a bowling league, go to meetings and pay dues, or can we just bowl alone? If we are highly educated, do we need to join a group enabling us to associate exclusively with others of the same attainment? Even strictly professional organizations are not immune to the decline; between a high in the late 1950s and 2000, the American Medical Association decreased from enrolling about 75 percent of licensed physicians to less than 40 percent. Is there a parallel to Theosophy and its relation to spiritual seekers?

Robert Wuthnow, one of the most exacting and respected sociologists of American religion, attempted a similar project for religion, especially that of younger Americans. He discusses his findings in After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton University Press, 2007). His demographic is people age 21—45, the children of the famous and now graying postwar "boomer" generation. Their spiritual life, institutional and otherwise, is of tremendous importance for the future of religion, for as many a pastor will confide, most congregations across the land are not growing, and many are conspicuously aging.

To be sure, the precise picture is not easy to demarcate. Religious membership and participation in the U.S. is harder to document than that of many secular organizations. Different denominations count membership in quite different ways that are not easy to compare, and religion polls are unreliable. Sociologists are well aware of the "halo effect," whereby a significant number of those asked by pollsters about their religious life will give the answer they think they ought to give rather than the unvarnished truth. Some ingenious cross-check studies have suggested that real church attendance in America is actually 10—15 percent lower, or even more, than the figure indicated by Gallup polls, which is usually around 40 percent.

In the research reported in After the Baby Boomers, Wuthnow found that over the years 1972-2002 his youth cohort's affiliation with mainline Protestantism declined by half, in evangelicalism marginally; in Roman Catholicism it increased very slightly (largely because of immigration), while the number of religiously unaffiliated young adults has more than doubled, to 20 percent. Actual attendance at religious services declined in this age range by about 6 percent. Only a quarter of younger Americans can be considered regular church attenders in the early years of the twenty-first century.

Wuthnow, as a sociologist, does not attribute the pattern to the inherent theological appeal of various traditions so much as to demographic factors. Evangelical Protestantism has had the advantage, in his eyes, of being rooted in a rural culture in which people marry younger and have larger families than they do in mainstream and liberal Protestantism. (Nonetheless, as evangelical Protestantism has become more middle-class, its younger adherents have begun to adopt more "liberal" ways if not beliefs, and its numbers have recently stabilized or even started to decline.) Marriage, Wuthnow says, is the most consistent indicator of religious participation, and today's general trend in urban and relatively liberal sectors of society toward later and later marriage and childbearing—if there is marriage and childbearing at all—clearly has had a deleterious effect on church attendance among these influential classes. Young unmarrieds working full-time seem to have other priorities than churchgoing, and, it would seem, attending Theosophy meetings.

Another factor affecting the declining membership of many groups: the vastly increased number of women, both married and unmarried, working full-time outside the home in the years since the 1960s. This was just as seismic a social as an economic shift. Undoubtedly it helps explain the precipitous decline of women's organizations like those cited above as well as the decline of numerous parareligious and spiritual groups once predominantly composed of women. A study of a large New England Congregational church showed that in 1950 this parish had no fewer than fourteen women's circles, only three of which met in the evening; by the '90s the number of circles had fallen to six, all of which were evening gatherings. Religious or not, familied or not, working women just don't have the time and energy for the sort of leadership their gender once exercised in innumerable churches, clubs, and Theosophical groups. Some of us can remember when the once-ubiquitous women's clubs were forums of some intellectual and even political heft, and so-called women's auxiliaries no less so in the life of the church; now they are nearly gone.

One could go on to discuss other factors, such as the much-discussed role of television and the Internet in keeping people at home rather than going out on a cold night to some lecture. So many other ways there are to get what information and inspiration we need to sustain ourselves, and even to make connections with other humans, apart from gathering in solemn assemblies. Wuthnow opines that changing levels and styles of education, and even globalization, may be significant too, though they are still more problematic to quantify.

But what the post-boomers are looking for on the Internet and in Facebook may not be too different from what people used to look for clubs, churches, and lodges; it is perhaps a matter of more a different medium than a message.

Wuthnow's research says that the 25 percent of younger Americans who attend religious services, not surprisingly, state an interest in both religion and spirituality. But of those who are religiously uninvolved, 60 percent say spiritual growth is at least fairly important to them, and 29 percent say they have devoted some effort to their spiritual lives over the past year; 25 percent say their interest in spirituality is increasing; and 25 percent say they meditate at least once a week. The great majority of young people report that spiritual experience is more important than church doctrine in shaping their religious outlook. Among their elders the two are nearly equal.

Whether or not these surveys are precisely accurate, undoubtedly they tell of a vast openness out there toward free, noninstitutional perspectives on spiritual growth. I am sure Theosophy has much it could contribute to the quests of this audience. But our gifts will need to be presented in ways that make Theosophy seem less like a membership organization that one joins, and more like a welcoming resource and support group that is available 24/7 through the media younger people use, from the Internet to informal "hanging out" gatherings. We will get nowhere by looking just like another church, club, or lodge, and declining along with them. We need to find ingenious ways to connect with lives that are much more individualistic and free-floating than they were back when joining was an important way of saying who one was.

