Theosophy

[From Mahatma Letter 20 (chronological sequence, ed. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., pp. 72-3) or Letter 49 (earlier editions), received at Umballa while A. P. Sinnett was on his way to Simla, August 5, 1881.

The Occult Science is not one in which secrets can be communicated of a sudden, by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the “Brothers” would have to do, would be to publish a Hand-book of the art which might be taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery — that we wish to keep our knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse — “wantonly and deliberately” to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled and fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. Till then no hocus pocus of incantations, or mummery of appliances, no metaphysical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these are but means to an end, and all we can do is to direct the use of such means as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the required object. And this was and has been no secret for thousands of years. Fasting, meditation, chastity of thought, word, and deed; silence for certain periods of time to enable nature herself to speak to him who comes to her for information; government of the animal passions and impulses; utter unselfishness of intention, the use of certain incense and fumigations for physiological purposes, have been published as the means since the days of Plato and Iamblichus in the West and since the far earlier times of our Indian Rishis. How these must be complied with to suit each individual temperament is of course a matter for his own experiment and the watchful care of his tutor or Guru. Such is in fact part of his course of discipline, and his Guru or initiator can but assist him with his experience and will power but can do no more until the last and Supreme initiation. I am also of opinion that few candidates imagine the degree of inconvenience — nay suffering and harm to himself — the said initiator submits to for the sake of his pupil. The peculiar physical, moral, and intellectual conditions of neophytes and Adepts alike vary much, as anyone will easily understand; thus, in each case, the instructor has to adapt his conditions to those of the pupil, and the strain is terrible, for to achieve success we have to bring ourselves into a full rapport with the subject under training. And as the greater the powers of the Adept the less he is in sympathy with the natures of the profane who often come to him saturated with the emanations of the outside world, those animal emanations of the selfish, brutal, crowd that we so dread — the longer he was separated from that world and the purer he has himself become, the more difficult the self-imposed task. Then — knowledge can only be communicated gradually; and some of the highest secrets — if actually formulated even in your well prepared ear — might sound to you as insane gibberish, notwithstanding all the sincerity of your present assurance that “absolute trust defies misunderstanding.” This is the real cause of our reticence. This is why people so often complain with a plausible show of reason that no new knowledge is communicated to them, though they have toiled for it for two, three or more years. Let those who really desire to learn abandon all and come to us, instead of asking or expecting us to go to them. But how is this to be done in your world, and atmosphere?

H. P. Blavatsky

H. P. Blavatsky

[The opening paragraphs of “Esoteric School, Instruction No. 1, 1890,” in Collected Writings 12:515.]

There is a strange law in Occultism which has been ascertained and proven by thousands of years of experience; nor has it failed to demonstrate itself, almost in every case, during the fifteen years that the T. S. has been in existence. As soon as anyone pledges himself as a “Probationer,” certain occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the throwing outward of everything latent in the nature of the man: his faults, habits, qualities, or subdued desires, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

Nancy Reigle – USA

[Reprinted here from Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years of Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 139-48, with formal modifications for Theosophy Forward house style.]

Among the many works that Madame Blavatsky brought before the public, The Voice of the Silence was unique in its appeal to the heart and spirit of humanity. Throughout, it repeatedly demands the greatest compassion that one is capable of towards one’s fellow human beings.

According to Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence comes from ‘‘The Book of the Golden Precepts,” which “forms part of the same series as that from which the ‘Stanzas’ of the Book of Dzyan were taken, on which the Secret Doctrine is based.”1 She says that the Book of the Golden Precepts “contains about ninety distinct little treatises,” thirty-nine of which she had memorized.2  Three of these she translated into English for us in The Voice of the Silence, which we know as the ‘‘Three Fragments.” One can surmise that she studied these treatises under the tutelage of her Adept teachers during her stay in Little Tibet and Tibet proper, which she refers to in her writings.3

[The following is the first paragraph of a letter, whose text is on the Web site Blavatsky Archives Online (www.blavatskyarchives.com/hpbwqj81287.htm) as part of a series of letters compiled by Dara Eklund and Nicholas Weeks; the present notes have been added by Theosophy Forward editors.]

