The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
Thus says Paul, mentioning but the dual and trinitarian man for the better
comprehension of the non‐initiated. But this is not all, for the Delphic
injunction has to be fulfilled: man must know himself in order to become a
perfect Adept. How few can acquire the knowledge, however, not merely in
its inner mystical, but even in its literal sense, for there are two
meanings in this command of the Oracle. This is the doctrine of Buddha and
the Bodhisattvas pure and simple.
Such is also the mystical sense of what was said by Paul to the
Corinthians about their being the “temple of God,” for this meant
Esoterically:
Ye are the temple of [the, or your] God, and the Spirit of [a, or
your] God dwelleth in you.(108)
This carries precisely the same meaning as the “I am verily Brahman” of
the Vedântin. Nor is the latter assertion more blasphemous than the
Pauline—if there were any blasphemy in either, which is denied. Only the
Vedântin, who never refers to his body as being himself, or even a part of
himself, or aught else but an illusory form for others to see him in,
constructs his assertion more openly and sincerely than was done by Paul.
The Delphic command “Know thyself” was perfectly comprehensible to every
nation of old. So it is now, save to the Christians, since, with the
exception of the Mussulmans, it is part and parcel of every Eastern
religion, including the Kabalistically instructed Jews. To understand its
full meaning, however, necessitates, first of all, belief in Reincarnation
and all its mysteries; not as laid down in the doctrine of the French
Reincarnationists of the Allan Kardec school, but as they are expounded
and taught by Esoteric Philosophy. Man must, in short, know who he was,
before he arrives at knowing what he is. And how many are there among
Europeans who are capable of developing within themselves an absolute
belief in their past and future reincarnations, in general, even as a law,
let alone mystic knowledge of one’s immediately precedent life? Early
education, tradition and training of thought, everything is opposing
itself during their whole lives to such a belief. Cultured people have
been brought up in that most pernicious idea that the wide difference
found between the units of one and the same mankind, or even race, is the
result of chance; that the gulf between man and man in their respective
social positions, birth, intellect, physical and mental capacities—every
one of which qualifications has a direct influence on every human
life—that all this is simply due to blind hazard, only the most pious
among them finding equivocal consolation in the idea that it is “the will
of God.” They have never analysed, never stopped to think of the depth of
the opprobrium that is thrown upon their God, once the grand and most
equitable law of the manifold re‐births of man upon this earth is
foolishly rejected. Men and women anxious to be regarded as Christians,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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