Vol143No08 May2022.pdf - TS Adyar

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Text of Resolutions passed by the

General Council of the Theosophical Society

Freedom of Thought

As the Theosophical Society has spread far and wide over the world,and as members of all religions have become members of it withoutsurrendering the special dogmas, teachings and beliefs of their re-spective faiths, it is thought desirable to emphasize the fact that there isno doctrine, no opinion, by whomsoever taught or held, that is in any waybinding on any member of the Society, none which any member is notfree to accept or reject. Approval of its three Objects is the sole conditionof membership. No teacher, or writer, from H. P. Blavatsky onwards,has any authority to impose his or her teachings or opinions on members.Every member has an equal right to follow any school of thought, buthas no right to force the choice on any other. Neither a candidate for anyoffice nor any voter can be rendered ineligible to stand or to vote, becauseof any opinion held, or because of membership in any school of thought.Opinions or beliefs neither bestow privileges nor inflict penalties.The Members of the General Council earnestly request every memberof the Theosophical Society to maintain, defend and act upon thesefundamental principles of the Society, and also fearlessly to exercise theright of liberty of thought and of expression thereof, within the limitsof courtesy and consideration for others.

Freedom of the Society

The Theosophical Society, while cooperating with all other bodieswhose aims and activities make such cooperation possible, is and mustremain an organization entirely independent of them, not committed toany objects save its own, and intent on developing its own work on thebroadest and most inclusive lines, so as to move towards its own goal asindicated in and by the pursuit of those objects and that Divine Wisdomwhich in the abstract is implicit in the title ‘The Theosophical Society’.

Since Universal Brotherhood and the Wisdom are undefined andunlimited, and since there is complete freedom for each and every memberof the Society in thought and action, the Society seeks ever to maintainits own distinctive and unique character by remaining free of affiliationor identification with any other organization.

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THE THEOSOPHIST

CONTENTS

“Small Acts with Great Love” 5Tim Boyd

What Does It Mean to Be Human? 10Ravi Ravindra and David Lorimer

Where, Who, What is God?—I 18Elton A. Hall

Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: How It Was Written—I 23Daniel Caldwell and Doss McDavid

Conscience and Intuition 32G. de Purucker

Choiceless Awareness 34K. Dinakaran

International Directory 40

This journal is the official organ of the President, founded by H. P. Blavatsky on 1 Oct. 1879.The Theosophical Society is responsible only for official notices appearing in this journal.

Editor: Mr Tim Boyd

Note: Articles for publication in The Theosophist should be sent to: <[email protected]>

___________________________________________________________________

VOL. 143 NO. 8 MAY 2022

Cover: Buds of the Magnolia tree (magnolia soulangeana). It is one of the early bloomers,displacing the gray-brown colors of the departing winter, accompanied by courting birdcalls. By author and photographer ©Richard Dvorák: <dvorak.photography>.

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The Theosophical Society is composed of students, belonging to any religion inthe world or to none, who are united by their approval of the Society’s Objects,by their wish to remove religious antagonisms and to draw together men of goodwill,whatsoever their religious opinions, and by their desire to study religious truthsand to share the results of their studies with others. Their bond of union is not theprofession of a common belief, but a common search and aspiration for Truth.They hold that Truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity of life,by devotion to high ideals, and they regard Truth as a prize to be striven for, notas a dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that belief should be theresult of individual study or intuition, and not its antecedent, and should rest onknowledge, not on assertion. They extend tolerance to all, even to the intolerant,not as a privilege they bestow but as a duty they perform, and they seek to removeignorance, not punish it. They see every religion as an expression of the DivineWisdom and prefer its study to its condemnation, and its practice to proselytism.Peace is their watchword, as Truth is their aim.

Theosophy is the body of truths which forms the basis of all religions, andwhich cannot be claimed as the exclusive possession of any. It offers a philosophywhich renders life intelligible, and which demonstrates the justice and the lovewhich guide its evolution. It puts death in its rightful place, as a recurring incidentin an endless life, opening the gateway to a fuller and more radiant existence.It restores to the world the Science of the Spirit, teaching man to know the Spirit ashimself and the mind and body as his servants. It illuminates the scriptures anddoctrines of religions by unveiling their hidden meanings, and thus justifying themat the bar of intelligence, as they are ever justified in the eyes of intuition.

Members of the Theosophical Society study these truths, and theosophistsendeavour to live them. Everyone willing to study, to be tolerant, to aim high, andto work perseveringly, is welcomed as a member, and it rests with the member tobecome a true theosophist.

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETYFounded 17 November 1875

President: Mr Tim Boyd Vice-President: Dr Deepa PadhiSecretary: Ms Marja Artamaa Treasurer: Ms Nancy Secrest

Headquarters: ADYAR, CHENNAI (MADRAS) 600 020, INDIA

Vice-President: [email protected]: [email protected]

Treasurer: [email protected] Library and Research Centre: [email protected]

Theosophical Publishing House: [email protected] // www.adyarbooks.comEditorial Office: [email protected], Website: http://www.ts-adyar.org

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“Small Acts with Great Love”

Vol. 143.8, May 2022


TIM BOYD

IT is an understatement to say that wefind ourselves living in challenging times.Right now any direction we look, thereseems to be some looming crisis. In H. P.Blavatsky’s “The Golden Stairs” the per-son who aspires to wisdom is chargedwith “a valiant defense of those who areunjustly attacked”. But where do webegin with those who are unjustly at-tacked? Certainly there are human con-ditions of unjust attacks, person to per-son, nation against nation, but there isalso the natural world, which is under anunrelenting and unjustifiable attack fromhumanity as a whole.

In these moments, not just within theTheosophical Society (TS), but in theworld, it seems that many people arereaching out for some spiritual grounding— a sense of something more real thanthe turmoil they are experiencing. Whilethere is such a thing as genuine spiri-tuality, from my point of view an untestedspirituality is somehow not real.

On a sunny day, with good health anda pocket full of money, spirituality is nota difficult thing to proclaim. However, thecourse of every life is filled with chal-lenges. One of life’s great challenges isto discover and exhibit what is in fact real.The great saint Kabir made the statement:“What Kabir talks of is only what he has

lived through. If you have not livedthrough something, it is not true.”

For some years I worked in hospice,caring for the dying. When people woulddie, it was often unsettling and confusingto the people they knew in life. Friendsand acquaintances, when speaking to theloved ones who remained, did not knowwhat to say. Very often people would saythings like “he/she is in a better place”,“it’s God’s will”, or “at least you had 10good years together (or 15, 20, and soon, years)”. These kind of remarks aremore a sign of people’s personal discom-fort, unfamiliarity, and perhaps fear ofthis moment. But it is something thatcomes from this category of unlivedtruths. To someone who is grieving, theyneed companionship, not pronounce-ments. Too often, people fail in that re-gard. Until we have lived it, it is not truefor us. Without having had the experiencewithin our heart, spiritual sounding wordscan flow too easily from our lips.

When we talk about a human life, allof us are experienced in it. Each of us ishere for a very short period of time — ifwe are lucky, 100 years — but it is short,and filled with crises and joys. Duringthat time many things happen, and wetry to make sense of them. Very oftenthe deepest meaning we find is in some

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outlook related to spirituality. An Ameri-can humorist once made the point that“Life is full of miserableness, loneliness,and suffering, and it’s all over too quick-ly.” Crises and loss seem to be the mainways that we deepen, as well as joy.Every life has its share of them. So whenwe think about what life is, it is manythings. It is growth and creation, also itis destruction and decline. The greatspiritual Masters throughout the ageshave repeatedly tried to draw ourattention to the fact that it is all of thesethings at once. Try to ignore any part ofit, and we limit our access to truth.

Periodically I reread the Bhagavad-gitâ, and always I find new insights. It isa source of great enjoyment and ins-truction whenever I get to the chapterwhere Arjuna recognizes that Krishnais not merely a friend, or a knowledge-able charioteer, but that he is, in fact,the supreme Lord. Arjuna asks him forthe boon of seeing him in his true form.Krishna obliges, and when Arjuna seesall that, his hair stands on end. It is muchmore than what he could have expected.

What is described as being seen with-in this “true form” are all of the devas(angels) and gods, innumerable eyesseeing in every direction, fires comingfrom his body “burning up universes”.The Gitâ is the conversation that resultsfrom Arjuna’s indecision on the cusp ofthe battle between two warrior families,his family, the Pandavas, and his op-ponents, the Kauravas. Arjuna sees allthe warriors of the Kaurava family, flow-ing into the infinite mouths of Krishna,

and being crushed in his teeth, but alsoall of humanity is flowing into the mouthsof Krishna. As much as life is creation,it is equally destruction.

When we talk about Oneness andBrotherhood, often we limit our consi-deration to Light and enlightenment.Oneness is a solidarity, a shared, mutualexperience of life. But life is a sharingin both its lightened and dark aspects— in enlightenment and in ignorance,equally so. There is no such thing as onewithout the other. It is an immatureapproach to the spiritual life to want theicing on the cake and not the cake.

In spiritual traditions around the worldthere is a term that comes up again andagain — emptiness. It is a term which isequated with wisdom or enlightenment.You find emptiness in the Sufi tradition,in Buddhism and Christianity as well.The idea expressed is that the deepestwisdom, or connection with the Divine,is related to this experience of emptiness.Saint Paul talked about the experienceof communion with the Divine, saying:“To be absent from the body is to be pre-sent with God.” To be absent (empty)from all of the senses, from all the ex-perience with desires that we treasureis to be present with the Divine.

In Buddhism emptiness is highlyemphasized in the six pâramitas (per-fections, or virtues). HPB’s The Voiceof the Silence lists seven. In all of theapproaches to the perfections, the finalone is prajñâ — wisdom. A great empha-sis is placed on that in the sense that pa-tience, perseverance, morality, and all

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the other perfections, even meditation,or dhyâna, are deepening, and each oneis regarded as an antidote to differentconditions of the human mind. But theywould say: “When in doubt, look towisdom.” When in doubt try to connectwith whatever your experience of emp-tiness, or wisdom, might be. So what isthis emptiness?

I spent a good deal of time during mylife actively involved in a Buddhist ap-proach to spirituality. This whole con-sideration of emptiness is central inBuddhism, but it breaks your head whenyou first encounter it. It is hard to geta handle on it, necessarily so. One ofthe great presentations of this WisdomTradition is called the Heart Sutra, orthe Prajñâ Pâramita Sutra, in which theBodhisattva Avalokiteshvara gives theteaching to a disciple of the Buddha. Init, his sole focus is on wisdom and emp-tiness. To me it is revealing, because theentire discussion is about what wisdomis not, not what it is. From beginning toend it is a negation of everything thatwe might think wisdom could be.

The Bodhisattva tells the disciple thatemptiness is the original character ofeverything: It is not born, not annihilated,not tainted, not pure, it does not increaseor decrease. Then he goes on to talkabout how with emptiness there is no eye,no ear, no nose, no body, no mind. Andhe goes on layer after layer of what it isnot. This emptiness the sutra attemptsto convey is not a void. In a sense it isa Space-like understanding, and Spacecontains everything.

As individuals we move and functionwithin space; nations, houses, ideas, allare within space. It is probably our closestmetaphor for God, or the Divine, some-thing that is present everywhere, thatparticipates in everything, out of whicheverything comes into being, yet it iscompletely unaffected by anything cre-ated or destroyed, by ignorance orenlightenment. Understanding this is des-cribed as the pathway to enlightenment.Enlightenment does not arise because wesit in meditation, or from the things wedo for others, or ourselves. All of thesethings need to take place, but wisdom onlymakes itself known to us when everycategory in which we attempt to containit drops away. That is the difficulty.

Very often the statement is made:“With age comes wisdom.” As someonewho has entered the category of “old”,this is a statement that I have to disagreewith. A more correct statement wouldbe: “With age comes the possibility of adeepening wisdom.” One of the thingsthat aging does is that it strips many thingsaway from us. All of us who in our youthwere active, perhaps even vain, proud ofour good looks, our hair, our smile, findthat with time the hair thins and disappears,that youthful vibrancy diminishes. Withtime our attachments to many superficialthings can lessen. This can have the effectof allowing us to see something that ismore real, that was always present, buthidden by our youthful involvement in arange of activity that has faded away.

