Theosophy

"Beware of venomous vibrations. Strive for the future and succumb not to the spell of the present. Follow the simplest path as you ascend the mountain. Powerful, exalted visions require pure surroundings, and prana. Christ’s deeds were consummated amidst the beauties of nature. Never did He dwell for long in cities. (51)"

"The Teacher suffered for His words of Truth. Man resists the path to Light. Darkness is more pleasing to the eyes of moles, But love and knowledge will conquer all. Your spirit will ascend and you will pass by the uncomprehending ones swiftly, as you would mileposts on the way. Smile at the difficulties upon your path. I vouch, you will conquer! (116)"

"We speak but once. Do not repeat your questions. What is not understood or is unheard is lost to Earth. You may find new ways of understanding and ascent, but by new steps. Therefore be alert. Tiredness is not dangerous. But levity and callousness are banes to mankind. Like a householder in constant action, be not afraid of a few drops of labor’s perspiration. Even a misguided action is better than passivity. Attain the port. For each one is a ship provided. (292)"

"The Treasure is returning from the West. On the mountains the fires of jubilation are kindled. Behold the road! There walk those who carry the Stone. Upon the Shrine are the signs of Maitreya. Out of the Sacred Kingdom is given the date when the carpet of expectation may be spread. By the sign of the seven stars shall the Gates be opened. “By fire shall I manifest My messengers. Gather the prophecies of your happiness.” Thus are fulfilled the prophecies of the ancestors and the writings of the wise ones... The approaching Maitreya is symbolized with His feet set upon earth—the symbol of haste. (Prophecies of Shambhala and Maitreya)"

"By holiness in life, guard the precious Gem of Gems. Aum Tat Sat Aum! I am thou, thou art I—parts of the Divine Self. My Warriors! Life thunders—be watchful. Danger! The soul hearkens to its warning! The world is in turmoil — strive for salvation. I invoke blessings unto you. Salvation will be yours! Life nourishes the soul. Strive for the life glorified, and for the realization of purity. Put aside all prejudices—think freely. Be not downcast but full of hope. Flee not from life, but walk the path of salvation. You and We — here together in spirit. One Temple for all—for all, One God. Manifold worlds dwell in the Abode of the Almighty, And the Holy Spirit soars throughout. The Renovation of the World will come — the prophecies will be fulfilled. People will arise and build a New Temple. (1)"

"It is predicted that the manifestation of Maitreya will come after the wars. But the final war will be for the True Teaching. But each one rising up against Shambhala shall be stricken in all his works. And the waves shall wash away his dwelling. And even a dog will not answer to his call. Not clouds but lightning shall he see on the final night. And the red messenger shall rise up on pillars of Light. The teaching indicates that each warrior of Shambhala shall be named the invincible. The Lord Himself hastens and His banner is already above the mountains! (Prophecies of Shambhala and Maitreya)"

"Those who are obsessed with matters of the earthly world can receive no answers from the Heights. Fate can be overcome if you manifest the Christ, Who sacrificed Himself for Truth. (3)"

"Into the New World my first message. You who gave the Ashram, And you who gave two lives, Proclaim. Builders and warriors, strengthen the steps. Reader, if you have not grasped — read again, after a while. The predestined is not accidental, The leaves fall in their time. And winter is but the harbinger of spring. All is revealed; all is attainable. I will cover you with My shield, if you but tend to your labors. I have spoken. (i)"

"The King commanded Maitri to be companion to the Prince and greatly admired the wisdom of her who was found on the shores of the lake... Many years did the Prince spend with Maitri, calling her at times Stern One, or Glowing One, or Warrior, or Seeress of the Wisdom of Nagi. Maitri opened before him the door of the Path. When the powerful Lion returned and with the roar of Truth mantled the mountains, Maitri guarded for Him his best pupil and pronounced, “She shall glorify the sight of Thy labors.” The Lord of Truth answered, “Maitri, manifested Councilor and Keeper. Thou who hast hidden thy wisdom from the crowd. Thou shalst assume My place as the Lord of Compassion and Labor. Maitreya shall lead the nations towards Light. And the arrow of achievement shall bestow the apple of Knowledge.” (A Page from the Sacred History of the Lord Buddha, the Predestined Maitreya)"

"The Blessed Buddha bestowed upon you the cherished Maitreya to approach the New Era. Thy Pastures shall reach the Promised Land. When thou tendest thy flocks, dost thou not hear the voices of the stones? These are the toilers of Maitreya who make ready the treasures for thee. When the wind murmureth through the reeds, dost thou understand that this is the arrows of Maitreya flying in protection? When lightning illumineth thy camps, knowest thou that this is the light of thy desired Maitreya? To whom shall the watch upon the first night be entrusted? — To thee! (Prophecies of Shambhala and Maitreya)"

"I perceive the enemies will be destroyed by miraculous fire. The time for action is but begun. Comprehend devotion, faith, and courage. I will safeguard you with a helmet of faith, an armor of devotion, and a shield of victory. And on the banner will be inscribed: Love, the Conqueror. (299)"

"The prayer uttered by Christ when leaving Earth was not heard by people. The prayer uttered by Buddha was not heard by people. The prayer that will be uttered by Maitreya knocks like lightning at the gates of the human spirit. Thus is Earth stratified and the consciousness of the spirit created."

