Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00237)

WHAT IS THEOSOPHY ?


WHO KNOW WHAT THEOSOPHY IS ?


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THEOSOPHY AND THE MAHATMAS


Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to
shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its
deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope,
yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the
understanding of a child.

It is not a belief or dogma formulated or invented by man, but is
a knowledge of the laws which govern the evolution of the
physical, astral, psychical, and intellectual constituents of
nature and of man.

The religion of the day is but a series of dogmas man-made and
with no scientific foundation for promulgated ethics.

Our science as yet ignores the unseen, and failing to admit the
existence of a complete set of inner faculties of perception in
man, it is cut off from the immense and real field of experience
which lies within the visible and tangible worlds.

Theosophy knows that the whole is constituted of the visible and
the invisible, and perceiving outer things and objects to be but
transitory it grasps the facts of nature, both without and
within. It is therefore complete in itself and sees no unsolvable
mystery anywhere; it throws the word coincidence out of its
vocabulary and hails the reign of law in everything and every
circumstance.


FOR THE SAKE OF THE SOUL, THE UNIVERSE EXISTS.

That man possesses an immortal soul is the common belief of
humanity; to this Theosophy adds that he is a soul; and further
that all nature is sentient, that the vast array of objects and
men are not mere collections of atoms fortuitously thrown
together and thus without law evolving law, but down to the
smallest atom all is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule
of law which is inherent in the whole.



GRADUATES OF THE MAN-SCHOOL

There must be beings in the universe whose intelligence is as
much beyond ours, as ours exceeds that of the black beetle, and
who take an active part in the government of the natural order of
things. Pushing further, the Theosophist adds that such
intelligences were once human and came like all of us from other
and previous worlds, where as varied experience had been gained
as is possible on this one.


UNIVERSAL MANIFESTATION and EVOLUTION

We are therefore not appearing for the first time when we come
upon this planet, but have pursued a long, an immeasurable course
of activity and intelligent perception on other systems of
globes, some of which were destroyed ages before the solar system
condensed. This immense reach of the evolutionary system means,
that this planet on which we now are is the result of the
activity and the evolution of some other one that died long ago,
leaving its energy to be used in the bringing into existence of
the earth, and that the inhabitants of the latter in their turn
came from some older world to proceed here with the destined work
in matter.


GREAT FRIENDS OF MANKIND

The most intelligent being in the universe, man, has never, then,
been without a friend, but has a line of Elder Brothers who
continually watch over the progress of the less progressed,
preserve the knowledge gained through aeons of trial and
experience, and continually seek for opportunities of drawing the
developing intelligence of the race on this or other globes to
consider the great truths concerning the destiny of the soul.

These Elder Brothers also keep the knowledge they have gained of
the laws of nature in all departments, and are ready when cyclic
law permits to use it for the benefit of mankind. They have
always existed as a body, all knowing each other, no matter in
what part of the world they may be, and all working for the race
in many different ways. In some periods they are well known to
the people and move among ordinary men whenever the social
organization, the virtue, and the development of the nations
permit it.

It would be subversive of the ends they have in view were they to
make themselves public in the present civilization, which is
based almost wholly on money, fame, glory, and personality. For
this age, as one of them has already said, "is an age of
transition," when every system of thought, science, religion,
government, and society is changing, and men's minds are only
preparing for an alteration into that state which will permit the
race to advance to the point suitable for these elder brothers to
introduce their actual presence to our sight.


THE SCIENTISTS OF TIME and SPACE

They may be truly called the bearers of the torch of truth across
the ages; they investigate all things and beings; they know what
man is in his innermost nature and what his powers and destiny,
his state before birth and the states into which he goes after
the death of his body; they have stood by the cradle of nations
and seen the vast achievements of the ancients, watched sadly the
decay of those who had no power to resist the cyclic law of rise
and fall; and while cataclysms seemed to show a universal
destruction of art, architecture, religion, and philosophy, they
have preserved the records of it all in places secure from the
ravages of either men or time; they have made minute
observations, through trained psychics among their own order,
into the unseen realms of nature and of mind, recorded the
observations and preserved the record; they have mastered the
mysteries of sound and color through which alone the elemental
beings behind the veil of matter can be communicated with, and
thus -- they know what the ultimate divisions of time are and
what are the meaning and the times of the cycles.