Many of us find ourselves drawn tosome form of spirituality because we feel

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it will benefit us, that in some way peaceand tranquility, are possibilities for us ifwe follow this avenue. While this iscertainly true, when we think in terms ofthe enlightened beings such as Krishna,the Buddha, and we study the way thatthey had to interact with the world, itmight not fit with our normal ideas. Forexample, Krishna, in the Mahabharata,is not only fully engaged in a war, buthe has chosen a side in the war. He isnot merely an all-seeing witness of theviolence, he is on the side of Arjuna andhis family, and assists them in the battle.So, there is this war, where he seems tobe favoring one side, but in the end heclaims everybody in the universal expe-rience of death. All is completely equal.

There is a well-known story aboutone of the people that the Buddha hadto deal with. There was a great murderercalled Angulimâla. He was given the namebecause when he murdered his victimshe would cut one of their fingers (anguli)and place it on his necklace (mâla). Hewas famed and feared for this. On oneoccasion the Buddha was near the forestwhere the murderer was staying, and hedecided he would walk there alone. Hisdisciples warned him of the danger, yet hewent alone into those woods where Anguli-mâla lived. As the Buddha was walking,Angulimâla spotted him and told him-self: “I have another victim!”

As the Buddha was meditatively walk-ing through the forest, Angulimâla startedto run after him. The Buddha continuedwalking slowly, never increasing hispace, but somehow the murderer could

never catch up. He ran faster, but he couldnever bridge the distance. Finally, heshouted: “Stop! What are you doing?”The Buddha kept walking and said,“I have stopped!”, to which Angulimâlaresponded, “No, you haven’t!” This dia-logue repeated itself until the Buddha said:“I have stopped from violence, fromkilling, from the pursuit of desires thatharm others. You have not.” At that mo-ment this dialogue sank in, and the mur-derer went on to become one of the greatdisciples sitting at the feet of the Buddha.

These are stories about the visionand effects of a genuine spirituality, butit always comes back to us: How do webehave? What do we do based on thesituations we are facing in our world?Recently the news around the world isabout a new war that has broken outbetween Ukraine and Russia. How do wehelp? What do we do? Often the think-ing and conversation runs to who is rightand who is wrong. Based on our judgmentwe decide and then often take the nextstep of creating an enemy. Within us weidentify and create an enemy, and in sodoing we become participants in the pro-cess of war-making. Nothing good comesout of war, except what it generates asan enlightened response among people.

One of our TS members who periodi-cally comes to Adyar to visit with us, isfrom Russia. In talking with him the otherday, he said he has to return now, becausehis visa is expiring. He is not involvedin the war, but when he returns home hewill find that, as a consequence of war,his life savings will have been reduced

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by sixty percent. More than half of thevalue of his lifetime earnings has va-nished almost overnight. The job heworked for many years is also gone.Why? because he works for Google,who, as a party to sanctions againstRussia, is no longer operating in hiscountry. He also is “unjustly attacked”.

I received a letter from one of the re-presentatives of the TS in Russia. It wasnot addressed to me, but to his “Ukrainianbrothers and sisters in the TS”. It was avery brave thing for him to do, becausethat letter could land him in jail. It was aletter of open support for the Ukrainianpeople and a statement of the fact thatthe people of Russia are not an enemy tothem. He wrote it knowing that alreadythousands of Russians have been impri-soned for writing or saying similar things.

Many of the millions of Ukrainianswho have left their homes in war-tornareas have arrived in Hungary, a neigh-boring country to Ukraine. In that coun-try the Theosophical Order of Service(TOS) and other groups are inviting re-fugees, people they have never met,into their homes. People in America areputting together homeopathic medicinepackages, food, clothing, toys for chil-dren to send to them. Globally there isthe question “what can I do for all whoare affected by senseless and unneces-sary violence?” And there is a response.

These are some of the things that fillour attention in these times, and everytime there are issues like this. The dif-ference now is the growing awarenessthat we are globally interconnected. If itwas not clear already when the pandemicrose up and a small virus brought everycoun-try and economic class to theirknees, we become aware that this is onelife that we share. It comes back againto “what do we do?” There is no pre-scription for that.

Mother Theresa is well known forhaving said: “We can do no great things.”Most of us want to do the great thing thatwill change the world, that will end war,poverty, hunger, and unloving behavior.All of this we would do if it was withinour capacity, which, as individuals, it isnot. But her full statement was: “We cando no great things; we can only do smallthings with great love.”

We can care for the people within thecircle which we inhabit. We can think ofthe people beyond our reach. We candevise ways to support those things thatsupport others. It spreads. You do notthrow a rock in a pond and the ripplesstop; they spread. This is worth remem-bering if we ever feel powerlessness inthe face of very challenging times.

Wherever we are, small acts withgreat love invariably reach beyond theboundaries of our locale. ²

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.And if you can’t help them at least don’t hurt them.

The Dalai Lama

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What Does It Mean to Be Human?

The Theosophist


RAVI RAVINDRA AND DAVID LORIMER

Dr Ravi Ravindra, a lifetime member of the Theosophical Society, is Professor Emeritus, Dalhousie University,

Halifax, Canada, where he taught comparative religion, philosophy, and physics. Theosophy-Science Inter-

view at the TS Adyar International Convention, Chennai, India, on 28 Dec. 2021. See: <ravindra.ca>.

Mr David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA, is a writer, lecturer and editor, Program Director, Scientific

and Medical Network, Founder of Character Education Scotland, and former President of Wrekin

Trust and the Swedenborg Society. See: <scientificandmedical.net> and <galileocommission.org>.

RAVI Ravindra: You have been veryconcerned about what it means to be areal human, so please share with us yourunderstanding of that.

David Lorimer: Well, this is indeed acentral concern of mine. I think there isa multi-level answer to this. If you speakin a metaphysical sense, a human hasthese different levels of identity, differ-ent levels of being in terms of the spirit,the soul, and multiple subtle bodies. Thisis the esoteric understanding of what ahuman is. Epistemologically, I wouldsay a human is capable of Gnosis,which is the knowledge by identity andrealization that the metaphysical essenceof the universe is Love and Light.

But I think what is important in thecurrent context is the human as humaneand as humanitarian. I have been veryinfluenced by Albert Schweitzer in thisrespect, who argued for humanitarian-ism. He also argued for us becomingwhat he called, and I love this phrase,“more finely and deeply human”, by

which I think he meant a component ofunderstanding and wisdom, but morecentrally, a component of reverence forlife, and compassion and care, and ethicof the heart. So I think someone who istruly human is someone who lives not justfrom the mind, but also from the heart.

RR: Yes. As we look around and lookat all the political leaders running thewhole world, controlling the economiesand the armies, some of them could evenstart a nuclear war. Do you think any ofthem would correspond to what youdefine as a decent human being?

DL: In this sense of humaneness, byand large the people who run the political,economic, and financial systems areobsessed with power, money, and con-trol. So their values are mostly selfish,or corporate. They are out for their ownsuccess, and that really does not cor-respond to the common good. There area few exceptions to this because theproblem goes back at least as far as Plato,who had this idea that dispassionate

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guardians should be the rulers, and thereis a bit of patronizing paternalism here.But I think what he was getting at washow you reconcile power and goodness.And the philosopher, by definition, inthat sense, is someone who is good, hasthe common good in mind.

There are of course, some remarkablepolitical people, statesmen. I think if youare an inspired politician, you becomea statesman, just as Gandhi, Mandela,Václav Havel, the recent president ofUruguay Luis Lacalle Pou, and someonelike Dag Hammarskjold, who I think is ahuge inspiration. He and Schweitzer werequite closely linked. Hammarskjold wasscrupulous in maintaining a dispassionateand disinterested position in the variousissues that he was trying to deal with,even under pressure from the great pow-ers to bend to their will, and against ac-cusations of partiality. So there are theseinspirational models, but they are quitefar and few between in terms of visionarypolitical leaders.

RR: I would also like to ask a very sim-ilar question about all the people whowould be highly regarded in the scien-tific, and even the theological and phil-osophical world, including many NobelPrize winners, because you have metmany of these people, and have hadmany interactions with them. Do youfind some of them or all of them closeto being good human beings, as youwould understand?

DL: Well, you covered this in a recentcourse that you put on. Scientists, intel-lectuals, and theologians, are not special-ists in “being”, like the sages. They are

specialists in knowledge and in some casesbeing very clever and mathematicallybrilliant. What I am talking about here ispolicy of the human being. That is whatwe are. We are not human doings orhuman havings. We are human beings,and that seems to me fundamental. I havemet some very inspiring people. I thinka lot of the people I have come acrosshave this understanding, like yourself.They integrate science and spirituality,they are not one-sided, and they haveconcern for the larger whole. But I donot think that expertise in one areanecessarily translates into being a goodhuman, maybe a productive one, butnot necessarily a good one.

RR: But of course, since you are verymuch connected with the Scientific andMedical Network, and if you are meet-ing some of these people in that context,there is already a selection made. Other-wise, they will not be interested in theNetwork unless they were also interestedin trying to understand something otherthan just the materialistic science.

DL: Yes, this raises a very interestingpoint, because if we go back to the originsof the Mystics and Scientists Conferencein 1978 (and Fritjof Capra is the onlyspeaker who is still with us), there was asense in those days of having the mysticson the one hand, and the scientists onthe other. I think what has happened inrecent years is that the scientists whoI invite (and you would be among thosepeople) have themselves a mystical side.And so they are not purely scientific,but they try to integrate their sciencewith their spirituality.

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RR: So you see, consequently, yourexample of the scientists is naturallyrestricted. It is not that you have all thescientists, because, unfortunately, at leastin my experience, even when I was atthe Institute of Advanced Study, wherethey obviously end up getting highlycreative scientists, I was really quite sad-dened, because I am sure I would notwish to invite many of them for tea at myhome. But it is also true that there areexceptions, some extraordinary people.To mention merely one example, Free-man Dyson was very human. In fact, onone occasion visiting us, he ended upeven washing the diapers of my daughter,in some context.

DL: He is someone I knew a little bit, notnearly as well as you. But I agree, he is avery good example. Well, I think if youhave a family and you have children andgrandchildren, you are also a familyperson as well as being a scientist.

RR: But now the question which is reallyrelevant to our life in society now. Doyou feel that there is enhancement ofgood human beings in society? Are theydecreasing in their numbers? Or are theyincreasing? What is your impression?

DL: Well, of course, this is an impos-sible question to answer. Any answer isgoing to be to some extent subjective. ButI would like to frame it within the workof David Hawkins, who produced aclassic book, Power vs Force. This is acentral diagnosis, because what he meansby power is, in fact, spiritual power. Andwhat he means by force is violence,which produces its opposite reaction, and

that is non-violence, the Gandhian idea,something which represents spiritualpower, or the power of love, or power oftruth. According to his analysis, by a kindof rating scale of emotions and spiritualdevelopment, the key part on the scaleis 200. Anything below 200 is predomi-nantly negative, and anything above 200is moving into the positive. He reckonedthat in the last few years of his life wehave just gone from about 194 to 207.So this would be, on his scale, some-thing encouraging.

The other point I want to make, isreally that the news that we are fed andthe propaganda that is spread by thenews is mostly bad. It highlights the aw-ful things that are going on: deaths,corruption, and so forth. As Satish Kumarhas said in a lecture he gave: We mightbe misled into thinking that the worldis a much worse place than it in factis, because 99% of people are just go-ing about their own business, and theyare helping their neighbors, their families,are supporting the community, and soon. It is only a small number who areon the extreme.

I was talking to my wife about thisjust yesterday. There is some sort ofgroundswell going on, which is a self-organizing system, to bring a new kindof relationship with each other, whichinvolves mutual solidarity and care, andis a horizontal form of organization,rather than being a vertical top down,which is our usual kind of administrativearrangement. There is a sense in whichpeople are waking up.

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But when I look at the big picture,I am struck by a phrase from my friendLawrence Freeman. He sent a letter fromGlasgow, which talked about a pessimismof the intellect, and an optimism of thewill. That was a very interesting phrase,because I cannot say I am hugely opti-mistic about human prospects, but it isincumbent on me to do what I can tomove things in a positive direction.

