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(October-November 1890)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. V, nos. 7-8, October-November 1890, pp. 213-217, 249-252
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DATA
Title for references: Keightley J - A Theosophical Catechism
Short description: A catechism in question-and-answer form for children, teaching the meaning of Theosophy and religion...
Signed "J. Campbell Ver Planck," the married name at the time of Julia Keightley (see her author card). A footnote to the title explains that each lesson is meant for four successive Sundays, the pupil answering in his own words while the teacher illustrates with anecdotes and facts; the teachings are drawn mainly from the works of H. P. Blavatsky and oriental sources, with no claim of originality by the author-compiler.
213
Lesson I.
1. Q. What is your belief?
A. I believe in Theosophy.
2. Q. What is the meaning of the word Theosophy?
A. It means godlike wisdom, or knowledge of divine things.
3. Q. Do you believe that you have this wisdom?
A. No. I believe that there is such a divine knowledge, and that it can be attained.
4. Q. By whom can it be attained?
A. By just men made perfect.
5. Q. With what help?
A. By the help of the Spiritual soul.
6. Q. Is Theosophy a religion?
A. No, it is not a religion. It is Religion itself.
7. Q. Explain the difference. What do we mean by a religion?
A. We mean a fixed statement of belief about divine things, which men have made into a creed or articles of faith which all their followers must agree to.
8. Q. You say men have made these creeds. How?
A. They have chosen a number of truths, or their interpretation of truths as they see them, and founded churches upon them. Each such church or creed is a religion.
9. Q. What is Religion itself?
A. It is the whole body of Universal Truth.
10. Q. Into how many departments may Religion be divided?
A. Two.
11. Q. What are they?
A. Religion in the universe and Religion in man.
12. Q. What is Religion in the universe?
A. It is Truth, or real Being, and obedience to divine, universal laws. The universe is founded on Truth, and its development, course, or evolution is guided by those spiritual laws which it always obeys.
13. Q. What is Religion in man?
A. The desire to seek divine truths and the will to follow them when found.
14. Q. Name another difference between religions and Religion itself.
A. Religions are made by men and perish like them. But the nature of Truth is divine and it can never die.
15. Q. What does Theosophy teach?
A. Theosophy does not teach anything, for it is divine knowledge itself. But people who believe that there is such knowledge and that it can be found, learn first that Truth is all and in all, and that no religion is higher than Truth.
16. Q. If Theosophy has no creed, how can we know some of the truths of spiritual wisdom?
A. That spirit instills the love of Truth into the hearts of men. In the world's long history many holy men, great spiritual teachers, have sought for and have found some of the divine truths.
17. Q. Are they known to any religion?
A. All religions are built upon some portion of Truth, and all reject other portions of it.
18. Q. How many religions are known to us?
A. There are said to be ten great religions, and there are many smaller ones and sects.
21419. Q. Which is the true one?
A. Each one claims to be the true one and that all the others are wrong. Each one claims that by it only men can be saved.
20. Q. What do we believe that Theosophy would say of this?
A. We believe the truth to be that every religion has some divine knowledge in it, and that all are founded upon the one Truth.
21. Q. What makes religions differ?
A. The different minds of the various men who have seen different aspects or sides of the truth.
22. Q. Where do most theosophical students believe that most divine truths are to be found?
A. In a body of teaching called The Secret Doctrine.
23. Q. Tell me more about this Secret Doctrine.
A. It was known to wise men in the far East at an early period of time, long before the christian era, and they have handed it down to our time.
24. Q. Why do you call it a Secret Doctrine?
A. Because it was only known to few men at any one period of the world's history.
25. Q. Why was this?
A. Because few men were sufficiently perfect to be taught by divine wisdom.
26. Q. What religions are most like the Secret Doctrine?
A. The Buddhist religion and the religion of the Brahmans.
27. Q. Are they two of the great religions?
A. Yes. They include more than two-thirds of all mankind.
28. Q. But you say other religions contain truths.
A. Yes, they all do. And all the great teachers from Rama and Buddha to Jesus Christ have taught these things, and all the bibles of different religions contain some of them.
