Exploring The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky

[Music] you my name is David Orr I was the inaugural artist in residence here at PRS and I ended up establishing the arts program and working with Greg creating the Hansel gallery and one of the things I discovered when I worked here I was working with the special collection was Theosophical texts and I was coming to this completely cold and one of the images that I photographed what actually hangs in the bookstore and is actually at the Crotona Institute in Ojai in a show I'm in up there the private instructions of Helena Blavatsky and this was a typewritten manuscript with hand colored diagrams bound in leather and of course I began to delve into livanski and one of the things that really struck me as an artist was her huge influence on the art scene of the early 20th century particularly symbolist poets and abstract painters Apollinaire Hilma of Klimt I say Klimt Clint Piet Mondrian believed ik and Kandinsky Helena Blavatsky in particular was a huge influence on Mondrian and Kandinsky Mondrian had a picture of her hanging in a studio for many years and Kandinsky quotes are quite a bit in his wonderful book on the spiritual and art the reason the artists were interested in her is that she was exploring what I like to call the world beyond reason and they were looking for ways to establish that and if you stop to think for a moment that Mondrian was painting landscapes essentially before he began to work on the more stylized things that we all know it's pretty remarkable the impact and the sea change it was under undergone in art so while I was up at the Crotona Institute I actually sat in on a Lodge meeting and I that's how I met Pablo I was really struck by his contributions to that evening very thoughtful very knowledgeable and I have to say that the Crotona Institute is very much like this place in that there's something in the air in that you will strike up a conversation with pretty much anybody there and immediately go down the rabbit hole into many fascinating subjects and tangents and connections and those kinds of things so it's it's already that kind of a place but I was really I was really amazed by Pablo's contributions and I didn't even know who he was at that time and then afterwards I was introduced some oh you're Pablo sender anyways I'm glad he's here tonight I'm gonna read his bio off to you pal sunder is a microbiologist holds a PhD in biological sciences he's been a member of the Theosophical society since 1996 which were you 12 when you joined wheedle you see him he's a young guy and has presented lectures seminars and classes around the world he's worked at the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society in a jar and currently lives in Ojai he's the author of evolution of the higher consciousness and his articles have been published in Theosophical journals internationally and in several languages we have some of his books here and he will be signing them after the talk so please make sure to see him afterwards to have the actual author signed a book I'm always a big fan of buying CDs at the shows of the bands that I like or buying a book at a reading by the author at least I feel there's a connection there it's not going through Amazon so please make sure to do that and without further ado please welcome pablo sender thank you David good evenin everybody before we start let me say that it is a joy and an honor to be here with you as David said these organizations are they share a kinship actually I remember when I joined the Theosophical Society in Argentina one of my first Theosophical books were books by Manley Hall and Blavatsky was an inspiration for him as she is for us and I think that the the work that he did is very important and he brought the these eternal truths in a very unique and creative way that we all enjoy so thank you to the PRS for inviting me and we are happy also to have David over there in the Crotona Institute and I hope this is the the opportunity for a collaboration and to to stimulate and inspire each other so tonight we are going to look at the secret doctrine which was probably the magnum opus the the great work that Blavatsky wrote and of course we could talk about the secret doctrine for years so I'm going to be able only to share to give you a taste of the book the book as we will see is quite extraordinary itself but we can't understand the book without knowing something about the source of the information they are I think that if we approach the book without certain acquaintance with the source of the information it's it's hard to understand where all this is coming it's this Blavatsky's you know imagination speculation in the West Western philosophy especially modern philosophy tends to be the outcome of a person's rational powers you sit down and try to figure something out this was not the case of philosophy in ancient times and the times of play-doh etc there was far more of spiritual insight and as we are going to see the secret doctrine is said to come from that world beyond reason as David was saying I like to say from a trans intellectual perception it's not irrational it's something that is beyond the level of rationality it includes and transcends the level of rationality and so to understand all all of these we need to know a little about Blavatsky's life and how she she came across this waste on let's say so let us start with a very brief biographical information she was born as Elena Petrovna von Han her family she was born in Russia the part that is today Ukraine in 1831 and her family was had a certain level of culture her mother was a writer her grandfather had a big library with a lot of books some books related to what at that time was called the occult or called not so much in the in the sense of astrology and things like that which you know are part of what we call that but a philosophy that is trying