This article is written by a student of the United Lodge of Theosophists
Selflessness is sky
The bird of the heart
flies nowhere
but there
Jalaluddin Rumi[1]
The Wisdom Religion, which Hinduism sometimes calls Sanatana Dharma, and Western history has sometimes called Theosophia, and named Theosophy by Helena Blavatsky, has always existed. The ancient Stanzas of Dzyan are the oldest account of the Wisdom Religion available to us. But we are incarnated beings, just beginning the reascent from matter to spirit as the Fifth Sub-Race on this fourth globe of the Fourth Round. Here Manas, mind, which when fully awakened or developed is universal in thought, is brought to the fore. Given our current state of collective evolution, we necessarily use language to communicate and share with one another.
Much earlier in our history, much earlier than anything written down, we knew the Wisdom Religion in our hearts. But the involution or descent into increasingly concrete matter, now at its most solid, so to speak, obscured and eventually eclipsed that innate knowledge. It is our task in collective evolution to remove that obscuration so that the Wisdom Religion can shine through our buddhic hearts in ever purer radiance. The Voice of the Silence teaches us how that can be done—indeed, the only way it can be done—no matter whether we choose to do it for ourselves alone or for all humanity. This choice, of course, is the ultimate choice we all will have to make in the future, but as Theosophy makes clear, every choice we make, every reaction we have, tends in one or the other direction—escape for oneself or uplift of the whole—so that when the great moment of that ultimate choice comes, our response will be based on our tendencies through numberless incarnations.
Plato taught that all knowledge is recollection, and it is this recollection of what is latent in us, the Wisdom Religion itself, that he meant. Since we are incarnated here and now, the Wisdom Religion has to be expressed in the languages that we use to link ourselves together. In fact, we are all the One Life, but that life expresses itself in great diversity, and it is only through the awakening of Manas in human beings that conscious movement toward realizing the One Life is possible. This movement includes the reflection and self-reflection required for any level of realization of that Truth. Hence it is our dharma—our duty, the law of our being—to strive to realize that One Life and uplift not only humanity but the whole of Nature, the whole of embodied existence, toward that realization. Theosophy, as given us in The Secret Doctrine and other writings of H.P.B., and eloquently supported by profound teachers in her day and in the century and a half since the founding of the Theosophical Society, is an expression of the Wisdom Religion, the most comprehensive expression given to humanity in recorded history.
Even this magnificent Teaching, Theosophy, is an expression of the Wisdom Religion, not the whole of that Truth nor a perfectly transparent expression of it. For it reaches even beyond the One Life, the unity of spirit and matter, to the formless and That which gives rise to the formless potential that involution and evolution actualizes. And, as the Upanishadic Hindus say, That Thou Art—tat tvam asi. The Wisdom Religion did not spring altogether new in the nineteenth century: it has always been with humanity, but its expression has always been subject to two limitations. One limitation is the nature of the language, culture, and psychic condition of the people for whom it is expressed. The second limitation is the sacred safety of those to whom it is expressed. The Masters of Wisdom cannot interfere with karma, and so even the greatest of Teachers will not give more than the people whom they teach can absorb without harming themselves or others. Nor can the most sacred truths be given to those who could only distort or mock them. The karma of denigrating the truth is heavy, tempered only by the degree of ignorance in doing so. No wonder the Christian Bible says that the one unforgivable sin is to know the truth and to reject it. Here our ignorance is a protecting illusion.
If the Wisdom Religion has always been with us; if, as H.P.B. taught, it is the source of the religions, philosophies, and sciences of humanity, past and present, then it must be discernable in all of them. Doing so requires understanding the concepts used in these human endeavors. It requires looking beyond the concrete and literal surfaces of those concepts and the ways they are used. That is, it requires an esoteric understanding of all traditions. While such discernment requires training, we are all familiar with the process. When someone tells us about some problem or crisis, we listen to what they say, but we also watch their expressions and body language to glean a deeper understanding than their words alone can convey. Hence we can often tell when someone is not telling the exact truth, when they are dodging the real issue, and so on. Friendships are often based on the ability of both parties to “read” each other without judgement or criticism. Sometimes we can discern another’s deep concern more clearly than they can themselves.
