Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00043)

Having reached the commentary on Stanza VI in Eldon's scanned text of
the Secret Doctrine, I have found there is more work than hitherto to be
done!  Accordingly I am having a rest from this, but in order to keep
the work moving along, I am uploading the text of ~The Ocean of
Theosophy~ (Also supplied by Eldon, but in much better shape!)

The following text is of the Preface and Chapter I.  I omitted the
contents, which merely say, Chappter I, Chapter II, etc.  The page
numbers will differ according to the format in which subscribers choose
to keep their copies of this seminal work.  Further uploads will be of
individual chapters as they come.

Alan Bain, March 13th, 1996.
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The Ocean of Theosophy
by William Quan Judge
New York, May 1893

PREFACE

An attempt is made in the pages of this book to write of
theosophy in such a manner as to be understood by the ordinary
reader. Bold statements are made in it upon the knowledge of the
writer, but at the same time it is distinctly to be understood
that he alone is responsible for what is therein written: the
Theosophical Society is not involved in nor bound by anything
said in the book, nor are any of its members any the less good
Theosophists because they may not accept what I have set down.
The tone of settled conviction which may be thought to pervade
the Chapters is not the result of dogmatism or conceit, but
flows from knowledge based upon evidence and experience.
Members of the Theosophical Society will notice that certain
theories or doctrines have not been gone into. That is because
they could not be treated without unduly extending the book and
arousing needless controversy.

The subject of the Will has received no treatment, inasmuch as
that power or faculty is hidden, subtle, undiscoverable as to
essence, and only visible in effect. As it is absolutely
colorless and varies in moral quality in accordance with the
desire behind it, as also it acts frequently without our
knowledge, and as it operates in all the kingdoms below man,
there could be nothing gained by attempting to enquire into it
apart from the Spirit and the desire.

I claim no originality for this book. I invented none of it,
discovered none of it, but have simply written that which I have
been taught and which has been proved to me. It therefore is
only a handing on of what has been known before.

CHAPTER I

THEOSOPHY IS THAT OCEAN of knowledge which spreads from shore to
shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its
deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope,
yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the
understanding of a child. It is wisdom about God for those who
believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about
nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the
Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and
that darkness is around his pavilion. Although it contains by
derivation the name God and thus may seem at first sight to
embrace religion alone, it does not neglect science, for it is
the science of sciences and therefore has been called the wisdom
religion. For no science is complete which leaves out any
department of nature, whether visible or invisible, and that
religion which, depending solely on an assumed revelation, turns
away from things and the laws which govern them is nothing but a
delusion, a foe to progress, an obstacle in the way of man's
advancement toward happiness. Embracing both the scientific and
the religious, Theosophy is a scientific religion and a
religious science.

It is not a belief or dogma formulated or invented by man, but
is a knowledge of the laws which govern the evolution of the
physical, astral, psychical, and intellectual constituents of
nature and of man. The religion of the day is but a series of
dogmas man-made and with no scientific foundation for
promulgated ethics; while our science as yet ignores the unseen,
and failing to admit the existence of a complete set of inner
faculties of perception in man, it is cut off from the immense
and real field of experience which lies within the visible and
tangible worlds. But Theosophy knows that the whole is
constituted of the visible and the invisible, and perceiving
outer things and objects to be but transitory it grasps the
facts of nature, both without and within. It is therefore
complete in itself and sees no unsolvable mystery anywhere; it
throws the word coincidence out of its vocabulary and hails the
reign of law in everything and every circumstance.