to understand things that are beyond the senses that aspect of the universe that is hidden occult means that hidden so she grew up in a very interesting environment but also since she was born she displayed what we call today some psychic perceptions some extrasensory perception and then as she grew up she yearned for independence and one of the ways in which she found that is to actually get married she was 18 and she got married to her husband husband that was Nikki for the Blavatsky and he was in his 40s there was a big difference she was 18 when or almost 18 when she got married and three months after getting married she took off and went around the world three times for 20 years and the husband tried to apply for divorce saying that the marriage was just a sham but in Russia they didn't didn't like divorce so they stayed married until he died eventually but they never saw each other again so HPV basically was you know we have to understand this is in the eighteen fifties in Russia women were not supposed to be independent to go around the world by themselves but there was in Blavatsky sun a yearning that was very strong very marked as we are going to see so she sets off to travel and she went many countries in Europe in the Middle East in Asia in Africa she came to the Americas she went all the way down to Peru in South America so she went around the world why was she doing that we will see a quote but soon after she started this travel she met in London she was in London and she met what she called the master of my dreams in her biographies you see instances in which the person would appear and interact with her actually this person saved her life on a couple of occasions that she was about to get into an accident and she would never know who this person was they she would see this person as I said have some kind of interaction and then the person would disappear so she thought it was Jesus that's the only thing that she she knew she grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church so she was in London there was a parade there there was a parade that with people from Nepal and she sees on horse the person that she had seen in her visions and she was struck by that she didn't expect it she didn't think this person was real and eventually they met and they talked and this person who became her teacher sometimes these teachers are called the Masters of wisdom and Blavatsky would call them the Masters they this teacher told her that they they thought they they had been looking after her since she was young and they thought that she could do something interesting in the world they said that the world the Western world could benefit from knowing about Eastern philosophy this was at a time where we didn't know anything about Eastern philosophy here actually the few scholars that knew something about the bhagavad-gita and the Upanishads basically all that they knew they regarded that as superstition so this this person told their we would like you to spread in the West the eastern philosophy and also in the East the even the natives for example Gandhi he says he's his autobiography that he regarded Hinduism as a superstition and it was only when he went to actually the Theosophical Society in London that they were studying the Bhagavad Gita that he recognized that there was a lot of wisdom there in his own tradition and that set him off to to try to revive Hinduism this is something he says in in his autobiography so he was in the East can benefit from the attention of the West because the England was the the power in India because if the West begins to see the value of the Eastern teachings then those teachings will be valuable again even for the natives so that was a general plan but this lava skis master said you have to be trained and part of that training which because of what she needed to do in the in the future was to go around the world and to learn firsthand from all different traditions spiritual traditions natives from the different parts of the world traditions from different religions etc so she in these travels around the world we don't know much about we don't have a lot of information about this because she wasn't really keeping a journal or or anything the only one that knew where she was at anytime or sometimes was her father who would send her some money every now and then but she did go to Tibet on two occasions she says that she spent between these two occasions about seven years in Tibet that is the place where her teacher lived there was a community of Indo Tibetan Yogi's let's say what today in India would they would regard us Rishi's as enlightened beings but they are human beings extraordinary human beings but they have a physical body they they eat they they have they are not just spirits but because they have certain yogic powers they could for example one of the powers that Patanjali the founder of the Raja yoga in India who is one of the highest authorities in Hinduism says that there are certain powers by which we can project our consciousness in in an ethereal kind of form and interact with people so Lebowski's teachers were able to do all of this and she went to Tibet in eighteenth around 1856 and then 1868 and was trained there I mentioned this because this is something that will mark the the the source of the information that we find in the secret doctrine as we are going to see so she says that for example let's see one of the quotes in Isis unveiled she was this was the first book she wrote in the when she was here in the US and she writes when years ago we first travelled over the east exploring the penny trail which is the innermost part of of the deserted sanctuaries - suddenly and ever recurring questions oppressed our thoughts so you see this is why she said of our set out in this search there were two questions that she says sudden saddening so for her it was something that was was oppressing her and she