“All paths meet at the centre”
When we look at today’s world it can be challenging to ponder on the energies of Libra, “the balance”, for it seems there is no middle ground—only the extremes of wealth and poverty, of droughts and floods, of “right and left”. For all thoughtful people who seek to understand the causes of polarization, the present situation can seem appalling. Perhaps this crystallization is an indication that a point of shattering is approaching which will force reconciliation and compromise, but this isn’t yet assured. “Humanity is being weighed in the balances”, Alice Bailey wrote, “so as to indicate the way that it must go.” The choices and decisions humanity makes, rather than fate, will determine the outcome.
In this testing, the power of desire to govern humanity’s choices will be decisive and increasingly complicated as the mind, human intelligence, awakens. The developing mind wields discrimination and discernment as it perceives diversity and differentiation in the form world, creating the snares of dogma and doctrine which prevent understanding the spiritual purposes of diversity. The natural bent of the mind is to rest comfortably in its preferences, making judgments and choices and abiding by them. But as the spiritual intuition awakens, the higher mind becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the choices made by the desire nature and turns instead to search for the center where all paths meet. The Path to this distant realization is delineated in the Bhagavad Gita, a manuscript of ancient India which helps to clarify the Path of liberation expressed in Libra’s keynote, I choose the way which leads between the two great lines of force.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the earthly search for the path to a higher unity requires choices which repeatedly require letting go of one goal after another in search of still higher goals. This is because, as the Theosophist and Sanskrit scholar Charles Johnston clarified in his commentary and translation of the Bhagavad Gita, “The spiritual structure of the Universe is in part never manifested. This ideal structure of the Universe, according to the Mystery Teaching, rests on the Eternal, in Sanskrit ‘Parabrahma’, which is everlasting Being, undivided, unmanifested, unchanging.” Space, time and causation (the law of cause and effect) make the universe appear fragmented, Johnston said, but transcending them there is only Being. “In the field of evolution, manifested life consists of the experiences of individualized spirit in contact with existence, through manifold transformations, until the hour strikes for its return to the bosom of the Infinite Spirit”, he wrote. Above all differentiation is “the One without a second” wherein all rests.
The fulfillment of our planet’s purpose in the Cosmos rests on the essential duality of spirit and matter, but resolution of this fundamental duality isn’t a question of “either or”, for each of the pairs of opposites is incomplete on its own. Their relationship, expressed by H. P. Blavatsky as “Matter is spirit at its lowest point of manifestation and spirit is matter at its highest”, can only be understood as a demonstration of the great Law of Synthesis, the cosmic law which governs the tendency to unification. We’re told in Alice Bailey’s writings that “It is almost impossible for those of us who have not the buddhic faculty in any way developed, to comprehend the scope of this law. It is the law that demonstrates the fact that all things—abstract and concrete—exist as one.” It is an aspect of God, the Logos’, thought; “a thought form in its entirety, a concrete whole, and not the differentiated process that we feel our evolving system to be. It is the sumtotal, the centre and the periphery, and the circle of manifestation regarded as a unit”, in Alice Bailey’s words.
This realization lies beyond language, inexpressible and unimaginable, but what we do know—what must guide human choices—is expressed in Libra’s keynote: I choose the way which leads between the two great lines of force. This way leads to liberation from separateness and towards a unity dimly visible to the human mind, but serving as a beacon leading to an ever-expanding comprehension of the centre wherein all paths meet.
