T PH ILOSOPHY/THEOSOPHY ea Raghavan Iyer founded HERMES, a journal of Theosophical Wisdom, C he TEACHERS OF the just prior to the beginning of the 1975 Cycle in Santa Barbara, California, as one of several vehicles for the current behind the 7th RS Century Impulsion. In that journal, he illustrated the ways in which EterNAL DoctrINE Mahatmas have worked and continue to work in the world. In the OF article, “The Seventh Impulsion: 1963-2000”, he made clear that the VOL. I: FROM TSON-KA-PA TO WILLIAM LAW Mahatmic impulsions were concentrated in the last quarter of each T century, but that preparations for them occurred earlier, and that he their reverberations lasted far beyond the conclusion of each quarter- century cycle in an unfailing continuous stream. E T Near the beginning of 1976, after a year of guiding the golden E HERMES current, Professor Iyer determined that those thinkers RN and teachers most involved in the Seven Century Plan should be honored through writings - called the Teacher Articles - that A L described the hidden current behind their lives and the timeless D context for their work within the cycles of time. All of the Teacher Articles were written from a Theosophical perspective based, in large OCTRIN part, upon the philosophy expounded in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. This collection of essays contains those articles that first appeared in HERMES as an exploration of the Seven Century Plan. E - Professor Elton A. Hall taught philosophy and religious studies for 40 I years at Moorhead State University, California State University (Fresno), Oxnard College, and Moorpark College. His writings have appeared E in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, The Journal of the LTON Muhyiddin ibn al-‘Arabi Society, Manas, The Middle Way, and HERMES. A. H BY A ELTON A. HALL LL compILed BY the edItorIAL Board of Theosophy Trust T T theosophY trUst T T Books www.theosophytrust.org TEACHERS OF THE ETERNAL DOCTRINE VOL. I: FROM TSON-KA-PA TO WILLIAM LAW Other Theosophy Trust Books Meditation and Self-Study by Raghavan Iyer The Origins of Self-Consciousness in The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky compiled by The Editorial Board of Theosophy Trust Wisdom in Action Essays on the Spiritual Life by Raghavan Iyer The Dawning of Wisdom Essays on Walking the Path by Raghavan Iyer Symbols of the Eternal Doctrine From Shamballa to Paradise by Helen Valborg The Key to Theosophy An Exposition of the Ethics, Science, and Philosophy by H. P. Blavatsky Evolution and Intelligent Design in The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky compiled by The Editorial Board of Theosophy Trust TEACHERS OF THE ETERNAL DOCTRINE VOL. I: FROM TSON-KA-PA TO WILLIAM LAW by Elton A. Hall Theosophy Trust Books Washington, D.C. Teachers of the Eternal Doctrine Copyright © March 10, 2011 by Theosophy Trust All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means -graphic, electronic, or mechanical - including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Theosophy Trust books may be ordered through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and other booksellers, or by visiting: http://www.theosophytrust.org/online_books.php ISBN 978-0-9832220-1-9 ISBN 0-9832220-1-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2011921591 Printed in the United States of America Dedicated to Raghavan Narasimhan Iyer Master Teacher Lux Theosophiae, Lux Terrarum KRISHNA: "This exhaustless doctrine of Yoga I formerly taught unto Vivaswat; Vivaswat communicated it to Manu and Manu made it known unto Ikshwaku; and being thus transmitted from one unto another it was studied by the Rajarshees, until at length in the course of time the mighty art was lost, O harasser of thy foes! It is even the same exhaustless, secret, eternal doctrine I have this day communicated unto thee because thou art my devotee and my friend." ARJUNA: "Seeing that thy birth is posterior to the life of Ikshwaku, how am I to understand that thou wert in the beginning the teacher of this doctrine?" KRISHNA: "Both I and thou have passed through many births, O harasser of thy foes! Mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine." "Even though myself unborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet in presiding over nature - which is mine - I am born but through my own maya, the mystic power of self-ideation, the eternal thought in the eternal mind. I produce myself among creatures, O son of Bharata, whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness. Whoever, O Arjuna, knoweth my divine birth and actions to be even so doth not upon quitting his mortal frame enter into another, for he entereth into me." The Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. IV CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. xi THE SEVENTH IMPULSION: 1963–2000. 1 TSONG-KHA-PA . 7 PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA . 