Inner Circle

“ For although not nominally a secret society it is one in effect, being composed of outer and inner circles and absolutely controlled by supreme directors. The inner circle, known as the Esoteric Section, or rather the Eastern School of Theosophy--usually referred to as the E.S.--is in reality a secret society, consisting in its turn of three further circles, the innermost composed of the Mahatmas or Masters of the White Lodge, the second of the Accepted Pupils or Initiates, and the third of the Learners or ordinary members. ”

“ Where aspirational thought exists, it invariably shows itself in a beautiful little violet circle at the top of the ovoid of the mental body. As the aspirant draws near to the gateway of the Path this circle increases in size and radiancy, and in the initiate it is a splendid glowing cap of the most lovely colour imaginable. Below it comes often the blue ring of devotional thought, usually rather a narrow one, except in the case of the few whose religion is really deep and genuine. ”

“ The things of the inner world appear to us only inside the circle which is formed round us by the objects of the outer world, beyond which circle our spirits cannot soar, except in dim mysterious bodings--never ”

“ He now compared the spiritual and bodily sides of a man to the concave and convex sides of a circle, as inner and outer sides of the same process, which is psychical as viewed from within and physical as viewed from without. ”

“ I rather gather around myself, link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese, my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square—the circle is my own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty corners which it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the remainder of mankind. ”

“ What if we imagine all humanity as laid side by side to match, so as to form one continuous body, one continuous mentality, one continuous inward self? We might represent this blending of humanity as taking place in a circle, thus:
In this imaginary representation of humanity, each human being is a sector of the circle, and at the apexes of the sectors, where each of us is the godlike thinker, the blending must of necessity be perfect, however imperfect the blending and sharply defined the sectors may be on the mental and bodily planes. ”

“ Their presence round her at this moment, their homage, the emotion visible everywhere, proved that all was different, that she had passed the barrier which once existed between her and the world which knows and thinks, and had been drawn within that circle of individualities which, however undefined, is still the vital circle of any time or society, for it is the circle which represents, more or less brilliantly and efficiently, the intellectual life of a generation. ”

“ Let me say rather, it would be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to feel a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference. ”

“ And we know that a Circle is a higher Being than a Straight Line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection.
Sphere. It is not for me to classify human faculties according to merit. Yet many of the best and wisest in Spaceland think more of the affections than of the understanding, more of your despised Straight Lines than of your belauded Circles. ”

“ As we follow the chain through this last region of disease, misery, and sin, of embodied Discord, and feel, as we must, in the mutilated affinities of its revolting forms, their fearful relation to this fair, harmonious creation,--how does the awful fact, in these its breathing fragments, speak to us of a fallen world!
As the living centre of this stupendous circle stands the Soul of Man; the conscious Reality, to which the vast inclosure is but the symbol. ”

“ The contact of a system of philosophy or religion with reality is that of a tangent with a circle. It touches the circle at one point, but instantly the circle edges away.
In every man there is something of the Universal Spirit, strangely limited by that which is finite and personal, but still there. ”

“ In Circle One, which is unlocated, the soul has no condition of bodily existence as in Circle Two. The second Circle appears to be a state something like the one we are in now—a mixture of good and evil. ”

“ Within ourselves, at the apexes of our sectors, each of us is Creator, for there we are one with Him; there also are we love, wisdom, power, and can create our outward lives as we will - provided that we keep our mentality clear and unclouded for the transmission of the godlike ideal of the spirit into the bodily life.
In the circle, not only is each sector the equal of every other sector before the law ”

“ To what state or place does The Path lead? Let us attempt to answer by asking you to imagine a series of millions of circles, one within the other. Each circle means a stage of Life. The outer circles are filled with life in its lowest and most material stages—each circle nearer the Centre holds higher and higher forms—until Men (or what were once Men) become as gods. Still on, and on, and on. does the form of life grow higher, until the human mind cannot grasp the idea. But what is the Centre? The MIND of the entire Spiritual Body—the ABSOLUTE! ”

“ But I would inform the reader, that whatever may be the circle to which minds belong, in the rudimental or second sphere, it does not separate one from another by an impassable partition, so that one can not hold intercourse with another, though occupying different circles. As different circles in the body may converse together, so different circles in the spirit world may do the same. The circles do not represent arbitrary lines of division between spirits, but simply degrees of wisdom. ”

“ He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. ”

“ To Choose Thou canst choose the eastern Circle for thy part,
And within its sacred precincts thou shalt rest;
Thou shalt fold pale, slender hands upon thy breast,
Thou shalt fasten silent eyes upon thy heart.
If there steal within the languor of thine ark
The thunder of the waters of the earth,
The human, simple cries of pain and mirth,
The wails of little children in the dark,
Thou shalt contemplate thy Circle's radiant gleam,
Thou shalt gather self and God more closely still:
Let the Piteous and the Foolish moan at will,
So thou shelter in the sweetness of thy dream. ”