My dear W. Q. J.

To explain my telegram of today know, that for several days I kept thinking over your letter & that of Coues1 — feeling the great responsibility you wanted me to assume. The night before last, however, I was shown a bird's eye view of the present state of Theosophy & its Societies. I saw a few earnest reliable Theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general, with other — nominal but ambitious — theosophists. The former are greater in number than you may think, & they prevailed, as you in America will prevail, if you only remain staunch to the Masters' programme and true to yourselves. And last night I saw 2 & now I feel strong — such as I am in my body, and ready to fight for theosophy & the few true ones to my last breath. Are you ready to help me carry on the sacrifice — that of accepting & carrying on the burden of life which is heavy? My choice is made & I will not go back on it. I remain in England in the midst of the howling wolves. Here I am needed & near to America, there, in Adyar — there are dark plots going on against me & poor Olcott (which you will understand better by reading Bert's3 letter & the enclosed one from Olcott) and I could only defend myself — not do any good to the Cause or Society. The defending forces have to be judiciously — so scanty they are — distributed over the globe wherever Theosophy is struggling against the powers of darkness. Let O. remain at Adyar — I will remain here. If you & Coues carry out the plan we will have four great & strong centres America, Paris, India, England.

David Reigle – USA

[By David Reigle, reprinted here from Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years of Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 83-95, with formal modifications for Theosophy Forward house style.]

Some seven centuries ago there arose in Tibet a school of teachings which has many parallels to Theosophy. This is the Jonangpa school. Like Theosophy, which attempted to restore teachings from “the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world,”1 it attempted to restore teachings of the earlier Golden Age. Like Theosophy, which teaches as its first fundamental proposition “an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception,”2 it teaches a principle which is permanent, stable, quiescent, and eternal, which is devoid of anything but itself, or “empty of other” (gzhan stong), and which therefore transcends even the most subtle conceptualization. And like Theosophy, it was persecuted by orthodoxy.

A SECRET DOCTRINE

The teachings of the Jonangpa school were originated by Yumo Mikyo Dorje (yu mo mi bskyod rdo rje), an eleventh/twelfth-century yogi. He was a student of Somanatha, the Sanskrit pandit and Kalacakra master from Kashmir who translated the great Kalacakra commentary Vimala-prabha into Tibetan. Yumo is said to have received the Jonangpa teachings while practicing the Kalacakra six-limbed yoga in the Mt. Kailasa area of western Tibet. The Jonangpa teachings include primarily the Kalacakra transmission and the “empty of other” or shen-tong (gzhan stong) doctrine. Yumo expounded these as a “secret doctrine” (lkog pa’i chos).3 He did not, however, put these teachings into writing; so we do not have from him a work called The Secret Doctrine, as we do from H. P. Blavatsky. The task of putting them into writing was left to a successor, Dolpopa.

Nicholas Weeks – USA

[This article is based on a talk given in April 2010 at the Krotona Institute in Ojai, California by the author. References to Echoes of the Orient are from the revised version, 2009-2010.]

Now some thoughts on human perfectibility.  Some object to spiritual perfection because it sounds like a final status, with all change or progress ended.  I have not found this taught in the original Theosophy of HPB or WQJ.  Even if this were the case, consider the many thousands of incarnations involved in becoming a Buddha or Bodhisattva, for example.  Then, many manvantaras more helping the spiritual advance of all beings; boredom is not in the future.

