[Report of Proceedings of the Secret Doctrine Centenary October 29 – 30, 1988, The Theosophical Society Pasadena, California, U.S.A.]

This is a talk by Mr. John P. Van Mater, Librarian of the Theosophical Library Center, on

Six Propositions of The Secret Doctrine

H. P. Blavatsky’s great work The Secret Doctrine in two volumes was issued in the fall of 1888, and we are today commemorating this event. The first volume [SD I], titled Cosmogenesis, treats of the birth of worlds - universes, suns, planets – but more particularly our Earth with all its kingdoms, stretching from the elemental lives or forces up through the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. Above these HPB speaks of the dhyan-chohanic kingdoms; and beyond these the great cosmic gods whose immanent activities constitute the law and harmony not only of our Earth, but of the cosmos as well. All these lives are born with and form part of the expression of the larger being in which or in whom we live and move and have our being.

The second volume [SD II] treats of Anthropogenesis, the origin and destiny of the human race in conjunction with all the other kingdoms with which we are familiar. This volume discusses the three rounds of life that preceded our present or fourth round. As Earth with its kingdoms awakened from its pralaya or rest period, it started at a very ethereal or spiritual level, gradually solidifying into the physical globe we see around us. Prominent in this second volume is a discussion of the awakening of man’s mind and the part the manasaputras or elohim played in bringing this about.

The universe surrounds and enfolds us on every side. It has a structure. It operates in certain unerring ways. It was born as we were born, has its life, and one day, like us, will die, rest. And, as the old tradition has it, the universe will then, after a lapse of cosmic time, seek its rebirth. It therefore has a history and a destiny over and above that which we now see and investigate; and the same is true of man. What is the relationship between man and the all-embracing cosmos, man the microcosm of the macrocosm? This in brief is The Secret Doctrine.

Man in a very real sense is a universe: an overdwelling consciousness that in mysterious and wonderful ways emanates and organizes billions of atoms, molecules, cells, into tissues, organs—a functioning system—a system which to one living on an atom would appear to be as extensive as our universe appears to us as we look out over the fields of space from our small planet.

How little we really know about human physiology, especially human birth, from the consciousness standpoint. Our observations and deductions are constricted by our limited senses. The human being who is incarnating seems unaware of the transformations taking place as a single fertilized cell proliferates into a vast system, thus achieving its own incarnation. There comes a time after birth and during growth when our human consciousness has built for itself a vehicle, a brain and other faculties which allow us to speculate on our own genesis. Even so, we cannot either remember or explain how the complicated structure of ourselves was built or even how it functions.

Turning now to the birth of worlds, let us consider the three propositions given by H. P. Blavatsky in volume I of The Secret Doctrine. These deserve our most careful attention, for they summarize the basic thoughts wrapped up in the so-called creation stories found the world over, which describe how the cosmos was born out of chaos, and how man was born from the cosmos.

The first proposition projects a picture of the ALL, the ultimate eternally unknowable Cause, from which everything is born and to which all things eventually return. Quoting from HPB:

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is Impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by silly human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought – in the words of Mandukya [Upanishad], “unthinkable and unspeakable.” – SD I:14

Ancient peoples refused to give attributes to this principle. The Jews called it Ain-Soph, the Boundless. The Hindus THAT or TAT. It is all things, and in all things, and the cause of all things. And all things are in IT. It is the unknowable God of Paul, which he refused to personify. It cannot be called beautiful or ugly, good or evil, for these terms apply to finite things. As HPB says, it is “Be-ness” rather than Being.

The second proposition HPB phrases as follows:

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe. – SD I:17

What language! The first proposition conveys a picture of the boundless source of all, aspects of which are given as infinite Space, eternal duration, and unending motion. The second proposition sets the pattern for all manifested existence, whether atoms, men, gods, universes. These issue forth or manifest from their inner essence, live out their lafe span, and then withdraw, rest, only to reappear again. Many of the old traditions speak of a ray from the Unknowable that fecundates chaos or the Mother principle, and out of chaos is born the cosmos, the manifested worlds. Here we have the trinity – Father, Mother, Son; Father, Holy Ghost, and Son (as more correctly given in the Greek Church); Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt; Parabrahman, Mulaprakriti, and Brahman (or the manifest universe) among the Hindus.

