Theos-Talk Archives (June 2003 Message tt00097)

1st Series response. Studying The SECRET DOCTRINE



Friday, June 13, 2003

Dear Marko:

The study of The SECRET DOCTRINE is an ongoing work at
blavatsky.net

http://www.blavatsky.net


I see you already have the Bowen article and you are following
the outline of study suggested there.


Here are some of the preliminary studies on which we made notes.

If these are useful, please ask and more can be sent.

This is a First Series

=========================
1

The Secret Doctrine: Purpose, Layout, Value



A NOTE:


>From its Title Page the scope of The Secret Doctrine is
indicated. It is not "a," nor "the," but, "The Synthesis of
Science, Religion and Philosophy." It is not synthetic, but
relying on universal Law, it demonstrates and shows the
adjustment of observed effects to primal and metaphysical causes.

It offers unification of knowledge, a knowledge obtained by the
use of the senses physical and super-physical, and the power of
observation on many panes more subtle than the physical.
[Therefore, we need to sharpen our power to observe around and
inside of ourselves.] The Soul is the Perceiver, and "looks
directly on ideas." Being central in each individual, everything
moves around it. It observes, considers and records. It notes
the deductive processes of the mind and the inductive results of
intuition at work, and draws them into a united, living, and
consistent whole. It sifts through detail and seeks the cause,
the core of events, and handles the value of opinions. It deals
with purposes and powers, with thoughts and urgings, with joys
and sorrows, always seeking the "Why ?" of things.

The propositions of philosophy science and religion assembled by
HPB in The Secret Doctrine do not clash, but blend into a
harmonious whole at all points. In this way we receive one more
proof of the fact (as claimed on SD I 272-3), that this book is a
report of the observations made, tested and verified by an
enormous number of researchers who have labored together or
separately in all ages, from the dimmest of pasts up to and
including the present, in every department of nature, visible and
invisible.

It proceeds from the metaphysics of the Universal to the details
of the physical and the personal. The whole reveals the relation
of the many parts to each other and to IT. In addition it
reveals the lines of force, the energies and powers that actuate
those subjective planes we call the psychic, the volitional, and
the spiritual, or ideal. "As above, so below," is seen to
operate as analogy and correspondence in its multitude of
applications here. This is the method of teaching used in all
ancient esoteric schools.

Both the inductive and the deductive systems of reasoning are
found interblended, as they are inseparable, just as a magnet has
polar opposites, so exist Spirit, eternally indispensable to
matter. A grasp of the implications of the Pythagorean Decad
gives a key that can be applied everywhere in understanding the
Secret Doctrine [ see SD I p. 200 ]. Analogy is said to be a
sure clue--a guiding thread that leads the pupil to understand
Nature's economy. "Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the
only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, through the
inextricable paths of her domain, towards the primal and final
mysteries." SD II 153

"From Gods to man, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush
light, from the Sun or the vital heat of the meanest organic
being--the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, whose
links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the first key to
the world-problem, and those links have to be studied
coordinately in their occult relations to each other."	SD I 604


Although HPB repeatedly disclaims any completeness in her writing
and presentation, the salvation of the reader lies in the
paradoxical fact that it is complete in its incompleteness. The
faithful student, applying everywhere the law of analogy and
correspondence, and bearing in mind the relations of the
"principles" in man to nature, will grasp the most difficult
concepts without trouble. But an understanding of those
fundamentals has to be secured: the "Three" "fundamentals" [SD
I 14-19], and the "7" "principles" of man and nature.
[SD I 157, II 593, 596]



HPB'S MISSION AND WORK


In musing over the pages of The SECRET DOCTRINE, one may feel
this discloses some of the important aspects of HPB's mission and
work:

A gap had been created in Europe between the wisdom of antiquity
and the knowledge that has been recorded in the West following
the Renaissance in the 13-14th Century in the effort to overthrow
the bonds of creedalism and dogmatism placed by the Church on
Europe.

She shows that our modern knowledge suffers from this
information gap, and in Isis and the S D as well as in her many
articles, she shows its root preservation is in records kept in
the Orient. She speaks there of the "Oriental Kaballah."

