PRINCIPAL POINTS OF THEOSOPHICAL TEACHING
If so-called Theosophical doctrine is examined as a whole, it is at once apparent that the central point is the idea of 'evolution'. [1] Now this idea is absolutely foreign to Easterners, and even in the West it is of quite recent date. In fact even the idea of 'progress, [2] of which evolution is only a form more or less complicated by spurious 'scientific' considerations, hardly goes back before the second half of the eighteenth century, its real promoters having been Turgot and Condorcet. There is no need therefore to go back very far to find the historical origin of this idea which because of their mental habits many men have come to believe essential to the human mind, whereas the greater part of humanity continues to ignore it or to take no account of it. A very clear conclusion results from this: as long as Theosophists are 'evolutionists' (and they are generally such even to the point of admitting transformism, which is the crudest aspect of evolutionism if we leave aside certain points of the Darwinian theory), [3] they are not what they claim to be and
their system cannot 'have as its foundation the most ancient philosophy in the world. [4] No doubt Theosophists are far from being alone in taking for a 'law' something that is no more than an hypothesis, and in our view even a wholly useless hypothesis; their entire originality consists in presenting this so-called law as a traditional datum, while the truth is quite the contrary. Moreover, it is hard to see how belief in 'progress' can be reconciled with attachment to an 'archaic doctrine' (the words are those of Mme Blavatsky); for anyone who admits evolution, the most modern doctrine ought logically to be the most perfect; but the Theosophists, to whom a contradiction makes little difference, seem not even to have posed the question.
We will not linger very long over the fantastic story of the evolution of humanity as the Theosophists describe it: seven 'motherraces' succeed one another in the course of a 'world period', that is to say while the 'wave of life' sojourns on a given planet. Each 'race' includes seven 'sub-races', each of which is divided into seven 'branches'. On the other hand, the 'wave of life' successively runs through seven globes in a 'round', and this 'round' is repeated seven times in a same 'planetary chain', after which the 'wave of life' passes to another 'chain', composed likewise of seven planets which will be traversed seven times in their turn. Thus there are seven 'chains' in a 'planetary system', also called an 'enterprise of evolution'; and finally, our solar system is formed of ten 'planetary systems', though there is some ambiguity on this last point. We are presently in the fifth 'race' of our 'world period', and in the fourth 'round' of the 'chain' of which the earth forms part and in which it occupies the fourth rank. This 'chain' is also the fourth of our 'planetary system' and it includes, as we have already indicated, two other physical planets, Mars and Mercury, plus four globes which are invisible and which belong to 'superior planes'. The preceding 'chain' is called the 'lunar chain' because it is represented on the 'physical plane' only by the moon. Some Theosophists interpret this data quite a different way and claim that it is only a question of different states and successive 'incarnations' of the earth itself, the names of other planets
in this context being purely symbolic designations; these things are truly very obscure, and we would never finish if we wished to raise all the contradictory assertions which they have occasioned. It must also be added that there are seven kingdoms, the three 'elemental' kingdoms, then the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, and when beings of one kingdom pass from one 'chain' to the following, they generally pass to the immediately superior kingdom; in fact, it is always the same beings who are supposed to accomplish their evolution by multiple incarnations during the different periods that we have enumerated.
The figures that are given for the duration of these periods are no less improbable than all the rest. Thus according to The Secret Doctrine, the appearance of man on earth in the fourth 'round' occurred eighteen million years ago, and it was three hundred million years ago that the 'wave of life' reached our globe in the first 'round'. It is true that today this is much less confidently affirmed than at the beginning, for Leadbeater even declares that 'we do not know if all the rounds and all the racial periods are of equal length', and that in any case 'it is useless to try to measure in years these enormous periods of time. [5] As regards the more limited periods, Sinnett affirms that 'the present race of humanity, the fifth race of the fourth-round, began to evolve about one million years ago,' and that this is 'a simple fact which has been definitively stated on the highest occult authority we are concerned with. [6] On the other hand, according to the authors of the 'Lives of Alcyone', which we have mentioned, 'the foundation of the fifth race dates back to the year 79,997 before Jesus Christ. [7] This last assertion, which is astonishingly precise, hardly seems to agree with the preceding one, and it is hardly worth the trouble to mock the savants who doubtless are in no greater agreement in their evaluations of geological periods but who at least offer their calculations as purely hypothetical. Here
on the contrary we have people who claim they are able to directly verify their assertions and in recreating the history of vanished races have at their disposition the 'akashic records', [8] that is to say the very images of past events, faithfully recorded in an indelible manner in the 'invisible atmosphere' of the earth.