Against the background of unending time and infinite space these manvantaras and pralayas, these comings and goings of worlds, would seem like twinkling lights. In this setting there can be no ultimate beginning or ending. All births, therefore, no matter how cosmic or supercosmic, are rebirths; and all deaths are intervals between reimbodiments or, as in the case of man, reincarnations. From out of the infinite unknown how is the finite born? Why are we urged to try to picture or grasp the infinite if it is beyond the finite mind? It is because, in the words of Katherine Tingley:

Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful, spiritualizing force; one cannot think toward it without a disposition either to think more or feel more – without opening up the inner consciousness of man. And when that inner consciousness is awakened, the soul finds itself closer to the infinite laws, closer to THAT, or that Great Center that no words can express. – quoted by G. de Purucker in Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy. p. 14

In the heart of our hearts there resides a spark, a link with the unutterable. Reaching towards it we seek to transcend our ordinary selves and gain insights that are more in the nature of experience than mental concepts. What we aspire towards are larger understandings, and understanding is the buddhic principle flooding the mind.

The third proposition may seem like a mouthful – which in indeed it is. Yet it pertains to those aspects of life with which we are the most directly involved.

The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, . . . and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul – a spark of the former – through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “Necessity”) is accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, ... In other words, no . . . (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark. . . has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world . . . and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. – SD I:17

Let me try in a small way to elaborate this basic statement of the cosmic ladder of lives. The range of beings stretches from the tiniest subatomic particle and below to the grandest universe or clusters of universes and beyond. And since every unit is a consciousness, according to ancient thought, a monad of infinite potential, we see the cosmos as infilled with divine intelligences of every conceivable type, all seeking to unfold themselves through evolution by means of repeated reimbodiments.

The higher beings – call them gods, if you wish – form the inner planet, sun, and so forth, just as man’s spirit, intelligence, consciousness, mind, emotions, life, in fill and make up what we know as Mary Jones or Frank Smith. Without these inner qualities and forces and substances there would be no Mary Jones or Frank Smith, nothing but the material shell. And so it is with the universe. It too is ensouled with hosts of informing intelligences at every level.

HPB sought to reintroduce the concept of the living universe governed by cause and effect or karma. When we humans are born, we come freighted with karma out of the past. We are that karma. In previous incarnations we have made ourselves what we now are, and are in the process of making ourselves what we shall one day become, in future incarnations. Now when a universe, a sun or a planet is reborn, it seeks its rebirth by means of all the lesser lives of which it is composed, just like man and his atoms and lesser units when he reincarnates. The new universe is the karma of the old universe. Its newly awakened lives at all levels bring themselves, each such lesser life being the karma of its own past. Collectively they form the expression of the vaster being of which each living atom is an integral part. All beings, then, are sparks of the universal essence or Oversoul at various stages in this Cycle of Necessity, various levels in their self-unfoldment or evolution, which takes place through repeated reimbodiments.

When the scroll of Earth unrolled (as the Hebrews would phrase it), all the lives of Earth were unrolled with it, starting at a very ethereal level. How could it be otherwise? Earth was reimbodying itself, and achieved it by means of all the lesser lives, which includes ourselves. Just as man incarnates by means of all the atoms, molecules, cellular and other lives which form his ethereal and material bodies, so when Earth commenced its long process of reimbodying, all the kingdoms of Earth took part.

However, neither Earth nor the kingdoms of Earth resembled even remotely what we see about us today. For then everything was spiritual, ethereal, astral, not physical as now. With each succeeding pulsation or cycle or round, Earth and the lives of Earth grew more material until its most material phase, which is roughly where we are today. We call our present Earth-cycle the fourth round. In this round on this physical globe of ours each of the kingdoms has successively dominated Earth. At one time mineral activity was most intense for millions of years producing world-changing volcanism, followed by long intervals of metamorphism; then volcanism, then change, again and again.