That man possesses an immortal soul is the common belief of
humanity; to this Theosophy adds that he is a soul; and further
that all nature is sentient, that the vast array of objects and
men are not mere collections of atoms fortuitously thrown
together and thus without law evolving law, but down to the
smallest atom all is soul and spirit ever evolving under the
rule of law which is inherent in the whole. And just as the
ancients taught, so does Theosophy; that the course of evolution
is the drama of the soul and that nature exists for no other
purpose than the soul's experience. The Theosophist agrees with
Prof. Huxley in the assertion that there must be beings in the
universe whose intelligence is as much beyond ours as ours
exceeds that of the black beetle, and who take an active part in
the government of the natural order of things. Pushing further
on by the light of the confidence had in his teachers, the
Theosophist adds that such intelligences were once human and
came like all of us from other and previous worlds, where as
varied experience had been gained as is possible on this one. We
are therefore not appearing for the first time when we come upon
this planet, but have pursued a long, an immeasurable course of
activity and intelligent perception on other systems of globes,
some of which were destroyed ages before the solar system
condensed. This immense reach of the evolutionary system means,
then, that this planet on which we now are is the result of the
activity and the evolution of some other one that died long ago,
leaving its energy to be used in the bringing into existence of
the earth, and that the inhabitants of the latter in their turn
came from some older world to proceed here with the destined
work in matter. And the brighter planets, such as Venus, are the
habitation of still more progressed entities, once as low as
ourselves, but now raised up to a pitch of glory
incomprehensible for our intellects.

The most intelligent being in the universe, man, has never,
then, been without a friend, but has a line of elder brothers
who continually watch over the progress of the less progressed,
preserve the knowledge gained through aeons of trial and
experience, and continually seek for opportunities of drawing
the developing intelligence of the race on this or other globes
to consider the great truths concerning the destiny of the soul.
These elder brothers also keep the knowledge they have gained of
the laws of nature in all departments, and are ready when cyclic
law permits to use it for the benefit of mankind. They have
always existed as a body, all knowing each other, no matter in
what part of the world they may be, and all working for the race
in many different ways. In some periods they are well known to
the people and move among ordinary men whenever the social
organization, the virtue, and the development of the nations
permit it. For if they were to come out openly and be heard of
everywhere, they would be worshipped as gods by some and hunted
as devils by others. In those periods when they do come out some
of their number are rulers of men, some teachers, a few great
philosophers, while others remain still unknown except to the
most advanced of the body.

It would be subversive of the ends they have in view were they
to make themselves public in the present civilization, which is
based almost wholly on money, fame, glory, and personality. For
this age, as one of them has already said, "is an age of
transition," when every system of thought, science, religion,
government, and society is changing, and men's minds are only
preparing for an alteration into that state which will permit
the race to advance to the point suitable for these elder
brothers to introduce their actual presence to our sight. They
may be truly called the bearers of the torch of truth across the
ages; they investigate all things and beings; they know what man
is in his innermost nature and what his powers and destiny, his
state before birth and the states into which he goes after the
death of his body; they have stood by the cradle of nations and
seen the vast achievements of the ancients, watched sadly the
decay of those who had no power to resist the cyclic law of rise
and fall; and while cataclysms seemed to show a universal
destruction of art, architecture, religion, and philosophy, they
have preserved the records of it all in places secure from the
ravages of either men or time; they have made minute
observations, through trained psychics among their own order,
into the unseen realms of nature and of mind, recorded the
observations and preserved the record; they have mastered the
mysteries of sound and color through which alone the elemental
beings behind the veil of matter can be communicated with, and
thus can tell why the rain falls and what it falls for, whether
the earth is hollow or not, what makes the wind to blow and
light to shine, and greater feat than all, one which implies a
knowledge of the very foundations of nature, they know what the
ultimate divisions of time are and what are the meaning and the
times of the cycles.

But, asks the busy man of the nineteenth century who reads the
newspapers and believes in "modern progress," if these elder
brothers are all you claim them to be, why have they left no
mark on history nor gathered men around them? Their own reply,
published some time ago by Mr. A.P.  Sinnett, is better than any
I could write.

