RELIGION
Various terms have been used to refer to the esoteric tradition, Theosophy. It is Esoteric Science , the Ancient Wisdom, the Secret Doctrine and the Wisdom Religion. But in using this last term, care must be taken not to see in it a religion comparable to Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity or any other of the religions of man. The Wisdom Religion is the source of all of these, and the study of the similarities in their traditions, forms and doctrines will show that in essentials they must stem from a common origin.
One of the aims that Mme Blavatsky set before herself in The Secret Doctrine is particularly relevant:
... to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of all religions, and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which they all spring. [10]
The state of religion today, the perpetuation of forms in ignorance of the truths they represent, shows the need for the wide dissemination of Esoteric Science if that aim is to be achieved.
Throughout the study of Esoteric Science, it should be recognized that what is presented to us here is not speculation or hypothesis but knowledge - knowledge possessed by men who, by the development within themselves of the necessary faculties, made themselves able to investigate at first hand the hidden side of Nature.
The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But modern science believes not in the "soul of things", and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the "Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organizations to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions - so obtained as to stand as independent evidence - of other adepts, and by centuries of experience. [11]
[10] The Secret Doctrine I, viii /I, xxi /I, 9
[11] The Secret Doctrine I, 272 /I, 293 /I, 316
