Theosophy or Neo-TheosophyA talk by Adam Warcup, recorded 12th Sept. 1976 at
The Northern Federation Conference of The Theosophical Society in England.
Transcribed from tape in Sweden in 1988.The title of today’s talk is taken from a document which came into my hands a little while back called Theosophy and Neo-Theosophy and later on in this talk you will be hearing some of the contents of this document. It came into being because the author had noticed, with alarm and dismay, that the Theosophy that was set forth and taught during the last quarter of the 19th century was certainly not the Theosophy that was taught much later on in the 20th century, from about 1910 and onwards. The differencies between the two are the subject for this talk today; hence the title Theosophy – as it was originally taught, or Neo Theosophy, as it is now presented. The aim of this talk is then to demonstrate, as clearly as I possibly can, that the two really do differ and in order to show you this I shall be using this book (Theosophy and Neo-Theosophy), which has copious quotes from the respective literature. I shall spend a good portion of this period just reading out to you passages from the literature, so that you can see for yourself, at first hand, that the content does in fact differ substantially.
Why am I going to do this? The purpose, then, is this. It is our duty, as theosophists, to promulgate Theosophy, to teach the world what we have had passed on to us. It is an obligation you might say; it is a trust that is invested in us, to pass on this information, this wisdom, of which we have become the custodians. And if it is a duty, then equally it is our responsibility to make sure that what we say is as nearly correct as we can possibly make it. And if somebody such as myself stands up before you and says ”Look, there are two versions and the two versions radically are different”, then it is your responsibility to assess what I say, to see whether what I say is in fact correct, and, if it is correct, then for you to choose, to use your discrimination and decide which of these two versions you think is the correct one.
It is easy to say that the two differ, but it is very much more complex to discern just in what way the two differ. It is not a matter of black and white. Nothing in the world, let’s face it, is black and white. I am not for one instant saying that everything in the Neo-Theosophical presentation is wrong. What I am saying is that there are substantial portions of it which I believe to be incorrect and altered from the original. It has become, I think, so altered, as to now be dangerous as a presentation of real Theosophy. This is not to say that there is nothing of value in it, but what I am saying, is, that if you’ve found two sources in the mining of gold you are going to the richer source the whole time. You will not go to the inferior source. So in this talk I am trying to point you what I am regarding to be the prime source and to show that the other is indeed inferior.
A general background
Now let me try to put this whole case in a slightly wider context before we come down to specifics. I am going to talk around the subject for a little while now to try and give you a general background into which you can fit these particular pieces of information.
It seems to be the faith of every religion and philosophy to change after it’s founder or founders have promulgated their ideas. If you look at the major world religions, like Buddhism, Christianity and so forth, you find that it is often the case that the leader or the inspirer of the movement himself, or herself, writes nothing at all. There is no written evidence of what they had to say. And so, after a couple of hundred years, by the time it has been passed down through word of mouth and it has been interpreted by the people in the chain of propagation, the movement has diverged into sects, each with a portion of the original Truth, but now embellished. When you start comparing these divergent views, you find that they now contain opposite elements within them. One is saying something which the other is denying and so it goes on. Look at the various Buddhistic sects. Look at the various Christian sects and you will see this to be true. This happens because the founders didn’t write anything down, for one reason or another. In Theosophy however, where it would seem that a similar process is at work, the case is rather different, because our founders went to enormous lengths to write down what they had to say. In an idle moment once I computed that Mme Blavatsky wrote something in the order of 4 million words in her lifetime, which is a large amount to write. So should we want to we can be in no doubt as to what she did say on particular subjects. The information is there. So if indeed it has altered, it has altered for different reasons and we can always refer back to the original.
