The Theosophical Society,
What is Theosophy?
By
H P Blavatsky
First Published 1879
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, Iamblichus, 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 Rev.
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
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
The central idea of the Eclectic
Theosophy was that of a simple 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, and the Zeus of the Thracians. As to the
Absolute Essence, the One and all--whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the
Chaldean Kabalistic, or the Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will lead to
one and the same result. The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which
retires into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect) was made the
basis of all things; and we can find the idea in all its integrity in the
philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a Theosophist
agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph propounds the query:
"Who, then, can comprehend It since It is formless, and
Non-existent?"--or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig-Veda
(Hymn 129th, Book 10th)--enquires:
"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 Svabhâvikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but
"Svabhâvât" (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 Mohammedanism.
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 of
changes in the soul1 which can be defended and explained on
strict philosophical principles; and only by making a distinction between Paramâtma (transcendental, supreme
soul) and Jivâtmâ (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 "Daimonion-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 "Noëtic work" that which the Yogin
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 Dayanand Saraswati, who
has read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough Vedic
scholar, says in his Veda Bháshya
(opasna prakaru ank. 9)--"To obtain Diksh (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise 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 Gymnosophists2 and 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 Atmân--"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;--so the spiritualists of
today 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 Yogins, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists,
affirm that possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never
embodied spirit--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 spiritst becomes possible. Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogins 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
Böhme 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. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath
not to divulge his higher
doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and initiated, and
who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the demons of other
peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia,
or under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi, the uneducated multitude,
suppose them to be," says Epicurus. "He is not an atheist who denies
the existence of the gods whom the multitude worship, but he is such who
fastens on these gods the opinions of the multitude." In his turn,
Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence pervading the whole world
of nature, what are styled the gods
are simply the first principles."
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 things 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 Iamblichus 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 göetia (or
black magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white, nor black magic are what popular
superstition understands by the terms. The possibility of "raising
spirits" 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 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 school, 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 IXo . .
. himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, The Royal Masonic
Cycloepædia (articles Theosophical
Society of New York and Theosophy,
p. 731).3 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
Theosophist, October, 1879
History
of the Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society gets off the Ground 1875
The
Theosophical Society: Its Origin, Plan and Aims
By H
S Olcott with H P Blavatsky
The Original Programme of the Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society,