The Writings of Annie Besant
Theosophy
and the Theosophical
Society
From
a series of Lectures delivered in
I want to put before you
clearly and plainly what Theosophy means,
and what is the function of the Theosophical
Society. For we notice very often, especially with regard to the
Society, that there is a good deal of misconception touching it, and that
people do not realise the object with which it
exists, the work that it is intended to perform. It is very often looked upon
as the expression of some new religion, as though people in becoming
Theosophists must leave the religious community to which he or she may happen
to belong. And so a profound misconception arises, and many people imagine that
in some way or other it is hostile to the religion which they profess.
Now Theosophy,
looked at historically or practically, belongs to all the religions of the
world, and every religion has an equal claim to it, has an equal right to say
that Theosophy exists within
it. For Theosophy,
as the name implies, the Divine Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, clearly cannot be
appropriated by any body of people, by any Society, not even by the greatest of
the religions of the world. It is a
common property, as free to everyone as the sunlight and the air. No one can
claim it as his, save by virtue of his common humanity; no one can deny it to
his brother, save at the peril of destroying his own claim thereto. Now the
meaning of this word, both historically and practically, the Wisdom, the Divine
Wisdom, is a very definite and clear meaning; it asserts the possibility of the
knowledge of God. That is the point that the student ought to grasp; this knowledge
of God, not the belief in Him, not the faith in Him, not only vague idea
concerning Him, but the knowledge of Him, is possible to man. That is the affirmation
of Theosophy,
that is its root-meaning and its essence.And we find,
looking back historically, that this has been asserted in the various great
religions of the world. They all claim that man can know, not only that man can
believe.
Only in some of the more
modern faiths, in their own modern days, the knowledge has slipped into the
background, and the belief, the faith, looms very-large in the mind of the
believer. Go back as far as you will in the history of the past, and you will
find the most ancient of religions affirming this possibility of knowledge. In
divine science," was that which you will call "science"
nowadays, the study of the external world. But it also included all that here
we speak of as Literature, as Art, as Craft—everything, in fact, which the
human brain can study and the human fingers can accomplish—the whole of that,
in one grand generalisation, was called " Divine
Wisdom," but it was the lower divine Wisdom, the inferior knowledge of
God. Then, beside, or rather above that, came the Supreme Knowledge, the
higher, the superior, that beyond which there was no knowledge, which was the
crown of all. Now, that supreme knowledge is declared to be "
the knowledge of Him by Whom all things are known "—a phrase
indicating the Supreme Deity. It was that which was called the supreme
knowledge, or, par excellence, the Divine Knowledge, and that old Hindu thought
is exactly the same as you have indicated by the name Theosophy.
So, again, classical
students may remember that among the Greeks and the early Christians there was
what was called the Gnosis, the knowledge, the definite article pointing to
that which, above all else, was to be regarded as knowledge or wisdom. And when
you find among the Neo-Platonists this word Gnosis used, it always means, and
is defined to mean, " the knowledge of God,"
and the "Gnostic" is "a man who knows God." So, again, among the early Christians. Take such a man as Origen. He uses the same word in exactly the same sense;
for when Origen is declaring that the Church hasmedicine for the sinner, and that Christ
is the Good Physician who heals the diseases of men, he goes on to say that the
Church has also the Gnosis for the wise,
and that you cannot build the Church out
of sinners; you must build it out of Gnostics.
These are the men who
know, who have the power to help and to teach; and there can be no medicine for
the diseased, no upholder of the weak, unless, within the limits of the
religion, the Gnostic
is to be found. And so Origen lays immense stress on the Gnostic, and devotes page
after page to a description of him: what he is, what he thinks, what he does;
and to the mind of that great Christian teacher, the Gnostic was the strength
of the Church, the pillar, the buttress of the faith. And so, coming down through the centuries,
since the Christian time, you will find the word Gnostic used every now and again, but more often the
term " Theosophist" and " Theosophy
" ; for this term came into use in the later school, the Neo-Platonists,
and became the commonly accepted word for those who claimed this possibility of
knowledge, or even claimed to know.
And a phrase regarding this is to be found in the mystic Fourth Gospel, that of S.