To create this 1,000 year gap, between the 3rd to the 14th
Centuries, fanatics of Christianity and Islam, systematically
sought for and destroyed any records they could find relating to
the wisdom of antiquity. Europe, and America her child, lost
their traditional and ancestral lore by this process.

Platonism, alone, served as a guide beacon in the West as a
counter-balance to blind dogmatism and materialism. Periodically
we can trace its return in the writings of the Neo-Platonists,
the Florentine Renaissance, the Cambridge Platonists and the
Transcendentalists of New England, and finally, the Theosophists
of this century.

A knowledge of the moral factor had to be restored to psychology
and to science and daily life. It is a basis for the freedom of
the individual. And this position leads to a consideration of
the Fundamental Truths, Soul immortality, Karma, Reincarnation
and Brotherhood.

HPB's mission is the restoration of this link, the establishing
of a bridge of understanding between modern thought based on the
observation of our physical and psychic environment, and the
ancient source-record of scientific, philosophical and religious
thought, study and intuition preserved in the East.

For this reason, HPB starts the SD with an exposition of the 3
Fundamentals [Deity Universal -- Law All-pervasive -- Evolution
of All Beings] and the sequence of development starting on
metaphysical planes at the onset of evolution. One may surmise
that those fundamentals are analogous to processes proceeding
first, in Kosmos, in a Solar System (Cosmos), in a human, and in
the Monad, or "life-atomic" entity.

She declares that the source of the information offered is the
archaic heritage of all mankind.

-----------------------------------------------------------


QUOTATIONS FROM HPB:


"The Secret Doctrine merely asserts that a system known as the
Wisdom Religion, the work of generations of adepts and seers, the
sacred heirloom of pre-historic times--actually exists, though
hitherto preserved in the greatest secrecy by the present
Initiates; and it points to various corroborations of its
existence to this very day, to be found in ancient and modern
works. Giving a few fragments only, it there shows how these
explain the religious dogmas of the present day, and how they
might serve Western religions, philosophies and science, as
sign-posts along the untrodden paths of discovery. The work is
essentially fragmentary, giving statements of sundry facts taught
in the esoteric schools--kept, so far, secret--by which the
ancient symbolism of various nations is interpreted. It does not
even give the keys to it, but merely opens a few of the hitherto
secret drawers.

No new philosophy is set up in the Secret Doctrine, only the
hidden meaning of some of the religious allegories of antiquity
is given, light being thrown on these by the esoteric sciences,
and the common source is pointed out, whence all the
world-religions and philosophies have sprung.

Its chief attempt is to show, that however divergent the
respective doctrines and systems of old may seem on their
external or objective side, the agreement between all becomes
perfect, so soon as the esoteric or inner side of these beliefs
and their symbology is examined and a careful comparison is made.


It is also maintained that its doctrines and sciences, which form
an integral cycle of universal cosmic facts and metaphysical
axioms and truths, represent a complete and unbroken system; and
that he who is brave and persevering enough, ready to crush the
animal in himself, and forgetting the human self, sacrifices it
to his Higher Ego, can always find his way to become initiated
into these mysteries.

This is all the Secret Doctrine claims.

Are not a few facts and self-evident truths, found in these
volumes--all the literary defects of the exposition
notwithstanding--truths already proved practically to some,
better than the most ingenious "working" hypotheses, liable to be
upset any day, than the unexplainable mysteries of religious
dogmas, or the most seemingly profound philosophical speculations
? Can the grandest among these speculations be really
profound...when they are limited and conditioned by their
author's brain-mind, hence dwarfed and crippled...cut down to fit
limited sensuous perceptions, which will not allow the intellect
to go beyond their enchanted circle?..."
--HPB-The Babel of Modern Thought - HPB Art III 44-5


[ HPB gives Sinnett the purpose and plan of the SD. ]
HPB to APS, p. 88-9

"The Secret Doctrine will explain many things, set to right more
than one perplexed student."	ML 289

"The Secret Doctrine is not a treatise, or a series of vague
theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in
this century."	SD I xxxviii

"These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor
does the author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore.
now made public for the first time in the world's history."
SD I vii

"Is it a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a
religion, nor is its philosophy new...it is as old as thinking
man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time, but
have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one
European Initiate--especially by the late Ragon."	SD I xxxvi


