What are the Theosophists?
By
Are they what
they claim to be--students of natural law, of ancient and modern philosophy,
and even of exact science? Are they Deists, Atheists, Socialists, Materialists,
or Idealists; or are they but a schism of modern Spiritualism,--mere
visionaries? Are they entitled to any consideration, as capable of discussing
philosophy and promoting real science; or should they be treated with the
compassionate toleration which one gives to "harmless enthusiasts"?
The Theosophical Society has been variously charged with a belief in
"miracles," and "miracle-working"; with a secret political
object--like the Carbonari; with being spies of an
autocratic Czar; with preaching socialistic and nihilistic doctrines; and, mirabile dictu, with having a
covert understanding with the French Jesuits, to disrupt modern Spiritualism
for a pecuniary consideration! With equal violence they have been denounced as
dreamers, by the American Positivists; as fetish-worshippers, by some of the
New York press; as revivalists of "mouldy
superstitions," by the Spiritualists; as infidel emissaries of Satan, by
the Christian Church; as the very types of "gobe-mouche,"
by Professor W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S.; and, finally, and most absurdly, some
Hindu opponents, with a view to lessening their influence, have flatly charged
them with the employment of demons to perform certain phenomena.
Out of all
this pother of opinions, one fact stands conspicuous--the Society, its members,
and their views, are deemed of enough importance to be discussed and denounced:
Men slander only those whom they hate--or fear. But, if the Society has had its
enemies and traducers, it has also had its friends and advocates. For every
word of censure, there has been a word of praise.
Beginning
with a party of about a dozen earnest men and women, a month later its members
had so increased as to necessitate the hiring of a public hall for its
meetings; within two years, it had working branches in European countries.
Still later, it found itself in alliance with the Indian Arya
Samaj, headed by the learned Pandit
Dayanand Saraswati Swami,
and the Ceylonese Buddhists, under the erudite H. Sumangala,
High Priest of Adam's Peak and President of the Widyodaya
College, Colombo.
He who would seriously attempt to fathom the
psychological sciences, must come to the sacred land of ancient Aryâvarta. None is older than she in esoteric wisdom and
civilization, however fallen may be her poor shadow--modern
Holding this
country, as we do, for the fruitful hot-bed whence proceeded all subsequent
philosophical systems, to this source of all psychology and philosophy a
portion of our Society has come to learn its ancient wisdom and ask for the
impartation of its weird secrets. Philology has made too much progress to
require at this late day a demonstration of this fact of the primogenitive nationality of Aryâvart.
The unproved
and prejudiced hypothesis of modern Chronology is not worthy of a moment's thought,
and it will vanish in time like so many other unproved hypotheses. The line of
philosophical heredity, from Kapila through Epicurus
to James Mill; from Patanjali through Plotinus to Jacob Böhme, can be
traced like the course of a river through a landscape. One of the objects of
the Society's organization was to examine the too transcendent views of the
Spiritualists in regard to the powers of disembodied spirits; and, having told
them what, in our opinion at least, a portion of their phenomena are not, it
will become incumbent upon us now to show what they are.
So apparent
is it that it is in the East, and especially in India, that the key to the
alleged "supernatural" phenomena of the Spiritualists must be sought,
that it has recently been conceded in the Allahabad
Pioneer (Aug. 11th, 1879), an Anglo-Indian daily journal which has not the
reputation of saying what it does not mean. Blaming the men of science who
"intent upon physical discovery, for some generations have been too prone
to neglect super-physical investigation," it mentions "the new wave
of doubt" ( spiritualism) which has
"latterly disturbed this conviction."
To a large
number of persons including many of high culture and intelligence, it adds,
"the supernatural has again asserted itself as a fit subject of inquiry
and research. And there are plausible hypotheses in favour of the idea that
among the 'sages' of the East . . . there may be found in a higher degree than
among the more modernised inhabitants of the West
traces of those personal peculiarities, whatever they may be, which are
required as a condition precedent to the occurrence of supernatural
phenomena." And then, unaware that the cause he pleads is one of the chief
aims and objects of our Society, the editorial writer remarks that it is
"the only direction in which, it seems to us, the efforts of the
Theosophists in
The leading
members of the Theosophical Society in India are known to be very advanced
students of occult phenomena, already, and we cannot but hope that their
professions of interest in Oriental philosophy . . . may cover a reserved
intention of carrying out explorations of the kind we indicate."
While, as
observed, one of our objects, it yet is but one of many; the most important of
which is to revive the work of Ammonius Saccas, and make various nations remember that they are the
children "of one mother." As to the transcendental side of the
ancient Theosophy,
it is also high time that the Theosophical Society should explain.
With how
much, then, of this nature-searching, God-seeking science of the ancient Aryan
and Greek mystics, and of the powers of modern spiritual mediumship,
does the Society agree? Our answer is: with it all. But if asked what it
believes in, the reply will be: "As a body--Nothing." The Society, as
a body, has no creed, as creeds are but the shells around spiritual knowledge;
and Theosophy in its fruition
is spiritual knowledge itself--the very essence of philosophical and theistic
enquiry.
