CHAPTER I
THE SOURCE OF THE HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
AS THE THEOSOPHY APPEARED
In his evolutionary process, the man must, more and more develop a mental opened to the investigations, with three fundamental qualities:
1. - Disposition to study the several religions, several mythologies, the several philosophies that existed from the origins of the human thought, as well as the elements of the science that are appearing on these last centuries, because the last chapters of the science begin coupling to the propositions occultists. Einstein, for instance, affirms that the whole is contained in the parts and the parts in the whole. The most recent discoveries regarding the subatomic particles declare that nothing can be studied separately. A correlation exists among the events of the Nature. With this attitude, the man, automatically, stops attaching to a dogma, to a facet of the truth and he will never become fanatic. On the contrary, he will maintain the mental always opened to receive new informations, new concepts, that should be analyzed and computed.
2. - Capacity to compare all the affirmatives of those religions, philosophies and mythologies, looking for in them what exists of common, of essential. He ends up noticing that there is an only root and that the religions and the philosophies come with different garments by the influence of the time and by the men's interpretation. Then the respect that one should have for all the forms of thinking existent. At the same time, we should try to compare the Universal Laws, the ones that govern the Universe, and which will be presented in the chapter III, with the ones that are being discovered by the science and relate them.
3. - Constant concern of going elaborating coherent syntheses that will never be definitive because our knowledge is still partial. All the data of the human knowledge are just facets of the truth and they are part of a set that goes approximating, more and more, of the Primordial Unit that gave origin to all of the existent things.
With these three qualities, the individual acquires the fundamental quality of being free thinker.
The great support for the development of this way of interpreting the world and the Universe is in the most primitive tradition existent on the face of the earth, known as Initiatory Wisdom of the Ages, wisdom that doesn't refer to an accumulation of academic and cultural knowledge, but the research of the origin of all the things, the research of that Primordial Principle.
The philosophical movements, religious or spiritualistic, they don't appear suddenly from anything but, one way or another, they lean on that millenarian tradition.
Those teachings of the Initiatory Wisdom of the Ages are registered in the books of the Oriental philosophy of Tibet, India, China, Egypt, Littler Asia and they bring an entire context of truths about the origin of the Universe, the man's origin etc.
One of the proofs of the immense wisdom contained in those old knowledges are the pyramids of Egypt, particularly the one of Cheops. The wise persons that have been studying the registrations of that pyramid affirm that the mathematical and astrological knowledges of the old ones were superior to ours and that, counting with the whole electronic equipments of today and so many discoveries that come happening through the millennia, the scientist has still difficulty to arrive to the results that are calmly registered there. Besides, among other curiosities, the pyramid contains certain channels that, according to the movement of the earth, they point to certain stars and that has been intriguing the astrologers.
While the time went passing, the man became more distant of those primordial truths. To revive those teachings of the Initiatory Wisdom of the Ages, sometimes there appear Beings, that are expressions of the own Divinity and that bring keys so that the man can understand the language of those old teachings, once they are written in a symbolic way. With that purpose we have, for instance, among others, Krishna, Lao-Tse, Budha and, more recently, Jesus Christ. All point for a work inside of us through the interior transformation and to a work inside of the world for organization of the civilizations.
Plato (428-348) tried to do a synthesis of all those revelations and he gave to it the name of Theosophy, which means Theos - God and Sophia - wisdom, therefore, Wisdom of God. An exhibition of that Theosophy was made by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. H.P.B. - in her books Secret Doctrine and Isis without Veil.
The Theosophy presents the Universal Laws. One of their chapters treats of Cosmogenese, when it shows the formation of the Universe in a coherent way. Another chapter treats of Anthropogenesis, when it shows the man's formation and it presents the links that lack for the science to discover.
One of the great objectives of the Theosophy is of relating whatever exists in the Universe because each aspect is a portion of the Whole. But, according to the own Theosophy, we will only get to notice that global aspect through the awake of the latent forces in the own man.
The Theosophy includes all of the branches of the human knowledge, and we can say, with the whole safety, that was the Theosophy that gave origin to all of them - philosophy, science, religion and art. How?
Trying to explain those millenarian revelations, there start appearing the several schools of philosophy. The philosophy was the first branch that came off of the old Theosophy.
The philosophy studies the causes that triggered off the phenomena, enters for the fields of the metaphysics, but it already begins making that through a systemization that walks into the grounds of the logic. Formerly, the philosopher understood of everything - they were philosophers, doctors, physicists, chemicals, biologists, sociologists, economists, understood of art and religion. Today, the philosophy limits to the logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology or theory of the knowledge, when studies it in all their fundamental aspects - origin, methods and structures.
