Philosophy

"It has been your karma to work all this time preparing yourself and preparing the way for the coming of the World-Teacher; and just because you are good old members you have attracted some of the souls who have been working up to a high level of development in previous incarnations, so that they have been born to you as children; and you must not be surprised if you sometimes find that those who in the physical body are your children are in other and higher worlds far older in development than you are. If a boy or a girl suddenly enters into close relations with a Master-- such relations as you have hardly ventured to think of for yourself, even after many years of meditation and hard work-- do not be astonished... you should rejoice with exceeding great joy that you have been found worthy to train the physical footsteps of one who shall be among the Saviours of the world."

"The Lord Maitreya has frequently been called the Teacher of Gods and Men, and that fact is sometimes expressed in a different way by saying that in the great kingdom of the spiritual work He is the Minister for Religion and Education. It is not only that at certain intervals, when He sees it to be desirable, He either incarnates Himself, or sends a pupil, to state the eternal truth in some new way... We know little of the methods of world-wide instruction which He adopts; there are many ways of teaching apart from the spoken word; and it is certain that it is His constant and daily endeavour to raise the intellectual conceptions of millions of Angels and of men."

"Most of Them are distinctly fine-looking men; Their physical bodies are practically perfect, for They live in complete obedience to the laws of health, and above all They never worry about anything. All Their evil karma has long been exhausted... This freedom from karma gives Them, when for any reason They choose to take new bodies, entire liberty to select a birth in any country or race that may be convenient for the work that They have to do, and thus the nationality of the particular bodies which They happen to be wearing at any given time is not of primary importance."

"He who tries to develop love within himself will be saved from many mistakes. Love is the supreme virtue of all, without which all other qualifications water but the sand."

"Do not rest on your oars. There are still higher peaks to conquer. The need of intellectual development must not be forgotten; and we must unfold within ourselves sympathy, affection, tolerance. Each must realize that there are other points of view than his own, and that they may be just as worthy of attention."

"Advice from the Master. I know that your one object in life is to serve the Brotherhood; yet do not forget that there are higher steps before you, and that progress on the Path means sleepless vigilance. You must not only be always ready to serve; you must be ever watching for opportunities—nay, making opportunities to be helpful in small things, in order that when the greater work comes you may not fail to see it."

"Henceforth it does not matter to him what judgment the world gives on his actions, but only what judgment the Brotherhood gives. Whether he is popular or unpopular with the world matters not at all, if through all his conduct he has been loyal to the ideals placed before him."

"Some senior members of the Brotherhood may desire to use him at any moment, wherever he happens to be, and sometimes without his knowing it in the brain consciousness, but he cannot be used if, at the moment when he is needed, he is found brooding over his own affairs and turned inwards, not outwards to the world. The supreme need for him is the building of character, so that, when his Master looks at him he will find him thinking of the world’s welfare, and not whether that world is giving him happiness or misery. p. 179"

"Just as it is evolution for the personality to learn to express the ego more fully, so is it evolution for the ego to learn to express the Monad more fully. An undeveloped personality forgets all about this connection with the ego and feels himself quite independent. It can hardly be possible for an ego at his much higher level to be unaware of his link with the Monad; certainly some egos are far more awake to the necessities of their evolution than others—which is only another way of saying that there are older and younger egos, and that the older are striving more earnestly than the younger to unfold their latent possibilities. p. 184"

"As I have explained at length in Man Visible and Invisible, the causal body of a savage is almost colourless. As in the process of his evolution he develops good qualities which can find corresponding vibrations in the matter of the causal body, the colours expressive of these qualities begin to show themselves; and presently the causal body, instead of being empty, is full of active pulsating life."

"Definite service, and not mere amusement, should be your aim; think, not what you want to do, but what you can do that will help someone else; forget about yourself, and consider others."

"Realization of Unity. All that lives is really one, and it is the duty of those who enter the Brotherhood to know that as a fact. We are taught that the Self is one, and we try to understand what that means; but it is quite a different thing when we see it for ourselves, as the candidate does when he enters the buddhic plane."

"So wonderful is the expansion of the Initiate’s consciousness that it is most apt to speak of the change as a new birth. He begins to lead a new life “as a little child,” the life of the Christ; and the Christ, the intuitional or buddhic consciousness, is born within his heart. p. 158"

"He will attain the great Initiation of the Buddha, and thus gain perfect enlightenment; at that time these pupils of His, without physically knowing or remembering Him, will all be strongly attracted towards Him, and under His influence great numbers of them will enter the Path, and many will advance to the higher stages, having already in previous incarnations made considerable progress."

