Tim Boyd – India, USA
The author, a passionate speaker
As children we learn to perceive differences. Comparison and contrast are normal. We see people who dress like we do, and those who don’t; who worship the same way and those who don’t; who have different facial features and skin color; who speak languages we don’t understand. When we ask questions about them the answers from our elders take root and our worldview takes shape.
At the minimum we become aware of diversity, but we are also informed of qualitative distinctions. It is the normal training of the intellect we receive from family, culture, and social context. It is a training for our capacity to analyze that brings order to the world. In combination with sensations, feelings, and the desires that arise from them, intellect is the function that guides and misguides us in our life journey. Rightly used, it leads toward liberation. In its normal, diminished use, it functions as a potent servant to the countless desires that arise and inhabit our personal consciousness. Kâma-manas is the term used for this mind as an instrument of desire.
There is another training possible for the intellect. Although not a normal feature of our upbringing and education, it is possible for the mind and its tool of intellect to be taught to look for, and see, commonality, shared qualities, interdependence, even inseparability from others, to see the importance of bonds of love that permit no separation.
If we are lucky, some person in our lives nourishes the seeds of such an awareness — a grandparent, a friend, a teacher. The seeds for this level of seeing don’t need to be planted in us. They have always been there, unattended. For most of us this alternative education begins later in life as a process of self-learning. Its beginnings require an intense period of “unlearning” — a releasing of the hold of a lifelong training in separateness and comparison.
We Are Not Yet Fully Human
Many years ago, Joy Mills, a much loved, profound student and teacher of the Ageless Wisdom, made a statement which, at the time, puzzled me. What she said was: “We are not yet fully human.” My initial question was: How is that possible? I have hands, eyes, a body. I think thoughts, feel emotions, have a will. How can I not yet be fully human? At the time that she made the statement she did not choose to fully answer the question, leaving it to her listeners to pursue it.
What is the missing element that completes our humanity?
One answer might be found on the level of biology. The human being is evolving. Within the human genome there are many, as yet, unexpressed genes — more qualities and capacities are waiting to be revealed. From a material science point of view there is more ahead for us. We are not yet complete.
Evolution is normally thought of as the unfoldment of form in response to environmental demands, operating solely within the confines of the material world, but consciousness also unfolds. And the hidden potentials, the “latent powers” of consciousness are limitless.
Dehumanization
Another cause for our unfulfilled humanity can be found in our personal and social behaviors. There is a word we come across from time to time, particularly in the reporting of problems in the world. The word is dehumanize, meaning, to strip a person or a group of essential, defining human qualities.
It has been a constant feature of human history as well as a blight on our current time. It is the justification for war, colonialism, racism, genderism, slavery, caste in all its forms, hatreds and abuse of all varieties. It is also the basis for the twin illusions of superiority and inferiority, and the deluded states of mind that accompany each. In each case the sense of separation, of standing apart from humanity as a whole, and the isolation incurred by that belief, distorts our higher potential.
The Maha Chohan’s Letter
Many of us have read, or are at least aware of The Mahatma Letters, one of the source books of the theosophical tradition. The Mahatmas, or the Masters of the Wisdom, are those fully human beings, the flowering of human kind, who have fused the spiritual and material components of their being. They remain as teachers and guides to a struggling humanity.
The Letters which comprise the book were written to A. P. Sinnett, an early Anglo-Indian member of the Theosophical Society (TS). Although all of the letters are instructive, one in particular has been recognized as preeminent, as the marching orders for the TS and the movement it spawned. It is called the Maha Chohan’s letter because that is who wrote it. Technically speaking it was not written by the Maha Chohan, but was a summary by one of the Masters of a conversation with him.
Maha Chohan, of course, is not a name, but a designation of a position or status within the hierarchy of the Mahatmas, the great (mahâ) souls (âtma). In much the same way as we regard the Masters, the Maha Chohan is regarded by them as the Great Master or Lord of Lords. In one of the letters, he is described as one “to whose vision the future lies like an open page”.
In the Maha Chohan’s letter, he comments on a deeper aspect of the ways we dehumanize ourselves and others. He identifies the two most prominent conditions of mind that block us from the humanizing connection with spirit, as materialism and bigotry (mostly religious).
Materialism is understandable to us. “Unrestrainedly indulging in the animal propensities” is the described effect of a view that recognizes matter as the sole reality, which is to say a fixation on the satisfaction of the senses. It is not merely hedonism, or living the life of a “party animal”. It also expresses as the unrestrained consumption of the planet’s resources to satisfy a want for personal comfort and ease.
The Bigoted Mind
The effects of the bigoted mind he describes as “the utter deformation of the intellectual principle”. In theosophical teachings we understand the “Mind” (Manas) in two aspects — the lower (concrete) mind, and the higher (abstract) mind. The higher mind is an aspect of the Higher Self, in theosophical parlance the Higher Triad, which includes Buddhi (the intuitional/spiritual) consciousness, and Âtma (the all-pervading cosmic life). It is this Higher Self which survives the death of the body and personality and reincarnates.