We will first discuss, if you please, the one relating to the
presumed failure of the 'Fraternity' to leave any mark upon the
history of the world. They ought, you think, to have been able,
with their extraordinary advantages, to have gathered into their
schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of
every race. How do you know they have made no such mark? Are you
acquainted with their efforts, successes, and failures? Have you
any dock upon which to arraign them? How could your world
collect proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept
closed every possible door of approach by which the inquisitive
could spy upon them? The precise condition of their success was
that they should never be surprised or obstructed. What they
have done they know; all that those outside their circle could
perceive was the results, the causes of which were masked from
view. To account for these results, many have in different ages
invented theories of the interposition of gods, special
providences, fates, the benign or hostile influences of the
stars. There never was a time within or before the so-called
historical period when our predecessors were not molding events
and 'making history,' the facts of which were subsequently and
invariably distorted by historians to suit contemporary
prejudices. Are you quite sure that the visible heroic figures
uin the successive dramas were not often but their puppets? We
never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this
or that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world's
cosmic relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of
mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other as day
does night. The major and minor Yugas must be accomplished
according to the established order of things. And we, borne
along the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its
minor currents.

It is under cyclic law, during a dark period in the history of
mind, that the true philosophy disappears for a time, but the
same law causes it to reappear as surely as the sun rises and
the human mind is present to see it. But some works can only be
performed by the Master, while other works require the
assistance of the companions. It is the Master's work to
preserve the true philosophy, but the help of the companions is
needed to rediscover and promulgate it. Once more the elder
brothers have indicated where the truth, Theosophy, could be
found, and the companions all over the world are engaged in
bringing it forth for wider currency and propagation.

The Elder Brothers of Humanity are men who were perfected in
former periods of evolution. These periods of manifestation are
unknown to modern evolutionists so far as their number are
concerned, though long ago understood by not only the older
Hindus, but also by those great minds and men who instituted and
carried on the first pure and undebased form of the Mysteries of
Greece. The periods, when out of the Great Unknown there come
forth the visible universes, are eternal in their coming and
going, alternating with equal periods of silence and rest again
in the Unknown. The object of these mighty waves is the
production of perfect man, the evolution of soul, and they
always witness the increase of the number of Elder Brothers; the
life of the least of men pictures them in day and night, waking
and sleeping, birth and death, "for these two, light and dark,
day and night, are the world's eternal ways."

In every age and complete national history these men of power
and compassion are given different designations. They have been
called Initiates, Adepts, Magi, Hierophants, Kings of the East,
Wise Men, Brothers, and what not. But in the Sanskrit language
there is a word which, being applied to them, at once thoroughly
identifies them with humanity. It is Mahatma. This is composed
of Maha great, and Atma soul; so it means great soul, and as all
men are souls the distinction of the Mahatma lies in greatness.
The term Mahatma has come into wide use through the Theosophical
Society, as Mme. H.P. Blavatsky constantly referred to them as
her Masters who gave her the knowledge she possessed. They were
at first known only as the Brothers, but afterwards, when many
Hindus flocked to the Theosophical movement, the name Mahatma
was brought into use, inasmuch as it has behind it an immense
body of Indian tradition and literature. At different times
unscrupulous enemies of the Theosophical Society have said that
even this name had been invented and that such beings are not
known of among the Indians or in their literature. But these
assertions are made only to discredit if possible a
philosophical movement that threatens to completely upset
prevailing erroneous theological dogmas. For all through Hindu
literature Mahatmas are often spoken of, and in parts of the
north of that country the term is common. In the very old poem
the Bhagavad-Gita, revered by all Hindu sects and admitted by
the western critics to be noble as well as beautiful, there is a
verse reading, "Such a Mahatma is difficult to find."

But irrespective of all disputes as to specific names, there is
sufficient argument and proof to show that a body of men having
the wonderful knowledge described above has always existed and
probably exists today. The older mysteries continually refer to
them. Ancient Egypt had them in her great king-Initiates, sons
of the sun and friends of great gods. There is a habit of
belittling the ideas of the ancients which is in itself
belittling to the people of today. Even the Christian who
reverently speaks of Abraham as "the friend of God," will
scornfully laugh at the idea of the claims of Egyptian rulers to
the same friendship being other than childish assumption of
dignity and title. But the truth is, these great Egyptians were
Initiates, members of the one great lodge which includes all
others of whatever degree or operation. The later and declining
Egyptians, of course, must have imitated their predecessors, but
that was when the true doctrine was beginning once more to be
obscured upon the rise of dogma and priesthood.