The Theosophical Society was founded in the Victorian heyday of finding, or making, personal identities through joining churches and/or such groups as Masonic lodges, gentlemen's clubs, women's clubs, literary societies, army regiments, and much else. Those commitments involved considerable time, but also often supplied the kind of contacts one needed to get good jobs, connect politically, and find mates. They had their pins and ties, perhaps even their grips and passwords. Theosophy, insofar as it is organized on the lodge or club model, reflects those days, and there is nothing wrong with that for those who find it comfortable. But clearly the time is upon us when we must also think of Theosophy as a movement of mind and spirit, intangible but powerful, to be advanced in all sorts of ways outside those particular boxes.

The day may come when Theosophy is no longer a shrinking membership organization but more like an educational foundation, supported by all who feel called to do so, and involved in promoting teaching in the Theosophical tradition through all possible media: books, pamphlets, lectures, films, Internet sites, classes, camps, and personal contact. (Even video games, which are just beginning to be taken seriously as a new art form—a fresh embodiment of the timeless hero myth?) The new Theosophy will maintain all facets of the Ancient Wisdom but will assure the old is made new by always being presented in a way that facilitates individual spiritual life and growth.

For all that, Theosophy will probably continue also to manifest itself in groups getting together in person as well as virtually, under whatever name and in whatever form they take. Clearly a reaction has set in against traditional kinds of organization, but that does not mean humans will forever be content to live, learn, and die alone. Numerous studies have shown that people who are not just in families, but also active in religious or other larger meaning-giving organizations, are happier and healthier than solitaries or those who know only casual and informal relationships. One can e-mail, tweet, text, game, and surf the Web all one wants, even stream Theosophical lectures or participate in virtual sacred rituals at a keyboard together with fellow worshipers across the continent; this has been done. But the screen still does not take the place of face-to-face meetings. Words alone will never be quite the same as hugs and eye contact.

The jury is still out on how this will be achieved. Many voices will need to be heard as Theosophy adapts itself, as it always has over the ages, to new occasions which teach new duties and new words. It is exciting to have the privilege of living in such times of change and challenge.

Robert Ellwood is emeritus professor of religion at the University of Southern California and a former vice-president of the Theosophical Society in America. He currently resides at the Krotona School of Theosophy.

by Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "God and the Great Angel." Quest  99. 1 (Winter 2011): 24-28.

 Who is the God we worship? Is he really the supreme creator of the universe, or merely an impostor or a fiction?

Such questions seem sacrilegious to believers, but they have been surfacing for millennia. The Jews contend that their God, Yahweh or Jehovah, is the Supreme Being, who deigned to communicate with them and them alone in the covenant at Sinai. Christians and Muslims, their spiritual descendants, have taken up the claim—while insisting that their revelations are the final and complete versions. All of these religions, in their dominant forms, insist that any other god either does not exist or is a demon in disguise.

Sometimes, however, the charges have been reversed to say that the monotheistic God of the Abrahamic faiths is not what he is claimed to be. One of them was H. P. Blavatsky. She writes: "If we are taken to task for believing in operating 'Gods' and 'Spirits' while rejecting a personal God, we answer to the Theists and Monotheists: Admit that your Jehovah is one of the Elohim, and we are ready to recognize him. Make of him, as you do, the Infinite, the one and the Eternal God, and we will never accept him in this character. Of tribal Gods there were many; the One Universal Deity is a principle, an abstract Root-Idea which has nought to do with the unclean work of finite Form" (Secret Doctrine, I, 492n.; emphasis here and in other quotations is in the original). Blavatsky is not denying that the God of the Abrahamic religions exists; rather she is saying that, contrary to what these religions claim, he is not the sole and unique Supreme Being.

In this she echoes the Gnostics of antiquity, who said that the god who created the physical world was the Demiurge (from the Greek d?miourgos, "craftsman"), a second- or third-degree divine emanation who falsely claimed to be the true God. Some Gnostic texts call him Ialdabaoth, a name of uncertain etymology. One common suggestion is "child of chaos" (cf. Secret Doctrine I, 197); another possibility is "begetter of hosts" (Barker, Great Angel, 174). A Gnostic text called Apocryphon of John says of Ialdabaoth: "And he is impious in his madness which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come" (Robinson, 105). This is clearly mocking the First Commandment in Exodus 20:2-3: "I am the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt not have any other gods before me." [*] Blavatsky equates Yahweh or Jehovah with Ialdabaoth (Secret Doctrine I, 197; cf. Isis Unveiled II, 183ff.).

