Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Truth may be defined as that which is Reality; and present human intelligence can make but approximate advances or approaches to this Cosmic REAL which is measureless in its profundity and in its infinite reaches, and therefore never fully comprehensible by any finite intellect. It was a wise declaration, in one way, that Pontius Pilate made, as alleged, when Jesus, the great Syrian Initiate, was brought before him: "What is Truth!"; for a man who knows Truth in fulness would have an active intelligence commensurate with the Universe: and whose intelligence is universe-wide?
There are, however, relative truths, and it is relative truth that the human mind can comprehend and therefore can understand. In and by this reflexion we immediately cut away the ground from any assertion that the Theosophical Philosophy teaches dogmas, meaning by the term 'dogma' an unreasoning, blind, and obedient assent to the mere voice of authority -- which is something that is inadmissible in genuine Theosophical study.
The Theosophist does not, therefore, proclaim these essentially natural truths as dogmas which one must accept, willy-nilly, if he expect to have any hope of being 'saved'! The Theosophical Philosophy admits nothing of the sort. As Theosophists our sole duty in teaching our sublime Philosophy is to present this Ancient Wisdom of the Gods in such fashion that men will be interested in it and begin to study it for themselves, and will learn to abide by the results of their own careful examination and sifting of the evidence. To those to whom the Theosophist presents his Theosophical doctrines, he says: "Here is a truth which we have tested, and we have found in it all that the heart and mind crave for. Try it. You are the judge in this case, and you must take the consequences of what you shall choose. You may err in your judgment, but the principle of self-choice and unfettered free will in choice is so sacred to us that on this point our teachings definitely tell us that it is better to be honest and true to the best in us, even if that best be imperfectly manifest, than to accept offhand or without lengthy examination the teachings of any other human being as gospel-truth; for by doing this latter you cripple your own will, weaken your own discrimination in judgment, and thus undermine the fabric and fiber of your own character."
What, then, is dogma? Dogma is a Greek word. It was originally a Greek political term, which became, through its adoption by the Christian church, a religious word, Christianly religious, having a Christian atmosphere about it and Christian meanings and consequent Christian implications, which in its original sense and usage this word dogma never had.
The word itself comes from the Greek verb dokein, 'to seem to be,' 'to appear to be.' A dogma, therefore, was something which appeared to be, or which seemed to be, a truth: an opinion about truth, if you like; and hence this term 'dogma' was frequently employed in certain ones of the Greek states as signifying the decision, the considered opinion, and therefore the final vote, arrived at and taken in a state council or assembly. It was thus used as a public ordinance or decree passed by the constituted authority in the Greek state. In Athens, however, these considered votes were called psephismata.
Edoxe toi ekklesiai -- 'it appeared to the council,' i. e., to the gathering, to the assembly, -- was the usual form in which such votes were recorded and quoted.
From this word ecclesia we have the modern word, ecclesiastical, at present meaning churchly, with an altered meaning, however, running from and through mediaeval to modern times -- an entirely different meaning from its original sense, for Ecclesia in Greece meant a political convention or assembly of all the voting citizens of a Greek state.
Thus this word 'dogma' changed from its original significance, meaning a vote or the considered opinion of an assembly of Greek citizens voting in formal council upon a measure brought before them; for it came, through its adoption by the Christian Church, to mean a certain religious doctrine, a certain dogmatic tenet, supposed to represent the mere opinion of the best minds in a Christian community. Nothing more.
Having thus this first significance in Christian history, especially in the Greek Christianity of the hither Orient, this word retained this significance for a number of centuries during the early part of the Christian era, and only in later and early mediaeval times did the word 'dogma' acquire the meaning which it now commonly has, as signifying a doctrine based upon the declaration of an oecumenical council or upon an authoritative popular pronouncement, or mayhap deriving from some other widely recognised churchly or religious authority; and such authority and dogmatic sense it was finally considered by faithful Christians to be pernicious and wicked even to question.
Now, there would emphatically seem to be no such authority or inspired religious significance connected with the word 'dogma' either in very early Christianity or certainly not in the original Greek political sense; and, as stated above, it was only later in mediaeval times that the word 'dogma' included the inherent idea of some religious tenet imposed by an ecclesiastical or religious authority, by divine mandate, upon communicants.
In this modern sense of the word, then, it is abundantly obvious that Theosophy is wholly non-dogmatic: it has, in this last signification of the word 'dogma,' no dogmas whatsoever: no teaching, no doctrine, imposed as divinely authoritative upon members of the Theosophical Movement, or derivative from some individual, or body of individuals, claiming authority to tell the members of the Theosophical Movement that such or such other teaching or dictum or doctrine is truth, and that it must be accepted and believed in by those who wish to be Theosophists. The Theosophist, however, claims that the Theosophical teachings, as delivered or handed on to us by the great Masters of Wisdom, the Great Seers and Sages of the present age, have been tested by Adepts and Great Initiates through unnumbered centuries of the past, this testing being a comparison with Reality -- that is to say, Spiritual Nature herself, which is the ultimate tribunal of proof, the final tribunal: because Nature, in the true Theosophical sense, is the Grand Unity, the great incomprehensible aggregate, of THINGS AND BEINGS AS THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES -- Truth.
On the other hand, if we take the original meaning of the word 'dogma' as signifying an interior opinion based upon facts or mental conviction, and use it in the sense in which the early so-called 'Pagan' philosophers used it, as implying the doctrines or tenets of their respective schools: then the Theosophist would have no objection to using this word 'dogma' (or dogmata in the plural) as signifying one of the body corporate of Theosophical teachings. But, unfortunately, the use of the word 'dogma' in that sense would be misleading.
Theosophy, as we see from the foregoing, is utterly non-dogmatic; it is not a collection of dogmas; it is based on nobody's say-so, because it is based on Divine-Spiritual-Physical Nature herself, as interpreted by this age-old Brotherhood or Association of the Great Sages and Seers referred to. Each new generation of these Seers, as these generations succeed each other in serial line of Successors through the centuries, tests the accumulated knowledge and consequently formulated system of its Predecessors, i. e., of those who came before: the Sages of each new generation test this accumulated Wisdom and thus prove it anew; so that as time goes on, there is a continual perfecting of details, as it were.
Seers means those who see: who have so refined their inner nature, who have so largely brought forth into activity the spiritual faculties and powers in themselves, that this their inner spiritual nature can at their will penetrate deep into the Arcana of the Universe, go behind the veils of the outer seeming, and see; and thus seeing, these Seers can and do interpret truly. Being thus able to interpret with exquisite accuracy and fidelity, their doctrines are consistent, coherent, all hanging together most beautifully. From time to time this Brotherhood or Association of Mahatmans or evolved Men gives forth to the world in its spiritual need new-old vistas into Nature's greatest secrets, stimulating man's ethical instincts, arousing his latent intellectual powers, and thus, in short, bringing about the constant albeit silent evolutionary urge forwards to greater and nobler highths of human achievement.
