Section 1

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s[ EPITOME v THEOSOPHY
By WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
WITH AN HISTORICAL NOTE
PRICE
25 Cents
Theosophy Company
Los Angeles, Cal. 1922
An Epitome of Theosophy
By William Q. Judge
WITH AN HISTORICAL NOTE
The Theosophy Company
Los Angeles, Cal. 1922
Historical Note
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/Jj N EPITOME OF THEOSOPHY is the earliest
f\ /-jj as it remains the best, condensed, yet withal L / I su^stantive treatment of the Great Message ^•—^-ut. of the doctrines of the Wisdom-Religion, or Theosophy.
It was originally issued as "A Theosophical Tract" by the Aryan Theosophical Society of New York City in December, 1887. This "Tract" was printed in full in Mr. Judge's magazine, The Path, Volume II, No. 10, January, 1888, — a brief or digest of six pages, rather than a treatment; a table rather than its contents.
The foundation of The Path, the return of Madame Blavatsky to active effort in the West by her residence in London and the commencement of her magazine, Lucifer; the public announce- ment of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society; the foundation of the Blavatsky Lodge at London; the publication of The Secret Doc- trine; the organization of the American Section of the Theosophical Society — all these occurred con- temporaneously in the years 1886-1888, and be- tokened a new orbit of action, a great revival of Theosophy pure and simple in the Western World. An Epitome of Theosophy, even in its original immature 'form, had no small share in this revival. So great was its circulation in the United States, so great the need elsewhere, that the Theosophical Publication Society in England requested Mr. Judge to revise the leaflet for issuance in Great Britain.
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Mr. Judge accordingly re-wrote entirely the original Tract as put together at his suggestion by Mr. Alexander Fullerton and others, enlarging it to a booklet, and sent the manuscript to the Theo- sophical Publication Society at London. Its man- agers wrote back that the treatment was entirely too "deep" for the average mind; that what was needed was something "light." Mr. Judge replied to this criticism in characteristic fashion. His an- swer will be found in Volume II of the Letters That Have Helped Me, in No. IV of that book. He says (in part) : —
"It is with great regret that I learn from recent London advices that the Managers of the Society there think that the Tract, 'Epitome of Theos- ophy,' which appeared in The Path, is 'too ad- vanced to be reprinted now, and that what is needed is a 'stepping-stone from fiction to phil- osophy.'
"Permit me to say that I cannot agree with this opinion, nor with the policy which is outlined by it. The opinion is erroneous, and the policy is weak as well as being out of accord with that of the Masters.
"If I had made up that Epitome wholly myself I might have some hesitation in speaking this way, but I did not. The general idea of such a series of tracts was given to me some two years ago, and this one was prepared by several students who know what the people need. It is at once compre- hensive and fundamental. It covers most of the ground, and if any sincere reader grasps it he will have food for his reflection of the sort needed.
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"If, however, we are to proceed by a mollified passage from folly (which is fiction) to philos- ophy, then we at once diverge from the path marked out for us by the Masters; and for this statement I can refer to letters from Them in my hands. I need only draw your attention to the fact that when those Masters began to cause Their servants to give out matter in India, They did not begin with fiction, but with stern facts. We are not seeking to cater to a lot of fiction readers and curiosity hunters, but to the pressing needs of earn- est minds. Fiction readers never influenced a nation's progress. And these earnest minds do not desire, and ought not to be treated to a gruel which the sentence just quoted would seem to indi- cate as their fate.
"I therefore respectfully urge upon you that the weak and erroneous policy to which I have re- ferred shall not be followed, but that strong lines of action be taken, and that we leave fiction to the writers who profit by it or who think that thus people's minds can be turned to the Truth. If a contrary line be adopted then we will not only dis- appoint the Master (if that be possible) but we will in a very large sense be guilty of making false representations to a growing body of subscribers here as elsewhere."
These wise counsels of Mr. Judge, fortified by the advice of Madame Blavatsky, prevailed with the Managers of the T.P.S., and the Epitome was accordingly issued in the summer of 1888. Subse- quentlv the work has been reissued and circulated by various Theosophical bodies.
As we feel that the present cycle of effort in the Theosophical Movement closely parallels the be-
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ginnings of the great renaissance of 1886-1888, and that a whole new generation of incarnated Souls are wrestling with the same problems, and suffer from the same needs, we think it timely and fitting to make available to them this wonderful Epitome of the only doctrines which have power to heal, by teaching, the nations. Hence the pres- ent Edition.
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An Epitome of Theosophy
THEOSOPHY, the Wisdom-Religion, has ex- isted from immemorial time. It offers us a theory of nature and of life which is founded upon knowledge acquired by the Sages of the past, more especially those of the East; and its higher students claim that this knowledge is not imagined or inferred, but that it is a knowledge of facts seen and known by those who are willing to com- ply with the conditions requisite ' for seeing and knowing.