"Then an old sage turned to the King saying, “Reverend Mother, and thou, Lord, command me to combine your wishes. Command me to bring unto you her whom we call the daughter of the Great Nag, whom we have sheltered in our house. And for seven years have we marveled at her wisdom and the strength of her bow. Verily she is worthy of the hand which has inscribed the wisdom of the Vedas.” “Let her be brought here,” commanded the King. The wise councilor brought a young being, saying, “Maitri, send the worthiest greeting to our King.” Unheard of was it to see a seven-year-old girl in a white garment, her bow and arrow in hand and a dagger in her girdle. The crown of heavy dark hair was not restrained by the fillet of the Nag and the eyes peered out sadly and sternly..."

"My Friends! Happiness lies in serving the salvation of Humanity. Put aside all prejudices and, summoning your spiritual forces, aid mankind. Direct the unsightly towards the path of beauty. As the tree renews its leaves, so shall humanity flourish on the path of righteousness. (4)"

"The Tashi Lama shall ask the Great Dalai Lama: “What is predestined for the last Dalai Lama?” “The denier shall be given over to justice and shall be forgotten. And the warriors shall march under the banner of Maitreya... “Those rising against Shambhala shall be cast down. To the obscured ones the Banner of Maitreya shall flow as blood over the lands of the new world. To those who have understood, as a red sun.” (Prophecies of Shambhala and Maitreya)"

"Twice He has Himself appeared-- as Krishna in the Indian plains, and as Christ amid the hills of Palestine. In the incarnation as Krishna the great feature was always love... in Palestine, love was the central feature of His teaching."

"What is now called Christianity was undoubtedly a magnificent conception as He originally taught it, sadly as it has fallen away from that high level in the hands of ignorant exponents since. It must not be assumed, of course, that the teaching of brotherly and neighbourly love was new in the world."

"The identical thing that we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and has not been lacking from the beginnings of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, from which moment on the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian."

"The Bodhisattva Maitreya. The Lord Maitreya, whose name means kindliness or compassion, took up the office of Bodhisattva when the Lord Gautama laid it down, and since then He has made many efforts for the promotion of Religion. One of His first steps on assuming office was to take advantage of the tremendous magnetism generated in the world by the presence of the Buddha, to arrange that great Teachers should simultaneously appear in many different parts of the earth; so that within a comparatively short space of time we find not only the Buddha Himself, Shri Shankaracharya and Mahavira in India, but also Mithra in Persia, Laotse and Confucius in China, and Pythagoras in ancient Greece."

"Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher. p. 148"

"If glancing back to the history of the past, you are able to see there something of the promise of the future; if you realize something of the changing world around you, the physical earth showing signs of alteration; if you see the beginnings of the new type, of the new sub-race; if you understand something of the problems around us and the hopelessness of trying to solve them along lines previously used; if you realize the growing expectation, the looking for the coming of One to lead and to guide, and then you realize that while He is preparing for His coming, His children are preparing to welcome Him and are getting ready to march under His banner and to carry out His will; then I think that... to some of us, there will rise up the hope, nay, the certainty, that we are on the eve of mighty changes to be carried out under a World Teacher, Who shall come to our help. Who shall act as our Guide; and as that thought grows strong in your hearts, life will grow full of hope, full of joyful expectation. p. 148"

"The Bodhisattva also occupied occasionally the body of Tsong-ka-pa, the great Tibetan religious reformer, and throughout the centuries He has sent forth a stream of His pupils, including Nagarjuna, Aryasanga, Ramanujacharya, Madhavacharya, and many others, who founded new sects or threw new light upon the mysteries of religion, and among these was one of His pupils who was sent to found the Muhammadan faith."