Visible
representative of Universal Theosophy,
it can be no more sectarian than a Geographical Society, which represents
universal geographical exploration without caring whether the explorers be of one creed or another.
The religion
of the Society is an algebraical equation, in which
so long as the sign = of equality is not omitted, each member is allowed to
substitute quantities of his own, which better accord with climatic and other
exigencies of his native land, with the idiosyncrasies of his people, or even
with his own. Having no accepted creed, our Society is very ready to give and
take, to learn and teach, by practical experimentation, as opposed to mere
passive and credulous acceptance of enforced dogma.
It is willing
to accept every result claimed by any of the foregoing schools or systems, that can be logically and experimentally demonstrated.
Conversely, it can take nothing on mere faith, no matter by whom the demand may
be made. But, when we come to consider ourselves individually, it is quite
another thing.
The Society's
members represent the most varied nationalities and races, and were born and
educated in the most dissimilar creeds and social conditions. Some of them
believe in one thing, others in another.
Some incline
towards the ancient magic, or secret wisdom that was taught in the sanctuaries,
which was the very opposite of supernaturalism or diabolism; others in modern
spiritualism, or intercourse with the spirits of the dead; still others in
mesmerism or animal magnetism, or only an occult dynamic force in nature.
A certain
number have scarcely yet acquired any definite belief, but are in a state of
attentive expectancy; and there are even those who call themselves
materialists, in a certain sense. Of atheists and bigoted sectarians of any
religion, there are none in the Society; for the very fact of a man's joining
it proves that he is in search of the final truth as to the ultimate essence of
things.
If there be
such a thing as a speculative atheist, which philosophers may deny, he would
have to reject both cause and effect, whether in this world of matter, or in
that of spirit. There may be members who, like the poet Shelley, have let their
imagination soar from cause to prior cause ad infinitum, as each in its turn
became logically transformed into a result necessitating a prior cause, until
they have thinned the Eternal into a mere mist. But even they are not atheist
in the speculative sense, whether they identify the material forces of the
universe with the functions with which the theists endow their God, or
otherwise; for once that they cannot free themselves from the conception of the
abstract ideal of power, cause, necessity, and effect, they can be considered
as atheists only in respect to a personal God, and not to the Universal Soul of
the Pantheist. On the other hand the bigoted sectarian, fenced in, as he is,
with a creed upon every paling of which is written the warning "No
Thoroughfare," can neither come out of his enclosure to join the
Theosophical Society, nor, if he could, has it room for one whose very religion
forbids examination. The very root idea of the Society is free and fearless
investigation.
As a body,
the Theosophical Society holds that all original thinkers and investigators of
the hidden side of nature whether materialists--those who find in matter
"the promise and potency of all terrestrial life," or
spiritualists--that is, those who discover in spirit the source of all energy
and of matter as well, were and are, properly, Theosophists. For
to be one, one need not necessarily recognize the existence of any special God
or a deity. One need but worship the spirit of living nature, and try to
identify oneself with it.
To revere
that Presence, the invisible Cause, which is yet ever manifesting itself in its
incessant results; the intangible, omnipotent, and omnipresent Proteus:
indivisible in its Essence, and eluding form, yet appearing under all and every
form; who is here and there, and everywhere and nowhere; is ALL, and NOTHING;
ubiquitous yet one; the Essence filling, binding, bounding, containing
everything, contained in all. It will, we think, be seen now, that whether
classed as Theists, Pantheists or Atheists, such men are near kinsmen to the
rest.
Be what he
may, once that a student abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and
enters upon the solitary path of independent thought--Godward--he
is aTheosophist; an original thinker, a seeker after
the eternal truth with "an inspiration of his own" to solve the
universal problems.
With every
man that is earnestly searching in his own way after a
knowledge of the Divine Principle, of man's relations to it, and
nature's manifestations of it, Theosophy
is allied. It is likewise the ally of honest science, as distinguished from
much that passes for exact, physical science, so long as the latter does not
poach on the domains of psychology and metaphysics.
And it is
also the ally of every honest religion--to wit, a religion willing to be judged
by the same tests as it applies to the others. Those books, which contain the
most self-evident truth, are to it inspired (not revealed). But all books it
regards, on account of the human element contained in them, as inferior to the
Book of Nature; to read which and comprehend it correctly, the innate powers of
the soul must be highly developed. Ideal laws can be perceived by the intuitive
faculty alone; they are beyond the domain of argument and dialectics, and no
one can understand or rightly appreciate them through the explanations of
another mind, even though this mind be claiming a direct
revelation.
And, as this
Society, which allows the widest sweep in the realms of the pure ideal, is no less firm in the sphere of facts, its deference to modern
science and its just representatives is sincere. Despite all their lack of a
higher spiritual intuition, the world's debt to the representatives of modern
physical science is immense; hence, the Society endorses heartily the noble and
indignant protest of that gifted and eloquent preacher, the Rev. O. B. Frothingham, against those who try to undervalue the
services of our great naturalists. "Talk of Science as being irreligious,
atheistic," he exclaimed in a recent lecture, delivered at
It is due to
Science that we have any conception at all of a living God. If we do not become
atheists one of these days under the maddening effect of Protestantism, it will
be due to Science, because it is disabusing us of hideous illusions that tease
and embarrass us, and putting us in the way of knowing how to reason about the
things we see. . . ."