The conceptions which we have just sketched are basically only an absurd caricature of the Hindu theory of cosmic cycles; this theory is in fact entirely different and has nothing evolutionist about it; moreover, the numbers relating to this theory are essentially symbolic; to take them literally for actual numbers of years can only be the effect of a crude ignorance, of which not only the Theosophists give proof. We can even say without further emphasis that this theory is one of those whose true meaning is most difficult for Westerners in general to come to. But to return to the conceptions of the Theosophists, if these were to be examined in detail, many more singularities would be found; for example, the description of the first human races and their progressive solidification; further, in the present 'round', the separation of the sexes was not effected until around the middle of the third race. It also seems that each 'round' is devoted especially to the development of one of man's constituent principles; some even add that a new sense faculty develops with the appearance of each race. How does it happen then that peoples who are portrayed as vestiges of prior races, more precisely of the third or fourth, nevertheless have five senses just as we do? This difficulty is no obstacle to specifying that 'clairvoyance' (which is particularly sought after in the 'esoteric section') is the seed of the sixth sense, which will become normal in the sixth 'mother-race', the one which will immediately follow our own. Naturally, the investigations of 'clairvoyants' are credited with all this prehistoric romance, where what is related of ancient civilizations resembles rather too closely the inventions and discoveries of modern science; one even finds, for example, aviation and radioactivity, [9] which shows well enough the preoccupations which really influence these authors, and the
considerations relating to social organization are no less characteristic in this respect. [10] In the same order of very modern preoccupations one must also include the role played in Theosophical theories as well as in spiritist theories by the 'fourth dimension' of space; the Theosophists go even further with these 'higher dimensions', and categorically declare that 'space has seven dimensions,' [11] which mathematicians would find quite arbitrary, for they conceive of geometries of any number of dimensions even while regarding them as simple algebraic constructions translated in spatial terms by analogy with ordinary analytic geometry. The detailed description of different kinds of atoms [12] can also be ranked among these pseudo-scientific fantasies; and again, it is by 'clairvoyance' that these atoms have allegedly been observed, just as it is to this faculty that one owes the knowledge of the colors of the invisible elements of man's constitution; [13] one is to believe that these 'hyper-physical organisms' are endowed with physical properties! We will also add that it is not only among the Theosophists that there are 'clairvoyants', for they are not lacking among the occultists and spiritists. The unfortunate thing is that they do not understand each other, and the visions of each always conform to the theories professed by the school to which he belongs. In such conditions it surely requires much good will to accord any importance to these reveries!
