The Ancient Wisdom

Based on the works of Annie Besant

 

The Unity Underlying All Religions

 

A survey of the great religions of the world reveals that they hold many religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas in common. While some attribute these similarities to the gradual elaboration of primitive animism and the personification of natural phenomena by ignorant savages, the Ancient Wisdom offers a more profound explanation. It asserts the existence of an original teaching in the custody of a Brotherhood of great Spiritual Teachers. These Teachers, the outcome of past cycles of evolution, acted as instructors to the child-humanity of our planet, imparting Fundamental Truths in forms adapted to different races and nations.

 

This central primary body of doctrine is known as the Divine Wisdom, or Theosophy. As the origin and basis of All Religions, it is not their antagonist but their Purifier, Revealing their Hidden Wisdom and defending their Deepest Spiritual Verities.

 

The main Spiritual Truths shared by world religions can be summarized as follows:

 

• One Eternal, Infinite, Incognizable Real Existence.
  
  
• From THAT, the manifested God, unfolding from Unity to Duality to Trinity.
  
  
• From the manifested Trinity, many Spiritual Intelligences guiding Cosmic Order.
  
  
• Man as a reflection of the manifested God, fundamentally a Trinity whose Inner Self is Eternal and One with the Self of the Universe.
  
  
• Man's evolution through repeated incarnations, drawn by desire and set Free by Knowledge and Sacrifice, becoming Divine in Potency as he had ever been Divine in latency.

 

 

The Physical Plane: The Source of the Universe is a manifested Divine Being, often called the LOGOS or Word.

The LOGOS circumscribes Himself to become the Life of His Universe, unfolding into a threefold form:

 

The First LOGOS: The Root of All Being.

 

The Second LOGOS: Manifesting the duality of Life and Form (Spirit and Matter).

 

The Third LOGOS: The Universal Mind, the Source of fashioning Energies and Archetypal Forms.

 

The physical plane, our world, consists of matter in Seven Subdivisions: Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Four Etheric stages. Man's physical body comprises the dense body (Solids, Liquids, Gases) and the Etheric double (the Four Higher Etheric levels). The Etheric double absorbs Life-Energies (Prana) from the Sun and distributes them, acting as the bridge for sensory information to reach the Conscious Entity.

 

Permeating the physical world is the astral plane, a region of finer, more Highly Vitalized Spirit-Matter. It is the realm of desires, passions, and emotions. Thoughts and Feelings create "Artificial Elementals" or Thought-Forms in astral matter, which can influence others and shape the national or global atmosphere.

 

Kamaloka (the place of desire) is a condition on the astral plane where human beings undergo Purifying changes after physical death. It is not an Eternal Hell, but a temporary state where Individuals work out the causes set in motion during earth-life. The length and nature of this stay depend on the desires cultivated during Life. Those with base, brutal appetites experience the gloomy lower regions, while those with refined, albeit earthly, interests occupy Higher, More Luminous levels. Eventually, the Soul shakes off the astral body and passes into the heaven-world.

 

The Mental Plane is the world of the real man, the Thinker (Manas). It is divided into the lower "form" levels (concrete Thought) and the Higher "formless" levels (abstract Thought). The Thinker uses the Mental body on the lower levels and the permanent causal body on the Higher levels.

 

Devachan is the heaven-world, a guarded part of the Mental plane where the Soul assimilates the Pure Thoughts, Noble Emotions, and Aspirations of the past earth-life. Here, experiences are transmuted into Mental and moral faculties for the next incarnation. Devachan is a state of Immense Bliss and Intense Mental Reality, where the Soul Communes with Loved ones (through its own Mental images of them) and develops its Powers unhindered by gross matter.

 

Beyond the Mental plane lie the Spiritual Realms. The Buddhic plane is the realm of Pure, Unselfish, All-Embracing Love and Bliss, where the illusion of separateness vanishes, and Unity with All Life is experienced. The Nirvanic plane (Atma) is the realm of Pure Existence and Supreme Spiritual Will.

 

The evolution of man involves the gradual unfolding of these Higher Aspects (Atma-Buddhi-Manas). When the Soul achieves Full Consciousness on these planes, it breaks the cycle of compulsory reincarnation and attains Immortality, becoming a Master of Wisdom, a perfect agent of the Divine Will.

 

Reincarnation is the evolutionary process by which the Soul (the Thinker in the causal body) repeatedly takes on new Mental, Astral, and Physical vehicles to gather experience. This continuous pilgrimage explains the vast differences in human capacity and character, proving that All Souls are climbing the same ladder of evolution, simply at different stages.

 

Karma is the Inviolable Law of Cause and Effect that governs this process. It dictates that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap". Karma operates through three main classes of energies:

 

Thoughts build our future Mental character and faculties.

 

Desires shape our Astral body, determine our post-mortem fate, and attract us to our future environment.

 

Actions influence our future physical circumstances and environment.

 

By understanding Karma, Man ceases to be a helpless slave of chance and becomes the Master of His Destiny, using the Immutable Laws of nature to Consciously shape his future character and circumstances.