The first essential point that a beginner in Theosophy needs to grasp is that the Ancient Wisdom, a portion of which has been revealed to us today and which goes by the name of Theosophy, is a definite system of thought or of knowledge, to which additions cannot be made and from which nothing can be subtracted. That knowledge and the method are invariable. Why that particular method was employed rests on the fact that all other methods were tried out and were found wanting; that method which has proved itself is the Theosophical method.
The Ten Items of Isis Unveiled (II, 587-89) contain a hint as to the nature of this method. The first three items deal with the system of knowledge—with the assertion of the reign of law in everything and with the triune aspect of Nature and of Man. Then we are told that there is a right method of using knowledge and a wrong one, one leading to Adeptship and the other to mediumship. The Adept, by using his spiritual vision, can know all that has been known or can be known. Adepts belong to a race of Seers. Seeing is a spiritual act, and even the organs of physical sight, our eyes, are sometimes spoken of as the windows of the soul. What does an Adept or a true Seer see? That which exists. And that which exists is always and invariably the same; it is the same from immemorial time and never varies or changes one hair's breadth. Therefore, this method of "seeing" brings to the Adept the vision of the Truth which is precise, which is definite, and which has its own code of laws, as has any physical science.
Theosophy is an evolved and not an evolving or progressive system of thought. Nor is it a revelation. In The Key to Theosophy this statement is made: "Theosophy, in its abstract meaning, is Divine Wisdom, or the aggregate of the knowledge and wisdom that underlie the Universe." How, then, can anything be added to it? Our insight into the knowledge might increase, but the knowledge itself cannot increase. It cannot undergo any change. The Theosophy of 1875, or even of five thousand or five million years ago, cannot progress and become something different today. To take an analogy: there are seven notes in the musical scale, and no musician can invent an eighth note, though he may make endless permutations and combinations of those seven. So also there are seven prismatic colours, and no painter can bring into existence an eighth colour, though he can create an endless variety of shades by combining those seven. Likewise, everything in the universe, including man, is composed of seven principles; those seven can yield many permutations and combinations, but there cannot be an eighth principle.
The Knowers of wisdom are the true Scientists who have based their system on universal principles; they know the source of all sciences, all philosophies, all religions, all arts, all branches of knowledge, and all permutations and combinations of these. Therefore, their code of knowledge, their system of thought, their aggregate of the wisdom that underlies the Universe, is complete, in which nothing whatsoever is left out.
If it is true that that system of thought which is the source and synthesis of all knowledge is complete, it is also true that that knowledge which does not derive from that source cannot be precise or complete. Ignorance is of two kinds: ignorance which is absence of true knowledge and ignorance which is knowledge of the false. One may be very learned, but learned about things that are not true. While on the one hand there are in the world men of great learning but little knowledge, on the other hand there are Those Who Know. The first Item of The Secret Doctrine, known to students as "The Ancient Source," explains the method by which "the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages" was arrived at. What is said there might appear rather dogmatic when first read, but once the fact that all life is evolving is admitted, one is led to the conclusion 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 know all that needs to be known. These Knowers of Wisdom whom we call Masters assert that in Their Philosophy there is no problem that remains unsolved. Problems may remain unsolved for those who do not know where to look, but the solutions to all problems are within the reach of those who seek for them in Masters' Philosophy.
Evolution implies the gradual solution of problems. To each student of the Ancient Wisdom certain truths are apparent, have become matters of inner convictions. If the new knowledge he gains conforms with and completes that which he has proved for himself already, then he is on the right track. That is what is meant by each student coming into the possession of the method whereby he can check and verify for himself.
Where does he begin? At the place where he finds himself now. Everyone has spiritual powers, mental powers, sense powers. The senses of some are keener than those of others; the minds of some are sharper and more profound than the minds of others, and so with soul powers. Each must begin to find out, with the help of the powers that are already his, whether the knowledge he possesses is true knowledge, is part of the aggregate of the wisdom that underlies the Universe. So the student encounters knowledge that is true, ignorance that is the absence of knowledge, and ignorance that is the presence of false knowledge. A student of Theosophy can and has to be excused for not possessing knowledge which is true in its entirety; but there is no excuse for him to hold knowledge which is false. The erasing from the mind of false knowledge is the starting point of inquiry into the system of knowledge which is the aggregate of wisdom, precise and complete in itself, and which is called Theosophy today.
