Proposition 1: A Ray of Divine Radiance in Every Heart

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Cleanthes of Assos, Lucretius, Porphyry · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 10 pages

Ten pages with a contents page of key concepts, and *one of the shortest and most approachable files in the section* — it argues a single point and then gathers three ancient witnesses to it.

The point is in the title: as a ray of divine mind dwells in the heart of every man, when we wound our brother we wound God. The theological move behind it is stated bluntly at the start and is the reason the file belongs to the First Proposition — that when theosophists and occultists say God is no Being, for it is nothing, No-Thing, they are being more reverential to the Deity than those who call God a he and so make of him a gigantic male. A God, on this account, is not the universal deity but a spark from the one ocean of Divine Fire; the God within us, the Father in secret, is what is called the Higher Self or Ātma. The incarnating Ego is said to have been a God in its origin, as were all the primeval emanations, but since its fall into matter it is no longer a free and happy god but a poor pilgrim on the way to regain what it lost — the Higher Manas being essentially divine and therefore pure, so that no stain can pollute it and no punishment reach it. A short distinction follows: God is the Father of the World, but the World, not God, is the father of things in the world. Three ancient passages are then given their own headings, Cleanthes of Assos on God, Lucretius on God and Porphyry of Tyre on God, so the reader sees the same thought stated in Stoic, Epicurean and Neoplatonic terms. The file closes on the practical form of the doctrine — that the theosophist's religion is service to humanity and the dogma is love of one's fellow man — and a page of suggested reading.

Read the full text (PDF, 1.1 MB, 10 pages)