C. C. Martindale sj, 1996 note: this article predates the release of the february 2003 vatican document on the new age by seven years- michael

Karma

Karma means the law of cause and effect working itself out, deterministically, and rigorously governing the whole process of man's existence and the series of his states. It is the Ultimate Law of the Universe, for social and national Karmas grow out of the aggregate of individual ones (Key, pp. 198-215). It leaves then no room for regret, hope, repentance, atonement, or prayer.

"'We do not believe in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god. What we believe in is strict and impartial justice. [This is the sense in which Karma is "Relative and Distributive," a law of readjustment giving back Harmony (which is synonymous with Good) to the world.] There is no repentance' (here we resume H. P. B.'s assertions in standard works): no 'casting our sins at the foot of the Cross.'

"'There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine; no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about.' Weak natures may accept the 'easy truth of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness.' The Ego, then, becomes its own saviour in each world and incarnation (Key, p. 155). Christianity does but introduce one external, miraculous, and therefore unmoral Saviour.

"Hence prayer especially is idle.

"'Do you ever pray?' the Theosophist is asked. 'We do not, we act.' 'Pray?' (Buddhists would exclaim)'to whom? or to what?' (and yet they are confessedly far more virtuous than Christians.) To ask for help from Christ were 'morel idleness, revolting, degrading to human dignity' (Key, pp. 66-72). It is absurd to suppose that an answer can be given to every foolish and egotistical prayer.

"Both Buddha and Christ corroborate this. Doubtless Jesus says: 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name (that of "Christ"; H. P. B.), that will I do'; but this, interpreted esoterically, means Christ = Buddhi-Manas = Self. The only God we must recognize and pray to, or rather act in union with, is that Spirit of God of which our body is the temple" (ibid.).

Free Will is certainly the greatest mystery of human life, and no metaphor drawn from the mechanistic universe around us can properly describe it, though we have a direct consciousness of it. The history of Theosophy, in this matter, has been a desperate effort to reconcile the doctrine of Karma with free will.

We are told that we can "choose" to alter the tendency due to some wrong act; but that very choice is as much dictated by one's Karma as the wrong act was-each is the necessary result of what preceded it.

Do what I will, I cannot see any reason, offered by Theosophists, for denying that Karma is a doctrine of fatalism and, quite logically, involves a rejection of merit, reward, or punishment, all of which flow no less logically from a belief in the radical freedom of the will. Karma offered as an explanation of an undoubted mystery annihilates the possibility of choice.

H. P. B., therefore, by Prayer, "will-prayer," "internal command" to "our Father in heaven" in its esoteric sense, is but an inevitable communing with self, i.e., the core of self, and a "suggestion" administered to all the outer selves. All men (Christ included) have Divinity more or less dormant within them. Wake it up! Or rather when because of Karma, it inevitably starts to wake up, your prayer will become less of a petition from a man, that an angel could grant, than-just God talking to Himself.
Ethic

Theosophy tends towards a "social," non-self-regarding Ethic, with a sort of mechanical justice because everything, in the long run, is one. The Theosophist will therefore de-animalise the body, but not injure it-especially by abstinence from meat, alcohol and marriage, by breathing exercises accompanied by noble thoughts:

"I breathe the breath of Life: I send love to all mankind. I breathe the life-dispensing ether: I send forth thoughts of life for all mankind. I breathe the eternal movement of the divine life; I send wishes for health for all mankind. I breathe the universal Life Spirit, full of strength: And deny all weakness of Life and of the Soul." And so on, ending, for Amen, "So breathes every man that is born of God."

But there are no hard and fast rules for behaviour, and all such practices are "esoteric," the Enlightened seeing that there is but one soul in all, and refusing to sacrifice the life even of beast or fish. We are not told what to do about vegetables. The essence therefore of Theosophist ethic is altruism-though even this is a misnomer, since All are One, I am you, and you I. Hence, on lower planes, tolerance, social effort, forgiveness-even the supreme sacrifice made by those who put off their Nirvana so as to help others. We refer, for Nirvana, to Essay No. 6, since Theosophists, while rightly refusing to call it annihilation, or to admit Pantheism, have added nothing to an explanation of what it is.

