NASA Astronaut Tracy Caldwell

WHEN the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, the First and foremost of its Three Objects was identified as Universal Brotherhood.

It was the only one of the Three Objects requiring acceptance by prospective members of the Society. The fundamental first principle was held to be a “fact in Nature.” 

The Theosophical Movement magazine noted persuasively in its article Universal Brotherhood Fiction or Fact?  that “the world is sick of war and desires peace, yet wars and preparations for war continue.”

“People wish to banish enmity and to usher in an era of friendship,” the article continues, “yet rivalry and hatred perpetuate hard feelings which separate man from man. Many believe in and talk about Brotherhood, but we see everywhere the failure of unity and harmony.”

“… the very concept of cosmopolitan internationalism, of humanity as a unit, one grand family, seems fanciful.”

Would not this concept of unity, if acknowledged, inexorably shift humanity’s worldviews away from selfishness and separateness towards a realized universal compassion and world peace, as Theosophy established in its original First Object?

If universal unity and causation are in truth the substratum of nature and the cosmos, must it not be so with humanity? Would acknowledgement and proof of this idea not lead to true human solidarity?

Universal Unity and Causation

In the century following the launching of the theosophical movement, one scientist arose who got the message, British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001). Hoyle dedicating his life to asking and answering universal questions,  maintained that the origin of life was cosmic, not terrestrial — and seemed like a dedicated Theosophist plus world-renowned astronomer.

Hoyle maintained “there is a coherent plan in the universe.” (Adding, “though I don’t know what it’s a plan for.”)

His “steady state” theory maintained that the universe had no beginning or end, and would continue to exist. Likewise Theosophy “affirms the Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane,” H. P. Blavatsky notes (The Secret Doctrine 1:16).

Fred Hoyle

And she explained how this grand canvas “is periodically the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing, called ‘the manifesting stars,’ and the ‘sparks of Eternity.’” 

“The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.”

(See Part II., “Days and Nights of Brahma.”)

“This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

“It expanded like the bud of the Lotus.”

Preempting the future gravity-based materialism of science, in what would come to be known as “The Big Bang” concept, The Secret Doctrine declared with irrefutable logic, that an ‘infinite universe’ cannot by any stretch of the imagination become ‘larger!’

The “expansion” so-called, does not mean “an increase in size,” rather “it was a change of condition,” Blavatsky maintained — “it ‘expanded like the bud of the Lotus,'” a metaphor she used frequently in her teachings. (The Secret Doctrine 1:62-3)

The Big Bang is Wrong

The Big Plan

Theosophy insists it knows what a big, universal ‘plan’ has in mind. In an Address given by theosophical pioneer William Q. Judge, at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893, explains how the grand Plan must incorporate not just humans but the entire field of manifestation.

“We insist that Universal Brotherhood is a fact in nature,” Judge said.

“It is a fact for the lowest part of nature; for the animal kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. We are all atoms, obeying the law together. Our denying it does not disprove it. It … keeps us miserable, poor, and selfish.”

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available,” Hoyle predicted in 1948, “a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”

Twenty years later his idea would receive a staggering confirmation. 

Elevating the visions of both Hoyle and Judge, in 1968 Apollo 8 ventured to the moon, and astronauts beamed back stunning images of the Earth. “That was the first time I had ever seen the planet hanging in space like that,” says author Frank White in the film. “And it was profound.” Everyone on Earth thought so too, and many worldviews changed for the better.

“We should all see the world from this vantage,” writes Leia Cator in her blog dailycelebrations.com. “It may, in fact, do us a world of good.”

 Overview Effect

“When we look down on the Earth from space, we see this indescribably beautiful planet,” says astronaut Ron Garan in a short documentary released at the end of last year called Overview. “It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also at the same time looks extremely fragile.”

“Indeed, that staggering perspective, dubbed ‘the overview effect’, may be the most enduring legacy of space travel — the sense of a home that is intimately shared. Human spaceflight has changed our world, but a perspective born in space can change the world too.

“The Overview Effect, while intuitively valid to many, is often marginalized as a philosophical, metaphysical or aesthetic epiphany, not the fundamental perspective-altering experience that both astronauts and scientists suggest that it is.”

(Also of interest: Q&A with with astronaut Ron Garan by USA TODAY Natalie DiBlasio a breaking news reporter.)

“We’re all basically living in this one eco-system called Earth,” Garan adds. “And everything you do on one side of the eco-system affects the other side.” That sense of interdependence drives the film’s powerful environmental message — understanding borne of a stellar perspective. But it’s a perspective that one doesn’t need to leave the Earth to gain.”

Universal Causation
& Solidarity

by H. P. Blavatsky

(Excerpts: The Key to Theosophy, Ch. 12)

Question: “How, then, should Theosophical principles be applied so that social co-operation may be promoted and true efforts for social amelioration be carried on?”

H. P. Blavatsky: “Let me briefly remind you what these principles are — universal Unity and Causation; Human Solidarity; the Law of Karma; Re-incarnation. These are the four links of the golden chain which should bind humanity into one family, one universal Brotherhood.

“In the present state of society, especially in so-called civilized countries, we are continually brought face to face with the fact that large numbers of people are suffering from misery, poverty and disease. Their physical condition is wretched, and their mental and spiritual faculties are often almost dormant.

“On the other hand, many persons at the opposite end of the social scale are leading lives of careless indifference, material luxury, and selfish indulgence. Neither of these forms of existence is mere chance.

“Both are the effects of the conditions which surround those who are subject to them, and the neglect of social duty on the one side is most closely connected with the stunted and arrested development on the other.

“In sociology, as in all branches of true science, the law of universal causation holds good. But this causation necessarily implies, as its logical outcome, that human solidarity on which Theosophy so strongly insists.

“If the action of one reacts on the lives of all, and this is the true scientific idea, then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters, and by all practising in their daily lives true brotherhood and true sisterhood,

that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of the elevation of the race, can ever be attained.

“It is this action and interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual life.”

 ♥

Modern cosmologists comfortably ensconced in their materialistic hierarchies, enjoying big salaries and bigger grants, are still focused on subjects like Einstein’s triumphs and blunders / How gravitational waves will change astronomy / The big bang and the possible future of the cosmos / Dark matter and dark energy / Black holes / Theory of everything — and much more. If the scientific worldview continues to promote materialism, humanity will remain forever divided. The Theosophical worldview is one of unity and similarity, not separateness, and must sooner or later prevail.

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