The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

emembered that the study of Occultism proceeds from Universals to Particulars and
not the reverse way, as accepted by Science. As Plato was an Initiate, he very
naturally used the former method, while Aristotle, never having been initiated,
scoffed at his master, and, elaborating a system of his own, left it as an heirloom to
be adopted and improved by Bacon. Of a truth the aphorism of Hermetic Wisdom,
“As above, so below, “ applies to all Esoteric instruction; but we must begin with the
above; we must learn the formula before we can sum the series.
The two figures, therefore, are not meant to represent any two particular planes, but
are the abstraction of a pair of planes, explanatory of the law of reflection, just as the
Lower Manas is a reflection of the Higher. They must therefore be taken in the
highest metaphysical sense.
The diagrams are only intended to familiarize students with the leading ideas of
Occult correspondences, the very genius of metaphysical, or macrocosmic and
spiritual Occultism forbidding the use of figures or even symbols further than as
temporary aids. Once define an idea in words, and it loses its reality; once figure a
metaphysical idea, and you materialize its spirit.
Occult Secrecy (Page 487) Figures must be used as ladders to scale the battlements,
ladders to be disregarded when once the foot is set upon the rampart.
Let students, therefore, be very careful to spiritualize the Papers and avoid
materializing them; let them always try to find the highest meaning possible,
confident that in proportion as they approach the material and visible in their
speculations on the Papers, so far as they from the right understanding of them. This
is especially the case with these first Papers and Diagrams, for as in all true arts, so
in Occultism, we must first learn the theory before we are taught the practice.
Concerning
Secrecy
Students ask: Why such secrecy about the details of a doctrine the body of which
has been publicly revealed, as in Esoteric Buddhism and the Secret Doctrine
To this Occultism would reply: for two reasons:—
(a) The whole truth is too sacred to be given out promiscuously.
(b) The knowledge of all the details and missing links in the exoteric teachings is too
dangerous in profane hands.
The truths revealed to man by the “Planetary Spirits”—the highest Kumâras, those
who incarnate no longer in the Universe during this Mahâmanvantara—who will
appear on earth as Avatâras only at the beginning of every new human Race, and at
the junctions or close of the two ends of the small and great cycles—in time, as man
became more animalized, were made to fade away from his memory. Yet, though
these Teachers remain with man no longer than the time required to impress upon
the plastic minds of child-humanity the eternal verities they teach, Their Spirit
remains vivid though latent in mankind. And the full knowledge of the primitive
revelation has remained always with a few elect, and has been transmitted from that
time up to the present, from one generation of Adepts to another. As the Teachers
say in the Occult Primer:
This is done so as to ensure them [the eternal truths] from being utterly lost or
forgotten in ages hereafter by the forthcoming generations.
The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the key-note of Truth. When once
He has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course uninterruptedly along the
concatenation of the race to the end of the cycle, He disappears from our earth until
the following Planetary Manvantara. The mission of any teacher of Esoteric truths,
(Page 488) whether he stands at the top or the foot of the ladder of knowledge, is
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