Here is some of what William Quan Judge wrote on perfection:

“On this plane of ours the spirit focalizes itself in all human beings who choose to permit it to do so, and the refusal to permit it is the cause of ignorance, of sin, of all sorrow and suffering. In all ages some have come to this high state, have grown to be as gods, are partakers actively in the work of nature, and go on from century to century widening their consciousness and increasing the scope of their government in nature. This is the destiny of all beings, and hence at the outset Theosophy postulates this perfectibility of the race, removes the idea of innate unregenerable wickedness, and offers a purpose and an aim for life which is consonant with the longings of the soul and with its real nature, tending at the same time to destroy pessimism with its companion, despair.

In Theosophy the world is held to be the product of the evolution of the [Unknown eternal] principle..., from the very lowest first forms of life, guided as it proceeded by intelligent perfected beings from other and older evolutions, and compounded also of the egos or individual spirits for and by whom it emanates. Hence man as we know him is held to be a conscious spirit, the flower of evolution, with other and lower classes of egos below him in the lower kingdoms, all however coming up and destined one day to be on the same human stage as we now are, we then being higher still.”  [Echoes II 136]

H. P. Blavatsky

Collected Writings 9:99-104 [“Conversations on Occultism” in Path 3.1 (April 1888): 17-21]


Student. — I am very much puzzled about the present age. Some Theosophists seem to abhor it as if wishing to be taken away from it altogether, inveighing against modern inventions such as the telegraph, railways, machinery, and the like, and bewailing the disappearance of former civilizations. Others take a different view, insisting that this is a better time than any other, and hailing modern methods as the best. Tell me, please, which of these is right, or, if both are wrong, what ought we to know about the age we live in.

Sage. — The teachers of truth know all about this age. But they do not mistake the present century for the whole cycle. The older times of European history, for example, when might was right and when darkness prevailed over Western nations, was as much a part of this age, from the standpoint of the Masters, as is the present hour, for the yuga — to use a Sanskrit word — in which we are now had begun many thousands of years before. And during that period of European darkness, although this yuga had already begun, there was much light, learning, and civilization in India and China. The meaning of the words “present age” must therefore be extended over a far greater period than is at present assigned. In fact, modern science has reached no definite conclusion yet as to what should properly be called “an age,” and the truth of the Eastern doctrine is denied. Hence we find writers speaking of the “Golden Age,” the “Iron Age,” and so on, whereas they are only parts of the real age that began so far back that modern archaeologists deny it altogether.

David Reigle – USA

[“What Are the Books of Kiu-te?” by David Reigle, was published in the High Country Theosophist 9.2 (Feb. 1994): 2-9, and reprinted in David and Nancy Reigle’s collection Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years’ Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 43-52, from which it is reproduced here, with slight modifications for our house style.]

The books of Kiu-te, as most Theosophists know, are said to be the source from which the Stanzas of Dzyan in The Secret Doctrine were translated. We are told that besides the secret books of Kiu-te from which the Stanzas of Dzyan were translated, there exist public books of Kiu-te, found in the libraries of Tibetan monasteries.1 Yet these public books of Kiu-te remained, for all practical purposes, secret until 1981, when they were finally identified. Though the books are "public," in that they are found in the printed collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, they continue to be regarded by Tibetan tradition as the Buddha's secret teachings, and therefore as having restricted access. Even now only a tiny fraction of them has been translated into English.

Nicholas Weeks – USA

[This article is based on a talk given in April 2010 at the Krotona Institute in Ojai, California by the author. References to Echoes of the Orient are from the revised version, 2009-2010.]

Many ideas have been presented by both the modern and ancient Theosophical Movement.  Yet there are three which should stand out in the thought-life of this world.  Since these three ideas are radiant with goodness we must continually rescue them from oblivion.  Here is how William Q. Judge described them:

“The first idea is that there is a great Cause — in the sense of an enterprise — called the Cause of Sublime Perfection and Human Brotherhood.  This rests upon the essential unity of the whole human family, and is a possibility because sublimity in perfectness and actual realization of brotherhood on every plane of being are one and the same thing.  All efforts by Rosicrucian, Mystic, Mason and Initiate are efforts toward the convocation in the hearts and minds of men of the Order of Sublime Perfection.