The origins of Gnosticism, the great adversary of proto-catholic Christianity in the early centuries of the present era, have been hard to trace. Various authorities have sought for its sources in Iranian, Egyptian, and Greek religion, but these views all have serious defects. Margaret Barker, a British biblical scholar with solid mainstream credentials (she is a former president of the Society for Old Testament Study), argues that Gnosticism actually arose out of Judaism (Barker, Great Angel, 167). In fact she argues that Gnosticism is a descendant of the religion of Israel of the First Temple period (c. 950—586 BC).

The conventional view of Judaism in this era is derived from the Hebrew Bible as it now stands. The children of Israel made a covenant with Yahweh to worship him alone, but they kept reneging and worshipping the strange gods of their Canaanite neighbors. Yahweh periodically punished them with invasions by great powers such as Assyria and Babylon . Nonetheless, the Israelites continued to backslide, even defiling the Temple in Jerusalem , which had to be periodically purged.

The most dramatic of these purges took place in 621 bc, under Josiah, king of Judah . Worship in Jerusalem had gone so far astray, according to the Bible, that the Temple had fallen into disrepair and needed to be rebuilt. During this restoration, the lost scroll of the law of Moses was supposedly discovered and read to Josiah. "And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes" (2 Kings 22:11). Shocked by how far his people had strayed from this law, Josiah "commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron" (2 Kings 23:4). Baal (a Canaanite god whose name simply means "lord"; his real name was Hadd: Patai, 45) is familiar to readers of the Old Testament as a rival god to Yahweh, but the "grove" and "the host of heaven" are puzzling. They are, however, extremely relevant to our story, and we shall return to them.

Most biblical scholars believe that the scroll read to Josiah was not a rediscovered ancient text but a composition written for the occasion. This text is generally identified with Deuteronomy. It is the first part of what is called the Deuteronomic history, which also includes Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. The prevailing scholarly view of this history is that its first version was composed in Josiah's reign and came to a stirring climax with the restoration of the true worship of Yahweh at that time. But the history does not stop here. It continues down through the death of Josiah in 609 bc and the sack of the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 bc. For this reason a second, revised edition of the Deuteronomic account is postulated; it would have been written during the Babylonian exile (586—538 BC).

All of this is, as I say, widely held by mainstream scholars. Even so, they generally accept this Deuteronomic work as a broadly accurate account of the history of Israel in the period of the First Temple . Barker disagrees, saying that the Deuteronomic history was written by innovators who radically altered the Jewish religion and rewrote history to reflect their views. Moreover, the Josianic "reform" of 621 was itself a radical restructuring of the faith. Up to that time, she suggests, the Israelites had worshipped a trinity of gods: El, the high, absolute God; Yahweh, the national god of Israel ; and Asherah, Yahweh's consort. Contrary to what the current version of the Bible says, worship of this trinity was not an aberration, but the nation's standard religion up to that time. The Deuteronomic reform purged the goddess Asherah and conflated El with Yahweh, so that the national god of Israel was now equated with the high God. Monotheism as we know it was born.

These facts have been obscured, Barker says, because all texts in the present-day Old Testament were either written or edited by supporters of this new monotheistic faith. Nevertheless, some biblical texts may retain traces of the original scheme. One of these is Daniel 7:13-14, written in the second century bc: "I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away." In Christian theology, the Father is the "Ancient of days" and Jesus Christ is the "Son of man"—but what could it have meant in its original Jewish context? For Barker, the Ancient of Days here could be a relic of El, the transcendent God, from the religion of the First Temple . The "Son of Man" would then be Yahweh, the national god of Israel (Barker, Great Angel, 153-55). The Christians did not make up this mythos; their sole innovation was to equate the "Son of Man" with the man Jesus. Or, if we are to believe the Gospels, Jesus himself made this identification.

Even more remarkably, Barker says there may have originally been no distinction between Yahweh and the Angel of Yahweh. As she points out, many texts in the Old Testament equate the two, for example Judges 2:1: "Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, 'I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you.'" In Genesis 22, with its story of the sacrifice of Isaac, it is "the angel of Yahweh" that calls to Abraham out of heaven (Gen. 22:11), but in the end Abraham names the place where this happened "Yahweh-yireh," or "Yahweh is seen" (Gen. 22:14). In Genesis 48:15-16 Jacob says, "God, before whom my ancestors Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long to this day, the Angel which has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." In short, "the bulk of the evidence suggests that the Angel of Yahweh and Yahweh had been identical" (Barker, Great Angel, 35).

Sometimes Yahweh was described as being incarnated in the Davidic king, as we learn in Chronicles' account of Solomon's coronation: "And all the assembly blessed the Lord God of their fathers, and bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord and the king" (1 Chron. 29:23). If this was the case, and the tradition had survived among the people of Israel if not in the official cult of the Second Temple (539 bc—ad 70), it would explain why the Gospels stress that Jesus was a descendant of David: as the messiah, he would be the embodiment of Yahweh as the old kings of Judah had been.

