Theosophy

Our Work

Details: Published: Wednesday, 21 March 2012 22:54

Rafael Arévalo, Teotle Lodge, San Salvador – El Salvador

El Salvador, a small country in Central America, was at first affiliated Theosophically with Cuba. In those days, an Irish citizen named Patrick Brannon came to El Salvador; he had been hired by the company constructing the first railroad for the western part of the country. After the railroad enterprise concluded, Brannon stayed and married Carmen Vega, a Salvadorian who became the mother of Carmen Brannon, a poet and Theosophist with the pen name Claudia Lars.

In December 1878, Brannon went to New York because he wanted to consult HPB about a supernatural experience he had had. After first visiting some relatives who lived in NY, on December 16th he attempted to meet Madame Blavatsky, but was unable to do so because, unfortunately for him, she and H. S. Olcott were preparing to depart on December 17th for London, en route to India.

Truth: The Limitless Horizon – part two

Details: Published: Sunday, 18 March 2012 23:37

John Algeo – USA

[This article is a revision of two earlier publications: “Truth: The Limitless Horizon,” American Theosophist 72.11 (December 1984): 413-25; and “Theosophical Truth Is a Many-Splendoured Thing,” Theosophist 127.5 (February 2006): 167-74.]

HOW THEOSOPHICAL TRUTHS RELATE TO ABSOLUTE TRUTH

Yet, if it is the case that Theosophical truths can free us from the illusions of ordinary assumptions, how do we know that our Theosophical truths are True? Is it possible that they too—although far better than our ordinary assumptions about life—are only partial and distorted? The Mahachohan has said that the teaching the Masters proclaim is “the only true one” and that “Theos-Sophia, Divine Wisdom, . . . is a synonym of truth.” But is the Theos-Sophia of the Mahachohan the same as the Theosophy we understand and proclaim? Is it possible that our understanding of the Divine Wisdom may not be quite the same as that of the Mahachohan, not quite on the same level as his?

Truth is like light. The cosmos is pervaded by electromagnetic radiation. Our eyes can perceive only a tiny portion of the full spectrum of the radiation, and we call that tiny portion “light.” The cosmos is full of an enormous range of electromagnetic radiation that we cannot see—a practically limitless display of energies, of which we are completely in the dark. And even the tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see, we do not see directly. Light is invisible until it is reflected by some object.

The Heart Doctrine - How to escape from Plato’s Cave – part two

Details: Published: Sunday, 18 March 2012 21:17

Erwin Bomas – The Netherlands

The Escape

Transmitter and receiver - The Heart Doctrine

We can compare our faculty of thinking to both a transmitter and a receiver. Actually our thinking functions as a transmitter and at the same time as a receiver. And just like a receiver can be tuned to certain wavelengths, likewise our thinking can be tuned. According to the wavelengths we have tuned into before and are tuning into now, we lock ourselves to a set of frequencies. And depending on how we have understood received thoughts we will likewise transmit them.

The more conscious we become of the possibility we have to tune our thinking, the more capable we become in selecting frequencies to tune into and receive. And the better we are tuned, the better we can receive and transmit thoughts harmoniously and the less philosophical distortion (noise) we will produce in our transmission. [2]

Let the Christ-Child Live

Details: Published: Friday, 02 December 2011 20:30

G. de Purucker – USA

Theosophists look upon Christmas in two ways: first, as the record of a sublime fact in occult history and life, that every son of man some day in his own spiritual history will repeat if he climb successfully. And the other way, that there is an unborn Christ in the soul of every one of us, the Christos, the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Love. As the cycling days bring the Christmas season around and the Christian world celebrates the supposed birth of the physical body of its Chief, its Savior, we may take the words of the avatara, the Christ, in their higher sense: that we humans are the "sons of god," of the divine, and that the spirit of love and consciousness of the most high dwelleth in the sanctuary of every man's heart - which means that there is a Christ-child in my heart, in your heart. Certain Orientals call it the Celestial Buddha in our hearts, but the idea is the same.

The Voice of the Silence 2 (Verses 6-32)

Details: Published: Friday, 02 December 2011 19:55

John Algeo – USA

Verses 6 to 12 of The Voice of the Silence concern the experience we have when we begin to control our minds: “[6] For: 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. [9] Before the soul can see, the harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion. [10] Before the soul can hear, the image (man) has to become as deaf to roarings as to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as to the silvery buzzing of the golden firefly. [11] Before the soul can comprehend and may remember, she must unto the Silent Speaker be united, just as the form to which the clay is modeled is first united with the potter’s mind. [12] For then the soul will hear, and will remember.”

One of the first experiences we have is distinguishing between the real and the unreal (in Sanskrit sat and asat). This is what At the Feet of the Master calls the first qualification: discrimination—distinguishing between, as that book says, the real and the unreal, the right and the wrong, the important and the unimportant, the useful and the useless, the true and the false, and the selfish and the unselfish. Sat, usually translated as “real” or “true,” is actually the present participle of the Sanskrit verb for “to be.” It thus means literally “being.” The real is what is, what has actual being. Asat, the “unreal,” is that same word with the negative or privative prefix a- meaning “not” or “without.” (We have that prefix in its Greek form in words like atypical “not typical” or asexual “without sexual characteristics.”) So the real is what has being; and the unreal is what has no being.