"Of the Master's (Kuthumi) family I know but little. There is a lady, evidently a pupil, whom He calls ` sister' . Whether she is actually His sister or not I do not know; she might possibly be a cousin or a niece. She looks much older than He, but that would not make the relationship improbable, as He has appeared of about the same age for a long time. She resembles Him to a certain extent, and once or twice when there have been gatherings she has come and joined the party; though her principal work seems to be to look after the house-keeping..."

"The sermon begins with a proclamation that the Middle Path is the safest, and indeed the only true Path. To plunge on the one hand into the sensual excesses and pleasures of the ordinary worldly life is mean and degrading, and leads a man nowhither. On the other hand, extravagant asceticism is also evil and useless. There may be a few to whom the high ascetic and solitary life appeals, and they may be capable of leading it rightly, though even then it must not be carried to excess; but for all ordinary people the Middle Way of a good life lived in the world is in every way best and safest. The first step towards the leading of such a life is to understand its conditions; and the Lord Buddha lays these down for us in what he has called the Four Noble Truths.These are:"

"What is now called Christianity was undoubtedly a magnificent conception as He originally taught it, sadly as it has fallen away from that high level in the hands of ignorant exponents since. It must not be assumed, of course, that the teaching of brotherly and neighbourly love was new in the world."

"The identical thing that we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and has not been lacking from the beginnings of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, from which moment on the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian."

"The Bodhisattva also occupied occasionally the body of Tsong-ka-pa, the great Tibetan religious reformer, and throughout the centuries He has sent forth a stream of His pupils, including Nagarjuna, Aryasanga, Ramanujacharya, Madhavacharya, and many others, who founded new sects or threw new light upon the mysteries of religion, and among these was one of His pupils who was sent to found the Muhammadan faith."

"When you see certain evils in yourself, take them in hand manfully and effectively. Persevere, and you will succeed. It is a question of willpower. Watch for opportunities and hints; be efficient. I am always ready to help you, but I cannot do the work for you; the effort must come from your side. Try to deepen yourself all round and to live a life of utter devotion to service."

"1. The First Truth is an assertion that all manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it. In commenting upon this, the Bodhisattva said that there are two senses in which manifested life is sorrowful. One of these is to some extent inevitable, but the other is an entire mistake and is very easily to be avoided...Even though we may be only a tiny fragment—indeed, a fragment of a fragment—we are nevertheless a part of a magnificent reality. There is nothing to be proud of in being only a fragment, but there is a certainty that because we are therefore part of the higher, we can eventually rise into the higher and become one therewith. That is the end and aim of our evolution. And even when we attain that, remember that it is not for the sake of our delight in the advancement, but that we may be able to help in the scheme. All these sacrifices and limitations may rightly be described as involving suffering; but they are undertaken gladly as soon as the ego [soul/God within] fully understands. An ego has not the perfection of the Monad, and so he does not fully understand at first; he has to learn like everybody else. .."

"He is thus the Head of all the faiths at present existing, and of many others which have died out in the course of time, though He is of course responsible for them only in their original form, and not for the corruption which man has naturally and inevitably introduced into all of them as the ages have rolled by."

"We can quite understand that those who have nothing to do with the training of individuals might say: “Our work is eing disturbed, and it is better that those who have such immature personalities should stay outside.” They would say that nothing was lost, that progress can be made just as well outside, and that pupils could go on making themselves better and stronger and wiser before gaining Initiation."

"It is as if in physical life we were each living at the bottom of a well, from which we may look up at the sunlight in the world above; and just as the light shines down into the depth of many wells, and yet ever remains the one light, so does the Light of the One illumine the darkness of our hearts. The Initiate has climbed out of the well of the personality, and sees that the light which he thought to be himself is in very truth the Infinite Light of all... p. 190"

"As the Logos is a Trinity, so the Occult Government of the world is in three great departments, ruled by three mighty Officials, who are not merely reflections of the Three Aspects of the Logos, but are in a very real way actual manifestations of Them. They are the Lord of the World, the Lord Buddha and the Mahachohan, who have reached grades of Initiation which give them waking consciousness on the planes of nature beyond the field of evolution of humanity, where dwells the manifested Logos."

"The Buddha. The Supplementary Acts. The Wesak Festival. The Valley. The Ceremony. The Greatest Blessing. The Predecessors of the Buddha. The Bodhisattva Maitreya. The Asala Festival. The Four Noble Truths. The Noble Eightfold Path."

