"A thing moderately good is not so good
as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue,
but moderation in principles is always a vice"
(Thomas Paine).
Today's mankind is very far away from living in balance. Anyone who sustains the contrary is either extremely naïve, or extremely evil. This also affects the so-jiggled notion of "equilibrium between mind and heart", seriously questioned by the alarming statistics of drug consumption, delinquency, suicide, political hatred, religious/materialistic fanaticism, the compulsory hunting for sensorious whims, and so on.
There is an urgent need to educate people in terms of Human Rights and Duties (issued in 1947 and 1997 respectively) for the sake of Universal Principles only, which means to expose and throw away the psychological trash outspreaded by modern forms of leftism and rightism, as well as their loser bigots of anarcho-paranoia. The constant hijacking of ethical and occult principles by these repulsive factions makes possible the "perfect marriage" between moral cowards and corrupt individuals, amidst other vices.
Somehow voicing the above quotation by Thomas Paine, William Judge wrote: "Be temperate in all things, most of all in the condemnation of other men [i.e., avoiding hasty, uninformed or malicious criticism that is not based on ethical values]. It is unwise to be intemperate or drunken with wine. It is equally unwise to be drunken with temperance" ("Musings On the True Theosophist's Path", III, Path, February 1887). And besides: "[Benjamin Franklin] was a Freemason, and therefore a 'brother', so was Washington and also Jefferson. A sincere mason will be a just man who reveres liberty and abhors a tyrant. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita of himself, we may hear the Adept saying: 'I am manifested in every age for the purpose of restoring duty and destroying evil doing'" ("Adepts and Politics", Theosophist, June 1884).
Furthermore, Manly Palmer Hall (today so despised by many "Theosophical" evangelists) stated: "We must disabuse our minds of the idea that 'the black magician cannot injure us because we are in the right', or that 'he is weak because he is evil'. This is a foolish concept taught to prevent man from strengthening himself, and his propaganda of the black path itself. It is just as foolish as to say that if a prize fighter were boxing a baby, the baby would win the fight because 'he had no ulterior motive', or because 'his soul is undefiled'. Thousands of people have not enough ambition to develop the necessary strength; in fact, they do not even know that their soul is worth saving. They are living honestly, they are good Christian people, but so purely negative that they are positively advertising the fact that they are easy marks for anyone desiring to avail himself of the opportunity. They are not 'black' themselves, but they are the type that helps to make possible the perpetuation of black magic" ("Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics").
Hall notes insightfully: "We have reached a period in the history of the world when ignorance is criminal, and deserves the heaviest penalty. Ignorance is not black magic, but it is the greatest ally that the black magician has in the world today. People who do not know any better are constantly doing someone's else dirty work; that is the fruitage of their indolence" (ibidem).
Many evangelising and all-immaculate "Theosophists" like to impertinently point out the examples of William Judge and Helena Blavatsky to illustrate their "unshakable esoteric commitment" of blind "compassion for humanity, in "each and every circumstance". However, they overlook the details of the Coues affair (1891) in which Blavatsky's credibility was publicly restablished after serious legal menaces and exhibition of sound evidence. They also disregard the declarations by Judge under the attacks from Annie Besant and the Westminster Gazette, and in his defense he wrote thrice the expression "open enemies (of mine)" (see The Irish Theosophist, February 1895; Path, March 1895). Further he admitted: "It is disagreeable to talk much of oneself, but sometimes it is necessary, and in this case it has been made a necessity by the action of others, as also by the existence of many vague and suppressed rumors which have been flying about in quarters not public but sufficiently active to compel action on my part" (Convention Reports of the T.S. American Section, April 1894).
Another nuance is given in the book "The Gospel of the Buddha" by Paul Carus (1894), which depicts the Enlightened One saying: "The Tathagata teaches a complete surrender of [lower] self, but he does not teach a surrender of anything to those powers that are evil, be they men or gods or the elements of nature. Struggle must be, for all life is a struggle of some kind. But he that struggles should look to it lest he struggle in the interest of [lower] self against truth and righteousness". Thus, Buddha suggested to fight not in defense of unmerited or corrupt power, richness and privilege, but to get them with proper spiritual and ethical merit, opposing the efforts by black lodges to take them by assault. According to the website dharmawheel.com, this important sutra was suppressed from canonical texts (and guess why!).
