Secret Doctrine Study Group

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Secret Doctrine Study Aids for 2018

Topic

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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, 17.)

In the philosophy of Theosophy this fundamental plays the leading role. Every enquirer is told of it at the very start. Every tyro in Theosophy speaks about it. It is not a difficult proposition to understand, and yet, without doubt, it is the most difficult one to practise, and because of that, very often it is the least understood of the teachings. This is not paradoxical but the fact is that this teaching cannot be grasped by mind alone — however mighty the mind. No amount of theoretical knowledge of it will produce necessary effects. To know it thoroughly the teaching has to be applied, has to be practised, many a time, in many a situation, till dimly its activity stands revealed to our perception. It is not a mental process, hence mind alone cannot fathom its mystery; it is amanasic process, in which our mind is only a learner. Ordinarily our minds are the enlightening influence in our lives; but what has given it its enlightening power? Manas, the Thinker, is the teacher of mind; he lights the mind; from him our minds gain their power to illumine, their capacity to shine. Only when Manasic action of the Thinker, the Manushya, the Real Man, begins to operate does this teaching, through application, become clear.

B.P. Wadia

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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 latter the triplicity unfolds itself in manifestation. The forever concealed, primeval triune differentiation, not from, but in the ONE ABSOLUTE is therefore symbolized by 4, or the Tetraktis, in the metaphysical world. In the Indian system, the Sacred Word Aum is composed of four factors — the three letters A, U, and M and the half-metre, Ardha-Matra, for the fourth. Similarly, man is not only Atma-Buddhi and Manas but also is that which binds the immortal Triad, to the One Life, the Universal Spirit Paramatma, which enfolds all.

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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 Secret Wisdom, the white and black magic. (Cf. II, 364.) When we begin to analyse the content of our own brain, mind, and consciousness, we come to recognize that there is in us that which is ourself, which is indestructible because indivisible. In reference to the body itself we know that we can exist without arms and legs, without the ratiocination and memory of the brain, without eyes, ears, nose, deprived of touch and taste; that if only the heart kept on functioning and retained its slender connection with the brain on the one hand and the solar plexus on the other, the body could live on. In the body itself there are parts which in perishing kill not the body, but there are others — in fact three connected with three primary centres — any one of which destroyed would result in the destruction of the whole. Divide the heart and the heart is destroyed and the body dies. Take another aspect: in spite of the constant changes which are continuously taking place in the body, the identity of the body, its design and structure, survives; death, the great Change, differs from the millions of bodily changes in this that it changes the mould and the design of the body. Turn for a moment to our psychological transformations: in feelings and emotions we notice changes and differences; we love and hate by turn; we love and cease loving the same person in course of time; our sympathies and antipathies act in a similar fashion. Further, in knowledge and ignorance, in our ideas and thoughts on men and things, changes occur; still more, moods of aspiration and exaltation as of depression alternate. Now, like the heart in the body, we find that through all the changes of feeling and thought, the man who feels and thinks remains intact. However great the identification between himself and these processes, it is temporary; soon or late man knows himself other and higher than his thoughts, feelings, actions, his head, heart and hands. That which in the midst of all changes, changes not, that is the Self, immortal, indestructible, indivisible.

Man is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution — is the “Eternal Pilgrim,” the Protean differentiation in space and time of the One Absolute “unknowable.” (S.D. II, 728.)

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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 cross-examine this witness from the Occult World of Ancient Adepts; ours the task to endeavor to break her evidence and to encourage others to do so. If such statements as the nine quoted above are unprovable then as honest men and women we must reject this “messenger” and consign to consuming fire her falsehoods and frauds; for if these teachings are unprovable then on her own testimony, by her own standard, according to her own dicta she and her “synthesis of science, religion and philosophy” are worse than nonsense. As she herself wrote: “But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have any more weight than any other ‘doxy,’ in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved.” (S.D., Vol. II, Original Edition, p. 438.)