Let’s look at instances of the way in which Theosophy has changed, in a broader sense. It would seem that the original teachings acted as a fountain source of new information concerning what we might broadly call religious philosophy and occultism at the end of the last century. It acted as a prime cause for the complete reexposition of the occult philosophies in this century and, like a river rising at its source, it has rushed down the main course and then divided into a whole delta of subsidiary teachings and philosophies. Some of them are quite unrecognizable from the original but you can trace them back patiently, link by link, to find that it was the original Theosophical teachings, which inspired some remote philosophical school. But let’s look just at the major splits and divisions for the time being. There are instances such as Alice Bailey and the Arcane School, who claim what you might call direct descent from the original. Alice Bailey, after all, was a member of the Theosophical Society for a number of years. She was a member of the Esoteric Section and she based a lot of her information on that. She claimed the same heritage. But nonetheless her presentation is not called Theosophy any longer. She did not claim that what she taught was Theosophy and, although she might claim there was a common source, she did not use that title. To point out the differencies between Theosophy and the Arcane School teachings would not be difficult. There is another instance, Rudolf Steiner, who at one time was General Secretary of the German section of the TS. He was acquainted with prime theosophical teachings but in his wisdom decided that he wanted to form a movement of his own, with slightly different aims concerned with education and so forth and formed the Antroposophical Society. Although it has links with the original teachings he has added in substantial amounts of his own. Now that movement is the basis for schools and educational institutions right across the world. But again, Steiner did not call it Theosophy. However much it might owe to Theosophy, it doesn’t pass itself off under that name.
There are other and minor institutions which we could enumerate at this stage but with these we are not primarily concerned, because they don’t claim to be Theosophy. What I am concerned with is those people who have taken those original teachings, have added to and substracted from them and have altered and changed them and still call the result Theosophy. The people I have in mind here are Annie Besant, CW Leadbeater and others of their school such as C Jinarajadasa, the early Krishnamurti and AE Powell. It is specifically this line of development which I want to examine. It’s not the only line of development... There is an American branch which started with William Q Judge and they followed a line of their own development, producing a presentation of the teachings, which have variants on the original, but remained the more ”true” to the original, if not exactly so. This is the line followed by Katherine Tingley and Gottfried de Purucker etc. These people have produced another variant but, time being limited, we are now going to consider the one we are probably more familiar with. Now this latter class of people, Annie Besant etc., continue to call what they were teaching Theosophy and it is this, really, which is what I want to speak against.
Some arguments
Before we get more specific than that, I want to consider several arguments that l have heard from people, when I’ve got about this far in an exposition of this idea. I shall see if I can dispose of these, so that your minds are freer to absorb what I am going to say later.
It is not uncommon to hear people saying that Theosophy is nothing definite and thus we cannot say who is right and who is wrong. Theosophy is nothing, they argue, precise, but is very much more general. The counterargument that I would supply is this. I would agree that Theosophy in no sense is binding on the members of the TS. They, by charter, are free to believe and accept what they like and I would be the first to defend their right absolutely in this respect. But as far as saying what Theosophy is concerned with, we have very much more precise data than that. We have for instance the statement in one of the Mahatma Letters, where they say that Theosophy is an exact body of knowledge. I would suggest that if it is an exact body of knowledge it shouldn’t be too difficult to decide between two contrary propositions as to which one is more nearly correct. This is really all we are trying to establish. So it is something definite, an exact body of knowledge.
A second line, frequently used, is a phrase lifted from Mme Blavatsky’s own writings, where she said that she had, in writing the Secret Doctrine, ”only lifted a corner of the veil”. People have taken this phrase and say that if she had only lifted a corner of the veil, then this leaves the stage free for later writers to add more to this and follow on and develop from where she left off. This tempting proposition, I regard as being fallacious. She states for instance in the Secret Doctrine, where this famous quote comes from (about lifting only a corner of the veil), that the information presented in the SD is as much as the west is going to get, and can assimilate, in the remainder of the 19th and the 20th century. She said that this will be sufficient material for students to work over for the next hundred years. She went further and said that there would be no new teacher and hence no new additional teachings, until the very earliest at 1975. Now with this indication it would be surprising, would it not, if we had had a large body of additional information given to us in between these two periods. But this is exactly what the other Theosophists, the Neo Theosophists, have been claiming that they have been able to do. They are saying that they have been in a position to add to the teachings, in a substantial way.
Furthermore, if, by comparison of the two teachings – the original Theosophy and the later Neo Theosophy – we find the two do contradict one another, what position are we left in? You may reply: ”Yes, the two do differ, but I think that Mrs Besant & Co are right”. But if you do this, you are very neatly kicking out the foundations from under you, because Theosophy would never have existed in this exoteric form as we have it presented to us, had not the Masters and Mme Blavatsky made a systematic presentation. Annie Besant would not have had the prime material to work on had it not been for them. Without HPB and the Masters AB would not have had any material to develop at all. If you deny the validity of the original material, you have, in effect, kicked the stilts out from under you. It is not a very happy position to be in!