We just alluded to the elements or constituent principles of the human being; the question of man's constitution holds a great place in the 'teachings' of the Theosophists, who have devoted a number of special treatises to it; [14] it is far from being as simple as one might
often imagine. In fact, some few lines cannot suffice to show how the Theosophists have denatured Eastern conceptions in this area as everywhere else. When circumstances permit, we propose to publish a work in which we will outline the true Hindu conceptions on this question, [15] and one will then see how the Theosophists have drawn from them nothing but a terminology which they have appropriated without understanding it. We will therefore limit ourselves here to stating that for the Theosophists there are seven distinct principles in man; there are some divergences, it is true, not only as to the nomenclature (we have noted that Mrs Besant finally abandoned Sanskrit terms) but, what is more serious, as to the order into which they must be ranked. However, these principles are regarded as so many 'bodies' which as it were are enclosed within one another or which at least interpenetrate, and which differ in sum only by their greater or lesser subtlety. This is a conception which singularly materializes things, and naturally nothing like this exists in the Hindu doctrines. Moreover, the Theosophists willingly characterize their theory as 'transcendent materialism'; for them, 'all is matter' in different states, and 'matter, space, motion, and duration constitute the unique and one and the same eternal substance of the universe. [16] It may be that propositions such as this have some meaning for modern Westerners, but it is certain that they are totally without meaning for Easterners who, properly speaking, do not even have the notion of 'matter' (there is no word in Sanskrit that corresponds to it, even approximately); and for us, such propositions only show the very narrow limitations within which Theosophical thought is confined. What must be retained from all of this is that the Theosophists all agree that the constitution of man is sevenfold (which is not true of any Hindu school); it is only afterward that some occultists have sought to establish a correspondence between this and their own ternary conception by grouping together discrete elements that are distinguished in the first; and they have not always
succeeded in the happiest way. This should be noted in order to avoid confusion between the theories which, though having obvious points of contact, nevertheless have important divergences. Moreover, the Theosophists are so eager to find septenaries everywhere (this could already be seen in the discussion of the periods of evolution) that wherever they find classifications comprising only five principles or five elements, which is frequently the case in India as well as in China, they claim that two other hidden terms exist; naturally, no one can furnish a reason for such a singular discretion.
Another question linked to the preceding concerns the states that man must traverse after death; [17] to understand what they say about this it is necessary to know that the human septenary is regarded as comprising, on the one hand, an inferior quartenary formed of perishable elements, and on the other a superior ternary formed of immortal elements. Let us add here that the higher principles are fully present only in the most 'evolved' men, and that they will not be fully present in all men until the end of the 'seventh round'. Man must successively shed each of his inferior 'bodies' after a more or less lengthy sojourn on the corresponding 'plane'. Then comes a period of repose called the 'devachanic state' where he enjoys what he has acquired during the course of his last earthly existence and which comes to an end when he must again put on inferior 'vehicles' in order to 'return to incarnation'. It was for this 'devachanic' period that it was at first claimed that a uniform period had been established; we saw how this first opinion was reconsidered; but what is remarkable is that the duration of such a state, qualified moreover as 'subjective', is measured in units of earthly time! It is always the same pattern of materializing everything, and from such a background it is quite inappropriate to ridicule the 'Summerland' of the Anglo-Saxon spiritists, [18] which is only a little more grossly material; as between the two conceptions there is, after all, only a
difference of degree; on the one side as on the other there are a host of examples of preposterous representations that the imagination can produce in this order of ideas by transposing to other states what is essentially proper to terrestrial life. Moreover, it would be useless to discuss this theory, which we have summarily outlined by simplifying it as much as possible and neglecting exceptional cases; in order to show that it has absolutely no foundation it suffices to say that it presupposes above all the reality of something that is intrinsically absurd; we mean reincarnation.
We have already had more than one occasion to mention this notion of reincarnation, which is regarded as the means by which evolution is effected, first for each particular human and consequentially for all humanity and even for the entire universe. Some go so far as to say that reincarnation is the 'obligatory corollary of the law of evolution, [19] which must be an exaggeration as there are evolutionists who in no way admit reincarnation. It would be rather interesting to see this question discussed among evolutionists of different schools, though we greatly doubt that any light would come from such a discussion. However that may be, the idea of reincarnation too, like that of evolution, is a very modern idea; it appears to have materialized around 1830 or 1848 in certain French socialist circles. Most revolutionaries of that time were 'mystics' in the worst sense of the word, and everyone knows of the extravagances occasioned among them by the theories of Fourier, Saint-Simon, and others of this kind. For these socialists the idea in question, whose inventors were probably Fourier and Pierre Leroux, [20] had as its sole purpose to explain the inequalities of social conditions, or at least to allay what they found shocking in them, by attributing them to the consequences of actions accomplished in some prior existence.