When experts in martial arts say "anger defeats the warrior", they echo this Buddhist excerpt. Natural and unquestionable anger, on condition that it is an expression of spiritual discernment, must serve to higher ethical values taking into account at least three aspects: proportionality in the means used to reject or minimise evil (which implies the actual possibility to implement extreme measures face to extreme situations, without inflicting more harm than necessary), discernment about the seriousness of the problem, and absolute impartiality, no matter how many of one's close friends/relatives are found guilty and deserve punishment.
This is what Master Koot-Hoomi surely had in mind when he wrote: "(...) though we may not say with the Christians, 'Return good for evil' —we repeat with Confucius— 'Return good for good; for evil— justice'" (Letter n° 85 to Alfred Sinnett). This coincides with another explanation: "The real evil proceeds from human intelligence and its origin rests entirely with reasoning man who dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone is the true source of evil. Evil is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of human selfishness and greediness" (Letter n° 10).
In this way, the concepts of violence and non-violence are just CHOICES, NEVER IMPERATIVES. Again, any person who exclusively stands for one of these, either is completely ignorant, or an instrument of evil, be conscious or unconscious.
"There is good and evil in every point of the universe, and if one works, however indirectly, for one’s own partiality, one becomes, to that extent, a Black magician. Occultism demands perfect justice, absolute impartiality. When a man uses the powers of nature indiscriminately with partiality and no regard to justice, it is Black magic. Like a blackleg, a Black magician acts on certain knowledge. Magic is power over the forces of nature, e.g., the Salvation Army, by hypnotizing people and making them psychically drunk with excitement, uses Black magic. The first exercise of Black Magic is to psychologize people [i.e., to stimulate their lower selves/thoughts, to politicise Theosophy, to foster artsy divisions, etc.]" (Letters That Have Helped Me, p. 160).
In the light of this, even when humanity reaches the level of the Sixth or Seventh Race, it will inevitably confront intelligent threats coming from outer space, as Ronald Reagan forecasted in 1985, so the necessary conflict censured by most "white pigeons" in Theosophy will never have an end.
Extreme sanctimony and extreme unjustified violence are two sides of the same coin. They usually are employed to protect diabolical interests within most "religions" and other groups, deserving to be denounced, fought, unmasked and condemned with proportional violence in word, deed and thought. It is a sheer idiocy that Freudian lovers of the "mirror law" so ardently apply this norm to everybody who does not partake their twisted objectives, but never to themselves, as exemplified by the worship they offer to specific rabble-rouser characters and canned ideologies, whatever they may be.
Strictly necessary and direct violence (according to the context) is totally justified when it is a matter of claiming the universal right to individual/collective dignity on the physical plane, and to live in harmony with the Laws of Nature, preserving this evolutionary right for the incarnating Monads from lower realms. Nobody of sound mind would deny the importance to develop true compassion and altruism; however, this modern world pressingly needs to eliminate (by reason or by force) a stratospheric amount of ideological, psychological and "spiritual" waste, proudly sponsored by monsters of degenerate "progressivism" and "traditionalism". Namby-pambiness and love for dead letter are explicit conspirators, and certainly the self-proclaimed "influencers of Theosophical esotericism" do not contribute to find more practical solutions. To sum up, lack of honesty to see facts as they are, without ideological constraints, has reduced the misnamed "Theosophical" Movement to a mere roll of toilet paper for shameless gits.
Aquila in Terris
"We need all our strength to meet the difficulties and dangers which surround us. We have external enemies to fight in the shape of materialism, prejudice, and obstinacy; the enemies in the shape of custom and religious forms; enemies too numerous to mention, but nearly as thick as the sand-clouds which are raised by the blasting Sirocco of the desert. Do we not need our strength against these foes? Yet, again, there are more insidious foes, who 'take our name in vain', and who make Theosophy a by-word in the mouths of men and the Theosophical Society a mark at which to throw mud. They slander Theosophists and Theosophy, and convert the moral Ethics into a cloak to conceal their own selfish objects. And as if this were not sufficient, there are the worst foes of all—those of a man’s own household,—Theosophists who are unfaithful both to the Society [original teachings] and to themselves. Thus indeed we are in the midst of foes. Before and around us is the 'Valley of Death', and we have to charge upon our enemies—right upon his guns—if we would win the day. Cavalry—men and horses—can be trained to ride almost as one man in an attack upon the terrestrial plane; shall we not fight and win the battle of the Soul struggling in the spirit of the Higher Self to win our divine heritage?" (H.P.B., Second Message to the American Theosophists, 1889).