An Examination of that Universal Wisdom Which is
Present in the Most Different Traditions, at All Times
Helena P. Blavatsky
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Editorial Note:
The reader must take into consideration that the
original
Theosophical Society, to which H.P.
Blavatsky refers in
this article, ceased to exist a few years after
Blavatsky’s
death in 1891, when Annie Besant provoked its
division
and abandoned the original teachings of Theosophy.
Today the theosophical movement has a considerable
diversity
from the organizational point of view. Its three
largest
schools of thought, all active in different
continents,
are the United Lodge of Theosophists, present in some
15
countries; the Pasadena Theosophical Society, present
in some 10 countries, and the Adyar Theosophical
Society,
present in some 60 countries. There is a number of
independent theosophical centers and
institutions of great
importance, such as the Edmonton Theosophical Society,
in Canada ;
the “Fundación Blavatsky”, in Mexico
the “Theosophische Geselllschaft, Arbeitskreis
Unterlengenhardt, Loge Surya”, in Germany
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What is Theosophy? This question has
been so often asked, and misconception so widely prevails, that the editors of
a journal devoted to an exposition of the world's Theosophy would be remiss
were its first number issued without coming to a full understanding with their
readers. But our heading involves two further queries: What is the Theosophical
Society; and what are the Theosophists? To each an answer will be given.
According to
lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two Greek words -- theos,
"god," and sophos, "wise." So far, correct. But the
explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy. Webster
defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with God and
superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge, by
physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists,
or by the chemical processes of the German fire-philosophers."
This, to say the
least, is a poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus -- shows either
intentional misrepresentation, or Mr. Webster's ignorance of the philosophy and
motives of the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to
those whom their contemporaries as well as posterity styled “theodidaktoi,”
god-taught -- a purpose to develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions
by “physical processes,” is to describe them as materialists. As to the
concluding fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them to fall home
among our most eminent modern men of science; those, in whose mouths the Revd. James
Martineau places the following boast: "matter is all we want; give us
atoms alone, and we will explain the universe."
There were
Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian
writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic theosophical system, to the
early part of the third century of their Era. Diogenes Laertius traces
Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its
founder an Egyptian Hierophant called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic and
signifying a priest consecrated to Amun, the god of Wisdom. But history shows
it revived by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School
It was the aim and
purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all sects, peoples and nations under one
common faith -- a belief in one Supreme Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power,
governing the Universe by immutable and eternal laws. His object was to prove a
primitive system of Theosophy, which at the beginning was essentially alike in
all countries; to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels, and
unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother; to purify
the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from all dross of
human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure philosophical
principles.
Hence, the
Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or Zoroastrian, systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical
School along with all the philosophies
of Greece
Theosophy is,
then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every
ancient country having claims to civilization. This 'Wisdom' all the old
writings show us as an emanation of the divine Principle; and the clear
comprehension of it is typified in such names as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian
Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes of Greece; in the appellations, also of
some goddesses -- Metis, Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia, and finally -- the
Vedas, from the word "to know." Under this designation, all the
ancient philosophers of the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt Bactria
The central idea
of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme Essence, Unknown and
Unknowable -- for -- "How could one know the knower?" as enquires
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Their system was characterized by three distinct
features: the theory of the above-named Essence; the doctrine of the human soul
-- an emanation from the latter, hence of the same nature; and its theurgy. It
is this last science which has led the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented
in our era of materialistic science. Theurgy being essentially the art of
applying the divine powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of
nature, its votaries were first termed magicians -- a corruption of the word
"Magh," signifying a wise, or learned man, and -- derided. Skeptics
of a century ago would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the
idea of a phonograph or telegraph. The ridiculed and the "infidels"
of one generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next.
As regards the
Divine essence and the nature of the soul and spirit, modern Theosophy believes
now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Diu of the Aryan nations was
identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and even with the Jupiter of the less
learned and philosophical among the Romans; and it was just as identical with
the Jahve of the Samaritans, the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the
Duw of the Britains
"Who knows
from whence this great creation sprang?
Whether his will
created or was mute.
He knows it -- or
perchance even He knows not."
Or, again, accepts
the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who in the Upanishads is represented as
"without life, without mind, pure," unconscious, for -- Brahma is
"Absolute Consciousness." Or, even finally, siding with the
Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but "Svabhavat"
(substance or nature) which exists by itself without any creator; any one
of the above conceptions can lead but to pure and absolute Theosophy. That Theosophy
which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take up the labors of
the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the One Substance -- the Deity,
the Divine All proceeding from the Divine Wisdom -- incomprehensible, unknown
and unnamed -- by any ancient or modern religious philosophy, with the
exception of Christianity and Mahommedanism.