A third point relative to this is that the original teachings were, we say, given by Masters or Initiates, those who have developed the faculty to know directly what they were talking about. Unless the later writers, our Neo Theosophists, are claiming the same status for themselves, that they are also Initiates, that they are also adepts of that degree, then surely we must call into question the validity of what they say, where it contradicts the original.
Another line of argument is that Theosophy is synonymous with Truth and thus can be found in any teaching. With this, I must say, that in part, I agree. Theosophy undoubtedly, in the sense that it is the Ancient Wisdom, is synonymous with Truth. However, Theosophy as we have had it presented to us is not the whole story. We have had a partial presentation suited to our present stage of development. It is a presentation specifically aimed at western man as he now stands developed. If it could have been found anywhere else – if it could have been found without any difficulty in the extant religions and philosophies of the world – why then would Mme Blavatsky and the Mahatmas have gone to the lengths of writing down 4 million words, when it was all there already for everybody? Presumably they thought they were telling us something new, presenting the Truths in a better and more systematic light, presenting us with deeper insights into what had effectively gone before. If so, should we not be concentrating on the additional information that they had put before us, rather than saying ”Oh yes, but it is only the same as what went before, so we can study what we like”. I suggest strongly that we ought to be concentrating on the additional material that has been given to us by those people.
In the last hundred years there have been a number of dissenting voices, people who have stood up and said ”I don’t believe that the development of Theosophy (or Neo Theosophy rather) is the correct line at all” and speaking then was a considerably more daunting task than speaking out now. These people were vociferous. They wrote books and they spoke as cogently as they could, but it has to be admitted that they didn’t get much of a hearing. Now I suggest to you, that these people deserve a hearing from you. If in fairness and open-mindedness you are going to consider the validity of this case you need to look at the information that I am asking you to consider.
Literature
There are a number of books that I strongly suggest that you read. Roughly, in chronological order, the first one I suggest you read is called A Great Betrayal by Alice Cleather. Alice Cleather were one of Mme Blavatsky’s Inner Group, a group of 12 pupils and so certainly she was in a position to know what Mme Blavatsky was teaching. She stood up and denounced the development of Theosophy as it was then taking place. She were a formidable woman. I am not saying that anything she said was right, but I certainly think that you ought to consider her case and know what it was that she objected to. Another valuable source is the Introduction to The Mahatma Letters in the original and second editions, written by Trevor Barker. He presents there a very cogent case. He says in effect; Here in The Mahatma Letters we have a prime source of the original teachings, why don’t you compare this with what your present day (the then present day) writers are saying? He makes a very cogent case and makes very pertinent comments relative to the two versions.
Another book I would recommend is ”Is this Theosophy...?” by Ernest Wood. Ernest Wood was a long standing Theosophist and latterly had worked with Mr Leadbeater as his private secretary. In this book he chronicles as an insider the events and the people and the ways in which Mr Leadbeater’s books were written. By the time he came to write this book he was extremely dubious about the validity of the material being presented by Mr Leadbeater and indeed about the methods used. Somebody working as CWL’s private secretary must be expected to be in a position to know. I suggest you read it.
Another pair of books (the first one by Emily Lutyens, Candles in the Sun) go into the whole Krishnamurti Order of the Star movement and detail the way in which the Theosophical Society was developing during the 1920’s and -30’s. This gives you a good insight into the character and personality of the protagonists of that period. Although it does not directly comment on the teachings, it gives a valuable insight into the background and into the nature of the people involved and why they presented the teachings the way they did. A later book, by her daughter Mary Lutyens, Krishnamurti — The Years of Awakening, covers similar material but more thoroughly, perhaps more objectively. It is however very much an indictment of the management of the Society of that time.
More up to date, there is a booklet entitled There is no religion higher than Truth, taken from the motto of the Society, written by E. L. Gardner. This is quite a short book – a pamphlet more than a book, really – in which he brings into question the ways in which Mr Leadbeater went about his clairvoyant investigation and calls into question the validity of much of the psychic research which Mr Leadbeater was supposed to have carried out. Mr Gardner knew Mr Leadbeater extremely well; they worked together for a number of years. But latterly Mr Gardner began to have his doubts and presented explanations, within a theosophical framework, as to how Mr Leadbeater could have been misguided, in his presentations.
