Annie Besant

“ The Self of each is the Higher Self of all, and that bond is one which nothing in all worlds can avail to break.
That which raises one raises all; that which degrades one degrades all.
The sin and crime of our races are our sin and crime, and only as we save our brethren can we save ourselves.
One in our inception, one in our goal, we must needs be one in our progress; the “curse of separateness” that is on us, it is ours to remove, and Theosophy, alike as religion and philosophy, will be a failure save as it is the embodiment of the life of Love. ”

“ Trace through the Middle Ages, too often by the lurid light of flames blazing round a human body, the path along which the pioneers of Science toiled, and it will be found that the magicians and wizards were the finger-posts that marked the way. ”

“ But death is only transformation not destruction, and every molecule has pure life essence at its core with the material garment it has woven round itself of its own substance for action on the objective plane. ”

“ In our own time, secure in the completeness of our knowledge, certain that our philosophy embraces all things possible in heaven and earth, we neither honour the teachers as Gods nor denounce them as devils: with a shrug of contempt and a sniff of derision we turn from them, as they come to us with outstretched hands full of priceless gifts, and we mutter, “Frauds, charlatans!” entrenched as we are in our modern conceit that only our century is wise. ”

“ What does concern us is the general plan of evolution, the pilgrimage of the Ego, of the individual, encased in the outer shell of the personality.
The evolution of man consists in the acquirement by the Ego of experience, and the gradual moulding of the physical nature into a form which can readily respond to every prompting of the Spirit within.
This evolution is carried on by the repeated incarnation of the Ego, overshadowed by the Spirit, in successive personalities, through which it lives and acts on the objective plane. ”

“ To none born of women, save the Masters, is it at the present time given by the law of evolution to rise to the Âtmic-Buddhic planes in man; thither the race will climb millenniums hence, but at present it boots not to speak thereof.
Each of these planes has its own organisms, its own phenomena, the laws of its own manifestation; and each can be investigated as exactly, as scientifically, as experimentally, as the objective plane with which we are most familiar. ”

“ In the Middle Ages, when men, having turned from the light, saw devils everywhere in the darkness, the adepts of the Right-Hand Path were dreaded as those of the Left, and where-ever new knowledge appeared and obscure regions of nature were made visible, cries of terror and wrath rent the air, and men paid their benefactors with torture and with death. ”

“ Thus a man may pass from the plane of the objective in which his consciousness is generally acting, on to the other planes: he may pass into the astral in sleep, under mesmerism, under the influence of various drugs; his consciousness may be removed from the physical plane, his body passive, his brain inert; an electric light leaves his eyes unaffected, a gong beaten at his ear cannot rouse the organ of hearing; the organs through which his consciousness normally acts in the physical universe are all useless, for the consciousness that uses them is transferred to another plane. ”

“ Suppose a great sorrow falls on some shrinking human heart; the effect is there, it cannot be avoided, but its future result as cause may be one of two things; Kâma may rebel, the whole personal nature may rise in passionate revolt, and so, warring against the Higher Will, the new cause generated will be of disharmony, bearing in its womb new evil to be born in days to come. ”

“ Every distinction of race and sex, of class and creed, fades away before the essential unity of the indwelling Spirit, before the countless incarnations under all forms of outward garmenture, making the experience of prince and beggar part of the training of all in turn. ”

“ Each of the seven Kosmic planes of manifestation is marked off by its own characteristics; in the first pure spirit, the primary emanation of the ONE, subtlest, rarest, of all manifestations, incognisable even by the highest of Adepts save as present in its vehicle, the Spiritual Soul: without form, without intelligence, as we use the word — these matters are too high, “I cannot attain unto them”.
Next comes the plane of Mind, of loftiest spiritual intelligence, where first entity as entity can be postulated; individualism begins, the Ego first appears. ”

“ Each life should garner some fresh experience, should add some new capacity or strengthen some budding force; thus is built up through numberless generations the Perfect Man.
Hence the doctrine of Reincarnation is the very core and essence of Theosophy, and according to the hold this belief has on life, so will be the grasp of the learner on all Theosophic truth.
There is no doctrine in the range of philosophy which throws so much light on the tangled web of human life as does this doctrine of Reincarnation. ”

“ The Spirit in man is named Âtmã, cognizable only in its vehicle Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul; these are the reflections in man of the highest planes in the universe.
The Spiritual Intelligence is Manas, the Ego in man, the immortal entity, the link between Âtmã-Buddhi and the temporary personality. ”

“ The animal passions and desires may limit its effective expression on their own plane, but they cannot either prompt or prevent its impulses: man's true freedom is found when his lower nature puts itself into line with the higher, and gives free course to the will of the higher Ego.
And so with that Ego itself: able to act freely on the planes below it, it finds its own best freedom as channel of the Universal Will from which it springs, the conscious willing harmony with the All of which it is part.
An effect cannot be altered when the cause has appeared ”