One of the Mahatmas, who early corresponded wrote:

"We will first discuss, if you please, the one relating to the
presumed failure of the 'Fraternity' to leave any mark upon the
history of the world. They ought, you think, to have been able,
with their extraordinary advantages, to have gathered into their
schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of
every race. How do you know they have made no such mark? Are you
acquainted with their efforts, successes, and failures? Have you
any dock upon which to arraign them? How could your world collect
proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept closed every
possible door of approach by which the inquisitive could spy upon
them? The precise condition of their success was that they should
never be surprised or obstructed. What they have done they know;
all that those outside their circle could perceive was the
results, the causes of which were masked from view. To account
for these results, many have in different ages invented theories
of the interposition of gods, special providences, fates, the
benign or hostile influences of the stars.



HISTORY and the WORK OF GREAT MEN

There never was a time within or before the so-called historical
period when our predecessors were not molding events and 'making
history,' the facts of which were subsequently and invariably
distorted by historians to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you
quite sure that the visible heroic figures in the successive
dramas were not often but their puppets? We never pretended to be
able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spite
of the general drift of the world's cosmic relations. The cycles
must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and
darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major and
minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established
order of things. And we, borne along the mighty tide, can only
modify and direct some of its minor currents."


CYCLIC LAWS CONTROL MANIFESTATION AND EVOLUTION

It is under cyclic law, during a dark period in the history of
mind, that the true philosophy disappears for a time, but the
same law causes it to reappear as surely as the sun rises and the
human mind is present to see it. But some works can only be
performed by the Master, while other works require the assistance
of the companions.

It is the Master's work to preserve the true philosophy, but the
help of the companions is needed to rediscover and promulgate it.
Once more the elder brothers have indicated where the truth --
Theosophy -- could be found, and the companions all over the
world are engaged in bringing it forth for wider currency and
propagation.

The Elder Brothers of Humanity are men who were perfected in
former periods of evolution. These periods of manifestation are
unknown to modern evolutionists so far as their number are
concerned. The periods, when out of the Great Unknown there come
forth the visible universes, are eternal in their coming and
going, alternating with equal periods of silence and rest again
in the Unknown.


PERFECTION -- the GOAL OF EVOLUTION : ALL KNOWLEDGE

The object of these mighty waves is the production of perfect
man, the evolution of soul, and they always witness the increase
of the number of Elder Brothers; the life of the least of men
pictures them in day and night, waking and sleeping, birth and
death, "for these two, light and dark, day and night, are the
world's eternal ways."


A LIST OF GREAT MEN

In every age and complete national history these men of power and
compassion are given different designations. They have been
called Initiates, Adepts, Magi, Hierophants, Kings of the East,
Wise Men, Brothers, and what not. But in the Sanskrit language
there is a word which, being applied to them, at once thoroughly
identifies them with humanity. It is Mahatma. This is composed of
Maha=great, and Atma=soul; so it means great soul, and as all men
are souls the distinction of the Mahatma lies in greatness.



A GREAT ANCIENT LODGE EXISTS

All along the stream of Indian literature we can find the names
by scores of great adepts who were well known to the people and
who all taught the same story -- the great epic of the human
soul. Their names are unfamiliar to western ears, but the records
of their thoughts, their work and powers remain. Still more, in
the quiet unmovable East there are today by the hundred persons
who know of their own knowledge that the Great Lodge still exists
and has its Mahatmas, Adepts, Initiates, Brothers. [ISIS UNVEILED
II pp 98 -105; SECRET DOCTRINE I pp. 201-210] And yet
further, in that land are such a number of experts in the
practical application of minor though still very astonishing
power over nature and her forces, that we have an irresistible
mass of human evidence to prove the proposition laid down.