John, where into the mouth of the Christ the words are put, that the "
knowledge of God is eternal life "— not the faith, nor the thought, but
the knowledge—again declaring the possibility of this "Gnosis. And the same idea is found along the line
of the Hermetic Science, or Hermetic Philosophy, partly derived from
The Hermetic philosopher
also claimed to know, and claimed that in man was this divine faculty of
knowledge, above the reason, higher than the intellect. And whenever, among the thoughtful and the
learned, you find reference made to " faith," as where, in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, it is said to be " the evidence of things not
seen," the same idea comes out, and Faith, the real Faith, is only this intense
conviction which grows out of the inner spiritual being of man, the Self, the
Spirit, which justifies to the intellect, to the senses, that there is God,
that God truly exists.
And this is so strongly
felt in the East that no one there wants to argue about the existence of God;
it is declared that that existence cannot be proved by argument. " Not by argument," it is written, " not by
reasoning, not by thinking, can the Supreme Self be known." The only proof
of Him is "the conviction in the Spirit, in the Self." And thus Theosophy,
then, historically, as you see, always makes the affirmation that man can know;
and after that supreme affirmation that God may be known, then there comes the
secondary affirmation, implied really in that, and in the fact of man's
identity of nature with the Supreme, that all things in the universe can be
known— things visible and invisible, subtle and gross. That is, so to speak, a
secondary affirmation, drawn out of the first; for clearly if in man resides
the faculty to know God as God, then every manifestation of God may be known by
the faculty which recognises the identity of the
human Spirit with the Supreme Spirit that permeates the universe at large. So
in dictionaries and in encyclopedias you will sometimes find Theosophy
defined as the idea that God, and angels, and spirits, may hold direct
communication with men; or sometimes, in the reverse form, that
men can hold communication with
spirits, and angels, and even with God Himself; and although that definition be
not the best that can be given, it has its own truth, for that is the result of
the knowledge of God, the inevitable outcome of it, the manifestation of it. The
man who knows God, and knows all things in Him, is evidently able to
communicate with any form of living being, to come into relation with anything
in the universe of which the One Life is God.
In modern days, and
among scientific people, the affirmation which is the reverse of this became at
one time popular, widely accepted — not Gnostic but " Agnostic,"
" without the Gnosis " ; that was the position taken up by Huxley and
by many men of his own time of the same school of thought. He chose the name because
of its precise signification; he was far too scientific a man to crudely deny,
far too scientific to be willing to speak positively of that of which he knew
nothing; and so, instead of taking up the position that there is nothing beyond
man, and man's reason, and man's senses, he took up the position that man was
without possibility of knowledge of what there might be, that his only means of
knowledge were the senses for the material universe, the
reason for the world of thought.
Man, by his reason,
could conquer everything in the realm of thought, might become1" mighty in
intellect, and hold as his own domain everything that the intellect could grasp
at its highest point of growth, its highest possibility of attainment. That
splendid avenue of progress Huxley, and men like Huxley, placed before humanity
as the road along which it might hope to walk, full of the certainty of
ultimate achievement. But outside that, beyond the reason in the world of
thought and the senses in the material world, Huxley, and those who thought
like him, declared that man was unable to pierce—hence " Agnostic,"
" without the Gnosis," without the possibility of plunging deeply
into the ocean of Being, for there the intellect had no plummet. Such, according
to science at one* time, was man; and whatever man might hope for, whatever man
might strive for, on, as it were, the portal of the spiritual universe was
written the legend " without knowledge."
Thither man might not
hope to penetrate, thither man's faculties might never hope to soar; for when
you have defined man as a reasoning being, you have given the highest
definition that science was able to accept, and across the spiritual nature was
written : " imagination, dream, and phantasy."
And yet there is much in
ordinary human history which shows that man is something more than intellect,
as clearly as it shows that the intellect is greater than the senses; for every
statesman knows that he has to reckon with what is sometimes called "the
religious instinct" in man, and that however coldly philosophers may
reason, however sternly science may speak, there is in man some upwelling power
which refuses to take the agnosticism of the intellect, as it refuses to accept
the positivism of the senses ;*and with that every ruler of men has to deal,
with that every statesman has to reckon. There is something* in man which from
time to time wells up with irresistible power, sweeping away every limit which
intellect or senses may strive to put in its path—the religious instinct.
And even to takethat term, that name, even that is to join on this part
of man's nature to a part of nature universal, which bears testimony in every
time, and in every place, that to every instinct in the living creature there
is some answer in the nature outside itself. There is no instinct known in
plant, in animal, in man,
to which nature does not
answer; nature, which has woven the demand into the texture of the living
creature, has always the supply ready to meet the demand; and strange indeed it
would be, well-nigh incredible, if the profoundest instinct of all in nature's
highest product on the physical plane, if that ineradicable instinct, that
seeking after God and that thirst for the Supreme, were the one and only
instinct in nature for which there is no answer in the depths and the heights
around us. And it is not so.