"It has often been asked whether there are any Adepts living in feminine bodies. The existence of the World-Mother is an answer to that question. Because of her wonderful quality of intense purity and because of her development in other ways, she was chosen to be the mother of the body of the disciple Jesus long ago in Palestine; and because of the wonderful patience and nobility of soul with which she bore all the terrible suffering which came to her as the consequence of that position, she attained in that same life the level of Adeptship... That is the truth which lies behind the Roman Catholic doctrine of her Assumption; not that she was carried up into heaven among the Angels in her physical body, but that when she left that body she took her place among the Angels, and being presently appointed to the office of World-Mother she became very truly a queen among them, as the Church so poetically says. A great Deva needs no physical body; but while she holds her present office she will always appear to us in feminine form, as will those Adepts who have chosen to help her in her work."

"We must not think of this knowledge about the World-Mother as exclusively the possession of Christianity; she is clearly recognized in India as the Jagat-Amba, and in China as Kwan-Yin, the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge. She is essentially the representative, the very type and essence of love, devotion and purity; the heavenly wisdom indeed, but most of all Consolatrix Afflictorum, the Consoler, Comforter, Helper of all who are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any other adversity."

"The Wesak Festival. The occasion selected for this wonderful outpouring is the full moon day of the Indian month of Vaisakh (called in Ceylon Wesak, and usually corresponding to the English May), the anniversary of all the momentous occurrences of His last earthly life, His birth, His attainment of Buddhahood, and His departure from the physical body. In connection with this visit of His... an exoteric ceremony is performed on the physical plane... Whether He shows himself to pilgrims I am not certain; they all prostrate themselves at the moment when He appears, but that may be only in imitation of the prostration of the Adepts and their pupils, who do see the Lord Gautama. It seems probable that some at least of the pilgrims have seen Him for themselves, for the existence of the ceremony is widely known among the Buddhists of central Asia, and it is spoken of as the appearance of the Shadow or Reflection of the Buddha, the description given of it in such traditional accounts being as a rule fairly accurate. So far as we can see there appears to be no reason why any person whatever who happens to be in the neighborhood at the time may not be present at the ceremony; no apparent effort is made to restrict the number of spectators; though it is true that one hears stories of parties of pilgrims who have wandered for years without being able to find the spot. P. 285"

"Now at this time in the remote past to which we have referred, humanity should have begun to provide its own Teachers; but we are told that no one had quite reached the level required for the incurring of so tremendous a responsibility. The first-fruits of Humanity at this period were two Brothers who stood equal in occult development; one being he whom we now call the Lord Gautama Buddha, and the other our present World-Teacher, the Lord Maitreya. In what way they fell short of the required qualifications we do not know; but, out of his great love for humanity the Lord Gautama instantly offered to make himself ready to undertake whatever additional effort might be necessary to attain the required development. We learn from tradition that life after life he practised special virtues, each life showing out some great quality achieved."

"What is the greatest blessing?"

"It would indeed be well that women in all countries should band themselves together in an endeavour to spread abroad among their sisters accurate information on this most important subject; every women should fully realize the magnificent opportunities which the feminine incarnation gives her; every woman should be taught the absolute necessity for proper conditions before, during and after her pregnancy. Not only the most perfect cleanliness and the most careful attention should surround the baby body, but also it should be encompassed by perfect astral and mental conditions, by love and trust, by happiness and holiness. In this way the work of the World-Mother would be immensely facilitated and the future of the race would be assured."

"Guatama Buddha, translated thus by Professor Rhys Davids with slight modifications introduced from other sources, when they seemed decided improvements (by CWL). Quoted in The Masters and the Path (1925) by C.W. Leadbeater , (1925) p. 291"

"It happens that, in lands which have the European culture, almost the only way in which we can get the inner teaching put clearly before us is by coming into The Theosophical Society, or by reading Theosophical works. There have been mystical or spiritualistic works which have given some information, which have gone a long way, but there are none, so far as I know, which state the case so clearly, so scientifically, as the Theosophical literature has done. I know of no other book which contains such a wealth of information as The Secret Doctrine. p. 130"

"Four Ways to the Path. In the books we are told that there are four ways, any one of which may bring a man to the commencement of the Path of development. First, by being in the presence of, and getting to know, those who are already interested along that line. Some of us, for example, may have been monks or nuns in the Middle Ages. We may have come into contact in that life with an abbot or abbess who had deep experience of the inner world—a person like St. Theresa..."