16 PARACELSUS. 23 JACOB BOEHME. 30 THE ROSICRUCIAN MOVEMENT. 39 FRANZ ANTON MESMER . 49 LOUIS CLAUDE DE SAINT-MARTIN . 58 CAGLIOSTRO . 66 SAINT-GERMAIN . 78 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY. 88 DAMODAR K. MAVALANKAR . 98 WILLIAM QUAN JUDGE. 105 SOLOMON IBN GABIROL . 112 AVICENNA . 120 FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 129 HADEWIJCH . 140 ALBERTUS MAGNUS . 150 ROGER BACON . 158 MOSES DE LEON . 167 MEISTER ECKHART. 176 ix x Teachers of the Eternal Doctrine JAN VAN RUYSBROECK. 185 JULIAN OF NORWICH . 195 NICHOLAS OF CUSA. 203 THOMAS À KEMPIS. 212 MARSILIO FICINO. 221 THOMAS MORE. 230 DESIDERIUS ERASMUS. 240 NOSTRADAMUS. 251 ISAAC LURIA . 260 JOHN OF THE CROSS . 269 JOHN DEE . 279 TOMMASO CAMPANELLA . 290 GIAMBATTISTA VICO . 300 BA'AL SHEM TOV . 309 WILLIAM LAW . 320 INTRODUCTION The year 1975 marked the beginning of a remarkable cycle of activity in the West by the Brotherhood of Bodhisattvas. The last quarter of the 20th century was, for that ancient fraternity of Adept-Initiates, the culminating cycle in a series of efforts to bring to the West (and as the "West" spread in every direction, the world) knowledge of the immemorial Wisdom-Religion. The Seventh Impulsion, as it is known to that Fraternity, was the last in a series initiated in the 14th Century by Tsong-Kha-Pa, the founder of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism in which the Dalai Lamas incarnate. It may seem mysterious to us that a thoroughly modern spiritual movement that culminated in California at the end of the 1990s should have its origins in the 1300s in Tibet, but the real history of the hidden and public work of those Adept-Teachers is even more mysterious. That continuous stream of compassionate work for the spiritual enlightenment of the whole of the human race spanned what to most of us ordinary human beings might seem an aeon, but was in fact a mere 700 years; that work is known to those Adepts whose compassion and wisdom infused it as the Seven Century Plan. In the latter part of the 19th Century, Helena P. Blavatsky first revealed to a complacent, disbelieving and increasingly materialistic West the existence of this work of spiritual enlightenment by the fraternity of Adept-Initiates. She wielded a powerful light in tracing their work throughout recorded and, mostly, unrecorded history, as she was their messenger and agent in the world for the Sixth Impulsion. The parameters and deeper meaning of this plan were explained even more fully in the 20th Century by Raghavan N. Iyer in "The Seventh Impulsion: 1963-2000", the lead article in this book. Helena P. Blavatsky, or "HPB" as she was known to her students, was the great light of the Sixth Impulsion; it was she who delivered the teachings of Theosophy to the West and then to the world, boldly xi xii Teachers of the Eternal Doctrine announcing the existence of Mahatmas, Masters of Wisdom, whose very nature it is to share their knowledge and wisdom with humanity (when and as it is possible to do so). In founding the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, she adopted as its motto "There is no religion higher than Truth," thereby indicating that Theosophy is not another religion amongst competing faiths and sects, but rather it is the divine spirit that suffuses all religions to some degree and infuses the whole of human evolution. Theosophy is the wisdom that underlies the very universe itself, and so she called it the Wisdom-Religion, that divine knowledge that lies beyond and above any and all religions and faiths, creeds and cults. All manifestations of Theosophia are constrained by the mind-set of the ages in which they occur, furnishing what is required to provide humanity opportunities for spiritual evolution. In an earlier presentation of the Wisdom-Religion, Plato taught that things and actions are good only in so far as they participate in the ideal Good, which is abstract, eternal, and greater and beyond all of its embodiments. Just so, religion and all human endeavors can be said to contain truth to the degree they reflect the Wisdom-Religion, which transcends all of its expressions, however exalted and magnificent they might be. Just as the sentences "It is raining," "Es regnet" (German) and "Il pleût" (French) express the same proposition but are not themselves that proposition, Theosophia is expressed by many different words, none of which can claim to be seamless, whole, complete Theosophy. In the brilliant phrasing of HPB in The Key to Theosophy, "Theosophia is Divine Wisdom, the aggregate of the knowledge and wisdom that underlie the Universe – the homogeneity of eternal GOOD – and the sum total of the same as allotted to man by nature on this earth." Raghavan Iyer founded HERMES, a journal of Theosophical Wisdom and one of several vehicles for the current behind the 7th Impulsion, just prior to the beginning of the 1975 Cycle in Santa Barbara, California.