Theos-Talk Archives (June 2007 Message tt00140)

In Wikipedia, "Perennial philosophy" is described as follows:

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The notion of perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis) 
suggests the existence of a universal set of truths and values common 
to all peoples and cultures. . . . [The] German mathematician and 
philosopher Gottfried Leibniz . . . used it to designate the common, 
eternal philosophy that underlies all religions, and in particular 
the mystical streams within them. The term was popularized in more 
recent times by Aldous Huxley in his 1945 book: The Perennial 
Philosophy. The term "perennial philosophy" has also been used as a 
translation of the Hindu concept of Sanatana Dharma, the "everlasting 
or perennial truth, or norm".

The existence of a perennial philosophy is the fundamental tenet of 
the Traditionalist School, formalized in the writings of 20th century 
thinkers René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon....
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Quoted from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

Now consider what H.P. Blavatsky wrote in 1877 about "the One 
Universal Truth":

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Our examination of the multitudinous religious faiths that mankind, 
early and late, have professed, most assuredly indicates that they 
have all been derived from one primitive source. It would seem as if 
they were all but different modes of expressing the yearning of the 
imprisoned human soul for intercourse with supernal spheres. As the 
white ray of light is decomposed by the prism into the various colors 
of the solar spectrum, so the beam of divine truth, in passing 
through the three-sided prism of man's nature, has been broken up 
into vari-colored fragments called RELIGIONS. And, as the rays of the 
spectrum, by imperceptible shadings, merge into each other, so the 
great theologies that have appeared at different degrees of 
divergence from the original source, have been connected by minor 
schisms, schools, and off-shoots from the one side or the other. 
Combined, their aggregate represents one eternal truth; separate, 
they are but shades of human error and the signs of imperfection....
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Quoted from:  ISIS UNVEILED, Volume II, page 639
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu2-12b.htm

And in her magnum opus THE SECRET DOCTRINE (1888), Madame Blavatsky 
tells her readers:

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...this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a select 
number of fragments of its fundamental tenets....

...the teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in 
these volumes, belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the 
Chaldean, nor the Egyptian religion,neither to Buddhism, Islam, 
Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is the 
essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various 
religious schemes are now made to merge back into their original 
element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, 
and become materialised....
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Quoted from:  THE SECRET DOCTRINE, Volume I, page viii
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-0-co.htm#preface

Daniel
BLAVATSKY STUDY CENTER
http://hpb.cc