|
Theosophy is the quite obvious spiritual-intellectual background
of this Web site. Etymologically it means God's Wisdom.
Webster says it means "knowledge of the Divine Being
obtained by spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special
individual relations." The Encyclopaedia Britannica
further elaborates:
"Theosophy, those forms of philosophic and religious
thought which claim a special insight into the divine nature
and its constitutive moments or processes. Sometimes this
insight is claimed as the result of the operation of some
higher faculty or some supernatural revelation to the individual;
in other instances the theosophical theory is not based
upon any special illumination but is simply put forward
as the deepest speculative wisdom of its author. But in
any case it is characteristic of theosophy that it starts
with an explication of the divine essence and endeavours
to deduce the phenomenal universe from the play of forces
within the divine nature itself."
The founder of the modern Theosophical Society, H.P. Blavatsky,
defined Theosophia in her Theosophical Glossary as the "substratum
and basis of all the world-religions and philosophies, taught
and practised by a few elect ever since man became a thinking
being."
Blavatsky's major works online can be found at Electronic
Editions of Theosophical University Press Publications,
where you can read her Isis
Unveiled and The
Secret Doctrine. A very helpful research tool is the
Encyclopedic
Theosophical Glossary.
For further study of theosophy the web site Blavatsky
Net would be a good starting point. On Alpheus you can
find a very fine introduction
to Theosophy by Cyril Scott and the the whole question about
the existence and work of those exalted beings, called Mahatma's
or Masters of Wisdom, who have realised their divine nature.
From the same book come Nine
Portraits of the Masters by David Anrias.
The founding of the Theosophical Society was only the first
act of a still ongoing attempt by the Masters to present
the Wisdom Religion in an idiom adapted to the modern world.
The Masters
and Their Emissaries: From H.P.B. to Guru Ma and Beyond
tells the story of Their involvement with a series of messengers
and organizations. The pivotal point in the history of the
Theosophical Society was the coming and going of the World
Teacher through Krishnamurti. A couple of days before K
was overshadowed one Master communicated through Leadbeater
a message From
an Elder Brother, which commemorated 50 years of Theosophy
and set the stage for the coming of the World Teacher. How
this event of 'the coming' was seen by different theosophists
is presented in Krishnamurti
and the World Teacher Project: Some Theosophical Perceptions.
One of the views not included was J.J. van der Leeuw's Revelation
or Realization: The Conflict in Theosophy, which addresses
some profound questions in an attempt to bring some clarity
to the crisis caused by Krishnamurti.
Another response came from John R. Wilkinson in his article
The Theosophical
Society in Western History: A Study in Cycles, which
places the many ups and downs of the TS in a larger historical
perspective. The article is the introduction to a little
project called Centennial
Efforts and Counter-Efforts of the Millennium, which
is an esoteric interpretation of the last millennium of
western history and tries to identify the guiding hand of
the Masters.
|
