The key to one of the seven portals this is, the key which leads to the land of bliss, "to the other shore" where the vision is clear in a land of reality, and the nightmare of separateness, the ever-gnawing hunger for peace, the crazy confusion of values, is seen in the distance dissolving like some foul miasma.
If only as the New Year opens before us with its influx of fresh life from the inexhaustible Cosmic source — if only the people of our little Earth could realize that this key is within their grasp, nay more, that it is already theirs to use, that almost by the wave of a fairy wand they could find themselves upon a shore of clear vision. And if they could only discover that this needs but a change of viewpoint!
This key, which for so many is hidden, was well known in the Golden Age, and we ourselves, who lived in those days, painted many a picture in words to be handed down as a beacon light to hold the vision for the days when we must pass through the valleys of matter in order to gain power and strength. One of these pictures was that of the Asvattha Tree, the Tree of Life, rooted above in the unknown depths of Being, whose branches and branchlets grow until they fill all Space. It is a picture which tells of the unity of all life, of the actual fact that our Universe is one Being, of which we are all a part, that it is indeed a living Organism, every unit as responsive to every other as are the cells of our body to its other cells, all working to a common end, so bound together that Space, as we have conceived it, is annihilated; that Time upon which we have counted to wipe out causes, is but the eternal Now. But alas! in these valleys of Matter, we have lost the knowledge of ancient days. It is not now so clear to all that every force in this Organism is but the transmutation of the same force, whether called love of the atoms, brotherhood, co-operation, or compassion; that there must be a reaction everywhere when the eternal majesty of the law of harmony is broken on any plane — more and more intense the higher the plane. Loss of this knowledge has brought us to the Crossways. Our western civilization is a sorry object lesson of a people who do not know that there is a scientific, a moral, and a spiritual basis for ethics.
But the ignorant and childish notion that action and reaction exist only on the plane which can be perceived by the physical senses is passing. We see everywhere evidence that the flooding of the thought atmosphere with the ancient teachings of the Wisdom Religion is producing results, and happily for our race it will be borne in upon its consciousness that literally "as ye sow, so shall ye reap." - — These will less and less become empty words. With human reason harnessed to intuition we shall attain some of the results for which the Theosophical Movement is striving.
Above, within, at the source of all energy and life, is the compassionate power which keeps the cosmic harmony, the stars in their appointed orbits, the atoms at their appointed tasks. Should this be withdrawn for an instant — the Universe would crumble.