Finally I would recommend, as a much more general book, The Theosophical Movement from 1875 to 1950 [now also in Swedish], which was edited by somebody called Dutton. This is very much more general but it does include specific chapters on the development of the Adyar branch of the Theosophical Movement, whose principal members are the people I am talking about today.
I am going to read to you some of these extracts that I am concerned about, but before I do I want to draw your attention to the nature of the differencies that we are going to be looking at. There are two key ways in which they differ. They differ I think in tone and content. We shall concentrate primarily on content, because this is more easily seen. If one person says ”This is the case” and another person says ”This is not the case”, then you can see without much further thought that the two are contradictory and you can then get your teeth into it and try and sort out the differencies. But there is another way in which they differ and that is what I might call tone. The tone of the original is characterized by an extreme impersonality. It is not concerned with personalizing anything in the teachings. The persons presenting them never refer to themselves at all; it is always the writer or the author etc. and in no way did they put forward their own personalities. They merely set out abstract ideas. In the later Neo Theosophy this approach seems to disappear completely and the whole presentation became personalized. This attitude crept into the content in areas such as the Manu and the verious Buddhas which, in stead of being impersonal symbols of the abstract cosmos, became personilized into particular beings. In this way the whole tone of the teachings have become altered.
”Why bother?”
Let me just introduce this section with a passage by way of a general introduction. Even after hearing what I’ve got to say you may think that ”Yes, you are right. They do differ. But so what? We all know what Theosophy is. And does it really matter? We can all get on with one another anyway.”
Well, exactly this position came up at the time when the Mahatma Letters were being written in the 1880’s. One of the recipients of the Mahatma Letters was a man called Alan Hume and one of the things he had an enormous difficulty understanding was the fact that the occult system, Theosophy, has no place for a God in it. This was one of the things the Mahatma stressed with peculiar urgency. They really did put themselves to great pains to show, that whatever conception you might like to come up with as representing your God, they specifically denied it. Hume found this peculiarly difficult to accept and towards the end of the second letter on this subject, we find the Mahatma saying this to him (p. 143):
”As you say this need ’make no difference between us’ – personally. But it makes a world of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me I cannot make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C. of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on this or that side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a priori. My very dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first case what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the second case why should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitutes the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious ”God” as I hold. I say, it matters everything and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and matter – of God or no God) ’are admittedly beyond both of us’ — in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there on earth that I could teach you?”
A little later on in the same letter the Mahatma says (p. 143):
”I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous occupant would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer.”
Hume’s is an attitude which I think is still prevalent in the Society today and so we must reply: It does matter. It is a matter of vital concern if you are trying to pick up fundamentals of this system.
Now I intend to read to you these comparative passages and you must judge for yourself as to what you make of them. I will give you the books from which they come and I will give you the page references so that you can check them up. I am not making these passages up as I go along!
The nature of God
The first subject I intend to read you comparative passages on, is concerned with the nature of God. It is one of the most fundamental topics. Let’s start then with a passage from the Mahatama Letters. This comes from page 138-9.
They say:
”We say and affirm that that motion — the universal perpetual motion which never ceases never slackens nor increases its speed, not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or ’nights of Brahmas’, but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) — we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognize. To regard God as an intelligent spirit and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego, and to place his intelligence under a bushel for some mysterious reason, is a most consummate nonsense; to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a fiend — a most rascally God.”
Now I suggest you compare this with a passage from The Inner Life by C W Leadbeater, page 143 (93), where he says.
”We have in the LOGOS of our solar system as near an approach to a personal (or rather, perhaps, individual) God as any reasonable man can desire, for of Him is true everything good that has ever been predicated of a personal deity. We cannot ascribe to Him partiality, injustice, jealousy, cruelty; those who desire these attributes in their deity must go elsewhere. But so far as His system is concerned He possesses omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence; the love, the power, the wisdom, the glory, all are there in fullest measure. Yet He is a mighty Individual — a trinity in unity and God in very truth, though removed by we know not how many stages from the Absolute, ...”.
Now, there, I suggest to you, is a rather different conception being put forward. And if you think: Well, the later passage was only talking about the Logos, then I suggest that you compare it with this passage which comes from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, p 573:
”The Logos, ... ’this highest consciousness,’ answer the Occultists, is only a synthetic unit in the world of the manifested Logos — or on the plane of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyan Chohanic consciousnesses. ... Ishwara or logos is Spirit; or as Occultism explains, it is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits ...”..