It would then seem that Theosophy, confronting the immemorial problem set by the coexistence of the individual and society, and the fact that the former can never cease to be an individual yet reaches his perfection only in "society," have, by their habitual looseness of talk, modifications of doctrine to suit their audiences, and personal impressionisms, complicated that problem not a little, save when they have destroyed it by teaching a fatalistic Karma, which explains nothing, either as to origin or end, let alone as to route.
III. THEOSOPHY AND RELIGIONS

Buddhism and spiritualism

Theosophy professes to be the ancient wisdom allegedly lying behind all philosophies and religions. But it has been so strongly coloured with Indian expressions that it is often confused with Buddhism, and Buddhism (as in Ceylon) has been much used by Theosophists for political and nationalist purposes.

Col. Olcott, by the way, had been King Asoka in a previous incarnation, and H. P. B. (Key, pp. 12-15) considers even the "dead letter" of southern Buddhism to be far grander, nobler, more philosophical and scientific than that of any other religion.

In India, theosophy was given a Brahman [sic] colour, and Mrs. Besant fought bitterly against Catholic missionaries, being indeed received as an incarnation of the goddess Sarasvati, goddess of science, wife of Brahma, Christ being, she said, an incarnation of Vishnu. [11] Enough to say that Theosophy would disdain to be linked with Spiritualism, though H. P. B. allows a certain amount of credibility to spiritualist "phenomena" provided the spiritualist explanations be not admitted. She regards such phenomena as proper to one of the lower ranges of occult science, a science singularly apt to be misused for selfish ends.

Theosophists made much more of phenomena at first than they do now: H. S. O. was in fact converted from Spiritism because he saw spiritist phenomena equalled and transcended at will and in broad daylight by H. P. B. and eastern adepts. He gives examples in Theosophy, Religion and Occult Science, p. 251. Whatever be the facts about Theosophist "miracles," it must be noticed that they differ from those of the Gospels and of Catholic history at large, in origin, nature, moral and spiritual setting and consequences, and probative value.

We mentioned above (p. 2) the Coulomb scandal, information about which exists in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iii., parts vii., ix., pp. 201-400. Mme. Coulomb said that H. P. B. faked her "phenomena"; H. P. B. said that all the letters alleged by Mme. Coulomb to have been written by her were forgeries. A. B. says that they could not possibly have been written by her, because they are "uneducated," whereas H. P. B. was "brilliant, however familiar and conversational." To others they seem exactly in H. P. B.'s style.

H. P. B. repudiated the accusation, in the undisputed words subjoined, which sufficiently show her style:-

"I swear by the Master whom I serve faithfully, and for the sake of carrying whose orders I suffer now, let Him curse me in the future birth, aye, in a dozen of births, if I have ever done anything on my own hook, if I have ever written one line of these infernal letters And if the only person I believe implicitly on earth-Master-came and told me I had, then I would lay it at his door; for nothing and no one in this world could have taken away the recollection of that deed-that idiotic and insane deed-from my brain and memory but Himself-so you had better shut up and ask Him. The idea of it! Had I been such an ass...." etc.

H. S. O. prevented Mme. Blavatsky from prosecuting for libel the Christian College Magazine, Madras, which had published the letters, just as she was stopped from prosecuting Hodgson when he called her a Russian spy.
Christianity

When Theosophists speak well of Christianity it must be firmly remembered that they do so at the cost of denying its absolute, final, and unique validity, and of detecting in it an esoteric doctrine which Christians are ignorant of or deny. Mrs. Besant finds (rather like Modernists) a way of using the terms "Trinity," and "Redemption," but also of holding that in "all religions of the world" the Second Person of her Trinity somehow incarnates Himself and that Christ is adored by the Hindu as Vishnu.

This is the bad old system of amateurish comparative religion, which vaguely identified, or interconnected, the stories of

Mithra, Osiris, Krishna, and Christ. It has no scientific value nor ever had, but was current in Mrs. Besant's middle life. Mrs.

Besant, in Esoteric Christianity (1901) said that Comparative Mythologists derived their "similarities" in religion from a common trunk-human ignorance: and Comparative Religionists also did so from a common trunk-Divine Wisdom.

Supreme Teachers, possessed of the whole Wisdom, doled it out, though reluctantly (pearls before swine) to inferior men, Paul, the Great Initiate, for example, saying he gave them but milk, and insisting much on the "mystery" that was his to impart. (We say curtly, that what St. Paul meant was that divine revelation hitherto believed to be given by God to the Jews only was as a matter of fact, for all men, and that he in particular was "apostle to the Gentiles." (See Essay No. 21, p. 31).