As the mineral efflorescence subsided, the plant kingdom began to come in, eventually becoming dominant, covering the globe with its greenery, and for millions of years successive generations died and renewed themselves, thus laying down the fossilized energy from which we are still benefiting. Overlapping and gradually superseding it was the incursion of the animal life-wave or kingdom of multimyriad types. The reptilian era of gigantic creatures and insects climaxed and declined, giving way to a new insurgence, our own human life-wave.

At this point it would clarify the picture to quote from volume II of The Secret Doctrine, page one, where HPB sets down some guidelines, three additional propositions, regarding human evolution on our physical globe during the present or fourth round. We shall be going into these somewhat in detail in order to explain her fundamental propositions.

As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas: it teaches (a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different portions of our globe; (b) the birth of the astral, before the physical body: the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round, preceded every mammalian – the anthropoids included – in the animal kingdom. – SD II: 1

The first three propositions given in volume I deal with the birth of worlds: how from the unknown darkness finite worlds are born – cosmic entities which achieve their reimbodiment by means of all the lesser lives or kingdoms of which they are composed. In the case of planets like our Earth, this takes place in a series of pulsations or rounds. HPB speaks of seven or possibly several more than these. As planets like Earth proliferate outward over a certain portion of inner and outer space, they grow more and more physical until a climax has been reached; and then they begin to etherealize – the heavy elements begin to break up – stage by stage until eventually they die, withdraw together with all their lives onto higher planes, sometimes leaving moons or remnants called kama-rupas (in the case of humans) on the various cosmic planes they once occupied. Our own moon is an example in point. These moons have an enormous influence on their offspring planet now reimbodied, and HPB speaks of this in several places in The Secret Doctrine.

The three new propositions given in volume II have to do with life on this physical globe of ours in this fourth round. As said earlier, our globe in this round has seen various kingdoms dominate one by one: mineral, vegetable, animal; and now the human life-wave is dominant, the other kingdoms being recessive. First HPB speaks of the seven great root-races that were born simultaneously. As the chapter continues we note that although the seven primeval races did appear simultaneously, they did so in seed or germ, and one by one flowered, each on its own continental system. These are described by HPB. When we study these accounts of earlier races, we should bear in mind that we are reading about ourselves. For those past races were the scenes of our previous striving. We were the Hyperboreans, the Lemurians, the Atlanteans. It is the story of our own past.

The second additional proposition of volume II is most important, for it explains that the astral body is formed before the physical and is a model for the physical body. This principle may be applied to individual human or other births, as well as to the entire series of root-races; or for that matter to the planetary chain as a whole. As pertains to the individual, we learn that physical birth takes place as the nascent physical body follows on the physical plane the corresponding process on the astral plane, as the astral or pattern body unfolds cell by cell. This key given by HPB speaks to the question raised earlier as to how the single germ cell proliferates into a full-grown adult.

As applied to the seven races, HPB asserts that the individuals of the first race were more astral than physical, like gigantic cells. The second race was also astral, but the rudiments of the organs began to appear. These two races go back many millions of years.

Each race flourishes upon its own system of continents. The first race continent was termed the “Sacred Imperishable Land” and was located at the North Pole. The second race, called the Hyperboreans by the ancient Greeks, occupied a horseshoe-shaped continent in the far north. The Lemurians and Atlanteans, the third and fourth races, inhabited continents large portions of which may now be under the oceans, buried under deserts, or may be still in use as parts of existing continents. Because root-races endure for millions of years, the continents they live upon varied greatly during their own life span. Nothing in nature is static. Each race is born from the midpoint of its parent race, from its dark age or kali-yuga, as the Hindus term it. When a race has entered its kali-yuga or most material cycle, the seeds of the next race begin to appear and come on in increasing numbers. Eventually as these seeds become numerous, they are separated geographically, and portions of the old continents become unlivable and begin to break up or submerge. In the case of our own fifth race, Central Asia was the cradleland for those fleeing from Atlantean depravity. There in Central Asia our young race enjoyed its golden and silver ages in a series of splendid civilizations. Our own race, the fifth, is now entering its kali-yuga, its midpoint.