H. P. Blavatsky

From The Voice of the Silence, fragment 2 “The Two Paths”

109.    Saith the pupil: Teacher, what shall I do to reach to Wisdom?

110.    Wise one, what, to gain perfection?

111.    Search for the Paths. But, O Lanoo, be of clean heart before thou startest on thy journey. Before thou takest thy first step learn to discern the real from the false, the ever-fleeting from the everlasting. Learn above all to separate Head-learning from Soul-Wisdom, the "Eye" from the "Heart" doctrine.

Nicholas Weeks – USA

William Q. Judge and Henry Olcott in 1891

William Quan Judge (1851-96) was a loyal disciple of HP Blavatsky and strong worker for Theosophy.  His life and work are best known in the United States, where he was responsible for giving Theosophy a firm footing.

His occult life was deep, for he rarely spoke of it. Perhaps the most amazing part of his life was his birth.  It was highly unusual. But I will let friends of his, Cyrus Willard and Claude Wright, add to Judge's own telling of the “borrowed body.”       

I can tell, now, what I know, and saw with my own eyes, about this “borrowed body” and which was also seen and verified by at least ten other persons, who openly so stated at a meeting held in the headquarters of the Boston Branch, shortly after Judge’s death in 1896. And I think Brother Smythe [editor of The Canadian Theosophist] can vouch for my reputation for veracity.  It was at the Boston convention of 1891, where I served on a committee with Annie Besant, on her first visit to America, and was predisposed in her favor by her work for the Bryant & May match-girls.  Word was sent to all members of the E.S.T. which I had joined under H.P.B. in 1889, to be present at an E.S. meeting in the large double parlors of the Parker House. When I got in, it was early and from newspaper habit I walked down to the front row of seats and sat less than 10 feet away from Judge and Annie.  As she has seen fit to publish the E.S. instructions, it will not therefore be without justification that I relate what occurred, in order to give Judge his due.

David Reigle – USA

[“Quest for the Lost Language of the Initiates,” by David Reigle, was published in the American Theosophist 69.1 (January 1981): 11-6; and reprinted in David and Nancy Reigle’s collection Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years’ Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 6-19, from which it is reproduced here, with slight modifications for our house style.]

When we went to India to obtain books and materials for the Theosophical Research Center here [now Eastern Tradition Research Institute], after a most fruitful stay at Adyar of course, we made it a point to go to Bombay, the center of Zoroastrianism today, and see what we could find of this. We first set about obtaining the five Gathas of the Yasna in the original Gathic dialect of the Avesta language, supposed to be Senzar, and also in English translation. As usual, the English translation was very inadequate from the occult point of view. We also obtained some Avestan grammars and readers for use in learning the language.

Alexandria

A group of six enthusiastic Theosophists is working hard preparing an important gathering in Egypt’s Alexandria, which will take place in July 2012. This is a significant initiative and it deserves our attention. Theosophy Forward spoke with Erica Georgiades, one of the organizers, in order to find out more about this event.

David Reigle – USA

[“Quest for the Lost Language of the Initiates,” by David Reigle, was published in the American Theosophist 69.1 (January 1981): 11-6; and reprinted in David and Nancy Reigle’s collection Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years’ Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 6-19, from which it is reproduced here, with slight modifications for our house style.]

Introduction by David Reigle from Blavatsky’s Secret Books (BSB):

This article was written in 1979, after returning from India, where my wife and I had spent three months. It was written in a somewhat lighter style than my later writings, since I had tried to make it read more like a travel account. Thus it originally had no notes. The reviewers for the American Theosophist, however, felt that some of my statements should be documented, such as, “This Vedic Sanskrit, though assumed by scholars to be more primitive because older, is yet richer in grammatical forms than classical Sanskrit” (BSB, 10). So I then added twenty-seven references and notes, and have now added three more on Khshnoom, or esoteric Zoroastrianism, since it is so little known. I did not, though, document my above-quoted statement, since I felt that to do so would be too out of place for a nontechnical article such as this. In any case, it is well known among linguists that finite verb forms such as aorists and perfects abound in Vedic writings, while they have been largely replaced by participles in classical Sanskrit.