"You will realize that the world is not left alone, that the troubles of the present are but the birth-pangs out of which a new civilization shall be born; and that just as in the coming of a longed-for son the pain is forgotten in the joy of welcome, so, the troubles of our time, menacing and terrible as they are, are but that hour that precedes the dawning, are but the sufferings that precede the birth; and that we also shall ere very, very long realize that change is upon us, that the Teacher is with us, that hope has changed into realization, and that the longing for the coming has altered into the delight of the come. p. 149"

"That wide-spread expectation which now is spreading among the great religions of the world, in all the great religious organizations of the world, is literally a prophecy of the event which is to crown these expectations with realization, the thought - heralds of the coming Teacher preparing His way before Him. But it is not only the world's expectation; it is the world's need."

"That view, perchance, will appeal only to those who believe that the world is guided, helped, protected by higher powers than humanity, by mightier Beings than ourselves; Who look on the world as the huge field of evolution in which Spirits are unfolding, and which exists for the very purpose of their unfoldment; Who realize that the world has a mighty Architect Who plans out the progress of humanity, and that that plan is worked out stage by stage by His agents, His subordinates, who build slowly along the lines of the plan that He has designed and conceived. Then all those, when they see the terrible need of the world of to-day, feel that they need some Master to voice and to bring down the help of which the world feels the sore necessity. And those social problems to which I alluded mark out the need of our world."

"We need a leader, one greater than ourselves, who, seeing these mighty problems that to us are insoluble, will point us to the road along which we may walk to their solution, one who will apply to the tangle of earthly life these fundamental truths of morality which are unchanging and eternal, but which have never yet been thoroughly applied to human society, or to the organizing of men on the principles there laid down."

"And it is not only in the labor world that we feel that this deadlock is seen. Along many other lines of human thought and human activity there is the same feeling that we have worn out our old methods and need a new departure in order that progress may be continued. You see it in the world of Art where the old ideals are fading away, and efforts in every direction are being made to body out new forms of art, new conceptions of the beautiful for the growing longings of man. You see it not only in the world of industry and art but in the world of science — the same demand for a new departure because the old methods are beginning to be outworn, and along these lines no further progress seems possible. Endings in every direction! p. 141"

"And we put that on one side as one of the proofs — a very important proof when you realize that it is dealing with physical things that every one of you can judge about for yourselves. And we look to see if there are other reasons why we should expect a World Teacher; and the next thing we notice is that now, as in the time when the Christ came to the earth, you are face to face with a great civilization which has become strong, luxurious, and dominant, but which is carried on side by side with an enormous amount of misery and of wretchedness; which, while on one side it is undoubtedly magnificent, is on the other side as undoubtedly miserable, downtrodden, and depressed. How is our civilization to progress further along the lines on which it is going today? Take the social conditions as you see them around you now. Look on the terrible unrest in every country in the civilized world. You cannot take up a newspaper without seeing in one column after another references to labor troubles... where millions are being driven to the very verge of starvation in the frightful labor war that is desolating our land today. p. 139"

"The great Teachers have all spoken with one voice. They have told us: 'Love one another.' They have told us that hate ceases not by hatred at any time, that hatred ceases but by love; but although that was taught by the Lord Buddha twenty-five centuries ago, although the Christ in His exquisite Sermon on the Mount pressed that same eternal teaching in words familiar to you all, where do we find one nation that puts these principles into practice, where is a single organization which is built according to that moral law? p. 145"

"It is impossible to have those convulsions in the labor market without driving thoughtful men to consider the question of new departures, of re-organization, of a change in a system which is palpably breaking down before our eyes. And there is a strange indication, that comes from that American country where our new subrace is arising, of a possibility of an organization of industry, which, though at the moment it be on distinctly anti-social lines, has yet in it the possibility of growing into an organization that would serve society. I mean that flowering of the competitive system into trusts, in which you destroy a large amount of competition, in which one great trade is organized — granted for the benefit of those, a few, who have the control of it... we are beginning to feel the need of a new organization, of a new type of civilization, and that exactly fits in with the coming of a new sub-race, and demands by all the testimony of the past the coming of a World Teacher. p. 140"

"He is thus the Head of all the faiths at present existing, and of many others which have died out in the course of time, though He is of course responsible for them only in their original form, and not for the corruption which man has naturally and inevitably introduced into all of them as the ages have rolled by."

