The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky is one of the monuments of modern esotericism. Originally published in 1888, it gave the spiritual history of the development of the cosmos (or kosmos, as the author would have it) and of human life on earth. In doing this Mme. Blavatsky drew on her impressive knowledge of myth and ancient scripture for verification of the lineage of her theories. The book has gone on to become one of the most influential expositions of esoteric ideas, and its two volumes, comprising more than fifteen hundred pages, remain in print. Her scope was massive, taking the reader back to the dawn of existence, when naught was. Like a crack in the cosmic egg, the one life differentiates into spirit-matter, subject-object; and the universe, the child of necessity, emerges. A radiant being, the universe is vitalized by the force of Fohat, the divine fire or electricity, that animates creation. The Great Breath, the Days and Nights of Brahmā, planetary forces, the spiritual ancestors of humanity, the Sons of Light, the esoteric history of civilization, with accounts of the Lemurians and Atlanteans, are just some of the ideas the reader will encounter in the text. ix
The basis of the book is informed around the stanzas of Dzyan (a cognate of the Sanskrit dhyāna, Chinese ch an, and the Japanese zen, mystic meditation). It is said to be part of the commentary literature of Tibetan Buddhism, specifically the texts of Gyud-dse (or phonetically Kiu-te, as she gives it). Attempts at locating them in the Tibetan Buddhist canon have so far proved fruitless, though the similarity of parts of the stanzas of Dzyan to the literature of the Kālachakra has been noted. Literally, Wheel of Time, the Kālachakra is one of the most esoteric of scriptures, merging as it does Hindu and Buddhist concepts, and like the stanzas of Dzyan of The Secret Doctrine, claims great antiquity for itself. Covering ideas of divine time and cosmogony, it also correlates the place of the individual with these cosmic cycles. In their obscurity the stanzas function like a number of other oracular texts from antiquity. Their origin is as mysterious as that of the Chaldean Oracles. One current theory traces the source of the Chaldean Oracles to trance utterances recorded during the opening centuries of our era, a product of the religious amalgamation of the time. They were long viewed as relics from the time of Zoroaster and the sages of Chaldea. Like the stanzas in The Secret Doctrine, the fragments of these Oracles that have come down to us depict creation in terms of fiery whirlwinds and flashing force. Using the material in the Oracles, the Neoplatonists were able to construct the basis of an eclectic form of belief for the intelligentsia of their time. The closest complement to the stanzas is the Hymn of Creation in the Vedas. There was not the non-existent nor the existent then, There was not the air nor the heaven which is beyond. What did it contain? Where? x
Darkness was in the beginning hidden by darkness; By the creation of this (universe) the gods (come) afterwards. Rig Veda, X. 129, trans. by A. A. Macdonell This Vedic hymn ends with a query about the nature of the recorder of this event, since even the gods came later. Similarly, the first stanza ends with questioning the source of its observation on manifestation. Where were the seers who perceived this primal act when the universe itself had not yet come into existence? The explanation given in The Secret Doctrine allows for the awakened intuition of the sage to go beyond the limits of time and space. The modern Indian sage, Sri Aurobindo, giving voice to the same experience, provides what reads like another translation of the first stanza. It was the hour before the gods awake. Across the path of the divine Event The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone In her unlit temple of eternity, Lay stretched immobile upon Silence marge. A fathomless zero occupied the world. Savitri [1950], Canto I Likewise, the first six of the stanzas in the first volume of The Secret Doctrine that deal with universal cosmogony approach the primacy of being (or, as Mme. Blavatsky prefers, Be-ness) through a negative theology. Instead of indicating what was or might have been, the stanzas tell us what is not: universal mind was not, time was not, and darkness alone filled the boundless all. xi
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of the Great Breath, which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When the Great Breath is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One Existence which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of the Great Mother, who then sleeps wrapped in her invisible robes. The Secret Doctrine (1888), 1:43 This is an eternal process, and since the stanzas speak of existence as an emanation or differentiation of the one life, the universe is not seen as a creation of something out of nothing but itself as an aspect of reality. The force that animates existence is termed Fohat, the transcendental binding unity of all cosmic energies. Here, Fohat operates akin to Eros in the Greek Theogony, the force that fructifies the cosmic egg. Through a series of hierarchies of impersonal forces, and the esoteric combination of numbers, the structure of existence is built. The description in the stanzas of threes becoming fours is reminiscent of modern scientific theory with quarks clumping into three to form protons and neutrons, bound together by nuclear force. After the fourth śloka of stanza six, the narrative changes from universal cosmogony to the emergence of our solar system, and in particular our planet. The stanzas in volume 2 of the book, on anthropogenesis, detail the spiritual, physical, and mental development of human life on earth. Before proceeding, the reader should be aware of Mme. Blavatsky s advice on how to read esoteric texts. Such works can be taken xii