That argument is
strengthened and buttressed by an appeal to experience; for you cannot, in
dealing with human experience and the testimony of the human consciousness,
leave entirely out of court, silenced, as though it were not relevant, the
continual testimony of all religions to the existence of the spiritual nature
in man. The spiritual consciousness proves itself quite as definitely as the intellectual
or the sensuous consciousness proves itself—by the experience of the
individual, alike in every religion as in every century in which humanity has
lived, has thought, has suffered, has rejoiced". The religious, the spiritual
nature, is that which is the strongest in man, not the weakest; that which
breaks down the barriers of the intellect, and crushes into silence the imperious
demands of the senses; which changes the whole life as by a miracle, and turns
the face of the man in a direction contrary to that in which he has been going
all his life. Whether you take the facts of conversion, or whether you take the
testimony of the saint, the prophet, the seer, they all speak with that voice
of authority to which humanity instinctively bows down; and it was the mark of
the spiritual man when it was said of Jesus, the Prophet: " He taught them
as one having authority, and not as the scribes." For where the spiritual
man speaks, his appeal is made to the highest and the deepest part in every
hearer that he addresses, and the answer that comes is an answer that brooks no
denial and permits no questioning. It shows its own imperial nature, the
highest and the dominant nature in the man, and where the Spirit once has
spoken the intellect becomes obedient, and the senses begin to serve.
Now Theosophy,
in declaring that this nature of man can know God, bases that statement on
identity of nature. We can know—it is our continual experience— we can know
that which we share, and nothing else. Only when you have appropriated for
yourself something from the outside world can you know the similar things in
the outside world. You can see because your eye has within it the ether of
which the waves are light; you can hear because your ear has in it the ether
and the air whose vibrations are sound; and so with everything else. Myriads of
things exist outside you, and you are unconscious of them, because you have not
yet appropriated to your own service that which is like unto them in outer
nature.
And you can know God for
exactly the same reason that you can know by sight or hearing—because you are
part of God; you can know Him because you share His nature. "
We are partakers of the Divine Nature," says the Christian teacher
"Thou art That," declares the Hindu. The Sufi cries out that by love
man and God are one, and know each other. And all the religions of the world in
varied phrase announce the same splendid truth of man's Divinity.
It is on that that Theosophy
founds its affirmation that the knowledge of God is possible to man; that the
foundation, then, of Theosophy,
that the essence of its message.And the value of it
at the time when it was re-proclaimed to the world was that it was an
affirmation in the face of a denial. Where Science began to cry " agnosticism," Theosophy
came to cry out " gnosticism." At the very
same time the two schools were born into the modern world, and the
re-proclamation of Theosophy,
the supreme knowledge, was the answer from the invisible worlds to the
nescience of Science. It came at the right time, it came in the right form, as
in a few moments we shall see; but the most important thing of all is that it
came at the very moment when Science thought itself triumphant in its
nescience.
This re-proclamation,
then, of the most ancient of all truths, was the message of Theosophy to the modern
world. And see how the world has changed since that was proclaimed
! It is hardly necessary now to make that affirmation, so universal has
become the acceptance of it. It is almost difficult to look back to the year
1875, and realise how men were thinking and feeling
then. I can remember it, because I was in it. The elder amongst you can
remember it, for the same reason.
But for theyounger of you, who have begun to think and feel in the
later times, when this thought was becoming common, you can scarcely realise the change in the intellectual atmosphere which has
come about during these last two and-thirty years. Hardly worth while is it to
proclaim it now, it is so commonplace. If now you say: "
Man can know God," the answer is: " Of course he can."
Thirty-two years ago it was: " Indeed he
cannot." And that is to be seen everywhere, all
over the world, and not
only among those people who were clinging blindly to a blind faith, desperately
sticking to it as the only raft which remained for them to save them from being
submerged in materialism. It is recognised now on all
hands; literature is full of it; and it is not without significance that some months
ago The Hibbert Journal —which has in it so much of
the advanced thought of the day, for which bishops and archbishops and learned
clerics write—it is not without significance that that journal drew its
readers' attention to " the value of the God-idea in Hinduism." And
the only value of it was this, for man : that man is God, and therefore can
know God; and the writer pointed out that that was the only foundation on
which, in modern days, an edifice that could not be shaken could be reared up
for the Spirit in man.
