What are the Theosophists?
By
Are they what
they claim to be--students of natural law, of ancient and modern philosophy,
and even of exact science? Are they Deists, Atheists, Socialists, Materialists,
or Idealists; or are they but a schism of modern Spiritualism,--mere
visionaries? Are they entitled to any consideration, as capable of discussing
philosophy and promoting real science; or should they be treated with the
compassionate toleration which one gives to "harmless enthusiasts"?
The Theosophical Society has been variously charged with a belief in
"miracles," and "miracle-working"; with a secret political
object--like the Carbonari; with being spies of an autocratic Czar; with
preaching socialistic and nihilistic doctrines; and, mirabile dictu, with
having a covert understanding with the French Jesuits, to disrupt modern
Spiritualism for a pecuniary consideration! With equal violence they have been
denounced as dreamers, by the American Positivists; as fetish-worshippers, by
some of the New York press; as revivalists of "mouldy superstitions,"
by the Spiritualists; as infidel emissaries of Satan, by the Christian Church;
as the very types of "gobe-mouche," by Professor W. B. Carpenter,
F.R.S.; and, finally, and most absurdly, some Hindu opponents, with a view to
lessening their influence, have flatly charged them with the employment of
demons to perform certain phenomena.
Out of all
this pother of opinions, one fact stands conspicuous--the Society, its members,
and their views, are deemed of enough importance to be discussed and denounced:
Men slander only those whom they hate--or fear. But, if the Society has had its
enemies and traducers, it has also had its friends and advocates. For every
word of censure, there has been a word of praise.
Beginning
with a party of about a dozen earnest men and women, a month later its members
had so increased as to necessitate the hiring of a public hall for its
meetings; within two years, it had working branches in European countries.
Still later, it found itself in alliance with the Indian Arya Samaj, headed by
the learned Pandit Dayanand Saraswati Swami, and the Ceylonese Buddhists, under
the erudite H. Sumangala, High Priest of Adam's Peak and President of the
Widyodaya College, Colombo.
He who would
seriously attempt to fathom the psychological sciences, must come to the sacred
land of ancient Aryâvarta. None is older than she in esoteric wisdom and
civilization, however fallen may be her poor shadow--modern
Holding this
country, as we do, for the fruitful hot-bed whence proceeded all subsequent philosophical
systems, to this source of all psychology and philosophy a portion of our
Society has come to learn its ancient wisdom and ask for the impartation of its
weird secrets. Philology has made too much progress to require at this late day
a demonstration of this fact of the primogenitive nationality of Aryâvart.
The unproved
and prejudiced hypothesis of modern Chronology is not worthy of a moment's
thought, and it will vanish in time like so many other unproved hypotheses. The
line of philosophical heredity, from Kapila through Epicurus to James Mill;
from Patanjali through Plotinus to Jacob Böhme, can be traced like the course
of a river through a landscape. One of the objects of the Society's
organization was to examine the too transcendent views of the Spiritualists in
regard to the powers of disembodied spirits; and, having told them what, in our
opinion at least, a portion of their phenomena are not, it will become
incumbent upon us now to show what they are.
So apparent is
it that it is in the East, and especially in India, that the key to the alleged
"supernatural" phenomena of the Spiritualists must be sought, that it
has recently been conceded in the Allahabad Pioneer (Aug. 11th, 1879), an
Anglo-Indian daily journal which has not the reputation of saying what it does
not mean. Blaming the men of science who "intent upon physical discovery,
for some generations have been too prone to neglect super-physical
investigation," it mentions "the new wave of doubt" (
spiritualism) which has "latterly disturbed this conviction."
To a large
number of persons including many of high culture and intelligence, it adds,
"the supernatural has again asserted itself as a fit subject of inquiry
and research. And there are plausible hypotheses in favour of the idea that
among the 'sages' of the East . . . there may be found in a higher degree than
among the more modernised inhabitants of the West traces of those personal
peculiarities, whatever they may be, which are required as a condition
precedent to the occurrence of supernatural phenomena." And then, unaware
that the cause he pleads is one of the chief aims and objects of our Society,
the editorial writer remarks that it is "the only direction in which, it
seems to us, the efforts of the Theosophists in
The leading
members of the Theosophical Society in India are known to be very advanced
students of occult phenomena, already, and we cannot but hope that their
professions of interest in Oriental philosophy . . . may cover a reserved
intention of carrying out explorations of the kind we indicate."
While, as
observed, one of our objects, it yet is but one of many; the most important of
which is to revive the work of Ammonius Saccas, and make various nations
remember that they are the children "of one mother." As to the
transcendental side of the ancient Theosophy, it is also high
time that the Theosophical Society should explain.
With how
much, then, of this nature-searching, God-seeking science of the ancient Aryan
and Greek mystics, and of the powers of modern spiritual mediumship, does the
Society agree? Our answer is: with it all. But if asked what it believes in,
the reply will be: "As a body--Nothing." The Society, as a body, has
no creed, as creeds are but the shells around spiritual knowledge; and Theosophy in its fruition
is spiritual knowledge itself--the very essence of philosophical and theistic
enquiry.