And if Theosophy -- the teaching of this Great Lodge -- is as
said, both scientific and religious, then from the ethical side
we have still more proof. A mighty Triad acting on and through
ethics is that composed of Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. The
first, a Hindoo, founds a religion which today embraces many more
people than Christianity, teaching centuries before Jesus the
ethics which he taught and which had been given out even
centuries before Buddha. Jesus coming to reform his people
repeats these ancient ethics, and Confucius does the same thing
for ancient and honorable China.

The Theosophist says that all these great names represent members
of the one single brotherhood, who all have a single doctrine.
And the extraordinary characters who now and again appear in
western civilization, such as St. Germain, Jacob Boehme,
Cagliostro, Paracelsus, Mesmer, Count St. Martin, and Madame H.
P. Blavatsky, are agents for the doing of the work of the Great
Lodge at the proper time. It is true they are generally reviled
and classed as impostors -- though no one can find out why they
are when they generally confer benefits and lay down propositions
or make discoveries of great value to science after they have
died.


WHY THEOSOPHY WAS BROUGHT T THE WEST

Madame Blavatsky brought once more to the attention of the West
the most important system, long known to the Lodge, respecting
man, his nature and destiny. But all are alike called impostors
by a people who have no original philosophy of their own and
whose mendicant and criminal classes exceed in misery and in
number those of any civilization on the earth.

In the West a materialistic civilization having arisen through a
denial of the soul life and nature consequent upon a reaction
from illogical dogmatism, there has not been any investigation of
these subjects and, until lately, the general public has not
believed in the possibility of anyone save a supposed God having
such power.


WORK and POWERS of the ADEPTS, BUDDHAS and DHYANIS

A Mahatma endowed with power over space, time, mind, and matter,
is a possibility just because he is a perfected man. Every human
being has the germ of all the powers attributed to these great
Initiates, the difference lying solely in the fact that we have
in general not developed what we possess the germ of, while the
Mahatma has gone through the training and experience which have
caused all the unseen human powers to develop in him, and
conferred gifts that look god-like to his struggling brother
below.

Telepathy, mind-reading, and hypnotism, all long ago known to
Theosophy, show the existence in the human subject of planes of
consciousness, functions, and faculties hitherto undreamed of.
Mind-reading and the influencing of the mind of the hypnotized
subject at a distance prove the existence of a mind which is not
wholly dependent upon a brain, and that a medium exists through
which the influencing thought may be sent.

It is under this law that the Initiates can communicate with each
other at no matter what distance. Its rationale, not yet admitted
by the schools of the hypnotizers, is, that if the two minds
vibrate or change into the same state they will think alike, or,
in other words, the one who is to hear at a distance receives the
impression sent by the other. In the same way with all other
powers, no matter how extraordinary. They are all natural,
although now unusual, just as great musical ability is natural
though not usual or common.

All that the Mahatma may do is natural to the perfected man; but
if those powers are not at once revealed to us it is because the
race is as yet selfish altogether and still living for the
present and the transitory.

Though the true doctrine disappears for a time from among men it
is bound to reappear, because first, it is impacted in the
imperishable center of man's nature; and secondly, the Lodge
forever preserves it, not only in actual objective records, but
also in the intelligent and fully self-conscious men who, having
successfully over-passed the many periods of evolution which
preceded the one we are now involved in, cannot lose the precious
possessions they have acquired. And because the elder brothers
are the highest product of evolution through whom alone, in
cooperation with the whole human family, the further regular and
workmanlike prosecution of the plans of the "Great Architect of
the Universe" could be carried on, it is well to advert to them
and their Universal Lodge before going to other parts of the
subject.



(from OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY -- extracts)

DTB