Theos-Talk Archives (October 2004 Message tt00413)

Oct 29 2004



Mahatmas and Theosophy



In recent posts the question of the Masters, Mahatmas and Adepts and their
knowledge of THEOSOPHY has come under review. 



Here are some basic statements on that important subject





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WHAT IS THEOSOPHY ?





WHO KNOW WHAT THEOSOPHY IS ?





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INTRODUCTORY





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." 



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. 



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 The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY 



DTB





Dallas





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