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The Key to Theosophy
Theosophy signifies the knowledge, or the science of the wisdom and will of God, and His relation to the external universe and to man.
God is the supreme unity. He is the centre and the circumference, and is thus the key to man and Christ, to earth and heaven, and to universal law. He is absolute unity, and thus absolute perfection, but, He may be said to manifest himself as a trinity of Spirit, Power and Matter.
Man as the microcosm, “is made in the image of God,” and is thus also a triune being of body, soul and spirit.
This triune nature of man as the Son, is thus the key to the nature of God as the Father, and is thus the key to Theosophy. Without this key it is impossible to know what man is, and impossible to know what Christ is, and impossible to understand how man can see God in Christ, and thus save his soul.
When, therefore, the ancients wrote on their temples, Man know thyself, they enigmatically gave the key to all knowledge and all Theosophy. Because to know thyself in the centre, is to know God.
This is the doctrine taught by the esoteric Brahmans and Buddhists, by the Kabalistic Jews, by Pythagoras, by the Platonists, by Christ himself, by St. John in the Logos, by St. Paul, by Paracelsus, by the Rosicrucians, by the Alchemists, by Jacob Bœhmen, and by the ecstatic Saints, who becoming one with Christ, thus saw and knew God.
We know our bodies to be organic machines furnished with the five senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and feeling, and these organs bring us en rapport with the external universe.
Matter, or the external universe, is the equilibrium of the forces of attraction and repulsion.
All forces are modes of action of one force.
Electricity has been described to me by an ecstatic in trance as the arm of God, and is thus probably in its essence the one force used by the divine mind.
Thus the foundation or substance of matter is force, and the substance of force is the will of God, and the visible universe is thus only the materialised thoughts of the divine mind.
All force manifests itself in vibrations; and all external things being the result of force, the mystery of how mind recognises external matter is explained, for as matter is only an external form of force, it is recognised by mind, which is the central force.
The Soul is the aggregation of the mental forces, including the will, and by this soul man rules his actions and knows the external world.
The Spirit is the third factor in the triune man. It is that which is an atom or spark of the spirit of God. It is latent in the natural man. It is the hidden centre or “light of every soul born into the world, and hidden from the foundation of the world.” It is the secret Logos which became effulgent in the Christ, and it is that by which only God can be known. It is above and beyond reason. It is of the nature of the knowledge and wisdom and power of God.
Thus the soul reasons on the evidences furnished by our organisation, but the spirit knows by intuition.
The soul works by physical agents, and its power is limited by mechanism. The spirit works by will, and its powers are unlimited by physical law. The soul accumulates, and remembers facts; the spirit sees and knows all things.
The soul rules the body. The spirit rules the soul, and God rules the spirit. The soul is the ego of the body, the spirit is the ego of the soul, and God is the ego of the spirit.
As the soul is the ruler of the body in this physical world, so the spirit is the ruler of the soul in the spiritual world. The spirit is the unity in man, and thus is en rapport with the unity of God.
As the spirit is a unity it is indivisible, and therefore indestructible, and hence immortal.
It is by the power of the One that all compounds are made, and hence when man becomes a spirit, his five senses become one all-seeing and knowing sense, and as such can, like God, create forms external to himself, and thus in the world of spirits, “surround himself with the forms of his affections.”
Bishop Berkeley says, “As we can only know external nature through the mind, we have no proof that nature exists externally to the mind.”
This dogma the common sense of mankind rejects, and yet, in a sense it is philosophically true, but, in the world of spirit it is simply true, for there external forms are created by the mind, and are materialised thoughts.
The Heavenly habitations are described as solid and splendid mansions, and so indeed they are, solid in relation to spirit force, as much so as hills and trees and houses are solid in <... continues on page 10-323 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ The Key to Theosophy by Wyld, George, London Spiritualist, No. 394, March 12, 1880, pp. 122-26
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 394, March 12, 1880, pp. 122-26