Theosophy

Quest for the Lost Language of the Initiates - Part 1

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Published: Thursday, 20 January 2011 03:00

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 grammati¬cal 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.

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Senzar: The Mystery of the Mystery Language and the Theosophical Society Seal

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Published: Thursday, 20 January 2011 03:00

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.

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Voice of the Silence

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Published: Wednesday, 19 January 2011 03:00

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.

NEEDED: A LEAP FORWARD!

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Published: Wednesday, 19 January 2011 03:00

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.

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