The Secret Doctrine
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The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, a book originally published as two volumes in 1888, is Helena P. Blavatsky's magnum opus. The first volume is named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis. It was an influential example of the revival of interest in esoteric and occult ideas in the modern age, in particular because of its claim to reconcile ancient eastern wisdom with modern science.
Blavatsky claimed that its contents had been revealed to her by 'mahatmas' who had retained knowledge of mankind's spiritual history, knowledge that it was now possible, in part, to reveal.
Volume One
The first part of the book explained the origins of the universe itself, in terms derived from the Hindu concept of Yugas, or long passages of time through which the world is supposed to have evolved. Blavatsky attempted to demonstrate that the discoveries of "materialist" science had been anticipated in the writings of ancient sages, and that materialism would soon be proven wrong.
Volume Two
The second half of the book describes the origins of humanity through an account of "Root Races" dating back millions of years. The first root race was, according to her, "ethereal", the second root race lived in Hyperborea. The third root race lived according to her in Lemuria and the fourth root race in Atlantis.
According to Blavatsky, the present fifth root race, the so-called Aryans, is approximately one million years old. It overlapped the fourth root race and the very first beginnings of the fifth root race were approximately in the middle of the fourth root race.
Volume Three and Four
Blavatsky wanted also to publish a third and a fourth volume of the Secret Doctrine. After Blavatsky's death a controversial third volume of the Secret Doctrine was published by Annie Besant.
Racial theories
Blavatsky argues that some peoples are less fully human than the "Aryans". For example:
- Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.
While these assertions have been criticized, other extracts from her writings show her strong belief in an Universal Brotherhood of humanity. In The Key to Theosophy she wrote that "All men have spiritually and physically the same origin, which is the fundamental teaching of Theosophy" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence." One of the objects of her Theosophical Society is "To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, color, or creed." She also spoke out against European slave trade in Africa (Key to Theosophy 3), the Caste System (SD I:270) and often laid stress on "kindness, absence of every ill feeling or selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings, and perfect justice to others as to one's self" (The First Message of HPB).
On the other hand, in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky states: "Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence." Blavatsky connects physical race with spiritual attributes constantly throughout her works: "Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do" (The Secret Doctrine: Anthropogenesis). Blavatsky calls the physical Aryan race "the 'cream' of the Fourth Race", which "gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution", asserting that the Aryan Fifth Root Race corresponds to "the final adjustment of the human organism -- which became perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race" (The Secret Doctrine: Anthropogenesis). According to Blavatsky, "the MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained" savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had" (Anthropogenesis). She also prophesies of the destruction of the racial "failures of nature" as the "higher race" ascends: "Thus will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind."
Study of the Secret Doctrine
According to P.G.B. Bowen, Blavatsky gave the following instructions regarding the study of the Secret Doctrine:
Reading the S.D. page by page as one reads any other book (she says) will only end us in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the "Three Fundamental Principles" given in the Proem. Follow that up by study of the Recapitulation - the numbered items in the Summing Up to Vol. I (Part 1.) Then take the Preliminary Notes (Vol. II) and the Conclusion (Vol. II).
Quotations
Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume rather; one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century. (The Secret Doctrine)
Writings about \"The Secret Doctrine\"
- Alice Bailey wrote about the Secret Doctrine: But those of us who really studied it and arrived at some understanding of its inner significance have a basic appreciation of the truth that no other book seems to supply. H.P.B. said that the next interpretation of the Ageless Wisdom would be a psychological approach, and A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, which I published in 1925, is the psychological key to The Secret Doctrine. None of my books would have been possible had I not at one time made a very close study of The Secret Doctrine.
- Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine by Max Heindel (1933; from Max Heindel writings & with introduction by Manly Palmer Hall), [www]
- THE SECRET DOCTRINE is one of the most remarkable books in the world... Behind her [H.P.B.] stood the real teachers, the guardians of the Secret Wisdom of the ages, who taught her all the occult lore which she transmitted in her writings.
References
- The Secret Doctrine, by HP Blavatsky
- The Secret Doctrine and Its Study by P.G.B. Bowen
- The Key to Theosophy, by HP Blavatsky
- The First Message of HP Blavatsky. To WQ Judge, General Secretary of the American Section of the Theosophical Society. 1888.
See also
External links
- [The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 and Vol.2] Online Version
- [The third volume of the Secret Doctrine]
- [The Secret Doctrine Net]
- [The Secret Doctrine at Blavatsky.Net]
- [The Book of Dzyan Research Reports by David Reigle]
- [Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine by Max Heindel with an Introduction by Manly Palmer Hall], little essay on H.P. Blavatsky and "The Secret Doctrine" published in 1933
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