Theosophy, meaning knowledge of or about God (not in the sense of a personal anthropomor- phic God, but in that of divine "godly" wisdom), and the term "God" being universally accepted as including the whole of both the known and the unknown, it follows that "Theosophy" must imply wisdom respecting the absolute ; and, since the ab- solute is without beginning and eternal, this wis- dom must have existed always. Hence Theosophy is sometimes called the Wisdom-Religion, because from immemorial time it has had knowledge of all the laws governing the spiritual, the moral, and the material.
The theory of nature and of life which it offers is not one that was at first speculatively laid down and then proved by adjusting facts or conclusions to fit it; but is an explanation of existence, cosmic and individual, derived from knowledge reached by those who have acquired the power to see be- hind the curtain that hides the operations of nature from the ordinary mind. Such Beings are called Sages, using the term in its highest sense. Of late
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they have been called Mahatmas and Adepts. In ancient times they were known as the Rishis and Maharishis — the last being a word that means Great Rishis.
It is not claimed that these exalted beings, or Sages, have existed only in the East. They are known to have lived in all parts of the globe, in obedience to the cyclic laws referred to below. But as far as concerns the present development of the human race on this planet, they now are to be found in the East, although the fact may be that some of them had, in remote times, retreated from even the American shores.
There being of necessity various grades among the students of this Wisdom-Religion, it stands to reason that those belonging to the lower degrees are able to give out only so much of the knowledge as is the appanage of the grade they have reached, and depend, to some extent, for further informa- tion upon students who are higher yet. It is these higher students for whom the claim is asserted that their knowledge is not mere inference, but that it concerns realities seen and known by them. While some of them are connected with the Theo- sophical Society, they are yet above it. The power to see and absolutely know such laws is surrounded by natural inherent regulations which must be com- plied with as conditions precedent; and it is, there- fore, not possible to respond to the demand of the worldly man for an immediate statement of this wisdom, insomuch as he could not comprehend it until those conditions are fulfilled. As this knowl- edge deals with laws and states of matter, and of consciousness undreamed of by the "practical" Western world, it can only be grasped, piece by
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piece, as the student pushes forward the demoli- tion of his preconceived notions, that arc due either to inadequate or to erroneous theories. It is claimed by these higher students that, in the Occident especially, a false method of reasoning has for many centuries prevailed, resulting in a universal habit of mind which causes men to look upon many effects as causes, and to regard that which is real as the unreal, putting meanwhile the unreal in the place of the real. As a minor exam- ple, the phenomena of mesmerism and clairvoyance have, until lately, been denied by Western science, yet there have always been numerous persons who know for themselves, by incontrovertible intro- spective evidence, the truth of these phenomena, and, in some instances, understand their cause and rationale.
The following are some of the fundamental propositions of Theosophy:
The spirit in man is the only real and perma- nent part of his being; the rest of his nature being variously compounded. And since decay is inci- dent to all composite things, everything in man but his spirit is impermanent.
Further, the universe being one thing and not diverse, and everything within it being connected with the whole and with every other thing therein, of which upon the upper plane (below referred to) there is a perfect knowledge, no act or thought occurs without each portion of the great whole perceiving and noting it. Hence all are insepar- ably bound together by the tie of Brotherhood.
This first fundamental proposition of Theos- ophy postulates that the universe is not an aggre- gation of diverse unities but that it is one whole.
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This whole is what is denominated "Deity" by Western Philosophers, and "Para-Brahm" by the Hindu Vedantins. It may be called the Unmani- fested, containing within itself the potency of every form of manifestation, together with the laws governing those manifestations. Further, it is taught that there is no creation of worlds in the theological sense; but that their appearance is due strictly to evolution. When the time comes for the Unmanifested to manifest as an objective .Universe, which it does periodically, it emanates a Power or "The First Cause" — so called because it itself is the rootless root of that Cause, and called in the East the "Causeless Cause." The first Cause we may call Brahma, or Ormazd, or Osiris, or by any name we please. The projection into time of the influence or so-called "breath of Brahma" causes all the worlds and the beings upon them to gradually appear. They remain in mani- festation just as long as that influence continues to proceed forth in evolution. After long aeons the outbreathing, evolutionary influence slackens, and the universe begins to go into obscuration, or pralaya, until, the "breath" being fully indrawn, no objects remain, because nothing is but Brahma. Care must be taken by the student to make a dis- tinction between Brahma (the impersonal Para- brahma) and Brahma the manifested Logos. A discussion of the means used by this power in act- ing would be out of place in this Epitome, but of those means Theosophy also treats.