RR: We very much appreciate that. Thisis in fact, one of the reasons for invitingyou for this interview, because of yourinterest in promoting goodwill and goodactions in the world. But there is in-creasing apprehension that more andmore enhancement of artificial intel-ligence is really going to interfere withhuman beings’ freedom to actually evenchoose to do good or bad, for that matter,but that they will all be treated like ma-chines by the artificial intelligence. Doyou have some remarks about that youwould like to share?

DL: Yes, indeed. And I initially amreminded of a sentence from Ends andMeans by Aldous Huxley, where he saidthat technological progress has merelyprovided us with a more efficient meansof going backwards. And Schweitzerdistinguishes quite carefully betweentechnological progress, social progress,and spiritual progress. He always insistedthat spiritual progress was the mostimportant. So I think that we are reallyback to this initial premise about what isa human being. For the transhumanistsand technocrats in Silicon Valley, entre-preneurs, most of them, except FedericoFaggin, think we are just biologicalmachines. It is so sad that the machine

metaphor is so much taken for granted.It does not occur to people to make the

obvious distinction between a machineand an organism, almost obvious to anybiologist. And so we are regarded asbiological machines in need of anupgraded operating system. I think thespiritual traditions also feel we need anupgrade, but that is not quite the samething. I think the agenda has moved for-ward sharply in the last 18 months. It istowards this technocracy, transhuman-ism, surveillance, and control throughelectronic means. This is already appear-ing on the horizon, in my view, with the“track and trace” vaccine health passes,or vaccine passports.

Another aspect of this, which manypeople do not appreciate, is the relation-ship between technocracy, the controlthrough technology, and the sustainabledevelopment goals, because a centralplank of these is what we call smart cities.And a smart city is one with a lot of “5G”and “6G”, which enables the internet ofthings and bodies. And with the internetof bodies, our vital functions, and evenour thoughts and feelings, may eventuallybe enabled to be read out of a device oran implant, if we go that far. Then every-thing will be uploaded into the cloud andused for commercial purposes. The me-chanistic metaphor is in bad need of anoverhaul. We need to go to a more living-systems view.

RR: Maybe I can take more or less real-ly specific points from this mechanis-tic overhaul mechanism. Is truth to bediscovered only by the mind and science?So music, sculpture, they can all go tohell, they cannot lead to any truth?

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How do we change that perspective?

DL: Well, the magnum opus of IainMcGilchrist, The Matter With Things, isjust coming out, with 1,600 pages and5,700 references. The means and waysto truth is his fundamental exploration.He explains that there are analytical waysto truth. He also talks about science,reason, imagination, and intuition asbeing paths to knowledge, and elaborateson the possibilities and potential of eachof these paths. Obviously, the means totruth depends on the level at which youare operating and your state of aware-ness. So you cannot get to Gnosis, orspiritual truth, without using spiritualmeans and perception.

RR: But you see what has happenedsince the so-called age of enlightenment,which I regard to be a completely wronglabel for this. I cannot recall any greatpoet who has been happy with this under-lying assumption that only reason, orscience, can lead to truth. For example,William Blake even regarded Newton,Francis Bacon, and Locke, the philos-opher, as members of an infernal trinity.Similarly, whether you read Wordsworth,Shelley, Keats, anybody, they are notreally happy with this whole overlyingidea that science is the only avenue totruth. So how do we actually encouragepeople to have some concern for what-ever we mean by spiritual, because it canbe a very large area? We need to beginfrom wherever one is.

DL: One very influential person in thisrespect is Goethe, who was a poet and ascientist. My understanding is that hedeveloped what Brian Goodwin used to

call the science of qualities. So he com-plemented third-person objective, as itwere, observation, with first-person con-templation and empathy, where we feelinto the nature of what it is we are observ-ing. We have a dynamic wish to under-stand the processes by which the plantdevelops — a seed develops into a plant,into a flower, and then back into a seed.His interest was in becoming. But thewider question then is the validation ofspiritual insight and knowledge, which isalso related to creativity, because of theinsights that come.

I just was reading the piece by IainMcGilchrist on Poincaré, the father ofmodern chaos theory, for instance, as aparallel to Mozart, who was able to, as itwere, download an entire symphony, andthen just write it out. [RR: Yes]. I think itis a common source to creativity. WhatIain insists on, is the key role of the righthemisphere in these processes and thefact that we live in a left hemisphere-dominated culture, which has created thissort of serious imbalances that we aretalking about.

RR: My own impression is that atpresent, there is a very strong tendencythat every kind of science, say evenbiology through biophysics, chemistrythrough physical chemistry, geologythrough geophysics, or even psychology,all ultimately have to become branchesof physics. My personal impression is thatsooner or later, maybe within one cen-tury, or even less, physics will becomea branch of psychology. What is yourimpression about this?

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DL: That is a very interesting remark.You can see why. Well, theology was thequeen of the sciences in the Middle Ages,then physics becomes the queen of thesciences. If you move in a direction ofthe primacy, or fundamental nature, asexplained by Planck and Schrodinger,and another great physicist, Pauli, in hisinteraction with Jung, then you can seethat everything actually branches outfrom consciousness and attention andthe way that we actually pay attention tothings. This is another of Iain’s points,that the left hemisphere has a focusedattention and the right hemisphere has abroader attention, and they obviouslyneed to work together. That is a prettygood forecast. But I had hoped that itwould be a transpersonal kind of psy-chology, rather than a reductionist one,if you are right.

RR: Well, the reductionist one becomesa branch of physics!

DL: That is true.

RR: Now, how do we encourage, parti-cularly really young people, to take moreand more interest in spiritual matters,because it is not that one needs to be inany sense against the scientific know-ledge — that would be quite silly — buthow to see the limitations or the under-lying assumptions of scientific know-ledge, and that there is something abouttheir own life? After all, whatever I callmyself, will die in a few decades, in mycase really only a few more years. Sohow do we encourage our young studentsor young people generally?

DL: At an early stage in its development,

the Network had a week-long course forunder-25s called Wider Horizons. Andthe intent of this course, which consistedof one person coming every 24 hourstalking about their area of expertise andleading meditations, and then they alsohad some craft work, sculpting, dance,and movement. So the idea was to openthem up, and to cover some of the areasthat are not covered by the conventionalcurriculum. I myself try to do this inmy inspiring purpose work, which is acharacter and values program foryoung people.

The way that this works is that I givethem a template, the first part of whichconsists of thinking about themselves interms of their qualities and what theyneed to develop and what they are goodat — self-awareness and self-knowledge.Then it proceeds onto inspiration andthen on to aspiration in terms of askingquestions like, “what do you want to notjust achieve, but also contribute in yourlife”, and “what are your ideas for a sus-tainable future”. So the purpose there isto enable young people to find out whatis already implicit inside them to be drawnout, as education literally means. So theybegin to develop a philosophy of life oftheir own.

But in terms of interesting youngpeople in spirituality, quite a lot of themare interested in yoga. Fewer, I think,probably, in my experience, are inter-ested in meditation, but they might comearound to that. I think it is our life ex-perience, essentially, which raises thesequestions for us. One of my colleagues,

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Oliver Robinson, is a specialist on whathe calls the quarter-life crisis. So the mid-to late 20s is when, it seems, you firstsystematically start asking: “Well, whatam I doing here?” and “Why am I here?”If you have not asked these questionsalready, then quite often these will arisearound that phase of life.

RR: I would like to ask you a questionthat I also ask myself: Are we just fromthe very beginning of our life, mainlybecause of some previous lives or frombirth, privileged to have certain kinds ofinterests, a certain kind of search, or is itsomething that one accidentally comesacross? Or is it something that you arenow suggesting we could actually installin our educational system to bring abouta search for the quality of one’s being,not only the quality of one’s knowledge?

DL: From my own part, around theage of 30 or so, I kind of rememberedwho I was, at a deeper level. And this,of course, corresponds to the Gnosticidea that there is a fall into separation,into forgetfulness, into sleep, and thenthe job is to wake up and remember thatyou are more than just the physical bodyand personality. So I think that is intrin-sic. But how to put it into the educationalsystem? In England, for instance, whatused to be called religious instruction,then became religious education. Andnow it seems to be evolving into com-parative worldviews, which I findquite interesting.

But what is missing in the actualsyllabus is any reference to practice, sothat you are not introduced to practices,

which are the essence of the spiritual life.I think you would need to do that. I triedto do this, even when I was teaching 30or 35 years ago. Now I introduce mypupils to basic meditation techniques,just to give them a little bit of space andsilence inside. That is missing in youngpeople at the moment. They give so muchattention seeking technology, that theyfind it very difficult to go inside.

RR: One of the almost fundamentalenunciations practically in all spiritualteachings, is that there are many levelsof reality, subtler than the mind. Forexample, in the Bible, we have nineorders of angels, they are all spiritual, sothere is a very large realm. How do weinvite people to bring something otherthan their mind to relate with reality?

DL: That again, is a matter of practice,as we both know. It is difficult to envisagethat kind of esoteric teaching beingbrought into the classroom, other than byvery special teachers who happen to havedeveloped that interest themselves. Sowhat we are getting at here is how do weidentify the limits of the mind, or limitsof the left hemisphere, and the limits ofwhat can be apprehended at differentlevels, and by implication, the limits ofregarding ourselves as only a body, abody with consciousness, which isobviously the standard prevalent view?

RR: It will be good now for you to addwhatever you wish. People would ob-viously be interested both in eternalwisdom, or Ageless Wisdom, if you like,and science. What would you like to sayto them to encourage them to at least

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admire the fact that they are interestedin both?

DL: Well, we need a complementaryapproach and to balance our inner andouter lives. And that is something thateach of us has to address in our own way.I myself do this through my spiritualpractice, which is partly meditation. I alsodo daily movements from my spiritualteacher, Peter Deunov, a Bulgarian sage.In these movements, we invoke the bles-sing of God, the divine love in our soul:“May divine love live in my soul, maydivine justice grow within me.” Theseare affirmations that correspond toparticular gestures.

When I am walking in Nature, I try toput my mind in neutral and be completelypresent. For instance, walking in the au-tumn rain and mist is incredibly beautifulin its own way. I try to allow myself tobecome absorbed in that. It makesenough space for silence, to slow down,because we are living in a speeded-upworld. To have a sense of service, whatcan we actually do for each other?

In terms of what is important in ex-panding science we need to realize thatthere are these different interfaces,which the Network is very much con-cerned with. We are less concernedwith the interface, specifically betweenscience and Christian theology, andscience and theology generally. But whatwe are concerned with is the interface

between science and mysticism, themystics’ and scientists’ conference, sci-ence and spirituality, and science andesotericism. And I know that in the bigmagnum opus that Edi Bilimoria will bepublishing next year, which I have beenhelping on the editing side, he makes avery good case for a new metaphysicalbasis for science being an esoteric frame-work. I very much sympathize with that.I agree with a great deal of what he says.

This means, for instance, expandingthe notion of the human being into a moretraditional understanding, also expandingthe number of bodies, that there is notjust the physical body. One of the thingsthat the Western philosophers alwaysbring up in discussing the Cartesian mind-body problem is that they say: “Well, howcan you have an interaction betweensomething that is extended in somethingthat is unextended?” This completelyignores the tradition that there is not onlya physical body, but there are also subtlebodies which have been articulated inWestern esotericism too.

So I think we are living in a time ofintegration. It is extremely important tointegrate the inner and the outer scienceand spirituality, left and right hemi-spheres, masculine and feminine. We areliving in a time of the arrival of, and theabsolute necessity for, the sacred femi-nine to make itself felt. So integration,I suppose, would be a key word here.²

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Albert Einstein

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Where, Who, What is God? — I

The Theosophist


ELTON A. HALL

Prof. Elton A. Hall is an associate of the United Lodge of Theosophists (ULT) from Ithaca, New York.