The Theosophical student and scholar thus finds it within the compass of possibility to examine these archaic and wonderfully inspiring doctrines and to test them in his turn and with his own capacities, however limited these latter may be; and thus it is that time, magic time, in its unfolding of things out of the womb of destiny, brings forth to the faithful and intelligent student abundant proofs, checked and examined at each step by himself, that the Theosophical doctrines are truths based on Universal Nature herself.
It should be added here for clearer understanding, that when the Theosophist uses the phrase 'Universal Nature' he never limits the meaning to Nature's mere physical shell which our material apparatus of sense tells us somewhat of; 'Universal Nature' to him means Nature spiritual and material with all the countless hierarchical ranges between, including worlds visible and invisible, beings divine, spiritual, intellectual, ethereal, astral, and physical.
In Webster's English Dictionary, Theosophy is defined somewhat after this wise: "A method of knowing truth and of approaching divinity through physical processes." This wholly naive and quaint definition makes a Theosophist smile in rather grim humor. 'Physical processes,' such as scientific investigations and experiments in the laboratory, can indeed tell us something valuable of the phenomena of outer or physical Nature, and of natural events which are results of the hid and secret and mystic noumenal operations working behind the veils of Nature; but to know Truth, or a truth, infallibly, it is necessary to cultivate within oneself the seeing Spiritual Eye. Every human being has this inner Spiritual Eye. None but a congenital idiot (1) may be said to be without it. In every normal human being the spiritual nature is waiting all the time -- not to be developed or evolved, but simply to have the veils enshrouding it: the mental, and the astral, and the physical veils: rent asunder or destroyed, so that the formerly ingathered supernal treasures of wisdom concerning Nature's inner realities may be poured forth into the hitherto dull and non-understanding brain. When this inpouring or inspiration happens in large or small degree, as the case may be, we have the Great Men of the world, the really inspired thinkers, the illuminated guides, the seeing leaders of mankind -- the Sages and Seers.
Some may say: "I have seen this or that and I know it to be truth, and you should accept my dictum." Why? This is but one phase of the dogmatic spirit so common in the world, and it is one which no Theosophist would ever either himself permit for himself, or allow to be imposed upon himself. Never. If there is one thing that the Theosophist bases his conviction of realities upon, it is his own strictly conscientious sense of Truth eternal abiding in his own breast, and which he rarely or never communicates to others, and certainly never does so in the form of dogmatic pronouncement or asseveration. One may object: "A following of this your rule to individual guidance and vision would open the door of men's minds wide to all kinds of folly, un-wisdom, and erratic notions and beliefs sincere or insincere. An evil man might say: 'Lo, behold me a prophet. I see truth!"
But, indeed, that is not the Theosophical idea. It runs directly counter to our idea. The man who truly KNOWS is always reticent, if not invariably silent. He never in any situation calls attention to himself as a prophet or a seer. He says to those around him: "You have within yourselves the divine touchstone, by which you may test reality. Use this; in fact, develop your own powers; and then you will see that what the Great Brotherhood tells you is indeed Truth: is indeed Reality."
Probably not in historical times has there been such a widespread awakening in religious feeling and in general religious interests as exists today; but no longer do men quibble and quarrel and fight over mere questions of form, theological or ecclesiastical, nor over mere hair-splitting definitions of words involving doctrines. No longer do they oppose each other with such acrimonious and unbrotherly harshness in these matters as they formerly did during the Middle Ages and after. Rather is the feeling today abroad in men's hearts that there is a concealed but not unsolvable Mystery behind the veil of the outward seeming of Nature which men's minds only belittle, only bemean, in any attempt at a humanly limited and personally arbitrary description of it; and that the only way by which to acquire this reality, this truth, existing as a mystery behind the veils of the outward seeming, is to penetrate into the temple of Truth oneself -- into the very heart of the Invisible. There is nothing so chastening to the aggressive, self-asserting mind, as this theosophical feeling of reverential aspiration: nothing that wipes away so quickly from men's brain-minds the feelings of egoism and of ignorant and foolish self-sufficiency of judgment. All men are able to see if they will but fit themselves for the seeing, and no man with this conviction in his heart will ever declare dogmatically: "I am the prophet of truth!"
We repeat that thus it can be seen that Theosophy is in no wise dogmatic. It teaches no dogmas at all in the modern sense of the word. Yet this does not mean that the Theosophical doctrines have no precision, have no definiteness in outline, that they are vague, mere intellectual nebulosities. Very much the contrary to this is the fact. These doctrines have been tested by every generation of great Seers and Sages, as already stated, and again tested and tested still again through unnumbered ages of past times; and as we now possess them they have all the precision of mathematics, albeit possessing a far sharper outline of definition than the latter does; and we are told clearly and with no uncertain voice that all the great Seers and Sages have come back from passing during initiation behind and beyond the veils of Universal Nature, all bringing back the same identic story, marvelous, amazing, and with the same proofs evident in their own being of what they have met with on that most glorious of Adventures comprised in the initiatory cycle.
How about proof? The Pontius Pilates of modern life are almost as numerous as are educated men; and each one, in the self-sufficiency of his own intellectual penetration and tacit belief in his own infallibility of judgment, listens to the recitation of any new natural fact or of any apparently incredible story with a final exclamation by which he thinks to prove his wisdom: "Where are your proofs?" It sounds so reasonable; but the slightest knowledge of the processes of human understanding, were that only exercised, would show to these self-wise skeptics that there is no proof outside of man himself.
As a matter of fact, what is 'proof'? Is proof something that exists outside of one? If so, how could it be understood? No; all proof lies within one's own self. When the mind is so swayed by the preponderance of evidence and testimony that it automatically assents to a proposition, then the case for that mind is proved. Another stronger mind may require stronger proof based on a larger field of more cleverly presented evidence and testimony; yet in all cases, proof is the bringing of conviction to the mind; and hence a man who cannot see the force, both internal and external, of evidence or testimony, or who sees it but feebly, will say that the proposition is not proved or insufficiently proved; and so forth. But this skeptical attitude does not disprove the proof, so to say, but merely shows that the mind in question here is incapable of receiving what to another and perhaps quicker and brighter intellect is clear enough to establish the case, and hence, to that intellect the proof is amply sufficient.