Now, in the one case you have a unit individual and in this latter case you have a compound unity of all the living intelligencies and spirits. A very, very different picture. Compare this again finally with a passage from First principles of Theosophy by C Jinarajadasa, p. 29, where he says:
”Man, the individual, evolving soul, is in Truth the image of his Maker and what HE is in HIS fullness now, that man will be some day. Hence it is that, by a certain development of faculties latent in the human consciousness, men can touch even now the fringe, as it were, of the Consciousness of the LOGOS, and so, with HIM, see the past as happening even now.”
If we are to accept the passages from the Secret Doctrine, then that Logos is no unit consciousness, so how one is supposed to touch the fringes of it, becomes something of a mystery.
Religion
Let’s move on now to consider a couple of passages concerned with religion. The first passage I am going to quote to you comes from the Mahatma Letters, p 57 — 58. They say here:
”I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches. It is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetishism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them.”
Fairly strong stuff I think you will agree, but let’s compare it with these passages. Firstly from The Ancient Wisdom by Annie Besant, p. 4:
”As the origin and basis of all religions, it [Theosophy] cannot be the antagonist of any; it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition; but it recognizes and defends itself in each and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need cease to be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu; he will but acquire a deeper insight into his own faith, ...”
And again a passage from At the feet of the Master (p. 8) by the early Krishnamurti, still much regarded, we can find this:
”If he is on God’s side, he is one of us and it does not matter in the least whether he calls himself a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Mohammedan.”
I think again the parallel or shall we say the discrepancies there are fairly apparent. I don’t think I need labour those.
Christ
And now, since we are on the subject, here is a brief comparison as to what is meant by Christ. First a passage from the Mahatma Letters, page 344, where they say in their usual strong style;
”Let these unfortunate, deluded Christians know that the real Christ of every Christian is the Vach, the ’mystical Voice,’ while the man Jeshu was but a mortal like any of us, an Adept more by his inherent purity and ignorance of real Evil, than by what he had learned with his initiated Rabbis and the already (at that period) fast degenerating Egyptian Hierophants and priests.”
So Christ is an impersonal principle, the mystical voice; Jeshu is the man. Compare it with this, which is a passage from C W Leadbeater’s The Inner Life, p. 19 and 20 (13 and 14):
”Again, in these researches into the remote past we have frequently found the disciple Jesus, who in Palestine had the privilege of yielding up His body to the Christ.... Then the one who was once the disciple Jesus stands ready especially to guide the various activities of the Christian Churches.”
And again, from Annie Besant this time, an interview reported by Associated Press in India where she says:
”I believe with many of the early Christians that the World Teacher, named by them the Christ, assumed, at the stage of the Gospel story called the Baptism, the body of the disciple Jesus to carry on with his earthly work of that time.”
Well, is it the Christ as a man, the Christ as a being, incarnating in the disciple Jesus, as they say, or is it the impersonal mystical voice, inspiring the adept Jesus, as the Mahatmas say? Again, they are completely incompatible.
Let’s turn to something now more in the nature of Theosophical fundamentals and consider the nature of the principles of man and as a key example here let’s consider the respective definitions of Atman, the 7th principle in Man. The first passage I am going to read you comes from the Key to Theosophy, page 93 (119), where it is defined thus;
”First of all in terms of the principles of mane Spirit, in the sense of the Absolute and therefore indivisible ALL, or Atma, can neither be located nor limited in philosophy, being simply that which IS in Eternity and which cannot be absent from even the tiniest geometrical or mathematical point of the universe of matter or substance, it ought not to be called, in truth, a ’human’ principle at all. Rather, and at best, it is in Metaphysics that point in space which the human Monad and its vehicle man occupy for the period of every life.”
Now that, I think you will agree, is a very deep definition and it would take some while to assimilate the full depth of what is being said there. But it is certainly an aspect of the absolute all. I think that much comes across. Now I suggest you compare it with this passage from The Ancient Wisdom, page 168. Annie Besant says there that:
”The fifth plane, the nirvanic, is the plane of the highest human aspect of the God within us and this aspect is named by Theosophists Atma, or the Self. It is the plane of pure existence, of divine powers in their fullest manifestation in our fivefold universe — what lies beyond on the 6th and 7th planes is hidden in the unimaginable light of God.”