says ever recurring questions that were oppressing her thoughts the first one where who or what is god and ii who ever saw the immortal spirit of man so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality so sees she was 18 years old she she had these questions burning questions with her and she decides to go off in the world without without much money without any plan this I think talks about her spirit and the yearning that that she had to find an answer to this she didn't go as a vacation or tourism it was a search and she says it was while most anxious you see all the words that she uses to qualify her state opressing anxious saddening it was why most anxious to solve this perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient to their instructions we lend a ready ear they showed us that by combining science with religion the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated I think this is also a key concept that is behind everything Blavatsky did around at the end of the 19th century science and religion were completely opposed and science science had fought its way out of the influence of religion and had become its fall science began to describe the world in a materialistic way saying the universe is less like a clock you don't need a concept of God for the universe you don't need a concept of spirit the body is just a machine we can explain everything that you see material means so spirituality religion this is all just fantasy and so we had these two completely opposing views and what lava ski learns with her teachers is that there is an approach in which we can integrate science and spirituality and actually the subtitle of the secret doctrine as we will see is a synthesis of science religion and philosophy so what she learns is there is a way to demonstrate the existence of God or the divine and the immortality of the human soul or spirit which is religious and scientific so after her trainings in 1873 she sailed to the United States where two years later she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 and then she published the secret doctrine this was not the first book she published she published Isis unveiled which is a first attempt the secret doctrine begins as an expansion on Isis unveiled but soon develops into a book on its own and she published the secret doctrine in 1888 so you see there 1888 it is composed of two volumes the first volume the title is cosmic Genesis and the second is anthropogenic so the first volume talks about the the beginning and the development and evolution of the cosmos and the second volume about the beginning of humanity on earth and its evolution so before we go into some of the teachings let's see a little bit about the secret doctrine itself you can see there there are two volumes and both volumes are divided in three parts the first part in the first volume is cosmic evolution and the first part in the second is the anthropogenic sees now these parts the first part in each valium are the core of the secret dog tree and this this part is based on some ancient stanzas that we are going to explore which Blavatsky translated and commented on then the second part in both volumes is it's an exploration of symbology the symbolism related to the cosmos in the first volume and then the symbolism related to human beings and to religion in the second but in the second volume and then the third part in both volumes is an attempt to to contrast the science of her time and what she was writing in The Secret Doctrine she was very well aware of in what aspects the secret doctrine matched with the science of the time and in what aspects it didn't and in those aspects that it didn't Blavatsky would justify why in her views science was wrong and and the source that she from which she was drawing was right especially in the field of physics a lot of information that Navasky published in 1888 has been actually discovered by science Blavatsky sets out the foundations of quantum physics she said that the atom is divisible when science thought that it was a little ball like a billiard ball of matter without motion solid indivisible she said that forces were carried by particles which is what quantum physics says at a time where when science thought that the forces were in material and several all the foundations of quantum physics are in the Secret Doctrine in cosmogony also many of the things she talked about the solar nebular theory at the time where science thought about something else and many of the cosmology the teachings in cosmology have been proved the second volume that is about the evolution of humanity we are still far quite different from the from what science knows at the time so there are many points that still remain to be proven many others that in over a hundred years turn out that Blavatsky was right and science the science of the time was wrong this is important to keep in mind because these are not general statements that you say ok randomly Blavatsky was right these are very specific statements that turned out to be to be right and this has to do with the source of the information so she says that the stances that she publishes in the first part of both volumes come from a very old book that is is not known to humanity that she called the book of zeon or or Zen so she says there exists somewhere in this wide world an old book this was in Isis unveiled before she wrote the Secret Doctrine and she published some of the stances that are found there so very old that are modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages and indefinite time and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written in the Secret Doctrine 1012 years later she would say that the paper of the book of Sienese is a paper that is special that is it has been treated in a way that is that cannot be damaged with failure or with water and that this is why this book has been preserved it has many thousands