Exploring the QuestionSir William Jones (1746–1794), despite

his occasional dim view of Indian culture,virtually fell in love with Sanskrit writ-ings. His interest in philology led him topropose the now accepted connectionbetween Indian and European languages,reflected in the relationship betweenSanskrit, Greek, Latin, and their descen-dants. We begin with one of his trans-lations from the Yoga Vâsishtha:

Blue crystal vault, and elemental fires

That in th’ ethereal fluid blaze and breathe;

Thou, tossing main, whose snaky

branches wreathe

This pensive orb with intertwisted gyres;

Mountains, whose radiant spires

Presumptuous rear their summits

to the skies,

And blend their em’rald hue with

sapphire light;

Smooth meads and lawns, that glow

with varying dyes

Of dew-bespangled leaves and

blossoms bright,

Hence! vanish from my sight:

Delusive Pictures! unsubstantial shows!

My soul absorb’d One only Being knows,

Of all perceptions One abundant source,

Whence ev’ry object ev’ry moment flows:

Suns hence derive their force,

Hence planets learn their course;

But suns and fading worlds

I view no more:

GOD only I perceive; GOD only I adore.1

This poem embraces the spirit ofthe question Helena Petrovna Blavatsky(HPB) asked, that is the title of this essay.Those familiar with Theosophy and thewritings of HPB know that it is reward-ing to pay close attention to every word.Though these words sometimes seemcasually tossed out, or even wanderingfrom the subject at hand, each word iscarefully chosen. By reading with reflec-tive attention, we may distinguish distinc-tive features of her approach:

1. HPB immediately gets to the heartof the matter at hand, even when she doesnot appear to do so.

2. She covers a topic repeatedly — aswe see in Isis Unveiled and The SecretDoctrine — but each time unveiling moreprofound levels of meaning. We are intro-duced to a subject in a way that encouragesus to assimilate what we are told, only tofind a new level, perspective, or dimen-sion of the topic for further assimilation.

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The process, as she explained in her com-ments to Commander Robert Bowen,one of a small group of her students, helpsrefine the brain so that consciousnesscan expand and achieve more profoundinsights and deeper realization. Her tea-chings are not aimed to merely producean intellectually organized system ofthought but rather to transform con-sciousness itself. One could take TheVoice of the Silence as the key to howshe wrote her other works.

3. Yet because of the nature of theteachings, HPB sometimes uses whatshe calls “blinds”, or veils, for variousreasons. One reason is to preserve tea-chings and ideas that could only be mis-understood by unprepared minds, andtherefore could only be confusing andperhaps harmful if encountered withoutpreparation. Another reason, which sheclearly states often, is to preserve thesanctity of the most spiritual doctrines —not that they need protection in them-selves but because of the karma incurredby those who might defile that sanctity.And most importantly, the teachings areset out in a way that allows the earneststudent to develop mentally, morally,and spiritually, thus gaining ever deeperunderstanding.

4. HPB deals with every topic she ad-dresses in ways that fulfil all three ob-jects of the Theosophical Society (TS).

If we keep in mind her multifacetedapproach to Theosophy, we will findmuch to ponder and appreciate.

Two years after the founding of theTS in 1875, HPB published Isis Unveiled

in 1877, and her methods are immediatelyevident. For those of us with the hind-sight of having available The SecretDoctrine (1888), The Key to Theosophy,The Voice of the Silence, and her manyarticles can look back and see just howrevelatory Isis is.

For example, the very first sentence ofIsis (Preface, p. v) invokes the Mahatmas,which she calls “Eastern adepts” and theirteachings. she said: “The work now sub-mitted to public judgment is the fruit ofsomewhat intimate acquaintance withEastern adepts and study of their science.”And in the second sentence, she qualifiesthat “public” by saying the book is forthose “willing to accept truth wherever itmay be found”. And she adds that it isoffered to those willing to defend suchtruth and confront popular prejudice.

We would be wise to recall not onlythe rather gross prejudices prevalent inthe 19th century, including the idea ofsuperior and inferior races — using theterm “race” quite differently from the wayTheosophy uses that word — but also thesubtler forms of prejudice that have sur-faced in our own times in and throughmodern discourse. Right from the begin-ning, she has set down a fundamentalreason for offering theosophia in itsmodern expression. Within two senten-ces, HPB has given the source of theseteachings and the requirements for thosewho want to understand and who aspireto Truth.

The remainder of the page is equallysignificant, touching as it does indirectlyon the three objects of the TS, but our

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topic is “Where, who, what is God?”, sowe turn to the second page of the Preface.

In language that later writings willshow is modestly veiled, HPB wrote:“When, years ago, we first travelled overthe East, exploring the penetralia of itsdeserted sanctuaries, two saddening andever-recurring questions oppressed ourthoughts: “Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD?Who ever saw the immortal SPIRIT of man,so as to be able to assure himself of man’simmortality?” (p. vi) 2

Albert Einstein, among other 20thcentury scientists, remarked that theanswers we get depend upon the questionswe ask. An ill-formed question will leadto distorted answers, so we need to knowexactly what we are asking, which re-quires reflection, clarity, and commit-ment. HPB already raised the subject ofhuman evolution on the previous page,broadening its implication beyond phy-sical evolution — biology and botany —to include consciousness itself, especiallyas found in the human being. She raisedthe issue of the nature of law and thelaw-like nature of magic, thereby sug-gesting potential human powers yet tobe developed by humanity as a whole,though already manifest to a high degreein those “Eastern adepts” she invoked inher first sentence. Given all this, we needto look at her questions carefully.

In her second question, she asks whohas seen the immortal Spirit of the humanbeing. She is not asking for some abstrusereasoning that allegedly proves immor-tality; she is asking about direct percep-tion — unrefutable realization, not logic

or indirect evidence. She has connectedthe two questions, because if one can“see” the immortal Spirit of the humanbeing, one has seen God, at least theGod in Man.

The first question — Where, who, whatis God? — is the most fundamental ques-tion humans can ask, for it seeks thesource of existence, which necessarilyincludes human existence. It has beenasked since the beginning of recordedhistory and long before, as the archeo-logical remains of ancient graves indicate,even those graves of individuals we callNeanderthals. The search for the Sourceof all persists not only in religion andphilosophy but in science as well. Eventhe so-called atheist yearns to know theSource, whether it has a beginning in timeor beyond time and even space. Hencethe cosmological debate over whether theBig Bang — itself a contested theory incosmology — is the absolute beginningor whether we can speak of what wassomehow “before” the Big Bang.

In various ways, this desire to knowthe ultimate Source — God, howeverconceived — has always been tied to theissue of transcendence and immanence.Is God “up there”, ultimately separatefrom the cosmos, or “here”, suffusedthroughout existence, or perhaps both?Religious traditions have attempted toanswer this question by moving back andforth between the poles of transcendenceand immanence. Some have placed Godquite beyond the cosmos, as Creator pre-existing and separate from the creation.Others have seen God descending in some

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sense into cosmos. And yet others, includ-ing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, havepostulated intermediate beings — angels,for example — that bridge the seeminggulf between God and the human being.(For example, one might think of theChristian doctrine of God descending asJesus into human form, or the Islamicbelief that the Qu’ran — the Word ofGod — was given orally to Muhammadby the angel Gabriel.)

By linking the two questions together— God and the immortal Spirit of thehuman being — HPB has already suggestedanswers to the “where”, “who”, and “what”.Referring to Teachings she learned fromthese Eastern Adepts, she said: “Man-spiritproves God-spirit, as the one drop of waterproves a source from which it must havecome.” (p. vi) Here we have an intimationof the nature of all existence, if we reflecton the analogy. Pure water is one thing:H

2O. Whether it is the ocean or a drop, it

is this one thing. What distinguishes thedrop is its separation from other water.Place that drop in a body of water andit disappears by becoming one with thewhole body. “Man-spirit” — the immortalaspect of the human being — is analo-gously related to “God-spirit”. From thestandpoint of spirit, the separation is anillusion, though from the standpointof differentiation, it is quite real. So if“Man-spirit proves God-spirit”, we willneed to know what “Man-spirit” is.

HPB mentions belief on the first page,saying that Theosophists do not believein miracles nor in any magic that “trans-cends the scope and capacity of the

human mind”, pointing out that the ideaof evolution must include evolving powersof human perception, consciousness, andawareness. Since consciousness is con-sciousness of something in the evolvingworld, perception cannot be separatedfrom consciousness. Here both conscious-ness and perception can be turned out-ward toward the world or inward towardthe depths of subjectivity. Even this be-lief that there is no miracle can becomeknowledge, implying that all existenceis governed by law, and those laws canbe understood.

Faith in the human capacity of per-ception, then, is the first step towardknowledge. In applying the analogy ofthe drop with the ocean, she notes that ifone accepts this much, blind faith is notnecessary. Yet we do not know but wishto learn. What faith do we need? “Faith”is often confused with “belief”, as in“confessions of faith”. She certainly doesnot mean that. Given the analogy of thewater, this faith is twofold: on the onehand it is faith that such knowledge existsbecause there are those who have it; onthe other hand, it is first and foremostfaith in oneself — that one can, indeed,learn and heighten perception.

As Damodar Mavalankar said in hisbrief indication of the method of study,one begins with universals, related to thefirst kind of faith, and traces them downinto particulars, then moves up fromparticulars to those universals, related tothe second kind of faith. What one learnsis what to do; what one knows is what onediscerns for oneself in this reflective and

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meditative process. Only in this way, canwe discover the “Man-spirit” that proves“God-spirit”.

In recounting her encounter with theseEastern Adepts, HPB says that she foundthat they possessed mysterious powersand profound knowledge. And so she “lenta ready ear”. The Voice of the Silencesays: “The ‘Doctrine of the Eye’ is for thecrowd; the ‘Doctrine of the Heart’ for theelect. The first repeat in pride: ‘Behold,I know’; the last, they who in humblenesshave garnered, low confess: ‘Thus haveI heard.’ ” 3 Here she gives the stanceof one who truly aspires to know, andthroughout her works she demonstratesthis stance in two ways. One is her im-mense erudition, fulfilling the three ob-jects of the Society, and the second isthat she always says that her teachingis not her own but that which she hadlearned from those Eastern Adepts. Werecall that the first words of The SecretDoctrine are “The Author — the writer,rather” echoing the timeless “Thus I have

heard”, indicating that all true Teachersof Theosophy are transmitters of agelesswisdom, not originators of doctrines;their brilliance lies in giving out as muchof the Gupta Vidya, the secret doctrine,(1) as can be understood by serious as-pirants in their time, and (2) in wordsavailable and accessible in the culture inwhich they teach. In other words, theyteach what can be used by humanity atany given time.

So, for the Theosophist and the inquireralike, HPB is preparing the way to answerthe question “Where, who, what is God?”The question for all of us is: are we pre-pared to say “Thus, I have heard”, or dowe, perhaps obviously declare, but evenmore importantly, deep down inside our-selves whisper, “Behold, I know”? Every-thing hangs on our answer. Given the richcomplexity of human nature, it is a ques-tion we must answer again and again aswe explore the teachings of the Mastersgiven through HPB.

(To be continued)

Endnotes

1. The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse, ed. Jerome J. McGann, Oxford UniverstiyPress, 1993, pp. 4–5.

2. All references are to the photographic facsimile reproduction of the original ed. of Isis,The Theosophy Company, Los Angeles.

3. The Voice of the Silence, The Theosophy Company ed., pp. 29–30.

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.

Arthur Rimbaud

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Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge: How It Was Written — I

Vol. 143.8, May 2022

Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge:How It Was Written — I

DANIEL H. CALDWELL AND DOSS MCDAVID

Mr Daniel H. Caldwell, librarian and historical researcher, has authored several books, including The EsotericWorld of Madame Blavatsky: Insights into the Life of a Modern Sphinx. See: <blavatskyarchives.com>.Dr Doss McDavid is Professor Emeritus, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.A member of the TS in America for over fifty years, he served two terms on the National Board of the TSA.

A SET of eight notebooks in HPB’shandwriting has been preserved in theArchives of the Theosophical Society(Adyar, Chennai, India).1 Notebook No. 1contains the following cryptic passages:

Page 51. Universal Mind in its general, abstractmeaning means Absolute Mind. There-fore, it only implies that as there are nofinite, differentiated minds even of theAh-hi to reflect or contain an ideationof this Absolute Mind, the latter is not.Every thing outside of the Absolute &immutable Sat, Be-ness — is necessarilyfinite & conditioned since it has a

Page 6beginning and end. Imagine Vacuum,if you can, in its highest, Parabrahmicsense. Produce Vacuum in an emptyglass ball & then break these Vessels,where will be your vacuum? And yet itstill is, though we neither know nor

Page 7sense it, anywhere, simply because we

cannot locate it. The Ah-hi are vehicles orvessels. Your third para gives the answer.

