Meditation Alone Will Not Lead to Theosophic Development

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 7 pages

Seven pages from the correspondence pages of the Collected Writings volume IX, pages 169 to 171. *It is a letter from a beginner, and an unusually well-argued one* — the writer says frankly that he is quite new to the study and must perforce express himself crudely, and then puts an objection that is harder to answer than most.

He first states, fairly, what he understands the promise to be: that an early result of entire devotion to an inner contemplative life, and to a life of fine unselfishness, will be a growing recognition of the underlying unity of man and his surroundings; that truth will make itself known to such a man from within, claiming instant acceptance; that the longer such a life is lived with unfading enthusiasm the higher the central spirit will rise and the wider the survey of creation; and that with these tends to develop a greater physical command of the forces of nature. Then he objects. Such a life, he submits, is led by men who attain none of these results. Most of us, he says, know Christians who seem never to have a selfish thought, who exist in an atmosphere of self-sacrifice for others, and whose leisure is spent in meditation and emotional prayer — which is surely seeking after truth — and yet they do not attain it; they fail to rise out of Christianity into theosophy and remain for ever satisfied with the narrow space they move in. He anticipates the reply that they expand slowly, grants it for some, and then narrows his claim to something one counter-example is enough to establish: that there exist men, and particularly women, leading lives both of spiritual meditation and of unselfishness, to whom nevertheless no clearer view of the universe is vouchsafed. His example on the last point is John Stuart Mill. The file's title is the answer the editors gave him.

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