7rcTIX1xP

A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga870
course sooner or later assume. To the individual, how well we know that a
sober moderation of action, an appropriate gravity of demeanor, belonging
to the mature period of life, change from the wanton willfulness of youth,
which may be ushered in, or its beginnings marked by many accidental
incidents; in one perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the
loss of fortune, in a third by ill-health. We are correct enough in imputing
to such trials the change of character; but we never deceive ourselves by
supposing that it would have failed to take place had these incidents not
occurred. There runs an irresistible destiny in the midst of these vicissitudes.
There are analogies between the life of a nation, and that of an individual,
who, though he may be in one respect the maker of his own fortunes, for
happiness or for misery, for good or for evil, though he remains here or
goes there as his inclinations prompt, though he does this or abstains from
that as he chooses, is nevertheless held fast by an inexorable fate—a fate
which brought him into the world involuntarily, so far as he was concerned,
which presses him forward through a definite career, the stages of which are
absolutely invariable,—infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, with all
their characteristic actions and passions,—and which removes him from the
scene at the appointed time, in most cases against his will. So also is it with
nations; the voluntary is only the outward semblance, covering but hardly
hiding the predetermined. Over the events of life we may have control, but
none whatever over the law of its progress. There is a geometry that applies
to nations an equation of their curve of advance. That no mortal man can
touch.”
This remarkable passage, just quoted, shows how the close observers of
history note the rise and fall of the tides of human race progress, although
ignorant of the real underlying causing energy or force. A study of the
Occult Teachings alone gives one the hidden secret of human actions and
throws the bright light of Truth upon the dark corners of phenomena.
At the beginning of the Fifth Cycle (which is the present one), there were
not only the beginnings of the new races which always spring up at the