Is proof therefore infallible? Pray pause a moment over this question which so infrequently occurs even to thinking men. The answer is obvious. No. If it were then he who offers and he who accepts proof would likewise and equally be infallible. How many men have died innocent of the crime for which they were convicted in courts of law, because the evidence was apparently conclusive against them, 'proved' to the minds of the judge and jurors who tried the cases! They were condemned and the sentence duly carried out. These are cases in which the crimes were proved against innocent men; because the evidence was there and was duly submitted; there were, apparently, no missing links or lacunae in the chain of evidence, and therefore to the jurors the crimes were proved. The minds of the jurors were swayed and completely controlled by the evidence; yet in the cases alluded to, showing the fallibility of established proof, these jurors sent innocent fellow human beings to an infamous death.
Here we refer to courts of law alone because the argument there becomes clear and obvious enough; and while conviction of the innocent does indeed occur there, how much more often do the innocent suffer in the affairs of daily life! These latter cases occur with appalling frequency, even daily one might say. From what we see, from what we hear, from what we know or believe, by the working of our prejudices and in other ways, our minds are swayed, our judgment is over-ruled, our discrimination is warped, our instincts of compassion have no longer room in which to work freely, and we condemn. We feel that the case is proved; and it may be years afterwards before we finally learn that we have wrongly judged despite our sincerity and earnestness of desire to abstain from hasty and unfair conclusions. To us those cases were proved, proved to the hilt, as the saying goes, and yet we later find we were all wrong.
Let us then beware not merely of an uncharitable heart and of a biased mind, but likewise of mere 'proof' which so strongly sways both mind and heart. There is only one true guide in life, and that guide is the inner voice which grows stronger and ever more emphatic with cultivation and exercise of it, telling us: "This is true; that is false." In the beginning we hear this silent voice and recognise its clear clarion tones but faintly, and call it a 'hunch' or an intuition, which indeed it is. There is nothing except our own stupidity and the overweening consciousness we have in the righteousness of our own set opinions, which prevents us from cultivating this noblest of inner monitors more perfectly than we do. Egoism and vanity are two of the most formidable stumbling-blocks in the cultivation of these marvelous inner springs of the spirit-soul, whence streams the flow of intuition. Those springs belong to the impersonal and therefore purely unselfish part of us. Their flow which is like the quick and silent coming of light, will appear to us at first like the intimations or intuitions of the coming of a messenger, whose footsteps over the distant hilltops we may not hear at first, though inwardly we know that he is coming, coming, coming; and then finally we see the presence and recognise the intimations of the approaching truth which our inner nature gives forth to us in unceasing streams.
This is what is really meant by 'true faith.' As Paul of the Christians says: "Faith [or instinctive knowledge] is the reality of things hoped for [intuitively discerned], the evidence of things invisible." (2)
This is not blind faith. Blind faith is mere credulity, believing what one is told only because someone tells it, someone who is trusted perhaps, or perhaps because it happen to please at the moment. There is a very famous example of the working of blind faith in the writings of the fiery Church-Father, Tertullian. Inveighing against Marcion, who was a very eminent Gnostic teacher, he speaks as follows:
The only possible means that I have to prove myself impudent successfully, and a fool happily, is by my contempt of shame. For instance, I maintain that the very Son of God died; now this is a thing to be accepted, because it is a monstrous absurdity; further, I maintain that after he was buried, he rose again; and this I believe to be absolutely true because it is absolutely impossible. (3)
Declarations of this kind would have indeed no effect whatsoever on any well-balanced mind, were it not for the fact that there is in them a tacit or unspoken appeal to the contrarieties and contradictions and amazing surprises in life, all which arise merely because we are not under the beneficent and benign influence of our higher nature. Were we so, these contrarieties and contradictions which make us doubt our own reason and sanity sometimes, and all the rest of the panoply of the lower self, would never manifest at all, and such wildly illogical contradictions as those Tertullian allowed his mind to be swayed by, would have no such easy sway over credulous minds. A man who will say that because a thing is absolutely impossible, which is the same as saying absolutely untrue, it is therefore absolutely true, is simply playing ducks and drakes with his own reason and with the springs of inner consciousness; the boldness of the absurd declaration is its only force.
When an honest man will allow his judgment to be so biased and swayed that his mind thereby becomes a battlefield of conflicting theories and emotions, which he nevertheless manages to hold together by opinionative will-power, he is indeed, intellectually speaking, in a pitiful state; and this is the invariable result of mere blind faith. True faith, contrariwise, is the intuitive and clear discernment of reality, the inner recognition of things that are invisible to the physical eye.
The time will inevitably come -- we cannot escape its coming -- when the entire human race will know this sublime truth; and in those days the men and women who have run the race of evolution faster than their fellows have done, will then stand as Masters of Life, with a conscious knowledge of the truths of being, working henceforward as actual conscious agents in the Cosmic Labor, and no longer the mere tide-driven flotsam on the ocean of life, as most human beings today actually are. No wonder that Pythagoras spoke of the latter as 'the living dead,' living indeed in the lower principles of their constitution, but dead to the Divinity within themselves.
Another example of human credulity leading to what one may probably call mis-information of others on the very shaky basis that the end justifies the means, which will likewise show the tricks, moral or mental, that our minds do play upon us, is the following, taken from the writings of another and this time supposedly great Father of the Christian Church, possibly one of the greatest in that company, a saint likewise, Augustine, who was at one time Bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa. In his thirty-third Sermon, he delivers himself unconcernedly of the following amazing statement:
I was already Bishop of Hippo when I went into Ethiopia, with a number of servants of Christ, in order to preach the Gospel there. In that country we saw numbers of men and women who had no heads, but had two large eyes in the breast; and in countries still more to the south, we found a people who had but one eye, and that placed in the middle of the forehead. (4)
It is unfortunate that our geologists and anthropologists have found no traces of the acephalous races and cyclopean peoples. Suppose we say that Augustine dreamed a dream and saw a vision. He was at one time a rather fervid Pagan philosopher, but his later writings also show that he was more than credulous; which seems to be proved by the citation just given -- although he says he 'saw' these amazing but utterly unknown races himself. As a former believer in the mystical and mythological teachings of his own and of preceding ages, he must have known well of the old Pagan allegories and legends, as for instance that of the Cyclops-race, who had but one eye, and that in the center of the forehead. Odysseus, in Homer's Odyssey, it will be remembered, escaped with his companions from out the cave near Mt. Aetna where the Cyclops, Polyphemus, cannibal as he was alleged to be, was holding them for his future meals, by clinging to and under the belly of rams and sheep, the herds of the giant. Polyphemus, according to the mythological story, was the son of Poseidon, and of the nymph Thoosa. He was representative, according to the esoteric story, of a former titanic race, which preceded our human kind, and he is usually represented in story as a gigantic quasi-human monster having more or less human shape, with one eye situate in the center of his forehead, defiant of the gods, and, as the legend of the ancients runs, of cannibalistic propensities.
I suppose that Shakespeare, having this report of Augustine in mind, probably referred to it when he makes Othello speak as follows, when the latter is explaining how he won the hand and heart of the fair Desdemona:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
. . . . . .