That is the religion of
the future, the religion of the Divine Self; that the common religion, the
universal religion, of which all the religions that are living in the world
will be recognised as branches, as* sects of one
mighty religion, universal and supreme.
For just as now in
Christianity you have many a sect and many a church, just as in Hinduism we
find many sects and many schools, and as in every other great religion of the
world at the present time there are divisions between the believers in the same
religion, so shall it be—very likely by the end of this century—with all the
religions of the world; there will be only one religion—the knowledge of
God—and all religions sects under that one mighty and universal name.
And then, naturally, out
of this knowledge there must spring a large number of other knowledges
subservient to it, that which you hear so much about in Theosophical
literature, of other worlds, the worlds beyond the physical, worlds that are
still material, although the matter be of a finer, subtler kind; all that you
read about the astral, and mental, and buddhic
planes, and so on—all these lower knowledges find
their places naturally, as growing out of the one supreme knowledge. And at
once you will ask: " Why ?" If you are
really divine, if your Self is the same Self of which the worlds are a partial
expression, then it is not difficult to see that that Self in you, as it
unfolds its divine powers, and shapes the matter which it appropriates in order
to come in contact with all the different parts of the universe, that that
Self, creating for itself bodies, will be able to know every material thing in
the universe, just as you know the things of the physical plane through the
physical body. For it is all on the same lines: that which enables you to know
is not only body—that is the« medium between you and the physical world—but the
Knower in you is that which enables you to know, the power of perception which
is of consciousness, and not of body.
When consciousness
vanishes, all the organs of consciousness are there, as perfect as ever, but
the Knower has left them, and know-ledge disappears with him; and so, whether
it be in a swoon, in a fainting fit, in sleep, or in death, the perfect
instrument of the physical body becomes useless when the hand of the master
workman drops it. The body is only his tool, whereby he contacts the things in
a universe which is not himself; and the moment he leaves it, it is a mere heap
of matter, doomed to decay, to destruction. But just as he has that body for
knowledge here, so he has other bodies for knowledge everywhere, and in every
world he can know, he who is the Knower, and every world is made up of objects
of knowledge, which he can perceive, examine, and understand.
And the world into which
you shall pass when you go through the portal of death, that is around you at
every moment of your life here, and you only do not know it because your
instrument of knowledge there is not yet perfected, and ready there to your
hand; and the heavenly world into which you will pass out of the intermediate
world next to this, that is around you now, and you only do not know it because
your instrument of knowledge there has not yet been fashioned.
And so with worlds yet
higher, knowledge of them is possible, because the Knower is yourself and is
God, and you can create your instruments of knowledge according to your wisdom
and your will.
Hence Theosophy includes the
whole of this vast scheme or field of knowledge; and the whole of it is yours,
yours to possess at your will. Hence Theosophy should be to you
a proclamation of your own Divinity, with everything that flows therefrom; and all the knowledge that may be gathered, all
the investigations that may be made, they are all part-t of this great scheme.
And the reason why all the religions of the world teach the same, when you come
to disentangle the essence of their teaching from the shape in which they put
it, the reason that they all teach the same is that they are all giving you
fragments of knowledge of the other worlds, and these worlds are all more real
than the world in which you are; and they all teach the same fundamental
truths, the same fundamental moral principles, the same religious doctrines,
and use the same methods in order that men may come into touch with the other
worlds. The sacraments do not belong to Christianity alone, as sometimes
Christians think; every religion has its sacraments, some more numerous than
others, but all have some. For what is a sacrament? It is the earthly, the
physical representative of a real correspondence in nature; as the catechism of
the Church of England phrases it: " An outward
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." It is a true definition.
A sacrament is made up
of the outer and inner, and you cannot do without either. The outer thing is
correlated to the inner, and is a real means of coming into touch with the
higher, and is not only a symbol, as some imagine.
The great churches and
religions of the past always cling to that reality of the sacrament, and they
do well. It is only in very modern times, and among a comparatively small
number of Christian people, that the sacrament has become only a symbol,
'instead of a channel of living and divine power. And much is lost to the man
who loses out of his religion the essential idea of the sacrament; for it is
the link between the spiritual and the physical, the channel whereby the
spiritual pours down into the physical vehicle.
