Source of Theosophy
The truths of the Secret Doctrine are not the result of one person's
opinion. Rather they have been preserved and extended according to a "scientific
method" employed over long long centuries by adepts "testing,
checking, and verifying" the results of fellow adepts. HPB explains:
The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages ... 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 ... 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 experience. -Secret Doctrine
by Blavatsky, Vol I, page 273.
William Q. Judge, the very close student and colleague of Blavatsky,
summarized the source of Theosophy:
Theosophy is not a new invention but the essential underlying truth
of all philosophies; it is a body of doctrine in philosophy, science,
and ethics, principally derived from the Eastern archaic sacred Theories,
which were worked out by a brotherhood of devotees and initiates who
used every method of scientific investigation known to us, as well as
their own highly developed practices of observation, experiment, concentration,
and meditation to reach the truth. They traced all phenomena by every
possible means from their significance to their source, and by comparison
of their independent searches and observations recorded their conclusions
and accepted such results only as could stand the test of applicability
and verification from every point and in every conceivable direction.
This slowly accumulating body of facts furnished the basis for these
great universal doctrines, and the psychic development of these devotees
and students gave them great power over nature and insight into the
mystic side of the universe and man. These doctrines were handed down
from generation to generation since time immemorial, and were guarded
by the most sacredly pledged disciples, who had devoted their whole
lives to the development of their psychic and spiritual faculties. The
reason why these doctrines had been so strenuously guarded from the
profane and unripe is because the possession of their knowledge gives
great power for use or abuse. It embraces the science of the finer forces
in nature, their relation and correspondences in themselves, and the
knowledge of their uses and application for the benefit or destruction
of humanity.
Although this transcendental knowledge was accessible at all times
to those who were ripe and who felt the craving for it strong enough
to make the unremitting sacrifice, it would be acquired only by those
whose supreme intensity of excitement and enthusiasm made it possible
in those times to incur the self-denial and renunciation of worldly
concerns necessary to initiation. Nor is it any different now, and never
will be, except that portions of the doctrine are given out from time
to time, such as may be safely trusted to an advancing age, because
to penetrate into the mystery of nature requires a state of the greatest
purity and perfection, and this final perfection is not a gift to be
expected from without, but is to be worked for by those who desire it.
(From Theosophy and The Theosophical Society, an article by W.
Q. Judge)
Blavatsky was taught by two of the Masters who were part of this body
of initiated seers referred to above. So she once answered a question as
follows:
What I do believe in is (1), the unbroken oral teachings revealed by
living divine men during the infancy of mankind to the
elect among men; (2), that it has reached us unaltered;
and (3) that the MASTERS are thoroughly
versed in the science based on such uninterrupted teaching. (From
What
Shall We Do For Our Fellow-Men? by H.P. Blavatsky)
| H.P. Blavatsky wrote two seminal books that contain the knowledge that was permitted to be released to the world. These books are necessary to all students seeking esoteric knowledge. |
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"No Religion Higher Than Truth"
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