" The latter," The Secret Doctrine "though giving out many
fundamental tenets from the Secret Doctrine of the East, raise
but a small corner of the dark veil. For no one, not even the
greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could--even if
he would--give out promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving
world, that which has been so effectually concealed from it for
long aeons and ages."	SD I xvi


"...it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the
teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these
volumes, belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the
Chaldean nor Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is
the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the
various religious schemes are not made to merge back into their
original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown,
developed, and become materialized."	SD I viii


"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 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."	SD II
794


"For in the 20th century of our era scholars will begin to
recognize that the S D has neither been invented nor
exaggerated, but on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally,
that its teachings antedate the Vedas."	SD I xxxvii


"It is only in the XXth century that portions, if not the whole,
of the present work will be vindicated."	SD II 442


"We give facts, and show land-marks: let the wayfarer follow
them. What is given here is amply sufficient for this century."
SD II 742


HPB's Preface to the Voice of the Silence: "The work which I
here translate forms part of the same series as that from which
the "Stanzas" of the Book of Dzyan were taken, on which the
Secret Doctrine is based."	Voice p. i



AUTHORSHIP OF THE S D


"I have also noted your thoughts about the Secret Doctrine. Be
assured that what she has not annotated from scientific and other
works, we have given or suggested to her. Every mistake or
erroneous notion, corrected and explained by her from the works
of other Theosophists was corrected by me or under my
instructions. It is a more valuable work than its predecessor,
an epitome of occult truths that will make it a source of
information and instruction for the earnest student for long
years to come."
--K.H. Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, 1st Series, p. 54
[see also Path, Vol. 8, p. 1]


[HPB on the method of seeing the SD references in the Astral
Light.]	HPB to APS, Letters, p. 194-5
[ see also Path, Vol. 9, pp 266-270, 297-302 ]



S D AND OCCULTISM


"...this work is written for the instruction of students of
Occultism."	SD I 23


"An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that
lead to a correlations of elements, whether psychic or physical,
that may produce a hurtful result as well as a beneficent one.
But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret
of the ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed
under mythological symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more
land-marks towards a retrospective view of the past, as
containing useful information with regard to the origin of man,
the evolution of the races and geognosy...a mass of facts is
given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the
evolution of the globe and the races, human and animal, are as
fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them." S D
I 306-7



ANTIQUITY OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE


"The Secret Doctrine [not the book] was the universally diffused
religion of the ancient and prehistoric world." SD I xxxvi


[ HPB claims incredible antiquity for SD sources.
SD II 438-9, 449, 200-201, ]



STUDYING THE S D


HPB on how to study the SD. Notes by Bowen.	Pamphlet.


HPB on method of instruction used in the SD	SD II 81



AUTHORITY IN THEOSOPHY


"As all Theosophists have to be judged by their deeds and not by
what they may write or say, so all Theosophical books must be
accepted on their merits, and not according to any claim to
authority which they may put forward."	Key, p. 300


"It is above everything important to keep in mind that no
theosophical book acquires the least additional value from
pretended authority."	SD I xix


"...there are proofs of a certain character which become
irrefutable and are undeniable in the long run, to every earnest
and unprejudiced mind...such were offered to her [HPB]...But,
this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy
cannot be expected to have any more weight than any other
"doxy."...Therefore are we, Occultists, fully prepared for such
questions as these: "How does he know that the writer has not
invented the whole scheme? And supposing she has not, how can
one tell that the whole foregoing [scheme of evolution--Rounds,
Globes, Races, etc...], as given in the Stanzas, is not the
product of the imagination of the ancients? How could they have
preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible
antiquity? The answer that the history of the world since its
formation and to its end "is written in the stars," i.e., is
recorded in the Zodiac and the Universal Symbolism whose keys are
in the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the
doubters...So are our data based upon the same readings [of the
Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics],
in addition to the almost inexhaustible number of Secret works of
which Europe knows nothing--plus the perfect knowledge by the
initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded..."	S D II
438-9


"To the mentally lazy or obtuse, Theosophy must remain a riddle;
for in the world mental as in the world spiritual each man must
progress by his own efforts. The writer cannot do the reader's
thinking for him, nor would the latter be any the better off if
such vicarious thought were possible." Key, Preface.



