To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Who Will Save Us? / 161
avatāra of Vishnu. Presuming that these time cycles are
reasonably accurate, this means we have completed only a
little more than 5,000 years of kali yuga, with some 427,000
years yet to run! Moreover, as kali yuga is held to contain
but one-quarter of satya or truth in contrast to the fourquarters
of truth present in the kṛita age, it looks as though
humanity is on a downslide — a most discouraging prospect
unless we view our present age within the larger context
of the evolutionary cycle of earth. The crucial factor
here is that earth and its inhabitants have progressed beyond
the halfway point in their evolution; they have completed
their downward thrust and, having passed the nadir, if only
slightly, have begun the climb upward out of matter toward
an ever more refined spirituality. Thus, kali yuga is a minor
cycle of descent within a larger cycle of ascent on which we
and earth have embarked; in fact, even during our present
kali age there occur periods of relative spirituality.
In a letter to Allan O. Hume written in 1882, HPB’s
mentor KH explains that when humanity passes the ‘‘axial
point,’’ the midpoint in its septenary course, ‘‘the world
teems with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual
decrease’’; and that it is in the latter half of the long evolutionary
arc that ‘‘the spiritual Ego will begin its real struggle
with body and mind to manifest its transcendental powers.’’
He closes his long letter by asking: ‘‘Who will help in the
forthcoming gigantic struggle? Who? Happy the man who
helps a helping hand.’’* Who, indeed, will lend a helping
hand in this contest of ages?
*The Mahatma Letters, Letter XIV, p. 88.