"Blessings. Under this heading should come the various types of blessings such as are given in the Church, in Freemasonry, and by the pupils of our Masters. Blessings may be arranged in two sections—those which a man gives from himself, and those which are given through him as an official by a higher power. The first kind of blessing is merely an expression of an earnest good wish... this will depend upon the earnestness of the good wish and the amount of spiritual force put into it... If the words were uttered... without much feeling or intention behind them, the effect would be slight and transient; on the other hand, if they came from a full heart and were uttered with definite determination, their effect would be deep and lasting. The second type of blessing is that which is uttered by an official appointed for the purpose, through whom power flows from some higher source... the power of giving a definite blessing is one of those conferred upon the Priest at his ordination... he is simply a channel for the power from on high, and if it should unfortunately happen that he speaks it merely as a matter of course and as part of his ritual, that would make no difference to the spiritual power outpoured. The blessing flows equally over all, but the amount of the influences which any individual can obtain from it depends upon his receptivity. p. 142-143"

"In the Oriental books on the subject, written thousands of years ago, are to be found many accounts of this preparatory period of instruction; and when reference has been made to it in the earlier Theosophical literature it has been called the Probationary Path—the term referring not to being put upon probation by any individual Adept, but to a course of general training preparatory to Initiation. I myself used the term in Invisible Helpers, but have lately avoided it on account of the confusion caused by the employment of the same word in two distinct senses."

"The method really adopted is readily comprehensible, and is in fact much like that of some of our older Universities. If a student wishes to take a degree at one of those, he must first pass the entrance examination of the University and then be admitted to one of the Colleges.The Head of that College is technically responsible for his progress, and may be regarded as his tutor-in-chief. The man will have to work to a large extent by himself, but the Head of his College is expected to see that he is properly prepared before he is presented to take his Degree. The Head does not give the Degree; it is conferred by that abstraction called the University—usually at the hands of its Vice- Chancellor. It is the University, not the Head of the College, that arranges the examination and confers the various Degrees; the work of the Head of the College is to see that the candidate is duly prepared, and generally to be to some extent responsible for him. In the process of such preparation he may, as a private gentleman, enter into whatever social or other relations with his pupil he may think proper; but all that is not the business of the University. p. 129"

"Madame Blavatsky told us, I remember, that a mantra might be recited not for oneself at all, but with a special view to someone whom it was thought it might help. In this way we might recite the Sacred Word [Om] or the Gayatri, or any of those beautiful Buddhist mantras which flow so sweetly, thinking strongly of a special person and projecting towards him the force of the mantra. But she advised us to use these things with care. Again, she gave a caution that no one should attempt to use a mantra which is too high for him. None such will be given to us by our teachers; but I would say this, as a caution to neophytes, that if the reciting even of the Sacred Word in any particular way should produce headache or a feeling of nausea or faintness, it should be stopped at once. We should go on working at the development of our characters, and try it again in a few months. In using the Word, we are invoking great forces, and if we are not yet quite up to their level they may not be harmonious, and the result may be not invariably good. p. 149"

"The Gayatri is perhaps the greatest and most beautiful of all the ancient mantras. It has been chanted all over India from time immemorial... in an antiquity so remote that the very memory of it has been forgotten, the altruistic use of such mantras was fully comprehended and practiced. It begins always with the sacred word [Om], and with the enumeration of the planes upon which its action is desired—the three worlds in which man lives, the physical, the astral and the mental. p. 149"

"The Adepts are the busiest people in the world; they deal with egos in blocks; they deal with souls by the million, not with personalities one by one."

"The more advanced we can become, the better prey we should be for these Brothers of the Shadow if they could get hold of us. But they cannot get hold of us, they cannot touch us, as long as we can keep ourselves in full community of thought with our Masters; as long as we can keep ourselves steadfastly along the line of unselfishness, of the constant outpouring of love."