Every Theosophist,
then, holding to a theory of the Deity "which has not revelation, but an
inspiration of his own for its basis," may accept any of the above
definitions or belong to any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within
the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL,
the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or
known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving
a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy.
True, Theosophy
shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing that, from eternity
retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity neither wills nor creates; but
that, from the infinite effulgency everywhere going forth from the Great
Centre, that which produces all visible and invisible things, is but a Ray
containing in itself the generative and conceptive power, which, in its turn,
produces that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam
Kadmon -- the archetypal man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or
the Divine Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis or continued
existence, and in transmigration (evolution) or a series or changes in the soul
[4] which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical
principles; and only by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental,
supreme soul) and Jivatma (animal, or conscious soul) of the Vedantins.
To fully define
Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has
not been hidden from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition
acquired by Theosophia -- or God-knowledge, which carried the mind from the
world of form into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled in
every age and every country to perceive things in the interior or invisible
world. Hence, the "Samadhi," or Dyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu
ascetics; the "Daimonlon-photi," or spiritual illumination of the
Neo-Platonists; the "Sidereal confabulation of soul," of the
Rosicrucians or Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and
of the modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though
various as to manifestation.
The search after
man's diviner "self," so often and so erroneously interpreted as
individual communion with a personal God, was the object of every mystic, and
belief in its possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of
humanity, -- each people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call
"Noetic work" that which the Yogas and the Shrotriya term Vidya.
"By reflection, self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can
be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty -- that is, to
the Vision of God -- this is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To
unite one's soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but
a perfectly pure mind. Through self-contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity
of body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true
knowledge and wonderful insight." And Swami Saraswati, who has read
neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough Vedic scholar,
says in his Veda Bhashya (opasna prakaru ank. 9) -- "To obtain Diksh
(highest initiations) and Yog, one has to practice according to the rules . . .
The soul in human body can perform the greatest wonders by knowing the
Universal Spirit (or God) and acquainting itself with the properties and
qualities (occult) of all the things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshit
or initiate) can thus acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great
distances."
Finally, Alfred R.
Wallace, F. R. S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great naturalist, says,
with brave candour: "It is 'spirit' that alone feels, and perceives, and
thinks -- that acquires knowledge, and reasons and aspires . . . there not unfrequently
occur individuals so constituted that the spirit can perceive independently of
the corporeal organs of sense, or can perhaps, wholly or partially, quit the
body for a time and return to it again . . . the spirit . . . communicates with
spirit easier than with matter."
We can now see
how, after thousands of years have intervened between the age of the
Gymnosophists [5] our own highly civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps,
just because of such an enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the
psychological as well as upon the physical realms of nature, over twenty
millions of people today believe, under a different form, in those same
spiritual powers that were believed in by the Yogins and the Pythagoreans,
nearly 3,000 years ago. Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the
power of solving all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained
the power of acting independently of his body, through the Atman --
"self," or "soul;" and the old Greeks went in search of
Atmu -- the Hidden one, or the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of
the Thesmophorian mysteries [6] ; -- so the spiritualists of to-day believe in
the faculty of the spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to
communicate visibly and tangibly with those they loved on earth. And all these,
Aryan Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that
possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied spirits
--the real self, -- are not separated from either the Universal Soul or other
spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their qualities; as in
the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no limitation. And that when
this difference is once removed -- according to the Greeks and Aryans by
abstract contemplation, producing the temporary liberation of the imprisoned
Soul; and according to spiritualists, through mediumship -- such an union
between embodied and disembodied spirits becomes possible.
Thus was it that
Patanjali's Yogis and, following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other
Neo-Platonists, maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united
to, or rather become as one with, God, several times during the course of their
lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the Universal
Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to be put aside as
entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi, the only controvertible
point, the dark spot on this philosophy of extreme mysticism, was its claim to
include that which is simply ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous
perception. In the case of the Yogins, who maintained their ability to see
Iswara "face to face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the
stern logic of Kapila. As to the similar assumption made for their Greek
followers, for a long array of Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last
two claimants to "God-seeing" within these last hundred years -- Jacob
Bohme and Swedenborg -- this pretension would and should have been
philosophically and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science
who are spiritualists had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
phenomenalism of spiritualism.
