Ten Important Ideas of Theosophy
from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky
Compiled with excerpts (see footnotes) from The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, and Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge.
1. The Secret Doctrine, or Theosophy, is the accumulated wisdom of the ages. It is found in every religion for those who know how to look. It is not the property of any one religion but is the basis of all religions that follow a spiritual path.
2. Unity is the one fundamental law of Theosophy.
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a. It is a different kind of Unity. It is not a collection of things linked together. It is, in fact, All or one Being. We see the differences and give focus to the separateness. Yet, the differences are always changing. Behind these differences there is that which does not change. That is the Real. |
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b. Everything in the Universe is called Maya, or illusion, because the "things" of the Universe are temporary--just as so much of our lives are temporary. |
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3. There is one absolute REALITY which antecedes all manifested being. It is the Rootless Root of all that was, is, or ever shall be. It is "Be-ness" rather than being. It has two aspects - one symbolized by abstract space, the other by abstract motion. The universe came into being just as our lives and all of our ideas come into being. There is an expression from the unknown which first begins to take the shape of an expression; this in turn has two aspects - spirit and matter. From there ideas come. From ideas the form is expressed. This is how the ideal plan of the Universe came to be. It is how every act of our lives came to be. In this journey we often lose sight of the balance of spirit and matter and begin to experience adjustments (karma) attempting to restore harmony. This we feel as pain until we begin to restore the harmony.
4. There is an absolute law of periodicity - the alternation of day and night, life and death, sleeping and waking. All of nature follows this law of cycles or periodicity. It is the basis of karma which includes both physical and moral law. One cannot express an act without the consideration of morality or ethics involving others and the rest of life.
5. There is an identity of each soul with the Universal Oversoul. We may belong to ourselves but through ourselves we belong to all. Each of our acts, no matter even if seemingly insignificant, affects all others. There is an "obligatory pilgrimage" or the "cycle of necessity," for all life is inherently traveling on the path to the next highest level. In the human being this takes the form of reincarnation. Once the spark of life reaches the human stage, there is no going back into lower forms.
6. We are seven-principled beings. There is the principle of the human body; there is an astral or form body which acts as a template of our physical form; there is the form for the passions and desires or the principle of Kama; there is a life energy or Prana. These four constitute what are called the lower principles. The three higher principles are the mind, or Manas; the vehicle of spirit, or Buddhi; and universal spirit of which we all are part, and this is called Atma.
7. After death, the four lower Principles separate through a disintegration of the astral body and then the passions and desires separate. The three higher principles then enter a longer period of bliss or what is called Devachan - a period analogous to sleep - as we expend the energies of the previous life. Before each life there is a "birth vision" where we see the path we are about to travel. There is also the "death vision" where we see the course of the life we have lived.
8. The human being is the microcosm of the macrocosm. All the hierarchies of the heavens exist within the human being. What appears great and what appears small is only limited by the consciousness of the human being. The concept of "parallel universes" is integral to the philosophy of Theosophy. For each band of consciousness there exists another universe: "All that is inner, so is the outer; nothing is great, nothing is small; nothing is high, nothing is low, in the divine economy."
9. The universe is worked and guided from within outward. The whole cosmos is guided, controlled and animated by an almost endless series of hierarchies of sentient beings. These are called devas, dhyan chohans and sometimes the angels. The human can neither propitiate nor command the devas. But if one reaches the stage where the lower personality is paralyzed, and arrives at the full knowledge of non-separateness of his higher self from the one absolute self, it is possible that even in the terrestrial life the human can become as "one of us." The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. We are co-workers with nature and there is a natural ecology on all levels of being. Environmentalism is one of these levels.
10. The Secret Doctrine teaches no atheism - except as a rejection of idols - including every anthropomorphic god. It admits a logos, or collective "architect of the universe." The plan is carried out by the collective hosts or working powers. All are entitled to the grateful reverence of humanity, and human beings ought to be striving to help the divine evolution of ideas, by becoming to the best of their ability co-workers with nature in the cyclic task. Our "father" within us is our higher principle or the teacher or master within ourselves. Prayer, or better, meditation, is an inner journey to find the real, the permanent, or that which we really are.
"…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." (S.D. I, Preface, viii)
"The first and Fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects." SD I 58; "...there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest...are but so many various differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations)...of that One...then the first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered." (SD I 75)
"a) The fundamental unity of all existence. This unity is a thing altogether different from the common notion of unity - as when we say that a nation or an army is united; or that this planet is united to that by lines of magnetic force or the like. The teaching is not that. It is that existence is one thing, not any collection of things linked together. Fundamentally, there is ONE BEING. This Being has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive is Spirit, or consciousness. The negative is substance, the subject of consciousness. This Being is the Absolute in its primary manifestation. Being absolute there is nothing outside it. It is ALL BEING. It is indivisible, else it would not be absolute. If a portion could be separated, that remaining could not be absolute, because there would at once arise the question of comparison between it and the separated part. Comparison is incompatible with any idea of absoluteness. Therefore it is clear that this fundamental One Existence, or Absolute Being, must be the Reality in every form there is...(I said that though this was clear to me I did not think that many in the Lodges would grasp it. "Theosophy," she said, "is for those who can think, or for those who can drive themselves to think, not mental sluggards." H.P.B. has grown very mild of late. "Dumbskulls" used to be her name for the average student.)" ( "The Secret Doctrine and Its Study," Robert Bowen)
…"there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause — dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European philosophy — is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation." (S.D. Vol. I, Proem, p. 14)
"This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe." (S.D. Vol. I, Proem, p. 17)
"(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul — a spark of the former — through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, — or the OVER-SOUL, — has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. This is why the Hindus say that the Universe is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in every atom of the universe, the six principles in Nature being all the outcome — the variously differentiated aspects — of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in the Universe whether Cosmical or micro-cosmical;" (S.D., Vol 1 - Proem, p. 17)
Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a septenary during life; a quintile just after death, in Kamaloka; and a threefold Ego, Spirit-Soul, and consciousness in Devachan. (HPB, Key to Theosophy, p. 98)
For the human eidolon it begins when the Atma-Buddhi-Manasic triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles, or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state. "At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator looking down into the arena he is quitting; he feels and knows the justice of all the suffering that has overtaken him."-- "As the man at the moment of death has a retrospective insight into the life he has led, so, at the moment he is reborn on to earth, the Ego, awaking from the state of Devachan, has a prospective vision of the life which awaits him, and realizes all the causes that have led to it. He realizes them and sees futurity, because it is between Devachan and re-birth that the Ego regains his full manasic consciousness, and rebecomes for a short time the god he was, before, in compliance with Karmic law, he first descended into matter and incarnated in the first man of flesh. The "golden thread" sees all its "pearls" and misses not one of them. (HPB, Key to Theosophy, Section 8, pp. 162-3)
"(6.) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man -- the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm -- is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and who -- whether we give to them one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels -- are "messengers" in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws." (SD I p. 275)
"(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu sense of the word nastika, or the rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a Nastika...(2) It admits a Logos or a collective 'Creator' of the Universe; a Demi-urgos -- in the sense implied when one speaks of an 'Architect' as the 'Creator' of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demiurgos is no personal deity, -- i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god, -- but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces." (S.D. I, pp. 279-80)