The first race reproduced by simple cell division, hence it is said that its individuals knew no death. The second race towards its end reproduced by budding. The third or Lemurian race as it grew more and more physical commenced reproducing by what the Puranas of India describe as sweat-born, that is, by casting off or sweating vital cells. There also was a time when the third race was oviparous, that is, egg laying. And finally, with the division of the race into two sexes, the present form of procreation commenced.

We see here how the patterns are laid down by nature. For the embryo human being starts out as a single cell (the first race), and as it unfolds it undergoes procedures that are memories not only of former races, but of previous rounds when the human kingdom, seeking to build an appropriate body for itself, went through a series of forms that we now associate with the lower kingdoms. This is all remembered in the recapitulation of the embryo.

Perhaps the most important evolutionary event insofar as humanity is concerned took place in the third or Lemurian race, and it is remembered in all the world’s religions and legendary histories almost without exception. When the human vehicle or body was ready, there occurred the awakening of man’s heretofore slumbering mind. You will recall the story of Prometheus, who stole the fire of the gods, the fire of mind, and brought it to man.

In the Far East there were the manasaputras – literally meaning Sons of Mind – who incarnated in man and thus awakened him to mental life and self-awareness, qualities which distinguish the human from the animal. In Christianity we have the story of Lucifer, the light-bringer, who was on the right hand of God and was (symbolically) cast out – the War of the Gods, so to say – and who made his way to the Garden of Eden: Lucifer, the Christian Prometheus, who tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Thereafter humans possessed the power to choose; they could sow and reap karma in a far more potent manner than heretofore. There could no longer be an Eden, a mindless life, for man now had self-conscious mind.

Last night I thought of an interesting sidelight, a kind of scientific confirmation of these wonderful myths that come down to us. Dr. Eiseley, the famous anthropologist, while going through a hall where the supposititious ancestors of man were depicted, found himself strangely disappointed. Somewhere along the line, he felt there must have been a sudden mitosis of the brain – one moment a higher mammal, in the next, thinking man. Alfred Russel Wallace felt that man’s evolution was not so much bodily as in the brain, his mental growth; his evolution took place in the mind and its organ, the brain. He also believed that man’s evolution could not have taken place without the intercession of “higher agencies.”

The legends of superior beings, divine teachers, instructing early mankind in the arts and sciences – legends found all over the world – taken in conjunction with the incarnation in man of his manasaputra or higher self, would certainly have brought about spectacular physiological differences between the human and the anthropoid brain, for example. This is verified. We find that the human trebles its brain size in the first year, something no other mammal succeeds in doing. We see here again how physiology confirms man’s history and how the old myths can be found to have a basis in scientific fact.

We have no time to develop these intriguing topics, including all the attendant activities that took place in human evolution just prior to and following the awakening of mind, such as how the ancient teachings describe the origin of the mammals, who in a strange and interesting fashion took their initial physical birth by means of man’s cast-off vital cells. It is suggested by HPB that before mind was awakened, men united with certain of the higher mammals, thus producing among other creatures the simians or monkey-like races – this act was called by H PB “the sin of the mindless.” Later, elements of the fourth or Atlantean race united, consciously, with some of these simians, and this depraved act produced the anthropoids, which thus have two or more drops of human blood in them, so to speak. Thus, the anthropoids came from man, not the reverse. In fact, as HPB states, man preceded all the mammals, including the apes, the common ancestor being man himself. The newly “created” mammalian creatures by reason of their own nature became physical more rapidly than the human stock. Hence some geological finds may show certain mammalians seemingly older than man, which was not the case, however. Man was astral and left no fossils in early third race times.

I must close. We have made a long journey here today, from kosmos to atom to man, taking thoughts from these two wonderful volumes. My earnest hope is that these remarks will convey some small idea of the scope of H. P. Blavatsky’s wonderful book. It should be added that HPB was not content merely to voice these principles, but she culled the literature, sciences, and mythologies of the world to illustrate that the principles she was re-expressing have been known and taught throughout immemorial time. She insisted that these ideas were not her own, simply what she had been taught.