“ Reincarnation under karmic law, until the fruit of every experience has been gathered, every blunder rectified, every fault eradicated, until compassion has been made perfect, strength unbreakable, tenderness complete, self-abnegation the law of life, renunciation for others the natural and joyous impulse of the whole nature. ”

“ On the objective plane we are already able to obey this rule; we do not use our eyes to listen to sounds, and then deny that sounds exist because our eyes cannot hear them nor do we take in hand the microscope to examine a distant nebula, and then say that the nebula is not there because the field of the microscope is dark.
A very slight knowledge of our own objective universe will place us in the right mental attitude towards the unknown. ”

“ The task before it when it starts on the wheel of life on this earth; during the present cycle, is to acquire and assimilate all experience, and so to energize and sublimate the objective form of man that it may become a fit instrument and dwelling for the Spirit; the complete assimilation of the Ego with the Spirit, of Manas with Âtma-Buddhi, being the final goal of the long and painful pilgrimage. ”

“ Mahatmas, Brothers, who are living men, evolved further than average humanity, who work ever for the service of their race with a perfect and selfless devotion, holding their high powers in trust for the common good, content to be without recognition, having passed beyond all desires of the personal self. ”

“ Those who have time, ability, and courage, can develop in themselves the senses and the capacities which enable the consciousness to come into touch with the higher planes, senses and capacities already evolved and fully at work in some, and to be in the course of ages the common inheritance of every child of man. ”

“ All the experiences of a life, gathered up after death, and the essence, as it were, extracted, have their appropriate thought-forms on the Mãnasic plane; as the time for the reincarnation of the Ego approaches, these, with previous unexhausted similar thought-forms, pass to the astral plane, clothe themselves in astral matter, and mould the astral body into the form suitable for the working out of their own natural results. ”

“ Between a barbarian dancing gleefully round the bleeding body of his foe, as he mangles and torments the living tissues, and the Howard who gives his life to save and aid the lowest fallen of his people, how vast the difference as to character ! ”

“ Now the consciousness of man can thus pass from plane to plane because he is himself the universe in miniature, and is built up himself of these seven principles, as they are sometimes called, or better, is himself a differentiation of consciousness on seven planes. ”

“ Why is man alone so diverse !
Theosophy points in answer to the reincarnation of the Ego, and sees in the differing stages of experience reached by that Ego the explanation of the differing intellectual and moral capacities of the personality. ”

“ Similar illustrations might be drawn in connection with every sense, and it is surely not too much to claim that if, on the plane to which our bodies are correlated, phenomena constantly escape our dull perceptions, men shall not found on their ignorance of other planes the absolute denial of their existence. ”

“ In each child of man the true Theosophist recognises a brother to be loved and served, and in the Theosophical Society, Theosophists, under the direction of the Masters, have formed a nucleus for such Brotherhood of Humanity and have made its recognition the only obligation binding on all who enter. ”

“ Now it is well to remember that the chemist is dealing with facts in Nature and that his results may therefore throw light on natural methods, working in larger fields; we may at least learn from such an illustration to clarify our conceptions of the past course of evolution. ”

“ Take, for instance, the immense difference in capacity and in character found within the limits of the human race.
In all plants and in all animals the characteristic qualities of species may vary, but within comparatively narrow limits; so also with man, so far as his outer form, his instincts and his animal passions are concerned. ”

“ The vibration-waves have become so short and rapid that the mechanism of the human ear cannot vibrate in unison with them; the objective phenomenon is there, but the subjective does not respond to it, so that for man it does not exist. ”

“ Its particles cohere, they vibrate, they attract and they repel: what are these but manifestations of that living energy which rolls the worlds in their courses, flashes from continent to continent, thrills from root to summit of the plant, pulses in the animal, reasons in the man ? ”

“ Only as the Manifested becomes, can language be used with meaning; but the appearance of the Manifested implies the Unmanifested, for the Manifested is transitory and mutable, and there must be Something that eternally endures. ”

“ Those who are sufficiently interested in the subject to desire further knowledge can easily pass on into the investigation of evidences, evidences that are within the reach of all who have patience, power of thought and courage. ”

“ We, who are Theosophists, allege that there exists a great body of doctrine philosophical, scientific and ethical, which forms the basis of, and includes all that is accurate in, the philosophies, sciences, and religions of the ancient and modern worlds. ”

“ All these and many other similar puzzles receive light from the idea of the persistent individual that informs each personality, and it is a well-known principle in seeking for some general law underlying a mass of apparently unrelated phenomena that the hypothesis which explains most, brings most into accord with an intelligible sequence, is the one most likely to repay further investigation. ”

“ Passing strange it is to note how the minds of men have changed in their aspect to the guardians of the Hidden Wisdom.
Of old, in their passionate gratitude, men regarded them as wellnigh divine, thinking no honours too great to pay to those who had won the right of entrance into the temple of the Unveiled Truth. ”