These points are highly muted in the current Hebrew Bible, Barker argues, because its texts all passed through the hands of reformers like those who wrote the Deuteronomic history and Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55 is generally regarded to be the work of a different man from the prophet of the first thirty-nine chapters of that book). Indeed when Second Isaiah writes, "I am Yahweh, and there is none else, there is no God beside me" (Isa. 45:5), he is not stating a conventional truth but making a revisionistic theological statement.

What, then, of the goddess Asherah? Her name is probably derived from a phrase from the Ugaritic language spoken in Syria in biblical times: atirat-yammi, "she who treads upon Sea," "Sea" being a personified chaos monster (Cross, 66-67). Canaanite myth usually portrayed her as consort of the high god, El (Cross 15, 37). In First Temple Judaism, however, she appears to have been the consort of Yahweh: dedicatory inscriptions from that era have been found of the form "Blessed be X to Yahweh and his Asherah" (Barker, Great Angel, 55).

The Hebrew Bible sometimes uses asherah not as a proper name but as a common noun for a cult object representing the goddess, possibly a crudely carved wooden image. Indeed one ancient Jewish tradition says that the asherah was either a tree or a tree with a cult object beneath it. Hence translators have rendered asherah variously as "tree" and "grove." Suddenly we remember the Josianic reform: one of the things thrown out of the Temple was a "grove." This was obviously not a literal grove. Almost certainly it was an image of Asherah (Barker, Great Angel, 55).

One interesting piece of evidence about goddess worship in First Temple Judaism appears in Jeremiah 44:17-18. After the Temple's destruction, people who "had burned incense to other gods" tell Jeremiah: "We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine." This passage indicates that the worship of the goddess had long been established in Jerusalem and that some, perhaps many, in Judah believed that the Temple was destroyed not because it had been profaned by her worship (as Jeremiah said) but because her worship had been abandoned (Barker, Great Angel, 51).

Who was this Queen of Heaven? Some scholars, such as Raphael Patai in his Hebrew Goddess, suggest that she was Astarte or possibly Anath, two other Semitic deities (Patai, 62—65). Barker, however, argues that the Queen of Heaven was Asherah. Certainly these goddesses were sometimes conflated by the worshippers themselves: a plaque from the Egyptian New Kingdom representing a Semitic goddess names her as both Asherah and Astarte (along with another Semitic goddess called Anat; Dever, 178). Although she was dethroned by Josiah, Barker says, Asherah was never forgotten by the Jewish people. She changed form, mutating first into a personified "Wisdom" (cf. Prov. 8), and later into the Shekhinah, the feminine "presence" of God revered by the Kabbalists. Indeed the medieval Kabbalists taught that the restoration of her worship would inaugurate the messianic age (Barker, Great Angel, 51).

As for the "hosts of heaven," again most scholars agree that the ancient Hebrews envisaged Yahweh as enthroned among a heavenly host (the Hebrew word for "hosts," by the way, is ts'vaoth or Sabaoth, a possible source for the name Ialdabaoth). Barker portrays this host in more precise terms. She notes that one of the central symbols of Judaism is the seven-branched candelabrum known as the menorah. Modern-day Jews often have similar objects in their homes to celebrate Hanukkah, but technically these are not menorahs; they are hanukkiyot or Hanukkah candelabra. They have nine branches, whereas the one in the Temple had seven. Indeed Jews in antiquity were forbidden to have seven-branched candelabra: that was for the Temple alone (Barker, The Older Testament, 221).

The symbolism of the seven is extremely important, and to esotericists it is fairly obvious: it represents the five planets known to antiquity (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) as well as the sun and the moon. It is extremely likely that the menorah represented this "host of heaven." We do not know what image of the "host" Josiah would have cast out in his purge, but we do know that the symbolism of the seven remained alive and well in Judaism. In the postexilic period the prophet Zechariah has a vision of the menorah with seven branches. An angel asks him, "Knowest thou not what these be? . . . they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro throughout the earth" (Zech. 3:5, 10). The symbolism reappears in Revelation, written in the first century ad: "I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man" (Rev. 1:12-13). Theosophists can relate these seven to the Dhyan-Chohans without any great difficulty.

Thus it is possible that ancient Judaism had a schema of a supernal trinity consisting of El, Yahweh, and Asherah, and a lower set of seven "eyes of the Lord" equated with the seven planets as then known. Astonishingly, this is practically identical to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its ten sefirot or principles, three supernal or "unmanifest" and seven lower or "manifest" (see diagram).

According to Barker's view of Judaism in the Second Temple , the radical monotheists who wrote Deuteronomy and Second Isaiah won the day, and their marginalized opponents preserved a kind of antitradition that is represented in works such as the pseudepigraphical 1 Enoch and in Gnosticism. The Gnostics, repudiating Judaism, would also have repudiated Yahweh, who in their eyes had usurped the position of the true, supernal God, much as Blavatsky claims; hence the stupid, arrogant Ialdabaoth.