1. I have just done so.2. No “Powers” but the one Periodi-

cal Law.3. To the 1st, 2d, & 3d.4. No; but in the next Manvantaras,

they will

Page 8when from the Highest Arupa theyevolve gradually into the Manasa-putras & Pitris.

5. No; a man has free will andindividual Will. The Ah-hi have onlya Collective one will among them, theoriginal impulse of the Law that ema-nates from the Causeless Cause,periodically —

Page 96. The reasoning higher mind of the

physical man is not; his front brain orcerebrum sleeps; but his back brains, orthe cerebellum, is wide awake. This hu-man mind passes in sleep from the plane

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of the objective and illusionary Uni-verse, to the astral & still more illusion-ary plane I say, still more because it isso full of these terrestrial emanations.Unless the Higher Ego helps it, it be-comes more confused than ever.

Page 107. Cosmic Buddhi is certainly the

vehicle of the Universal Mahat, for inthis sense Buddhi is Prakriti nature, inall its seven stages from Akasa downto Bhumi, Earth, or Malkuth, as it iscalled in the Kabala. But the humanBuddhi derives its essence only fromAkasa, the 2d principle which

Page 11is Mulaprakriti, the place of Atmanbeing taken by Parabrahman. Inman, it is Divine, as man is in thehigher triad, the post type of theHigher never manifested Triad asFather Mother and Son (Manas).

8. Consciousness is only a facultyof the mind the quality of self perceptionin the rational Ego. What is mind — inour understanding

Page 12it is the Soul. Then you may just as wellask if a conscious Soul exists . . . whichsurvives. To doubt that Consciousnesscan exist without mind is the same assaying that there is no Soul, noindividual self conscious soul, at anyrate.

Page 13

Sloka 4.1. Practical faculty of which you may

learn hereafter.

2. Almost the same.Read them.

3. All these are either theologicaldogmas or mysteries of the ways of theunfolding Soul which belong to the highestEsoteric Teaching.

4. They are the manifestation of the OneLaw, which acts

Page 14universally.

5. Nidana is the cause producingeffect, the concatenation of causes andeffects, & Maya is simply illusion. If youcall the Universe an illusion then ofcourse it is Maya with everything elselike Nirvana, etc.

* * *

Before the discovery, transcription,and publication of the records of thediscussions on which Transactions of

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the Blavatsky Lodge was based, the sig-nificance of HPB’s notes reproducedabove was not obvious to anyone. EvenBoris de Zirkoff did not seem to realizetheir significance or comment on themin any way. In the light of the now-published transcriptions2,3 we can nowsee that these notes were apparentlyjotted down by HPB in response toquestions that had been submitted bystudents in the [London] BlavatskyLodge as they worked through the suc-cessive stanzas of the book of Dzyan andthe commentaries given by HPB in TheSecret Doctrine. What seems to havehappened is this:

1. Students submitted questions thatwere presented to HPB in prepara-tion for each upcoming meeting of theBlavatsky Lodge.

2. HPB made brief notes to herself forreference in the discussions to follow.

3. During the lodge meetings, HPBengaged in back-and-forth discussionswith her students using her notebookas a starting point. The discussions wererecorded and compiled. After spendingtwelve decades in the hands of private stu-dents, this material has now been trans-cribed by modern students and publishedby the Point Loma Society in the Nether-lands and the United Lodge of Theo-sophists in Los Angeles. (For further in-formation see <blavatskyarchives.com/24folios.pdf>.)

4. At some point toward the end ofHPB’s lifetime it was decided to createa series of “transactions” in which someof the discussions held at the Blavatsky

Lodge could be made available to thepublic. This was done under the super-vision of HPB and published while shewas still living. The Transactions haveremained in print up to the present time 4

and were included in the 10th volumeof HPB’s Collected Writings along withsome helpful introductory commentsby Boris de Zirkoff.5

By extracting the relevant portions andgrouping them together (HPB’s hand-written notes, transcription of the meet-ing, and published Transactions), wehave reconstructed twelve examplesof the three stages through which theTransactions passed for the meeting of17 January 1889. It is instructive to seethe gradual evolution of HPB’s crypticnotes into the polished philosophicalexplanation that appears in the publishedTransactions. Unfortunately, HPB’s ori-ginal notes seem to exist for only one ofthe many meetings that were held.

Example 1. HPB’s Notebook:Universal Mind in its general, abstract

meaning means Absolute Mind. There-fore, it only implies that as there are nofinite, differentiated minds even of theAh-hi to reflect or contain an ideation ofthis Absolute Mind — the latter is not.Everything outside of the Absolute andimmutable Sat, (Be-ness) — is neces-sarily finite and conditioned since it hasa beginning and end. Imagine Vacuum,if you can, in its highest, parabrahmicsense. Produce Vacuum in an emptyglass ball and then break these Vessels,where will be your vacuum? And yetit still is, though we neither know nor

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sense it, anywhere, simply because wecannot locate it. The Ah-hi are vehi-cles or vessels. Your third para givesthe answer.

Transcription of the meeting:Mme Blavatsky: Universal mind andabsolute mind are one. Are they not?Very well, that only implies that as thereare no finite differentiated minds duringPralaya therefore it is just as though therewere no mind at all, if there is nothing tocontain it, or to perceive it. That is themeaning. There is nothing to reflect orcontain the ideation of the absolute mind,therefore it is not, because everythingoutside of the absolute and immutableSat, or the Be-ness, is necessarily finiteand conditioned since it has a beginningand end, and here is something with nobeginning and no end. Therefore sincethe Ah-hi were not, there was no uni-versal mind, because you must make adistinction between the absolute mindwhich is ever present, and its reflectionsin the Ah-hi at the first flutter of Man-vantara. The Ah-hi are on the highestplane; they are those who reflect theuniversal mind collectively, and beginthe work of evolution of all the lowerforces until they come, throughout theseven planes, down to our lowest plane.Mr A. Keightley: Then the Ah-hi andthe universal mind are necessary com-plements of one another?Mme Blavatsky: Not at all. Universalmind, or absolute mind, always is, whe-ther during Manvantara or during Pra-laya; it is immutably one. But since theterm Ah-hi means the highest Dhyani

— the Logoi perhaps — those which be-gin, which are the creation — or evo-lution, not creation, because everythingis an emanation; since the Ah-hi werenot, there was no universal mind, be-cause it was the absolute dormant, latentmind, and it was not differentiatedin the collectivity of these Dhyanis.The President: It was rather absoluteconsciousness.Mme Blavatsky: It was absolute con-sciousness which is not consciousness.What is consciousness? Further on youmake a question: “Can consciousnessexist without any mind?” But it will comein time. You had better proceed, unlessyou have some other questions to ask.For instance, let us represent to our-selves, if you can do such a thing, thatuniversal mind is a vacuum, but vacuumwith latent consciousness in it. You justsuppose you pump out all the air you canfrom some vessel, there is a vacuum. Youcannot represent yourselves in thatparticular vessel as a vehicle: there is thevacuum; but break these vessels thatcontain this soi-disant vacuum; whereshall you look for it? It has disappeared,it is everywhere and nowhere. It is some-thing, yet it is the absence of something.It is entirely a homogeneous thing. . . .You break those vessels and nothingexists, therefore universal mind is not,because there are no vehicles to contain it.

Published Transactions:Q. This sloka seems to imply that theUniversal Mind has no existence apartfrom the Ah-hi; but in the Commentaryit is stated that:

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“During Pralaya the Universal Mindremains as a permanent possibility ofmental action, or as that abstract absolutethought of which mind is the concreterelative manifestation, and that the Ah-hi are the vehicle for divine universalthought and will. They are the intelligentforces which give to Nature her laws,while they themselves act according tolaws imposed upon them by still higherpowers, and are the hierarchy of spiritualbeings through which the universal mindcomes into action.” The Commentary suggests that the Ah-hiare not themselves the Universal Mind,but only the vehicle for its manifestation.A. The meaning of this sloka is, I think,very clear; it means that, as there are nofinite differentiated minds during Pralaya,it is just as though there were no mind atall, because there is nothing to containor perceive it. There is nothing to receiveand reflect the ideation of the AbsoluteMind; therefore, it is not. Everythingoutside of the Absolute and immutableSat (Be-ness), is necessarily finite andconditioned, since it has beginning andend. Therefore, since the “Ah-hi werenot”, there was no Universal Mind as amanifestation. A distinction had to bemade between the Absolute Mind, whichis ever present, and its reflection andmanifestation in the Ah-hi, who, beingon the highest plane, reflect the universalmind collectively at the first flutter ofManvantara. After which they begin thework of evolution of all the lower forcesthroughout the seven planes, down to thelowest — our own. The Ah-hi are the

primordial seven rays, or Logoi, ema-nated from the first Logos, triple, yetone in its essence.Q. Then the Ah-hi and Universal Mind arenecessary complements of one another? A. Not at all: Universal or AbsoluteMind always is during Pralaya as well asManvantara; it is immutable. The Ah-hiare the highest Dhyanis, the Logoi as justsaid, those who begin the downwardevolution, or emanation. During Pralayathere are no Ah-hi, because they comeinto being only with the first radiation ofthe Universal Mind, which, per se, can-not be differentiated, and the radiationfrom which is the first dawn of Man-vantara. The Absolute is dormant, latentmind, and cannot be otherwise in truemetaphysical perception; it is only Itsshadow which becomes differentiated inthe collectivity of these Dhyanis.Q. Does this mean that it was absoluteconsciousness, but is so no longer? A. It is absolute consciousness eternally,which consciousness becomes relativeconsciousness periodically, at every“Manvantaric dawn”. Let us picture toourselves this latent or potential con-sciousness as a kind of vacuum in avessel. Break the vessel, and whatbecomes of the vacuum; where shall welook for it? It has disappeared; it iseverywhere and nowhere. It is something,yet nothing: a vacuum, yet a plenum.But what in reality is a vacuum asunderstood by Modern Science — ahomogeneous something, or what? Is notabsolute Vacuum a figment of our fancy?A pure negation, a supposed Space where

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nothing exists? This being so, destroy thevessel, and — to our perceptions at anyrate — nothing exists. Therefore, theStanza puts it very correctly; “UniversalMind was not” because there was novehicle to contain it.

Example 2. HPB’s Notebook:Apparently responding to: “1. CAN

YOU GIVE US A DEFINITION OF THE

UNIVERSAL MIND?”

1. I have just done so.

Transcription of the meeting:Mr A. Keightley: The first question is,can you give us a definition of the univer-sal mind, which will solve the difficulty?Mme. Blavatsky: Well, I think I have justdone so.

Example 3. HPB’s Notebook:Responding to “2. WHAT ARE THE

HIGHER POWERS WHICH CONDITION

THE AH-HI?”

2. No “Powers” but the one Periodical Law.

Transcription of the meeting:Mr A. Keightley: Quite so. Then number2. “What are the higher powers whichcondition the Ah-hi?”Mme Blavatsky: Well I don’t call thempowers at all; it is simply a manifestationof the periodical law, the universal law,which becomes by turns active or in-active. Thus that law of periodical mani-festation which creates them, whichemanates them. I always use the wordcreate, which is a very bad and wrongword to use, for there is no creation.Mr A. Keightley: Then the power whichis higher than the Ah-hi is the law whichnecessitates manifestation.

Mme Blavatsky: Just so; periodically,when the hour strikes, it comes, and theyappear into manifestation. They are on thefirst rung of manifestation, after whichit goes on gradually shaping itself moreand more.Mr B. Keightley: It should really be THE

law, and not A law.Mme. Blavatsky: The law, and not a law.I give it [to] you from the standpoint ofesoteric, or Eastern teaching. If physicalscience objects, just say so, and I will tryto repent. . . .