Such discernment is required for sensing the gold in the ore that presents itself to the prospector’s senses. When another speaks of her beliefs, rather than merely asserting that they are not our own, or describing how we think they are in error, discernment allows us to see where therein is a sense of Truth—Theosophy—and we can respond in terms of that. By establishing such a bond, we can then explore together thoughts in that direction rather than merely talking past one another.
H.P.B., in The Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled, and many of her other writings, showed us how we can exercise such discernment. We cannot explore her many examples in this short essay, and we will restrict ourselves to philosophy and religion. We recall her detailed esoteric analyses in “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels” and in her many discussions of the Kabbalah throughout her writings, as well as her discussions of the real nature of the Old Testament God and the many distortions involved there. And we can exercise the principle of discernment for ourselves.
Dao de jing (Tao te ching)
Take, as an example, the Chinese classic Dao de jing (Tao te ching in the older transliteration). This work is said to have been written by Laozi (Lao Tzu), a name which simply means “Old Master.” Who he was has been the subject of much debate and need not concern us here. Written perhaps almost six centuries before the Common Era (CE, old AD), it contains much metaphysical and practical wisdom. The text as we have it consists of 81 sections, sometimes called chapters, divided traditionally into two parts—the Dao, which is broadly more metaphysical, and de, which generally illustrates practical application of ethics. One very old text discovered at Dunhuang reverses these two sections. From the various ancient Chinese manuscripts, we know that the text was modified over time, though its essential message has remained constant.
Translation always faces two challenges. One is converting concepts accurately from one language to another, and when those languages are quite different, rendering the translation in a readable form is an enormous task. The second challenge is to choose words that both convey the meaning of the original thought and do not carry all the baggage associated with them. Think of the many meanings of ‘logos’ or of ‘soul,’ both of which have centuries of attached philosophy and theology which may unintentionally distort the accuracy of the translation. Even more is this true in the case of ancient Chinese, a language quite different from English, Spanish or Portuguese. As an example, the Chinese character for dao can be a noun or a verb, depending on context, and this is true of many Chinese characters. Dao, for instance, can mean ‘way,’ ‘path,’ ‘That,’ ‘the Absolute,’ even ‘name,’ as a noun and ‘walked,’ ‘trodden,’ ‘be told,’ ‘spoken of’ as a verb. Similar multivalent meanings attach to almost every character in the text. We recall H.P.B.’s discussion in The Secret Doctrine of the difficulty in translating the even more ancient Senzar into the Stanzas of Dzyan as we know them.[2] The case of the old Chinese language led one translator, Jonathan Star, to produce a rendition that includes an analysis of each Chinese character in the text in terms of its possible meanings, along with his own translation.[3]
The first verse in the Dao section has been translated in many ways, but the following version captures much in common with all of them:
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.
(translation by Derek Lin, 2006)
We immediately notice that “the Way,” “the Absolute,” that is eternal cannot be spoken of—just pointed to here. Thus, the name that can be named is not eternal, though it may seem eternal to us. The Absolute, which cannot be spoken of, is the origin of Heaven and Earth, a traditional Chinese metaphor for all existence, visible and invisible to human senses. What can be named—the lower Dao, so to speak, is the mother of “myriad things,” a phrase which can also be translated “ten thousand things,” another traditional metaphor for all that exists. The nameless dao, the unmanifest and formless gives rise to the dao that can be named, the manifest and form. When dao is understood as the Way, the manifest Way arises from the unmanifest Way and is a cosmic principle also found in the human being.
The text then turns to the individual and his or her capacity for perception. If one is truly desireless, one can discern its essence. The word for “discern” can be translated “witness” or “recognize,” and “essence” can also be “mystery,” “true nature,” or even “one’s true nature,” among other possibilities. If one has desires, one only discerns the ten thousand things. Desire is the key to knowledge. When we have desires, we can only see objects of desire, being attracted to or repelled by them. But when we are without desire, we can penetrate the true nature of existence, which is also our true nature. Here Theosophists might think of viraga in The Voice of the Silence. We are told that these two modes of discernment or observation are distinguished but are really only one—they merge—and this unity is a great mystery but also the door to “all wonders,” and, given the Chinese characters used to express this, we can also say it is the door to one’s true nature.
