Divine versus Worldly Love

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 14 pages

A fourteen-page compilation opened by four numbered propositions and a contents page, closing with suggested reading from this series. Its version number, 60.23, is among the highest in the library, indicating a document worked over many times.

The four propositions at the head state the distinction the whole file rests on. Worldly love is called an intoxication of the astral light and a state of severe mental perturbation; divine love is called the Law of Universal Sympathy. The third proposition makes a claim about consciousness rather than conduct — that monosexual consciousness is a characteristic of psychic development, whereas in spiritual development consciousness is asexual. The fourth gives the practical instruction: that the first step in true occultism is to try to apprehend the meaning of Universal Brotherhood, that devotion and aspiration raise consciousness to planes where faith, self-sacrifice and loyalty to the teachers are rewarded, and — in the phrase the section returns to elsewhere — give it all away or you will lose it. The body compares and contrasts the two loves, taking up a student's question about whether a contemplative and unselfish life can waken dormant faculties and a recognition of the underlying unity of man and his surroundings. A caution follows: that without esoteric philosophy guiding the soul, neither meditation nor devotion to duty will make the Wisdom of Love reveal her secrets. A section holds angel worship to be misplaced and ill-advised, and the closing argument brings the two loves back together as the two opposing paths of one divine love in the mayavic universe of being.

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