Hence the value that all
religions put upon sacraments, and their recognition of their reality, and
their priceless service to mankind. And so with many other things in ceremonies and rites, common to
all the different faiths—the use of musical sounds, a use which tunes the
bodies so that the spiritual power may be able to manifest through them and by
them. For just as in your orchestra you must tune the instruments to a
single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously
they may allow the spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower
plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the
difference between the vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that
are discordant, from this point of view, is this : when all the bodies vibrate
together, all the particles and their spaces correspond, so that you get solid
particles, then spaces, and then solid particles, and spaces again,
corresponding through all the bodies; whereas in the normal condition the
bodies do not match in that way, and the spaces of one come against the solid
parts of the other, and so you get a block.
When sounds are used,
the mystical sounds called mantras in Hinduism, the effect of those is to
change the bodies from this condition to that, and so the forces from without
can come into the man, and the forces in him may flow out to others. That is
the value of it. You are able to produce mechanically a result
which otherwise has to
be produced by a tremendous exertion of the will; and the man of knowledge
never uses more force than is necessary in order to bring about what he
desires, and the Occultist —who is the wise man on many planes—he uses the
easiest way always to gain his object. Hence the use of
music, or mantras, in every faith. Pythagoras used music in order to
prepare his disciples to receive his teachings.
The Greek and the
Even the songs of
illiterate Christian bodies do have some effect upon them, in raising them to a
higher level, although they possess little of the true quality of the mantra.
In Theosophy you find all
these things dealt with scientifically—a mass of knowledge, but all growing out
of the original statement that man can know God.
Now it is clear that in
all that, there is nothing which a man of any faith cannot accept, cannot
study. I do not mean that he will accept everything that a Theo-sophist would
say; but I mean that the knowledge is knowledge of a kind which he will be wise
to study, and to appropriate so far as it recommends itself to his reason and
his intuition. And that is all the man need do—study. All this knowledge is
spread out for you freely: you can take it, if you will.
The Theosophical
Society, which spreads it broadcast everywhere, claims in it no
property, no proprietary rights, but gives it out freely everywhere. The books in
which much of it is written are as free to the non-Theosophist as to the Theo-sophist. The results of Theosophical investigation
are published freely that all who choose may read. Everything is done that can
be done by the Society to make the whole thing common property ; and nothing
gives the true Theo-sophist more delight than when he sees the Theosophical
teachings coming out in some other garb which gives them a different name, but
hands them on to those who might be frightened perhaps by the name " Theosophy." And so,
when we find a clergyman scattering broadcast to his congregation Theosophical
teaching as Christian, we say: " See, our work is bearing fruit"; and
when we find the man who does not label himself " Theosophist" giving
any of these truths to the world, we rejoice, because we see that our work is
being done.
We have no desire to
take the credit of it, nor to claim it as ours at all; it belongs to every man
who is able to see it, quite as much as it does to anyone who may call himself " Theosophist." For the possession of truth comes
of right to the man who can see the truth, and there is no partiality in the
world of intellect or of Spirit. The only test for a man's fitness to receive
is the ability to perceive; and the only claim he has to see by the light is
the power of seeing.
And that, perhaps, may
explain to you what some think strange in our Society—we have no dogmas. We do
not shut out any man because he does not believe Theosophical teachings. A man
may deny every one of them, save that of human brotherhood, and claim his place
and his right within our ranks.
But his place and his
right within our ranks are founded on the very truths that he denies; for if
man could not know God, if there were no identity of nature in every man with
God, then there would be no foundation for our reception of him, nor any reason
for welcoming him as a brother. Because there is only one life, and one nature,
therefore the man who denies is God, as is he who affirms. Therefore each has a
right to come; only the one who affirms knows why he welcomes his brother, and
the one who denies is ignorant, and knows not why he has a right within our
ranks. But those of us who try to be Theosophists in reality, as well as in
name, we understand why it is that we make him welcome, and it is based on this
sane idea, that a man can see the truth best by studying it, and not by repeating
formula that he does not understand. What is the use of putting a dogma before
a man and saying: " You must repeat that before
you can come into my Church " ?
If the man repeats it
not understanding it, he is outside, no matter how much you bring him in ; and if he sees it, there is no need to make that as a
portal to your fellowship. And we believe, we of the Theosophical
Society, that just because the intellect can only do its best work
in its own atmosphere of freedom, truth has the best chance of being seen when
you do not make any conditions as to the right of investigation, as to the
claim to seek. To us, truth is so supreme a thing that we do not desire to bind
any man with conditions as to how, or where, or why, he shall seek it. These
things, we say, we know are true; and because we know they are true, come
amongst us, even though you do not believe them, and find out for yourself
whether they be true or not. And the man is better worth having when he comes
in an unbeliever, and wins to the knowledge of the truth, than is the facile
believer who acknowledges everything and never gets a real grip upon truth at
all.