in a literal way, on a symbolical level, or as a transformative experience where the very process of interacting with the text brings about substantive change in the individual. Scattered throughout The Secret Doctrine are hints about the seven keys of interpretation that unlock the meaning of myths and symbols. They are: physiological, psychological, geological, theogonic, geometrical, astronomical, and spiritual. So, when we come to the seven ages of humanity presented, it is worth keeping in mind that it not only may be a representation of actual events but may also function on other levels. Having gone through three previous cycles on globes representing mineral, plant, and animal development, humanity appears on earth, clothed in forms provided by divine ancestors, the Lunar Pitris. Starting as a semi-divine being, the first race spent its existence in an unconscious state, mind not having been developed. The second race was but a solidification of the first, as the earth became more material. By the third race, plants and animals have started to appear. Desire awoke, and humanity, once androgynous, became male and female. Eighteen million years ago, the rudiments of mind began to unfold and the civilization of Lemuria appeared on a now-submerged continent that stretched through the Indian and Pacific oceans. With the destruction of this landmass due to natural causes, the fourth race developed on the Atlantic portions of the former continent. Manas, or the thinking principle, continued to develop, and because of their great learning, the Atlanteans figure in the tales of divine kings and gods of legend. After the decline of the Atlanteans the fifth race emerged, of which we are the fifth sub-race. Forerunners of the sixth sub-race will appear in America in the future when a sixth sense or faculty will develop. After the fifth and sixth races, humanity will go through two more cycles, or rounds, ascending spiritually. xiii
Added to both volumes are a number of chapters elucidating the concepts embodied by the symbols referred to in her text. These symbols are reflective, a means of accessing some unstated reality. Reiterating her credentials, Mme. Blavatsky introduces this section by reminding the reader that the study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small pre-eminently the traditions of the East has occupied the greater portion of the present writer s life, and these chapters show the wealth of her research. Using the results of her travels among indigenous peoples, now- forgotten nineteenth-century studies on myth, classical references, and Eastern religious texts, she gathered an immense amount of information. The esoteric correlations about the moon, the lotus, the mundane egg, the figure of Enoch, and Kuan-yin, are among some of the areas covered. Throughout the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine, Mme. Blavatsky cited the opinions of various travelers, historians, anthropologists, orientalists, cabbalists, philologists, ethnologists, authors and scholars hundreds of titles to help establish the pedigree of her ideas. There is scarcely a page in the book where some authority or system is not mentioned to show that she is not inventing her subject. Three sources that gave her the major amount of references were the Bible, the Vishnu Purāṇa, and her previous book, Isis Unveiled. From the Bible, Genesis and Exodus were the parts most used, and often interpreted in a metaphysical way as support for her ideas. The Purāṇas, the great repositories of lore from India, have five defining characteristics: they deal with cosmology, appearance and dissolution of worlds, genealogy of the gods, the periods of the Manus, or Manvantaras, and the lineage of the solar and lunar dynasties. The Vishnu Purāṇa is exemplary of this type of literature, and it gave her the chance to point to numerous xiv
allegorical narratives as indicative of her claims. As she noted, there is more wisdom concealed under the exoteric fables of Puranas and Bible than in all the exoteric facts and science in the literature of the world (The Secret Doctrine, 1:336). For the Vishnu Purāṇa she used the five-volume translation of Horace Hayman Wilson, edited by Fitzedward Hall, published in London between 1864 and 1870, and still the only complete source for the text in English. Initially, The Secret Doctrine was intended to be a revision of Mme. Blavatsky s first book from a decade before, Isis Unveiled. Two volumes of more than fourteen hundred pages, Isis was a cautious attempt to introduce the public to the idea of the existence of the esoteric tradition and its survival into modern times. Subtitled A Master-key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, the book sought to unlock access to the ancient wisdom and allow a glimpse of its contents. The key had to be turned seven times, and in Isis it was, she affirms, given one turn. The Secret Doctrine promised another turn of the key. Both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine begin by referring to an old book, the only surviving original copy in existence. From it, many other occult works were derived. The product of the Divine Teachers of humanity in its infancy, it contains the fruit of their research into the hidden mysteries of nature and the powers latent in mankind. It is the source from which the stanzas of Dzyan originated. But how did Mme. Blavatsky get this material? Or even invent it herself? Her education was minimal. A pampered child, born in an aristocratic family in southern Russia in 1831, she would have received instruction in French, music, and etiquette. Her mother, an acclaimed novelist, died at the age of twenty-eight when Helena was eleven, and she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother, the Princess Helena xv