of years according to Navasky she says it is the only original copy now in existence and the one and she she'd saw this book when she was with her teachers in Tibet tradition says that he was taken down in censor the secret societal tongue from the words of the divine beings who dictated it to the sons of light in Central Asia at the very beginning of our present humanity so she claims that there at the time she claimed that this sensor was a language that predated Sanskrit Sanskrit in science knew at the time that was the origin of the indo-european languages she said there is a language that was before Sanskrit and this is the censor today they know that there was is a language before Sanskrit but we don't know anything about this and what she says here this is part of what she explains in the secret doctrine as humanity begins it's evolution is not left alone to learn about the world by trial-and-error blindly just trying and and seeing what works and what doesn't she says humanity the humanity that begins in in on any planet where there may be some kind of humanity it's always guided by what religious call religions called gods or celestial beings or angels we have in all ancient traditions that there was a golden age when the gods worked among people Navasky says this is what she was talking about and it is these divine beings are the ones that instructed humanity with certain fundamental truths that are preserved by those human beings that are more mature more evolved and we'll see a little about that later and then these people become their religious leaders and guides of humanity so the book of Sein is the recording of the teachings from these divine beings let's say then she says that the first installment of the esoteric doctrines that she is given in the secret doctrine is based upon stanzas which are the records of people unknown to ethnology this is already what she writes in the secret doctrine the previous quote was from Isis unveiled it is claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted so she is referred to that sense are here the stanzas are given throughout in the secret doctrine in their modern translated version as it would be worse than useless to make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of the original with its bustling style and words extract are given from the original censor commentaries and glosses of the bekasi on this being now render for the first time into a European language so what she claims is that when she was in Tibet she learned this language censor and what she did in the secret doctrine is to take some of these dances and the stanzas are made of a series of verses which she calls locusts in there with the Sanskrit world so she took some of the stances on distances some of the shlokas that she published in The Secret Doctrine and she translated them into English into a European language for the first time she says there are translations that did her teachers had in Tibetan in Sanskrit in Chinese but they had never been translated into English so this is what she claims and what we we will see some of these verses so you have a sense of how they are she claims that she translated them into English from this source now let us see a little more this question of the the source of the information that that the stanzas have is this we we see Blavatsky saying okay this is information given by these divine beings these gods now she says that the book the book of Shen is knowledge means knowledge through meditation and this is important because as I said the field philosophy in the modern time is the knowledge that comes through thinking Blavatsky claims that the knowledge that comes from the secret doctrine is a knowledge that comes in meditation what the secret doctrine is explaining is not only the physical evolution of humanity and the universe but the spiritual evolution of this science can only investigate in the field where things can be measured by mechanical instruments so anything that is beyond the measurement of science is beyond the field of science x-rays were not a scientific fact before we build a machine that is able to measure it and to do experiments etc so Blavatsky says there is a whole the physical aspect of the universe that science knows something about is a very small part of what we are as human beings what they Cosmo says there is a huge reality behind beyond the physical plane but it can only be accessed by spiritual means and those spiritual means need to be trained so the the idea with with HPV is that there is a way to train these senses to do this kind of research yeah okay that's fine I can read the clothes but what meanwhile I'll keep saying something about this so this is what I called a trans intellectual means of perception of course when scholars hear about this it is difficult for them to have is to put this idea into what science or the academia knows today so they tend to interpret the Secret Doctrine as Blavatsky's imagination I think when we study the secret doctrine we can see that if this was Blavatsky came out of Blavatsky's mind then she was more extraordinary than she already is impossible to think that somebody can make this up so what Blavatsky proposed is that this information came through a kind of scientific method but using higher senses let's say so she says in the secret doctrine it is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals that it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of seers men who have developed and perfected their physical mental psychic and spiritual organizations to the utmost possible degree so she says these years for generations thousands of generations they they have developed all these other senses and they are researching they are looking into the universe into the nature of human beings by these spiritual means and they are are writing all this down so to say so just as a scientist does that research is