We believe that truth is
only found by seeking, and that the true bond is the love of truth, and the
effort to find it; that that is a far more real bond than the repetition of a
common creed. For the creed can be repeated by the lips, but the seeing of
truth as true can only come from the intellect and the spirit, and to build on
the intellect and the spirit is a firmer foundation than to build on the breath
of the lips. Hence our Society has no dogmas. Not that it does not stand for
any truths, as some people imagine. Its name marks out the truth for which it
stands: it is the Theosophical
Society ; and that shows its function and its place in the world—a
Society that asserts the possibility of the knowledge of God; that is its
proclamation, as we have seen, and all the other truths that grow out of that
are amongst our teachings. The Society exists to spread the knowledge of those
truths, and to popularise those teachings amongst
mankind. " But," you may say, " if it be the fact that you throw
out broadcast all your teachings, that you write them in books that every man
can buy, what is, then, the good of being a member of the Theosophical
Society ?
We should not have any
more as members than we have as non-members." That is not quite true, but
it may stand as true for the moment. Why should you come in ?
For no reason at all, unless to you it is the greatest
privilege to come in, and you desire to be among those who are the pioneers of
the thought of the coming days. No reason at all: it is a privilege. We
do not beg you to come in; we only say: " Come if you like to come, and share the glorious privilege that
we possess; but if you would rather not, stay outside, and we will give you
everything which we believe will be serviceable and useful to you."
The feeling that brings
people into our Society is the feeling that makes the soldier spring forward to
be amongst the pioneers when the army is going forth. There are some people so
built that they like to go in front and face difficulties, so that other people
may have an easier time, and walk along a path that has already been hewn out
for them by hands stronger than their own.
That is the only reason
why you should come in : no other. Do not come to " get" ; you will be disappointed if you do. You
can " get" it outside. Come in to give, to
work, to be enrolled amongst the servants of humanity who are working for the
dawn of the day of a nobler knowledge, for the coming of the recognition of a
spiritual brotherhood amongst men. Come in if you have the spirit of the pioneer
within you, the spirit of the volunteer; if to you it is a delight to cut the
way through the jungle that others may follow, to tread the path with bruised
feet in order that others may have a smooth road to lead them to the heights of
knowledge.
That is the only advantage
of coming in : to know in your own heart that you realise
what is coming, and are helping to make it come more quickly for the benefit of
your fellow-men; that you are working for" humanity; that you are
co-workers with God, in making the knowledge of Him spread abroad on every
side; that you are amongst those to whom future centuries will look back,
thanking you that you saw the light when all men thought it was dark, and that
you recognised the coming dawn when others believed
the earth was sunk in midnight. I know of no inspiration more inspiring, of no
ideal that lifts men to greater heights, of no hope that is so full of
splendor, no thought that is so full of energy, as the inspiration, and the
ideal, and the hope, and the thought, that you are working for the future, for
the day that has not yet come. There will be so many in the days to come who
will see the truth, so many in the unborn generations who will live from the
hour of their birth in the light of the Divine Wisdom. And what is it not to
know that one is bringing that nearer ? to feel that this great treasure is placed in your hands for
the enriching of humanity, and that the bankruptcy of humanity is over and the
wealth is being spread broadcast on every side ?
What a privilege to know
that those generations in the future, rejoicing in the light, will feel some
touch of thanks and gratitude to those who brought it when the days were dark,
to those whose faith in the Self was so strong that they could believe when all
other things were against it, to those whose surety of the
divine knowledge was so mighty that they could proclaim its
possibility to an agnostic world. That is the only reason why you should come
into the vanguard, that the only reason why you should join the ranks of the
pioneers. Hard work and little reward, hard words and little praise, but the
knowledge that you work for the future, and that with
the co-operation of Deity the final result is sure.
History
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Lentil burgers, a thousand
press ups before breakfast and
the daily 25 mile run may put it
off for a while but death
seems to get most of us in the end.
We are pleased to
present for your consideration, a
definitive work on the
subject by a Student of Katherine Tingley entitled
Theosophy and the Number Seven
A selection of articles
relating to the esoteric
significance
of the Number 7 in Theosophy
The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
The Earth Base for Evolutionary Theosophy
Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy By C
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
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General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
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Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom
and has an eastern
border with England.
The land area is
just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long.
The population of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.