Even so, more mainstream forms of Judaism preserved echoes of the older schema in their notion of a deuteros theos or "second God," or the immanent aspect of God. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, borrowing a term from Greek philosophy, called this "second god" the Logos. (Logos is frequently translated as "word," as in the opening of the Gospel of John, but it is more accurately characterized as the structuring principle of consciousness.) Jewish mystical literature from this era represents this "second god" as the mysterious angel Metatron, the "angel of the presence." (The etymology of this name is doubtful, "before the throne.") For Barker, Metatron is merely a mutated form of the original Yahweh—who was not originally imagined as distinct from the angel of the presence.

Most scholars agree that this concept of a deuteros theos was widespread in Judaism of the first century ad. Barker differs in arguing that it had always existed in Judaism. Philo's innovation, she says, was simply to connect this "second god" with the logos of Greek thought. The innovation of Christianity was to argue that this logos was embodied in Jesus, as Yahweh may have been in the kings of the old Davidic dynasty. Hence the emphasis on Jesus as the "son of David."

Barker's portrait of this Temple theology, as she calls it, could clarify a great deal about the history of Western religion. It explains why Jesus could have attained quasi-divine status very soon after his death (cf. Phil. 2:6-11): he would have been the anointed one, the embodiment of Yahweh. It also explains why the Gnostics would have had such an ambivalent, not to say hostile, attitude toward Yahweh. And it goes far toward providing a protohistory of the Kabbalah, which would then be, not an importation of Gnostic or Neoplatonic ideas into Judaism (as various scholars, including Gershom Scholem, have argued), but the survival of the old First Temple theology in an esoteric form.

Why should we today care about such arcane points, which are so far from our life and experience? Actually they are not. Monotheism as it has come down to us in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has caused endless amounts of grief and bloodshed. Perhaps this conflict is rooted in an underlying contradiction in monotheistic theology: the idea that there is only one God, but that this God has chosen to reveal himself exclusively to my people (or religion) and not to any others. Stated so baldly, this view makes little sense, as Blavatsky, who derided the absolutistic claims of the Abrahamic faiths, well understood. But to a degree it is still held by all these religions, and it is not surprising that religious warfare over the last two thousand years has chiefly taken place in the parts of the world where these faiths are dominant.

Blavatsky's views do not coincide exactly with those of Margaret Barker. Barker is a biblical scholar and is principally concerned with these ideas as they have evolved over the course of centuries, while Blavatsky sometimes speaks as if this upstart Jehovah has a metaphysical reality. In this she resembles Kyle Griffith, author of the underground classic War in Heaven, which claims that the gods of the conventional religions are "Theocrats"—parasitic beings who maintain their existence on the astral plane with energy derived from the worship of devotees.

Whether we ourselves go this far is a matter of individual choice. But I personally believe that the great monotheistic faiths are currently seeing their grandiose and exclusivistic claims unmasked and increasingly derided. The rise of fundamentalism is in many ways a response to this trend: as a religion loses its hold over a populace, the remaining followers become more and more isolated, embittered, and extreme.

A curious Jewish mystical text known as 3 Enoch, dating from the early centuries of the Christian era, describes how Metatron is removed from his throne and demoted to the same rank as the other angels. This may reflect an attempt to reduce Metatron's status in the theology of the time, which was getting too close to that of God himself (Odeberg, 85-88). Whether or not that is the case here, such a fate sooner or later befalls all gods—that is to say, all attempts to conceptualize that which is beyond concepts. We may need these concepts, because that is how our minds work, but sooner or later we will conclude that they are nothing more than that, and we put them on the shelf alongside the other concepts in our mental closets. Only then, perhaps, will we be able to glimpse beyond them.

References

Barker, Margaret. The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992.

——. The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God. London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007.

——. The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity. London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1987.

Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. 3 vols. Wheaton : Quest, 1993 [1888].

Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Biblical Epic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Dever, William G. Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Eerdmans, 2005.

. Self-published, 1988: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8146891/War-in-Heaven-by-Kyle-Griffith; accessed Feb. 3, 2010.

Kuyt, Annelies. The "Descent" to the Chariot. Tübingen, Germany : Mohr Siebeck, 1995.

Odeberg, Hugo. 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928.

Patai, Raphael. The Hebrew Goddess. 3d ed. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 1st ed. San Francisco : Harper & Row, 1977.

The theology of the First Temple according to Margaret Barker. The supernal god, El, was worshipped along with Yahweh, the national god of Israel , and Yahweh's consort Asherah. Below them are the "host of heaven"—probably the five planets known at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) along with the sun and the moon. The scheme resembles the Kabbalistic Tree of Life ( far right). The top triangle contains the "supernal" or "unmanifest" principles: Keter (Crown), Hokhmah (Wisdom); and Binah (Understanding). The lower seven principles are associated with the planets: Hesed (Mercy) with Jupiter, Gevurah (Strength) with Mars, Tiferet (Beauty) with the sun, Netzach (Victory) with Venus, Hod (Glory) with Mercury, and Yesod (Foundation) with the moon. Malkut (Kingdom) is the earth. Binah is usually associated with Saturn.