John Algeo – USA

Among the items of curious lore in H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine are her references to a language called Senzar. Senzar is a mystery. According to Blavatsky, it is the original language of the stanzas of Dzyan, which are the core of her great book and also the original language of all humanity. Blavatsky calls Senzar “a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted” (SD 1:xxxvii), and so it is. The name of Senzar appears in none of the lists of the world’s languages that linguists have compiled, nor is it ever likely to. We know about Senzar only what HPB has told us, although in fact she has told us a good deal.

Some of what Blavatsky says about Senzar makes it seem to be an ordinary language like English, Sanskrit, or any such human tongue, but her other comments show that it cannot be an ordinary language. Some years ago, I gathered all the references I could find in Blavatsky’s writings to Senzar, in an effort to deduce from them what sort of “language” it might be. My analysis and conclusions were published in a little monograph entitled Senzar: The Mystery of the Mystery Language (London: Theosophical History Centre, 1988). I shall not summarize the analysis, which is long, complex, and rather technical. Instead, I present here just the main conclusion.

H. P. Blavatsky

From The Voice of the Silence, fragment 1

[1]    THESE instructions are for those ignorant of the dangers of the lower IDDHI¹.

[2]    He who would hear the voice of Nada², “the Soundless Sound,” and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana³.

[3]    Having become indifferent to objects of perception, the pupil must seek out the rajah of the senses, the Thought-Producer, he who awakes illusion.

[4]    The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.

[5]    Let the Disciple slay the Slayer.

For:— [6]    When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams;

[7]    When he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer.

[8]    Then only, not till then, shall he forsake the region of Asat, the false, to come unto the realm of Sat, the true.


1. The Pali word Iddhi is the synonym of the Sanskrit Siddhis, or psychic faculties, the abnormal powers in man. There are two kinds of Siddhis. One group which embraces the lower, coarse, psychic and mental energies; the other is one which exacts the highest training of Spiritual powers. Says Krishna in Shrimad Bhagavat:— “He who is engaged in the performance of yoga, who has subdued his senses and who has concentrated his mind in me (Krishna), such yogis all the Siddhis stand ready to serve.”

2. The “Soundless Voice,” or the “Voice of the Silence.” Literally perhaps this would read “Voice in the Spiritual Sound,” as Nada is the equivalent word in Sanskrit, for the Sen-sar term.

3. Dharana is the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon some one interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the senses.

Boris de Zirkoff – USA

Universal Life, in all its multi-myriad forms and aspects, is in constant flux. Unalterable in its underlying essence, it is in perpetual outward change. As soon as any one of its temporary manifestations becomes rigid, decay sets in, which is but another aspect of life, breaking up the outworn form, in order to build a new and more adequate one.

Wherever there is flexibility, optimism, dynamic interest, vision, the search for the unknown, the urge to grow and to become, and the enthusiasm that scales new heights and attempts the seemingly impossible—there is youth and hope and the broad highway to all future yet unborn.

Wherever there is rigidity, pessimism, indifference, fear of the unknown, frustration and mental fatigue, doubt, anxiety and lack of vision, attachment to established routines and well-worn grooves of thought, crystallization of methods, and cherished traditions obscuring the distant horizons of the future—there is old age, decay, senility, and the loss of the vital fires that are essential to all becoming and all growth.

