Theosophy

 This article is written by a student of the United Lodge of Theosophists

What is the foundation of religion as we see it practiced today?  Alleged revelation and tradition? Error and superstition, serving wishful thinking? Is it a sociological question: a laudable tendency in human society towards moral community? Is all religion based in mythology, which tends to literalism as superstition takes hold? Is religion merely a political device for control over the minds of others? What greater authority than to proclaim that one acts for and on behalf of God? Or do we find the foundation of religion in psychology, in compensation, in a deep need to soften the hard facts of life with gratifying illusions?

And what do we mean by religion? A body of beliefs? Formal rites and ceremonies? Is religion merely the way a community solemnizes and sanctifies stages of life and rites of passage: birth, puberty, marriage, death? Is religion a segment of life? Does it occupy a particular hour or a particular day only?  

To be sure, many people are born into a religion and taught that its foundations have been solidly established by others. To peer into and question these foundations may be regarded as rebellion or impiety, even blasphemy. But what value is a religion that cannot stand up to scrutiny? Can it ever be regarded as true? 

Thomas Paine

In The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine wrote that the integrity of one’s own mind had to be the primary holiness or wholeness:  

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.   

The coercion to pretend that something is true which one has not verified – perhaps cannot verify – and to succor oneself within a community of others who also so pretend, is to corrode one’s moral and intellectual faculties. And yet, this implicit pretense is what so often flies under the banner of religion.  

Waldo Emerson

In the opening paragraph of his essay “Nature”, Emerson pleaded for a forward-looking religion whose foundations are verifiable: 

Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? 

Likewise, in his essay “Worship”, Emerson expressed doubt that old wine skins could be patched:  

We say the old forms of religion decay, and that a scepticism devastates the community. I do not think it can be cured or stayed by any modification of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. The cure for false theology is mother-wit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. 

In the education of the natural sciences there is no parallel to this blind reliance on tradition. It is not enough for the physics student to learn about Newton and what he discovered about the laws of gravitation. He has to work out the laws and equations for himself. The apple has to fall on his head today. The education of every modern physicist is a recapitulation of the whole history of physics. It is not enough to say, “Great minds in the past already figured out that stuff. You start where they left off.” No, the mind of the modern student must walk that path, and see for himself.  

Thomas Paine strongly criticized Christianity as he saw it: 

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics.  

Of course, Paine and Emerson were not atheists or materialists, but they were advocates for a rational and moral approach to religion. It is useful to inquire what a theosophical reform of religion might be. The religion of tomorrow will be the recovery of that which is in the beginning. If we razed the house of religion, so to speak, and jackhammered its foundations, what would remain? H.P. Blavatsky wrote that the temple of truth cannot be built by hammering dead stones; the foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of life. We may premise that there exists an irrepressible, ineradicable sense of the sacred within the human heart. It is a still small voice which too easily gets steamrollered by social pressures, distractions and daily cares. True religion – religion stripped of dogma, speculation and tradition – must begin with the spark of this sacred sensibility. The judicious care of this sacred sense, vigilance for what the Master called “whisperings of the Buddhi to the Manas”, must constitute the existential core of true religion. 

In the Great Master’s Letter, we read, “The Theosophical Society was chosen as the cornerstone, the foundation of the future religion of humanity.” This is profound and elusive. How can we even imagine what the future religion of humanity will look like? It may bear little resemblance to our ideas of religion today. And how far away is this future? Is the Master referring to an Aquarian approach to religion, one that will mature over the next 2200 years?  By then, the name of Theosophy, and its various organizations, may be long past. And yet, a broader recognition for Ancient Wisdom and the Science of Spirituality may flourish. A cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a new building. It stakes out the exact location and the vector lines for the sides of the structure. Once in place, the construction follows a sure footing.  

We need not be totally blind to the future. Let us note seven suggestions from the teachings.  

1. The true foundations for religion must be within us. We ourselves must constitute those foundations; not external documents or supposed revelations. “Theosophy is who theosophy does.”
2. This means that religion cannot be sequestered to a particular activity or day of the week.  It pervades the whole of life. True religion is a 24-7 responsibility. The theosophical life begins with a call to responsibility, and theosophy itself is known as the Religion of Responsibility.
3. The religion of tomorrow is a Wisdom-Religion. That is, it calls forth and cultivates the power of discernment. The theosophical life identifies the true problem of life and applies the true remedy. The problem is self-enclosure; the solution is a series of progressive awakenings. “Shun ignorance and likewise shun illusion” is a motto for the practitioner of the Wisdom-Religion.
4. Metaphysical imagination is essential to the religion of tomorrow, and this begins with the logic of the First Fundamental Proposition of The Secret Doctrine. The student must come to appreciate the difference between the First Cause and the Causeless Cause, between Being and the formless Ground of Be-ness. Again, this is not a matter of abstract speculation removed from life. This logic is, for example, the basis for understanding the motto of the Theosophical Society, “There is no religion higher than truth.” If satya (truth) is Sat (Reality), then no formulation of that truth can be other than relative, partial and provisional. We must always hold the ineffable Truth superior to every existent and any possible religion. This conviction blossoms as humility and dispassion in our ethical lives.
5. Thus this same realization provides a solid basis for thorough non-sectarianism. “The true theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all.” The Formless Reality is the basis for each and every form, yet it remains untouched and beyond. So also the formless soul of the votary of truth generously identifies and supports the partial visions of others, precisely because he is unthreatened and has nothing to prove. In the words of Walt Whitman, “We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers, nor any thing that is asserted.” This generosity of heart is the only antidote to the noisy antagonisms of sectarianism, a genuine disarming of pseudo-absolutization.
6. “True religion is a knowledge of one’s own self, and action in accordance”, according to Robert Crosbie in his essay “The Foundation of Religion”. Religion is simply recognition, consent and willing participation in the Law of Universal Unity and Causation. As Religion becomes all-encompassing, “religion” disappears. The term dharma carries rich connotations that include but surpass the English word, religion. Dharma derives from the root, ‘dhr-’, meaning ‘that which holds’. Likewise, the Latin religare means ‘to bind’. Both imply core commitments and values which lend life harmony and integrity, and promote personal individuality, confidence and strength. Dharma also means the essence of a thing, its particular location and function in the cosmos, and the special calling of an individual within society. Dharma, as law, is fundamentally impersonal, and human dharma is only a specialization of the greater law. In other words, an individual realizes religion by discovering and participating in the Religion of Nature.
7. Finally, the recognition that what we call religion is only a diminished descendent of the mystery religions of the ancient world. Self-regeneration, spiritual resurrection, dvija, the second birth, and initiation are not vague ideas or superstitions, but facts and precise aspects of the Science of Spirituality, which will be fully restored in the future.

Journalists and cultural observers today frequently note, and sometimes lament, the decline of religion and the diminishing church memberships. Many, too, note the hypocrisy of violence and cruelty practiced in the name of Jesus. It is clear that we are in a transition age, as W.Q. Judge wrote in his letters, and as Emerson noted 25 years before: 

We live in a transition period, when the old faiths … seem to have spent their force. … By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.  

The theosophist has faith that this ‘irresistible maturing’ follows the lines of law. As St. Paul noted, spiritual growth means putting aside the toys and amusements of ignorance. We have the privilege of realizing the future today, of strengthening the foundations of true religion within ourselves, and thereby shortening painful delays and deprivations for our global fellows. 

The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race: that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth.

                                                                                                                        Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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This article was also published in VIDYA, the Winter 2026 issue, a publication of the United Lodge of Theosophists in Santa Barbara, Ca;ifornia, USA. For more issues of this outstanding magazine click HERE