Blavatsky Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
Cyclic
Evolution Applied to History
The
is no Utopia in The Secret Doctrine.
In
Francis
Fukuyama finished the 20th century
by
claiming that history is over.
I
bet he wishes he hadn’t
Posted
History is over – No Way
In “The End of History and the Last Man” published in the late
1990s Francis Fukuyama claimed that we had finally arrived
His argument was that universal history was culminating in
liberal democracy - with the United States as its chief embodiment - caught the
tide of American optimism after the cold war.
Quite a bit has happened since the late 90s and he’s had to have
a rethink.
The idea that history is over is not new
In 143 CE a Greek public orator named Aelius Aristides told the
Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius, that
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What H P Blavatsky said about Cycles in her Theosophical
Glossary
Cycle.
From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles, wheels
within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking
the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or
metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense
duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of
races, lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which
brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations
between men and gods—a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.
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Theosophical Glossary
Index
A B C D EFG H IJ KL M N OP QR S T UV WXYZ
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To H P Blavatsky, the Cyclic Law, underlying the evolution of
everything in existence, makes all attempts to create controlled regulated Utopias
a recipe for misery which are doomed to failure. Evolution as reflected in
social progress is not linear but has turning points which cause similar events
and situations to recur often many times in the course of history, while actual
evolution may be so slight that nobody notices it. Attempts to establish Utopias may be all part
of this cyclic routine but the concept of a Utopia itself is against the natural order of things.
If evolution in all things is cyclic, then for mankind to
achieve a final result would mean that we cease to evolve. If we create a Utopia
and then lose it, it would not really have been a Utopia, just a Golden Age in
which we reap a bit of good Karma while we can. In fact achieving and then
losing a Golden Age is a good example of Cyclic Evolution.
Living through a Golden Age is usually a subjective experience,
for example, my Grandfather regarded the period in
In
These criticisms are really an attack on attempts to create a
society or social order externally according to some sort of blueprint. To H P
Blavatsky this leads to a “one size fits nobody” system.
It is interesting that H P Blavatsky never attacked the Tsarist
system in the
If you think about it, to evolve (as a race and personally) then
we have to get our experience somewhere. Perfect societies, if they existed,
would be a non starter , in fact a holiday from evolution. A naturally evolving
imperfect society (most of us live in one) or even a failed Utopia i.e. a
Distopia should provide something of a test.
Everyone has something to learn
Being born into a society with no social challenges and in which
everyone is “Excellent to Everybody” wouldn’t give you a chance to learn much
and would probably be pretty boring. On the other hand being born into a
society, which in an attempt to create a better society, imposes something on
the lines of “Prohibition” a disastrous policy seen in 1920s America could
provide phenomenal prospects for personal growth.
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From
Plato, in the fifth book of the Republic, suggests a
method for improving the human race by the elimination of the unhealthy or
deformed individuals, and by coupling the better specimens of both sexes. It
was not to be expected that the "genius of our century," even were he
a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain anything entirely new.
Comte was a mathematician. Cleverly combining several old
utopias, he colored the whole, and, improving on Plato's idea, materialized it,
and presented the world with the greatest monstrosity that ever emanated from a
human mind!
We beg the reader to keep in view, that we do not attack Comte
as a philosopher, but as a professed reformer. In the irremediable darkness of
his political, philosophical and religious views, we often meet with isolated
observations and remarks in which profound logic and judiciousness of thought
rival the brilliancy of their interpretation. But then, these dazzle you like
flashes of lightning on a gloomy night, to leave you, the next moment, more in
the dark than ever. If condensed and repunctuated, his several works might
produce, on the whole, a volume of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear
and really clever definition of most of our social evils; but it would be vain
to seek, either through the tedious circumlocution of the six volumes of his Cours
de Philosophie Positive, or in that parody on priesthood, in the form of a
dialogue -- The Catechism of the Religion of Positivism -- any idea
suggestive of even provisional remedies for such evils. His disciples suggest
that the sublime doctrines of their prophet were not intended for the
vulgar. Comparing the dogmas preached by Positivism with their practical
exemplifications by its apostles, we must confess the possibility of some very
achromatic doctrine being at the bottom of it. While the
"high-priest" preaches that "woman must cease to be the female
of the man"; while the theory of the positivist legislators on
marriage and the family, chiefly consists in making the woman the "mere
companion of man by ridding her of every maternal function"; and while
they are preparing against the future a substitute for that function by
applying "to the chaste woman" "a latent force,"
some of its lay priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that
their doctrines are the quintessence of spiritual philosophy.
