Common Misconceptions of Theosophical Doctrines Removed

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 13 pages

A corrective file, taking the misreadings one at a time. The first is the commonest: that the inner man is a trinity and not a duality, becoming a Tetractys or quaternity only when the physical body is added. The second is historical — that Plato never confused the périsprit with the soul or spirit, and in common with every other philosopher called it neither nous nor psyche but gave it the name eidolon, sometimes imago or simulacrum. She notes in passing that the psychic element never seems to have been in the odour of sanctity with either the saints of Christianity or the philosophers of paganism.

The philosophic quaternary of body, périsprit, soul and spirit is then compared to the ether and its correlations. The distinction the file exists to protect follows: that the Spirit within is the personal god of each mortal and his only divine element, while the dual soul is semi-divine — potentially divine — and that only when the human individuality, soiled with earthly impurities, overcomes separateness and identifies itself with the divine intelligence within can the spiritual aroma of personal experience become immortal. Two further corrections close it: that thought is a material force though invisible, so that the least cerebral motion reverberating in the ether of space produces a disturbance reaching to infinity; and that nothing in nature is stationary, everything must advance or fall back.

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