October 2006 Newsletter

The following articles are reproduced from the October 2006 Newsletter to members. Non-members may or may not be able to relate to the contents.

No Other Option

By John Algeo

Reprinted from the July 2006 of The Theosophist

Dr John Algeo is international Vice-President of the TS and Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, USA, with many academic distinctions to his credit

WE human beings are like the survivors of a shipwreck, huddled together in a lifeboat that is being tossed about on the stormy ocean of existence. What are our options?

We can simply cling to each other in despair without hope of deliverance and with only inevitable destruction to look forward to. Or we can begin to work together to realize a plan for reaching the shore safely. Our religions, philosophies, and sciences are our old plans for coping with the storm of life. We have inherited them from our cultural ancestors, or we have devised or discovered them on our own, or we think we have received them by revelation. But few of them seem to be working very well.

An alternative plan is the one we call Theosophy. What sort of plan is it — religious, philosophical, or scientific? Or is it something different from all of those?

Theosophy as Religion

The Theosophical Society is a religious organization, in the sense of ‘religious’ as ‘concerned with things of ultimate value’. But Theosophy is certainly not a religion in the sense of an organized set of beliefs and practices that people identify as their ‘religion’. Annie Besant, who was a reformer and probably the greatest woman orator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the second President of the Theosophical Society, said that Theosophy does not ask us to leave our religions, but to live them. The Theosophical Society thus has members who adhere to many of the religions of the world: Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian and so on.

Though religious, the TS is a non-dogmatic organization, which does not ask its members to espouse any set of beliefs or to practise any particular lifestyle. Its members subscribe only to its three objects of brotherhood, encouraging study, and investigating the unexplained. These objects are not matters of belief or of particular activities, but rather they are matters of attitude, of a mental and spiritual orientation that is harmonious with various doctrinal formulations and ways of life.

Theosophy holds that all the great religions of humankind are expressions of the same underlying need for human beings to come to an understanding of and relationship with the ultimate Reality of existence. Each religious expression is a cultural and historical articulation of that need, especially suitable for a particular place, time, and people. The Theosophical Society therefore respects and honours each of those expressions, but looks for the commonality among them.

The English word ‘religion’ is from a Latin root meaning literally ‘bind back’. That etymology has a double interpretation. On the one hand, a religion binds its adherents back to the group — uniting them as coreligionists. That binding serves the interests of the group by strengthening it. It also helps the individual members by giving them a sense of identity and belonging. But, as the novelist Ursula Le Guin has observed, to light a candle is to cast a shadow. The shadow side of the light of this interpretation of religion is an emphasis on separativeness, pride, and opposition to other religious traditions.

On the other hand, another interpretation of the etymology of ‘religion’ is a binding-back of all humans to their common nature and source — their shared physical, intellectual, and spiritual origins. It is this second interpretation that Theosophy emphasizes and that the TS seeks to promote. It is the essence of the Society’s three Object.

Theosophy as Philosophy

The Theosophical Society is also a philosophical organization, in the sense that it conducts ‘a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative … means’, to quote a definition of ‘philosophy’ from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. ‘Speculative’ (from Latin specula ‘a watchtower’) here means looking at things and trying to explain them. It is what the President does in her monthly column ‘On the Watch-Tower’. Theosophical speculation offers an explanation of the nature of the universe and of us beings who inhabit it. Theosophical philosophy covers a range of ideas from the very general to the very specific. But all of them can be subsumed under three fundamental heads: (1) the essential unity of all that is, (2) the cyclical order of the universe and everything in it, and (3) the purposeful evolution of life as a process of increasing sensitivity, responsiveness, and awareness.

Among the more specific ideas that many Theosophists hold, but that have no official standing in the Society, are ones like the following:

1. The present life each of us is leading is only one link in a long series of reincarnations through which we experience many cultures and social levels, as well as the biological and social roles of both sexes, and by which we grow as individuals.

2. The circumstances of each life are determined by the choices we have made in past lives, and our choices in this life will determine our future life-conditions, by the principle of karma.

3. All life is evolving towards greater material sensitivity, intellectual responsiveness, and spiritual awareness of our substantive unity.

4. The universe consists of non-physical dimensions of being of which we are aware only indirectly as feeling, thinking, and intuiting, as well as other dimensions of which we are normally unaware.

5. Each of us is responsible, through the choices we make, for our own identity. Although there are advanced beings, such as the great spiritual leaders of humanity, to guide us, we alone determine our future.