on physical plane they are researching on the inner planes and they she says they investigated by checking testing verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great audits part of what Lebowski would say is that the ancient wisdom is the result of this kind of adepts that exist that every time in history and they are research into the spiritual nature of the universe so we receive this tradition and normally the general population leaders believes in this and has faith on this or doesn't but she says the adepts don't work in that way they received this tradition and then they verified they look and see if they see the same that the tradition is saying so she continues no vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions so what so obtained as to stand as independent evidence of other audits and by centuries of experience so this is the same as the scientific method another goes into meditation investigates in some aspect of the human nature the cosmos and another addict does the same and then they check the results and we have in the philosophical tradition some examples of of some developed Theosophists that investigated in this way so you can see that the the source of the secret doctrine is claimed to be scientific source but in non material realms and then she says that this is exactly how she learned also she didn't learn from her teachers in the way that we do talking to each other teaching philosophy she says in a writing that she left before dying she says knowledge comes in visions first in dreams and then in pictures presented to the inner eye during meditation thus have I been taught the whole system of evolution the loss of being and all else that I know the mysteries of life and death the workings of karma not a word was spoken to me of all of these in the ordinary way except perhaps by way of confirmation of what was does given me nothing taught me in writing so you see she herself what what she learned when she was in Tibet is not a philosophy she learned the means to access this information from her long meditation her own raising of consciousness to these planes in the Theosophical view just as a there are mathematical truths that people in different parts of the world can discover by applying the intellectual powers you have a Chinese person that may be working on a theorem that maybe somebody in in Europe or in Greece Europe or in in America they are also working independently on this theorem and then they may come to the same conclusion and it's not wonder there are our intellectual powers have the ability to think things out and to come to these mathematical truths similarly people that have access to a spiritual perception can come to the same truths just as these people come to the same mathematical truths but they come to the same spiritual truths so what the adepts taught Blavatsky are the methods to use this spiritual perception that we all have latent in us and she went through a course of training part of the Theosophical approach is to learn to develop the spiritual perception so that we can learn about our true nature and the true nature of the cosmos my spiritual perception I don't necessarily mean psychic perception although that is part of it spiritual psychic perception is still a perception that comes through senses non-physical senses but it comes through psychic senses let's say an all perception that comes through some kind of sense maybe wrong maybe condition may be misinterpreted there is a higher perception the spiritual perception by which one can perceive truth as it is and that is the most important aspect to develop which is what she was trained in so he's happy with the with information good so let's look at the let us begin to look at the teachings that we find in the secret doctrine the secret doctrine has an introductory section that is called the pro-am and she gives some fundamental propositions on which the whole of the first volume is based and she says the secret doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions the first one there is an omnipresent eternal boundless and immutable principle on which all speculation is impossible since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude it is beyond the range and reach of thought so the first fundamental proposition is that there is an absolute reality which is beyond all conditioning is beyond our ability to think about it because everything we think about is by comparison cold or hot high or low good or bad this is a nature that is beyond any comparison beyond any relative aspect and that is the essence of the universe and the essence of each one of us as long as we live in relative in the relative world we are we fall within the constant change of the opposites we are happy we are sad we are worried we are peaceful we are hard we are cold but there is something that all traditions point out that it is a state that is per se immutable is stable is independent from what happens there is this Center of poise from which we can interact with the world the center of poise is our true nature and the true nature of the cosmos there is no difference so this the me dick search of of all Mystics of all traditions is to get to this as the christian mystic would say the Godhead or the godhood the godhood beyond God because God in their general religion is conditioned God is good and it's not bad God is like these people and doesn't like those people and that all mystics would always say there is something beyond the these levels of good and evil something that integrates both so that is the first fundamental principle then the second principle let's see if we can get she says is the the absolute universality of the law of periodicity of floods and reflux and flow which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature so basically this is that everything in the universe is cyclic and our moods go through cycles our existence go