True Buddhism is neither a sect nor a religion. It is rather a moral and intellectual reform, which excludes no belief, but adopts none. Yet the Buddhism of today is less a rather dogmatic religion, split into many and heterogeneous sects. Like true Buddhism, Theosophy asserts and maintains the truth common to all religions, pure truth undefiled by the concretions of ages of human passions and needs, and unveils Its majesty to all thinking men.

Progress review of the aims and mission of the Theosophical Society, September 1889, on the occasion of the fifth volume of “Lucifer.” 1. To establish a nucleus of universal brotherhood of man. The Indian National Congress was planned by our Anglo-Indian and Hindu members after the model and on the lines of the Theosophical Society, and has from the first been directed by our own colleagues, men among the most influential in the Indian Empire. From Ceylon the religion of Gautama streamed out to Cambodia, Siam, and Burma; and from this holy land the message of Brotherhood reached Japan. We depicted the chromatic vibrations of the aura of Gautama in the Buddhist Flag — sapphire blue, golden yellow, crimson, white, and scarlet. 2. To promulgate the study oriental philosophy and literature. Our magnificent achievements in India. The revival of Buddhism in Ceylon. Neither race, nor creed, nor colour, nor social class, nor old antipathies are irremovable obstacles to the grand ideals of altruism and brotherhood. 3. To investigate the occult laws and principles in nature and man. We work on the basis that the Higher Self in every man is colourless, cosmopolitan, unsectarian, sexless, and pre-eminently altruistic. The early fruits of the Theosophical Tree, August 1890, a year later. The Theosophical Society arose to defend true science and true religion against a sciolism that was becoming more and more arrogant, and to stem the headlong descent to materialism. The popularity of theosophical and mystical literature indicates the despair and hope of the churches — despair that science will ever read the puzzle of life; hope that the solution may be found in the secret doctrine. The modern Theosophical Movement is a necessity of the age. It has spread under its own inherent impulsion, and owes nothing to adventitious methods. Its strongest allies are the yearnings for light upon the problem of life, and for a nobler conception of the origin, destiny, and potentialities of the human being. Alone the organs of disembodied “angels” poured as unsuccessfully as ever their vials of wrath, mockery, and brutal slander, upon us. However, the utmost malignity and basest treachery have not been able either to controvert our ideas, belittle our objects, disprove the reasonableness of our methods, or fasten upon us a selfish or dishonest motive. The Adyar Library, founded by the loving labour of Colonel Olcott, is the crown and glory of the Theosophical Society. Progress review of the three objects of the Theosophical Society. The clear note of universal brotherhood was struck and the evangel of religious tolerance declared in India, where previously there had been only sectarian hatred and selfish class egotism. And by bringing the people of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and Japan, into fraternal relations with the Hindus, and creating channels for international intercourse upon religious and educational subjects. In the East End of London we have founded the first Working-Women’s Club, wholly free from theological creeds and conditions. We have revived the study of oriental literature across the globe, thus opening up the vista of a new spiritual day for the world, the harbinger of a new marriage between science and religion, and of peace between the people of the most incongruous sects. We have placed before the thinking public a logical, coherent, and philosophical scheme of man’s origin, destiny, and evolution — a scheme pre-eminent above all for its rigorous adherence to justice. Theosophy, the universal solvent, is fulfilling its mission. For many a long year humanity, the “great orphan,” has been crying aloud in the darkness for guidance and light — but no more!

This is a new release of the original 1931 edition.

The Theosophical Society (est. 1875 in New York by H. P. Blavatsky, H. S. Olcott and others) is increasingly becoming recognized for its influential role in shaping the alternative new religious and cultural landscape of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, especially as an early promoter of interest in Indian and Tibetan religions and philosophies. Despite this increasing awareness, many of the central questions relating to the early Theosophical Society and the East remain largely unexplored. This book is the first scholarly anthology dedicated to this topic. It offers many new details about the study of Theosophy in the history of modern religions and Western esotericism. The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period understood the East and those of its people with whom they came into contact. The authors examine the relationship of the theosophical approach with orientalism and aspects of the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the early Theosophical Society's imagining of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.

On the causal agency of Number Seven in Kosmos and Man, and its presiding role in the Theosophical Society.