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Compassion - The Spirit of Truth

By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

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Listen To The Still Small Voice

O great Pelasgic, Dodonæan Jove! Who ’midst surrounding frosts, and vapours chill, Presid’st on bleak Dodona’s vocal hill: (Whose groves the Selli, race austere! surround, Their feet unwash’d, their slumbers on the ground; Who hear, from rustling oaks, thy dark decrees; And catch the fates, low-whispered in the breeze;) — Homer

Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain’s silence, and o’er Glory’s din: — Lord George Gordon Byron 2

One of the most uncompromising doctrines proclaimed by Esoteric Philosophy “admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.” 3 That is why the “journey of the ‘pilgrimsoul’ through various states of not only matter but self-consciousness and self-perception or of perception from apperception” 4 is long, arduous and perilous. Instead of getting easier with time and perseverance, it becomes increasingly gruelling and disheartening. It gets worse before it gets better, so to speak.

Master M closed a letter to AP Sinnett with four lines from Christina Georgina Rossetti upon the request of Master KH who, at the time, was preoccupied elsewhere:

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.5

Very few are capable of accomplishing the Cycle of Necessity 1 singlehanded. Circe and Calypso 2 are still around, waiting to bewitch the unwary. In his Introduction to the Fable of Cupid and Psyche, Thomas Taylor cites a telling passage from Synesius’ work On Dreams:

. . . when we are profoundly delighted with external and corporeal goods, we confess that the nature of matter is beautiful, who marks our assent in [nature’s] her secret book; and if, considering ourselves as free, we at any time determine to depart, she proclaims us deserters, endeavours to bring us back, and openly presenting her mystic volume to view, apprehends us as fugitives from our mistress. Then indeed, the soul particularly requires fortitude and divine assistance, as it is no trifling contest to abrogate the connection and compact which she made.3

Those truly devoted to the welfare of society, at a particular turn of their ascent upon their “hill of execution” will be assisted by no lesser one than the Regent of the Dhyani-Chohans. Having sacrificed the efflorescence of Its Spiritual Life for our sake, It remains on Earth holding the Torch of Truth, lighting the path of struggling humanity until the next Torch Bearer emerges. It is our Saviour and Highest Benefactor. Is this not compelling evidence that Compassion and Sacrifice are the Heart of the Universe?

But divine assistance — grace, par excellence — is not provided indiscriminately. It is offered only to exceptional individuals upon reaching a critical stage of inner growth. It comes unsolicited in the guise of a “still small voice,” which is 16th century English for a soft, whispering murmur. Only ears that have become deaf to the sounds of life will be able to hear it. Here is how GRS Mead, the leading scholar of Hermetic and Gnostic texts, describes Simon’s logoic emanations from the “God-nourished Silence”:

In his æonology, Simon, like other Gnostic teachers, begins with the Word, the Logos, which springs up from the Depths of the Unknown — Invisible, Incomprehensible Silence. It is true that he does not so name the Great Power, He who has stood, stands and will stand [Ο εστως, στας, στησομενος]; but that which comes forth from Silence is Speech, and the idea is the same whatever the terminology employed may be. Setting aside the Hermetic teachings and those of the later Gnosis, we find this idea of the Great Silence referred to several times in the fragments of the Chaldæan Oracles. It is called “God-nourished Silence” (σιγη θεοθρεμμων),1 according to whose divine decrees the Mind that energises before all energies, abides in the Paternal Depth.2 Again:

“This unswerving Deity is called the Silent One by the gods, and is said to consent (lit. sing together) with the Mind, and to be known by the Souls through Mind alone.” 3 Elsewhere the Oracles demonstrate this Power which is prior to the highest Heaven as “Mystic Silence.” 4, 5

Having contrasted Higher Harmony or “Reflex” (παλινδρομη) with Lower Harmony or “Manifested,” 6 Mead proceeds to define evil as “what is displeasing to the Self” and points out the similarities between Simon and other Gnostics who believed that by straining our ear we may be able to hear “the things which sound within” or the “Voice of the Fire,” Harmony Unmanifested:

Law, Justice, and Compassion are not incompatible terms to one whose heart is set firm on spiritual things; and the view that evil is not a thing in itself, but exists only because of human ignorance, is one that must commend itself to the truly religious and philosophical mind. Thus evil is not a fixed quantity in itself, it depends on the internal attitude each man holds with regard to externals as to whether they are evil or no.

For instance, it is not evil for an animal or savage to kill, for the light of the higher law is not yet flaming brightly in their hearts. That only is evil if we do what is displeasing to the Self. This may perhaps throw some light on the Simonian dogma of action by accident (ex accidenti), or institution (θεσει), as opposed to action according to nature (naturaliter or φυσει) — evidently the same idea as the teaching of Heracleitus to act according to nature (κατα φυσιν) which he explains as according to the Unmanifested Harmony which we can hear by straining our ears to catch that still small voice within, the Voice of the Silence, the Logos or Self. Simon presumably refers to this in the phrase “the things which sound within” (τα ενηχα), an idea remarkably confirmed by Psellus [14], who quotes the following Logion:

“When thou seest a most holy, formless Fire shining and bounding throughout the depths of the whole Cosmos, give ear to the Voice of the Fire.” 1

Contrary to profane belief, “‘barbarous names’ were regarded as of the greatest efficacy and sanctity, and it was unlawful to change them.” 2 Yet, old Greeks got in the habit of twisting primeval names 3 as much as the unlearned do today, ignorant of the Chaldean Logion:

Never change barbarous Names [barbara nomina]; For there are Names in every Nation given from God, Which have an unspeakable power in [Sacred] Rites. When thou seest a sacred fire without form, Shining flashingly through the Depths of the World, Hear the voice of Fire.4

That Voice is not any voice, either real or imagined. It is the Voice of the Highest Being of our planet, a truly “Wondrous Being.” 5 Its rank is so exalted that It cannot be identified. It is neither lawful nor proper to do so. HP Blavatsky refers to It as INITIATOR or GREAT SACRIFICE. It is the HIGHEST CHOHAN, “the collective aggregation of divine rays” that consented to inform animal man. It is Deity itself, the Voice of our Spiritual Heart and Saviour. Even the Masters of Wisdom depend on It. Referring to his own initiation, Master KH confided to AP Sinnett that:

“K.H.” has been born into a new and higher light, and even that one, in no wise the most dazzling to be acquired on this earth. Verily the Light of Omniscience and infallible Prevision on this earth — that shines only for the highest CHOHAN alone — is yet far away from me! 6

In his review of The Idyll of the White Lotus, T Subba Row enunciates the same occult doctrine:

“Every Buddha meets at his last initiation all the great adepts who reached Buddhaship during the preceding ages: and similarly every class of adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which knits them together. . . . The only possible and effectual way of entering into such brotherhood . . . is by bringing oneself within the influence of the spiritual light which radiates from one’s own Logos.” 7