Visible
representative of Universal Theosophy,
it can be no more sectarian than a Geographical Society, which represents
universal geographical exploration without caring whether the explorers be of
one creed or another.
The religion
of the Society is an algebraical equation, in which so long as the sign = of
equality is not omitted, each member is allowed to substitute quantities of his
own, which better accord with climatic and other exigencies of his native land,
with the idiosyncrasies of his people, or even with his own. Having no accepted
creed, our Society is very ready to give and take, to learn and teach, by
practical experimentation, as opposed to mere passive and credulous acceptance
of enforced dogma.
It is willing
to accept every result claimed by any of the foregoing schools or systems, that
can be logically and experimentally demonstrated. Conversely, it can take
nothing on mere faith, no matter by whom the demand may be made. But, when we
come to consider ourselves individually, it is quite another thing.
The Society's
members represent the most varied nationalities and races, and were born and
educated in the most dissimilar creeds and social conditions. Some of them
believe in one thing, others in another.
Some incline
towards the ancient magic, or secret wisdom that was taught in the sanctuaries,
which was the very opposite of supernaturalism or diabolism; others in modern
spiritualism, or intercourse with the spirits of the dead; still others in
mesmerism or animal magnetism, or only an occult dynamic force in nature.
A certain
number have scarcely yet acquired any definite belief, but are in a state of
attentive expectancy; and there are even those who call themselves
materialists, in a certain sense. Of atheists and bigoted sectarians of any
religion, there are none in the Society; for the very fact of a man's joining
it proves that he is in search of the final truth as to the ultimate essence of
things.
If there be
such a thing as a speculative atheist, which philosophers may deny, he would
have to reject both cause and effect, whether in this world of matter, or in
that of spirit. There may be members who, like the poet Shelley, have let their
imagination soar from cause to prior cause ad infinitum, as each in its turn
became logically transformed into a result necessitating a prior cause, until
they have thinned the Eternal into a mere mist. But even they are not atheist
in the speculative sense, whether they identify the material forces of the
universe with the functions with which the theists endow their God, or
otherwise; for once that they cannot free themselves from the conception of the
abstract ideal of power, cause, necessity, and effect, they can be considered
as atheists only in respect to a personal God, and not to the Universal Soul of
the Pantheist. On the other hand the bigoted sectarian, fenced in, as he is,
with a creed upon every paling of which is written the warning "No
Thoroughfare," can neither come out of his enclosure to join the
Theosophical Society, nor, if he could, has it room for one whose very religion
forbids examination. The very root idea of the Society is free and fearless
investigation.
As a body,
the Theosophical Society holds that all original thinkers and investigators of
the hidden side of nature whether materialists--those who find in matter
"the promise and potency of all terrestrial life," or
spiritualists--that is, those who discover in spirit the source of all energy
and of matter as well, were and are, properly, Theosophists. For to be one, one
need not necessarily recognize the existence of any special God or a deity. One
need but worship the spirit of living nature, and try to identify oneself with
it.
To revere
that Presence, the invisible Cause, which is yet ever manifesting itself in its
incessant results; the intangible, omnipotent, and omnipresent Proteus:
indivisible in its Essence, and eluding form, yet appearing under all and every
form; who is here and there, and everywhere and nowhere; is ALL, and NOTHING;
ubiquitous yet one; the Essence filling, binding, bounding, containing
everything, contained in all. It will, we think, be seen now, that whether
classed as Theists, Pantheists or Atheists, such men are near kinsmen to the
rest.
Be what he
may, once that a student abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and
enters upon the solitary path of independent thought--Godward--he is
aTheosophist; an original thinker, a seeker after the eternal truth with
"an inspiration of his own" to solve the universal problems.
With every
man that is earnestly searching in his own way after a knowledge of the Divine
Principle, of man's relations to it, and nature's manifestations of it, Theosophy is allied. It is
likewise the ally of honest science, as distinguished from much that passes for
exact, physical science, so long as the latter does not poach on the domains of
psychology and metaphysics.
And it is
also the ally of every honest religion--to wit, a religion willing to be judged
by the same tests as it applies to the others. Those books, which contain the
most self-evident truth, are to it inspired (not revealed). But all books it
regards, on account of the human element contained in them, as inferior to the
Book of Nature; to read which and comprehend it correctly, the innate powers of
the soul must be highly developed. Ideal laws can be perceived by the intuitive
faculty alone; they are beyond the domain of argument and dialectics, and no
one can understand or rightly appreciate them through the explanations of
another mind, even though this mind be claiming a direct revelation.
And, as this
Society, which allows the widest sweep in the realms of the pure ideal, is no
less firm in the sphere of facts, its deference to modern science and its just
representatives is sincere. Despite all their lack of a higher spiritual
intuition, the world's debt to the representatives of modern physical science
is immense; hence, the Society endorses heartily the noble and indignant
protest of that gifted and eloquent preacher, the Rev. O. B. Frothingham,
against those who try to undervalue the services of our great naturalists.