Relying on some worthless Gnostic work, but above all on clairvoyance, she and H. P. B. know that the Roman Church really considers Christ as the Gnostics did, i.e., as chief of the Aeons. Of the iniquitous Roman distorters of theosophic truth, need we say that the Jesuits are the worst (A. B., in the Theosophist, January, 1913, p. 481, etc.). "Money is poured out like water; one day's post brings attacks from Rome, from Stockholm, Hong Kong."

Since the Masters confessedly convey their instruction in a shell of myth, we need not suppose that A. B. believed all, or any, of this.

What is clear about most Theosophists that I have read is that they neither had, nor have, any knowledge of the ordinary doctrine of the Catholic Church (open to all, not to an elite); that they originally drew their notions about it from the worst version of Christianity supplied (as apparently it still is) by the Middle West of the U.S.A., and that they utilised the shockingly bad religious history of the period in which modern Theosophy blossomed in order to speak of Isis, Buddha, and what not in connection with Christianity, and, that they have never learnt anything ever since.

A. B. therefore borrows a historical, a mythical, and a mystical "Jesus" from other writers; considers that the historical Jesus was born 105 B.C., became an Essene monk, studied Indian occultist books, travelled into Egypt and at 29, surrendered his body to a Buddha of Compassion, who entered it at the Baptism. The man Jesus in his human body suffered for the services rendered to its superhuman occupant. Gradually a "myth" crystallised around this, the husk of legend being identical all over the world.

The Mystical Christ is the Logos, crucified (i.e., extended throughout matter) and, equally, the divine spark in man. Mr.

Kingsland, in his Esoteric Basis of Christianity, and Mr. Leadbeater, in his Christian Creed, respectively prepare the way for follies of this sort by declaring that science has destroyed the credibility of the historic Bible and that clairvoyance reveals the "inner meaning" of the Creed.

Others interpret the Catholic ritual "esoterically," seldom, we may mention, describing it accurately.

The Catholic Church has never admitted that it has an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine, suitable to the few and the more crass of Christians. St. Paul's doctrine of "mystery" has, of course, nothing to do with any such thing. The "discipline arcani" is a special subject and has nothing to do with a special lore, and the term in fact appears to have been invented about 1750 by a Protestant.

In a word, Theosophic treatment of Christianity has nothing historical to recommend it: on the contrary, it is historically inexcusable, unless of course you resort to clairvoyant knowledge which cannot be tested by anyone. If it be said that those who claim to possess it "know" that they do so possess it, one can only say that the material they offer as the result of their knowledge, while containing elaborate descriptions of alleged mental and other conditions, explains none of them, and is

exhibited with a vulgarity such that one hardly knows to whom these writers can be speaking, and, that there is nothing in the ethical character of Theosophist protagonists, as discernible in their writings or lives, that would tempt anyone for one moment to attach any significance to their assertions.

There are certain vast problems that have tormented mankind ever since it began to reflect. Such are the existence and nature of God and the extent to which man can know Him: the origin and destiny of human life: the relation of the "one" to the "many": the extent to which man can term himself free, or again, immortal.

Human intelligence cannot form complete ideas about all of this nor can it know all that has happened in the past, or will yet happen.

Human curiosity has, however, loved to speculate upon such matters; and we feel human vanity has recurrently wished to flatter itself and impress others by alleging that it possesses all such knowledge, or at least more of it than other people do.

It is into this category of "knowers" that Theosophy enters.

Unfortunately H. P. B. and A. B. lived at a time when there was an outburst of new human knowledge, and an accumulation of intriguing books, especially about ancient religions, full of the most unsifted and now discarded information. Intoxicated by this, they made use of all of it, and bequeathed their damnosa haereditas to their successors.

However since all such things are, or should be, logically held by them to be illusory and as false as they are true, and anyhow conveyed to the world by a method of knowing that the world cannot share, yet without any guarantee for the method, we are justified in regarding them, as a rule, as an amateurish and indeed disgusting mismanagement of ancient philosophies and myth, a realm into which quite untrained minds like those of H. P. B. and A. B. and their subordinates exasperatingly intruded themselves. Yet the will to seek and the effort to know are to be respected: we can but regret the addition of so much confusion into English and American minds, themselves as a rule so untrained.