Published Transactions:Q. What are the higher powers whichcondition the Ah-hi?A. They cannot be called powers; po-wer or perhaps Potentiality would bebetter. The Ah-hi are conditioned by theawakening into manifestation of theperiodical, universal LAW, which be-comes successively active and inactive.It is by this law that they are conditionedor formed, not created. “Created” is animpossible term to use in Philosophy.Q. Then the power or Potentiality whichprecedes and is higher than the Ah-hi, isthe law which necessitates manifestation?A. Just so; periodical manifestation. Whenthe hour strikes, the law comes intoaction, and the Ah-hi appear on the firstrung of the ladder of manifestation.Q. But surely this is THE law and not A law?A. Precisely, since it is absolute and“Secondless” — therefore it is not anattribute, but that Absoluteness itself.

Example 4. HPB’s Notebook:Responding to “3. WHAT COSMIC

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PLANE DO THE AH-HI HERE SPOKEN

OF BELONG?”3. To the 1st, 2d, and 3d.

Transcription of the meeting:Mr A. Keightley: “To what cosmic planedo the Ah-hi here spoken of belong?”

Mme Blavatsky: To the first the secondand the third. Because it is a triad, amanifested triad, a reflection of the non-manifested. Taking the triad in the sensethat Pythagoras gives it, it disappears inthe darkness and the silence. Taken inthis sense it is the only thing, as there isAtma, Buddhi, Manas — well all, thefirst, second, and third planes — theAh-hi belong to these planes.Mr A. Keightley: That is to say the Ah-hibelong to the cosmic planes which cor-respond to Atma, Buddhi, Manas.Mme Blavatsky: Just so, they correspond.Mr B. Keightley: They are successive emana-tions; you get the Atma, Buddhi in man,before Manas makes its appearance.Mme Blavatsky: But we do not speak ofman now, if you please, we speak ingeneral that these correspond. Don’t yougo and mix up man with it now. We speakof the macrocosm simply, at the begin-ning when there was the first flutter ofthe manvantaric dawn, and then evolu-tion begins.Mr B. Keightley: The question I want toput exactly is this: are those three planessimultaneous emanations or do theyemanate one from the other?Mme Blavatsky: I suppose one fromanother, but I could not tell you that.Don’t ask me questions I cannot answer.

Published Transactions:Q. To what cosmic plane do the Ah-hi,here spoken of, belong?A. They belong to the first, second, andthird planes — the last plane being reallythe starting point of the primordialmanifestation — the objective reflectionof the unmanifested. Like the Pytha-gorean Monas, the first Logos, havingemanated the first triad, disappears intosilence and darkness.Q. Does this mean that the three Logoiemanated from the primordial Radia-tion in Macrocosm correspond to Atma,Buddhi, and Manas, in the Microcosm?A. Just so; they correspond, but must notbe confounded with them. We are nowspeaking of the Macrocosm at the firstflutter of Manvantaric dawn, when evolu-tion begins, and not of Microcosm or Man.Q. Are the three planes to which the threeLogoi belong simultaneous emanations,or do they evolve one from another?A. It is most misleading to apply mecha-nical laws to the higher metaphysics ofcosmogony, or to space and time, as weknow them for neither existed then. Thereflection of the triad in space and time orthe objective universe comes later.

Example 5. HPB’s Notebook:Responding to “4. HAVE THESE

AH-HI BEEN MEN IN PREVIOUS

MANVANTARAS OR WILL THEY BE-

COME SO?”5. No; but in the next Manvantaras, theywill. When from the Highest Arupa theyevolve gradually into the Manasaputrasand Pitris.

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Transcription of the meeting:Mr A. Keightley: Question 4. “Have theseAh-hi been men in previous Manvantarasor will they become so?”Mme Blavatsky: They will become menin a subsequent Manvantara.Mr A. Keightley: Do they remain perma-nently on this very exalted plane duringthe whole period of the Manvantara?Mme Blavatsky: Of the 15 figures? No,they pass through all the planes until theybecome on the third plane Manasaputra,the sons of Manas or mind. They arearupa. On the higher planes these Ah-hiare arupa, that is to say formless, bodies,without any substance, without anything,they are breaths. On the second planethey approach to rupa or to form. On thethird they become Manasarupa, thosewho become incarnated in men.Mr A. Keightley: Then the Ah-hi of thismanvantara —Mme Blavatsky: They do not exist anymore, if you please. They have becomelong ago. . . Read The Secret Doctrine,you will see the thing there.Mr A. Keightley: I understood you tosay they did not become men in thisManvantara.Mme. Blavatsky: The 15 figures applyto the solar system. The first answers relateto the beginning of the whole objectiveuniverse, but after that, when you beginto speak about Father-Mother, then it re-lates to our objective universe and to thesolar system only because our teachingdoes not busy itself at all with thingsoutside. At least those things that I haveselected. I could not go and select the

whole thing. I have only taken that whichrelates to our solar system. I have justtaken two or three just to show the generalidea, and then skipped over whole stan-zas and came to the point. I have saidthere are some 60 stanzas passed over.Mr. B. Keightley: Then on the reawaken-ing will the men of one Manvantarahave to pass through a similar stage tothe Ah-hi stage in the next Manvantara?Mme. Blavatsky: In many, many Man-vantaras at the end of the tail of theserpent; when the tail will be in the mouthof the serpent, I might say. What haveyou got the ambition of becoming? AnAh-hi, or what? You will have time, mydear fellow, to do many things beforeyou become an Ah-hi.

Published Transactions:Q. Have the Ah-hi been men in previousManvantaras, or will they become so?A. Every living creature, of whatever des-cription, was, is, or will become a humanbeing in one or another Manvantara.Q. But do they in this Manvantara remainpermanently on the same very exalted planeduring the whole period of the life-cycle?A. If you mean by “life cycle” a durationof time which extends over fifteen fi-gures, then my answer is most decidedly— no. The “Ah-hi” pass through all theplanes, beginning to manifest on thethird. Like all other Hierarchies, on thehighest plane they are arupa, i.e., form-less, bodiless, without any substance,mere breaths. On the second plane, theyfirst approach to Rupa, or form. On thethird, they became Manasaputras, thosewho became incarnated in men. With

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Endnotes1. H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings (1966), Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House (TPH),

vol. 1, p. 25.

2. ______, The Secret Doctrine Commentaries (2010), The Hague: I.S.I.S. Foundation.

3. ______, The Secret Doctrine Dialogues (2014), Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company.

4. ______, Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge (1923), Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company.

5. ______, Collected Writings (1964), Adyar: TPH, vol X, pp. 298–406.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Michele Sender for transcribing HPB’s notes.

every plane they reach they are calledby different names . . . Later, they be-come Rupa — ethereal forms.Q. Then the Ah-hi of this Manvantara . . . ?A. Exist no longer; they have long agobecome Planetary, Solar, Lunar, and last-ly, incarnating Egos, for, as said, “theyare the collective hosts of spiritual beings.”Q. But it was stated above that the Ah-hidid not become men in this Manvantara.A. Nor do they as the formless “Ah-hi”.But they do as their own transformations.The Manvantaras should not be con-founded. The fifteen-figure Manvantariccycle applies to the solar system; but there

is a Manvantara which relates to thewhole of the objective universe, theMother-Father, and many minor Man-vantaras. The slokas relating to theformer have been generally selected, andonly two or three relating to the lattergiven. Many slokas, therefore, have beenomitted because of their difficult nature.Q. Then, on reawakening, will the men ofone Manvantara have to pass through astage corresponding to the Ah-hi stagein the next Manvantara?

A. In some of the Manvantaras, the tail isin the mouth of the serpent. Think overthis Symbolism. (To be continued)

Human life is the allegory of the spirit,a drama of the unfoldment of consciousness;and the emancipation of woman in the worldcorresponds to and symbolizes the emergence

of the intuition in the consciousness.

Claude BragdonDelphic Woman

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Conscience and Intuition

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G. DE PURUCKER

I DO not know — and yet I am glad tosee that the fact I speak of is so — whypeople are so much interested in knowingwhat conscience is and where it is locatedin the human constitution and how youcan make it function. We know that whileman is a stream of consciousness, he is aseptenary stream, and each aspect of theseptenate again has its divisions, whichis one reason why men differ amongstthemselves so greatly and so widely;and it is a pity that this is not better under-stood. Men would differ more but quarrelless. Quarrels are stupid; kindly “scraps”make firm friends — if they are kindly!

Now, as I understand the matter, ourconscience to which we all too infre-quently pay heed, to our loss, is thatfriendly, warm-hearted whispering fromabove, which we feel as showing us theright and the wrong, and it comes fromthe stored up ethical wisdom in our being.It is not in the disputatious brain-mind:it is in the heart. It is the highest part ofthe human ego, the treasury of ethicalexperience, the accumulated wisdom ofpast lives, garnered and treasured in ourhigher parts; and as far as it goes its voiceis infallible and powerful; but it does notgo far enough to make its voice in oursoul an infallible guide, because we have

not had past human lives throughouteternity and we are not infinite beings,humanly speaking.

One man’s conscience is strong; an-other man’s conscience is weaker. Tworeasons why: the one may be more evolvedand may have learned to listen moreattentively to the inner monitor. Thereforeits voice is familiar, strong, and steady,and as we say, warm and sweet. We lovethat, and one reason why we love it isbecause it is so personal to ourselves.It is the highest part of each one of us asa human being, whispering to us admo-nitions of right, and denying to us theways of wrong-doing. It is the buddhi-manas [higher self] part of the humanbeing, garnering experience of past agesof births and rebirths, the echo of pastsufferings and heartaches from whichwe have gleaned wisdom and treasuredit on the tablets of the Self. That is theconscience.

But higher than conscience is intuition:Intuition is infallible. Its voice is im-measurably infallible, because it is thewhispering within us, as it were, of thetruths of the Cosmic Spirit. It is a raydirect from the Divine Spirit in our hearts.Our conscience will not tell us the truthabout a fact of Nature, nor whisper into

G. de Purucker (1874–1942), was a widely and greatly admired leader of the Theosophical Societybased in Point Loma from 1929 to 1942. Reprinted from his book, Studies in Occult Philosophy, p. 212.

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our minds guidance along the paths ofscientific or religious or philosophicaldiscovery, because it is the garnered ethi-cal wisdom familiar to the soul of eachone of us. But the intuition will tell usinstantly, it has instant vision of truth.Its voice is neither familiar nor unfamil-iar. It is utterly impersonal. Its atmos-phere is neither “hot” nor “cold”. It isneutral in this respect; and it is the voiceof the âtma-buddhi-manas within us,the Monad, as H. P. Blavatsky called it.

Do you get the distinction? The con-science is our own treasury of spiritual-ethical wisdom. It is infallible as far as itgoes, as far as we can hear its voice; andwe can hear it ever more by practice,training, listening to it, by just recognis-ing it and following it. But because it isonly our own gathered treasury, it is notinfinite, and therefore not in the truesense always infallible.

But so far as concerns each one of usas individuals, when our conscience whis-pers to us, we need to follow it, becauseit will whisper only when we are in dangeror seeking to do aright: whereas the voiceof the intuition is the voice of the Spiritwithin us, and it is infallible. It has nofrontiers. It is, so to speak, a ray directfrom the mahâ-buddhi of the Universe;and we can allow intuition to become everstronger within us, enlightening ourminds and opening our hearts, by notbeing afraid of it, or of having hunches,of following our conscience and ourintuitions when they come to us. They arecoming to us all the time.

Most men are ashamed to act intui-tively. They do not want to make mis-

takes. Prudential, yes! But it is only pru-dence, and uncommendable, cowardlyand weak, and small, if it is merelybecause you do not want to begin to makea fool of yourself until you have learnedmore. The strong man is not afraid ofmaking a fool of himself occasionally,because he knows that that very fact willstimulate him, awaken him, make himthink; and after awhile he will not makea fool of himself. He will learn to trusthis inner powers. That is the way tocultivate the intuition, by cultivating it;not being afraid of what is within you.Suppose you do make mistakes — whatof it? By practice in its exercise themistakes will grow fewer and fewer.

Make a companion of your conscience.The man or woman who has not heardthe voice of conscience whispering in hissoul, who has never felt its presence, isnot truly human. You know what I meanby that companionship: we call it a voicewhich whispers to us. It is a light whichlives within you always and which tellsyou what is right — and to follow it; whatis wrong — and to abandon it. Make acompanion of your conscience, stimulateit, open your hearts and your minds to it.Your lives will be beautified, strength-ened, made happier than they are now,because you will be following the voicewithin which is the accumulated Wisdomof the Ages.