And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline: (5)
There seems to be little question that the sole foundation for this yarn of Augustine's was the various legends and stories current in the Roman Empire and commonly accepted in the intellectually degenerate days when Augustine lived. Among other sources of possible information whence Augustine probably drew the material for his alleged anthropophagi and cyclopean peoples, we may perhaps cite the Historia Naturalis of the great Pliny, often called Pliny the Elder, who in his very interesting if rambling History has a number of allusions to wonders in the various countries which he describes. (6)
These two illustrations of human credulity and of love of the marvelous, to wit, the examples just drawn from Tertullian and Augustine, show that mere belief or faith, whether honest and sincere or dishonest and insincere, is not enough as a sure guide in life, be it either in conduct or in knowing, for such blind credulity is virtually identic with blind faith. A belief, on the other hand, may be very honest, held with sincerity and fervor, and yet be untrue. Of this stuff are fanatics partly made. Of this latter kind were the beliefs and convictions which sent Mohhammed and his cavalry over the plains and deserts of the Hither East, with the Qur'an in the one hand and the sword in the other, giving to all whom they met the choice of three things: Tribute, the Qur'an, or death! Such likewise was the nature of the pathetically blind convictions and beliefs of various kinds and held by various religious groups which sent so many noble-minded men and women to a horrible and untimely death throughout the long centuries of mediaeval European religious history.
The entire course of modern education -- to say nothing of modern instruction -- is against accepting the idea that man has within himself unused and usually unawakened faculties by the training and employment of which he may know truths of Nature, visible and invisible, with a depth of intellectual penetration and keen accuracy of instinctive feeling obtainable in no other manner whatsoever. Differing in this from our modern selves, the ancient peoples without exception knew this now forgotten verity; they knew that all proof lies ultimately in the man himself; they knew that judgment and cognition of truth lie within him and not without; and for these reasons they were more largely introspective than we are, who pride ourselves upon, yes, actually boast of, the modern idea that extraspection, or looking without, is the sole highway to truth. This modern conception is all wrong because it is entirely one-sided. The attaining of truth by the individual runs in both directions, in the sense that while we should cultivate the faculty of looking outwards in order to discern the facts of Nature, we can only understand those facts by using the power of understanding, of discrimination, of judgment, of intellectual analysis; and that power of understanding and comprehension is not outside of but within us, as seems obvious enough.
It is with a recognition of this inner power of understanding that the Theosophical teachings should be approached. It is indeed a maxim with Theosophists: "Believe nothing that your conscience tells you is wrong, no matter whence it come. If the very divinities came to earth and taught in splendor on the mountain-tops, believe naught that they tell you, if your own spirit-soul tells you that it is a lie."
Yet while we teach this rule as an absolute necessity of prudence for inner growth and as an invaluable exercise of the spirit and of the intellect, which by that exercise of attempting to understand have the means thereby to manifest themselves with ever increasing power: nevertheless others of our teachings tell us, and we try to follow these injunctions with equal fidelity because we have proved their merit: "Be of open mind. Be careful lest you reject a truth and turn away from something that would be of inestimable benefit and help, not only to you but to those whom you love and therefore to your fellow-men." For these two rules not only complement each other but balance each other in their functioning, the one avoiding and preventing credulity, the other forestalling and uprooting intellectual egoisms.
There is no contradiction or contrariety in sense or of feeling between these two attitudes or intellectual positions. It is the most logical and natural thing in the world for an honest, truth-seeking man or woman to follow both these rules for obtaining knowledge of verity. How can a man honorably teach that which he believes to be false? How can he accept it? How can a man refuse to believe that which he inwardly knows to be true?
With these inner faculties awakening within him, should the Ancient Wisdom be approached by every honest man. That sublime System of thought is not based upon blind faith, nor on anyone's 'say-so,' nor again is it based upon the equally blind assurance of our own intellectual self-sufficiency. The Ancient Wisdom of the Gods is kept in the most sacred guardianship of Great Adepts, of Initiates or Masters of Life. It is astonishing that European and American scholars, who are more or less conversant with the various world-literatures, have not themselves discovered, at least intuitively, that this Ancient Wisdom exists as a coherent body of teaching based on inner and outer Nature's structure and operations. The explanation of their cecity in these matters is simple indeed: they have never believed that such a systematic formulation of the Ancient Wisdom of the Gods exists or indeed ever has existed; they do not see the wood, as the old saying goes, on account of the trees. They see so many individual instances of high thinking and noble thought in those old literatures that they have failed to realize that behind these diversities in the various religions and philosophies, as we find them in the literatures, there is likewise a universal system, common to them all and veiled from merely superficial observation by the forms and methods of presentation that each one of these ancient systems is imbodied in.
How can these diversities, with their common background of an identic Universal Doctrine, be otherwise explained than as above stated, remembering that all systems of human thinking, religious, philosophical, and scientific, are the productions of the human soul and mind? Take any truth, any fact of Nature, and put ten men to giving an explanation of this truth or of this fact: while they all will base their thoughts on the same background of substantiated facts, each one of the ten men will give a different version of the truth that he observes; and thus it is that the framework, the format, in which this essentially coherent and synthetic Ancient Wisdom lies, this Archaic System in fact, is expressed in the divergent manners that exist in the various great World-Religions and World-Philosophies.
Our learned Occidental scholars and researchers into the ancient religions and philosophies, have, as above stated, not seen the wood on account of the trees. They are in the wood, and they see only the trees immediately surrounding their own field of thought, their own field of research. But they have no general view over the whole; and having no such general view, of necessity they cannot see the undivided whole, of which these various portions or mere fragments are only parts. Yet once that the student has the wonderful key to interpretation that the Ancient Wisdom, in other words that Theosophy, gives, then he himself will be able to prove for himself the statement hereinbefore made: that there is a systematic formulation of spiritual and natural law and of spiritual and natural verities existent in the world, which today is called Theosophy, and which Theosophists love to call by other names: the Ancient Wisdom, the Wisdom of the Gods, or the Wisdom-Religion of the archaic ages; and which has given its title to this present work -- The Esoteric Tradition.
From this Ancient Wisdom or Esoteric Tradition have sprung forth at various times in the history of the world the great world-religions or world-philosophies which either have existed and have disappeared, or which still exist in more or less degenerate and incomplete form. Understanding somewhat at least of this Esoteric Tradition or Ancient Wisdom, the student has thereby the master-key which will unlock those mysterious and tightly closed portals opening into the archaic thought of the human race, and which portals intuitive scholars now and then dimly perceive as they study, but whose existence is almost reluctantly acknowledged.