2nd AND 3rd VOLUMES OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE.


"Two years ago, the writer promised in the S D [ Vol. II, p.
798], a third and even a fourth volume of that work. This third
volume (now almost ready) treats of the ancient Mysteries of
Initiation, gives sketches--from the esoteric stand-point--of
many of the most famous and historically known philosophers and
hierophants...from the archaic down to the Christian era, and
traces the teachings of all these sages to one and the same
source of all knowledge and science--the esoteric doctrine of
Wisdom Religion...Now the main point of Vol. III of the S D is to
prove by tracing the blinds in the works of ancient Indian,
Greek, and other philosophers of note, and also in all the
ancient Scriptures --the presence of an uninterrupted esoteric
allegorical method and symbolism; to show, as far as lawful,
that with the keys of interpretation as taught in the Eastern
Hindu-Buddhistic Canon of Occultism, the Upanishads, the Puranas,
the Sutras, the Epic poems of India and Greece, the Egyptian Book
of the Dead, the Scandinavian Eddas, as well as the Hebrew Bible,
and even the classical writings of Initiates (such as Plato,
among others)--all, from first to last, yield a meaning quite
different from their dead-letter texts. That is flatly denied by
some of the foremost scholars of the day. They have not got the
key, ergo--no such keys can exist..."	HPB Art. II 80-81
"The Negators of Science" Lucifer April 1891



=================================


AVAILABLE AIDS TO STUDYING THE SECRET DOCTRINE.


Index	a separate book

Theosophical Glossary	Explains Words used in Theosophy
and ancient language terms

Isis Unveiled	should first be read as it gives a
survey of evidence which is
developed in the SD.

Index to Isis	Separate book

Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge
covers questions asked of HPB by her students
for the first 200 pages

Studies in The SECRET DOCTRINE (2 Vols)
Series of articles first published
in Theosophy Vols. 11, 12, 13.
In Theosophical Movement V. 5, 6,
29, 30, 31 (now in a book)

Articles on the Study of the SD

"Authorship of the SD"	HPB and 2 Mahatmas
WQJ Art II 57
[ Path, Vol. 8, p. 1 ]

"A Word on the SD"	WQJ Art II 60

"Esoteric Buddhism & the SD"	.	.	HPB Art III 18

"Mistaken Notions on the SD"	.	.	HPB Art I 485

"Hidden Hints in the SD"
articles by WQJ - end of Vol. 1 of
WQJ Articles. Covers points
of special interest in first
220 pages of Vol. 1.

"Seeming Discrepancies"	.	.	HPB Art I 488
"The Babel of Modern Thought"	.	.	HPB Art III 35
"My Books".	.	.	.	.	HPB Art I 475
"Science and the SD"	.	.	Series in Theosophy
"Isis and the SD"	.	.	.	Thy 6, p. 179
HPB's Method in the SD	.	.	Thy 22, p. 217



============================

Best wishes,

Let us know if more is wanted

Dallas


===========================


-----Original Message-----
From: Marko M
Sent:	Friday, June 13, 2003 12:46 AM
To:
Subject:	Introducing myself, S D STUDY Notes needed



Re: Introducing myself, S D STUDY, Notes needed

Hi all

I'm 27 years old life traveller from Finland. I've been
interested
on theosophical subjects since 13 and here in Finland i have been
familiar with Theosophical society, Christosophia society and
Finnish Rose Cross society.

Main reason for taking part of Blavatsky Study and theos-talk
groups is, that we have founded a web-based study course for
Secret
Doctrine. It's mainly in Finnish language, but many references go
to English sites. I hope, you don't bother if i ask questions
about
S D when we go forward with study.

As a start, we choose to read the Foreword and Summaries in The
SECRET DOCTRINE as
suggested by Cmdr. Bowen, Blavatsky's student.

Our site is on:

http://www.aikainviisaus.net/

http://www.aikainviisaus.net/so/phpBB2/ -> direct link to Secret
Doctrine forum


First of all, I'd like to ask, if there is any study material on

internet, where SD is commented by chronological and thorough
way?


I wish you all the best life can give,


Marko

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