Well, we will pass over that last reference to God, but consider the definition of Atma as being one of the human principles, as if it was something which resided on this 5th cosmic plane, a quality, or a property, or something of that nature, whereas the other passage I quoted to you clearly said, it was identical with the essence of the whole cosmos itself. The 7th principle of the universe and the 7th principle of man are one and the same.
Group Souls
Another thorny problem you will come across, I am sure, in your reading, is the question of what was later introduced as the Group Soul into Neo Theosophy. This is an appealing idea, at first sight, which suggests that as the life waves evolve, they do so in aggregates, such that (putting it crudely and probably oversimplifying it) let’s say a million ants all form one entity activated by a group soul. They have one soul with a million bodies. As this entity evolves and moves up the scale of evolution, it becomes a hundred lizards, perhaps. It has skill got that one group soul entity animating so many forms and this becomes perhaps ten sheep and finally this line culminates in man where it becomes one man. I am not trying to make fun of it, I am just trying to give you an idea of the way in which the theory goes. Now, in a sense, this is quite an appealing notion. People suggest that herd activity and group activity in hives and in ants and so forth are instances of this corporate activity. (Personally I don’t think you have to go to these lengths to explain this corporate activity. I think there are often quite rational explanations for it.) But quite apart from that the original teachings on this subject of evolution clearly indicate that this is not the method by which we evolve at all. The group soul idea states that there is one monad animating one group soul which is in turn animating a number of forms which ultimately culminate in one man. The Blavatsky tradition, on the other hand, says there is a monadic essence which only gradually becomes a unit human monad when it achieves the status of the human kingdom. It is never a unit monad at any time prior to that and there is never a group soul or any psychic entity which exists between one phase and another in a continuous and continuing line, culminating in man. I explain this now, because the passages I am going to read will, I hope, illustrate what I’ve just said. But it is a complex subject and I would readily forgive you if you don’t assimilate all that I am going to say immediately. But I would like to get across to you that there are real alternatives to this idea of the group soul. Now let me just read you a few passages here to give you the idea of what is involved.
Firstly a passage from the Secret Doctrine, (SD 1, p 178, 1st ed.) where HPB says:
”It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms and, after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende.” (Humboldt was a scientist in the 19th century, hornblende something he discovered — a group of minerals in most kinds of rock.)
In other words this is denying specifically that you start off as a monad animating a particular crude form in the mineral kingdom which works its whole way up in the distinct path and becomes human. This is exactly what doesn’t happen. More positively, let’s see what she is saying. Again from the Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pages 178. She says:
”In short, as the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the individual Monads’ of men, so the Mineral Monad – being at the opposite point of the circle – is also One – and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.... As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad – not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.”
I repeat, it is a difficult passage, and I would hope that you would find time to go and study these passages again later, but the essence of them is quite clear. That which persists is the spiritual essence. That which doesn’t persist is the atomic aggregation: The group soul and the forms through which the life is said by the others (AB, CWL etc.) to operate in. Very different teachings. The group soul was in fact quite unnecessary in order to account for evolution.
Let’s continue with this question of evolution because there are a number of misconceptions in this area. The next one which I want to consider is the idea that there are two lines of evolution. The idea in the Neo Theosophical teaching is that, at some juncture, the line of evolution splits: one line becomes man and the other becomes devas. But this is again specifically denied in the original teachings. Let us have a look at two passages which explore this area. I read them in reverse order this time, in case you are not familiar with the Neo Theosophical one. The definition of it here is from Jinarajadasa’s First principles of Theosophy on page 17, 18. He says:
”There are several parallel streams of evolving life, each mostly independent of the others in its development. Two of these streams are those of Humanity and of a parallel stream called the evolution of Deva or Angels. As already mentioned, human life has its earlier stages of animal, vegetable, mineral and elemental life. From that same mineral life, however, the life diverges into another channel, through stages of vegetable forms, animal forms, then forms of ”nature-spirits”, or the fairies of tradition, into Angels or Devas.... One stream builds organisms living in water, while three use forms living on land. Only one of the six streams of life leads into humanity; the other five pass into the parallel evolution of the Devas.”
Well, can I ask you to compare this with a passage from the Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p 277, where it says:
”In sober truth, as just shown, every ’Spirit’, so called is either a disembodied or a future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan Choan) down to the last conscious ’Builder’ (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), ail such are men, having lived eons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals — are all future men.”
