Theos-Talk Archives (November 2005 Message tt00013)

November 2, 2005



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KEYS TO ARCHAIC AND PRESENT IN THEOSOPHY 





It is suggested that students be invited to seek for and make their own
in-depth study for and of all the keys H.P.B. gives out in her books: ISIS
UNVEILED, SECRET DOCTRINE, and other of her numerous articles pertaining to
the roots of Christianity, the pagan origins of Church rituals and dogmas. 



Of those Keys, we might mention: the Anthropological, Mystical, Historical,
Astrological, Astronomical, Metaphysical, Cosmogonical, Psychical,
Physiological, Numerical, Ethnological Keys she has furnished in respect to
both Old and New Testaments, especially, the Book of Genesis, the Gospels
and the Revelations, and some Kabalistic texts.



The method used is to employ the correspondences in Nature which are also
found to be analogetic. Above all they are synthetic and universal, not
analytic and divisive. 



Theosophy, is not a creed or dogma invented by theologians, by fallible men,
but ANCIENT and UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE. It is the cumulative testimony of an
innumerable, endless series of Seers. [S D I 272-3] 



It is not a religion, not a creed, nor does it have dogmas. It is not built
on anything but that ancient foundation upon which every one of the
religions of the world have been based.



"However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history-which, for being esoteric
and traditional, is none the less more reliable than profane history-we are
as entitled to our beliefs as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic.



"And that Doctrine says that the Dhyani-Buddhas of the two higher groups,
namely, the "Watchers" or the "Architects," furnished the many and various
races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity
their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated
Monads that had just shaken off their vehicles of the lower Kingdoms-and who
had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin-the great
spiritual truths of the transcendental worlds. (See Book II., "Divine
Dynasties.") 



"Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended on Earth and
reigned over men-"who are themselves." The reigning kings had finished their
cycle on Earth and other worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future
manvantaras they will have risen to higher systems than our planetary world;
and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult
path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next
great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the
instructors and guides of a mankind whose Monads may now yet be
imprisoned-semi-conscious-in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom,
while their lower principles will be animating, perhaps, the highest
specimens of the Vegetable world. 





SEPTENARY EVOLUTION UNIVERSAL -- A PATTERN UBIQUITOUS


"Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Septennial nature;
the Spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual, the
passional, the instinctual, or cognitional; the semi-corporeal and the
purely material or physical natures. 


All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in
a double, centrifugal and centripetal way, one in their ultimate essence,
seven in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is the one depending upon and
subservient to our five physical senses.* Thus far, for individual, human,
sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher
macrocosm. 


The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the
collective progress of the countless lives, the outbreathings of the One
Life; in order that through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this
infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the
mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation,
and then back again, reascending at each new period higher and nearer the
final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach through individual merits and
efforts that plane where it re-becomes the one unconditioned ALL. 


But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary "Road" hedged in by
thorns, that "goes down first, then-


Winds up hill all the way
Yes, to the very end . . . . ." 



Starting upon the long journey immaculate; descending more and more into
sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested
Space-the Pilgrim, having struggled through and suffered in every form of
life and being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half
through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective Humanity. 



This, he has made in his own image. In order to progress upwards and
homewards, the "God" has now to ascend the weary uphill path of the Golgotha
of Life. 



It is the martyrdom of self-conscious existence. 



Like Visvakarman he has to sacrifice himself to himself in order to redeem
all creatures, to resurrect from the many into the One Life. Then he ascends
into heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible absolute Being
and Bliss of Paranirvana, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will
re-descend again at the next "coming," which one portion of humanity expects
in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last
"Kalki Avatar." S D I 267-9



-----



Concerning the Knowers of the Wisdom of the Universe, We find H P B wrote: 



"Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical and
spiritual senses untrammeled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and
compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that was not
corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was rejected, while that
only was recorded as established truth which, in various ages, under
different climes, and throughout an untold series of incessant observations,
was found to agree and receive constantly further corroboration." [Key, p.
85]



"The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its
cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in
the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult
symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations
of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the
bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages
of geometrical signs and glyphs. 



The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of
matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane,
however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. 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. That
for long ages, the "Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and
rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their
lives in learning, not teaching. 



How did they do so? It is answered: 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 organisations 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."

S D I 272-3



She also, said:





"Let no man set up a popery instead of Theosophy, as this would be suicidal
and has ever ended most fatally" has been the plea of H.P.B. to students.(
"Five Messages to American Theosophists" from H. P. Blavatsky. First
Message, 1888 ). 



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Best wishes,



Dallas





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