There is a doctrine which has prevailed in Western lands for many centuries, known as “The Resurrection of the Dead.” The most intelligent minds know that this doctrine had and has an esoteric basis and meaning far different from that given it by a grossly materialistic theology, yet they are powerless to remove the mental incubus that centuries of thought and action based upon it have imposed.
Until comparatively recently, this doctrine has meant to Christian peoples the coming to life again of the same old person who had died; and, indeed, still prevails among the adherents of a personal religion based upon a Personal God, a Personal Savior, and one personal life.
Since the advent of Theosophy in 1875, with its all-inclusive and soul-satisfying philosophy, a change has gradually but surely come into the minds of the most intelligent of the race, yet even with these there is too often to be seen the working—unconsciously, no doubt—of the tendency to materialize spiritual conceptions. Minds sufficiently awake to perceive the incompleteness and inefficiency of one form of belief and practice desert it, to immediately fall into the belief and practice of another form.
It must be true that Truth exists in all forms, but none nor all of these may contain it; it is self-existent and needs no form. Any attempt to enclose it in any form must result in a materialization of spiritual conceptions and a loss of spiritual life.
So every form of religion that ever has been or now exists, has decayed or is decaying and must die the death of all forms. Those who think otherwise have not understood the drama of the human soul; its eternal progress through form and forms; forms of body, forms of mind, forms of religion.
By the aid of the Eternal Verities which Theosophy presents, the true student sees and knows the true Path, and is never found expending his energies in the graveyard of thought in the hope of resurrecting any of its dead forms. He realizes the truth of that saying of the Nazarene, “No man putteth new wine in old bottles, lest the bottles burst and the wine be lost.” Lest the wine be lost is the main reason for refraining, not regard for the “old bottles.”
Yet there are Theosophists who would not only do this very thing, but who proclaim that course as the only true one; and this in the very face of statements by the Teacher of Theosophy to whom they are indebted; and the nature of the Teachings themselves.
H. P. Blavatsky, in Lucifer, Vol. 2:422, wrote: “The T. S. was not created to propagate any dogma of any exoteric, ritualistic church, whether Buddhist, Brahmanical, or Christian.” . . . “The Society was founded to become the Brotherhood of Humanity—a center, philosophical and religious, common to all—not as a propaganda for Buddhism merely,” nor, it follows, any other religion.
Again, in the same article there is written: “But he has not learned the lesson of its (the T. S.) history, nor perceived that to graft a young and healthy shoot on to a branch which has lost—less than other, yet much of—its inner vitality, could not but be fatal to the new growth. The very essence of the position taken up by the T. S. is that it asserts and maintains the truth common to all religions; the truth which is true and undefiled by the concretion of ages of human passions and needs.”
In another place H. P. B. wrote: “The attitude of mind in which the teachings given are to be received, is that which shall tend to develop the faculty of intuition. The duty of members in this respect is to refrain from arguing that the statements made are not in accordance with what other people have said or written, or with their own ideas on the subject, or that, again, they are apparently contrary to any accepted system of thought or philosophy. . . . It requires all the mental and psychic power of the student to be used in examining what is given, to the end that the real meaning of the Teacher may be discovered, as far as the student can understand it. He must endeavor to free his mind as much as possible while studying or trying to carry out that which is given him, from all the ideas he may have derived by heredity, from education, from surroundings, or from other teachers. His mind should be made perfectly free from all other thoughts, so that the inner meaning of the instructions may be impressed upon him apart from the words with which they are clothed. Otherwise there is constant risk of his ideas becoming as colored with preconceived notions as those of the writers of certain otherwise excellent works upon esoteric subjects, who have made the occult tenets more subservient to modern science than to occult truth.”
To repeat: “The very essence of the position taken up by the T. S. is that it asserts and maintains the truth common to all religions; the truth which is true and undefiled by the concretion of ages of human passions and needs.”
The “truth common to all religions” is only that which is true and undefiled by the concretion of ages of human passions and needs; all the rest is false and defiled, distinctive, separate, exclusive. Theosophy is that Truth, to be learned, understood, applied and promulgated; not by modifying, diluting or adapting it to any existing form, however popular, but by asserting and maintaining it. The close of the last message of H. P. Blavatsky to Theosophists says: “After all, every wish and thought I can utter are summed up in this one sentence, the never-dormant wish of my heart, ‘Be Theosophists, work for Theosophy.’” Theosophy first and Theosophy last; for its practical realization alone can save the Western world from that selfish and unbrotherly feeling that now divides race from race, one nation from another; and from that hatred of class and social considerations that are the curse and disgrace of so-called Christian peoples. Theosophy alone can save it from sinking entirely into that mere luxurious materialism in which it will decay and putrefy as civilizations have done. In your hands, brothers, is placed in trust the welfare of the coming century; and great as is the trust, so great is also the responsibility.”
How have we fulfilled the trust placed in our hands? Let each one answer for himself. Never mind what others have done or may be doing, but arise and look about, each for himself. The Teachings of the Teacher are always available, and the line of action is plainly to be discerned. It is safe to say that when we have done this a new light will dawn; we will no longer look for, take or credit purported “messages,” “directions” or “instructions,” whether they differ or agree with what has been recorded by the Messenger; if they differ, they are false; if they agree, they are but repetitions by some one desiring that attention may be turned his way. Theosophy presents in itself, the way, the truth, the life; “let the dead bury their dead,” said the Christian Master, “follow thou me.” So says Theosophy.
If Theosophists can so misinterpret and misapply what is so plainly put as Theosophy—a record of the laws which govern all the constituents of nature and of Man—what blame can be attached to those ignorant of it, who endeavor to resurrect the dead “forms” of past efforts of the Great Lodge, like Rosicrucianism, Vedantism, Sufism, Bahaism and the many others that have been; these represent but the kama-rupas of past renaissances, and are no more suited to the present time and people, than would be the bodies of a past incarnation; why try to resurrect a corpse? Why not take the Living Truth, once more brought to us, pure and undefiled, and profit by it, and what is best of all promulgate it as broadly and as quickly as possible that those who know not may know, and cease their useless, harmful endeavor to resurrect the dead?