Blavatsky on the Theosophical Movement
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages
Two pages taken from "Recent Progress in Theosophy," first published in The North American Review for August 1890 and republished in Blavatsky Collected Writings volume XII. A headnote points to the full text under the title "Theosophical Society – Objects and early accomplishments" in the site's Theosophy and Theosophists Series. The same passage, with one further paragraph added, also appears in this series as What should be the measure of our conduct? — the two files are excerpts of different lengths from the same article.
The account claims that the movement was a necessity of the age and spread under its own inherent impulsion, owing nothing to adventitious methods, and that from the first it had neither money, endowment, nor social or governmental patronage to count upon. What it appealed to instead were certain human instincts and aspirations and a lofty ideal of perfectibility — something the vested interests of society were bound to conflict with. Its strongest allies are named as the human yearning for light on the problem of life and for a nobler conception of the origin, destiny and potentialities of the human being. The passage then positions theosophy between two opponents: materialism and its congener secularism, bent on destroying not only theology and sectarian dogmatism but the religious conception of a diviner Self, and dogmatic religion itself. Against both, theosophy is described as aiming to unite broad religious people for research into the actual basis of religion and for scientific proof of the permanence of the higher Self. Its method is stated as accepting the results of scientific study, adopting the maxims of science, and using them to save whatever truth is admixed in each cult — discarding miracle and supernaturalism, and tracing the kinship of the whole family of world-faiths to one another and their common reconciliation with science.
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