HOME" Man's mind once streched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension. " (Oliver Wendell Holmes) 
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QUESTION 01: Why the occult and esoteric teachings have been handled with such secrecy? A lot of food for thought. But I am still baffled at the secrecy of the subject. Why is it that only a few people get attracted to Theosophy, when the root of divinity is among us all and all are equal. Why is it that occultism is shrouded in a veil of mystery and is not to be discussed among all. I understand that our knowledge is thoroughly incomplete and inadequate. But it is through discussions and interactions of constructive kind that we become aware of newer horizons. If I have missed out a pont on a doctrine or a concept, my friend can alwways point it out and in this way, we both can grow faster rather that working alone. Please opine
This will be found in the SECRET DOCTRINE :
"The so-called Forces, with Light and Electricity heading them, and the
constitution of the Solar orb must be carefully examined; as also
Gravitation and the Nebular theories. The Natures of Ether and of other
Elements must be discussed: thus contrasting scientific with other Occult
teachings, while revealing some of the hitherto secret tenets of the
latter. (Vide Addendum.)
Some fifteen years ago, the writer was the first to repeat, after the
Kabalists, the wise Commandments in the Esoteric Catechism.
"Close thy mouth, lest thou shouldst speak of this (the mystery), and
thy heart, lest thou shouldst think aloud; and if thy heart has escaped
thee, bring it back to its place, for such is the object of our
alliance." (Sepher Jezireh, Book of Creation.) And again:—"This is a secret
which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst reveal it to the
vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape from it and
fall outside." (Rules of Initiation.)
A few years later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and
now another and a larger rent is made. . . .
But old and time-honoured errors—such as become with every day more
glaring and self-evident—stand arrayed in battle-order now, as they
did then. Marshalled by blind conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they
are constantly on the watch, ready to strangle every truth, which,
awakening from its age-long sleep, happens to knock for admission. Such has
been the case ever since man became an animal. That this proves in
every case moral death to the revealers, who bring to light any of these
old, old truths, is as certain as that it gives LIFE and REGENERATION to
those who are fit to profit even by the little that is now revealed to
them. “ S D I 299
“ For it is not the fault of the initiates that these documents
are now “lost” to the profane; nor was their policy dictated by
selfishness, or [xxxv] any desire to monopolise the life-giving sacred
lore. There were portions of the Secret science that for incalculable ages
had to remain concealed from the profane gaze. But this was because to
impart to the unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous
importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle in a powder
magazine.
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of
students, when meeting with statements such as this, may be outlined
here.
“We can understand,” they say, “the necessity for concealing
from the herd such secrets as the Vril, or the rock-destroying force,
discovered by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how
any danger could arise from the revelation of such a purely philosophic
doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of the planetary chains.”
The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the
seven races, at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for
each principle is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the
human principles are, on every plane, correlated to seven-fold occult
forces—those of the higher planes being of tremendous power. So that
any septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult powers,
the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity. A clue,
which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation—especially the
Westerns—protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant
materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would,
nevertheless, have been very real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to
people fully convinced of the reality of occultism, and entering a
cycle of degradation, which made them rife for abuse of occult powers and
sorcery of the worst description.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and
its actual existence had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants
of the Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and
stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known
by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the
Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change for
the worse—in the policy of centuries.
…. Is it a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a
religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as already stated, it is as
old as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time,
but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one
European Initiate—especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a
religious founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a
new religion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all
transmitters, not original teachers.
They were the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the
truths upon which the latter were based were as old as mankind.
Selecting one or more of those grand verities—actualities visible
only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer—out of the many orally
revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the adyta of
the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES and by personal
transmission—they revealed these truths to the masses.
Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under
the veil of its own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on,
developed into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in
mythical disguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient [xxxvii]
legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage in the World’s
History, shown by Dr. Legge *—who calls him “emphatically a
transmitter, not a maker”—as saying: “I only hand on: I cannot create
new things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them.”
(Quoted in “Science of Religions” by Max Müller.)
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients,
and the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now
transmits that which she has received and learnt herself to all those who
will accept it.
… This first installment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon
Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is
claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said
to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and,
finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before
the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special
hobby of their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these
teachings may be expected, and must be accepted beforehand. …
… The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when
proofs are given of its undeniable existence and records. But it will take
centuries before much more is given from it. Speaking of the keys to the
Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was remarked
by the writer in “Isis Unveiled” some ten years ago that: “The
said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is divulged.