In other words, everything has to pass through the human stage of evolution, Not necessarily our humanity, but it certainly has got to pass through a human stage. There is no divergence at any stage. It must go through this stage in order to complete its evaluation. Again, a flat contradiction.
”Life after death”
Another fruitful area in which to find divergencies is in the teachings on the after death states. Here is one instance just to show you how different the teachings can be. In particular I am going to look at the area of Kama Loka. Let’s start then from the Mahatma Letters, which is the prime source of a lot of our teachings on the after death states. This passage comes from the Mahatma Letters p. 186/7, where they say:
”Every just disembodied four-fold entity... [By fourfold they mean the remaining four principles having discarded the physical body, the Linga Sarira and the Prana, so it is the remaining fourfold entity i.e. Kama-Rupa, Manas, Buddhi and Atman...] Every just disembodied four-fold entity – whether it died a natural or violent death, from suicide or accident, mentally sane or insane, young or old, good, bad or indifferent – loses at the instant of death all recollection, it is mentally – annihilated; it sleeps it’s Akashic sleep in the Kama-loka. This state lasts from a few hours, (rarely less) days, weeks, months — sometimes to several years. All this according to the entity, to its mental status at the moment of death, to the character of its death, etc. That remembrance will return slowly and gradually toward the end of the gestation (to the entity or Ego), still more slowly but far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell and fully to the Ego at the moment of its entrance into the Devachan.”
I think you can get a fairly clear picture from this of the following sequence: You die, you fall unconscious, you sleep your Akashic sleep, as they say, in Kama loka and the Ego, which is what we are primarily concerned with, wakes up, slowly, is born as we say, in Devachan. Kama loka then comes across very clearly as being an unconscious state. I suggest then that you compare this with two passages. The first from A Textbook of Theosophy by Mr Leadbeater, pages 77/8, where he says:
”Many men arrive in the astral world in utter ignorance of its conditions, not realizing at first that they are ded, and when they do realize it fearing the fate that may be in store for them, because of false and wicked theological teaching.”
Well, if they don’t realize that they are ded, I think you will have to agree that they are conscious. If they are conscious, then it absolutely contradicts what we’ve just read in the Mahatma Letters. The Mahatmas are explicit on this point. They say that the only people who know they are ded in their physical bodies are adepts and sorcerers, and the sorcerers deeply regret it.
The second passage, on the same subject, comes from Annie Besant in The Ancient Wisdom, page 100, where she says:
”The fifth subdivision of Kâmaloka offers many new characteristics. ... Here are situated all the materialized heavens which play so large a part in popular religions all the world over. The happy hunting]grounds of the Red Indian, …”
Now, again, this I think strongly suggests that the entities in it are conscious. She wouldn’t make comparisons with heaven untess she was suggesting a conscious experience. She is in fact primarily confusing this with the Rupa loka of Devachan, where indeed this sort of condition might ultimately be entered, but in a rather different form, but not in Kama loka.
Maitreya
I want to present another small section which illustrates what I was saying about tone. It also illustrates content, so let’s have a look at the differencies here. The first subject I want to consider is that of Maitreya. Firstly then let me read you a couple of passages from the Secret Doctrine. The first one from Volume I, p 384 and the second one from Vol 1, p 470.
"MAITREYA is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and the Kalki Avatar of the Brahmins — the last MESSIAH who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle."
And in the latter passage:
"He will appear as Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatars and Buddhas, in the seventh Race. ... Only it is not in the Kali yug, our present terrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the ’Black Age’, that a new Saviour of Humanity can ever appear."
Fairly clear, I would have thought. But compare it with this passage from The Inner Life, p 151, by Mr Leadbeater, where he says:
"The great purpose of this drawing together is to prepare the way for the coming of a new Messiah, or as we should say in Theosophical circles, the next advent of the Lord Maitreya as a great spiritual teacher, bringing a new religion. The time is rapidly approaching when this should be launched — a teaching which shall unify the other religions and compared with them shall stand upon a broader basis...".
So he is just about to arrive in the middle of the 5th race, where really he should have arrived in the 7th race...! Do you suppose that the law of cycles has suddenly been broken, and by some sudden mysterious dispensation he can suddenly appear...? Well, I think not.