"Thus in Buddhism that great cycle of antiquity found its ending; in that great religion the last word of the ancient world was spoken, and He Who had taught. He Who had illuminated, the Christ of that elder world. He passed away. His Work for humanity completed, His task accomplished. His Successor ready to take His place. Then opened the new cycle, the new age of racial life. The old was closed, the new was to open, and with the fifth sub-race, the Teutonic sub-race that now is leading the nations of the earth, a new cycle was to open, and to it there came the new Bodhisattva, the new Christ, to be the builder of a yet greater civilization. He came among the Jewish people to give out His message and to meet His destiny, to be rejected by His contemporaries, murdered by the people from whom He took His body. p. 111"

"Chapter VI, Why we believe in the coming of a World Teacher"

"The Theosophical conception, as widely put forward among thoughtful people, asks them to consider the coming of World Teachers as normal, not as abnormal; as under a certain definite law, and not as a breach of continuity; as part of the Divine plan working out in human evolution, by which these Teachers form a long succession, appearing at quite definite intervals, and accompanied by certain definite signs or conditions in the civilization of the world to which they come."

"Looking backwards over the past of our race, we see how He came from time to time, the Bodhisattva of the past, the Christ of the past, Who gave the earlier religions to the great Aryan Race; Who built up the fabric of Hinduism for the Aryan root-stock; Who taught as Thoth in Egypt, later known as Hermes, the mighty Revealer; Who came as Zoroaster to the great Persian Empire, thirty-one thousand years ago; Who came as Orpheus to the Greeks, founding the Orphic Mysteries from which all other Mysteries in Greece were gradually successively derived; Who spoke as the Sun in India, as Light in Egypt, as Fire in Persia, as the exquisite Beauty of Music and Sound in Greece; Who gave to each great nation in turn its own religion, laid in each the foundation of the civilization which that religion was to color and to inspire; and Who, then, having done His work, came forth for the last time in Hindustan, there to reach the Illumination of the Buddha, and with Buddhism closed the ancient cycle, and left to His Successor the opening of the new."

"What is desired in order to promote the work of the great plan is that all these races should be drawn into much closer sympathy. This has already been achieved to a great extent in the case of England and America; it is very much to be regretted that it cannot be done in the case of Germany also, but for the present that great country seems disposed to hold aloof from the desired coalition, and to stand out for what it considers its own private interests. It is much to be hoped that this difficulty may be overcome. The great purpose of this drawing together is to prepare the way for the coming of the new Messiah, or, as we should say in Theosophical circles, the next advent of the Lord Maitreya, as a great spiritual teacher, bringing a new religion. The time is rapidly approaching when this shall be launched—a teaching which shall unify the other religions, and compared with them shall stand upon a broader basis and keep its purity longer. But before this can come about we must have got rid of the incubus of war, which at present is always hanging over our heads like a great spectre, paralyzing the best intellects of all countries as regards social experiments, making it impossible for our statesmen to try new plans and methods on a large scale. Therefore one essential towards carrying out the scheme is a period of universal peace. p. 151"

"As He stands there, across the exquisite music which surrounds Him there sounds a sob of pain, a wailing from the earth that lies behind. He hears the cry of humanity in bondage; He sees the gropings of the ignorant, the helpless, and the blind. He sees the suffering that He has transcended, the weakness that in Him has turned to strength, the helplessness that in Him has been crowned into power. His race has cast around Him the only fetters that still have power to bind the enfranchised, the liberated Spirit; they are the fetters of compassion; they are the bonds of love; the old sympathy for the humanity of which He is the flower; for those who still lie in darkness and the shadow of death while Light Eternal is radiant around Him. And then He turns backward to the world that He had left. Then, instead of casting away the burden of the flesh. He takes it up and bears it still, in order that He may help mankind. p. 105"

"Theosophists, looking back over the world's religions, pointed out that each religion had such a great Teacher as its Founder; that no matter where you searched in the past, you found some magnificent figure at the commencement of a new era alike of religion and civilization; that you could trace a definite order; that you could recognize a quite intelligible sequence of world religions, rising one after another and appearing in the world when the previous civilization and religion was beginning to show signs of failing in its power, and of no longer being able thoroughly to cope with the conditions surrounding it. p. 126"

"The Teaching Department, that from which all religions come which inspire and color civilizations: at the head of that department, two grades above the grade of a Master, stands the Supreme Teacher, the Teacher of angels and of men, Whom in the East they call the Wisdom, or Bodhisattva, Whom in the West they call the Christ. His the duty of watching over the spiritual destinies of mankind; of guiding, blessing, maintaining the various religions of the world, founded in outline by Himself. His the duty of appointing one Master or another as the special Guide and Protector of a special religion, while His own benediction flows ever upon the whole of the living religions of the time. His the great duty of appearing from age to age to inspire a new religion, to strike a keynote, until all the notes shall have been struck that make up the great religious chord of our humanity, varied but all harmonious, giving out different tones but forming one mighty chord. p. 110"

"The New Epoch... will bring the renaissance of woman. The Epoch of Maitreya is the Epoch of the Mother of the World."

