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Theosophy An Introductory Study Course

By John Algeo

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Theosophy As Philosophy

In still another aspect, Theosophy is philosophy because it postulates a logicalexplanation for the universe and its laws, as well as for humanity’s origin, evolution, and destiny. In a message she sent to the American convention of 1888, Blavatsky wrote, “Theosophy [is] the philosophy of the rational explanation of things and not the tenets.”

That is, Theosophy is not a body of beliefs, but a way of explaining things—a philosophy.

Theosophy offers reasons for life left untouched by either religion or science. It holds that the universe is unified, orderly, and purposeful, that matter is the instrument for the evolution of life, that thought is a creative power which we can learn to use effectively, and that experience of both joy and suffering is the means by which we grow in character and ability and thus attain wisdom, compassion, and power.

We say that Theosophy includes aspects of religion, science, and philosophy, but those three approaches to truth, when rightly followed, are not contradictory. In fact they blend into one another. They are three ways of viewing the truth of the universe, and what at one time is religion or philosophy will be science at another time. As a British scientist, John D. Barrow, has written (Theories of Everything, 4):
 

Today, physicists accept the atomistic viewpoint that material bodies are at root composed of identical elementary particles, as [that view is] well supported by evidence. It is taught in every university in the world. Yet, this theory of physics began amongst the early Greeks as a philosophical, or even mystical, religion without any supporting observational evidence whatsoever. . . . Atomism began life as a philosophical idea that would fail virtually every contemporary test of what should be regarded as “scientific”; yet, eventually, it became the cornerstone of physical science. One suspects that there are ideas of a similar groundless status by today’s standards that will in the future take their place within the accepted
“scientific” picture of reality.