Even a little before the Christian Era, the philosophers, such as Anaxagoras (500 B.C.), Zenon (± 490 A.C.), Aristoteles (384 A.C.), Plotino (205 d.C.), old Gnostics, still continued with the same objective of studying God, of penetrating the mysteries of the Universe, but already using clearly deductive processes.
Not getting to unmask the transcendent part of the Universe and of the man, that in fact will never be unmasked by the mental rational that is dual, dialectical, as we will see in the chapter VI, the man began turning back his attention to the aspects that can be analyzed, investigated, he began observing the phenomena of the nature, things that are objective. From this moment, the philosophy received another name - the one of science, which is that branch of the knowledge that demands plain proves. Starts utilizing hypothesis, it accomplishes experiences, it proceeds to a generalization and it elaborates a law or a theory founded in statistics.
By their turn, those who started to act and to decant the beautiful, the harmony, they created the arts.
Those that started to adore the beings that unveiled the truths, those that absorbed the mystic side of the teachings through the times, those that were firm on the emotional side, created the religions.
On this way, the philosophy, the science, the art and the religion had their origin in the same source, in other words, in the Theosophy.
For this reason, the good theosophist is always somebody that hears everything, analyzes everything, investigates everything, but concludes only after deep meditation and personal experience.
The main characteristic of the Theosophy is the one of supplying to the studious elements that make possible the development of their internal faculties, in way to qualify him to notice the First Causes of the Universe, for his identification with the Cosmos, in other words, with the Cosmic Mind, that delineated the archetypical plan of the creation and that, usually, is known by the name of God.
According to the Theosophy, God is not an entity out of us, which looks at a distance and judges the events, punishing and rewarding. God is part of the Universe, so to speak, he is the Universe, expresses through the Universe and it is inside of each one of us, constituting our Superior Conscience, as we will see in the next chapter. The objective of the life and of the evolution would be exactly the waking up of that internal God.
The knowledge, therefore, is One, because the source of the knowledge is One, and that source is in everything, inclusive inside of us.
The Jewish tradition, on which the Christians leaned, contains, in its whole, that conception of internal God. Gnostics, that had his acme until the second century of our era, they preached the idea of the immanence of God, because the Universe, by them, had appeared through the emanation of God, for weakness steps.
The first Christians, that appeared from among Gnostics, the first priests of the Church, accepted the immanent God, the reincarnation and other principles accepted by Gnostics, principles that went being withdrawn with the passage of the times, by the several councils. Origines, for instance, preached nailed the pre-existence of the soul, therefore, the reincarnation and the non eternity of the pities.
The school Patristic, that goes until Saint Agostinho (354-430 d.c.), had the same concept of God and of the Universal Laws. In the book "Confessions", of authorship of Saint Agostinho, is registered: "From you we emanated Master and to you we will return, reason why our heart will be restless until it rests on you."
Saint Catarina of Gênova (1.447-1.510), that dedicated her life to the care of the patients, left the following affirmative: "My God is my I and I don't recognize other I that does not be the own God."
The apostle Saint Paulo expressed the same idea in:
I Corinthian 3:16 "Don't you know that you the temple of God and that the Spirit of God inhabit in you"?
I Corinthian 6:19 "Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Spirit Saint, which inhabits in you"?
II Corinthian 6:16 "And what consensus has the temple of God with the idols, because you are the temple of the living God."
Which would be, then, the purpose of the life on the face of the earth?
To make possible the man to organize his interior life in agreement with the Universal Laws, in such a way that he reaches the value of his Conscience and reaches the value and the balance of the own Divinity. And this is the true sense of the word religion, that comes from the Latin "religare" and it means to link again. The religion, the true religion, must link again the human being conscious to his Superior Conscience.
Penetrating the deep sense of the Universal Laws, practicing the Meditation and certain exercises proposed by Yoga, the individual will go on tuning with the superior energies and will go, progressively reinstating himself in the Whole.
Yoga is one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy, codified by Patanjali; it involves discipline for the domain of the body, of the mind, of the emotion for the awake of the spirit. It includes the aspects: Hatha that takes to the balance of the energies; Jnana that takes to the knowledge and development of the mental; Bhakti, the doctrine of the heart, which takes to the psychic balance; Karma that takes to the fair action. The road is the concentration and the innerness, and this subject will be ventilated better in the chapter XVI.
