Heart Doctrine and Higher Ethics

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 11 pages

An eleven-page statement by the series editor, opened by a single-page abstract that gives the whole argument before the supporting material follows. The frontispiece is an advertisement created for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra by Euro RSCG in December 2008. It is the companion piece to “Eye vs. Heart Doctrine” in this same batch, and effectively states the position from which the section as a whole is compiled.

The Heart Doctrine is defined as enshrined like a pearl within the shell of every religion, with altruism — the universal code of higher ethics — as its moral basis, embodied in the injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself. The Eye Doctrine is dismissed as mere head-learning, a non-issue for the masses and for those who, though capable and fit, are unwilling to serve anyone but themselves. The abstract then makes an observation about scale: that we are mad not only individually but nationally, checking manslaughter and isolated murders while war and genocide go on. Theosophy is called the pith and marrow of the Heart Doctrine, its aim being the Great Renunciation of self, and service to humanity is named as the true Theosophist's only religion and dogma. A distinction between kinds of love follows — pure love creates and selfish love corrupts; the one is sympathy, the other fascination — with the qualification that self-love is love misdirected and misapplied but love nonetheless, since the loving essence can never be extinguished, only perverted. The closing passage concerns what happens after death: that one may choose between personal rest in Devachan and altruistic service on earth, and that the Elect, spurning Devachan and remaining for the salvation of mankind, are the germ of a hierarchy that has never died.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.8 MB, 11 pages)