{"id":2607,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2607"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:43","slug":"16-science-and-religion-in-theosophy-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/12-essays-divine-and-human\/16-science-and-religion-in-theosophy-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-16_Science and Religion in Theosophy.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Science & Religion in Theosophy <\/b>
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I have said that I wish to write of Theosophy in no strain of
\nunreasoning hostility or spirit of vulgar ridicule; yet these essays will be found to be much occupied with criticisms and often
\nunsparing criticisms of the spirit and methods of Theosophists. There is, however, this difference between my criticisms and
\nmuch that I have seen written in dispraise of the movement, that I censure not as an enemy but as an impartial critic, not as
\na hostile and incredulous outsider but as an earnest and careful inquirer and practical experimentalist in those fields which
\nTheosophy seeks to make her own. Theosophy was not born with Madame Blavatsky, nor invented by the Mahatmas in the
\nlatter end of the nineteenth century. It is an ancient and venerable branch of knowledge, which unfortunately has never, in
\nhistorical times, been brought out into the open and subjected to clear, firm and luminous tests. The imaginations of the cultured
\nand the superstitions of the vulgar played havoc with its truths and vitiated its practice. It degenerated into the extravagances of
\nthe Gnostics & Rosicrucians and the charlatanism of magic and sorcery. The Theosophical Society was the first body of inquirers
\nwhich started with the set & clear profession of bringing out this great mass of ancient truth into public notice and establishing
\nit in public belief. The profession has not been sustained in practice. Instead of bringing them out into public notice they
\nhave withdrawn them into the shrouded secrecy of the Esoteric society; instead of establishing them to public belief, they
\nhave hampered the true development of Theosophy & injured its credit by allowing promise to dwarf performance and by a
\nreadiness to assert which was far beyond their power to verify. I do not deny that the Theosophical Society increases in its
\nnumbers, but it increases as a mystic sect and not in the strength of its true calling. I do not deny that it has done valuable service
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in appealing to the imaginations of men both in India & Europe;
\nbut it has appealed to their imaginations & has not convinced their reason. When there is so serious a failure in a strong and
\nearnest endeavour, we must look for the cause in some defect which lies at the very roots of its action. And it is just there
\nat the very roots of its active life that we find the vital defect of modern Theosophy. We find a speculative confusion which
\nfatally ignores the true objects and the proper field of such a movement and a practical confusion which fatally ignores the
\nright and necessary conditions of its success. They have failed to see what Theosophy rightly is and what it is not; they have failed
\nto understand that error and the sources of error must be weeded out before the good corn of truth can grow. They have fallen
\ninto the snare of Gnostic jargon and Rosicrucian mummery and have been busy with a nebulous chase after Mahatmas, White
\nLodges and Lords of the Flame when they should have been experimenting earnestly and patiently, testing their results severely
\nand arriving at sound and incontestable conclusions which they could present, rationally founded, first to all enquirers and then
\nto the world at large.
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Mrs Besant would have us believe that Theosophy is Brahmavidya. The Greek Theosophia and the Sanscrit Brahmavidya,
\nshe tells us in all good faith, are identical words and identical things. Even with Mrs Besant’s authority, I cannot accept this
\n.. extraordinary identification. It can only have arisen either from
\nher ignorance of Sanscrit or from that pervading confusion of thought and inability to perceive clear and trenchant distinctions
\nwhich is the bane of Theosophical inquiry & Theosophical pronouncements. Vidya may be represented, though not perfectly
\nrepresented by sophia; but Brahman is not Theos and cannot be Theos, as even the veriest tyro in philosophy, one would
\nthink, ought to know. We all know what Brahmavidya is,\u2014the knowledge of the One both in Itself and in its ultimate and
\nfundamental relations to the world which appears in It whether as illusion or as manifestation, whether as Maya or as Lila.
\nDoes Theosophy answer to this description? Everyone knows that it does not and cannot. The modern Theosophist tells us
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much about Mahatmas, Kamaloka, Devachan, people on Mars,
\npeople on the Moon, astral bodies, precipitated letters, Akashic records and a deal of other matters, of high value if true and of
\ngreat interest whether true or not. But what on earth, I should like to know, has all this to do with Brahmavidya? One might
\njust as well describe botany, zoology & entomology or for that matter, music or painting or the binomial theory or quadratic
\nequations as Brahmavidya. In a sense they are so since everything is Brahman,\u2014sarvam khalvidam Brahma. But language has its
\ndistinctions on which clear thinking depends, & we must insist on their being observed. All this matter of Theosophy is not
\nBrahmavidya, but Devavidya. Devavidya is the true equivalent, so far as there can be an equivalent, of Theosophy.
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\tI am aware that Theosophy speaks of the Logos or of several Logoi and the government of the world\u2014not so much by any
\nLogos as by the Mahatmas. Still, I say, that all this does not constitute Theosophy into Brahmavidya, but leaves it what it
\nwas, Devavidya. It is still not the knowledge of the One, not the knowledge that leads to salvation, but the knowledge of the
\nMany,\u2014of our bondage & not of our freedom, Avidya & not Vidya. I do not decry it for that reason, but it is necessary that it
\nshould be put in its right place and not blot out for us the diviner knowledge of our forefathers. Theosophy is or should be a wider
\n& profounder Science, a knowledge that deals with other levels & movements of consciousness, planes if you like so to call them,
\nphenomena depending on the activity of consciousness on those levels, worlds & beings formed by the activity of consciousness
\non those levels,\u2014for what is a world but the synthesis in Space & Time of a particular level of consciousness,\u2014forming a field
\nof consciousness with which material Science, the Science of this immediately visible world, cannot yet deal, and for the most
\npart, not believing in it as fact, refuses to deal. Theosophy is, therefore, properly speaking, a high scientific enquiry. It is not
\nor ought not to be a system of metaphysics or a new religion.  
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