The Singapore Lodge Theosophical Society
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The Singapore Lodge Theosophical Society
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The following articles are reproduced from the April 2025 Newsletter to members. Non-members may or may not be able to relate to the contents. HPB’s Esoteric Instructions By Michael Gomes
‘THE Theosophical Society has never been a mere exoteric Society, without touch with the unseen world,’ explained Annie Besant in her 1895 history of Blavatsky’s Esoteric School. ‘It has been ever since its foundation a ladder, with its foot on earth but its top in the heavenly places, and any one stepping off the ground on to its first rung might climb upwards, if he possessed the capacity to do so. The obstacles to climbing lay in the incapacity of the member, not in the absence of the necessary steps.’ As she shows, the notion of different grades of the Theosophical Society was referenced in its earliest rules. ‘Fellowship in the TS admitted to the Third Section only. If fellows showed special earnestness and capacity, they were allowed to pass into the Second Section, and this Second Section is the original form of what was later called the Esoteric Section, and still later the Eastern School’.
These inner grades may not have been formally organized in the early days, for a petition survives from 1884 asking to start such a group in London. Four years later, Col. Olcott, as President of the Theosophical Society, formally recognized HPB’s intention to organize students into such a section. HPB wrote at the time: ‘As this degree is probationary it is to prove and try and select out of the mass of Theosophists those who really have at heart the true desire to go forward and benefit the race’.
The qualifications necessary for such study had been broached in two articles, ‘Practical Occultism’ and ‘Occultism versus the Occult Arts’ published in the April and May 1888 issues of her London magazine, Lucifer. The difficulties facing the seeker were greater than imagined: ‘We are in the Kali-yuga and its fatal influence is a thousand fold more powerful in the West than it is in the East; hence the easy preys made by the powers of the Age of Darkness in this cyclic struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now labouring. One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get at the ‘Gate’ and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great sacrifice’.
By 1888 a number of occult groups were canvassing members of the
Theosophical Society. One, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, invited
'Theosophists who may have been disappointed in their expectations of
Sublime wisdom being freely dispensed by Hindu Mahatmas’ to contact them
for more satisfactory results. This group, which operated in England and
America, had begun to draw some leading Theosophists. There was also
Hiram Butler’s Esoteric Society in Boston in the U.S.A. In London, the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn had been formed in May 1888 offering
both sexes instruction in the hermetic Kabbalah and ritual magic. As
Blavatsky had observed in April 1888: ‘there are many who are looking
for practical instruction in occultism’. Blavatsky’s Esoteric School was to be different than these. In the Preliminary Memorandum sent out at the end of 1888, she laid out the work ahead for members: ‘He who wants to follow the working of his inner self and nature for the purpose of self-mastery, has to understand them by comparison; he has to strive to fathom the mysteries of the human heart in general, before he can hope to learn the whole truth about the mysteries of his own soul. The power of Occult self-introspection is too limited in its area if it does not go beyond the Self, and the investigation of isolated instances will remain forever fruitless if we fail to work it out on firmly established principles. We cannot do good to ourselves — on a higher plane — without doing good to others, because each nature reacts upon other natures; nor can we help others without this help benefiting ourselves.’
The first three certificates of membership were issued October 27, 1888. Members signed a pledge striving to make Theosophy a living power in their lives, to support the Theosophical movement and its leaders, refrain from speaking ill of others, to struggle against one’s lower nature, to be charitable to the weaknesses of others, and to give to the movement ‘in time, money, and work.’
Once announced, the next need was to provide the necessary instructions for those who had joined. Instruction No. l was dated January-February 1889 and the second March-April 1889. They were circulated as cyclostyled copies, a process where the pages were traced on stencil paper and then duplicated by the use of an ink-roller. A print version was made available later that year when James Pryse and his brother John arrived in New York. Looking to be of use, and recognizing the need, they started a small press that printed an American edition of the Instructions. At the end of the year James Pryse went to London and started the HPB Press there. Instruction No. 3 was issued December 1889-January 1890.
These three numbered instructions were all that was issued during Mme. Blavatsky’s lifetime. They hold together as some of her best work and contain information not to be found in the rest of her writings.
HPB begins by instructing the student in the meaning and use of the mantra ‘Om Mani Padme Hum.’ The words, which she describes as the most sacred of all Eastern formulas, ‘when rightly understood, instead of being composed of the almost meaningless words, ‘O the Jewel in the Lotus,’ contains a reference to this indissoluble union between Man and the Universe, rendered in seven different ways and having the capability of seven different applications to as many planes of thought and action’.