“ The one idea upon which we would insist is that the circle be considered and conducted as a permanent institution, that it be made the intellectual center of your life. How wonderful an impetus to thought and culture is such an organization, only those who lack its influence can tell. ”

“ The circle, which is self-enclosed and at rest, and, qua substance, holds its own moments, is an immediate relation, the immediate, continuous relation of elements with their unity, and hence arouses no sense of wonderment. But that an accident as such, when out loose from its containing circumference,—that what is bound and held by something else and actual only by being connected with it,—should obtain an existence all its own, gain freedom and independence on its own account—this is the portentous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of pure ego. ”

“ The first duty of this circle will be to make known the existence of mind, in this sphere, to the doubting of earth. The wisdom of the circle will next be employed to abolish the errors of mind. No sectarian organization will justify the revelation, which this circle will disclose. All will stand amazed at the wonder. When the wonder subsides, the condition of mind will be aided. Spirits will communicate a system of ethics, adapted to the amelioration of human wrong. ”

“ The first is that a psychic circle is a great source of strength to one who is himself psychic, as is shown continually in our own experience, where, with a sympathetic and helpful surrounding, an atmosphere is created where all the powers are drawn out. ”

“ The simplest symbol of it is the circle, the line which returns into itself, not the straight line produced indefinitely; and the readiest way to find it is to consider the satisfaction of desire. There we have myself and its opposite, and the return from the opposite, the finding in the other nothing but self. ”

“ For the first, indeed, and most proximate circle is that which every one describes about his own mind as a centre, in which circle the body, and whatever is assumed for the sake of the body, are comprehended. ”

“ The object of this fine essay quaintly entitled Circles is to reconcile this rigidity of unalterable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory of Circles reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid essay on Love. ”

“ Each living creature, as part of this great circle, is a sector in the circle, thus: Such a sector consists, as does the entire circle, likewise of three factors,
that which thinks; mentality, where thoughts are shaped; the body, the material life, where spirit finds expression as outward form." Nos. 2 and 3--mentality and the bodily form--are but the instruments of the spirit, the thinker within us. The thinker within us is part of the Great Thinker at the centre of the circle of the Universe. So that, according to Mrs. Gillen, it is incorrect to say "I *have* spirit." ”

“ The world revolves the portion of a circle; yet why that circle of a sun-centre, or that wider circle within which both suns and earths revolve, or what the centre which controls the entire system of immensity may be, he dares not affirm. Our lives are miracles, yet we are habituated to them, and name them chance. ”

“ You should establish the circle:
You should melt the world
In a circle of lovers!
Heart burn, voice lull, raise me, lower me,
With the flame of the flagrant love I awaken:
That red flames stop-flowing through the lands,
Cheeks begin to redden in fraternal receiving,
And brotherly, in a solemn circle, through the world
The wave of the song of Understanding begins to bellow... ”

“ The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. ”

“ The "spirit circle," as most of you know, is a company of harmonious, earnest, sympathetic persons joining their psychic powers for the purpose of aiding the medium to establish the lines of psychic communication between the earth plane and the planes of the spiritual world. It must here be stated that by "development" we do not mean the cultivation of the powers of the spirits, but rather the training and unfoldment of the powers of the medium to receive and transmit the power exercised by the spirit controls. ”

“ It is perhaps impossible to find the beginning of a vicious circle, but the first step out of it must be the realization that one is within it, and the realization of some, at any rate, of its component parts. ”

“ The outermost and all-embracing circle of benevolence has inward concentric circles which, like those of the spider's web, are bound together by links, and rest upon each other; making one frame, and capable of one tremor; circles narrower and narrower, closer and closer, as they lie more near to the centre of self from which they proceeded, and which sustains the whole. The order of life does not require that the sublime and disinterested feelings should have to trust long to their own unassisted power. ”

“ As we have repeatedly stated in the foregoing pages, the actual spirit circle is the best possible means of developing the latent powers of mediumship, and the simplest, readiest, and most effective method of discovering the presence of such latent powers in the individual. As a leading medium has told us, it is "the primary school for the study of spiritual facts, and for the training of mediums." ”

“ Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and thought as large and excellent as itself ”

“ Thus, instead of being a perpetually even revolution, the idea of the circle is nothing but the true philosophical idea of progress, of the perpetual growth of the spirit and of reality in itself, where nothing is repeated, save the form of the growth; unless it should be objected to a man walking, that his walking is a standing still, because he always moves his legs in the same time! ”

“ Therefore, sitters at the circle should endeavor to do their part in producing and maintaining such harmony with both the medium, the spirits, and finally with each other—and this last is not the least, by any means. Unless there be at least a very fair degree of harmony between the several members constituting the circle, there will be something important lacking in their harmony of the circle as a whole toward the other two sides of the psychical triangle. ”