It is necessary to get a clear perception that Truth is a definite thing. For the ordinary mind it is difficult to conceive that all that it is possible for the human soul to know is, so to speak, codified, systematized, brought together. This might seem a startling proposition, but there is not a philosopher worthy of the name in the West, not to speak of the East, who has not proceeded on that basis. This conception of knowledge which is absolute, from which nothing can be taken away without distorting the whole and to which nothing can be added, is found in Pythagoras and in Plato; nay, more, in the modern philosophers, in the very concepts of time, space and motion which Kant and those who followed him presented. What Kant states in a speculative way, Theosophy puts forth as a fact: that there is a code of knowledge, tabulated and complete, which can be used as a criterion to judge any other code or system.
As all forms of life are synthesized in the One Life, so all forms of knowledge, religions, sciences and philosophies are synthesized in the one root from which they proceeded. In The Key to Theosophy (pp. 2-3), H.P.B. says: "The chief aim of the Founders of the Eclectic Theosophical School was one of the three objects of its modern successor, the Theosophical Society, namely, to reconcile all religions, sects and nations under a common system of ethics, based on eternal verities" (italics ours). So this system is one of eternal verities, verities on which are based the ethics which enable one to establish an intelligent relationship between oneself and Nature as a whole.
Further on in The Key to Theosophy (p. 4) H.P.B. says:
The "Wisdom-Religion" was one in antiquity; and the sameness of primitive religious philosophy is proven to us by the identical doctrines taught to the Initiates during the MYSTERIES, an institution once universally diffused. "All the old worships indicate the existence of a single. Theosophy anterior to them. The key that is to open one must open all; otherwise it cannot be the right key." (Eclect. Philo.)
As stated above, this key enables one to find out whether a particular system that arises today is right or wrong; and, if right, how far right, wholly or partly, in reference to those verities which are eternal. On pages 7-8 of the Key we read: "The WISDOM-RELIGION was ever one, and being the last word of possible human knowledge, was, therefore, carefully preserved. It preceded by long ages the Alexandrian Theosophists, reached the modern, and will survive every other religion and philosophy." Again, in the Introductory to The Secret Doctrine (p. XXXiV) H.P.B. says:
The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
In Lucifer for October 1889 Madame Blavatsky stated:
What I do believe in is: (1) the unbroken oral teachings revealed by living divine men during the infancy of mankind to the elect among men; (2) that it has reached us unaltered; and (3) that the MASTERS are thoroughly versed in the science based on such uninterrupted teaching.
In H.P.B.'s article, "Is Theosophy a Religion?" (reprinted in U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 1 from Lucifer for November 1888), we read: "Tearing off with uncertain hand the thick veil of dead-letter with which every old religious scripture was cloaked, scientific Theosophy, learned in the cunning symbolism of the ages, reveals to the scoffer at old wisdom the origin of the world's faiths and sciences." Further on in the same article she speaks of "the existence of a knowledge at once scientific, philosophical and religious." So, again and again one comes upon the idea that there is this record. Mr. Judge speaks of it in the very first chapter of The Ocean of Theosophy, where he says that the Wisdom-Religion is "complete in itself and sees no unsolvable mystery anywhere." Why? Because it is "the last word of possible human knowledge." He speaks of it as the mathematics of the soul. He mentions the one single Brotherhood of Adepts, whose members all profess and practise the one Doctrine.
Where is the single Doctrine to be found? It is in two places: First, there are the actual objective records which are always available to him who can read the language of signs, of symbols, of glyphs. As H.P.B. points out in the First Item of The Secret Doctrine (I, 272)
Such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form.
From time to time, portions of the record are made public or semi-public. The Secret Doctrine is a public exposition of the record; all the sacred scriptures of the world are a public exposition of the selfsame record. Most of these are symbolical representations of the knowledge. Then, too, there are different methods whereby those symbols are put forward at different times. Today, the record that is made public is set down in words, because we use that method of expression. In other days and other places knowledge was conveyed differently; e.g., through pictorial representations. Ancient temples and caves had carvings or paintings, which depicted in detail the whole scheme of evolution. To give but one example, in one single picture all the steps of reaching Buddhahood are given.
Besides the objective records, there is still another place where the true doctrine is preserved:
Events which were never written outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission "within the book volume of the brain," and through countless aeons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written document or record. (S.D., II, 424)
This is the living record that the Masters of Wisdom carry "within the book volume of the brain," from where it can never be effaced. One cannot understand the record, whether a written work, a pictorial or dramatic representation, or a symbolic teaching, put forward by Them or Their Messengers, without the key; and the key in the final analysis is—the Masters. The Teaching and the Teacher are always one; never can they be separated.