Furthermore, just in proportion as youlearn to know your conscience, which isyour own self, the higher part of you, andtrust it and follow it, the more will intu-ition brighten your lives, bringing youknowledge direct, knowledge infallible.²

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Choiceless Awareness

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K. DINAKARAN

Mr K. Dinakaran is a long-term member of the Indian Section Council and Secretary of the KeralaTheosophical Federation. Based on a talk delivered online on 3 April 2021 at the Easter Conference.

HUMANITY is passing through a verydifficult time. Fragmentation of mindsand its results such as war, ethnic cleans-ing, religious and communal conflicts,ideological differences, all these divideman from man. Man-made divisionslike casteism, nationalism, regionalism,discrimination based on colour, race,and so on are the order of the day.Humanity is divided into various com-partments based on religion and na-tionality. In this context the teach-ings of Theosophy and J. Krishnamurti(Krishnaji or K.) are more relevant thanever. He never claimed that he was ateacher or guru, and identified himselfas just a passerby. The generation thatwas able to listen to him personally isreally blessed, because his words inperson had a deeper meaning than wefind in books or audio and video tapes.

Krishnaji raises some pertinent points.What can one do, as a human being, in aworld that is torn apart, where there is somuch despair and sorrow? What valuedoes individual change have? How will itaffect the whole mass of human existence?Krishnaji says these are wrong questions,because one does not live and act rightly

for the sake of somebody else, or for thebenefit of society. It is we ourselves thathave to change, not society. Krishnajipresented Ancient Wisdom or Theo-sophy in a unique way. One may find histeachings similar to the teachings of LordBuddha, Krishna, and Christ. But theterms he used to express his philosophyis quite new to the modern world. Hemade statements like “Truth is a pathlessland”, “You are the world”, “conditioningof the mind”, and so forth. He pointedout the fallacy of clinging to a particularsystem or method, aiming to achievesomething.

Krishnaji questioned the traditionalapproach to meditation, religion, thereligious mind, cultivated virtues, self-knowledge, education, charity, awareness,and love. His teachings are centred onunderstanding oneself in the light ofwisdom. He used the term “choicelessawareness” to describe it. It is easy for oneto understand the verbal meaning of thisexpression but not easy to follow it in dailylife. This is because we are conditionedby our own surroundings, and the cultural,social, and political circumstances whichmolded us. But it is not an impossible task.

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The moment one becomes aware of one’sown limitations one is free from theirclutches. Krishnaji’s mission during hislifetime was to “set man absolutely, un-conditionally free” which was declaredby him in his famous talk while dissolv-ing the “Order of the Star in the East”, theorganization set up for him by the Theo-sophical Society (TS).

By “choiceless awareness” Krishnajimeans to be aware without any priorchoice, desire, or memory. This will en-able us to see the extraordinary beauty ofNature. We should be aware of the worldinside us and the world outside us. Thereis no difference between inner and outerworld. On the other hand, when one triesto concentrate, effort and control arenecessary and the controller and thecontrolled will always be conflictingleading to division. According to him, forbeauty to come into being, the mind mustbe choicelessly aware of its own petti-ness, there must be an awareness inwhich comparison has wholly ceased.Choiceless awareness means attentionthat is not cultivated. When the obser-ver is absent there is choiceless aware-ness. This condition is only presentwhen the everlasting struggle of condi-tioning ends.

Krishnamurti asks: “Is it possible toobserve, watch, and listen whether thereis already a conclusion, a formula, basedon which I am watching, a memory whichdictates my watching, or a previous ex-perience through which I am watching?”When there is already a conclusion, ajudgment, when we have already formed

an opinion about that which we are goingto watch, it is based on memory, fromwhich thought arises.

K. says: “Does a free mind choose?A mind that sees very clearly does notchoose, there is only action.” So whenthere is watching with thought, there is nowatching at all. We must note that theseare very practical things we have to applyin our daily living.

Limitation of ThoughtHuman beings are violent because

there is conflict in thinking, saying, andacting. Krishnaji says: “Can you thinkclearly if you have a prejudice, a parti-cular belief — that is, if you think as aHindu, a communist, or a Christian? Youcan think very clearly only when yourmind is not tethered to a belief, as a mon-key might be tethered to a stake.” Ourminds are caught up in the idea ofachievement, climbing higher and higher,that is, in the idea of choosing betweenthe essential and the non-essential. Wetry to fill our emptiness with actions bornof choice, like trying to fill a pot withoutany bottom. He concludes: “Thinkingcannot solve our problems.” He adds:“Thought has not created Nature, thetiger, the wolf, and the marvelous treesand flowers. . . It has created divisionbetween man and woman. Society iswhat we have made of it, with our greed,ambitions, corruption, competition, andall the rest of it.”

Self-knowledgeTo K. life is relationship. He asks: “If you

can look into the mirror of relationship

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exactly the way you look into the ordi-nary mirror, then there is no end to self-knowledge. It is like entering a fathom-less ocean which has no shore. But mostof us want to reach an end and to achievesomething.” He requests us to look atourselves without condemning what wesee, without comparing ourselves withsomebody else, without wishing to bemore beautiful or more virtuous; if wecan just observe what we are and movewith it, then we will find that it is possibleto go infinitely far. There is no end to thatjourney, and that is the mystery andbeauty of it. He adds: “Without self-knowledge there is no release from con-fusion, without self-knowledge confu-sion is like a wave eternally swallowingyou up. The moment you understandconfusion, you are free of it.”

Krishnaji’s statement, “The guru des-troys the disciples and the disciplesdestroy the guru”, was shocking to manywho believed in “gurudom” and guidanceon religious life. He was a vehement criticof religious hierarchies. He stressed theneed of self-enquiry rather than clingingto someone or some philosophy to showthe Path. In the modern world we can seemany examples of this mutual destruc-tion, which fully agree with K’s state-ment. The “key” is with us, but we searchfor it everywhere else.

The TS endorses K’s view by givingcomplete “Freedom of Thought” to itsmembers. The text of the resolutionspassed by the General Council of the TSprinted on the inner page of its monthlyjournal, The Theosophist states: “No

teacher, or writer, from H. P. Blavatskyonwards, has any authority to impose hisor her teachings or opinions on members.Every member has an equal right to followany school of thought, but has no right toforce the choice on any other.” The entiretheosophical literature is presented beforeus for consideration and examination.Everyone is free to accept or reject it.

True ReligionWhat is Religion? H. P. Blavatsky

(HPB) in her essay “Is Theosophy aReligion?” says: “A religion, in the trueand only correct sense, is a bond unitingmen together — not a particular set ofdogmas and beliefs. Religion, per se, inits widest meaning is that which bindsnot only all MEN but also all BEINGS andall things in the entire Universe into onegrand whole.” HPB’s definition of religionis not different from Krishnaji’s approachto the same.

God ConceptIn The Mahatma Letters it is said: “The

God of the theologians is simply animaginary power. . . . Our chief aim is todeliver humanity of this nightmare, toteach man virtue for its own sake, andto walk in life relying on himself,instead of leaning on a theologicalcrutch that for countless ages was thedirect cause of nearly all humanmisery.” Krishnaji, in his simple state-ment, said: “God is confusion.”

For him there is no “right” leader —all leaders are wrong, what we have to dois to clear our own confusion. And con-fusion is set aside only when we under-

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stand ourselves; with the beginning of self-knowledge, there comes clarity.

Krishnaji cites the example of apainter and says: “You know, most of uswant to acquire wisdom or truth throughanother, through some outside agency.No one else can make you an artist; onlyyou yourself can do that. That is whatI want to say. I can give you paint, brush-es, and canvas but you yourself have tobecome the artist, the painter. I cannotmake you into one.” Theosophy alsoproclaims the value of self-knowledgerather than ready-made answers toquestions. Every theosophist is only astudent of Wisdom. In The Idyll of theWhite Lotus by Mabel Collins, it isstated in the Three Truths: “Each manis his own absolute law-giver, the dis-penser of glory or gloom to himself;the decreer of his life, his reward,his punishment.”

MeditationChoiceless awareness is the core

theme of Krishnaji in every aspect of life,whether it is meditation, freedom, inwardrevolution, and so on. As the mind caughtin the web of thought is never free, it islooking through a coloured glass whichdistorts the true vision. For K, meditationis a way of life; it is part of daily exis-tence; and the fullness and beauty of lifecan be understood through meditation.Meditation of the heart is the understand-ing of daily problems, and not an escapefrom them. He states: “You cannot govery far if you don’t begin very near.”

According to Krishnaji, meditation

itself is timeless; it is not a way of arrivingat a timeless state. It is, without a begin-ning and without an ending. He alwaysreminds us to have sensitivity. If we havethis extraordinary sensitivity going in ourlife, then it is everything, then we becomethe teacher, the disciple, the neighbour,the beauty of the cloud, we are all that,and that is love. Being sensitive meanssensitive to everything around us, to theplants, the animals, the trees, the skies,the waters of the river, the bird on thewing; and also to the moods of the peo-ple around us, and to the stranger whopasses by.

This sensitivity brings about the qual-ity of uncalculated, unselfish, response,which is true morality and conduct. If wedo not know the meaning and the beautyof meditation we do not know anythingin life. If our meditation is only a personalmatter, a thing which we personally enjoy,then it is not meditation. Meditation im-plies a complete radical change of themind and the heart. This is only possiblewhen there is this extraordinary sense ofinward silence, and that alone bringsabout the religious mind. That mindknows what is sacred.

Krishnaji often asks: “Have you everpaid any attention to the ringing of thetemple bells?” We rarely pay real atten-tion to anything, and K. says it is im-portant to find out what it means to payattention. If our mind has space, then inthat space there is silence, and fromthat silence everything else comes, forthen we can listen, we can pay attentionwithout resistance. That is why it is very

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important to have space in the mind.Then we will know what is meditation.

Be a lamp unto yourselfEchoing the message of Lord Buddha,

Krishnaji says: “If you are inwardly a lightunto yourself, you will never follow any-one. You follow out of your confusion,and what you follow must also be con-fused . . . therefore, first clear up yourown confusion, become a light unto your-self, and then the problem will cease.”In theosophical literature also we canfind the same message. Light on the Pathsays: “For within you is the light of theworld — the only light that can be shedupon the Path. If you are unable toperceive it within you, it is useless to lookfor it elsewhere.” We cannot achieve orattain it. Krishnaji always points out ourdesire to achieve a goal, position, or result.But Truth or Light is beyond us, as Lighton the Path states: “It is beyond you,because when you reach it you have lostyourself. It is unattainable, because it forever recedes. You will enter the light, butyou will never touch the Flame.”

Life is a challengeHuman beings throughout history have

faced challenges from the groove of habit.We always meet the new challenge withour old conditioned mind. Krishnaji says:“If each one of us could understand theproblem of struggle and conflict thenI think we would be able to live effort-lessly, happily, with a smile on our face.Ceaseless strife dissipates energy. Theman who is joyous, really happy, is notcaught up in effort. To be without effort

does not mean that you are stagnant, dull,stupid, on the contrary it is only the wise,the extraordinarily intelligent, who arereally free of effort, of struggle.” Ourenvy, greed, ambition, our competitive-ness, leading to ruthless efficiency —these are obviously the factors whichcause us to struggle, whether in thisworld or in the world to come. So we donot want to study psychological booksto know why we struggle; like the boatwhich moves with the wind, the mind canbe without struggle. K. points out: If youlove there is no need for discipline. Lovebrings its own creative understanding,therefore there is no resistance, no con-flict, but to love with such completeintegration is possible only when youfeel deeply secure, completely at home,especially when you are young.

Struggling to achieve successIn At the Feet of the Master Krishnaji

said: “Men who do not know, work togain wealth and power, but these are atmost for one life only, and thereforeunreal.” He in later talks mentioned: “Aslong as we pursue success in any direc-tion, we are bound to be in strife, in con-flict. Even when we arrive at the point ofsuccess or goal we are not happy, buttry to achieve higher and higher. Only todesire to be more — a mind craving for‘more’ — is not a healthy, intelligentmind, because its demand for the ‘more’implies a constant struggle in terms ofthe pattern which society has set for it.We are struggling after something, andwe have never paused to inquire if thething we are after is worth struggling for.”