Gottfried de Purucker – USA

Abridged and edited from H. P. Blavatsky: the Mystery (Point Loma Publications, 1974)

H. P. Blavatsky was a great psychological mystery to the world. She was a great psychological mystery even to her followers; ay, even to those who thought that they knew her best, and who met her daily and worked with her and were taught by her. To them, at least to most of them, she was an astounding paradox of what seemed to be conflicting and confusing traits of character. The intuitions of her followers and pupils told them that they were in the presence of a World-Teacher, the Messenger of other World-Teachers even greater than she was, who had sent her forth to strike the keynotes of a new age; and yet despite all this she puzzled these followers of hers most sadly, as much by those other traits of character which astonished and perplexed them because they had not the vision to expect to find such lofty and almost incomprehensible traits in a spiritual Teacher and Leader.

Antonio Girardi – Italy

The careful analysis of external circumstances and difficulties that are gripping societies and countries at this moment in time, makes us understand how important it is to reaffirm the concept of the unity of life, which is at the heart of Theosophical reflection. A sense of separateness, selfish achievements—be they of a political or financial nature—refusal of philosophical and religious contact, personal achievement as the keystone of development, have shown, and are showing, that they are not capable of giving humanity a better future. Therefore even today there is the problem of knowing how to interpret the evolutionary momentum of humanity, and the conditions for its real development in an ethical and positive sense.

Theosophy can offer key interpretations of this process, thanks to its vast tradition of awareness regarding the themes of life, evolution, karma, and dharma. The Theosophical Society was charged with the task of establishing a core of unconditional universal brotherhood for humanity by its supporters and founders. This is the task that we have to develop today and to which we must devote our energies.

Sabine van Osta – Belgium

While in its earlier days the Theosophical Society was only one of the very few organizations to bring Eastern thought to the West, today it is one of the many voices in a vast choir. Yet, as a Society, we have as much right to exist as any other of its kind; and it is clear that we still have a strong, uplifting, and healing message to offer to the public at large, whose need for clarity and truth is ever-increasing. Even when at this moment some of the original reasons for establishing the TS have since long been achieved, much remains to be done to help one another convert parts of the outer and inner human wastelands into flourishing heavens of peace and sustainable spiritual prosperity.

H. P. Blavatsky

From Lucifer 1.2 (October 1887): 96; Collected Writings 8:109

Will is the exclusive possession of man on this our plane of consciousness. It divides him from the brute in whom instinctive desire only is active.

Desire, in its widest application, is the one creative force in the Universe. In this sense it is indistinguishable from Will; but we men never know desire under this form while we remain only men. Therefore Will and Desire are here considered as opposed.

Thus Will is the offspring of the Divine, the God in man; Desire the motive power of the animal life.

Most of men live in and by desire, mistaking it for will. But he who would achieve must separate will from desire, and make his will the ruler; for desire is unstable and ever changing, while will is steady and constant.

Both will and desire are absolute creators, forming the man himself and his surroundings. But will creates intelligently—desire blindly and unconsciously. The man, therefore, makes himself in the image of his desires, unless he creates himself in the likeness of the Divine, through his will, the child of the light.

His task is twofold: to awaken the will, to strengthen it by use and conquest, to make it absolute ruler within his body; and, parallel with this, to purify desire.

Knowledge and will are the tools for the accomplishment of this purification.

Ali Ritsema – The Netherlands

The Theosophical Society has existed since 1875. We are now in the twenty-first century, 135 years later. This article is meant, not to look back to the past, but as a stepping stone to the future, to reconsider the role or the task of the Theosophical Society.

Obviously, the members of the Society determine its future, whether locally, nationally, or internationally. Consequently, when members have conflicting opinions about the Society’s role or task, the result will be confusion and chaos, and thus the Society will be weakened. This does not mean that there cannot be differences of opinion or different approaches—that is something else. But in order to build a strong future, it is important to have a clear idea about the central purpose or task of the Society. That’s why I would like to share what I have found in The Mahatma Letters about the task of the Society and to explore some aspects of it.