Fr. Martindale was a well-known Jesuit writer of the early part of the century.
ENDNOTES

1. 1885, p. 246.

2. , 1890, pp. 215, 288-303.

3. , tr., Paris, 1903, p. 20.

4. T.P.S., 1907; it is based on Mrs. Besant's reprinted in 1922, and a handy textbook for reference. It is increasingly the fashion to suggest that the existence of "Masters" is but one theory to account for the underlying "unity" of religions, etc.

5. Arnould, pp. 17-19. But H. P. B. calls Alexander ( p. 289) "a drunken soldier."

6. So "Hera," in for Sept., 1904, pp. 193-199.

7. pp. 10-20. "If human evidence can ever substantiate a fact, the appearance (and therefore existence) of the Masters is placed beyond the possibility of a doubt."

8.
, 1891, ix. p. 312.

9. , 1892, 1xxiv, p. 180.

10. H. P. B., in the Glossary to , says Brahma's day consists of 4,320,000,000 years. Brahma's Age = 100 years of

3,110,400,000,000 solar years each.

11. See an account of her triumphal progress in , cxxiv., pp. 261-265, 1901: H. S. O.'s methods in Ceylon are criticised in C. Gordon Cumming's , ii., pp. 413-419.
NOTE

From the February 3, 2003 Vatican Document, "Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life, A Christian reflection on the New Age":

#2.1 What is new about New Age?

For many people, the term New Age clearly refers to a momentous turning-point in history. According to astrologers, we live in the Age of Pisces, which has been dominated by Christianity. But the current age of Pisces is due to be replaced by the New Age of Aquarius early in the third Millennium. The Age of Aquarius has such a high profile in the New Age movement largely because of the influence of theosophy, spiritualism and anthroposophy, and their esoteric antecedents.

#2.2.3 Health: Golden Living

Spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy and New Age all see reincarnation as participation in cosmic evolution. This post-Christian approach to eschatology is said to answer the unresolved questions of theodicy and dispenses with the notion of hell. When the soul is separated from the body individuals can look back on their whole life up to that point, and when the soul is united to its new body there is a preview of its coming phase of life. People have access to their former lives through dreams and meditation techniques.

#2.3.2 The essential matrix of New Age thinking

The essential matrix of New Age thinking is to be found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It was particularly strong in freemasonry, spiritualism, occultism and theosophy, which shared a kind of esoteric culture. In this world-view, the visible and invisible universes are linked by a series of correspondences, analogies and influences between microcosm and macrocosm, between metals and planets, between planets and the various parts of the human body, between the visible cosmos and the invisible realms of reality.

Nature is a living being, shot through with networks of sympathy and antipathy, animated by a light and a secret fire which human beings seek to control. People can contact the upper or lower worlds by means of their imagination (an organ of the soul or spirit), or by using mediators (angels, spirits, devils) or rituals.
People can be initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos, God and the self by means of a spiritual itinerary of transformation. The eventual goal is gnosis, the highest form of knowledge, the equivalent of salvation. It involves a search for the oldest and highest tradition in philosophy (what is inappropriately called philosophia perennis) and religion (primordial theology), a secret (esoteric) doctrine which is the key to all the "exoteric" traditions which are accessible to everyone. Esoteric teachings are handed down from master to disciple in a gradual program of initiation.

19^th century esotericism is seen by some as completely secularised. Alchemy, magic, astrology and other elements of traditional esotericism had been thoroughly integrated with aspects of modern culture, including the search for causal laws, evolutionism, psychology and the study of religions. It reached its clearest form in the ideas of Helena Blavatsky, a Russian medium who founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Olcott in New York in 1875. The Society aimed to fuse elements of Eastern and Western traditions in an evolutionary type of spiritualism. It had three main aims:

1. "To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, caste or colour.
2. "To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science.
3. "To investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in man.

"The significance of these objectives... should be clear. The first objective implicitly rejects the 'irrational bigotry' and 'sectarianism' of traditional Christianity as perceived by spiritualists and theosophists... It is not immediately obvious from the objectives themselves that, for theosophists, 'science' meant the occult sciences and philosophy the occulta philosophia, that the laws of nature were of an occult or psychic nature, and that comparative religion was expected to unveil a 'primordial tradition' ultimately modelled on a Hermeticist philosophia perennis".