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Here is where the fundamental teachingof Theosophy and K’s message to theworld meet.

When we say we are seeking truthor seeking God — if we are religiouslyminded — or we are seeking a perfectlife, and so on, we must already havein our minds an image or idea, whichmeans that we have already known it,that all we have to do is to go after itand search it out.

Oneness of LifeTheosophy proclaims the Oneness

of Life. Krishnaji through his talks re-minds us of the unity of Life from a bladeof grass to the mighty mountains. Whenhe says observe Nature, the rain, thewind, the chirping of the birds, thegurgle of the river, he is trying to con-vince us of the oneness of life which wecan realize through choiceless aware-ness. HPB in The Secret Doctrine says:“The radical unity of the ultimate essenceof each constituent part of the com-pounds in Nature — from star to themineral atom, from the highest Dhyâni-Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in thefullest acceptation of the term, and whe-ther applied to the spiritual, intellectual,or physical worlds — this is the onefundamental law in Occult Science.”

Theosophy teaches us the evolutionof life through mineral, plant, animal, andhuman kingdoms and it also says the“growth and splendour of it has no limit”.

Torchbearer of TruthIn the conclusion of The Key to

Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky states: . . .“the spread of [theosophical] teachings. . . will find a numerous and unitedbody of people ready to welcome thenew torchbearer of Truth. He will findthe minds of men prepared for hismessage, a language ready for himin which to clothe the new truths hebrings, an organization awaiting hisarrival, which will remove the merelymechanical, material obstacles anddifficulties from his path.”

We can see that HPB’s propheticwords proved perfectly suited to Krish-naji’s life and message. He was the“torchbearer of Truth” of the 20th cen-tury. But many could not digest thisidea. Dr Besant was the only one whosincerely believed that K. was theexpected vehicle of the Great Teacher.She was ready to leave everything andsit at the foot of Krishnaji and listen tohim. She even closed down the EsotericSection and asked its members to listento Krishnaji.

The modern world needs the mes-sage of K. more than ever. Humanbrains have been replaced by compu-ters and robots, and man has become aslave to artificial intelligence and itsmultifaceted entertainments. He is slow-ly drifting to the position of a second-hand human being. Only choicelessawareness can save humanity from thismechanical, stereotyped living. Weshould be closer to Nature, the environ-ment, and ultimately, life in every form.We have “no other path to go”. ²

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Date Section General Secretary, etc. Address Magazine Email address

1947 Africa, East and … Mr Narendra M. Shah … PO Box 14525. 00800, Westlands, … The Theosophical Light [email protected]

Central Nairobi, Kenya

1909 Africa, South … Mr Desmond Chapman … 31 Streatley Ave, cnr.Lothbury Ave, Auckland … The South African Theosophist [email protected]

Park, Johannesburg PO Box 91523

1956 Africa, West … Dr K. A. Tutu … PO Box 720, Accra, Ghana … The West African Theosophist [email protected]

1929 America, … Mrs Beatriz Elisena … Colonia Universitaria Norte, Calle Julio [email protected]

Central * Martinez Pozas Mejia, Poligono, E-7 Mejicanos,

San Salvador, EL SALVADOR

1920 Argentina … Mr Esteban Langlois … Pje. Florencio Balcarce 71, Buenos Aires (1405) … Teosofía en Argentina [email protected]

1990 Asia, East and … Mr Chong Sanne … 540 Sims Avenue, No. 03-04 … Newsletter [email protected]

Southeast † Sims Avenue Centre, Singapore 387 603

1895 Australia … Mr Stephen Mcdonald … Level 2, 162 Goulburn St., Surry Hills, NSW 2010… Theosophy in Australia [email protected]

1912 Austria * … Mr Albert Schichl … Oberbaumgarten 25, 4204 Haibach im Mühlkreis … Theosofie Adyar [email protected]

2013 Bangladesh † … Mr Subrata Chowdhury … Urban Gardenia, Flat 5B, House 45A, [email protected]

Road 3A, Dhanmondi, R/A Dhaka 1209

1911 Belgium … Mrs Sabine Van Osta … Place des Gueux 8, B1000 Brussels … Le Lotus Bleu [email protected]

1965 Bolivia † … Mrs Maria Luisa Cabrera … c/Valdivieso Nº 541 Cochabamba … Revista Teosófica Boliviana [email protected]

1920 Brazil … Mr Sergio Carvalho de Moraes,Jr … SGAS Quadra 603, N. 20, … Sophia [email protected]

CEP 70200-630 Brasilia (DF)

1924 Canada * … Mr Robert Béland … 1120 Chemin de la Rivière, Val David, . … The Light Bearer [email protected]

P.Q., Canada J0T 2N0

1920 Chile * … Mr Victor Aguayo … Casilla 11 Sucursal Paseo Estacion, … Revista Teosófica Chilena [email protected]

Estacion Central, Santiago

1937 Colombia † … Mr Armando Motta Zapata … Carrera 6, # 56-40, Bogotá (Chapinero Alto) … Selección Teosófica [email protected]

1997 Costa Rica † … Mrs Cecilia Calderón … San José, 1350, Costa Rica [email protected]

2007 Croatia p … Mr Darko Majstorovic … Siget 11, 10000 Zagreb, Republic of Croatia … Teozofija [email protected]

1905 Cuba … Mr. Fidel Carrazana Macías … Apartado de Correos 6365, La Habana 10600 [email protected]

1987 Dominican Rep. † … Mrs Magaly Polanco … Calle Santa Agueda 1652 Les Chalet Col [email protected]

San Juan Puerto Rico Apartado 23 00926

1888 England … Mrs Jenny Baker … 50 Gloucester Place, London W1U 8EA … Esoterica [email protected]

1907 Finland … Mr Janne Vuononvirta … Teosofinen Seura, Vironkatu 7 C 2, Fin 00170, … Teosofi [email protected]

Helsinki

1899 France … Ms Maxence Ondet … 4 Square Rapp, 75007 Paris … Le Lotus Bleu [email protected]

1902 Germany … Mrs Manuela Kaulich … Hauptstr. 39, 93138 Lappersdorf … Adyar [email protected]

1928 Greece … Dr Alexandros Bousoulengas … 25 Voukourestiou St., 106 71-Athens … Ilisos [email protected]

1907 Hungary † … Mrs Adrienne Nagyiday … H-1085 Budapest, Horánszky u. 27. fsz. 10 … Teozófia [email protected]

1921 Iceland … Mr Jón Ellert Benediktsson … PO Box 1257 Ingolfsstraeti 22, 121 Reykjavik … Gangleri [email protected]

1891 India … Mr Pradeep H. Gohil … The Theosophical Society, Kamachha, … The Indian Theosophist [email protected]

Varanasi 221 010

1912 Indonesia … Mr Widyatmoko Nekara … Dsn. Parelegi no. 21, RT 02/ RW 09, … Theosofi [email protected]

Desa Purwodadi, Kecamatan Purwodadi,

67163 Pasuruan, Jawa Timur

1919 Ireland * … Mrs Marie Harkness … 97 Mountsandel Road, Coleraine, UK BT52 1TA … [email protected]

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1954 Israel p … Mrs Bracha Elron … PO Box 9114, Ramat-Gan, Israel 5219002 … Or [email protected]

1902 Italy … Mr Antonio Girardi … Viale Quintino Sella, 83/E, … Rivista Italiana di Teosofia [email protected]

36100 Vicenza

1997 Ivory Coast * … Mr Pierre-Magloire Kouahoh … Yopougon, 23 Rue Princesse … Sophia [email protected]

B. P. 3924, Abidjan 23

1919 Mexico … Mrs Juana Leonor Maldonado Ruíz … Ignacio Mariscal 126, Col. Tabacalera [email protected]

Mexicana, Mexico, D.F. 06030 [email protected]

1897 Netherlands, The … Mr Wim Leys … Tolsraat 154, 1074 VM Amsterdam … Theosofia [email protected]

1896 New Zealand … Mr John Vorstermans … 18, Belvedere Street, Epsom, Auckland 1051 … TheoSophia [email protected]

1913 Norway * … Mr Audun Solberg … Knapstadveien 8, 1823 Knapstad [email protected]

1935 Orlando p … Mr Carl Metzger … 1606 New York Ave. Orlando, Florida, [email protected]

32803-1838, USA

1948 Pakistan † … … Jamshed Memorial Hall, M. A. Jinnah Road, … The Karachi Theosophist [email protected]

opp. Radio Pakistan, Karachi 74200

1925 Paraguay p … Sr. Blas Osvaldo Añazco López … Eligio Ayala Nro. 1.833 e/ Mayor Fleitas y Gral. [email protected]

Aquino Asunción

1924 Peru † … Mr Julio Pomar Calderón … Av Republica de Portugal 152, Breña, Lima 5 … Búsqueda [email protected]

1933 Philippines, The … Mr Charlton Romero … Corner P. Florentino and Iba Streets, … The Philippine Theosophist [email protected]

Quezon City, Manila

1921 Portugal … Mr Carlos Guerra … Sociedade Teosófica de Portugal, … Osiris [email protected]

Rua José Estêvão, 10 B, 1150-202 Lisboa

1925 Puerto Rico † … Mrs Magaly Polanco … Apartado 36-1766 Correo General. … Heraldo Teosófico [email protected]

San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936-1766

2012 Qatar p … Mr Lijo Joseph . . . Crewing Officer, Teyseer Services Company [email protected]

P.O. Box 2431, Doha

2013 Russia † … Mr Alexey Besputin … 159-52, Novomytischinsky prospekt, . . . Teosoficheskoe Obozrenie [email protected]

Mytischi, Moscow region, 141018 (The Theosophical Review)

1910 Scotland * … Mr Gary Kidgell … Christine Gear 32 Newmains Road … Circles [email protected]

Kirkliston Edinburgh EH29 9AL

1992 Slovenia * … Mrs Irena Primc … Kajuhova UI 9, 3000 Celje … Teozofska Misel [email protected]

1921 Spain … Mrs Angels Torra Buron … Av. Vall d’or, 85-87 … Sophia [email protected]

08197 - Valldoreix(Spain)

1926 Sri Lanka † … Mr D. A. L. Wanigasekera … 146 Anderson Rd, Dehiwala, … The Sri Lanka Theosophist [email protected]

1895 Sweden … Mrs Birgitta Skarbo … Karla Plan 5 B, 11460 Stockholm … Tidlös Visdom [email protected]

1910 Switzerland † … Mr Andrea Biasca-Caroni … Via Collina 19, 6612 Ascona, CH-6612 … The Lotus [email protected]

1997 Togo * … Mr Kouma Dakey … S.O., A.R.T.T., BP 76, Adeta

2013 Ukraine … Mrs Svitlana Gavrylenko … Office 3, 7-A Zhylianska St., Kiev 01033 … Svitoch [email protected]

1886 USA … Dr Barbara B. Hebert … PO Box 270, Wheaton, IL 60187-0270 … The Quest [email protected]

1925 Uruguay * … Mrs Ema Ma. de Souza Leal … Javier Barrios Amorín 1085, [email protected]

Casilla de Correos 1553, Montevideo

1925 Venezuela † … Mrs Nelly Nouel … Romualda a Socarrás, Edif. de Oro [email protected]

Piso 12, Apto. 122 – Caracas

1922 Wales * … Mrs Julie Cunningham … Bryn Adda, Brynsiencyn, Llanfairpwll, … [email protected]

Anglesey, LL61 6NX UK

Date refers to the date of formation * Regional Association † Presidential Agency p Lodge attached to Adyar

The Council of the European Federation of National Societies: Chairperson: Miss Trân-Thi-Kim-Diêu, 67 Rue des Pommiers, F-45000 Orleans, France. [email protected]

Inter-American Theosophical Federation: President: Mr Enrique Reig, And. Nte 17 Villa Las Americas, San Andres, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. [email protected], [email protected]

Indo-Pacific Theosophical Federation: President: Mr Gerard Brennan, 42 Melbourne Street, Concord, 2137, Sydney, Australia. [email protected]

Pan-African Theosophical Federation: Chairman: Mr Tom Davis, 9 Ronean, 38 Princess Avenue, Windsor E 2194, South Africa. [email protected]

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