to cycles we are born we die we are born again we die everything goes through cycles so the whole view of the universe in Blavatsky is in a circular time not not nearly circular because within every new cycle the next cycle starts on a higher plane Ani it's just like what we do at school we study certain subjects in the next grade we study the same subjects but now a little deeper and we cycle through the different you know different subjects and different themes every time a little deeper so that's how the universe works according to the secret doctrine and the third one is the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul which Blavatsky says is a spark of the universal soul we are all expressions of one universal pre Cybil and the soul in me is the reflection of this universal principle in my body let's say and your soul is the reflection of that universal principle in your body and this is very important because that reflection is in essence that universal principle it is for this reason that mystics can perceive unity that mystics can in an individual way feel that they are the whole each one of us are an individual experience of the whole we only perceive our individual experience in general that is separate that is opposed to the experience of others and we may cooperate sometimes and enter into conflict at other times but when we can raise our consciousness to the essence of what we are we are one we are the whole so they for the soul to be able to consciously recognize this it has to experience life in a separate form it is by experiencing life in a separate form that we develop the sense of I am I am because I am this and not that the separation is what allows me to recognize that I am and then the spiritual path is to take that sense of i am-ness so that it comes from I am this - I am the whole soblova's kisses this is an obligatory pilgrimage for each soul this is something that we are engaged in the cosmos we cannot escape it we can kill ourselves and we are going to be reborn we can only end the cycle of incarnation when we realize the truth of our nature which is the truth of the universe so these are the three postulates that she proposes in the first volume of the secret doctrine this volume know that you have the the images is in the prime this is how the problem starts in the first volume this leads to the stances of Seon in the in the first volume that are about cosmic evolution so let me read a few of these verses so that you have a sense of what the stances are so this is taking taken from the first stanza the secret doctrine begins before the beginning what happened before there is light or God says let there be light of course the secret doctrine proposes a very different view of of God a more scientific and spiritual view but this is before during the night of the universe because just as we talked about the cyclic nature of the universe Blavatsky says the universe goes through periods of rest where there is nothing there and periods of activity where a cosmos manifests now when there is nothing there that nothing is not really nothingness that nothing is the unity that is behind everything because that is eternal remember we said there is an eternal immutable omnipresent principle it doesn't disappear when the cosmos disappears actually when the cosmos appears the diversity covers that unity when the cosmos disappears that unit is manifest so the first answer begins by describing this and she says the eternal parent space wrapped in her ever invisible robes had slumbered once again for seven eternities so then Blavatsky explains the eternal parent space white space she talks about an absolute space what are these invisible robes they are the seed of what we know was matter and then had slumbered again because there is the cyclic process so right now we are in again in a period of rest before the activity and at that time or at that period she says time was for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration and she explains duration she says there is a technical term in sensor there is no English word for this by duration she means probably today is we would call it like a timeless principle she says duration is not infinite time because because time disappears when the universe disappears time also ceases because she says time depends on the the changes in consciousness when there is no consciousness no separate consciousness there is no time what is left is this enduring nature this timeless nature which she calls duration so these are how she translated this original stanza and then she says Universal mind was not for there were no celestial beings to contain and hence to manifest it so she says intelligence is in the very fabric of the the cosmos but when there are no beings to express that intelligence intelligence is latent the mind is not whenever an entity appears and by entity can be a celestial being an atom a lizard or human being that entity expresses this intrinsic intelligence to the degree that that that particular organization allows it a human being can express more of the universal mind than a plant but the plant is expressing part of the universal mind now when there is no manifestation in the universe the mind is not manifested along the one form of existence stretched boundless infinite causeless in dreamless sleep in life and life pulsated unconscious in universal space throughout the old presence you will see many of these paradoxes unconscious but Israel and all presence what is it is it present or is it is it not I'm Ravis key explains this is a state that is not known by us remember that the absolute state is something that doesn't have to do with the opposite we know conscious and unconscious the absolute state is beyond both we just don't know what this state is so jumping now to the third stanza she describes the the awakening of the cosmos the last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude there is a vibration that trails the mother swells expanding from within without like the butt of the loaders the vibration sweeps along touching with its swift wing simultaneously the whole universe and the germ that dwelleth in darkness the darkness that breathed or moves over the slumbering waters of life in her commentaries she explains all of these who is the matter what it represents what are the the waters of life what does it mean that darkness breathed over the waters of life she explains all all the allegorical language of the stanzas then behold all anew the newest disciple this is when the deity appears the radiant child of the tool the unparalleled refulgent glory brightspace son of Darkspace who emerges from the depths of the great dark waters he shines forth as the Sun he is the blazing divine dragon of wisdom behold him lifting the veil and unfurling it from east to west he shuts out the above and leaves the below to be seen as the great illusion this is actually quite similar to the verses that are in the statue of this Egyptian statue out there if you read at the back I suppose that it comes from an Egyptian scripture where it says that the Sun Vails reality with the blinding light and there is a prayer to the Sun so that the Sun can remove the veil so that we can discover the essence of the Sun representing the deity which is the same essence and as it is in myself and it finishes saying I am that this is very similar to the imagery that this stanza shows the the blazing the Sun the blazing dragon of wisdom that Imfurst the Vail and covers the reality and lets the illusion be seen so that's more or less a little bit of the stance as they are very poetical they are very inspiring at the beginning when you have no clue what they mean you know you get stuck in trying to understand what they say but once you have a general sense they are very inspiring and poetical and let us see a little bit and with this way we are going to end and then we can have a discussion a little bit of the second volume that talks about humanity the the beginning of humanity again there is a an introductory section like the proem this is the preliminary notes in the second volume and she establishes three new propositions she says as regards the evolution of mankind the secret doctrine postulates three new propositions which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas so she was fully aware that what she was going to say was going to be accused of being non-scientific etc so the secret doctrine teaches the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups unsaved seven different portions of our globe so she she says humanity didn't start from one point you know from a group of monkeys and then from there spread around the world humanity actually studied in sever seven different places in the continents that we're at the time in the globe this is something that science cannot accept it would be very difficult to explain how this could happen because the the generation of intelligence is already a mystery science says since science doesn't believe in any conscious direction of evolution everything happens randomly and if you just look at the odds of intelligence coming out of random mutations and reactions it's just impossible it was very a miracle and for this to happen independently in seven places around the world that is unthinkable now Blavatsky says that all evolution is actually consciously guided the consciousness is part of the universe so we will see a little of that and she says that different there are different modalities of how the spirit can manifest what she would call the seven race of consciousness and therefore there were seven humanities that studied with coming from different expressing different aspects of the divine let's put it that way so the second proposition she says the birth of the astral body of a subtle body an invisible body before the physical body the former being the model of for the latter so she said humanity before beginning its physical appearance of own earth it existed in an astral body in in a more invisible way because she says the journey of the soul comes from the spiritual planes and gradually comes down into mother when it takes a physical form it is already at the bottom of of matter but there is a whole journey coming through different planes of the universe before it comes to the physical plane she would say Darwin approaches evolution the middle point he misses all that happened before we became physical so she says the first humanities the first stages of evolution of humanity were non-physical of course being non physical there are no fossils or or remains that we can discover so you can only know about this by spiritual research as I was saying and then the third one is that humanity in this round of evolution appear on earth before every mammal in the the anthropoids the monkeys and included so she says in this round of evolution humanity became physical first and the mammals were also spiritual let's say non-physical and she explains a very complex process by which the let's say the animal Souls began to incarnate and to be - to be physical using the remains of the human beings it is a very you know strange theory why would she make this up unless this is what she and her other teachers saw it was far easier to go along with the general evolution but this is what she says this is how evolution happened according to her visions and those of her teachers so - to finish let me read a few of the stanzas of the second volume or the verses so that you have a sense of this I chose some of the main ones in the in the evolution of humanity and you will see that there are gods involved involved in this vlog uzuki explains these gods were human beings in previous cycles of evolution in other planets and the future of humanity is this when our soul finishes the human experience it doesn't just