We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse
into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!”
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the
key, and no more, was given in “ISIS.” Much more is explained in
these volumes. …
In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the work was
written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now,
was forbidden.
… the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague
theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those
[xxxix] portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from
confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity—at any rate, the
probability—of the existence of such teachings was first established.
Such statements as will now be made, have to be shown warranted by
various authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even
certain learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because
they had studied them, had seen and read works written upon them; and
some of whom had even been personally initiated into the ancient
Mysteries, during the performance of which the arcane doctrines were
allegorically enacted.
The writer will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to
cite well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good
judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous
proficients in the secret arts and science, along with the mysteries of the
latter, as they are divulged, or, rather, partially presented before the
public in their strange archaic form.” S D I xxxiv -- xxxix
“The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely
loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions.
Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one
of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be
identical with that of every other great religion.
It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in nature. It
denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has never
rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens.
It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic
religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a
blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever Unknowable.
Furthermore, the records we mean to place before the reader embrace the
esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning of our humanity,
and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein only its legitimate place,
and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the “Dan” or
“Jan-na”* (“Dhyan”) of Gautama’s metaphysics—grand as they appear to
one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom Religion of
antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu Reformer limited his
public teachings to the purely moral and physiological aspect of the
Wisdom-Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone.
Things “unseen and incorporeal,” the mystery of Being outside our
terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left entirely untouched in his
public lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select circle of his
Arhats. The latter received their Initiation at the famous Saptaparna
cave (the Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near Mount Baibhâr (the Webhâra of
the Pali MSS.). This cave was in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of
Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as rightly suspected by some
archæologists. ” S D I xx
“Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important
difference between orthodox Buddhism—i.e., the public teachings of Gautama
the Buddha, and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however,
differed in no wise from that of the initiated Brahmins of his day. The
Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and a
disciple of the “twice born” (the initiated Brahmins) or Dwijas. His
teachings, therefore, could not be different from their doctrines, for the
whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a portion of that
which had been kept secret from every man outside of the
“enchanted” circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics.
Unable to teach all that had been imparted to him—owing to his
pledges—though he taught a philosophy built upon the ground-work of the
true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to the world only its outward
material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See also Volume II.) Many
Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the “Soul
Doctrine.” None seem to have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly—too secretly,
perhaps—within the sanctuary. “ S D I xxi
“ This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few
fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now
permitted to see the light, after long millenniums of the most profound
silence and secrecy. I say “a few truths,” advisedly, because that
which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes,
nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But,
even the little that is now given is better than complete silence upon
those vital truths.
The world of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown—which it
is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem
eludes the grasp of the physicist—is rapidly progressing on the reverse,
material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena—a true
valley of discord and of eternal strife—a necropolis, wherein lie
buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That
soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied.
…but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to
learn the few truths that may be given to them now; and now much more
than ten years ago, when “Isis Unveiled,” ….were published.
One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the
correctness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary
STANZAS:
“How can the statements contained in them be verified?”
True, if a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works
quoted in the present volumes are known to some Orientalists, the chief
work—that one from which the Stanzas are given—is not in the
possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or “Dzan”) is
utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by
them under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback [xxxiii]
to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by official
Science; but to the students of Occultism, and to every genuine Occultist,
this will be of little moment.
The main body of the Doctrines given is found scattered throughout
hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already
translated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual,—others still awaiting their
turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying the
statements herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. …
However … one fact is quite certain. The members of several
esoteric schools—the seat of which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose
ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in
Syria, besides South America—claim to have in their possession the sum
total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the works,
in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or
characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs down
to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of
the Alexandrian Library (see Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., p. 27), every
work of a character that might have led the profane to the ultimate
discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science,
was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods,
diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that
once found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works
were all destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were
secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.*
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind,
whose text was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any
[xxiv] direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been
carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of
the best and cleverest palæographer, was also destroyed to the last
copy. During Akbar’s reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the
Emperor’s sinful prying into the religions of the infidels,
themselves helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badáonì, who had
all undisguised horror for Akbar’s mania for idolatrous religions.
* Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could
extort from the Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that
European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the “Science of Religion,”
p. 23), Whether Europe has the complete text is very doubtful, and the
future may have very disagreeable surprises in store for the
Orientalists.
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Moreover in all the large and wealthy lamaseries, there are
subterranean crypts and cave-libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the gonpa
and the lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western
Tsaydam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun there are several such
hiding-places. Along the ridge of Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has
ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep
gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery,
with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old lama, a hermit, living
nearby to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and
halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which,
according to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British
Museum. ” S D I xxii - xxiv
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In the SECRET DOCTRINE
Sacred.
Mysteries,
Alexandrian, texts destroyed I xxiii-iv
astrology secret of II 500n
blinds conceal real II 310
custodians of II 281-2
desecration of II 503
a discipline & stimulus to virtue I xxxv
founders of II 267n
gave rise to religions I xxxvi
geography part of II 9
great, & candidate's death II 462
Greek sages initiated in I 117
ideal & practical I 363
ineffable name & I 346
initiation into I xxxvi; II 795-6
lunar, & occult knowledge I 228n
Masonry once based on II 795-6
origin of II 281, 560
philosophers initiated into I 326-7
psychic & spiritual element belong to I 229
pyramids symbolize I 314-15, 317-18n
rounds & races taught in II 435
secrecy re II 124-5, 451, 518, 535
unlocked w seven keys II 632
records of the East II 314
science, ancient origin in II 794
spark given man II 95
Sacred Animals I 362
meaning of I 442
Mexican & Egyptian II 399n
plants change into I 238
of Zodiac I 92, 446n; II 23, 181n, 625n
Sacred Four
Dhyanis remain to serve mankind II 281-2
swastika emblem of II 587
Tetraktis or I 88, 99; II 621
Sacred Name II 126; seven letters of I 438-9
Sacred Numbers, Figures, Signs
I 60, 66, 89, 114, 168, 384, 649;
II 34-5, 57n, 410, 553, 580, 598-604, 622.
Sanctuary. See also Adytum,
arts & sciences preserved in II 572
unbroken traditions & records of II 443, 470,
womb of nature I 382, II 234
Secrecy. See also Secret
about life & death II 451
re certain symbols I 306, 363
Egyptian priests pledged to II 763
esoteric catechism on I 299
fear of desecration II 124
of initiates II 586
re mysteries of nature II 518
reasons for I xxxiii-v; II 451
reticence in giving truth I 167; II 571
rules on, strict I 163-4, 168, 170
Secret(s)
books in temple libraries II 444, 529
complete, record of Lemurians II 334-5
data fr generations of adepts II 700
description of, Lemurian records II 334-5
documents hidden, knowledge not I xxxv
dual power of, wisdom II 364
figures kept I 163-4, 168, 170; II 251
Kabbala's secret of II 282n
knowledge confined to temples II 532-3
"Mirror of Futurity" one of, records II 49
of nature II 319
records & seven keys to man's genesis I 323
sciences, history of II 503
teachings, portion only given I 480
works & esoteric cycles II 70
works unknown in Europe II 439
Silence
Gnostics on II 569n, 573-4
reasons for II 451
of sages re higher themes II 589
on secret invisible things I 95
worship in I 280
Secret Doctrine. See also Esoteric, Occultism
accumulated wisdom of ages I xxii, 272-3
basis & source of all things I 46
Buddhism, Upanishads rest on I 47
Church Fathers tried to destroy I xl
common property of mankind II 794
on cosmogenesis (Isis Unveiled) I 4
dates incompatible w science II 794
defined & described I 272-3
difficulties in describing II 794-8
of the East II 127
found in thousands of Sanskrit manuscripts I xxiii
generations of seers checked I 272
intelligent powers rule universe I 287
interprets archaic symbols II 96-7
key to theogonies & sciences II 767
manus, races, etc II 307
more given each century I xxxvii-viiin
Nabathean Agriculture & II 455
teaches no atheism I 279
teaches progressive development I 43
teaches reliable history I 267
three fundamental propositions I 14-18
three fund prop re evolution II 1, 274-5
universally diffused religion of mankind I xxxiv
Word: one number fr no number I 94
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I hope this may prove to be useful.
Best wishes,
DTB
Dallas
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The Wandering Theosophist, Kuwait
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