A prominent component of Mrs. Blavatsky's writings was the emancipation of women, which involved an attack on the "male" God of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islam. She urged people to return to the mother-goddess of Hinduism and to the practice of feminine virtues. This continued under the guidance of Annie Besant, who was in the vanguard of the feminist movement. Wicca and "women's spirituality" carry on this struggle against "patriarchal" Christianity today.

#3.1 New Age as spirituality

New Age is often referred to by those who promote it as a "new spirituality". It seems ironic to call it "new" when so many of its ideas have been taken from ancient religions and cultures. But what really is new is that New Age is a conscious search for an alternative to Western culture and its Judaeo-Christian religious roots. "Spirituality" in this way refers to the inner experience of harmony and unity with the whole of reality, which heals each human person's feelings of imperfection and finiteness. People discover their profound connectedness with the sacred universal force or energy which is the nucleus of all life. When they have made this discovery, men and women can set out on a path to perfection, which will enable them to sort out their personal lives and their relationship to the world, and to take their place in the universal process of becoming and in the New Genesis of a world in constant evolution. The result is a cosmic mysticism based on people's awareness of a universe burgeoning with dynamic energies. Thus cosmic energy, vibration, light, God, love – even the supreme Self – all refer to one and the same reality, the primal source present in every being.

This spirituality consists of two distinct elements, one metaphysical, the other psychological. The metaphysical component comes from New Age's esoteric and theosophical roots, and is basically a new form of gnosis. Access to the divine is by knowledge of hidden mysteries, in each individual's search for "the real behind what is only apparent, the origin beyond time, the transcendent beyond what is merely fleeting, the primordial tradition behind merely ephemeral tradition, the other behind the self, the cosmic divinity beyond the incarnate individual". Esoteric spirituality "is an investigation of Being beyond the separateness of beings, a sort of nostalgia for lost unity".

"Here one can see the gnostic matrix of esoteric spirituality. It is evident when the children of Aquarius search for the Transcendent Unity of religions. They tend to pick out of the historical religions only the esoteric nucleus, whose guardians they claim to be. They somehow deny history and will not accept that spirituality can be rooted in time or in any institution. Jesus of Nazareth is not God, but one of the many historical manifestations of the cosmic and universal Christ".

The psychological component of this kind of spirituality comes from the encounter between esoteric culture and psychology (cf. 2.32). New Age thus becomes an experience of personal psycho- spiritual transformation, seen as analogous to religious experience. For some people this transformation takes the form of a deep mystical experience, after a personal crisis or a lengthy spiritual search. For others it comes from the use of meditation or some sort of therapy, or from paranormal experiences which alter states of consciousness and provide insight into the unity of reality.

#4 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN CONTRAST

It is difficult to separate the individual elements of New Age religiosity – innocent though they may appear – from the overarching framework which permeates the whole thought-world on the New Age movement. The gnostic nature of this movement calls us to judge it in its entirety… However, it is well to be aware that the doctrine of the Christ spread in New Age circles is inspired by the theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and Alice Bailey's "Arcane School". Their contemporary followers are not only promoting their ideas now, but also working with New Agers to develop a completely new understanding of reality, a doctrine known by some observers as "New Age truth".

#7.2 A Select Glossary

Occultism: In the 19th century, spiritualism and the Theosophical Society introduced new forms of occultism which have, in turn, influenced various currents in the New Age. 

Spiritualism: While there have always been attempts to contact the spirits of the dead, 19^th century spiritualism is reckoned to be one of the currents that flow into the New Age. […] Madame Blavatsky was a medium, and so spiritualism had a great influence on the Theosophical Society, although there the emphasis was on contact with entities from the distant past rather than people who had died only recently.


Theosophy: an ancient term, which originally referred to a kind of mysticism. It has been linked to Greek Gnostics and Neoplatonists, to Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa and Jakob Boehme. The name was given new emphasis by the Theosophical Society, founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others in 1875. Theosophical mysticism tends to be monistic, stressing the essential unity of the spiritual and material components of the universe. It also looks for the hidden forces that cause matter and spirit to interact, in such a way that human and divine minds eventually meet. Here is where theosophy offers mystical redemption or enlightenment. 

 MAY 2012