The story of Apollonius of Tyana is about a member of one of the
same ancient orders appearing among men at a descending cycle,
and only for the purpose of keeping a witness upon the scene for
future generations.

Abraham and Moses of the Jews are two other Initiates, Adepts
who had their work to do with a certain people; and in the
history of Abraham we meet with Melchizedek, who was so much
beyond Abraham that he had the right to confer upon the latter a
dignity, a privilege, or a blessing. The same chapter of human
history which contains the names of Moses and Abraham is
illuminated also by that of Solomon. And thus these three make a
great Triad of Adepts, the record of whose deeds can not be
brushed aside as folly and devoid of basis.

Moses was educated by the Egyptians and in Midian, from both of
which he gained much occult knowledge, and any clear-seeing
student of the great Universal Masonry can perceive all through
his books the hand, the plan, and the work of a master. Abraham
again knew all the arts and much of the power in psychical
realms that were cultivated in his day, or else he could not
have consorted with kings nor have been "the friend of God;" and
the reference to his conversations with the Almighty in respect
to the destruction of cities alone shows him to have been an
Adept who had long ago passed beyond the need of ceremonial or
other adventitious aids. Solomon completes this triad and stands
out in characters of fire. Around him is clustered such a mass
of legend and story about his dealings with the elemental powers
and of his magic possessions that one must condemn the whole
ancient world as a collection of fools who made lies for
amusement if a denial is made of his being a great character, a
wonderful example of the incarnation among men of a powerful
Adept. We do not have to accept the name Solomon nor the
pretense that he reigned over the Jews, but we must admit the
fact that somewhere in the misty time to which the Jewish
records refer there lived and moved among the people of the
earth one who was an Adept and given that name afterwards.
Peripatetics and microscopic critics may affect to see in the
prevalence of universal tradition naught but evidence of the
gullibility of men and their power to imitate, but the true
student of human nature and life knows that the universal
tradition is true and arises from the facts in the history of
man.

Turning to India, so long forgotten and ignored by the lusty and
egotistical, the fighting and the trading West, we find her full
of the lore relating to these wonderful men of whom Noah,
Abraham, Moses, and Solomon are only examples. There the people
are fitted by temperament and climate to be the preservers of
the philosophical, ethical, and psychical jewels that would have
been forever lost to us had they been left to the ravages of
such Goths and Vandals as western nations were in the early days
of their struggle for education and civilization.  If the men
who wantonly burned up vast masses of historical and
ethnological treasures found by the minions of the Catholic
rulers of Spain, in Central and South America, could have known
of and put their hands upon the books and palm-leaf records of
India before the protecting shield of England was raised against
them, they would have destroyed them all as they did for the
Americans, and as their predecessors attempted to do for the
Alexandrian library. Fortunately events worked otherwise.

All along the stream of Indian literature we can find the names
by scores of great adepts who were well known to the people and
who all taught the same story, the great epic of the human
soul.  Their names are unfamiliar to western ears, but the
records of their thoughts, their work and powers remain. Still
more, in the quiet unmovable East there are today by the hundred
persons who know of their own knowledge that the Great Lodge
still exists and has its Mahatmas, Adepts, Initiates, Brothers.
And yet further, in that land are such a number of experts in
the practical application of minor though still very astonishing
power over nature and her forces, that we have an irresistible
mass of human evidence to prove the proposition laid down.

And if Theosophy, the teaching of this Great Lodge, is as
said, both scientific and religious, then from the ethical side
we have still more proof. A mighty Triad acting on and through
ethics is that composed of Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. The
first, a Hindu, founds a religion which today embraces many more
people than Christianity, teaching centuries before Jesus the
ethics which he taught and which had been given out even
centuries before Buddha. Jesus coming to reform his people
repeats these ancient ethics, and Confucius does the same thing
for ancient and honorable China.