"Talk of Science as being irreligious, atheistic," he exclaimed in a
recent lecture, delivered at
It is due to
Science that we have any conception at all of a living God. If we do not become
atheists one of these days under the maddening effect of Protestantism, it will
be due to Science, because it is disabusing us of hideous illusions that tease
and embarrass us, and putting us in the way of knowing how to reason about the
things we see. . . ."
And it is
also due to the unremitting labors of such Orientalists as Sir W. Jones, Max
Müller, Burnouf, Colebrooke, Haug, St. Hilaire, and so many others, that the
Society, as a body, feels equal respect and veneration for Vedic, Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, and other old religions of the world; and, a like brotherly
feeling toward its Hindu, Sinhalese, Parsi, Jain, Hebrew, and Christian members
as individual students of "self," of nature, and of the divine in
nature.
Born in the
We have now,
we think, made clear why our members, as individuals, are free to stay outside
or inside any creed they please, provided they do not pretend that none but
themselves shall enjoy the privilege of conscience, and try to force their
opinions upon the others.
In this
respect the Rules of the Society are very strict: It tries to act upon the
wisdom of the old Buddhistic axiom, "Honour thine own faith, and do not
slander that of others"; echoed back in our present century, in the
"Declaration of Principles" of the Brahmo Samaj, which so nobly
states that: "no sect shall be vilified, ridiculed, or hated." In
Section VI of the Revised Rules of theTheosophical Society, recently adopted in
General Council, at
It is not
lawful for any officer of the Parent Society to express, by word or act, any
hostility to, or preference for, any one section (sectarian division, or group
within the Society) more than another.
All must be
regarded and treated as equally the objects of the Society's solicitude and
exertions. All have an equal right to have the essential features of their
religious belief laid before the tribunal of an impartial world.
In their
individual capacity, members may, when attacked, occasionally break this Rule,
but, nevertheless, as officers they are restrained, and the Rule is strictly
enforced during the meetings. For, above all human sects stands Theosophy in its abstract
sense; Theosophy which is
too wide for any of them to contain but which easily contains them.
In
conclusion, we may state that, broader and far more universal in its views than
any existing mere scientific Society, it has plus science its belief in every
possibility, and determined will to penetrate into those unknown spiritual
regions which exact science pretends that its votaries have no business to
explore. And, it has one quality more than any religion in that it makes no
difference between Gentile, Jew, or Christian. It is in this spirit that the
Society has been established upon the footing of a Universal Brotherhood.
Unconcerned
about politics; hostile to the insane dreams of Socialism and of Communism,
which it abhors--as both are but disguised conspiracies of brutal force and
sluggishness against honest labour; the Society cares but little about the
outward human management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations
are directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible worlds.
Whether the
physical man be under the rule of an empire or a republic, concerns only the
man of matter. His body may be enslaved; as to his soul, he has the right to
give to his rulers the proud answer of Socrates to his judges. They have no
sway over the inner man.
Such, then,
is the Theosophical Society, and such its principles, its multifarious aims, and
its objects. Need we wonder at the past misconceptions of the general public,
and the easy hold the enemy has been able to find to lower it in the public
estimation. The true student has ever been a recluse, a man of silence and
meditation. With the busy world his habits and tastes are so little in common
that, while he is studying, his enemies and slanderers have undisturbed
opportunities. But time cures all and lies are but ephemera. Truth
alone is
eternal.
About a few
of the Fellows of the Society who have made great scientific discoveries, and
some others to whom the psychologist and the biologist are indebted for the new
light thrown upon the darker problems of the inner man, we will speak later on.
Our object now was but to prove to the reader that Theosophy is neither
"a new fangled doctrine," a political cabal, nor one of those
societies of enthusiasts which are born today but to die tomorrow. That not all
of its members can think alike, is proved by the Society having organized into
two great Divisions--the Eastern and the Western--and the latter being divided
into numerous sections, according to races and religious views.
One man's
thought, infinitely various as are its manifestations, is not all-embracing.
Denied ubiquity, it must necessarily speculate but in one direction; and once
transcending the boundaries of exact human knowledge, it has to err and wander,
for the ramifications of the one Central and absolute Truth are infinite. Hence,
we occasionally find even the greater philosophers losing themselves in the
labyrinths of speculations, thereby provoking the criticism of posterity.
But as all
work for one and the same object, namely, the disenthralment of human thought,
the elimination of superstitions, and the discovery of truth, all are equally
welcome. The attainment of these objects, all agree, can best be secured by
convincing the reason and warming the enthusiasm of the generation of fresh
young minds, that are just ripening into maturity, and making ready to take the
place of their prejudiced and conservative fathers. And, as each--the great
ones as well as small--have trodden the royal road to knowledge, we listen to
all, and take both small and great into our fellowship. For no honest searcher
comes back empty-handed, and even he who has enjoyed the least share of popular
favor can lay at least his mite upon the one altar of Truth.
Theosophist,
October, 1879
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Complete Theosophical Glossary in Plain Text Format
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Classic Introductory
Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy By C
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
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Preface to the American Edition Introduction
Occultism and its Adepts The Theosophical Society
First Occult Experiences Teachings of Occult Philosophy
Later Occult Phenomena Appendix
Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
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