The Alexandrian
Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates, and masters, or
hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient Mysteries of Orpheus,
who, according to Herodotus, brought them from India
Plotinus, the
pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us, that the secret gnosis
or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees -- opinion, science, and
illumination. "The means or instrument of the first is sense, or
perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third, intuition. To the last,
reason is subordinate; it is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification
of the mind with the object known." Theosophy is the exact science of
psychology, so to say; it stands in relation to natural, uncultivated
mediumship, as the knowledge of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in
physics. It develops in man a direct beholding; that which Schelling
denominates "a realization of the identity of subject and object in the
individual;" so that under the influence and knowledge of hyponia man
thinks divine thoughts, views all thing as they really are, and, finally,
"becomes recipient of the Soul of the World," to use one of the
finest expressions of Emerson. "I, the imperfect, adore my own
perfect" -- he says in his superb Essay on the Oversoul. Besides
this psychological, or soul-state, Theosophy cultivated every branch of
sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now commonly known
as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or "ceremonial magic," so often
resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy -- was discarded by
the theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other
Eclectics, added to Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy.
When ignorant of
the true meaning of the esoteric divine symbols of nature, man is apt to
miscalculate the powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and
mentally with the higher, celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil,
dark powers which lurk around humanity -- the undying, grim creations of human
crimes and vices -- and thus fall from theurgia (white
magic) into goetia [7] (or
black magic, sorcery.) Yet, neither white, nor black magic are what popular
superstition understands by the terms. The possibility of “raising spirit”
according to the key of Solomon, is the height of superstition and ignorance.
Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an intercourse “with the gods”
and attain for us the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to have been
a spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the teachings
of the theosophical school.
It is a noticeable
fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates,
nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything to writing. The reason for it is obvious.
Theosophy is a double-edged weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish.
Like every ancient philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns; but, until
late in our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most
various sects and opinions. “Entirely speculative, and founding no schools,
they have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and no doubt,
when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give new
directions to human thought” -- remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX degree .
. . himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, The Royal Masonic Cyclopoedia (articles Theosophical Society of New
York and Theosophy, p. 731).[8] Since the days of the
fire-philosophers, they had never formed themselves into societies, for,
tracked like wild beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist
often amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant. The statistics show
that, during a period of 150 years, no less than 90,000 men and women were
burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft. In
Great Britain only, from A. D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000 persons
were put to death for compact with the “Devil.” It was but late in the present
century -- in 1875 -- that some progressed mystics and spiritualists,
unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of Spiritualism, started by its
votaries, and finding that they were far from covering the whole ground of the
wide range of phenomena, formed at New York, America, an association which is
now widely known as the Theosophical Society.
NOTES:
[1] Aryavart
– the native and ancient name of India
[2] Mercavah
- the secret Wisdom; literally, “the vehicle”. (Ed.)
[3] Bactria – an ancient country in West Asia . Its territory is today mainly in Afghanistan , Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan
[4] Note by
H.P.B.: In a series of articles entitled “The World's Great Theosophists,” we
intend showing that from Pythagoras, who got his wisdom in India, down to our
best known modern philosophers and theosophists -- David Hume, and Shelley, the
English poet -- the Spiritists of France included -- many believed and yet
believe in metempsychosis or reincarnation of the soul; however unelaborated
the system of the Spiritists may fairly be regarded.
[5] Note by
H.P.B.: The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman
writers, who call the Yogins Indian Gymnosophists; by Strabo, Lucan, Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum
[6] Thesmophorian
Mysteries – A Festival of Mysteries, celebrated at Athens ,
at Abdera and possibly also Sparta Pasadena
[7] Goetia – From the Greek, “goes”,
sorcerer, one who uses incantations to dominate people.
(“Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary”, T.U.P., Pasadena
[8] Note by
H.P.B.: The Royal Masonic
Cyclopoedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and Biography. Edited by Kenneth
R. H. Mackenzie IX degree (Cryptonymus) Hon. Member of the Canongate Kilwinning
Lodge, No. 2, Scotland New York
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The article “What
Is Theosophy?” was first published at the magazine “The Theosophist”, India Los Angeles
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Always visit www.filosofiaesoterica.com/english and
www.esoteric-philosophy.com .
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If you want to
have access to a daily study of the original teachings of Theosophy, there is
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, with copy to lutportugal@gmail.com,
and ask for information on the e-group E-THEOSOPHY.
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