Theosophy

Many brilliant writings by late Raghavan Iyer - for example:

One of Plato's most well-known myths is the 'quaint parable' with which the Seventh Book of the Republic opens. In this allegory of the cave he intimated the teaching that there is a truth beyond sense, pertaining to the eternal noumena underlying earthly phenomena, a deeper realm of reality which cannot be adequately apprehended except by the philosopher who has been initiated into the Mysteries.

https://www.theosophytrust.org/771-the-allegory-of-the-cave
 
From a 1947 issue, which includes a rarely seen letter of HPB.

MADAM BLAVATSKY - A TRIBUTE
Manly Palmer Hall

When any thoughtful and fair-minded person is confronted with a book like Priestess of the Occult, by Gertrude Marvin Williams, he is likely to feel a genuine sympathy for a person so unfairly and vindictively attacked. It seems rather cruel and unnecessary to set about a systematic process of tearing down the life and work of a distinguished woman who is not alive to defend herself, and most of whose personal friends and associates have also passed on.

Madam Blavatsky was subjected to constant persecution during the year when she was establishing and expanding the Society which she formed. But she had the wisdom and skill to defend the principles for which she stood, often by means little short of miraculous. Perhaps, then, it is not entirely coincidental that just at the time I decided to write this little tribute to her memory, a copy of a letter pertinent to the subject, written by H.P.B. to a personal friend on July 5th 1890, came into my possession. As I am not sure that the contents of this private correspondence has been published, it seems appropriate to quote several extracts which are more to the point than anything that I could say. Let Madam speak for herself.

As usual H.P.B. was in the midst of her critics, and her remarks have the rugged quality for which she was justly famous. As Mrs. Williams is particularly incensed over Madam Blavatsky's claims about the existence of mahatmas and adepts, H.P.B.'s remarks on this controversial issue might have been addressed directly to our Denver authoress. *
(*In the passages quoted from this letter written in her own handwriting, the spelling and punctuation have been left exactly as they appear in the original. In a few cases of obvious misspelling of Sanscrit terms, the correct transliteration has been added in brackets. - Ed. Theosophia.)

"All depends, you see, on what each of us means by Mahatmas or Masters. To a Hindu, no doubt, from the very learned Subba Row, down to Babula - 'Mahatma,' Guru or Master, is a naked Yogi with a chignon of entangled and unkempt hair on the top of the head; one who whether all Adweita [Adwaita], Dwaita or Visishadwaita [Visishtadwaita], ... or Vishnava [Vaishnava], or whatever else, follows the rules of Patanjali, of Chartanya Sankaracharya [Chaitanya Sankaracharya or any other of the known acheryas [acharyas]; one who calls upon the name of his 330 crown of deities, repeats parrot like his Aums, etc., etc. For me and those who know the Masters personally, our 'Mahatmas' so-called, are nothing of the kind. Olcott is home, and you may ask him what our Masters are like, whether from the description he had from me in New York and which was never altered to this day, or from the two Masters he met personally - one in Bombay and the other in Cashmere. My masters and the Masters are Yogis and Munis de facto, not de jure; in their life not in appearance. They are members of an occult Brotherhood, not of any particular School in India. One of their highest Mahachohans lived in Egypt and went to Tibet only a year before we did (in 1878) and he is neither a Tibetan nor a Hindu; this occult Brotherhood has not originated in Tibet, nor is it only in Tibet now; but what I always said and maintain to this day is, that most of its members and some of the highest are, and live constantly, in Tibet, because of its isolation and freedom from Christians; that its origin is of untold antiquity, and is as much Masonic as present Masonry is little Masonic; ... and finally that if I spoke only (to our Fellows of T.S.) of two or three Masters it is because my own Masters happen to be a Rajput [11] by birth - and 'Koot Hoomi' a Cashmerian, and therefore these were likely to be more authoritative with the Hindus than the rest of them. Ask Olcott, Sinnett, and even Hume, and even the latter could not without saying a lie tell you that I had not repeated this to them over and over again adding many a time that even few lamas knew the whole truth about the 'Chapa' (men-spirits) as they call them on account of their having so little to do with the general mass of the people. I said and repeat, that they are living men not 'spirits,' or even Nirmanakayas, that their knowledge arid learning are immense, and their personal holiness of life is still greater - still they are mortal men and none of them live 1000 years old as imagined by some. What I said and say, was and is, the truth; those who will have it, all right; those who see in what I say a cleverly concocted romance by me, are also welcome ...