Here and there in The Secret Doctrine, in both volumes, are interspersed wondrous insights into sciences now asleep or only partly awake in the modern consciousness, such as the many-layered interpretation of legend, myth, and symbol; the sciences of alchemy, augury, and divination; the story of initiation and the Mystery schools which were founded in the fourth or Atlantean race, and which existed in all parts of the world. The Mystery schools were places where stage by stage, first by instruction, discipline, and purification, and later through actual experience, the aspiring disciple might achieve within himself the birth of his inner god or Christos: an achievement which over the many rounds and races every man may aspire to and will in time succeed in bringing about, if not in this cycle or manvantara, then in a subsequent one.

The theme of this paper has been to illustrate by analogy how the history of mankind and the globe on which, or in which, he lives may be read in the story of how a single human being achieves his birth. Our past is compressed. All of it is engraved upon nature’s secret processes, unseen, but part of Earth’s memory. And our futures may be discerned in the patterns of the life-waves as they pass through the various globes in the unfolding rounds.

[The Q & A session follows]

J. V. M. - I think it would be wonderful to hear your ideas on these subjects, and questions – which I do not guarantee to answer!

M. K., New York, NY – You mentioned there were seven races that appeared simultaneously, and you said that they were in seed form. Then I assume that these same seven races are the ones that inhabited the different continents. Their development is traced successively. Could you elaborate on this point? How is it that both of these things occurred? What do you mean in “seed form”? Does HPB say this? What evidence is there in the SD for the simultaneous appearance in seed form and then the successive development of each one? Do you follow my question?

J. V. M. – Yes. I can’t pretend to give a thorough answer to that. Each race has its own essential characteristic to work out. They were all born at the same time, but they did not flower all at the same time. On the first continent it was the first race that flowered, and on the second continent the second race, and so on. HPB describes the continents on which these races evolved.

We have to have in mind that the seven nascent races provide the evolutionary means for man to achieve an all-round development and unfold all parts of his nature. For example, we are in the fifth race. We are also in the fourth round – but we won’t go into all that. In the fifth race we have been more cerebral than some races, for the fifth principle is mind. It is devoutly to be hoped that the sixth race will bring in more of the buddhic quality – buddhi being the sixth principle; I’m sure it will. Our present race with its misused mind will create situations that will separate out those in whom the buddhic principle is more alive, and eventually they will be isolated geographically from the other parts of the fifth race. Those who continue on the path of cold and merciless cerebration without any of the higher elements will go their way and their continents will gradually disappear or alter drastically. Someone else may have further ideas.

W. M., London, U.K. – If we are halfway to the fifth race, can you tell me if we are witnessing the birth of the new race with all the mixture of the races which is taking place at this time in our countries?

J. V. M. – It’s a wonderful question. We are indeed in the fifth race and we are approaching our midpoint, but we are just entering kali-yuga. Kali-yuga lasts 432,000 years. It sounds interminable to us who like things to happen yesterday! But it goes on and on and evolution becomes very intense. The old saying is that chelas long for kali-yuga because all the opposition, all the turmoil, develop strength, whereas in the golden periods it is not so intense, and one drifts along. As we come into kaliyuga – we’re only into it 5,000 years; it began with the death of Krishna in 3102 B.C. – we will see signs of the new and better race in people whose intuition is alive and whose hearts are open. Our next race will be a considerable improvement on what we are experiencing now.

W. E. S., San Diego, CA – The story you’ve told us is wonderful, especially, I think, from the scientific standpoint. HPB said that science was theosophy’s best friend. But could you also explain how through this also runs that golden thread of ethics? Ethics – isn’t ethics also scientific? And how can you explain that through the pages of The Secret Doctrine?

