Secret Doctrine Study Group

SD i. page xliv- xlv

The days of Constantine were the last turning-point in history, the period of the Supreme struggle that ended in the Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new one, built on their bodies. From thence the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the “Deluge” and the Garden of Eden, began to be forcibly and…[Read more]

B.P. Wadia From the Article: The Writer of the Secret Doctrine

Truth is sacred and can therefore stand the attack, sacrilegious and severe. H. P. Blavatsky invites this searching examination. Blind believers do her a disservice when by example or precept they discourage the attitude of critical questioning. Ours the mission to examine and…[Read more]

SD i XXXVI

More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They were the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the latter were…[Read more]

Very well worded Kirk,
HPB mentions somewhere (and I can’t find the ref anymore) that “Ethics is applied metaphysics”.
The misapprehension and lack of application of this statement could – apart from other considerations – lie at the basis of the failure of exoteric religions to live up to their promises as it would provide a thoroughly grounded…[Read more]

In the same article that Peter quotes (“Is Theosophy a Religion?”), Blavatsky refers to Thomas Carlyle, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, who described the western religion of his day as a kind of “working for divine wages…a prudential feeling, grounded on mere calculation, a matter of expediency and utility…whereby some smaller quantum of…[Read more]

“Theosophy is Religion” itself This is understandable as it is the source of all major religions, and governed by the Mysteries of the Zodiac as told by HPB.
However, one must remember that this does not mean the ‘Theosophical Society’, or what HPB gave to it, is religion itself. A point often overlooked by students.
Remember she only gave th…[Read more]

‘Theosophy, as already said, is the WISDOM-RELIGION.’
(The Key to Theosophy, p 13)

Theosophy, we say, is not a Religion.

Theosophy, we say, is not a Religion. Yet there are, as every one knows, certain beliefs, philosophical, religious and scientific, which have become so closely associated in recent years with the word “Th…[Read more]

“Why is it important not to call theosophy a religion?”

Perhaps the first question could be;

Why did the Maha Chohan write … ‘the Theosophical Society was chosen as the corner stone, the foundation of the future religion of humanity.’

Although that idea appears to have been scrapped by 1925 due to all the splits etc.

Why is it important not to call theosophy a religion?

This is a corroboration of that which has been stated many times before, and, unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose thrown at those who asserted but a truthful, if even a little known fact, have only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But now…[Read more]

SD Book i page XXXV-XXXVI

Moreover, there is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian Embassy—namely, that there are several documents in the St. Petersburg Imperial Libraries to show that, even so late as during the days when Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of M…[Read more]

From B.P. Wadia’s Studies in the Secret Doctrine: The Eternal Pilgrim

From this original duality springs what man recognizes in himself as his dual nature — lower and higher mind, good and bad moral nature, the mortal body and the immortal Self. Further, the student of Occultism traces to this prototypal Dual Force, the dual power of the S…[Read more]

SD i page XXV

The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven races, at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane, correlated to seven-fold occult forces—those of the higher planes being of tremendous p…[Read more]

From B.P. Wadia

Studies in the Secret Doctrine:
The Basic Law of Brotherhood

Nature and man are one in their divine consubstantiality, but each has a dual aspect — its Non-manifested and manifested. Again, both the Non-manifested and the manifested have a triple characteristic, which in the case of the former is forever concealed while in the l…[Read more]

SD vol i, pages XXIV- XXXV

The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, “the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of Aryan civilization) will have to wait.” For it is not the fault of the ini…[Read more]

SD i page XXXIV

To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in…[Read more]

SD i xix-xxi

Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philosophy of these teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and sacred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of proselytism, into a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India; i.e., once they were transferred into China,…[Read more]

SD i XX-XIX

Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, by reaction, of “Budhism,” deny its esoteric teachings (which are those also of the Brahmins), simply because the name suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use in their case. For the Eso…[Read more]

The first and the most important idea to understand in reference to evolution in this our kingdom is the following:

The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. (S.D. I,…[Read more]