The word "Theosophy" has become fairly familiar of late years, but still from time to time one notices that those who do not concern themselves much with the currents of thought in the modern world have the most curious notices of what is covered by that word. You may meet a man who will say: "Oh, Theosophy, it is some sort of table-turning, I believe"; or another, who will say; "Oh, yes, I think it is Spiritualism"; or another, that it is Mental Science, or Christian Science, or the School of New Thought, and so on. Comparatively few have a definite, clear-cut idea of what is covered by this word "Theosophy". And yet it is no new word in the history of philosophy. It is a word which has been used for many hundreds of years, a word that you come across continually if you study the mystic literature of the Middle Ages, a word that you meet from time to time further back among writers in Greek and Roman times. Still further back you may trace it, going over Eastwards, towards the source of the great religions. Truly, as the language changes the word itself changes, but translate both terms into English and you have identically the same words. For, tracing it back across Asia Minor into India, and China, you find the same thing described under the same name, although in another tongue.
An on this there is an old story in a very ancient book ["Mundakonapishat", I,i. 3-5]. The son of Shanaka, the great householder, approached, according to the rite, Angiras, and said; "Who is it, O venerable, by knowing whom all this becomes known?" And the sage answered: "Two [Page 4] sciences must be known, the knowers of Brahman tell us, the Supreme and the Lower Science." The Lower Science comprises the Rik, Yajur, Sâma, and Atharva Vedas - meaning generally all the sacred and revealed scriptures; also ritual, grammar, astronomy, and so on - meaning all sciences. The Supreme Science is that knowledge by which the Indestructible is understood. So runs the ancient tale. And in that latter phrase: "that by which the Indestructible, the Eternal, is understood: you have Theosophy, under its Samskrit name of Brahma-Vidyâ. Through all history and all philosophy, in Greece and Rome, in Egypt, in Middle Ages Europe, in India, always the same idea is connected with this word, and that idea is the direct knowledge of God, and therefore of the invisible worlds. That is the historical meaning of this great word. Everything else is secondary, conclusions from this great premiss. It is the assertion that man can know God directly, and can therefore know Nature directly - not only physical but superphysical nature - and know it by the same means that Science uses. I summarise it as the knowledge of God and Nature, because that includes in a single sentence the knowledge of all that can be known; and it asserts that That , which some modern philosophy has declared to be unknowable, is as much the heritage of human knowledge as any observations that science may make, as any deductions that philosophy may create. That which is denied by the Agnostic is affirmed by the Theosophist. It is the Gnosis of early Christians and Neo-Platonic times, the Brahma-Vidyâ of the Hindu.
From that supreme principle flow other deductions. God is to be known by consciousness, which is in its essence identical with Himself. Human consciousness is the bud of which the open flower is God. All powers are hidden within the human consciousness, and are capable of gradual unfoldment. And inasmuch as only this direct knowledge can give absolute certainty of the Divine Existence, therefore, again, it is written in a very ancient [Page 5] writing that the only proof of the existence of God is in the conviction in the human Spirit. All other proofs fail of absolute demonstration. Only the Spirit can know the Source whence it has flowed.
Now with that inevitably comes the direct knowledge of Nature, physical and
superphysical. I make the distinction because it is made by all around me,
although truly distinction there is none. Consciousness knowing the Supreme
Consciousness is knowledge 