vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD - A FACT IN NATURE
To help us to understand this more clearly, let us turn to "the few
fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system
of thought" which is presented in the epoch-marking work to which
we have just referred:
"The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:-
" (a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Houndless, and In~mutable PRIKLIPI,E on w-hich
all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could
only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach
of thought -in the words of MBrrdLikya, 'unthinkable and unspealiable.' . . .
" (6) . . . This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality
of that law of periodicity, or flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has ob-
served and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and
Kight, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a [act so common, so perfectly universal
and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it n-e see one of the absolutely
fundamental laws of the universe.
"Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches:-
"(c) The lundamental identity of all Souls with thc IJniversal Over-Soul, the
latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root [that which is referred to above in (0) 1;
and the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul - a sparli of the former - through the Cycle
of Incarnation (or 'iiecessity') in accortlancc with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole
term. . . . The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special
girls in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout
a long series of . . . reincarnations. This is a-hy the Mindtis say lhat thc Universe is Hrahma
and Brahm2, for Rrahma is in every atom of the universe, the six principles in Nature [that
is, the \~holc of manifested Nature] being all the outcome . . . of the SEVEKTII and ONE, the
only reality in the Universe. . . ." -I, 14-17
"In whom," the Initiate, Paul, declares, "we live and move and
have our being." It is this fact, this "identity of all souls with the Uni-
versal Over-Soul," that is the spiritual basis of the statement that 'Uni-
versal Brotherhood is a fact in Nature.' And how beautifully the same
teaching is expressed in the following dialog (The Secret Doctritze, I, 120),
which ages ago was part of the instruction of those who sought the higher
knowledge. It is a dialog between a Teacher and his pupil:
"Lift thy head, oh Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above thee, burning
in the dark midnight sky?"
"I sense one Flame, oh Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks shining in it."
"Thou sayest well. And now ltrok around and into thyself. That light which burns
insidr: thee, dost thou feel it dirferent in any~vise from the light that shines in thy Brother-mcn?"
"IL is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and
though its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, 'Thy Soul and My Soul.' "
This teaching of Universal Brotherhood as a fact, not a mere .
sentiment, but an inescapable fact in Nature, one of the supreme facts
of Life, this teaching of the essential Divinity and of the identity of the
inner, real natures of all men - - just as the same sun is mirrored in a
thousand mirrors - this teaching of the interdependence of all men, and