Theosophy

"Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY."

From Blavatsky's first book, Isis Unveiled.
 
Student.—How is one to know when he gets real occult information from the Self within?

Sage. [Blavatsky]—Intuition must be developed and the matter judged from the true philosophical basis, for if it is contrary to true general rules it is wrong. It has to be known from a deep and profound analysis by which we find out what is from egotism alone and what is not; if it is due to egotism, then it is not from the Spirit and is untrue. The power to know does not come from book-study nor from mere philosophy, but mostly from the actual practice of altruism in deed, word, and thought; for that practice purifies the covers of the soul and permits that light to shine down into the brain-mind. As the brain-mind is the receiver in the waking state, it has to be purified from sense-perception, and the truest way to do this is by combining philosophy with the highest outward and inward virtue.

Student.—Tell me some ways by which intuition is to be developed.

Sage.—First of all by giving it exercise, and second by not using it for purely personal ends. Exercise means that it must be followed through mistakes and bruises until from sincere attempts at use it comes to its own strength. This does not mean that we can do wrong and leave the results, but that after establishing conscience on a right basis by following the golden rule, we give play to the intuition and add to its strength. Inevitably in this at first we will make errors, but soon if we are sincere it will grow brighter and make no mistake. We should add the study of the works of those who in the past have trodden this path and found out what is the real and what is not. They say the Self is the only reality. The brain must be given larger views of life, as by the study of the doctrine of reincarnation, since that gives a limitless field to the possibilities in store. We must not only be unselfish, but must do all the duties that Karma has given us, and thus intuition will point cut the road of duty and the true path of life.

From “Conversations on Occultism”.
 
The whole of our literature proves that real Theosophists, worshipping universal wisdom, worship in reality the same wisdom which has been proclaimed by St. James in the third chapter of his Epistle [verse 17], i.e., “the wisdom that is from above [which] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy,” avoiding, on the advice of the same Apostle [verse 15], wisdom that “is earthly, sensual, devilish.”

Blavatsky
 
"Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence — let alone blasphemy —
toward the Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible.
Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us
to know that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow
creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere is
the boundless and endless one — the grand "Central Spiritual Sun" by whose
attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible will we are surrounded — the
God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature can be studied only in
the worlds called forth by his mighty fiat. His revelation is traced with his own
finger in imperishable figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It
is the only infallible gospel we recognize."

Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
 
"PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS -- the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing -- the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being -- the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions."

Huxley, Perennial Philosophy
 
"Abuse of power, whether it proceeds from excess of wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in its effects. Besides, the clergy are silenced now. Their protests would at this day [1877] be scarcely noticed in the world of science. But while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have seized the scepter of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the tree of immortal life and within this world of perishable matter."

Blavatsky Isis Unveiled
 
Do those who profess to believe in Theosophy also believe that Jesus is the Christ? Do they believe in all his words and that only in and through Jesus Christ can salvation be obtained? If not, then they are as Paul when he spoke to the Romans:

Romans 1:21-22

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
 
Do those who profess to believe in Theosophy also believe that Jesus is the Christ? Do they believe in all his words and that only in and through Jesus Christ can salvation be obtained? If not, then they are as Paul when he spoke to the Romans:

Romans 1:21-22

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Some theosophists believe in Jesus the Christ and only thru Christ that salvation can be obtained. However, their understanding of Christ Jesus is not conventional Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant. Also doctrine is less important to Christos centered theosophists than living a beneficent, godly life.

Blavatsky said that Father Damien (now a Saint) was a "True Theosophist".
 
The theosophical movement is larger and more ancient than the Theosophical Society of Blavatsky. The Kriya yoga movement that appeared in India around 1860 is part of it. Here is Swami Yogananda commenting on parts of the New Testament:

The Essence of the New Testament
 
"Thus Theosophy is not a Religion, we say, but RELIGION itself, the one bond of unity, which is so universal and all-embracing that no man,
as no speck—from gods and mortal down to animals, the blade of grass and atom—can be outside of its light. Therefore, any organization or body of that name must necessarily be a UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD.