That original Truth, from which all great religions and all great philosophies sprang in their origin, the earnest Theosophical student may discover for himself, if he will; and he shall then know that Truth is ageless and deathless, but yet takes up its abode in every earnest human heart, where it awaits recognition in order to pour its flood of light into the waiting mind. In each age a new revelation of this deathless Truth is given forth to the peoples of the Earth from and by the Guardians of this Ancient Wisdom; and each such 'revelation,' if we may call it by that much abused word, contains the same old Message that previous revealings had brought to the world, albeit the 'new' instalment may be couched in a later and different tongue and in newer and differing expressions from those employed in its last revealing. Therefore, behind all the various religions and philosophies, there is, the Theosophist emphatically declares, a secret or esoteric Wisdom, common to all mankind, existent in all ages, and revealed in one form or another as the cycling centuries slowly pass and drop into the ocean of bygone time. This Wisdom is Religion, per se, and unadulterate Philosophy of Nature, and impersonal Science, explaining the structure and habits of the Universe: this Wisdom is universal and impersonal, and its human proponents, however grand, are merely the Voice announcing it to mankind from age to age.
It is therefore obvious that the Theosophist makes a distinction of importance between Religion and Philosophy and Science on the one hand, and on the other hand religions, philosophies, and sciences. It has been for the last hundred or hundred and fifty years quite common in the Occident to talk of the 'conflict between religion and science.' This supposed antinomy between two things which are, in truth, radically identical, is both unfortunate and untrue; for in point of fact there can be no such natural conflict or disagreement between any two or more of these three: Religion, Philosophy, and Science. But, unfortunately, there can be conflicts between the brain-mind ideas of this man and the brain-mind ideas of another man, because the brain-mind is essentially a material organ, however useful it certainly is when properly disciplined and trained to the uses of the intuitive spirit. Between religions and sciences, or between either of these two and philosophies, yes, it is quite possible that there may be many conflicts; and this for the reason already set forth: that the great religions and philosophies have degenerated from their pristine purity and have been in consequence misunderstood, and of them there remain at present naught but psychological mounds and tombs, and speculations about them, and no certain knowledge among scholars of the inner meaning of any one of them. So that now, religion, philosophy, and science, in the common understanding of us modern men are supposed to be intrinsically separate things, and to be often in irreconcilable natural conflict. They are considered as being more or less artificial systems outside of the intrinsic operations of human spiritual and psychological economy, instead of being, as they obviously are, expressions of three different operations of the human soul and mentality.
This popular conception of these three fundamental activities of the human soul is entirely false; to the Theosophist, Religion and Philosophy and Science are fundamentally but one thing manifesting in three different manners. They are not three things outside of man, foreign to him, which he has to learn much in the way in which he learns that square things are not round. On the contrary, they are themselves activities of the human psychological and spiritual natures; and while they can be considered as three different ways of arriving at Truth, or Reality, or the Heart of Things, this is merely for convenience of expression. They are like the three sides of a triangle: if any one side or any two sides were lacking, the figure obviously would be de facto one-third or two-thirds imperfect. Religion, Philosophy, and Science, must unite and all at the same time, if we wish to attain to the actual truths of Nature, because our mind conceives those truths through these, its three main activities, which are essentially one because springing from the unitary faculty of understanding which man, their creator, has. They are but the three aspects, or the three operations, of the human mind in its transmitting, and in its setting forth, of the inspirations flowing into it from the spiritual inner sun which every man is in the arcanum of his being, and of which spiritual sun itself, more accurately speaking, he himself actually is the offspring, or imperfectly evolved ray.
Some say that the religion of the future is to be a scientific religion; others, knowing well the strong appeal of religious emotional feelings to the human heart, say "Nay, Science will have its day; it will be some new form of religious thought, perhaps not based on the old forms of the past, or perhaps so based, but in any case it will be a new religious feeling." Others again think that the religion of the future will be rather philosophical in character. Emerson, for instance, glimpses only half a truth when he says:
The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science. . . .
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. (7)
Beautiful thoughts, beautiful words are these, and doubtless in large part true; but yet one may well ask, why make of religion something that grows like a weed in the fields of human thought and that has to gather unto itself as time passes, and more or less at haphazard, the noblest aspects of human thinking? Indeed, religion is truly but a human weed, if that be all it is. Nay, the workings of the human spirit are sublime in themselves; it knows truth instantly; and all is in it, and true religion springs from it like Athene from the brain of Zeus; while a religion which grows merely by accretion of things to be preferred is destined to degenerate in turn by loss and decay. That indeed has been the history of degenerate religions in the past, because of the accretions which foolish and ambitious men have added to the spiritual core which the great founders of religions gave to their spiritual children; but it need not have been so.
The fact is that our Western peoples really do not understand what Religion per se is. They took over a certain body of religious tradition from the old Roman Empire, and distorted that body of tradition greatly, for they did not understand it, and indeed feared a great part of it. For the old religions of the Greeks and the Romans had degenerated into a system of ceremonial ritualisms and of so-called 'prayers' addressed to the gods; but Religion in itself is perhaps the noblest, the highest, instinct of the human spiritual soul. It is something apart from all forms, from all ceremonies, from all ritualism; it is in fact truly innate and intuitive consciousness of the nature of Being; it is a visioning of Reality; indeed, it is a growing Wisdom; it is therefore likewise knowledge, because it is intuitive wisdom.
It was through the crystallization of ideas around a sublime core that the dogmatic religions were born. Some great primal truth, or body of verities, coming from the sublime Brotherhood of the great Seers and Sages of the ages is given forth at cyclical times in human history, and a new religion is then and there begun; and as long as the original promulgator with his magnificent mind and high intuitional faculty is there to direct and to guide the works and channels of the movement, it prospers well; but when he passes on, vanishes from the sight of men, then come smaller men on the scene: less intuitive, less profound in their views, less piercing in their vision, and often ambitious and it may be self-seeking; and they also teach, and add accretions of their own imaginings to the primal spiritual verities; and their teachings are not grand and inspiring as were those of the original Promulgator. The consequence is ecclesiastic or religious dogma in the modern sense; and therefore ultimate disappointment and heart-breaking sorrow ensue to the faithful; for man clings very closely to his religious ideas, because fundamentally he is a religious being, since his own inmost nature is not only linked by unbreakable bonds with the Cosmic Spirit, but is a ray of that Cosmic Spirit itself. It is man's instinct to be impersonally religious; but it is not instinctual in him to be religious in a dogmatic sense. All ecclesiastical dogma are the offsprings of the minds of men far inferior to the Great Seer who inaugurated such or such other of the great World-Philosophies or World-Religions.