Dolgoruki. After being married off at the age of seventeen, Mme. Blavatsky left Russia in 1849 to begin a life of global travel. It was in London in 1851 that she claims to have met her teacher, an Indian who had come with the Nepal delegation to the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace. It was from him that she learned of the existence of an esoteric school in Tibet that included students of different nationalities. In the 1850s, according to her statements, she managed to reach Tashi-lhunpo monastery near Shigatse, the seat of the Panchen Lama. The amount of traveling equipment that she would have needed bearers, tents, food, cooking utensils such as an Englishman would have required at the time is cited as reason for the implausibility of such a journey. Yet in 1916 Alexandra David-Néel managed to make just such a trip from Sikkim to Shigatse with only a guide on horseback and a pack mule carrying the needed tents and provisions. So the possibility of such a pilgrimage by Mme. Blavatsky should not altogether be ruled out, especially since she was discovered on the Sikkim border by Captain Charles Murray of the Bengal Army in 1854. According to her sister, Vera, Mme. Blavatsky was back in Russia by the end of 1858. A decade later she was again in India, traveling through Kashmir and Ladakh to what was known as Little Tibet, to study with her teacher. Here, with another esoterist, a Kashmiri Brahmin who spoke English, she learned by heart the stanzas that form The Secret Doctrine. After a failed attempt to start a Spiritual Society in Cairo in 1871, she moved to Paris and from there to New York in the summer of 1873. Two years later, she was instrumental in forming the Theosophical Society, and in 1877 her statement of principles, Isis Unveiled, was published. Her inspiration was clear, for she told the reader, The work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate xvi
acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. Certain themes in the book, such as Esoteric philosophers held that everything in nature is but a materialization of spirit. The Eternal First Cause is latent spirit, they said, and matter in the beginning.... With the first idea, which emanated from the double-sexed and hitherto inactive deity, the first motion was communicated to the whole universe, and the electric thrill was instantaneously felt throughout the boundless space. Spirit begat force, and force matter; and thus the latent deity manifested itself as a creative energy (lsis 1:428) would receive further elaboration in The Secret Doctrine. In 1878, after becoming an American citizen, she left for India, where she would travel throughout the subcontinent, meeting with various swamis and pundits, Buddhist monks in Ceylon, and collecting local lore wherever she went. It was during this stay in India that she decided to make a major revision of Isis Unveiled. But it was not until she left and had settled in Germany that The Secret Doctrine took on a life of its own. Consumed by her work, Mme. Blavatsky would spend twelve-hour days at her desk, continually writing, even in the face of death. On the eve of relocating to London in 1887, her health had declined to the point where she was becoming increasingly comatose. The local doctor could do nothing for her and a specialist was sent for from London. As there seemed to be no improvement, her will was to be made out and a lawyer, the doctor, and the American Consul, as witness, were to come the next day. Her condition worsened during the night and she was not expected to live much longer. But in the morning they found a very much alive and awake Mme. Blavatsky. During the night, she revealed, she had been given the choice of being able to die and be released from suffering or to live and finish The Secret Doctrine. She chose to live. xvii
By the time she moved to London the manuscript had grown to be over three feet high. The process of preparing it for printing was taken over by Archibald Keightley and his uncle, Bertram Keightley. So similar in age that they were mistaken for brothers, they were remembered by Mahatma Gandhi for their keen interest in Eastern philosophy, encouraging him to study the Bhagavad-Gītā with them when he was a law student in London. They, like so many others, were captivated by the stanzas of Dzyan translated in the text and arranged the book around it. Each volume would begin with the stanzas and commentary, followed by a section on symbolism and then one on science. The two-volume set of The Secret Doctrine, bound in gray cloth, appeared under the imprint of the newly formed Theosophical Publishing Society of London in the fall of 1888. It quickly sold out, and another printing was required before the end of the year. The book has remained in print ever since, and gone on to become one of the global classics of esotericism in its English language original or in translation. It became the source of inspiration for a generation of writers, artists, and musicians. Mme. Blavatsky figured as part of the mythology of James Joyce s Ulysses, the writer D. H. Lawrence was intrigued by what she wrote on the mundane egg, and the composer, Alexander Scriabin, wanted to set The Secret Doctrine to music. Whether they sprang from the depths of Mme. Blavatsky s consciousness or are the meditations of ancient seers, the stanzas of Dzyan have had an enduring impact on subsequent esoteric groups. Some have tried to replicate the success of the stanzas by producing versions psychically received, while others, using information from their own innerplane contacts, such as the British occultist Dion Fortune in her treatise The Cosmic Doctrine, outlined the creative process of the universe following xviii
