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promulgation.
These manners or mannerisms of exoteric thinking we may discard if we wish; but it is the fundamental
principles behind every great religion or great philosophy which in their aggregate are the universal
esoteric doctrine. In this universal esoteric doctrine lies the mystery-field of each great religion or
philosophy -- this mystery-teaching being always reserved for the initiates. The esoteric philosophy or
doctrine has been held from time immemorial in the guardianship of great men, exalted seers and sages,
who from time to time promulgate it, or rather portions of it, to the world when the spiritual and
intellectual need for so doing arises. The origins of the esoteric doctrine are found in the
mystery-teachings of beings from other and spiritual spheres, who incarnated in the early humanity of the
third root-race of this fourth round of our globe, and taught the then intellectually nascent mankind the
necessary certain fundamental principles or truths regarding the universe and the nature of the world
surrounding us.
Ethics
The theosophical teachings are essentially and wholly ethical. It is impossible to understand the sublime
wisdom of the gods, the archaic wisdom-religion of the ancients, without the keenest realization of the
fact that ethics run like golden threads throughout the entire system or fabric of doctrine and thought of
the esoteric philosophy. Genuine occultism, divorced from ethics, is simply unthinkable because
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impossible. There is no genuine occultism which does not include the loftiest ethics that the moral sense
of mankind can comprehend, and one cannot weigh with too strong an emphasis upon this great fact.
Ethics in the theosophical philosophy are not merely the products of human thought existing as a
formulation of conventional rules proper for human conduct. They are founded on the very structure and
character of the universe itself. The heart of the universe is wisdom-love, and these are intrinsically
ethical, for there can be no wisdom without ethics, nor can love be without ethics, nor can there be ethics
deprived of either love or wisdom.
The philosophic reason why the ancients set so much store by what was commonly known as virtus
among the Latins, from which we have our modern word "virtue," is because by means of the teaching
originating in the great Mystery schools, they knew that virtues, ethics, were the offspring of the moral
instinct in human beings, who derived them in their turn from the heart of the universe -- from the
kosmic harmony. It is high time that the Occidental world should cast forever into the limbo of exploded
superstitions the idea that ethics is merely conventional morality, a convenience invented by man to
smooth the asperities and dangers of human intercourse.
Of course every scholar knows that the words morals and ethics come from the Latin and Greek
respectively, as signifying the customs or habits which it is proper to follow in civilized communities.
But this fact itself, which is unquestionable, is in a sense disgraceful, for it would almost seem that we
had not yet brought forth a word adequately describing the instinct for right and truth and troth and
justice and honor and wisdom and love which we today so feebly express by the words ethics or morals.
"Theosophist is who Theosophy does," wrote H. P. Blavatsky, and wiser and nobler words she never
wrote. No one can be a theosophist who does not feel ethic-ally and think ethically and live ethically in
the real sense that is hereinbefore described. (See also Morals)
Evolution
As the word is used in theosophy it means the "unwrapping," "unfolding," "rolling out" of latent powers
and faculties native to and inherent in the entity itself, its own essential characteristics, or more generally
speaking, the powers and faculties of its own character: the Sanskrit word for this last conception is
svabhava. Evolution, therefore, does not mean merely that brick is added to brick, or experience merely
topped by another experience, or that variation is superadded on other variations -- not at all; for this
would make of man and of other entities mere aggregates of incoherent and unwelded parts, without an
essential unity or indeed any unifying principle.
In theosophy evolution means that man has in him (as indeed have all other evolving entities) everything
that the cosmos has because he is an inseparable part of it. He is its child; one cannot separate man from
the universe. Everything that is in the universe is in him, latent or active, and evolution is the bringing
forth of what is within; and, furthermore, what we call the surrounding milieu, circumstances -- nature, to
use the popular word -- is merely the field of action on and in which these inherent qualities function,
upon which they act and from which they receive the corresponding reaction, which action and reaction
invariably become a stimulus or spur to further manifestations of energy on the part of the evolving
entity.
There are no limits in any direction where evolution can be said to begin, or where we can conceive of it
as ending; for evolution in the theosophical conception is but the process followed by the centers of
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consciousness or monads as they pass from eternity to eternity, so to say, in a beginningless and endless
course of unceasing growth.
Growth is the key to the real meaning of the theosophical teaching of evolution, for growth is but the
expression in detail of the general process of the unfolding of faculty and organ, which the usual word
evolution includes. The only difference between evolution and growth is that the former is a general
term, and the latter is a specific and particular phase of this procedure of nature.
Evolution is one of the oldest concepts and teachings of the archaic wisdom, although in ancient days the
concept was usually expressed by the word emanation. There is indeed a distinction, and an important
one, to be drawn between these two words, but it is a distinction arising rather in viewpoint than in any
actual fundamental difference. Emanation is a distinctly more accurate and descriptive word for
theosophists to use than evolution is, but unfortunately emanation is so ill-understood in the Occident,
that perforce the accepted term is used to describe the process of interior growth expanding into and
manifesting itself in the varying phases of the developing entity. Theosophists, therefore, are, strictly
speaking, rather emanationists than evolutionists; and from this remark it becomes immediately obvious
that the theosophist is not a Darwinist, although admitting that in certain secondary or tertiary senses and
details there is a modicum of truth in Charles Darwin's theory adopted and adapted from the Frenchman
Lamarck. The key to the meaning of evolution, therefore, in theosophy is the following: the core of every
organic entity is a divine monad or spirit, expressing its faculties and powers through the ages in various
vehicles which change by improving as the ages pass. These vehicles are not physical bodies alone, but
also the interior sheaths of consciousness which together form man's entire constitution extending from
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