And it is
also due to the unremitting labors of such Orientalists
as Sir W. Jones, Max Müller, Burnouf,
Colebrooke, Haug, St. Hilaire, and so many others, that the Society, as a body,
feels equal respect and veneration for Vedic, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and other
old religions of the world; and, a like brotherly feeling toward its Hindu,
Sinhalese, Parsi, Jain, Hebrew, and Christian members as individual students of
"self," of nature, and of the divine in nature.
Born in the
We have now,
we think, made clear why our members, as individuals, are free to stay outside
or inside any creed they please, provided they do not pretend that none but
themselves shall enjoy the privilege of conscience, and try to force their
opinions upon the others.
In this respect
the Rules of the Society are very strict: It tries to act upon the wisdom of
the old Buddhistic axiom, "Honour thine own faith, and do not slander that of others";
echoed back in our present century, in the "Declaration of
Principles" of the Brahmo Samaj,
which so nobly states that: "no sect shall be vilified, ridiculed, or
hated." In Section VI of the Revised Rules of theTheosophical
Society, recently adopted in General Council, at
It is not
lawful for any officer of the Parent Society to express, by word or act, any
hostility to, or preference for, any one section (sectarian division, or group
within the Society) more than another.
All must be
regarded and treated as equally the objects of the Society's solicitude and exertions.
All have an equal right to have the essential features of their religious
belief laid before the tribunal of an impartial world.
In their
individual capacity, members may, when attacked, occasionally break this Rule,
but, nevertheless, as officers they are restrained, and the Rule is strictly
enforced during the meetings. For, above all human sects
stands Theosophy
in its abstract sense; Theosophy
which is too wide for any of them to contain but which easily contains them.
In
conclusion, we may state that, broader and far more universal in its views than
any existing mere scientific Society, it has plus science its belief in every possibility, and determined will to penetrate into those
unknown spiritual regions which exact science pretends that its votaries have
no business to explore. And, it has one quality more than any religion in that
it makes no difference between Gentile, Jew, or Christian. It is in this spirit
that the Society has been established upon the footing of a Universal
Brotherhood.
Unconcerned
about politics; hostile to the insane dreams of Socialism and of Communism,
which it abhors--as both are but disguised conspiracies of brutal force and
sluggishness against honest labour; the Society cares but little about the
outward human management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations
are directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible worlds.
Whether the
physical man be under the rule of an empire or a
republic, concerns only the man of matter. His body may be enslaved; as to his
soul, he has the right to give to his rulers the proud answer of Socrates to
his judges. They have no sway over the inner man.
Such, then,
is the Theosophical Society, and such its principles, its multifarious aims,
and its objects. Need we wonder at the past misconceptions of the general
public, and the easy hold the enemy has been able to find to lower it in the
public estimation. The true student has ever been a recluse, a man of silence
and meditation. With the busy world his habits and tastes are so little in
common that, while he is studying, his enemies and slanderers have undisturbed
opportunities. But time cures all and lies are but ephemera. Truth
alone is eternal.
About a few
of the Fellows of the Society who have made great scientific discoveries, and
some others to whom the psychologist and the biologist are indebted for the new
light thrown upon the darker problems of the inner man, we will speak later on.
Our object now was but to prove to the reader that Theosophy is neither
"a new fangled doctrine," a political cabal, nor one of those
societies of enthusiasts which are born today but to die tomorrow. That not all
of its members can think alike, is proved by the Society having organized into
two great Divisions--the Eastern and the Western--and the latter being divided
into numerous sections, according to races and religious views.
One man's
thought, infinitely various as are its manifestations, is not all-embracing.
Denied ubiquity, it must necessarily speculate but in one direction; and once
transcending the boundaries of exact human knowledge, it has to err and wander,
for the ramifications of the one Central and absolute Truth are infinite.
Hence, we occasionally find even the greater philosophers losing themselves in
the labyrinths of speculations, thereby provoking the criticism of posterity.
But as all
work for one and the same object, namely, the disenthralment
of human thought, the elimination of superstitions, and the discovery of truth,
all are equally welcome. The attainment of these objects, all agree, can best
be secured by convincing the reason and warming the enthusiasm of the
generation of fresh young minds, that are just ripening into maturity, and
making ready to take the place of their prejudiced and conservative fathers.
And, as each--the great ones as well as small--have trodden the royal road to
knowledge, we listen to all, and take both small and great into our fellowship.
For no honest searcher comes back empty-handed, and even he who has enjoyed the
least share of popular favor can lay at least his mite upon the one altar of
Truth.
Theosophist,
October, 1879
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A B C D EFG H IJ KL M N OP QR S T UV WXYZ
Complete Theosophical Glossary in Plain Text Format
1.22MB
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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
_____________________
Preface to the American Edition Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts The Theosophical Society
First Occult Experiences Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Later Occult Phenomena Appendix
Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of
Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
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