Blavatsky on the Key to Spiritual Progress

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 7 pages

Seven pages built on a genuinely difficult question, put to Lucifer in March 1889 by a correspondent named Barbara Moskvitinoff. The Society's first object being universal brotherhood, how is that to be reconciled with the duty it sets each member of developing the Higher Self by sacrificing every selfish desire and conquering all material interest? How can one practise altruism and philanthropy while devoting one's life to inner cultivation and total indifference to the physical world? Can there be a compromise; can one serve two principles at once?

The letter is printed at length before the answer, and it presses harder than most. If one neglects personal interest and works for a happier earthly existence for others, may one not be accused of a materialism that treats men as born merely for enjoyment? And if the alternative is to work for the reign of the moral law, what is the criterion for judging it — can anybody be certain enough of possessing the truth to demand submission to it, and what right has anyone to expect his opinion accepted on authority when he himself can err? The document's value is that the objection is allowed its full force before anything is said in reply, which makes it a better introduction to the Society's ethics than a straightforward statement of them.

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