Basic Theosophy
An Introduction to the Perennial Wisdom
AUSTRALIAN SUMMER SCHOOL
INAUGURAL SESSION: 2008
BASIC THEOSOPHY - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PERENNIAL WISDOM
OUR OVERALL APPROACH, FUNDAMENTAL PREMISSES AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Responsible Freedom - Diversity in Unity - Reverence and Precedence
Responsible Freedom -In a THEOSOPHICAL Context Freedom does NOT mean saying and doing anything you like.
Diversity in Unity HPB, Semi-HPB, Non-HPB are three main modes of 'Spiritual Transport'.
They are NOT mutually exclusive.
Balance and Opposition Forces in opposition are not necessarily in conflict. They are necessary for balance and movement.
Reverence and Precedence Irrigating Field =Irrigating Humanity Irrigating System with Water to grow crops or for household consumption =Fecundate Humanity with Theosophy to flower in an Enlightened Age
Without Masters ..................... no Water Without HPB .... ............... ....... no Well to draw Water from Without AB/CWL, etc. .............. .no distribution network of pipes Without Humanity/us ............... no end consumers
For water to flow out of our taps, we need: Water - Well spring - Pipework/taps/Washer =Spirit - Soul - Body.
Common sense dictates that you can't design your pipework first without knowing how much water you want to flow. No need to know the volume flow, pressure drop, friction in the pipes, so you need to start with the well and work forwards from it. Not backwards towards it.
Therefore we must start with The Mahatma Letters and H p Blavatsky (ML/HPB). However far away we move away from the well, the water in our taps is always from it albeit polluted by the crud in the pipes. We can't get water in our taps by merely sticking our heads in the well. So however far we progress from ML/HPB we always carry the wisdom with us. Its not a question of back to Blavatsky, or lets drop HPB, but forward WITH HPB and others.
Water is ONE element, but on earth we can discern the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean each with their individual water quality and associated marine life unique to each ocean in question. By analogy, other great souls have also dug Wells and their water combines with the HPB water in our network - sages and philosophers like Ramana Maharshi, Paul Brunton, Krishnamurti, Steiner, Bailey, Tolle, Gibran.
Even if one washer fails - no water. So all components are equally necessary. Yes, the Well at Source is as important as the tap washer at the terminal, but in term of priority, the well obviously comes first. It is the pressure of water that determines the kind of washer - not the washer the water.
We can easily change a worn out washer at home even if it means crawling in a loft full of spiders to turn the water off. Try digging a deep well in your garden. But that is what HPB and other have done for us.
So there is HIERARCHY and PRIORITY of equal importance within a Unity. This is a bit like a koan. Total illogical nonsense to the Lower Mind, but, not non-sense, but Common Sense to the Higher Mind.
WHAT THEN IS CORE THEOSOPHY?
You cannot have an Apple without its Core, but just a Core ain't no Apple! So, always, a balance is needed.
THREE FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITIONS Not propositions or proposals in the everyday sense of the term but axioms or precepts:
«see summary on Page 8»
First Proposition 'An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. There is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause - is the rootless root of all that was, is, or ever shall be.'
Second Proposition The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing, called the Manifesting Stars, and the Sparks of Eternity.
The Eternity of the Pilgrim is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence. The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.'
Third Proposition The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul - a spark of the former - through the Cycle of Incarnation, or Necessity, in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.
Now such high abstract language can sometimes feel daunting and quite disconnected from our life, so as always with Theosophy lets examine the doctrine not, never as mere theory, but as something for us to investigate in Nature and ourselves.
Do we not then find that:
· An acorn is part of an oak tree - a spark of the tree, so to say · The Tree is part of the plant kingdom - a spark of that kingdom · Then the plant kingdom a spark of a greater, more all-inclusive realm of Life?
We see how the Microcosm is a spark of the Macrocosm, OR the Macrocosm emanates the Microcosm WHICH EVER SEEKS TO RE-UNITE WITH ITS EMANATING SOURCE (unfolding out of Itself) BY JOURNEYING THROUGH ALL THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE AND REALMS OF EXPERIENCE.