29. Q. Why, then, does each religion say that it alone has Truth?
A. Because every religion has been taught in two different ways, esoterically, and exoterically.
30. Q. What does esoteric mean?
A. It means secret. To teach esoterically is to teach the inner, hidden spiritual sense.
31. Q. What does exoteric mean?
A. It means outwardly. To teach exoterically is to teach the external form or creed.
32. Q. Give me some natural example of this.
A. If I show you an apple seed and say "Here is an apple seed", that is an exoteric teaching 215of the outer form and fact. But if I show the seed and say; "Here is a great green tree, with branches waving in the wind and all full of rosy fruit", then that is an esoteric teaching; it tells of the hidden power of the small brown seed to become so great. The first only tells of what we now see with the outer eye—a small brown seed. The second tells the secret truth of what power and beauty hides in the seed and is only seen by the eye of faith or knowledge.
33. Q. What was the reason for these differences in teaching?
A. To each man was given only what he could understand. Only a very few were wise in hidden spiritual things. A child, or a man who had never seen a seed grow, would not believe you about its inner power. The great number of unwise people had to be taught in a simple way just as in a Kindergarten object-lessons are given to a child.
34. Q. Name some great teachers who said that they taught in both these ways.
A. Rama, Buddha, Krishna; and the same is said about Jesus, now called Jesus Christ.[1]
35. Q. In what sense are the meanings of all religions the same?
A. In the hidden or esoteric sense.
36. Q. How can this be proved?
A. By comparing or examining all religions, when we find one Truth, like a thread of gold, running through all.
37. Q. Why do not the churches see this?
A. Because they study the outward forms or object-lessons called creeds and because many men are selfishly interested in keeping churches in being.
38. Q. What should these things teach us?
A. To pay as much respect to the religion of another as we wish to have shown to our own.
39. Q. What else?
A. That Truth is above all religions, must be looked for within, and that the man who seeks Truth for himself and obeys it in himself, so far as he knows it, is truly religious, and not the man who only believes what he has heard from others without search or comparison.
40. Q. What, then, is the first action of the theosophist?
A. To do his duty.
41. Q. What is his first duty?
A. To seek Truth. To love it better than himself or any other thing.
42. Q. What next?
A. To obey it; to live by its laws when found.
43. Q. And after that, what will he do?
216A. He will fulfill every duty belonging to that station in life where divine laws have placed him.
44. Q. Are you then a theosophist?
A. That is too much to say. It is not easy to be a true theosophist, or follower of Truth, but I am trying to become one.
Anecdote to Lesson I.
We are told an old story of a shield hanging at two cross roads. One side of this shield was silver; the other side was gold. Two knights came riding along, one on each road. The first cried out: "Oh! What a fine silver shield." The other knight, who was on the road where the gold side showed, laughed and said: "No, you mistake; the shield is gold." This made the first knight very angry. He cried out: "It is not gold, it is silver." "You are blind", said the other. "You are a fool", the first replied; and so they quarrelled bitterly. Just as they were getting down from their horses to fight over it, a third knight rode up and asked what the trouble was. They told him. "That is very strange", he said. "I must look for myself." So he went to look for the truth for himself, when he found out that the sides were different but yet it was the same shield.
Just in this way persons who come to Truth by different religions see different sides of it, think there is no other side and quarrel. But the man who loves Truth enough to seek it for himself finds out that the two sides both exist and are parts of the same shield. So the peaceful search for Truth and the power to look on both sides are better than too great pride in self and belief in our own road.
Now this story is an example of esoteric and of exoteric teaching. The outer meaning is what I have just told you; it is exoteric. The esoteric or inner meaning is that what we call spirit and matter, or the divine and the natural, are not separate things. They are each a side of the same shield; they appear different, but it is only an appearance. The shield, the cause, is one and the same. Further on you will learn more about spirit and matter.
J. Campbell VerPlanck.
249
Lesson II.
1. Q. You spoke of the Secret Doctrine in our last lesson. What did you say of it?
A. That theosophists believed it to contain more theosophical knowledge than any other body of teaching.
2. Q. By what other name is the Secret Doctrine sometimes called?
A. The Science-Religion.
3. Q. Why?
A. Because it is science and religion in one.
4. Q. What do you mean by Science?
A. The search for facts or laws in nature.
5. Q. What do you mean by nature?
A. The universe as we know or may know it.
6. Q. What do you mean by religion?
A. Obedience to divine laws.
7. Q. Where are these laws to be found?
A. Throughout all nature.
8. Q. What then does this Science-Religion do?
A. It teaches divine laws, the search for them, and how to obey them in our lives.
9. Q. You speak of divine things or laws. What do you mean by that?
A. Divine things are those that belong to the world of causes.
10. Q. Is the world which we see around us a world of cause?
A. No. It is a world of effects.
11. Q. What is a cause?
A. Something which makes or moulds. Causes are invisible spiritual forces.
12. Q. What is an effect?
A. Effects are visible results produced by a spiritual invisible cause.
13. Q. Can you give me an example of this?
A. Heat is caused by an expansive force. Cold is caused by a contractive force. We do not see the forces, but we feel heat and see it when it bursts into fire. We feel cold, and see it when it condenses into ice or snow. Heat and cold are effects; the forces which contract or expand are causes.