This mantra, so important in Tibetan Buddhism, is associated with the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It was his gift of protection to the Tibetan people and was carved on stones and placed throughout the country. Each syllable of the mantra had its correlations with states of consciousness, and HPB shows there are correspondences between the cosmic and human process, the macrocosm and the microcosm. This doctrine of correspondences forms the basis of western esotericism, and it is outlined in Mme. Blavatsky’s first book, Isis Unveiled, where she gives a translation of the ‘Emerald Tablet of Hermes,’ with its famous lines: ‘What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of the one thing’. And Instruction No. l gives a number of tabular diagrams supplying the correspondences.
In Instruction No. 2 HPB continued her explanation of the correlations between color, number and sound. Even before the founding of the Theosophical Society Mme. Blavatsky had taught this privately, for in a letter of May 21, 1875 to Col. Olcott in the T.S. archives at Adyar, she passes on instruction in the occult meaning of certain colours. And at a meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge held at the time the Instructions were issued she spoke publicly about ‘the true relation of sound, colours, and numbers’ as being ‘the keynote of Occultism’. Instruction No. 2 looks in detail at the various theories put forward by western kabbalists and astrologers at fixing the attributes between colours, metals, days of the week, etc., and corrects them according to the esoteric philosophy.
This second instruction also gives us an idea of what Mme. Blavatsky was reading at the time. In the section, ‘What Magic is, in Reality’, she cites the work of Simon Magus, an influential magician who flourished at the time of the apostles, and translates some points describing the teachings attributed to him from the third century A.D. Philosophumena, or, Refutation of All Heresies. Her source for this is from M. E Amelineau’s Essai sur le Gnosticisme Egyptien, published in Paris in 1887 as volume 14 of the learned Annates du Musee Guimet, a tome of 328 pages.
Instruction No. 3 was the longest of the three, covering some 40 pages, while Instructions 1 and 2 were 24 and 27 pages. Half of this Instruction is taken up with a comparison of the Indian idea of the Tattva-s (used here as elements or forces of Nature) with Theosophical concepts. ‘The doctrine of the seven Tattva-s (the principles of the universe and also of man) was held in great sacredness, and therefore secrecy, in days of old, by the Brahmans, who have now almost forgotten the teaching. Yet it is taught to this day in the schools beyond the Himalayan Range, but it is now hardly remembered or heard of in India except through rare Initiates. The policy has, however, been changed gradually; Chelas began to be taught the broad outlines of it, and at the advent of the TS in India, in 1879, I was ordered to teach it in its exoteric form to one or two. I now give it out esoterically’, she says.
‘While Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy speaks of five Tattva-s only, Occultists name seven, thus making them correspond with every septenary in nature’, and Mme. Blavatsky lists them as: (1) Adi, primordial force; (2) Anupadaka, first differentiation; (3) Akasa, ether; (4) Vayu, gaseous; (5) Tejas, fiery; (6) Apas, liquid; and (7) Prthivi, solid. She provides a diagram of correspondences showing the difference between the exoteric and esoteric correlations of the Tattva-s, the human principles, colours, and parts of the body.
The other area that Mme. Blavatsky turned her attention to, and which makes up most of the second part of Instruction No. 3, is the idea of the potential death of the Soul. As she points out, she had raised the subject in her first book, Isis Unveiled, that personal immortality is conditional, and that ‘we elbow soulless men and women at every step in life.’ In Instruction 3 she elaborates: ‘Real life is in the spiritual consciousness of that life, in a conscious existence in Spirit, not Matter; and real death is the limited perception of life, the impossibility of sensing conscious or even individual existence outside of form, or, at least, of some form of matter. Those who sincerely reject the possibility of conscious life divorced from matter and a brain-substance are dead units’.
Through study of what constitutes the mortal and the immortal, the impermanent and permanent, the student could ‘master and guide first the lower cosmic and personal, then the higher cosmic and impersonal. Once we can do that, we have secured our immortality’.
Instruction No. 3 was issued at the end of 1889; seven months had elapsed since the previous instalment of teachings. In a notification sent out to members of the School in advance of Instruction No. 3, HPB explained the delay by citing the contents of two letters sent by the Masters from Sikkim in March and August of that year. Apparently members of the School had not taken the nature of its work as seriously as they should have, for one of the letters noted: ‘Experience but too clearly proves that any departure from the time-honoured rules for the government and instructions of the disciple to suit Western custom and prejudices, is a fatal policy. Before the pupil can be taught, he must learn how to conduct himself as regards the world, his teacher, the sacred science, and his INNER SELF.’ Giving the example of the Eastern aphorism that ‘the ruffled water-surface reflects naught but broken images,’ the letter adds: ‘How can they be expected, then, to see aught but the broken truths, that such judgment is sure to suggest and distort the more? Violation of ancient usages is sure to result in evil. The office of Teacher was always considered as a very solemn and responsible one among our Asiatic ancestors, and the pupil was always enjoined to obedience and loyalty. This is what you have to tell them, advising them to study Manu’.