The Theosophists sometimes also proffered this 'reason' [21] although they generally stressed it less than the spiritists. At root, a theory such as this explains nothing, only serving to push back the difficulty, if indeed there is a difficulty; for if there was really equality at the outset it could never have been broken at least as long as one does not formally contest the principle of sufficient reason; but in this last case the question no longer arises and the very idea of natural law which was to figure in the solution no longer means anything. Moreover, there is still much more than this to say against reincarnation; for from the viewpoint of pure metaphysics one can demonstrate its absolute impossibility, [22] and do so without any exceptions like those conceded by the 'H B of L'. [23] Moreover, here we mean the impossibility of reincarnation, not only on earth but also on any other planet, [24] as well as of bizarre notions like the multiplicity of simultaneous incarnations on different planets; [25] for the Theosophists, as we have seen, there are very long series of incarnations on each of the planets that are part of the same system. The same metaphysical demonstration is equally valid against such theories as the 'eternal return' of Nietzsche; but even though quite simple in itself, an exposition of this demonstration would take us much too far afield because of all that is presupposed to understanding it well. We will only say, in order to reduce the claims of the Theosophists to their just value, that no traditional doctrine has ever admitted reincarnation and this idea was entirely foreign to all of antiquity, even though some have wished to support it by tendentious interpretations of certain more or less symbolic texts. Even in Buddhism it is
only a question of 'changes of state', which obviously is in not the same thing as a series of earthly lives; and, we repeat, it is only symbolically that different states have sometimes been described as 'lives' by analogy with the present state of the human being and with the conditions of his terrestrial existence. [26] The truth is therefore simply this: the first spiritists of Allan Kardec's school belonged to the socialist circles we spoke of, and it is there that they borrowed this idea, as did certain writers of the same period; [27] and it was in the French spiritist school that Mme Blavatsky in turn found this idea as the occultists of the Papusian school did a bit later; what we know of the first part of her life permits no doubt in this connection. We have seen, however, that sometimes the founder of the Theosophical Society had hesitations and that she even abandoned the theory of reincarnation during a certain period even though her disciples on the contrary made of it a veritable article of faith that must be affirmed without any attempt to justify it. But generally, and leaving aside the period when she was under the influence of the 'HB of L', she could have made her own the device of Allan Kardec: 'Birth, death, rebirth, and endless progress, that is the law.' If there were divergences of views between Blavatsky and French spiritists it was not about the principle but only about the modalities of reincarnation, and this last point is of quite secondary importance in relation to the first; moreover, we have seen that contemporary Theosophists have introduced further modifications. It is rather interesting, on the other hand, that English and American spiritists have formally rejected reincarnation, contrary to the French spiritists; at least they all did so during the time of Mme Blavatsky, although today some probably allow it, but without acknowledging this, under the influence of the Theosophist ideas that have so prodigiously spread in Anglo-Saxon countries. Of course, here exactly as with the experiences of 'clairvoyants', the 'communications'
received by any one spiritist confirms each in his own theory, as if they were merely a reflection of his own ideas. We do not want to say that there is only this in all such 'communications', but there is certainly a great deal of this ordinarily.
Attached to the alleged 'law of reincarnation' is the so-called law of 'karma', by which the conditions of each existence are determined by actions committed during previous existences; this is 'that unseen and unknown [28] law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. [29] Mme Blavatsky calls it the 'law of retribution', and Sinnett 'the law of ethical causality'; it is surely causality of a special kind, the conception of which is subordinated to moral preoccupations; it is, if one will, a kind of 'immanent justice'. A similar conception is also found, without the word that designates it here, among occultists and spiritists, many of whom even claim to determine with an extraordinary precision and down to the least detail the relationship between what happens to an individual in his present life and what he did in his previous lives; these considerations abound especially in spiritist works, attaining at times the summit of absurdity. [30] It must be recognized that in general the Theosophists do not go quite so far; but they elaborate just as much on the theory of 'karma', the moral character of which explains the ever greater place that it holds in their teachings, for Theosophy in the hands of Mme Blavatsky's successors tends to become ever more 'moralistic' and sentimental. On the other hand, some have gone to the point of personifying 'karma', and this more or less vague and mysterious power has become for them a veritable entity, a kind of agent charged with applying sanctions for each act. Mme Blavatsky was content to attribute this role to special beings she called the 'Lords of karma' and to which she also gave the name of 'Lipikas', that is to say 'those who write' or who register human actions. [31] In this Theosophical
conception of 'karma' we find an excellent example of the abuse of poorly understood Sanskrit terms, as we have previously noted, for the word 'karma' quite simply means 'action' and nothing else. It has never had the sense of causality ('cause' in Sanskrit is 'kārana'), and even less has it ever designated that special causation whose nature we have just indicated. Mme Blavatsky has therefore quite arbitrarily assigned the Eastern word 'karma' to a thoroughly Western conception which in fact is not entirely her own fabrication but a deformation of certain preexisting ideas, beginning with the very idea of causality. Further, this deformation is at least in part a borrowing from spiritism because it goes without saying that it is closely linked at root to reincarnationist theory itself.