25014. Q. What, then, lies within the visible world of effects?
A. The world of causes, invisible to the ordinary eye.
15. Q. What do we learn in studying Theosophy?
A. The Science of cause and effect.
16. Q. Why is such knowledge divine?
A. Because it teaches us to know those causes through which all the worlds came into being.
17. Q. Can you tell me how many principal teachings the Secret Doctrine contains?
A. Three.
18. Q. What is the first?
A. That there is one universal eternal principle of Being or Life, from which proceeds all that exists.
19. Q. Name the second teaching.
A. The absolute universality of the law of periodicity, or action and reaction, ebb and flow.
20. Q. Can you give another name to this law?
A. Karma, or the law of action and reaction.
21. Q. What is the third teaching?
A. The identity of all souls with the Oversoul.
22. Q. What do you mean by that?
A. That there is one universal Oversoul, or soul of the world, and that all souls are identical with, or united to and in, that soul.
23. Q. Do you mean the souls of men?
A. No. I mean the souls of all creatures.
24. Q. Why are these three teachings so important?
A. Because all other knowledge rests upon them.
25. Q. Explain what you mean by the souls of all creatures.
A. I mean that all nature is ensouled. That is, everything has a soul of its own kind and a knowledge or instinct of its own kind.
26. Q. Why so?
A. Because the universal soul is everywhere. It is in every point of the universe. It is in all bodies and knows all things. The soul of the ant and the soul of a man are not alike, but both are in and a part of the soul substance that is everywhere.
25127. Q. Do you mean as each drop of water is part of the ocean and is yet itself?
A. Yes.
28. Q. There is one great truth which we learn in these three teachings. What is it?
A. Universal Brotherhood.
29. Q. How do we learn this in the first teaching?
A. That teaching shows us one divine principle of Life, from which all things proceed. It alone never dies. Since all things, creatures, and men came from it, the one, all created things are its children and all are brothers.
30. Q. When you say universal brotherhood, do you mean the brotherhood of human beings only?
A. No. I said universal brotherhood. The word universal includes all things which came forth from The One.
31. Q. But we see many kinds, such as stones, plants, birds, beasts, men.
A. That is because the world soul enters first into the elements, such as air, fire, water, and then into the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human worlds. Each soul spark goes through all these thus, and slowly reaches perfection. But in the beginning all came forth from The One, and in the end all will return there.
32. Q. Explain this further.
A. The only real, the only eternal is The One. And as all things began and end there, that unity or oneness of soul is their only real state. Souls may change their bodies or dwelling-places, for these are not lasting. They pass away. They are unreal. Soul-union with the all is the only real state, so universal brotherhood alone is real.
33. Q. How does the second teaching, that of the Law of Karma, display Universal Brotherhood?
A. It shows the universe as governed by one great Law. That Law applies to all that exists and knits all worlds and creatures together: all things are the children of this Law.
34. Q. How does the third teaching display Universal Brotherhood?
A. It shows that all souls rest in and are parts of the universal soul.
25235. Q. What then seems to be the first fact of life?
A. Universal Brotherhood.
36. Q. Can you give it another name?
A. The spiritual identity of all Being.
37. Q. What does that mean?
A. That all came from Spirit or the Great Breath, and all will return to it.
38. Q. If it is true that we are all brothers, what should this teach us?
A. It should teach us perfect justice in all things.
39. Q. How best can we display justice?
A. By mercy, pity, and love. We should do in all things and to all things, even to the very least, as we would be done by.
40. Q. Can you tell me what other teaching is contained in these three?
A. Reincarnation.
41. Q. What is meant by Reincarnation?
A. That the soul enters into many bodies and lives many lives in such bodies.
J. Campbell Ver Planck.
Footnotes
- ↑ Read biblical and Vedic parables here and explain them.