Drawing of an Egyptian New Kingdom plaque from the Winchester College Collection. It shows the goddess riding on a lion and listing her three names: Qudshu ("holy one," another name for Asherah), Anat, and Astarte. Her Egyptian-style wig also appears in many of her images from Canaan. From William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife?

 by Edward Abdill

Originally printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Abdill, Edward. "Desire and Spiritual Selfishness." Quest  99. 1 (Winter 2011): 21-23, 39.

In fragment 1 of The Voice of the Silence we read, "Kill out desire; but if thou killest it take heed lest from the dead it should again arise." But if we had no desire to act, we would become the living dead. Surely that is not what the text is suggesting.

The Sanskrit word for "desire" is kama. According to Theosophical teaching, kama is one of the seven principles or aspects of human nature. These are localized fields within universal fields. Each of us is a microcosm, a miniature macrocosm, and as such we contain within us all the principles that the universe contains. Although the fields are nonmaterial, each one is associated with a type of matter that responds specifically to it. We can see matter being affected by a field when we observe a bar magnet close to iron filings. The filings line up along the field. The magnetic field visibly affects iron filings, but it does not visibly affect other material. The iron filings are a kind of test object that reveals the presence of the magnetic field.

The etheric double, a field closely associated with the physical body, affects protoplasm. This can be seen in the incubating chicken egg: a pulsation begins at the exact spot in the egg where the heart will be formed. The field "molds" the heart in the same way that the magnetic field "molds" the iron filings.

In addition to the etheric field, which affects the physical body, we have emotional, mental, and spiritual fields. Each of these has a particular type of matter that responds to it. Nonetheless, all these fields affect the physical body in some way. Perhaps that is because from a Theosophical perspective there is only a single field acting in different ways on seven different states of matter. Could it be that this ultimate unified field is consciousness itself?

A powerful component of the emotional field is kama, loosely translated as "desire." Essentially, kama is our emotional nature. It includes, but is not limited to, craving and desire of any kind. We may crave physical sensation, food, drink, companionship, prestige, power, or a soul mate. We may even crave fine art and music. Craving is not the same as appreciation. To appreciate fine art and music is not the same as craving them. The problem is the attachment to the objects of craving–the "I-can't-live-without-it" feeling. These attachments will inevitably cause us pain. The indisputable fact is that everything changes, both in the physical and in the psychological world. "This, too, shall pass" has no exceptions, not even in the subjective realm of the psyche. If we are attached to or identified with anything, psychological pain is inevitable when the object of our desire changes. How easy it is to see this, and yet how extraordinarily difficult it is to accept it.

In directing us to "kill out desire," The Voice of the Silence is not asking us to kill out emotion. If you read The Mahatma Letters, you will discover that the Masters Koot Hoomi and Morya show strong feelings. They are not cold, emotionless people. In letter 92 we read that Blavatsky's glowing description of Morya as "an Apollo of Belvedere" caused him to "start in anger, and break his pipe while swearing like a true Christian." (References to The Mahatma Letters in this article are to the chronological edition, edited by A. T. Barker and Vicente Hao Chin, Jr.)

In addition to our emotions we have minds. This mind—known in Theosophy as manas–can become focused on and identified either with buddhi, the spiritual nature, or with kama. When it is identified with buddhi, it is called buddhi-manas, and along with consciousness itself, atma, it is said to constitute the reincarnating individual self. But when the mind is focused on and identified with kama, it is called kama-manas. This is the animal soul or the lower self, and it perishes sometime after death.

Since we are localizations of universal fields, does this mean that the universe behaves as we do? If not, what is the difference?

To say that atma-buddhi, the most spiritual aspect of reality, "desires" anything would be misleading. It would be more accurate to say that atma-buddhi wills something. It is intentionality rather than desire. While these two things are related, they are quite different. In the universal sense, intentionality involves what is truly right for the whole. That is quite different from personal desire. So we might say that the one is similar to or a reflection of the other, but we can no more say they are identical than that the reflection of the moon on the water is the moon. Atma-buddhi wills the universe into existence. It desires nothing. If we identify with kama, we may use our willpower to get what we want. If we identify with buddhi, the divine will may be expressed through us. In that case, the divine will neutralizes personal desire.

The personal ego, the "me," is composed of our bodies and what might be called our "thinking/feeling" nature, kama-manas.