Were it otherwise, Theosophy would be but a word added to hundreds other such words as high-sounding as they are pretentious and empty. Viewed as a philosophy, Theosophy in its practical work is the alembic of the Mediaeval alchemist. It transmutes the apparently base metal of every ritualistic and dogmatic creed (Christianity included) into the gold of fact and truth, and thus truly produces a universal panacea for the ills of mankind. This is why, when applying for admission into the Theosophical Society, no one is asked what religion he belongs to, nor what his deistic views may be. These views are his own personal property and have nought to do with the Society. Because Theosophy can be practised by Christian or Heathen, Jew or Gentile, by Agnostic or Materialist, or even an Atheist, provided that none of these is a bigoted fanatic, who refuses to recognise as his brother any man or woman outside his own special creed or belief. Count Leo N. Tolstoy does not believe in the Bible, the Church, or the divinity of Christ; and yet no Christian surpasses him in the practical bearing out of the principles alleged to have been preached on the Mount. And these principles are those of Theosophy; not because they were uttered by the Christian Christ, but because they are universal ethics, and were preached by Buddha and Confucius, Krishna, and all the great Sages, thousands of years before the Sermon on the Mount was written. Hence, once that we live up to such theosophy, it becomes a universal panacea indeed, for it heals the wounds inflicted by the gross asperities of the Church “isms” on the sensitive soul of every naturally religious man. How many of these, forcibly thrust out by the reactive impulse of disappointment from the narrow area of blind belief into the ranks of arid disbelief, have been brought back to hopeful aspiration by simply joining our Brotherhood—yea, imperfect as it is."

Blavatsky in "Is Theosophy a Religion?" article.
 
"There is about H. P. Blavatsky a certain grandeur that impels us towards search for the inner meaning of things and an effort to awaken the deepest part of our nature where all truth abides for us to discover. We have not identified ourselves with her work for our own salvation's sake; our aim is at a mark more unusual: to make mankind happy glimpsing the wonderful hope that we cherish, glimpsing the wonderful truths; to unfold in our lives a divine influence to take out into the world and to give to humanity, that the great heart of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky may be understood; and that the doors of the temple of peace and brotherhood may be opened wider and wider, that we may look out beyond and see other and other portals of other and other temples opening and opening to the utmost heights; and that many may see and come forward who now fall back and die, and must, until the light so shines through their lives that without speech or writing it will make itself known."

From chapter IV of H. P. Blavatsky the Mystery
 
"Once the realization comes home to him that all Nature is a unity, and that he himself forms but one small wheel in the cosmic macrocosm, directed and inspired by a unifying spiritual force, man finds his freedom, sees his so-called 'struggle' to be what it is, his own illusion, and attains peace and liberation from the bonds of desire arising out of the thralldom of the personal self to the desires which that personal self gives birth to.

One of the great virtues of the teachings which H. P. Blavatsky brought anew to the western world lies in the sentences which immediately precede, for she showed to Occidentals the pathway out of this stifling morass of personality into the golden sunlight of spiritual freedom. In doing so she merely put in philosophic and religious form the teachings of the Sages of all the ages, that true and real freedom lies in abandoning the thraldom of selfish personal desires, and in realizing one's absolute fundamental oneness with the great motivating and causal impulses of Universal Nature which thrill through us, and really make us what we are."

From chapter VII of HP Blavatsky the Mystery by Purucker
 
Thanks, Skull, for this thread. I've read The Secret Doctrine at least a half dozen times, understood maybe 30-40% all told. I will say I did feel better afterwards.
 
Thanks, Skull, for this thread. I've read The Secret Doctrine at least a half dozen times, understood maybe 30-40% all told. I will say I did feel better afterwards.

Actually reading it all, more than once, and grateful also - a sagely one are you - well done!
 
The function of Theosophists is to open mens hearts and understandings to charity, justice, and generosity, attributes which belong specifically to the human kingdom and are natural to man when he has developed the qualities of a human being. Theosophy teaches the animal-man to be a human-man; and when people have learned to think and feel as truly human beings should feel and think, they will act humanely, and works of charity, justice, and generosity will be done spontaneously by all.

Blavatsky
 

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