John Vorstermans – New Zealand
Unity awareness sleeps deeply within us all. We are largely unaware of real Unity, as understood in the theosophical tradition, because we focus on separation, which is a dominant feature of our personality consciousness or awareness. Our personality being predominately focused in the desire mind (kama-manas) is focused outwardly through the senses through which it perceives its reality.
The Sacred Wisdom, however, teaches us that the real reality lies not in the outer world, rather within ourselves. To find this reality, we must let go of the outer world and take the inner journey. To awaken a deeper awareness and eventually we come to experience this Unity. Blavatsky talks of this in The Voice of the Silence as she describes the three halls of learning we pass through as we awaken – the hall of ignorance, the hall of knowledge and the hall of wisdom. Each hall we pass through must be left behind on our journey.
As an organization, the Theosophical Society has branched out in different directions, which we can see in the different Theosophical movements today. In itself this can be seen as quite healthy as we explore what Theosophy is. We can look at the Buddhist movement as an example, where we see differences in teaching and directions in the Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. They are both quite different in their approaches and study of Buddhism; however, acknowledge the value each brings to the world. It is much the same with the different Theosophical Movements today. Each has its ways of exploring and trying to understand Theosophy and through their efforts endeavor to help make the world a reflection of that Unity we are discussing.
At the personality level, we have a tremendous diversity. Our desire mind seeks to find differences and loves to work with these differences and argue, rationalize, judge, blame, etc. because that is what the desire mind does. The desire mind resides in the Hall of Ignorance, which we are struggling to get out of, using the knowledge we have learned in our theosophical journey, and thus we travel to the Hall of Learning. For the different Theosophical movements to work together, we as individuals in these movements are challenged to move beyond differences. The challenge is to center ourselves into the Unity awareness beyond the personality and focus on what we have in common. The lower mind will always look for differences, which to Unity awareness is simply seeing different pieces of a puzzle fitting perfectly together. In this way, we can grow and learn from each other and become a much stronger united force for Unity in the world. We can become living examples of this Unity.
If we can move into the Unity awareness as individuals, then this will be reflected in the different Theosophical groups. We will then perhaps step into the Hall of Wisdom, leaving the past behind and coming into the present as a real force for good.