This all too brief discussion of just the first chapter of the first section of the Dao de ching is enough to show the profound depth of its teaching. The remainder of this short book—containing about 5000 characters or words—expands on this doctrine and applies it to the individual human being, to society as a whole, to the nature of governance, and also characterizes the truly wise individual. Reading the whole work, one can readily find the seven keys to the portals that lead “to the other shore,” according to The Voice of the Silence.[4] The keys are oneself, purified by the paramitas which name the portals, for, the Voice teaches, one cannot travel the Path until one becomes the Path. One follows dao by becoming dao. We see here the Wisdom Religion expounded two thousand years before HPB, though in a form suitable to the time and civilization in which it was given. And, like all expressions of the Eternal Wisdom, it remains relevant to us today, though we live in a quite different time and culture.
Islam, the tradition founded by Muhammad and embodied in the Qur’an, consisting of revelations by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad over a period of years and gathered together after his death, has two broad dimensions. The common form of Islam is legalistic, reminiscent of the Talmud of Judaism though quite different. The other form is Sufism, which avers that the Qur’an must be read esoterically. Believing that the divine has permeated all religious traditions at least to some degree, Sufis teach that only through such esoteric understanding can God be understood. This stance is true in both great branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi’ite.
Scholars have long studied the emergence of Sufi groups in Islam. They realize that Sufi thought and practice draws on classical Greek thinking, Neoplatonism, and Zoroastrianism while adhering to the message and language of the Qur’an. While academic scholarship cannot trace the spirit of Sufism farther back than the emergence of the great religions of the world, it is clear that it reaches back to the Wisdom Religion. HPB said that the most ancient religions are the Indian, Mazdean, and Egyptian.[5] Although scholars cannot trace these traditions beyond their emergence in recorded history, HPB affirms that they have one source—the Wisdom Religion. All subsequent lasting spiritual traditions come from these original expressions of that one source. Henry Corbin (1903-1978) boldly traced much Shi’ite Islamic spirituality, found especially in Sufism, to Zoroastrian, that is, Mazdean, religion.[6] Given that the mystical dimension of Islam in its Shi’ite forms is found in Iran, once known as Persia, this is not surprising.
Shihab al-Din ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi
Corbin explored the teachings of Shihab al-Din ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi (1154-1191), known as Shaykh-i-Ishraq, Master of Illumination, for his philosophy of light. It seems that he was executed while still comparatively young for teaching esoteric doctrines. He drew on ancient Persian religious teachings to assert that everything is an outflow of primordial Light which, as it descends, loses intensity, and thus becomes dispersed. All existence consists of levels of light and darkness. Human beings are souls that have become divided, so to speak, one half of which remains in heaven, that is, in eternal luminosity, while the other half is trapped in the shadowy body. The aim of self-conscious existence is to transcend embodiment and return in full consciousness to the arena of the pure light which is Reality. We detect here the Theosophical teaching of the dual nature of incarnated human beings. Suhrawardi drew on Zoroastrian symbolism and its doctrines to elucidate a Path to perfection, tying metaphysics to ethical inner and outer development. It consists of “stations” or portals of various colored lights, leading ultimately to the untainted Light,[7] the source of existence. Here one might think of the references in The Voice of the Silence to sounds one hears in one’s meditational efforts and to the sound in the light and light in the sound. Suhrawardi held that Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, and Pythagoras had all traveled the path of God. Corbin said, "In northwestern Iran, Sohravardi (d. 1191) carried out the great project of reviving the wisdom or theosophy of ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran."[8] Muslims following the legalistic side of Islam, even in its Shi’ite version, would certainly find this heretical.