The Theosophist has, in consequence, little patience with the divisions of the workings of the constitution of man into three supposedly intrinsically separate and essentially distinct things; for man cannot be divided against himself; man in his essence is an inner harmony; and unless heart, and mind, and spirit work in harmony, he has neither inner rest nor peace. Origins, fundamentals (not in the absurd modern religious sense, but in the etymological sense), basic things, these are in the spirit of man, whence they come forth; for the spirit of man is the father of all human works.
Hence, Religion, Philosophy, and Science, per se, that is to say, the things in themselves, do really represent truth, in proportion as these three operations or functionings of the human spirit are uninhibited by mental or emotional obstacle or veil; for Truth in itself, as man can understand it, is but a formulation in systematic form of Nature's own operations and functions -- Nature here signifying not merely the physical nature which our optics enable us to sense, or our auditory apparatus gives us some information of, or our senses of touch or of taste or of smell give us still further ideas about: but meaning rather, the vast realms of the inner worlds, our native habitat as spiritual beings and as thinkers, having aspirations, and hope, and enthusiasm, and intellectual penetration, and other similar faculties, all which are human interpretative transmissions of the forces at the heart of being.
Few sane men believe today the old materialistic and now moribund notion that the noblest activities of the human spirit, or indeed any others of the energies of the human constitution be they intellectual, psychical, or emotional, are the mere products of fortuitous or chance movements among the atoms of the physical brain, in other words, that all feeling, and ethical sense and consciousness, are derivatives of molecular changes in the brain-cortex. That extravagant notion, thanks be to the immortal gods, is now seen to be an outworn fad of a defunct materialism; for indeed it never was anything else than an entirely unsupported theory. It never had a shred of real proof to support it, but was a theory evolved only in a desperate attempt to answer searching questions which would be inevitably asked by thinking men; and because the theory never did answer these questions satisfactorily, it lived its little life of folly and turned up its toes and died.
How did this theory arise? Thinking men revolted, some one hundred and fifty years ago, against all dogmatic and crystallized thought in both religion and philosophy, and sought out truth blindly along what seemed to be the new avenues of research and experiment that inquisitive European science was so rapidly opening. That revolt in many ways was in itself, at least in its beginnings, a fine and noble effort for intellectual freedom. But, like all one-sided albeit enthusiastic movements of the human soul and mind, the re-builders who later became destroyers, in their work went too far beyond the point of reason and ascertained fact; and in the fervor of destroying what they honestly believed to be false idols, falsehoods and falsities, they did away even with much that was ethical and good. Men today have learned better, and are more moderate in their judgment. Time has brought wisdom to them, and a chastened mind and a high toleration, and a far wider field of vision.
Yet men of the Occidental world today, despite the great and highly praiseworthy achievements of physical science, have no fully comprehensive and therefore satisfying system of intellectual and spiritual standards by which they may test, with confidence of arriving at the truth, any new discovery that may be made in the Nature that surrounds us, whether in its invisible, or visible physical parts. Now the ancients had such a comprehensive system of standards, and it was composite of the three activities of the human soul which have just been referred to. This system was at once religious, philosophical, and scientific, and for that reason provided a satisfactory test and explanation of the discoveries made in the search for Truth, because it comprised the three essential activities or faculties of the human understanding.
Most people in our Occidental world seem to think that religion is something which exists only for one part or range of life; that philosophy is another branch of human thinking which exists merely for a more or less noble intellectual pastime, consisting of a more or less successful effort, intellectually to penetrate into the causal and effectual structure and relations of the universe around us; and again most people seem to think that science is but an investigation into the physical nature in which we live as physical human beings, and the ensuing classification and recording of the various results of that investigation. The point of objection here to this manner of viewing these three functions of the human mind, is the underlying supposition that religion and philosophy and science are three things inherently distinct from each other and having no inherently natural and co-ordinating relations or points of inseparable union.
The Theosophical philosophy says: These three are fundamentally derivatives of human consciousness and, therefore, fundamentally one. They all spring from the human understanding. They are the children of the human spirit. They are, as it were, but three methods or ways in which the Self, the thinking self, the conscious self, the root of our being, endeavors to express what it cognises and recognises as truth. Science, Philosophy, Religion, are the offsprings of man himself; and more definitely they are spiritual and mental children of Great Men: the founders of the various religions and philosophical systems of the ancient world, and historically of our modern world as well. These Great Sages laid down basic or fundamental principles, based on Nature, on natural law -- not physical nature alone, but on inner Nature more especially -- that is to say on the roots or radicals of things; inner and invisible and to us intangible substances and energies and laws, potencies, powers, dominions, and virtues, which rule the world by action from within outwards, and thus among other things keep the stars in their courses.
Thus, religion, philosophy, and science compose one triform method of understanding -- what? The nature of Nature, of Universal Nature, and its multiform and multifold workings; and not one of these three activities of the human spirit can be separated from the other two if we wish to gain a true picture of things AS THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES. For Science is an operation of the human spirit-mind in its endeavor to understand the How of things -- not any particular science whatsoever, but the thing in itself, science per se -- ordered and classified knowledge, based on research and experimentation. Philosophy is that same striving of the human spirit to understand not merely the How of things, but the Why of things -- why things are as they are. And, lastly, Religion is that same striving of the human spirit towards union with the Cosmic ALL, involving an endlessly growing self-conscious identification with the Cosmic Realities therein -- commonly and so feebly called by men, 'God' or gods.
These three children -- functions and activities -- of man's spirit-soul all have one tendency, one trend, because all working towards one objective. This is to reach the Heart of Things, Truth, Reality, and to become united therewith. The scientist seeks truth; the philosopher searches for reality; the religionist yearns for union with the Divine; but are these three not essentially one? Is there any essential difference as among Truth, Reality, and union with Divine Wisdom and Love? It is only in the methods of attainment by which the three differ. Their object is but one. Moreover, as becomes abundantly obvious, Science should be as spiritual and as philosophical as Philosophy should be religious and scientific and as Religion should be scientific and philosophical.
What is the origin of the word 'religion'? -- because the search for etymological roots often casts a brilliant light upon the functioning of human consciousness. It is usual among modern Europeans to derive the word 'religion' from the Latin verb meaning 'to bind back,' or 'to fasten' -- religare. But there is another and perhaps a better derivation, which is the one that Cicero, the great Roman statesman, poet, and philosopher chooses; and, a Roman himself and a scholar, he unquestionably had a deeper knowledge of his own native tongue and its subtilties of meaning than even the ablest scholar has today. This other derivation comes from a Latin root meaning to select, to choose, from which likewise, by the way, comes the word lex -- 'law,' that course of conduct or rule of action which is chosen as the best, and is therefore followed: in other words, that rule of action which is the best of its kind, as ascertained by selection, by trial, and by proof. Typically scientific is this in idea, even in our day.