get get frozen for all eternity as a soul it goes on moves on to other systems and now begins to helped nature in the evolution of new humanities and helping in in the way of the gods let's say so the the verses say the great chohan's the lords the these celestial beings called the Lords of the moon of the eerie bodies were called the great Johanns called the Lords of the moon of the eerie bodies and told them bring forth men they were told men of your nature give them their forms within she mother earth or nature will build coverings without external bodies for male females will they be so the idea that these gods are are the ones that produced this astral body that is a model on which nature can build a physical body la busca says Nature doesn't leap from one stage to the other it all happens gradually so before the human form can be created it needs some kind of mold this is known in science for example if we grab a cell and we put it in a petri dish that cell will grow as a sheet but if you grab a cell and you put in the uterus then that cell will develop into a body with a 3d you know three-dimensional form so science doesn't know what's the difference how come that here it takes this form and in the lab it is just a sheet so if they want to develop artificial organs they have to create a mold like a silicon mold so that the cells follow that form this astral body Blavatsky says before science knew anything about this and could do these things this astral body is the mold given to nature so that the human form can be created and this is why humanity was first astral before it became physical so the form is is created but then the stanzas say the breath the human mana the spirit needed a form the father's gave it the father's are these Lords of the moon now the breath needed a gross body the earth molded it as I said the breath needed the spirit of life the soul our spirit breathed into the form so that would be prana the vitality the breath needs a mind to embrace the universe so now that the physical form was they are alive now it needed a mind we cannot give that said the father's I never had it said the spirit of the earth the form would be consumed were I to give it mind said the great solar fire so the early man remained an empty empty sense let's ghost or phantom or a an empty form so a table for you for a while humanity was physical but had no understanding and at some point when the physical body was mature enough came the incarnation of souls which are the ones that gave the bodies the mind and these souls are called the wind they saw the sons of wisdom so a further later sloka says the sons of wisdom ready for rebirth came down they saw the intellectually vile forms of the first third root race or the third evolution the humanity of the third evolutionary cycle which was still senseless so they came the souls came they saw the bodies and they say we can choose we have wisdom so some of the souls enter into the bodies some enter the choice the empty bodies some projected only a spark and some said we are going to incarnate later on we don't like these bodies they are too primitive so they deferred until the next evolutionary cycle those who blah boskie explains later those souls that enter into the bodies they became the sages of humanity those souls who only gave a spark those who receive body spark remain destitute of higher knowledge and she says that is all of us they the mass of humanity and the third group that we that didn't have a soul incarnating remained mindless it's a portion of human of human forms that remain without a mind grabarsky says the apes can from this group of humanity that or human forms they were they were in humanity but these human forms that didn't receive a soul they were human souls they had an animal so this is complicated but they became the da soblova's kid says it's not that we descend from the Apes the Apes descend from us from a part of humanity and why did this happen she says they are divas they are Mona's were not ready so what she explains in the secret doctrine that from the beginning of evolution there were human beings that were very wise there were human beings that were completely senseless and there were all the degrees in between because we are coming from previous evolutionary cycles so depending on the evolution of those souls how much they could express through the physical body so she says evolution is not like a race that we all start together and if I'm more evolved and used because I'm better than you or if I'm less evolved is because I'm unworthy on you we all start at different places and she says this is the explanation for good and evil evil people are just souls that are more immature there is no absolute evil because what what people who do evil now what they are doing is what we as Souls did perhaps in the past or what we will do in the future but she says this gives the key to the existence of evil in the world and then she explains her whole philosophy of evil so this is just I wanted to present a little bit so that you get the sense of this is allegorical language she explains in the commentaries she tries to put it more philosophically you see this is the way the myths are explained and and he has a lot of technical terms that she strives to explain in the secret doctrine so that's more or less a little taste of this as I said if you happen to go to the secret doctrine you have to be patient there is a period where you get to understand the terms but it is really a fascinating journey if you like this kind of text so now let us open to questions comments [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Philosophical Research Society

Views: 295,996

Keywords: wisdom studies, manly p hall, mythology, literature, philosophy, religion, los angeles, los feliz, occult studies, esoterica

Id: TeuAQkcL0os

Length: 68min 33sec (4113 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019