6. Each of us has latent spiritual powers that are developed during the course of our evolution and that are the means by which we can perceive the truth of things beyond our physical senses and empirical mind.

7. We progress in our evolution and we develop our latent powers by forgetting ourselves and working instead for the welfare of all humanity and indeed of all life, for life pervades every atom of matter.

Such ideas, though dear to many of us, are not themselves the essence of Theosophy. In one of her letters to the American Conventions, Madame Blavatsky wrote: ‘But there are others among us who realize intuitionally that the recognition of pure Theosophy — the philosophy of the rational explanation of things and not the tenets — is of the most vital importance in the Society, inasmuch as it alone can furnish the beacon-light needed to guide humanity on its true path’ (Collected Writings 9:243). Pure Theosophy is not tenets or ideas, but ‘the philosophy of the rational explanation of things’.

Theosophy as Science

The Theosophical Society is finally a scientific organization, in that it promotes a search for a rational explanation based on observation and tested in practice. Like any science, Theosophy has axioms that it starts from. Its axioms are its fundamental concepts of the unity, orderliness, and purposefulness of life. But what Theosophy constructs on that foundation is not a body of beliefs based on authority or accepted on blind faith. Rather, its specific teachings are empirical in that they must be proven by experience. And if experience disproves any specifics, we must be prepared to revise our understanding of them.

Master KH wrote to A. O. Hume (Mahatma Letter, chron. 65 / Adyar 11): ‘Modern science is our best ally. Yet it is generally that same science which has made the weapon to break our heads with.’ Science is the ally of Theosophy in resisting the human inclination to rely on authority, to hold on to one another in our lifeboat on the stormy ocean as we look to the ship’s captain for directions.

But modern science plays a game based on somewhat different axioms from those of Theosophy. Its unity is often limited to material reality and its orderliness generally excludes purpose. Theosophy has as one of its axioms that which KH went on to explain to Hume, namely that ‘spirit and matter are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences’, and spirit along with matter are twin expressions of the ‘one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself’. Our axioms differ from those of materialistic science, but our basic methods should not. To use an old English proverb, the proof of every pudding, scientific and Theosophical, is in the eating.

We Theosophists have to pay attention to the findings of science and not dismiss them if they conflict with our tenets (those ideas that we hold but that are not themselves axioms). But we must also recognize that true science is always provisional. It says that experience shows one idea to be right and another idea to be wrong. But further experience may always alter those conclusions. Most of us are not competent to judge whether theoretical ideas are right or wrong. But we are competent to judge how ideas work out in our lives. We know what a pudding is like when we taste it.

Theosophy as Ethics

Theosophical ideas, both fundamental and specific, have implications for daily living. And living those ideas is our way of testing their truth, that is, of tasting the pudding. Some of the implications of Theosophical ideas, practised by individual Theosophists according to their own conscience and the circumstances of their lives, include the following:

1. To practise, out of respect for all life, harmlessness with respect to other living beings, including vegetarianism and the humane treatment of animals, as well as an active concern for the ecology of our planet.

2. To study in order to learn about ourselves and the universe in which we exist.

3. To meditate in order to incorporate into our being the truths we have learned and to come into contact with the highest and inmost core of our being.

4. To serve others in ways that will help them to live effectively and to discover their own paths to self-realization and also, by the process of serving others, to develop ourselves into fuller and more authentic human beings.

5. To be understanding of theories and practices that differ from our own; and even if we believe such theories and practices to be wrong, not to attribute them to a wilful perversity on the part of those who embrace them.

In The Key to Theosophy (sec. 12), Blavatsky wrote:

Duty is that which is due to Humanity, to our fellow-men, neighbours, family, and especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and more helpless than we are ourselves. This is a debt which, if left unpaid during life, leaves us spiritually insolvent and moral bankrupts in our next incarnation. Theosophy is the quintessence of duty.

This ‘duty’ is our dharma, the core of our being, for whose full realization we exist.

Ethics can be thought of as the way we apply ideas in our lives. The essence of Theosophical ethics is a conviction that none of us has all of the answers and that none of us can reach personal well-being or eternal happiness alone. If all life is one, as Theosophy holds, then all living beings are inextricably linked. Every action, feeling, and thought of ours affects all other beings. We are all together in that lifeboat on the ocean of existence. To reach the shore, we must work together.

There is no other option.