We will not give further attention to other 'teachings', which are of less importance and of which we will only indicate a few points when the occasion arises in what follows; besides, there are some that must not be attributed to Mme Blavatsky herself but which belong to her successors. In any case, the outline which we have given, however succinct, seems to us sufficient to show the lack of seriousness of so-called Theosophist doctrine, and especially to prove that, despite its pretensions, it does not rest on any genuine traditional base. It must be placed quite simply, along with spiritism and the different occultist schools to which it is obviously related, in the collection of bizarre productions of the contemporary mentality to which may be given the general name of 'neo-spiritualism'. Most occultists also like to invoke the name of a 'Western tradition', which is as fantastic as the 'Oriental tradition' of the Theosophists, and likewise formed of disparate elements. It is one thing to seek the selfsame foundation which in many cases may really hide itself under the variety of forms of the traditions of different peoples; but it is quite another to fabricate a pseudo-tradition by borrowing more or less ill-formed scraps from one and another, gathering them together no matter how, especially when nothing is really understood either of their compass or of their meaning, which is the case with all these schools. These, apart from objections of a theoretical order which can be directed at them, all have in common a defect whose gravity cannot be concealed: they irremediably upset and unbalance the weak minds who are drawn to these circles;
the number of unfortunates who have been lead to ruin, to madness, and sometimes even to death by these things is much more considerable than the uninformed might think, and we have known the most lamentable examples. It can be said without the least exaggeration that the diffusion of 'neo-spiritualism' in all its forms constitutes a real public danger which cannot be too insistently denounced. The ravages accomplished especially by spiritism, which is the most widespread and the most popular form of 'neospiritualism', are already too great, and what is most disquieting is that they seem to be growing day by day.
A difficulty of another order, special to Theosophy by reason of the particular claims that it advertises in this connection, is that by the confusion it creates and maintains it discredits the study of Eastern doctrines and turns away many serious minds; it also gives Easterners the most unfortunate idea of Western intellectuality, for the Theosophists appear to them as its sad representatives. Not that they alone demonstrate a total incomprehension as regards certain things, but the allure of being 'initiates' that they give themselves renders this incomprehension the more shocking and inexcusable. We cannot insist too much on the point that Theosophy represents absolutely nothing in fact of authentic Eastern thought; it is thoroughly deplorable to see how easily, because of their generally complete ignorance of these things, Westerners allow themselves to be abused by audacious charlatans. This even happens to professional orientalists whose competence, it is true, seldom goes beyond linguistics or archeology. As for ourselves, if we are so assertive on this subject, it is because the direct study we have made of true Eastern doctrines gives us the right. Moreover, we know exactly what is thought of Theosophy in India, [32] where it never had the least success outside English or Anglophile circles; only the present Western
mentality is susceptible of receiving favorably productions of this kind. We have already said that when true Hindus know what Theosophy is, they hold it in profound contempt; and the heads of the Theosophical Society are so aware of this that in their Indian offices one cannot obtain any of their treatises of so-called oriental inspiration, nor any of the ridiculous translations they have done of certain texts, but only works relating to Christianity. [33] Thus in India Theosophy is commonly regarded as a somewhat peculiar Protestant sect; and it must be recognized that, today at least, it offers all the appearances-more and more exclusive 'moralizing' tendencies, systematic hostility toward all traditional Hindu institutions, British propaganda exercised under the cloak of works of charity and education; but what follows will make all this still better understood.