Manu
Again, another similar instance is concerned with what is called Manu. Now Manu, a particularly Brahmanical conception, was adopted, so to speak, by the Neo Theosophists, in quite a material way, as I think you will see. Here are just two examples of how the term is used. Firstly from The Inner Life, p. 15 (10):
"The Manu, or temporal leader, is practically an autochratic Monarch who arranges everything connected with the physical-plane life of the new race and endevours in every way to make it as perfect an expression as possible of the idea which the LOGOS has set before Him for realization."
From Man; Whence, How and Whither by Besant and Leadbeater we find this statement (p. 78):
"The Root-Manu of the terrene Chain, Vaivasvata, who directs the whole order of its evolution, is a mighty Being from the fourth Chain of the Venus Scheme... A Root Manu of a Chain must achieve the level fixed for the Chain or Chains on which He is human, and become one of its Lords; then He becomes the Manu of a Race; then a Pratyeka Buddha; then a Lord of the World; then the Root]Manu, then the Seed]Manu of a Round, and only then the Root]Manu of a Chain."
I think from these two passages you can clearly get the impression that this Manu is a being or an entity. Well, I suggest then that you compare it with this passage, a short extract, but I think it is quite telling, where HPB says in The Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 100 (also Collected Writings, Vol. X, p. 364), that
"Manu is not really an individuality, it is the whole of mankind. You may say that Manu is a generic name for the Pitris, the progenitors of mankind."
This is an instance how the teachings become personalized. Something which is an impersonal principle, or a collective form, as with the Logos, becomes suddenly an individual.
It is very much easier to think of it as an individual, it is perhaps also much cosier to do so, because it is very much easier to relate to individuals. But if it is wrong, then we must forsake this facile approach.
Pratyeka Buddhas
Here is one final point. Consider the nature of another class of beings; the Pratyeka Buddhas. I would have thought that this passage from The Voice of Silence on page 44 was reasonably clear, which says (Mme Blavatsky):
”The Pratyeka Buddhas are those Boddhisattvas who strive after and often reach the Dharmakaya Robe after a series of lives, caring nothing for the woes of mankind or to help it but only for their own bliss they enter Nirvana and disappear from the sight and hearts of men. In Northern Buddhism a Pratyeka Buddha is a synonymous for spiritual selfishness.”
Compare it with this statement from Jinarajadasa’s First Principles of Theosophy on page 208, where he says:
”When the life-wave shall pass from Earth to Mercury”... (another mistake I might point out, concerned with the Mars/Mercury controversy) ...”it is these Three who will become in turn Lords of Mercury and guide all evolution on that globe. They are known in Buddhism as Pratyeka Buddhas, the ’solitary Buddhas’, for They do not teach, or establish world-religions. They are on the First or ruling Ray, while the Buddhas are on the Second or teaching Ray. But They stand at the level of the Buddha, though not Their’s the rôle of the World-Teacher. Hence the curiously misleading description in popular Buddhism of Them as ’solitary’ or ’selfish’ Buddhas.”
Now, curiously misleading it may be to him, but it is curiously contradictory with the statement in The Voice of the Silence.
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I would think by now that you have samples, shall we say, of the nature of these two teachings. I am not really concerned with any one passage and I am not really concerned to hear justifications of why it might be this and why it might be that. If it were just one or two passages which were faintly contradictory here and there, I would be the first to try and reconcile them. But when page after page are radically different, then the odd justification here and there is totally irrelevant. You really do have to consider why they are different, acknowledge for yourself, if indeed you can, that they are different and then choose which one you think is right. I think you will probably sense that I am in absolutely no doubt whatsoever as to which one I think is correct, but all I am asking is that you open-mindedly assess the information that I have suggested today you look at and if you come to the opposite conclusion to me, I shall be very surprised.
Thank you.– o O o –
From a letter to G. Larson:
”I read your typescript of Adam's lecture with interest. I have myself come across – and in the early days puzzled over – the passages he mentioned. Of course, there are many many more.... There are the technical differencies too, between what are virtually two different Theosophical Systems, which in many areas are just not compatible.... Unless, however, students are relatively familiar with both systems, it is pointless to argue, because those who do not know the Master/HPB scheme do not know what you are talking about and it takes a very long time to tell them. Adam's talk, however, was fine in that he used some examples which could be fairly simply put.
Someone ought to do a lot of research and find all the areas, at least the major ones, of difference between the two systems and publish them. This becomes increasingly important as Schools of Theosophy are being set up.”
Geoffrey Farthing
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