That Which Is False Can Only Be Known by Truth

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 11 pages

Eleven pages carrying a dialogue, first published across six issues of The Path in New York from April to September 1888, and republished in the Collected Writings volume IX as "Conversations on Occultism — The Kali-Yuga". The frontispiece is False scent by Robert McGinnis. *It is written as a conversation between a Student and a Sage*, which makes it one of the easiest files in this section to read straight through.

The Student's opening question is a good one and is put without deference: he is puzzled about the present age, since some theosophists seem to abhor it, inveighing against modern inventions such as the telegraph, railways and machinery and bewailing the disappearance of former civilisations, while others insist this is a better time than any other and hail modern methods as the best. Which of them is right — or, if both are wrong, what ought we to know about the age we live in? The Sage's reply corrects the scale of the question before answering it. The teachers of truth know all about this age, but they do not mistake the present century for the whole cycle. The older times of European history, when might was right and darkness prevailed over the Western nations, were as much a part of this age as the present hour, because the Yuga now running had begun many thousands of years before — and during that period of European darkness there was much light, learning and civilisation in India and China. The meaning of the words present age, he concludes, must therefore be extended over a far greater period than the questioner supposed. What follows works out the consequence: that a cycle is not the same thing everywhere at once, and that judging an age by the part of the world one happens to inhabit is the mistake both parties to the Student's dispute were making.

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