In his book On the Nature of the Gods, speaking through the mouth of the eminent philosopher Quintus Lucilius Balbus, of the Stoic school, during the course of a discussion on philosophy and religion at the home of Cicero's friend, Cotta, Cicero writes as follows:
Do you not see, therefore, how from the productions of Nature and the beneficial inventions of men, imaginary and false deities have come into view; and that those have become the basis of wrong opinions, pernicious errors, and miserable superstitions? We know, as regards the gods, how their different alleged forms, their ages, clothing, ornaments, families, marriages, connexions, and all appertaining to them, follow examples of human weakness and are represented with human passions. According to the history of fables, the gods have had wars and fightings, governed by grief, lust, and anger, and this not only, as Homer says, when they interested themselves in different armies, but also when they battled in their own defense against the Titans and the Giants. Such tales, of the greatest folly and levity, are told and believed with implicit stupidity.
However, repudiating such fables with contempt, Divinity is diffused throughout all parts of Nature: in solids under the name of Ceres; in liquids under the name of Neptune; elsewhere under different names. But whatever the gods may be, whatever characters and dispositions they may have, and whatever the names given to them by custom, we ought to revere and worship them.
The noblest, the chastest, the most pious and holy worship of the gods is to revere them always with a pure, wholehearted, and stainless mind and voice; our ancestors as well as the philosophers have all separated superstition from religion. Those who prayed entire days and sacrificed so that their children should survive them, were called superstitious, a word which later became more general; but those who diligently followed and, so to say, read and practised continually, all duties belonging to the worthship of the gods were called religiose, religious, from the word relegendo, reading over again or practising; [a derivation] like elegantes, elegant, meaning choosing, selecting a good choice, or like diligentes, diligent, carefully following our selection; or like intelligentes, intelligent, from understanding: for all these meanings are derived from the same root-word. Thus are the words superstition and religion understood: the former being a term of opprobrium, the latter of honor. . . .
I declare then that the Universe in all its parts was in its origin builded, and has ever since, without any interruption, been directed, by the providence of the gods. (8)
Never has a Christian monotheistic critic of the errors of a degenerate polytheism spoken in stronger terms than does this ancient Roman philosopher-polytheist, against the mistake and impiety of looking upon the divine, spiritual, and ethereal beings who inspire, oversee, and by their inherent presence control the universe, as being but little better than, or superior to, merely enlarged men and women. No Church-Father ever used more emphatic or stronger language against superstitious and ignoble ways of looking upon these divine and spiritual and ethereal beings than does the great Roman philosopher-statesman here, and than did Varro and Empedocles and Epicurus and Democritus and Plato and many another great man of the Greek and Roman worlds.
One has but to read the scathing and caustic words of Lucian, the Greek satirist, to realize how the revolt against superstition and degenerate religion was as widely diffused and ran with as strong a current in ancient times as it may have done in any later period, including our own period.
Thus then, the meaning of the word 'religion' from the Latin religio, and following Cicero's etymological derivation, means a careful selection of fundamental beliefs and motives by the higher or spiritual intellect, the faculty of judgment and understanding, and a consequent joyful abiding by that selection, the whole resulting in a course of life and conduct in all respects following the convictions that had been reached. This is the religious spirit.
Philosophy is another part of the activity of the human consciousness. As religion represents the mystical and intuitional and devotional part of our inner human constitution, so does philosophy represent the co-ordinating and correlating and the examining portion of our intellectual-psychological apparatus; and it would seem to be instantly obvious to the reflective mind that the same faculty of discrimination, or what has been called selection in the preceding paragraph when dealing with religion, is as strongly operative in this field of thought as it is in the other, but with and by means of a different internal organ of the human constitution -- that of the mentality. Just as religion divorced from the intellectual faculty becomes superstition or a showy emotionalism, just so does philosophy divorced from the intuitional or discriminating portion of us become empty verbiage, logical in its processes mayhap, but neither profound nor inspired. If philosophy mean, as it is said that Pythagoras stated it to mean, the love of wisdom or sophia, so indeed may one truthfully offer that equally with religion, but in a different field of human understanding, philosophy contains likewise the elements which we may qualify as the wisdom of love -- one of the intrinsic or inherent attributes or qualities of the instinctive religion of the human spirit.
Likewise, and in a virtually identic manner, when the inner faculties of our constitution operate in such fashion as to classify and record the knowledge that they have gathered from instinctive love for investigation and research into Nature, and subject to measurement and category the facts and processes which Nature thereupon presents to the human intellect -- that indeed is Science. Here again we see that Science like Philosophy and Religion, is universal and impersonal, and of equal spiritual and intellectual dignity with the two former; all three are but 'joint and several' interpretations in formal system of the relations -- inherent, compelling, and ineluctable -- of man with the Universe of which he is not only a child but an integral and inseparable part. Does not the meaning by which this branch of human understanding is known, Science, signifying Knowledge, clearly set forth its origin in human understanding, an intrinsic part of the human constitution?
How obvious it is then that precisely because man is integral with the Universe in which he lives, and moves, and has his being, all and everything in that universe is represented both energically and substantially in himself; so that by obeying the mandate of the Delphic Oracle, "Man, know thyself!", man learns not only the nature and characteristics and structures and functions of his own constitution, but by an expansion of his own perceptive consciousness derived from training and thought can enter into and understand the identic energies and substances in the Great Mother, Universal Nature. Man, therefore, because he is the microcosm of the macrocosm, an integral and inseparable part of the Cosmic Whole, can, by entering into the mysterious realms and structure of his own inner constitution, enter by that fact with increasing cognition, as his own inner constitution is awakened, into the realms visible and invisible of the Cosmic Whole; and when this is done by highly evolved Men, Initiates, and Great Adepts, what is then and there learned in this most wonderful of Adventures, is brought back from these Adventures of exploration and wrought into systematic formulations of human thinking, which the Theosophist calls in their aggregate, Theosophia -- the Wisdom of the Gods. It is this Wisdom, this Esoteric Philosophy, which it is the intention in this present work to study, and which, considering its transmission from generation to generation of the Great Seers and Sages through the ages, and from immemorial time in the past, can with justice and truth be called the Esoteric Tradition.
Thus then, if we understand the nature and working of our own spiritual-intellectual consciousness, we have an infallible test or touchstone by which we may subject to trial and experiment all that comes before our attention. Theosophy indeed is the 'touchstone' most wonderfully formulated into a comprehensible human system. With its help and from its conscientious study, we are enabled to sift with certainty the false from the true, facts of Nature from mere human phantasy, and the merely imaginary from those enunciations of everlasting natural and spiritual truth which are the results of the working of man's spiritual consciousness, cast by the Great Sages aforesaid into philosophic, religious, and scientific systems.