Kama is an essential part of our nature. It propels us to act. If we did not act, we would wither away and die. Acting generates karma, and the karmic results of our actions enable us to learn. Some believe they should not act to help others on the grounds that this is interfering with that person's karma. But the wise have told us that inaction in a deed of mercy is a deadly sin. It is not a desire to act that causes a problem; rather it is our identification with our desires and our attachment to the objects of our desires. The following example may help illustrate this point.

Let us say that we have planned out our day. Even if the tasks before us are unpleasant, we want our plan to go as we have set it up. We want to finish our work; we want to finish it on time; and we want to have a feeling of satisfaction with a job well done. Yet, to paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry." When they do, we are likely to become upset. The upset comes because we are attached to the desire to have things go as we planned them. Avoiding attachment to desire does not mean that we should not act. It would be foolish to say that that we should do nothing or that we do not care about our plans. We do care. However, if our plans are blocked, can we accept that fact even if we are not happy about it? Can we say, "What needs to be done now?" and get on with it without emotional upset? Can we say, "Few things matter much, and most things don't matter at all" and mean it? If we cannot, we are attached to and identified with our desire.

Whenever we feel angry, upset, fearful, anxious, or frustrated, we are reacting to blocked desire, kama. Kama is not only a desire to possess something; it can also be a desire to reject something. We may desire to possess a lover, but we might just as well desire to be free of an enemy. Minor flare-ups of kama happen so often during the day that we are generally unaware of its tremendous power over us. Examples abound. Traffic jams, flight delays, loss of personal property, being jostled by crowds, and disruptions of our daily routine provide opportunities for us to notice whether or not we are attached to our desires.

Does nonattachment to desire mean that we should not plan? Nothing could be further from the truth. Planning for the future is common sense. Knowing something of inevitable cycles, we can plan ahead. Our plans may or may not work out as we hope, but that should not prevent us from being as sensible as possible.

Perhaps the most difficult attachment to avoid is the attachment to those we love. True love goes out without hooks. Attachment, however, makes us want to keep something or someone exactly as they are for our own emotional comfort. If we love a spouse or a friend without attachment, we can let them go when they move out of our lives or when they die. When we truly love someone, we want what is best for them; and sometimes it is best that they die. Our grief, although it is natural, is evidence that in addition to our love, we have become attached to having their physical presence with us.

Some might say that desires are normal and there is nothing to be gained by trying to detach ourselves from them. Rather than accept or reject that point of view, we might consider what sages have called "the eternal now." From a scientific as well as Theosophical point of view, everything in the objective world is moving, and moving equals change. Nothing stays the same even for a nanosecond. When we have what we want, we are happy. We don't want anything to change. But we can no more prevent our lives from changing than we can stop the earth from spinning on its axis. Our desire to keep things as they are, and the impossibility of doing so, produce psychological pain. Sages say that if we avoid becoming attached to the objects of our desire, we will be able to enjoy life to its fullest. Blavatsky once said that the Theosophist should have a deep appreciation of the sensate world, but a calm indifference to it. This indifference might mean a complete acceptance of constant change. Early in The Secret Doctrine we read, "Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration." The current scientific view is similar. Theoretically, there was no time before the Big Bang. What we call "time" is our experience of motion. Without motion there can be no time. But we are so rooted in our experience of time that it is difficult to realize that time is perpetual motion within an eternal now. In letter 15 of The Mahatma Letters, Koot Hoomi writes, "Past, present and future! Miserable concepts of the objective phases of the Subjective Whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving."

To be able to accept change and yet find life joyful, it may be helpful to get some sense of what Koot Hoomi calls "the Subjective Whole" or the eternal now. There is no doubt that this can be realized, at least momentarily, through meditation. Seeking to find the root of our own being in the Eternal can lead to Self-realization. It can free us from identification with the constantly changing world while allowing us to enjoy this world. When we have had flashes of insight into the eternal background, it becomes easier to accept and enjoy the changing foreground. Then, when our plans fall apart and what we have enjoyed is gone, we can more easily accept the situation because we now know that we are rooted in the eternal now. This is no easy task. In fact it may be one of the most difficult tasks we ever face. Even after having had a flash of insight into the Eternal, we may find that that insight fades and we slip back into our accustomed way of thought.

It is easy to fool ourselves into believing that we have rooted ourselves in the eternal now when we have not. In one episode of the comic strip "Agnes," we find Agnes at school. Her teacher asks for the assignment, but Agnes does not have it. Agnes is convinced that she is now enjoying every moment with joy, and the fact that she does not have her assignment does not bother her one bit. But when the teacher makes her stay after school to finish the assignment, Agnes decides that her moments of joy are turning sour. As is often the case with us all, Agnes has deceived herself.

Having touched on the problem of personal desire, we may now look more closely at spiritual desire or what Koot Hoomi called "inner spiritual aspirations." When The Voice of the Silence says, "If thou killest [desire] take heed lest from the dead it should again arise," it refers to killing ordinary selfish desire only to have it reincarnate as spiritual or inner selfish desire. This is not the same as spiritual will. Spiritual will is essential to spiritual development. In fact, in letter 126 Koot Hoomi directs us to have "an iron, never failing determination and yet be meek and gentle, humble and have shut out from [the] heart every human passion, that leads to evil." The "human passion" is both personal desire and spiritual selfishness.