Cosmos-7Solar Logos-7Monad-7Personality
Corollary to Three Propositions as --
FOUR BASIC IDEAS <<see summary on page 8» 1. The FUNDAMENTAL UNITY OF ALL EXISTENCE. This unity is a thing altogether different from the common notion of unity - as when we say a nation or an army is united; or that two objects are united by lines of magnetic force, or the like. The teaching is not that. It is that existence is ONE THING, not any collection of hings linked together. Fundamentally, then, there is ONE Being. This BEING has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive is Spirit, or CONSCIOUSNESS. The negative is SUBSTANCE, the subject of consciousness. The Atom, the Man, the God are each separately, as well as all collectively, Absolute Being in their last analysis, that is in their REAL INDIVIDUALITY. It is this idea which must always be held in the background of the mind to form the basis for each conception or idea that arises from a study of the Esoteric wisdom and occult Sciences. The moment one lets go (and it is most easy to do so when engaged in any of the many intricate aspects of the Esoteric Philosophy) the idea of SEPARATION supervenes, and the study loses its value.
2. The second idea to hold fast is that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS DEAD MATTER ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE. Every last atom is alive. It cannot be otherwise, since every atom is itself fundamentally Absolute Being - so are all of its constituent particles. Therefore the idea that there such thing as an inert
ethereal medium call it what you like, in which angels and elementals disport themselves like trout in water is a common idea, but is mistaken. The true idea shows every atom of substance, no matter of what plane, to be in itself a LIFE.
3. The third basic idea to be held is that Man is the MICROCOSM. As he is so, then all the Hierarchies of the Heavens exist within him. But in truth there is neither Macrocosm, not Microcosm but ONE EXISTENCE.
Great and small are such only as viewed by a limited consciousness.
4. The fourth and last basic idea to be held is that expressed in the Great Hermetic Axiom. It really sums up and synthesizes all the others.
As is the Inner, so is the Outer;
As is the Great, so is the Small;
As it is above, so it is below;
There is but ONE LIFE AND LAW; And he that worketh it is ONE.
Nothing is Inner, nothing is Outer;
Nothing is GREAT, nothing is small;
Nothing is High, nothing is low, in the Divine Economy.
So no matter what one chooses to study and contemplate in the Esoteric Philosophy, one must correlate it with these four basic ideas.
RECAPITUALATION ON COSMOGENESIS_COSMIC EVOLUTION SUMMARY OF THE POSITION «see summary on page 9»
let us recapitulate and show, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, how difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.
(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: But modern science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organizations to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions-so obtained as to stand as independent evidence-of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences.
(2) The fundamental law in that system, the central point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.
(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. Yet IT cannot be identified with a being of any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both.
(4) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.
(5) Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is CONSCIOUS: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that because we do not perceive any signs-which we can recognize-of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there. There is no such thing as either "dead" or "blind" matter, as there is no "Blind" or "Unconscious" law. These find no place among the conceptions of Occult philosophy. The latter
never stops at surface appearances, and for it the noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts.
(6) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man-the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm-is the living witness to this Universal Law and to the mode of its action. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change in man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and who-whether we give to them one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels-are "messengers" in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence;
(7) The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism.
It is on the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter and its real essence that the student has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies.
The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with its endless adaptations is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure the "survival of the fittest," though so cruel in their immediate action-all are working toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that what is called "unconscious Nature" is in reality an aggregate of forces manipulated by semiintelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits, (Dhyan Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the unmanifested LOGOS, and constitutes at one and the same time the MIND of the Universe and its immutable LAW.
Three distinct representations of the Universe in its three distinct aspects are impressed upon our thought by the esoteric philosophy: the PRE-EXISTING (evolved from) the EVER-EXISTING; and the PHENOMENAL-the world of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof.
FIVE PROVEN FACTS ON COSMOGENESIS_COSMIC EVOLUTION «see summary on page 9»
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following facts:
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu sense of the word nastika, or the rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a Nastika.
(2) It admits a Logos or a collective "Creator" of the Universe; a Oemi-urgos-in the sense implied when one speaks of an "Architect" as the "Creator" of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the Constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Oemiurgos is no personal deity,-i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god,-but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces.
As to the other forces(3) They are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that energy, and which is the Ohyan-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the Universal mind.
(4) Matter is Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no inorganic or dead matter in nature, the distinction between the two made by Science being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason.
Whatever Science may think, however-and exact Science is a fickle, as we all know by experienceOccultism knows and teaches differently, from time immemorial-from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his successors.
"Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. . . . There is nothing dead in Nature.
Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism [Gaia]." (Paracelsus, "Philosophia ad Athenienses")
(5) The Universe was evolved out of its ideal plan, upheld through Eternity that which the Vedantins call Parabrahm. This is practically identical with the conclusions of the highest Western Philosophy-"the innate, eternal, and self-existing Ideas" of Plato,
COSMOGENESIS_EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM + ADDENDA ON OCCULT AND MODERN SCIENCE - SUMMARY OF THE POSITION
The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as void, a vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the "lights" of science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that "two lights make darkness" found its application it is in this case, when one half of the "lights" imposes its Forces and "modes of motion" on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same.
But all is doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age of the hundred "isms" and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf. Unfortunately, no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate any more than units and individuals do.
While Materialists deny everything in the universe, save matter, Archreologists are trying to dwarf antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim to ancient Wisdom by tampering with Chronology. Our present day Orientalists and Historical writers are to ancient History that which the white ants are to the buildings in India.
Historical facts will remain as concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses, denials and scepticism. But very happily actual History repeats herself, for she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts and events deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will ascend once more and reappear on the surface.
ANTHROPOGENESIS - SUMMARY OF THE POSITION
Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of the "Secret Doctrine" has to be closed. The forty-nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the Commentaries just given are all that can be published in these volumes. These, with some still older records-to which none but the highest Initiates have access-and a whole library of comments, glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man's genesis.
It is from the Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of esoteric antiquity upon geology, anthropology, and even ethnology.
But even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as a possible reality.
All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have a too long period, full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the denials of our Teachers. For example, writing, our scientists say, was unknown to Panini; and this sage nevertheless composed a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the grammars that were ever made! Panini is made out to have lived barely a few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central Asia (whence the philologists and historians show us the ancestors of the same Panini, the Brahmins, coming into India) are covered with writing, two and three thousand years old (12,000, according to some fearless
palreontologists).
Thus let it be. For no great truth was ever accepted a priori. and generally a century or two passed before it began to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versa. It is only in the XXth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be vindicated.
"When you doubt, abstain," says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this sage of the past Ages is found preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical Wisdom. "In contemplation," he says (in any question of Knowledge, we add), "if a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives of British scepticism we ought to close the debate.
ANTHROPOGENESIS_ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS + SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED - CONCLUSION
And now to conclude.
We have concerned ourselves with the ancient records of the nations, with the doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records are the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first sight, seem out of place in this volume.
Statement of the Problem But they were necessary in truth. In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose very origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more than prehistoric races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject matter as it would be if only the philosophy of one special race, and its evolution, were concerned.
The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of Time; and that, even, which is historic-i.e., that which is found scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature-is, in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well-known historical nation.
The Method of Solution It is only by bringing before the reader an abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every nation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical system and its fundamental traditions-that he can be made to see that so many streams of the same water must have had a common source from which they started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said, "Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and all will be clear."
But when it becomes undeniably proven that the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an esoteric history of the world, is based on fact; that, though hitherto unknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned, (because they never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints thrown out by the ancient classics), it is still no fairy tale, but an actuality-then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they were but the silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are unreachable without a new key-is borne out by too many proofs to be easily dismissed.
But to do this, corroboration by even a few "historical" proofs was necessary, though all know the real value of the so-called "historical evidence." For, whether man had appeared on earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years ago, can make no difference to profane History, since it begins hardly a couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually-destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect the average reader has been brought up in for exact science, even that short Past would remain meaningless, unless the esoteric teachings were corroborated and supported on the spot-whenever possible-by references to historical names of a so-called historical period. This is the only guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start among the (to him) unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the pre-historic ages.
This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that the desire to do so, which has led Blavatsky to be constantly bringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the Archaic and quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up without order or method the various and widely-separated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.
To accomplish the proposed task, Blavatsky had to resort to the rather unusual means of dividing each volume or Book into three Parts; the first of which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this globe. But these two volumes had to serve as a PROLOGUE, and prepare the reader's mind for the material to follow. In treating of Cosmogony and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that no religion, since the very earliest, has ever been entirely based on fiction, as none was the object of special revelation; and that it is dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth. Finally, that no human-born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only: and that bosom is in the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the heart of nature, that shrine whence issued the early races of primeval Humanity, and which is the cradle of physical man.
Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic, earliest Races contained in their hitherto secret Scriptural records. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of esoteric interpretation, and even this has only been partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for anyone person to undertake, far more to accomplish. Our main concern was simply to prepare the soil. These two volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made to fell and uproot the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited ignorance.