Let men once realize and feel the force of the verity that true religion and philosophy and science all spring from within, all spring from the higher nature of man, and are therefore different but closely similar pathways in man's intellectual journey towards Truth, and instinctively man will then search for larger knowledge of the unifying spiritual-intellectual power behind and within and beyond these three functionings of his consciousness. He will not rest until he has acquired a larger acquaintance with that god-like System demonstrating the essential unity of these three as being derivatives from one common source -- Universal Nature in both her invisible and visible hierarchies of spheres. It is to aid in this search that the present work has been written, pointing to the existence in the world of that formulated Wisdom of the ancients which is here called The Esoteric Tradition.
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In opening the study to which the present work is devoted, mention should be made of two Theosophical books of outstanding esoteric value and of pre-eminent importance because of the fact that both were literary pioneers in the same field. These two books are, in the order of their writing, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (9) and The Secret Doctrine (10) by H. P. Blavatsky, the true foundress of the modern Theosophical Society, and during her lifetime, the spiritual and intellectual inspiration of the Theosophical Movement. The value of these two works in logically establishing and aiding in proving the existence of the Esoteric Tradition has to this day not yet been fully recognised, although students of a more intuitive mind, and with more than the average capacity for weighing evidence, are beginning to understand, first, the purposes for which the material in these two books was gathered together, and second, the foundation which they furnish for future efforts in the same direction. The literary material in each was chosen as appropriate for publication for the time in which it appeared -- an observation which applies perhaps with particular point to the letters written by the two Masters to Mr. A. P. Sinnett, and out of which this gentleman drew the substance of fact and idea incorporated by him in The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism. Mr. Sinnett's two books still have value of a kind, despite the fact that, due to the limitations of his understanding of the noble letters that he received, and due likewise to the very definite materialistic bias inherent in himself, he distinctly failed to convey to his readers the lofty spirituality and long line of esoteric or occult suggestions which the letters from the two Mahatmans to himself contained.
As between The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett and H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine there is after all but little to choose as being preferential material, for, in the last analysis, The Secret Doctrine was in very large part directly inspired by, if not indeed the actual compilation of, the same lofty mahatmic minds (11) which indited through their chela-amanuenses the letters printed in the book published by A. Trevor Barker.
Both books were what it was at one time customary among a certain class of English writers to call 'broadsides,' having as their objective to prove the existence of the Esoteric Tradition in all past archaic ages, and that this Esoteric Tradition has from immemorial time been the Mother-Source giving birth to, in cyclical times, the great Philosophies and Religions of former ages.
The Secret Doctrine alone contains an almost untouched mine of esoteric wisdom and teaching, untouched because its most devoted students apparently have done little more than scratch the surface of this genuine treasury of the Ancient Wisdom-Teaching. One might include in this work of resuscitation in public consciousness of the existence of the Esoteric Tradition, H. P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and also her minor works and her scores of different articles printed at various times in the magazines which she herself edited or to which she was a more or less continual contributor.
It is imperative for a proper understanding of these two noble books, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett and The Secret Doctrine, that the reader and student of them should invoke for their perusal not merely the ordinary ratiocinative faculty, but should strive to read them in the light of his intuition -- a faculty which when successfully invoked and evoked becomes a virtually infallible guide in understanding, and in all intellectual activity.
The purpose of this present book is to aid in the research for a greater truth for men; and however small this contribution may be to that really sublime objective, the reader is asked to remember the will while he is studying the deed.
Like the other books, or at least most of them, of which the present writer is the author, the work now before the reader is constructed upon the same general principle which has governed the making of the author's former literary contributions to the same purpose: that is to say, the study proceeds from the more simple to the less, from the easier to the more difficult themes of thought; and the reader is requested to remember this as he follows the author into those fascinating fields of research and inquiry which the Esoteric Tradition so lavishly opens to honest and thoughtful investigation.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Such a birth is that of one born a man indeed, yet not a complete man. (return to text)
2. In his supposed Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter xi, verse 1. (return to text)
3. De carne Christi (Treatise 'On the Flesh of Christ'), ch. v. (return to text)
4. Sermones, xxxiii. (return to text)
5. Othello, Act I, Scene iii. (return to text)
6. Historia Naturalis, Bk. VI, ch. xxxv, and elsewhere. (return to text)
7. The Conduct of Life, vi, 'Worship.' (return to text)
8. De natura deorum, Bk. II, sec. xxviii. (return to text)
9. These letters, written between the years 1880-4, did not appear in book-form until 1923, in which year they were first edited and published by A. Trevor Barker. (return to text)
10. Published in 1888. (return to text)
11. With regard to the very substantial aid that the Masters gave to the writing of The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, it may be as well to reproduce here, in this footnote, some statements from the Masters themselves as regards this matter, which were published by Mr. W. Q. Judge in The Path of April, 1893, Vol. VIII, No. 1. These statements appear in the form of what the writer of The Path article calls "a certificate signed by the Masters"; and in order that the reader may have before him the pertinent points of the "certificate," the latter part of The Path article is here reproduced in entirety:
"'I wonder if this note of mine is worthy of occupying a select spot with the documents reproduced, and which of the peculiarities of the "Blavatskian" style of writing it will be found to most resemble? The present is simply to satisfy the Doctor that "the more proof given the less believed." Let him take my advice and not make these two documents public. It is for his own satisfaction the undersigned is happy to assure him that the Secret Doctrine, when ready, will be the triple production of [here are the names of one of the Masters and of H. P. B.] and -- most humble servant, [signed by the other.]'
"On the back of this was the following, signed by the Master who is mentioned in the above:
"'If this can be of any use or help to -----, though I doubt it, I, the humble undersigned Faquir, certify that the Secret Doctrine is dictated to [name of H. P. B.], partly by myself and partly by my brother -----.'
"A year after this, certain doubts having arisen in the minds of individuals, another letter from one of the signers of the foregoing was sent and reads as follows. As the prophecy in it has come true, it is now the time to publish it for the benefit of those who know something of how to take and understand such letters. For the outside it will all be so much nonsense.
"'The certificate given last year saying that the Secret Doctrine would be when finished the triple production of [H. P. B.'s name], -----, and myself was and is correct, although some have doubted not only the facts given in it but also the authenticity of the message in which it was contained. Copy this and also keep the copy of the aforesaid certificate. You will find them both of use on the day when you shall, as will happen without your asking, receive from the hands of the very person to whom the certificate was given, the original for the purpose of allowing you to copy it; and then you can verify the correctness of this presently forwarded copy. And it may then be well to indicate to those wishing to know what portions in the Secret Doctrine have been copied by the pen of [H. P. B.'s name] into its pages, though without quotation marks, from my own manuscript and perhaps from -----, though the last is more difficult from the rarity of his known writing and greater ignorance of his style. All this and more will be found necessary as time goes on, but for which you are well qualified to wait.'" (return to text)