J. V. M. – I’d love to talk to that. Early mankind, after mind had awakened, was taught by great beings, and those divine teachers taught not merely the arts and sciences but they also impressed upon the pure and unsoiled minds of that time certain principles. It is we who have to choose between being merely intellectual or having ethics in the forefront of our mind and heart. After the Lemurian race had run its course, humanity sank into a more material life as the Atlanteans. They built wonderful civilizations no doubt comparable to, if not greater in some respects than, our own. In times like these the ethical instinct tends to flutter feebly but now we have passed the low point represented by the fourth or Atlantean race. We’ve entered the fifth race where the mind has been particularly active. Now as the sixth race comes on, if our minds can be illuminated by the compassion and the insight of the buddhic principle, then we will be well on our way to achieving real humanhood. Ethics are the most scientific discipline you can think of. Ethics are the manner in which we fumbling human beings should live if we wish to live in accord with nature. And if we don’t live ethically, we transgress nature and we pay the price.

M. S., Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA – You mentioned man’s evolution both in a spiritual and a physical way, yet you stated that HPB in the third proposition said that man preceded every other mammalian form. Or at least that’s what I thought I heard. I seem to have a problem understanding this in the light of other evolutionary theories, such as that promulgated by Darwin.

J. V. M. – Exactly. HPB foresaw that and said that the three propositions she was bringing forth in the second volume were diametrically opposed to some of the dogmas of science. The question was, first, how can we say that the mammalia came after man when the facts of science seem quite to the contrary? I must have you repeat the first part of your question, if you will.

M. S. – I thought I heard you state that man has been evolving in spiritual and physical ways a long time, over millennia, but also that HPB’s third proposition was that man preceded other mammalia.

J. V. M. – I get the picture now. Of course man was not physical before the mammalia. The mammals physicalized much more quickly than man by reason of the bent of their nature. With respect to evolution on a number of planes, that is very important because, in the case of man, for instance, he has awakened in himself a number of faculties. He is not any longer the victim of his environment. He doesn’t have to grow fur to stay warm and so he has no need to change the skin he has. If he suffers cold, he’ll just build a house, or he’ll wear clothes, or heat the house. In other words, he’s not entirely the creature of environment that we usually picture animals and the lower creatures as being.

Even these, as Alfred Russel Wallace – the great anthropologist and co-discoverer of the evolutionary theory which bears Darwin’s name pointed out, are protected by the forces of nature which are living things. Certain patterns laid down in nature account for the fact that animals often know when a severe winter is coming, let us say, and build their nests higher in the trees or whatever. Humans have developed ahead of the animals in many areas, but have lost something in the process. For instance, when man descended more and more into matter in the Lemurian race and later in Atlantean times, H. P. Blavatsky tells us that the great teachers withdrew, adding in parenthesis “became invisible.” What she was saying was that man, by having become engrossed in physical nature and in appearances, lost some of the faculties of sensing what is really happening behind the scenes, presaging events in nature. And we are still, relatively speaking, less sensitive than the so-called dumb beast who sees better, hears better and, what’s more, senses more than we do along certain inner lines.

All creatures are evolving on many levels, and this is particularly true of man. He is evolving spiritually. His mind is evolving. He is hoping to evolve his emotions; it takes a long time, it seems. His physical body is evolving and changing less than those of the animal kingdoms, the reason being that his evolution is mainly inward, not outward. The fact is that man became physical more reluctantly than the animals did. When the mammalians appeared, man was still partly astral. But the animals because of the bias of their nature descended into material expression much more quickly than man did. Thus, although man was considerably older than the mammals, which first appeared in this round during the third root-race, nevertheless the mammals were physical earlier than man and therefore, as I said, perhaps fossils would be found of mammalia which appear to antedate man. Well, the scientific concept of the age of civilized man is something that is inconceivable to theosophists – dating civilization at most at 15,000 years seems to us to be totally ridiculous.

E. W., Sepulveda, CA – Haven’t we been given indication in recent discoveries that there are human fossils two million years old now? I just read about that the other day. We’re pushing the whole process back from the scientific point of view.

J . V. M. – I think a lot of evidence that is uncovered is ignored, not with any deliberate intent of falsifying, but ignored because the researcher sees only what he is prepared to see. Many a scientist goes into his investigation with his framework already in place and he puts the pieces he sees into that framework. It is in many respects a violation of the scientific method, which should be that you must adapt your theories to the facts you discover, and not the reverse. I think that there must be many, many examples of civilized man’s great antiquity.