The Theosophist says that all these great names represent
members of the one single brotherhood, who all have a single
doctrine. And the extraordinary characters who now and again
appear in western civilization, such as St. Germain, Jacob
Boehme, Cagliostro, Paracelsus, Mesmer, Count St. Martin, and
Madame H.P. Blavatsky, are agents for the doing of the work of
the Great Lodge at the proper time. It is true they are
generally reviled and classed as impostors, though no one can
find out why they are when they generally confer benefits and
lay down propositions or make discoveries of great value to
science after they have died. But Jesus himself would be called
an impostor today if he appeared in some Fifth avenue theatrical
church rebuking the professed Christians. Paracelsus was the
originator of valuable methods and treatments in medicine now
universally used. Mesmer taught hypnotism under another name.
Madame Blavatsky brought once more to the attention of the West
the most important system, long known to the Lodge, respecting
man, his nature and destiny. But all are alike called impostors
by a people who have no original philosophy of their own and
whose mendicant and criminal classes exceed in misery and in
number those of any civilization on the earth.

It will not be unusual for nearly all occidental readers to
wonder how men could possibly know so much and have such power
over the operations of natural law as I have ascribed to the
Initiates, now so commonly spoken of as the Mahatmas. In India,
China, and other Oriental lands no wonder would arise on these
heads, because there, although everything of a material
civilization is just now in a backward state, they have never
lost a belief in the inner nature of man and in the power he may
exercise if he will. Consequently living examples of such powers
and capacities have not been absent from those people. But in
the West a materialistic civilization having arisen through a
denial of the soul life and nature consequent upon a reaction
from illogical dogmatism, there has not been any investigation
of these subjects and, until lately, the general public has not
believed in the possibility of anyone save a supposed God having
such power.

A Mahatma endowed with power over space, time, mind, and matter,
is a possibility just because he is a perfected man. Every human
being has the germ of all the powers attributed to these great
Initiates, the difference lying solely in the fact that we have
in general not developed what we possess the germ of, while the
Mahatma has gone through the training and experience which have
caused all the unseen human powers to develop in him, and
conferred gifts that look god-like to his struggling brother
below. Telepathy, mind-reading, and hypnotism, all long ago
known to Theosophy, show the existence in the human subject of
planes of consciousness, functions, and faculties hitherto
undreamed of. Mind-reading and the influencing of the mind of
the hypnotized subject at a distance prove the existence of a
mind which is not wholly dependent upon a brain, and that a
medium exists through which the influencing thought may be sent.
It is under this law that the Initiates can communicate with
each other at no matter what distance. Its rationale, not yet
admitted by the schools of the hypnotists, is, that if the two
minds vibrate or change into the same state they will think
alike, or, in other words, the one who is to hear at a distance
receives the impression sent by the other. In the same way with
all other powers, no matter how extraordinary.  They are all
natural, although now unusual, just as great musical ability is
natural though not usual or common. If an Initiate can make a
solid object move without contact, it is because he understands
the two laws of attraction and repulsion of which "gravitation"
is but the name for one; if he is able to precipitate out of the
viewless air the carbon which we know is in it, forming the
carbon into sentences upon the paper, it is through his
knowledge of the occult higher chemistry, and the use of a
trained and powerful image making faculty which every man
possesses; if he reads your thoughts with ease, that results
from the use of the inner and only real powers of sight, which
require no retina to see the fine-pictured web which the
vibrating brain of man weaves about him. All that the Mahatma
may do is natural to the perfected man; but if those powers are
not at once revealed to us it is because the race is as yet
selfish altogether and still living for the present and the
transitory.

I repeat then, that though the true doctrine disappears for a
time from among men it is bound to reappear, because first, it
is impacted in the imperishable center of man's nature; and
secondly, the Lodge forever preserves it, not only in actual
objective records, but also in the intelligent and fully
self-conscious men who, having successfully overpassed the many
periods of evolution which preceded the one we are now involved
in, cannot lose the precious possessions they have acquired. And
because the elder brothers are the highest product of evolution
through whom alone, in cooperation with the whole human family,
the further regular and workmanlike prosecution of the plans of
the Great Architect of the Universe could be carried on, I have
thought it well to advert to them and their Universal Lodge
before going to other parts of the subject.

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THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL:
Ancient Wisdom for a New Age