"The pupil must make up his mind that with regard to his efforts towards self-improvement he will never allow himself to be discouraged by failure, even though it be often repeated. However many times he may have failed in his effort, however many falls he may have on the path which he sets before himself, there is exactly the same reason for getting up and going on after the thousandth fall that there was after the first. p. 126"

"There is no harm whatever in reading a good novel for the sake of diversion; the thought-forms engendered by it would not in any way interfere with the current of the Master’s thought; but there are many novels full of evil insinuation, novels which bring impure thought-forms before the mind, novels which glorify crime, and others which concentrate the thought of their readers on the most unsavoury problems of life, or vividly depict scenes of hatred and cruelty; all such should be rigorously avoided. In the same way, there is no harm in taking part in or watching all ordinary games which are fairly played; but any which are rough and boisterous, any in which any sort of cruelty is involved, any in which there is likelihood of injury to man or beast—all these are absolutely barred. p. 119"

"I have heard our great President say: “What I have not time to do is not my work.” Yet no one labours more strenuously and unceasingly than she. If we use our forces reasonably for the task of to-day, we ought to be stronger to face the duties which tomorrow brings; to overstrain ourselves today so that we shall be useless tomorrow is not really intelligent service, for we spoil our power for future work in order to gratify to-day’s unbalanced enthusiasm. Of course emergencies occasionally arise in which prudence must be cast aside in order that some piece of work may be finished in time, but the wise craftsman will try to look ahead sufficiently to avoid unnecessary crises of that sort. p. 121"

"The Masters and the Brotherhood. All this while, the Adept, besides using his pupil as an apprentice, has been preparing him for presentation to the Great White Brotherhood for Initiation. The whole object of the existence of that Brotherhood is to promote the work of evolution, and the Master knows that when the pupil is ready for the stupendous honour of being received as a member of it, he will be of very much more use in the world than before. Therefore it is His wish to raise his pupil to that level as soon as possible."

"This wonderful mantra is an invocation to the Sun—of course really to the Solar Logos, who stands behind that grandest of all symbols; and the great shaft of light which immediately pours down upon and into the reciter comes as though from the physical Sun, in whatever direction that Sun may happen to be. This shaft of light is white tinged with gold, and shot with that electric blue which is so often seen in connection with any manifestation of the power of the first Ray; but when it has filled the very soul of the reciter it promptly shoots from him again in seven great rays or cones having the colours of the spectrum. It is as though the singer acts as a prism; yet the colour rays which dart forth are of a shape the reverse of what we usually find in such cases. Commonly when we send out rays of spiritual force they spring forth from a point in the body—the heart, the brain, or some other centre; and as they shoot out they steadily broaden fanwise, as do those shining from a lighthouse. But these rays start from a basis wider than the man himself—a basis which is the circumference of his aura; and instead of widening out they decrease to a point, just as do the rays of a conventional star except that they are of course cones of light instead of mere triangles. p. 150"

"It is true that doubt (or rather uncertainty) on some questions is a bar to spiritual progress, but the antidote to that doubt is not blind faith (which is itself considered a fetter, as will presently be seen), but the certainty of conviction founded on individual experiment or mathematical reasoning. While a child doubts the accuracy of the multiplication table, he can hardly acquire proficiency in the higher mathematics; but his doubts can be satisfactorily cleared up only by his attaining a comprehension, founded on reasoning or experiment, that the statements contained in the table are true. He believes that twice two are four, not merely because he has been told so, but because it has become to him a self-evident fact. And this is exactly the method, and the only method, of resolving doubt known to Occultism. p. 194"

"I remember one lady who was an exceedingly good clairvoyant, capable of looking back into the past, and describing historical events with great accuracy and wealth of detail. She was a very devout Christian, and I think she was never quite able to feel that any other religion could be as full an exposition of the truth as her own. She might be said (using the word in no invidious sense) to have a strong prejudice in favour of Christianity. The result of that upon her clairvoyance was very striking—in fact, almost amusing sometimes. She might be describing, let us say, a scene in ancient Rome; so long as nothing directly connected with religion came into her purview, the description would be quite accurate, but the moment that it appeared that one of the characters in the scene was a Christian she immediately displayed a remarkable strong bias in his favour. Nothing that he did or said could be wrong, whereas anything whatever that was said or done against him was always indicative of the greatest wickedness. When this factor was introduced her clairvoyance became absolutely unreliable. p. 110"

"In the earlier stages of the pupil’s relation with his Master, he will often feel that a vast amount of force is poured through him, without his knowing where it is going; he feels only that a great volume of living fire is rushing through him and flooding his neighbourhood. With a little careful attention he can soon learn to tell in which direction it is going, and a little later he becomes able to follow with his consciousness that rush of the Master’s power, and can actually trace it down to the very people who are being affected and helped by it. He himself, however, cannot direct it; he is being used simply as a channel, yet is at the same time being taught to co-operate in the distribution of the force. p. 102-3"