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In this
extract below from The Secret Doctrine, H P Blavatsky covers the idea that we
have to descend into matter or physicality to make any progress. This is true
for everything not just man.
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From The
Secret Doctrine
Vol 1 Page
146
Before we
can approach the evolution of physical and divine man, we have first to master the
idea of cyclic evolution, to acquaint ourselves with the philosophies and
beliefs of the four races which preceded our present race, to learn what were
the ideas of those Titans and giants -- giants, verily, mentally as well as
physically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy which
teaches the involution of spirit into matter, the progressive, downward cyclic
descent, or active, self-conscious evolution.
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In this
extract below from The Secret Doctrine, H P Blavatsky outlines how the Cyclic
Law permeates every aspect of existence.
I
translate the phrase “Nature never proceeds per saltum” as nature never
proceeds in leaps and bounds.
The
septenary nature of evolution described here shows how everything evolves in
seven stages cyclically thus returning to something similar to its orginal
state with the fourth stage as the turning point. Applied to history, this
means that current trends will not continue and history will repeat itself.
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From The
Secret Doctrine
Now, the
writer humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern chemistry and its mysteries. But she is pretty well
acquainted with the Occult doctrine with regard to correspondences of types and
antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a fundamental law in Occultism.
Hence she ventures a remark which will strike every Occultist, however it may
be derided by orthodox Science. This method of illustrating the periodic law in
the behaviour of elements, whether or not still a hypothesis in chemistry, is a
law in Occult Sciences. Every well-read Occultist knows that the seventh and
fourth members -- whether in a septenary chain of worlds, the septenary
hierarchy of angels, or in the constitution of man, animal, plant, or mineral
atom -- that the seventh and fourth members, we say, in the geometrically and
mathematically uniform workings of the immutable laws of Nature, always play a
distinct and specific part in the septenary system. From the stars twinkling high
in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder from the rude fire built by the savage
in his forest; from the hierarchies and the essential constitution of the Dhyan
Chohans -- organized for diviner apprehensions and a loftier range of
perception than the greatest Western psychologist ever dreamed of, down to
Nature's classification of species among the humblest insects; finally from
worlds to atoms, everything in the universe, from great to small, proceeds in
its spiritual and physical evolution, cyclically and septennially, showing its
seventh and fourth number (the latter the turning point) behaving in the same
way as shown in that periodic law of atoms. Nature never proceeds per saltum.
Therefore, when Mr. Crookes remarks to this that he does not "wish to infer
that the gaps in Mendeleef's table, and in this graphic representation of it
(the diagram showing the evolution of atoms) necessarily mean that there are
elements actually existing to fill up the gaps; these gaps may only mean that
at the birth of the elements there was an easy potentiality of the formation of
an element which would fit into the place" -- an Occultist would
respectfully remark to him that the latter hypothesis can only hold good, if
the septenary arrangement of atoms is not interfered with. This is the one law,
and an infallible method that must always lead to success,
One who
follows it
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In this
extract below from The Secret Doctrine, H P Blavatsky looks at the concept of
ideas ahead of their time. In an attempt at establishing a Utopia, ideas ahead
of their time may be imposed on an unwilling population leading to conflict and
a probable rejection of those ideas for a much longer period to come.
Possibly
the Prohibition of Alcohol in 1920s
From The
Secret Doctrine
Vol 1 Page
298
But if we look
into history we shall clearly see that, although the origin of a new opinion
may be thus due to a single man, the result which the new opinion produces will
depend on the condition of the people among whom it is propagated. If either a
religion or a philosophy is too much in advance of a nation it can do no
present service but must bide its time* until the minds of men are ripe for its
reception.
* This is
Cyclic law, but this law itself is often defied by human stubbornness.
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