Madame Blavatsky on the Root Causes of Sectarianism and Intolerance

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 12 pages

Twelve pages built around a diagnosis stated on the first page: that since the mind of every religionist is firmly impressed with the superiority of his own creed, it is thereby closed to the truths of any other — and that this, rather than doctrine, is the root cause of sectarianism and intolerance. The remedy follows from it, and is the reason the Society's position was so often misunderstood.

Theosophists, on this account, do not preach their own religion; they implore everyone first to study his own and to remain in it, whatever it is — Theosophy being not a competitor but, on the claim made here, the pristine stream from the Mother-Source and so the informing life of all religions. The editorial note supporting it does useful work on the word itself: religion does not imply belief in a personal God or in any god at all, the noun having been coined by Cicero from relegere, to bind or collect together — so that people pursuing a common idea with or without a presiding deity are equally covered by it. The document is framed by a Series Editor's summary and includes an answer by Babu Raj Narain Bose, printed before Blavatsky's own.

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