Let Your Daily Life Be Your Temple and God

A Master of Wisdom, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Living the Life Series · 7 pages

First published in Lucifer, Vol. I, January 1888, pages 344–46, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings VII pages 173–75 as part of the “Original Programme” manuscript. The frontispiece is by Virginia Frances Sterrett.

The advice begins from a claim about what alone can unite people who disagree: that it is divine philosophy, the spiritual and psychic blending of man with nature, which by revealing the truths hidden under the objects of sense can promote unity and harmony in spite of great diversities of conflicting creeds. What follows is presented as a demand rather than a hope — that Theosophy expects from the Fellows of the Society great mutual toleration and charity for each other's shortcomings, and ungrudging mutual help in the search for truth in every department of nature, moral and physical; and that this ethical standard must be unflinchingly applied to daily life. The central instruction concerns form as much as conduct: Theosophy should not represent merely a collection of moral verities epitomised in theoretical dissertations, but must be made practical and disencumbered of desultory oration and fine talk. The prediction attached is modest and checkable — that if every Theosophist only does his duty, that which he can and ought to do, the sum of human misery within and around every Branch will very soon be visibly diminished. Two closing counsels follow: forget self in working for others, and do not set your pride in having that work acknowledged.

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