much the same plan and terminology as Blavatsky s The Secret Doctrine. But none have been able to duplicate the achievement of her book. The present abridgment offers the reader the opportunity of accessing the core teachings of The Secret Doctrine. Previous attempts by Theosophists at shortening the book only reinforced its image as an intricate textbook, accessible only to specialists. My work a decade ago abridging Isis Unveiled proved an invaluable aid in producing a readable digest of the primary themes elaborated in the fifteen hundred pages of this text. Both books abound in references from other writers more than a thousand in each. While these are quite often illustrative, they are not indispensable, and the removal of a greater part of them has brought to the forefront the essence of The Secret Doctrine. The sections on Science, dealing as they do with the concerns of nineteenth-century science, proved to be unsalvageable for this abridgment and they have been omitted. Three chapters from the Science section of volume 1 are especially worthy of perusal by those interested in seeing how the book deals with this area: On the Elements and Atoms, Gods, Monads, and Atoms, and Cyclic Evolution and Karma. The following is an example of this omitted material. The Grand Cycle includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of primordial man of ethereal form. It runs through the inner cycles of his (man s) progressive evolution from the ethereal down to the semi-ethereal and purely physical: down to the redemption of man from his coat of skin and matter, after which it continues running its course downward and then upward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the manvantaric Serpent swallows its tail and seven minor cycles are passed. These are the great Racial xix
Cycles which affect equally all the nations and tribes included in that special Race; but there are minor and national as well as tribal cycles within those, which run independently of each other. They are called in the Eastern esotericism the Karmic cycles. The Secret Doctrine, 1:642 Part of the function of the book, according to its author, was to be a corrective to the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and students of mysticism have indulged. Forty pages in volume 1, pp. 151 191, are spent reviewing misconceptions of other theosophical writers with differing views on the septenary evolution of the planetary chain and rounds so complex a subject that Mme. Blavatsky chose to leave untranslated a number of stanzas dealing with this subject. The omitted parts dealt with the stages that make up planetary development. The seven globes that form the planetary cycle function on different planes, our globe being the most material. The development of humanity proceeds through seven stages on each successive globe. Earth life represents the fourth such stage passed through, and our present humanity is the fifth race to exist on the planet. Most readers will appreciate her decision to pass over these passages, and the same has been done here. What emerges into sharp relief when all this material is removed is the timeless vision of the stanzas. Part of Mme. Blavatsky s continued popularity lies in her ability as a writer, and this is shown in the poetic language in which she clothes the stanzas. Trying to articulate the state of preconditioned latency, she gives, Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration. Her language is full of graphic images and, taking the stanzas for what they claim to be, the meditative process of generations of seers pondering the mystery of creation, the verses xx
must have some evocative power of their own. With this in mind, care has been taken to retain Mme. Blavatsky s style and to follow the injunction of the Chaldean Oracles to change not the nomina barbara those strange, often unintelligible words of oracular texts. Since no title is given for this material other than the generic Book of Dzyan, this corpus might well be titled the Hymn, or Song, of the Monad, for the whole process of creation, manifesting in universes, solar systems, worlds, culminates in the development of humanity. Using the same method as that of the hermetic axiom, as above, so below, the stanzas show the parallel development of humanity and the kosmos (the universe, as differentiated from our solar system, the cosmos). The Monad, the Divine spark, after ensouling numerous forms, reaches the human stage, and, with the development of mind, is able to make meaning of its experience. Through self-devised and self-induced means, humanity rises beyond form and takes its place as a coworker in the creative process. The Secret Doctrine was to be Mme. Blavatsky s last major work. Three years after its publication she was dead. The continued demand for her writings is an enduring tribute to her great synthesizing ability, and the present abridgment, for a new century and a new generation, allows the reader to get to the heart of the matter. In presenting the first critical edition of the stanzas of Dzyan, based on published and unpublished material, we have followed the author s lead, since she indicates that the stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain. Using this method, the student focusing on the message, not the meaning begins the journey described therein to the fulfillment of one s being. In presenting her book to the world, Mme. Blavatsky offered the following analogy: xxi
When a tourist coming from a well-explored country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a terra incognita, hedged in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans. Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if he cannot visit the mysterious region personally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he can get a general and pretty correct idea of the transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it, at his leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left below, now that he is, thanks to his efforts, beyond the line of the mists and the cloudcapped cliffs. The Secret Doctrine, 1:xxxix The present abridgment offers the means to such a vantage point where a glimpse of that undiscovered country can be experienced firsthand. xxii