`100 Names of God in Islam
In the Sunni version of Islam, once extending from Arabia to the Iberian Peninsula, Muhyiddin ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240 CE) so permeated Islamic theology that his presence in all subsequent Islamic philosophical thought is like that of Plato in Western thinking.[9] One of his favorite metaphors was that of the polished mirror. Islam holds that the Qur’an reveals ninety-nine names of Allah. (Allah as the “name” of God comes from the Arabic ‘al-illah,’ meaning the God.) Many of these names are the opposites that are featured in human experience. There is also a secret 100th name, which remains unknown. Ibn al-Arabi taught that these “names” are the intelligent aspects of deity that permeate all Nature, indeed, they constitute it. Only in the human being, however, are all the names found together, though they are present in a confused, even chaotic, manner. One might think of them as intelligent forces, which need to be spiritually rectified. Ibn al-Arabi’s favorite metaphor is that of the polished mirror. In his time, mirrors were polished metal that could reflect one’s image. Polishing the mirror consists in nurturing and living the virtues suggested by the names. One name is ‘al-haqq,’ the true or the real. If one reads his voluminous work, one discerns the same Path indicated in the Voice, but put in Islamic terms. Notably, these virtues include reverence for everything sacred—and everything is sacred because consisting of the “names”—and gratitude to one’s teachers, visible and invisible. He emphasized, through this vision of the “names,” wahdat al-wujud,’ the unity of being, which Theosophists know as the One Life.
These few examples, chosen from among many that could have been picked, merely scratch the surface of the Wisdom Religion’s presence before HPB. They intimate, as HPB demonstrated throughout her writings, that the Wisdom Religion was never entirely lost from its expression at the beginning of our Fifth Race. As human beings descended ever deeper into matter and grew ever more involved in its distractions, the most sacred Teachings were, when necessary, hidden, and, as humans turned away from their spiritual natures, sometimes actively suppressed. In the West, one can think of the suppression and loss of Gnostic texts, many recovered only within the last century, and of the corruption of ancient doctrines by those who too easily said “Behold, I know.” The academic pressure to be “original” rather than to understand ancient, timeless thinking, has not helped in this regard. Theosophists strive to understand, and, while they work to express such wisdom in fresh and comprehensible ways, they do not see such ephemeral originality, since, as the Hebrew Bible taught, there is nothing new under the sun. What is new in the last 150 years is the unveiling of the Wisdom Religion to an extent not seen in well over two millennia and more.
Humanity in general lost its natural connection with the Wisdom Religion through identifying with the lower nature, mistakenly believing that human beings are the tools—the lower quaternary—that they use to gain experience. The Wisdom Religion, or that unveiled portion of it called Theosophy, aims to awaken us from that misidentification. The error is so deep—the Voice calls it the dire heresy of separateness—that we have to walk the paramita Path, climb the ladder of Lights, polish the mirror of our being, through gradual inner realization and pure expression of that realization in outer interactions with others and all of Nature. In doing so, we not only regain our inheritance, which is our true Self, but uplift the whole of humanity and Nature, on the never-ending evolutionary path of increasing awareness. We approach Reality, which we are. For the logos in the cosmos is the god in man, and we are what is best in us.
REFERENCES
[1] Jalaluddin Rumi, Water, translated from the Persian by Haleh Liza Gafori, New York Review of Books, New York, 2025, p. 36.
[2] See The Secret Doctrine, facsimile edition of 1888, The Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, vol. I, p. xliii, and pp. 22-24.
[3] Jonathan Star, Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 2001.
[4] The Voice of the Silence, The Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, 1928, pp. 52-53.
[5] The Secret Doctrine, I, 10.
[6] See Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi’ite Iran, translated by Nancy Pearson, Princeton University Press (Bollingen Series XCI:2), 1977.
[7] See Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, translated by Nancy Pearson. Various editions are available.
[8] Ibid. Sohravardi is an alternative transliteration of Suhrawardi.
[9] Muhyiddin is a title that means something like “the reviver of religion.” After his death, Sufis began referring to him as Shaykh al-Akbar, that is, the greatest Shaykh. He traced his descent from a famous poet from pre-Islamic Arabia.
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This article was also published in VIDYA, the autumn 2025 issue, a publication of the United Lodge of Theosophists in Santa Barbara, Ca;ifornia, USA. For more issues of this outstanding magazine click HERE