"When the time came at which it was expected that humanity would be able to provide for itself some one who was ready to fill this important office, no one could be found who was fully capable of doing so. But few of our earthly race had then reached the higher stages of adeptship, and the foremost of these were two friends and brothers whose development was equal. These two were the mighty Egos now known to us as the Lord Gautama and the Lord Maitreya, and in His great love for mankind the former at once volunteered to make the tremendous additional exertion necessary to qualify Him to do the work required, while His friend and brother decided to follow Him as the next holder of that office thousands of years later. p. 9"

"In those far-off times it was the Lord Gautama who ruled the world of religion and education; but now He has yielded that high office to the Lord Maitreya, whom western people call the Christ—who took the body of the disciple Jesus during the last three years of its life on the physical plane; and those who know tell us that it will not be long before He descends among us once again, to found another faith. Anyone whose mind is broad enough to grasp this magnificent conception of the splendid reality of things will see instantly how worse than futile it is to set up in one’s mind one religion as in opposition to another, to try to convert any person from one to another, or to compare depreciatingly the founder of one with the founder of another.... The Lord Maitreya had taken various births before He came into the office which He now holds, but even in these earlier days He seems always to have been a teacher or high-priest. p. 10"

"Likewise, ask those people who feel offended because the coming epoch is being called the epoch of Maitreya and not the epoch of Christ whether they really understand the significance of these Names. If they knew more, they would not feel offended."

"He will attain the great Initiation of the Buddha, and thus gain perfect enlightenment; at that time these pupils of His, without physically knowing or remembering Him, will all be strongly attracted towards Him, and under His influence great numbers of them will enter the Path, and many will advance to the higher stages, having already in previous incarnations made considerable progress."

"You ask about the Great One whom we call the Christ, the Lord Maitreya, and about His work in the past and in the future... there is what we may call a department of the inner government of the world which is devoted to religious instruction—the founding and inspiring of religions, and so on. It is the Christ who is in charge of that department; sometimes He Himself appears on earth to found a great religion and sometimes He entrusts such work to one of His more advanced assistants. We must regard Him as exercising a kind of steady pressure from behind all the time, so that the power employed will flow as though automatically into every channel anywhere and of any sort which is open to its passage; so that He is working simultaneously through every religion, and utilizing all that is good in the way of devotion and self-sacrifice in each. The fact that these religions may be wasting their strength in abusing one another upon the physical plane is of course lamentable, but it does not make much difference to the fact that whatever is good in each of them is being simultaneously utilized from behind by the same great Power. p. 19"

"You are correct in speaking of humanity’s lack of insight. When we approach the ominous hour, all forces must be strained for the mighty step. It has already been told that the Epoch of Maitreya is approaching, and the signs are strewn as fiery seeds; hence, the ominous hour will be one of Light for those who are in step with the Cosmic Magnet. Hence, the ominous hour will be as a future Light for those who battle for the significance of the Epoch of Maitreya. Hence, cooperation with Us brings the predestined victory. Therefore, the co-workers who walk in self-denial will be victors. (55)"

"Is it likely, we say, that what has happened over and over again — is it likely that, when looking back over our own great race, we see how the Teacher has come with each of these offshoots that we can trace in the past, that, as we see the beginning of a new vista when another type is developing, then the sequence of Teachers will be broken, and that one type for the first time will be left unguided, with none to shape its spiritual aspirations, with none to lay the foundation of the civilization that it will be its destiny to build?"

"In the Vishnu Purâna—which is certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name—we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ assuming as the male God, for purposes of creation, “ four bodies invested by three qualities.”* It is said : “ In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan (day), and Sandhyâ (evening twilight) are the four bodies of Brahmâ ” . . (Vishnu Purâna, p. 81, Vol. I., Wilson’s translation)."

"The Vishnu Purâna contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very widely. “The Sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against midnight, in all the Dwipas (continents), Maitreya! But the rising and the setting of the Sun being perpetually opposite to each other—and in the same way, all the cardinal points, and so the crosspoints, Maitreya ; people speak of the rising of the Sun where they see it ; and where the Sun disappears, there, to them, is his setting. Of the Sun, which is always in one and the same place, there is neither setting nor rising, for what is called rising and setting are only the seeing and the not seeing the Sun.” (Vishnu Purâna, Book II., ch. viii.)"

"Followers of other Religions will here substitute the name used in their Faiths for the Source of healing life and power, whether universal or individual, solar or planetary. Buddhists and Hindus may decide, for example, to invoke the aid of “The Lord of Loving Kindness”, known in both Faiths as the Lord Maitreya, the Supreme Teacher of Angels and of Men the Bodhisattva. (Footnote elaborating on "The Lord Christ")"