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HPB Quote for the Month: “ Remember that the only God man comes in contact with is his own God, called Spirit, Soul and Mind or Consciousness, and these three are one.”
—The Key to Theosophy p. 7-8
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Human Excellence
March 2026
Quote for the Month: “There is no understanding, no explanation of the mysteries of our own existence on the basis of a single life.”—Robert Crosbie
The Theosophical Movement, Vol. 20, No. 9, July 17, 1950
How is it possible to assume a position of power and confidence so long as one places his moral centre of gravity outside himself? How can he expect to face life and its trials, or to achieve the things he desires to do, if he believes himself to be the victim of the chaotic waves of matter, or the puppet of an arbitrary God? Theosophy teaches man to look up and aspire to the greatness that is his, inside, to assume the position of Divinity, to become master of his fate. There is a power in the soul that can accomplish seeming miracles—if only it is put to use.
He who would reach the goal must at some time make a vow. He must affirm the eminence of his Divine Self—which is above chance or circumstance, and beyond the pressure of time or cycles. It is not enough to sit and wait for Karma to clear away the old before instituting the pattern of the new. The whole order of Nature indicates that the process of life is a becoming— and that it works from within outwards. The withered leaves of the tree’s old growth do not detach themselves from the twig voluntarily. They are pushed off the limb from within, literally forced to depart by an inner impulse that prepares the way for the new. So it is with man, who stands at the front of the great wave of life. He must affirm the position of master in his kingdom. Will-action must precede outer change in condition. The light of the Satya age must dawn in the mind and heart of the race before the darkness of Kali will depart. One must become a disciple before the outer sign is bestowed. “Now is the only time we have!”
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but… Read More
Near the cave in which was born the Saviour of the world grew three trees—a pine, an olive, and a palm. On that holy eve when the guiding star of Bethlehem appeared in the heavens, that star which announced to the long-suffering world the birth of Him, who brought to mankind the glad tidings of… Read More
Cross Currents
The Logos and the Mind
By Charles Johnston
Io veggio ben sì come già risplende nello intelletto tuo l’eterna luce . . . —DANTE, Paradiso, V.
“Well do I note how in thine intellect already doth reglow the eternal Light, which only seen doth ever kindle love; and if aught else lead your love away, naught is it save some vestige of this Light, ill understood, that shineth through therein.”
In the two lines quoted above, from the longer passage given in English, Dante has said almost everything that can be said regarding the Logos and the mind. The eternal Light of the Logos glows again in our spiritual consciousness, when mind and heart have been cleansed and restored by the long process of purification so marvelously described in the Purgatorio.
The heart of the matter would seem to be that not only our spiritual insight and will, but every power that we possess without exception, the whole substance and force of our existence, comes to us from the Logos through the collective Divine Power which we call the Lodge of Masters, and in particular from and through that Master on whose ray of spiritual life and force we are. It is the work of the Master to give form to the spiritual ideal for each one of us, and to lead us, so far as we permit and co-operate, to fulfill that ideal and to make it concrete.
Our powers are not our own, but come to us without exception from the Logos, while the way in which we should use these powers, the plan and ideal we should follow, are given to us by the Master on whose ray we are, who himself draws the principles and lines of his conception from the Logos. Plato speaks of the secondary creative gods who formed mankind, according to his teaching, as mirrors of the eternal Artificer. Dante in like manner calls the divine potencies and high angels mirrors of the eternal Light. We may, perhaps, think of Masters in the same terms, and think of them as carrying out the same work.
Quite literally, we are not our own. We did not provide ourselves with bodies, which come to us through the long succession of ages, from an impulse having its origin in the Logos; and this is true both of their form and of their substance, in the view of students of Theosophy. In exactly the same way we did not provide ourselves with consciousness, that miraculous power which looks out at the world through our eyes. We did not provide ourselves with will, the ability to set our powers in motion, and actively to use them. Consciousness and will are more palpably of the Logos than the form and substance of our bodies; and it may be helpful for us to consider that our consciousness and will, exactly as they are at this moment, are integral parts of the Logos, of the divine, universal Consciousness and Will; not rays remotely derived from the Logos, but undivided parts of the Logos, here and now, just as, according to the most recent scientific view, our hands, for instance, are integral parts of the sum total of electrons which make up the physical substance of the world.
According to Theosophy humanity is on an immense pilgrimage. The Theosophical Movement has as one of its central activities the imagining and building towards an ever evolving and more enlightened civilization in the future. The Bible states in proverbs, “As a man thinketh, so shall he be.” To create the civilization of the future we must first imagine it. Furthermore the society of the future will be comprised of human beings who strive to become more compassionate, reverential, and wise. Ancient Wisdom holds that any effort, however small or humble, in the right direction will bear fruit. Students of Theosophy seek to find ways to sow seeds of benevolence which will benefit generations in the future.