While personal desire is deplorable, it is far less dangerous than spiritual selfishness. In letter 64 Koot Hoomi describes this more dangerous form:

 There are persons who, without ever showing any external sign of selfishness, are intensely selfish in their inner spiritual aspirations. These will follow the path once chosen by them with their eyes closed to the interests of all but themselves, and see nothing outside the narrow pathway filled with their own personality. They are so intensely absorbed in the contemplation of their own supposed "righteousness" that nothing can ever appear right to them outside the focus of their own vision distorted by their self-complacent contemplation, and their judgment of the right and wrong.

One sign of spiritual selfishness is the desire to acquire knowledge and power for oneself. If the desire for personal enlightenment is so strong that it prevents us from fulfilling our responsibilities, we have fallen victim to spiritual selfishness. In extreme cases, a parent may neglect a child in order to visit a guru or attend a religious rite. Among Theosophists we trust that such cases are rare, but less extreme cases are common. We may consider some cases from member meetings of the Theosophical Society. For example a member might insist that meetings contain information helpful to him or her personally while ignoring the needs of others. Their unstated desire can be summed up thus: "I know what we need to do to make our meetings more spiritually useful, and I intend to override the views of others in order to get what I want." In addition, many of us participate in group discussions, but sometimes the desire to get our view across is so strong that we monopolize the meeting, oblivious to the time we are taking and to the fact that we are keeping others from participating.

Not every member of the Theosophical Society can attend meetings. Some members who support the Society by their dues and good will do not have the interest or time to support it actively. Other members face responsibilities that prevent them from attending. In such cases, spiritual selfishness might, ironically, mean going to a meeting rather than carrying out these responsibilities.

Certain members are able to attend most meetings but choose to come only when the subject matter appeals to them. If they think they've heard it all before, they won't go. The late Emily Sellon, a prominent Theosophist and former vice-president of the Society in America , was once asked why she attended member meetings once a week. The inquirer asked her, "What do you get out of it?" Emily replied, "It is not what I get out of it. It is what I can contribute to it."

We do not have to give a lecture to contribute to a Theosophical meeting. Participating in a discussion is also a contribution. The expressed thoughts of individuals in the group provide food for thought, even when the ideas may seem foolish to us. If we try to understand our fellow members, we might discover what is behind an apparently foolish statement. For example, it may come from a rigid belief system. If so, rather than becoming annoyed with the speaker (a sign of blocked desire), we might state our own view calmly and without animosity.

In many organizations members complain that the meetings are uninspiring and the subject matter is boring. The charge is always the same. "They" don't present interesting programs. Who are "they"? It is generally only the few who take responsibility to organize the group and schedule programs. Anyone who has ever tried to get volunteer help for any organization knows how difficult that task is. Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "You are the world." In the Theosophical Society we may say, "Each member is the Theosophical Society." There is no "they," only "we." The Society is what each of us makes of it.

We often forget that the primary purpose of the Theosophical Society is to "form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity." It is easy to believe in universal brotherhood from our armchairs. It is not easy to experience it shoulder to shoulder with fellow members. Nearly every meeting of the Society gives us an opportunity to ponder spiritual principles. Perhaps the presenters are not eloquent. Perhaps they are not well informed. Perhaps they present mistaken notions. Nevertheless, you and I have an opportunity to present our own understanding of the topic. Together we can reach toward the inner states of consciousness, where it is possible to get insights into truth, where, despite our diverse opinions, there is a deeper unity. Even if the meetings occasionally seem to be boring to the bitter end, we are not there to be entertained. We are there to build the bonds of brotherhood and to contribute what we can, either silently by thought or verbally as food for thought.

Universal brotherhood cannot be achieved by acting from an emotional base, even though our emotional state may be profoundly and positively affected by our efforts to reach deeper states of consciousness. An awareness of universal brotherhood can only be achieved through a realization of unity in the deepest states of consciousness. Pondering spiritual principles together is a means toward that end. The Prayer of St. Francis says, "It is in giving that we receive." If we look only to receive, we will, as the Gospel says, "be sent empty away." Spiritual selfishness will have doomed us to failure.

Koot Hoomi has told us that selfishness, pride, egoism, and the want of self-sacrifice are the greatest impediments on the road to adeptship. As we begin to realize that attachment to the objects of our desire is selfish and brings pain, we will begin to free ourselves from it. We may by so doing come ever closer to the secret gateway that leads to the "reward past all telling, the power to bless and save humanity."

Ed Abdill, author of The Secret Gateway, is a former director of the Theosophical Society in America and past president of the New York Theosophical Society. He lectures for the Society throughout the United States and internationally.