The lower mind is where the described “utter deformation” takes place. The intellect is the seat of our thinking and reasoning, our knowledge, and logic. It is this same intellect which we cultivate in order to discriminate right from wrong and set the moral compass of our living. The pathway that leads to the “utter deformation” is described in the letter as “the deliberate surrender of the intellect, and its imprisonment in the narrow grooves of bigotry and superstition”. Although the words are clear, it might help to give an example.
Bigotry is defined as “the stubborn, unreasonable hatred or intolerance of people who are different. It involves strong bias against others based on their race, religion, gender, or beliefs.” It can be regarded in a couple of ways. As an individual shortcoming it appears as those people (with whom we are all too familiar) who harbor active prejudices against some group of their choice. All of us have acquaintances, friends or family, who fall into this category. But bigotry is also systematic and institutionalized.
Take the example of the experience of the TS in India of the late1800s. The British colonial system had been active in India for more than one hundred years before the TS arrived. One of the features of colonialism, wherever it occurs, is the required conviction of the colonizers that the colonized people are inferior.
The British regarded all facets of Indian society as backward and in need of the saving grace of British knowledge, culture, “civilization”, and especially religion. Indian science, languages, and literature were dismissed as useless and primitive. Religious practice was deemed barbaric compared to European “enlightenment”. The inadequacies the British assigned were also seen as racial, inherent, and unavoidable. It is all part of the dehumanizing colonial process.
In the one hundred and fifty years since that time India has emerged as one of the leading nations in the world, surpassing England in its economy, the scope of its democracy, the global recognition of its spirituality, its sciences and literature.
But what was the effect on the bigoted intellectual principle?
The most prominent effect is that such a distortion prevents a clear perception of reality. The well-known mantra, “From the unreal lead me to the Real”, is not possible for one to whom the unreality of inherently superior races, nations, and religions has become their way of seeing the world. The basis for such unreality begins with, not just the assumption of superiority, but the conviction of separateness, what has been described as the “heresy of separateness”. Violence, physical and psychological, is the unavoidable outcome. Why? Because the systematic expression of such a shared “deformation of the intellectual principle” strips people of essential human qualities; it dehumanizes them, making mistreatment not just possible, but easy, even necessary. You treat a sister or brother differently than a horse or a dog, or a slave.
The Deeper Cause
In a sense, the fact of incarnating in a body and assuming all of the personal identities that accompany it, is a root cause of our disconnection from Spirit. Just to be alive and functioning in the world places powerful demands on the direction in which we focus our energies and attention. We have to eat; find shelter from the elements; do some form of work to provide for basic sustenance. Relationships with family, friends and the broader community require attention and effort. National concerns affect us. Religious observance shapes our thoughts and demands our time. It is a long list. It is little wonder that deeper aspects of our being go wanting. But mere survival or well-adjusted living alone fail to invoke our full humanity.
Our view of ourselves as separate, independent beings and the self-centered behavior that goes with it is one way that we remove ourselves from being fully human. But there is a deeper cause of which our behaviors and social arrangements are only a symptom.
What is a human being, not merely from the material or behavioral point of view? From the perspective of the Ageless Wisdom the human being is more than biology or psychology. Stated simply, the human being is the Highest Spirit and lowest matter linked by mind. Matter and mind we understand to some degree, and this is the level to which our normal thought and function is confined. But the humanizing influence of the spiritual component that completes us, lies out of our reach most of the time. It is sensed, but for most of us is too subtle, too removed to be an active participant in our daily lives
What Is It We Are Missing?
So, what is it that we are missing? In the Bhagavadgitâ Krishna, as the Avatar, the embodiment of the all-embracing divine, makes the statement that he is “the Inner Ruler Immortal seated in the hearts of all beings”. In the Stanzas of Dzyan, the basis for The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, the statement is made that as human beings we have within us “the mind to embrace the universe”. In the Bible St Paul declares: “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Across the spectrum of the Ageless Wisdom teachings the point is continually made that it is the spiritual component of our being that elevates us to our true fully human status; and that so long as we are disconnected from it, we live as isolated, fleeting personalities in a shadow world. It is only as we open the link to the soul that new vistas and powers appear.
The spiritual traditions of the world exist to remind us of the direction for our growth. Even though we don’t listen or are unable to hear, they constantly whisper their message of return to the source; of a restoration of a lost and necessary connection. They exist not just to point the way, but to instruct in the tools required for the journey home — the self-education that, over time, leads beyond mere knowledge to understanding, wholeness, freedom, and active healing presence in the world.
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This article was also published in The Theosophist, VOL. 147 NO. 12 SEPTEMBER 2026
The Theosophist is the official organ of the International President, founded by H. P. Blavatsky on 1 Oct. 1879.
To read the SEPTEMBER 2026 issue click HERE