When we went to Pondichery with Olcott to form a Branch, instead of fifty or sixty members we got but three or four. Why? Simply because I had said to an influential member that our Mahatmas did not sit buried in the earth letting their toe and finger nails grow a yard long and the birds make nests in their top-nots - for such was his idea. He left the T.S. and led away almost all others. Ask Olcott, he must remember the fact. And yet in the very room where visitors came to see us, in the crowd there stood a living Mahatma, whom I knew for years, who lives in the neighborhood, but whom no one seemed to know in Pondichery, and who was mistaken for a Malayalin - a stranger!"

We cannot expect those who have no conception of an inner mystical life and no intention of seeking enlightenment through the unfoldment of their own inner faculties to understand or appreciate the esoteric tradition. They will not investigate, therefore, cannot equip themselves with the means of passing an intelligent judgment.

The late Srimat Kuladananda Brahmachary, one of the most deeply venerated of the Madhwacharya Order, said to me in Calcutta years ago, "If the West really wants to understand the Eastern mystics it is not so difficult. Select from your Universities a group of your outstanding students and professors; send them to us, and let them remain for five years following our instructions and obeying our rules; then let these then pass judgment upon our methods and our accomplishments."

The thousands of sincere and aspiring men and women in all parts of the world, who are proud to acknowledge the debt which they owe to Madam Blavatsky, will be properly indignant at a book which is so obviously an enterprise in catchpenny journalism. But they will remain forever grateful for the light of Eastern wisdom brought to the West by the white Yogini. We will always revere her as a faithful, unselfish servant of the Masters of Wisdom.
 
I think Theosophists have a lot to recommend them - I attend most of the local meetings and have given occasional talks when asked. However the society has been plagued with schisms and other issues right from its foundation by HPB.
Those interested in the alternative view of an initiate catholic man might enjoy reading the introduction and first lecture by C.G. Harrison's lectures from 1896 here:

archive.org

The transcendental universe; six lectures on occult science, theosophy, and the Catholic faith : Harrison, Charles George, 1855- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

2 p. l., [iii]-viii, 168 p. 20 cm
archive.org

The transcendental universe; six lectures on occult science, theosophy, and the Catholic faith​

 
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There is no miracle. Everything that happens is the result of law—eternal, immutable, ever active.

Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
 
Nicholas Weeks said:
There is no miracle. Everything that happens is the result of law—eternal, immutable, ever active.

Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
Click to expand...
Interesting. This of course is typically true, but is she saying there are NEVER miracles?
 
Aerist said:
The transcendental universe; six lectures on occult science, theosophy, and the Catholic faith
Click to expand...
Interesting ... but I do wish Theosophy would desist from misquoting Origen (in misrepresenting him by reference to Contra Celsius I, 32 – he's talking about what the philosophical schools believe, and using their own logic against them, not what he believes.)

. .
 
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Civilisation has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The command over and the guidance of one's own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the super-natural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking.

The Secret Doctrine, 2:319
 
The universe is the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit — a chaos to the senses, a cosmos to the reason.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1
 
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The idea of Absolute Unity would be broken entirely in our conception had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the deity, being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not an atom but contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1
 
As to the process of [self-will or] self-saturation, we have only to turn to the account of the priestly devotees of Japan, Siam, China, India, Thibet, and Egypt, as well as of European countries, to be satisfied of its reality. Long persistence in a fixed determination to subjugate matter, brings about a condition in which not only is one insensible to external impressions, but even death itself may be simulated, as we have already seen. The ecstatic so enormously reinforces his will-power, as to draw into himself, as into a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his own natural store.

Isis Unveiled 1:500
 
Nicholas Weeks said:
The idea of Absolute Unity would be broken entirely in our conception had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the deity, being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not an atom but contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1
Click to expand...
Is such absolute unity possible in nature? In the material world? Or is it the absolute antithesis of nature -- a spiritual perfection?
 
Nicholas Weeks said:
As to the process of [self-will or] self-saturation, we have only to turn to the account of the priestly devotees of Japan, Siam, China, India, Thibet, and Egypt, as well as of European countries, to be satisfied of its reality. Long persistence in a fixed determination to subjugate matter, brings about a condition in which not only is one insensible to external impressions, but even death itself may be simulated, as we have already seen. The ecstatic so enormously reinforces his will-power, as to draw into himself, as into a vortex, the potencies resident in the astral light to supplement his own natural store.

Isis Unveiled 1:500
Click to expand...
The teaching of the immortality yogas -- Taoist yoga and Kundalini yoga?
 
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