It is interesting that the Theosophy and the religions have the same objective to unmask God. Only that they follow opposite roads. The religions give a form to God and they start to adore him. The Theosophy gives elements for the man to find God inside of himself. The studious, through the effort of the self-realization, will go forging his soul along this life, and of other lives that he comes to have, because the Theosophy accepts the reincarnation, until getting to identify himself with the Universal Cosmic Mind, the SOURCE of whatever exists.
To address his life, the man needs to begin by knowing himself, then this is why we present, in the next chapter, the theosophic concept about the human being's constitution.
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Anaxagoras (500 42 & B.C.) - Natural from Lonian, in Greece. He was the introductory of the philosophy in Athena; first thinker to admit the spirit as force capable to explain the life. The spirit would be an extra substance of the composition of living beings. He affirmed that everything is infinitely divisible. Each particle of matter possesses a fraction of all of the things, but just shows off that which contains in larger proportion. For instance, everything has in itself some fire, but we can only call fire that in which this element prevails. In his thought it is not present the concern for the ethics and for the religiosity. He was friend of Pericles and, when they began the persecutions against Pericles, he passed to be sought because he didn\'t practice religion. He escaped from Athena and went back to the Lonian, where he founded a philosophic school.
Zenon (320 250 B.C.) He founded the philosophical school of the stoicism. They look for the supreme happiness, trying to live in harmony with the nature, accepting all of the laws. The Universe is impregnated in God and form with him a single being - they were pantheists. The virtue takes the man to participate in that divine universal life that follows a relentless evolution. In agreement with this march and the necessary happening of the things the man should accept all of the events of his life. The divine order of the universe demands a rational life and the condemnation of the passions. The true wise person, to identify with the Logos, that is reason or wisdom, he should enjoy an absolute impassibility. He should support, fearless, the adversity. The stoic virtue is an active and deliberate force that doesn\'t allow that the reason gives up place to the passions. The peace, the independence, the perfect beatitude are in the absolute indifference for all of the pleasures and for all of the pains. The stoic moral is the higher ethical system of the paganism. They preached the universal fraternity.
Aristoteles - (384 - 322 B.C.) - Born in Estagira in Macedonia, he settled in Athena, where, for 20 years, was disciple of Plato. Philosopher wrote on logic, moral, science, politics, biology, literary critic, psychology and metaphysics. He was, during 7 years, mentor of Alexandre, son of Filipe, king of Macedonia. When he returns to Athena he founds the school named Liceu. As he taught walking, the school also received the name of Peripatética, from the Greek "peripatos" that means "walk." After Alexandre's death, to escape to the persecutions he flees for Eubéia where he dies. As Socrates and Plato, he sought for the essence of the things, but, at the same time, he observed the actual reality, starting the Science. Renan affirms that Socrates gave the philosophy, Aristotle the science and Galileo was who introduced the scientific method. To avoid logical disorders and the subjectivism, Aristotle created the rules of the syllogism that consist of three propositions, being the third the conclusion. Example: The man is a rational animal - Socrates is man - So he is a rational animal. His metaphysics joins the physics in a theology, in a theory of God as motor of the universe, as pure action. He seems to hesitate among the theory of a transcendent God, "thought of the thought", and the one of a God immanent, "living eternal perfect."
Plotino (205. 270 d.C.) - Main representative of the Neo-Platonism that, in short, is a synthesis of the whole Greek philosophy.
Gnostic are adept of a philosophy that mixed Jewish-Christian concepts with the Greek philosophy. They accepted that the Universe emanated from God. They were all condemned by the church as heretics.
Origines - Christian Theologian and exegete. In 203 AD took charge of the catechetical school of Alexandria. In 230 d.C. became a priest. Union Christianity and Platonism. Convicted of heresy at the Council of Constantinople in 553 AD
Other important figures of Gnosticism:
- Basilides - One of the most famous; he lived in Alexandria around AD 125. He accepted that from God proceeded emanations" who came to build 365 skies". The first emanation of God, the Nous, incarnated in Jesus.
-Valentine or Valentino - (+ or - 150 AD) of Egyptian origin, settled in Alexandria and preaches the doctrine of pantheistic, doctrine that identifies God with the Universe..
Saint Agostinho (354 - 430) - Born in Tagaste, in Numídia, area to the northwest of Africa. His father was pagan and his mother catholic. As a child, was anabaptized catechumen. He studied in Carthage. Before 20 years he was the father of a boy that was called Adeodato. He tried to be a teacher in Rome without success. In 384 he goes to Milan where he met Saint Ambrosio and, under his orientation, he studies the doctrine of the philosophers neo-platonic. In 387, converted, he is baptized by Ambrosio and turn to Africa. In 396 is named bishop of Hipona, when that African city turned Roman city and in that position he stays until his death in 430.