There is, of course, another side to it. Suppose we were to discover overnight tremendous things showing civilized man to be millions of years old. Considering the place that science has in the thought life of the world, such a discovery might precipitate an era of total chaos because people would lose faith in something that in its own way is holding things together just as religion used to do, but which it no longer does in the same way. The secret, of course, is to unite the spiritual explanation with the physical expression, which is what HPB did in The Secret Doctrine. That’s the only way to go. We won’t explain man’s evolution without going along that line.

W. H., Wilmington, CA – I started reading this marvelous book this summer. I still haven’t finished it. It’ll be several years before I finish it. My wife keeps asking me about the title. She says, “What is this Secret Doctrine? What’s it about?” And I explain chapter by chapter. She says, “Well, that’s no secret. What’s the secret? It’s interesting. It’s challenging. It’s very strange. But why is it a secret? Find out for me and tell me today why it is called a secret doctrine.”

J. V. M. – I’m sorry, but the answer to that question is a secret! The Secret Doctrine is merely a phrasing in English words of a term which has been useful down through the millennia: that there was and is a doctrine for public consumption and an inner teaching, a secret doctrine for those who have the eyes to see it under the exoteric and often symbolic teaching.

I would say the greater proportion of the marvelous wisdom that could be had in The Secret Doctrine is secret to me still. Thank goodness! If we didn’t feel that way, it would become a bible, and we would say “if it isn’t there, it can’t be true,” and “if it is there, it must be true.” Of course I believe that to some extent, but we’re encouraged to use our own faculties at all times. There is an esoteric side to everything, and this book is astounding. She couldn’t come out and say everything, but she did wonderful things: she would state something, and you’d say, “I’m sure there’s more to that, I feel something’s missing.” Well, be alert. It may be a hundred and fifty pages later in a footnote that you’ll see something and say to yourself: “Oh! By golly, that’s exactly what it’s about!” That’s the way you have to read The Secret Doctrine. You have to sit loose in the saddle – it’s very important. If you don’t, you have your idée fixe and you will have to destroy it before you can get some bigger idée fixe.

H. M., Vancouver, BC – What puzzles me sometimes is where we stand on progress in that long time. If you trace the history of man, definitely there have been some enlightened periods. I’m not speaking about the Golden Age of course, which is very far away, but obviously there have been historically proven facts that man was enlightened or did more sensible things than we are doing in our scientifically developed time. One would think when we are coming back time after time, . . . in other words, we are the same souls which appear on the earth here, it makes me wonder that we have made so little progress.

J. V. M. – Well, I can’t peek back and see what the former races were really like. Maybe we’d find that it’s like reading some of the books we enjoy in English literature: how romantic the stagecoaches were, and the people in the streets; but of course they had no sewage disposal, everything was just thrown out in the street. There are all these sides to it. I think we’re mistaken if we think that advanced technology means that the race has evolved further, as Emmett implied earlier. True evolution is the uniting of the intellectual principle with the moral principle, and as long as that moral principle is weak we will develop technology that will threaten our own existence, which is happening. Not just the bomb – I’m talking about the environment.

Civilization has its ups and downs because it depends upon the type of souls coming in. The age of Pericles in Greece was great because there were great souls incarnating, and some of the Dark Ages were dark – I don’t think in all respects they were dark – because that was the karma of the egos coming into incarnation. The human race is perhaps a hundred times more numerous than those now in incarnation. Most of them are undergoing their after-death states, during which they stay away a long time. Souls come in and create the age – which is themselves – and there are dark ages and there are fine ages, just as there are evil people and good people. It is unfortunate that we judge by intellect who are good and not good. I am thinking of some of those who belong to the most rigid churches – I mean rigid – and yet they are sometimes the finest people you can imagine. We have to be generous even when it hurts, and until we do the race will suffer.

[Lunch Break, end of Q & A]

-- Report of Proceedings Secret Doctrine Centenary October 29 – 30, 1988, pp. 8-22

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