From Our Readers

Nigeria, November 15, 1999

Periodically individuals are gripped with fear that the cataclysmic upheaval signaling the end of the world is just around the corner, wondering what will become of them. Others believe they will be taken up into heaven when Jesus Christ, or some other divine figure, appears. Many are looking for a sign. But from immemorial antiquity there have been accounts of the destruction of the world. A Babylonian narrative thousands of years old, of a disastrous flood which wiped out almost all of mankind, was written on cuneiform tablets first translated by George Smith in 1872. In fact, in an early historic period (about 3000 bc) a gigantic flood did occur in the Tigris-Euphrates plain. English archeologist C. Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) discovered a layer of water-deposited silt eight feet thick separating the Ubaid and Uruk levels at the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. Similar deposits appear at other sites, but at different levels, suggesting a series of floods of varying magnitude.

When Jesus Christ was queried about when the end of days would be, he gave no definite answer. In the process, he said that he himself did not know, that his Father who is in Heaven knows. In any case, from biblical and other accounts we can infer that people usually have survived such catastrophes; therefore, there is still hope for humanity.

As everything is growing to a higher level of consciousness, it follows that when humans have acquired sufficient experiences in the lower planetary spheres, according to evolutionary law we gradually move to higher realms of experience. In consequence, lower beings aspiring to become humans will move up to occupy the space which mankind has left, for nature abhors a vacuum. As Heraclitus said, "everything is ever becoming" — that is, everything is in constant transformation, constant ebb and flux. There is no consummate extirpation of life or human beings. Everything is aspiring for finer and better experiences.

Consequently, as children of the cosmos we need not be afraid. We have only to rededicate ourselves to the theosophic ideals. Sometimes it becomes difficult to live rightly, particularly where the preponderance of people think very negatively, but there are many good things we can think of, such as love, kindliness, peace, health, and a constant willingness to stretch out a helping hand. We can streamline our desires in consonance with what will bring succor to the majority of mankind. There are laws we can live by: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We can order our thoughts and conduct in such a way that it will be pleasing to the cosmos; after all, do we know whether we shall be the next Noah?

As Grace F. Knoche said, "We move into the future with courage and a great hope for humanity. Our challenges will come not so much from outside as from within. To the degree that we can whittle away, steadfastly but without anxiety, those tenuous yet present internal barriers that block us from being all that we aspire to be, to that degree will we be a center of light, a natural laya-center for the inflow of pure theosophic inspiration to our fellow humans." — Emmanuel O. Awa

India, April 30, 2000





California, April 16, 2000

It's always seemed significant to me that when I want to organize my thinking I sketch or draw a circle. It is, at once, the relative transposition of chaos to cosmos. The circle captures, then re-presents, the "fleeing" centrifugal and the "converging" centripetal thought-forces that are the cache-tools of every ancient-to-modern Magician. Creating a circle is the Imagination's first move in the dynamic chessness of life.

Recently someone handed me this confirming quote from the notable American Sioux, Black Elk (1863-1950):


When thought-forces are drawn into a circle, it becomes a lens by which the Imagination can picture the winning move — victory over the self — that assures continued progress beyond the earth's demise. — Wynn Wolfe

"The Magic Circle" (detail), Edward Burne-Jones, c. 1880


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