This breathing-forth is known as a Manvan- tara, or the Manifestation of the world between two Manus (from Manu, and Antara "between") and the completion of the inbreathing brings with
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it Pralaya, or destruction. It is from these truths that the erroneous doctrines of "creation" and the "last judgment" have sprung. Such Manvantaras and Pralayas have eternally occurred, and will continue to take place periodically and forever.
For the purpose of a Manvantara two so-called eternal principles are postulated, that is, Purusha and Prakriti (or spirit and matter), because both are ever present and conjoined in each manifesta- tion. Those terms are used here because no equivalent for them exists in English. Purusha is called "spirit," and Prakriti "matter," but this Purusha is not the unmanifested, nor is Prakriti matter as known to science; the Aryan Sages therefore declare that there is a higher spirit still, called Purushottama. The reason for this is that at the night of Brahma, or the so-called indrawing of his breath, both Purusha and Prakriti are ab- sorbed in the Unmanifested; a conception which is the same as the idea underlying the Biblical ex- pression— "remaining in the bosom of the Father."
This brings us to the doctrine of Universal Evo- lution as expounded by the Sages of the Wisdom- Religion. The Spirit, or Purusha, they say, pro- ceeds from Brahma through the various forms of matter evolved at the same time, beginning in the world of the spiritual from the highest and in the material world from the lowest form. The low- est form is one unknown as yet to modern science. Thus, therefore, the mineral, vegetable and ani- mal forms each imprison a spark of the Divine, a portion of the indivisible Purusha.
These sparks struggle to "return to the Father," or in other words, to secure self-con-
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sciousness and at last come into the highest form, on Earth, that of man, where alone self-conscious- ness is possible to them. The period, calculated in human time, during which this evolution goes on embraces millions of ages. Each spark of di- vinity has, therefore, millions of ages in which to accomplish its mission — that of obtaining com- plete self-consciousness while in the form of man. But by this is not meant that the mere act of com- ing into human form of itself confers self-con- sciousness upon this divine spark. That great work may be accomplished during the Manvan- tara in which a Divine spark reaches the human form, or it may not ; all depends upon the individu- al's own will and efforts. Each particular spirit thus goes through the Manvantara, or enters into manifestation for its own enrichment and for that of the Whole. Mahatmas and Rishis are thus gradually evolved during a Manvantara, and be- come, after its expiration, planetary spirits, who guide the evolutions of other future planets. The planetary spirits of our globe are those who in previous Manvantaras — or days of Brahma — made the efforts, and became in the course of that long period Mahatmas.
Each Manvantara is for the same end and pur- pose, so that the Mahatmas who have now at- tained those heights, or those who may become such in the succeeding years of the present Man- vantara, will probably be the planetary spirits of the next Manvantara for this or other planets. This system is thus seen to be based upon the iden- tity of Spiritual Being, and, under the name of "Universal Brotherhood," constitutes the basic
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idea of the Theosophical Society, whose object is the realization of that Brotherhood among men.
The Sages say that this Purusha is the basis of all manifested objects. Without it nothing could exist or cohere. It interpenetrates everything ev- erywhere. It is the reality of which, or upon which, those things called real by us are mere im- ages. As Purusha reaches to and embraces all beings, they are all connected together; and in or on the plane where that Purusha is, there is a per- fect consciousness of every act, thought, object, and circumstance, whether supposed to occur there, or on this plane, or any other. For below the spirit and above the intellect is a plane of con- sciousness in which experiences are noted, com- monly called man's "spiritual nature;" this is fre- quently said to be as susceptible of culture as his body or his intellect.
This upper plane is the real register of all sen- sations and experiences, although there are other registering planes. It is sometimes called the "subconscious mind." Theosophy, however, holds that it is a misuse of terms to say that the spiritual nature can be cultivated. The real object to be kept in view is to so open up or make porous the lower nature that the spiritual nature may shine through it and become the guide and ruler. It is only "cultivated" in the sense of having a vehicle prepared for its use, into which it may descend. In other words, it is held that the real man, who is the higher self — being the spark of the Divine before alluded to — overshadows the visible being, which has the possibility of becoming united to that spark. Thus it is said that the higher Spirit is not in the man, but above him. It is always
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peaceful, unconcerned, blissful, and full of abso- lute knowledge. It continually partakes of the Divine state, being continually that state itself, "conjoined with the Gods, it feeds upon Ambro- sia." The object of the student is to let the light of that spirit shine through the lower coverings.
This "spiritual culture" is only attainable as the grosser interests, passions, and demands of the flesh are subordinated to the interests, aspirations and needs of the higher nature; and this is a mat- ter of both system and established law.