In this explanation Mme. Blavatsky cites some rules from the Book of Discipline for the School of Dzyan and adds the Master’s comments to members, which contains the well-known passage known as the Golden Stairs, beginning: ‘Behold the truth before you.. .’ This document was reissued in an abridged form in 1890 with the focus on these passages.
Although she was to live for another year and a half, Instruction No. 3 was the last one issued to the School during Mme. Blavatsky’s life. In August 1890 she turned her attention to forming an Inner Group of students, choosing six men and six women who would meet weekly with her every Wednesday until her death. Questions tended to be about the three issued instructions and her responses were written down. The answers given by HPB would be the basis for later instruction to the School. After her death an Instruction No. 4 was issued based on the Inner Group discussions about states of consciousness and loka-s and tala-s in relation to states of consciousness. A further instruction, No. 5, was later issued giving information on the seven principles and the organs of the body, culled from the Inner Group material and grouped by subject.
In the Inner Group HPB was able to deal with the teaching in a more in-depth and detailed way. This material offers a useful contrast with the structured Instructions written for different levels of students. Here she was answering questions from some of the best and brightest of the movement. ‘Night was bad for practical work,’ she could, for instance, tell them, ‘for we were tired, physically, mentally, and morally. The morning was best, at sunrise, or at the uneven hours after sunrise. Never take even hours after sunrise: always the uneven,’ and detail a series of experiments to indicate one’s ruling colour.
Available only in edited parts as Instructions 4 and 5, these teachings remained inaccessible except to members of the Inner Group who made their own notes of the meetings. In 1897 Annie Besant published this material, along with Instructions 1, 2, and 3, as part of the Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine, indicating, that had the author lived, it would have formed and fulfilled her intention to devote a volume to esoteric teachings. [In 1894 W.Q. Judge had notified members of his Esoteric School that HPB.’s E.S. Instructions were ‘no longer secret.’] In a number of issues of The Theosophist, from January 1931 to July 1932, C. Jinarajadasa published the contents of the Minute Book belonging to Inner Group member Isabel Cooper-Oakley.
For seventy years the material in the Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine also remained the sole source for HPB’s Esoteric Instructions. [The volume, incorporating Blavatsky’s posthumous writings, was reprinted in 1901 and steadily until 1938 when it was incorporated as volume 5 of the six-volume Adyar edition of The Secret Doctrine. It was issued as a separate publication in 1980.]
Yet, strangely enough, with all these versions available there has not been an edition that gives HPB’s three Instructions issued during her lifetime, paired with the material from the Inner Group, which may be regarded as a commentary on the Instructions. Embedded as part of a larger work, yes; as a separate text, no. Such an edition would have the added benefit of allowing the material a new level of accessibility to those interested in the development of Theosophical thought.
The information that forms the Esoteric Instructions represents Blavatsky’s last extended project accomplished during her lifetime. Her remaining output would be limited to magazine articles. It is invaluable for understanding Blavatsky’s thought. The various diagrams and charts she supplied and the correlations between colour and sound and states of consciousness have had a lasting influence on modem esotericism, even impacting the arts. Explored in detail are concepts found nowhere else in her writings, such as her esoteric tabulation of the seven human principles.
At first glance HPB’s Esoteric Instructions may seem daunting in its complexity. But if students persevere, taking the time to digest what is being imparted, their effort may more than be recompensed by the results. As HPB advises about the teachings printed here: ‘Let students, therefore, be very careful to spiritualize the Instructions and avoid materializing them; let them always try to find the highest meaning possible, confident that in proportion as they approach the material and visible in their speculations on the Instructions, so far are they from the right understanding of them. This is especially the case with these first Instructions and Diagrams, for, as in all true arts, so in Occultism, we must learn the theory before we are taught the practice.’
Since joining the
Theosophical Society in 1968 at age seventeen, Michael Gomes has
remained committed to its ideals. He has gone on to become one of the
best known historians of the movement, as well regarded among
theosophical and esoteric groups as he is in academic circles. His
publications, which range from new editions of Blavatsky’s writings to
examinations of contentious events in theosophical history, have
contributed toward a better understanding of the modern theosophical
movement. Michael Gomes is Director of the Emily Sellon Memorial Library
in New York City. |
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