Properly speaking, it is not correct to say that Theosophy is nontheistic. In her article titled “What Are The Theosophists?” H. P. Blavatsky states that “Theosophy in its fruition is spiritual knowledge itself – the very essence of philosophical and theistic enquiry,” and adds, “Once that a student abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and enters upon the solitary path of independent thought – Godward – he is a Theosophist; an original thinker, a seeker after the eternal truth with “an inspiration of his own” to solve the universal problems.” In her article “What is Theosophy?” she speaks of Theosophy or the Theosophia as “God-knowledge.” After all, that ancient Greek word “Theos-Sophia” literally translates as “God-Wisdom” or the “Wisdom of God.”

However, the Great Lodge or Brotherhood of Masters, Adepts, and Initiates – who are the real Teachers and Helpers of humanity, and who brought the Theosophical Society into existence at the end of the 19th century – consists of several geographical divisions, each of which is said to adopt a different philosophical approach and terminology from the others, even while still sharing essentially the same Esoteric or Secret Doctrine.

H. P. Blavatsky was a disciple of the Mahatmas of the Trans-Himalayan Lodge within the GREAT LODGE, and those Trans-Himalayan Initiates make very clear that they are Buddhists. Yes, an esoteric type of Buddhist but Buddhist nonetheless, including sharing and promoting the absolutely nontheistic approach that characterises Buddhism. For Buddhists, the Ultimate Reality cannot even be described or thought of as an “Impersonal God,” since the word “God,” in whatever context and with whatever prefix, gives entirely the wrong idea and connotation. We thus find in the original Theosophical literature statements such as these:

“The high Initiates and Adepts . . . believe in “gods” and know no “God,” but one Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 295)

“Deity is not God. It is NOTHING, and DARKNESS. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph – “the word Ayin meaning nothing.”” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 350)

“The Parabrahm of the Vedantins is the Deity we accept and believe in.” “Parabrahm is not “God.”” (HPB, “The Key to Theosophy” p. 222, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 6)

“It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never use the epithet “God” to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe.” (HPB, “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 555)

“The idea of God and Devil would make any chela of six months smile in pity. Theosophists do not believe either in the one or in the other. They believe in the Great ALL, in Sat, i.e., absolute and infinite existence, unique and with nothing like unto it, which is neither a Being nor an anthropomorphic creature, which is, and can never not be.” (HPB, “Misconceptions” from “Theosophy: Some Rare Perspectives” p. 12)

“Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H. . . . Our doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. . . . we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law . . . we are in a position to maintain there is no God . . . The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we have but one thing in common with theologies – we reveal the infinite.” (Master K.H., “The Mahatma Letters” p. 52)

“”Divine Wisdom,” Θεοσοφία (Theosophia) or Wisdom of the gods, . . . Therefore, it is not “Wisdom of God,” as translated by some, but Divine Wisdom such as that possessed by the gods. The term is many thousand years old.” (HPB, “The Key to Theosophy” p. 1)

Without doubt, it should be said that the Trans-Himalayan Esoteric Philosophy or Arhat Esoteric School is nontheistic. And that is who HPB is speaking about and on behalf of when making such statements as “the Initiates never use the epithet “God” to designate the One and Secondless Principle.” She cannot be speaking about all Initiates or the entire Great Brotherhood. For proof of this, see the very different terminology and approach favoured by the Master Serapis, also known as Maha Sahib, associated with the Egyptian branch of the Brotherhood. These excerpts from the book “Letters from The Masters of The Wisdom” were written to Colonel Olcott in the mid-1870s. Wording used by this Master suggests that he and his associates preferred a sort of Kabbalistic and Gnostic approach to esoteric Truth. The Great Brotherhood is not only an Eastern Brotherhood but a Western one too. The Western and Middle Eastern Brothers are not any the less true Masters than those of the Trans-Himalayan Lodge . . . besides which, the Master M. or Mahatma Morya of the Trans-Himalayan School even wrote of the Author of the following extracts as “our beloved Lord and Chief – him whom you know under the name of S. and Maha Sahib.” 

“God’s blessing upon thee, Brother mine.”

“Seek and ye will find. Ask and it will be given ye. Use your will power and may the benediction of Truth and the Divine Presence of Him the Inscrutable be upon thee and help thee to open thy intuition.”

“God’s blessing be upon you, and in your hours of black despondency think of me, mine Brother, and I will be with you.”

“The great Spirit be with thee, Brother.”

“Pray, both of you, for our Sister [i.e. H. P. Blavatsky, who was then going through a great initiatory trial], she deserves it. God’s blessing on thee, Brother.”

“God lead thee, Brother mine, and may He crown thy noble efforts with success.”

“Purity of earthly love purifies and prepares for the realisation of the Divine Love. No mortal man’s imagination can conceive of its ideals of the divinity otherwise but in the shape familiar to him. One who prepares for solving the Infinite must solve the finite first.”

Theosophists are thus in no position to “demonise” the word “God.” While for HPB and her Adept-Teachers, “Theosophy” is not to be understood as “Wisdom of God,” not all of the Masters would share this view. In fact, HPB herself used the “God” word for the Supreme Reality or Source of All throughout her first book “Isis Unveiled” and even did so occasionally after making such assertions as those quoted above from “The Secret Doctrine.” One should not become dogmatic about words, nor about anything.

And students of the original Theosophical teachings surely know that HPB’s closest colleague and most trusted co-founder William Q. Judge often used the “God” word, as shown below, even sometimes speaking of It with personal pronouns, such as “He” or “Him,” as the Maha Sahib does in the passages just shared. We will show that even HPB did the same in “Isis Unveiled.” What they both always insisted on, however, was that God or Deity (or whatever other term) is not actually someone or something PERSONAL, let alone anthropomorphic (human-like or existing in a human-like form), but must of philosophical necessity be intrinsically IMPERSONAL and formless, boundless and all-pervasive, infinite and having no traces or characteristics of what is finite, and alive and present within the essential core of every being and indeed of every atom.

It should also be remembered that the Sanskrit word “Ishvara” or “Ishwara,” familiar to and often used by students of Theosophy, literally translates as “Lord,” “Sovereign,” or “Ruler,” and is most typically defined in Indian religions and philosophy as simply meaning “God.” “Ishvara” and “Bhagavan” – these are the Sanskrit equivalents of our English word “God.” In no sense can the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the Bhagavad Gita be considered non-theistic.

Theosophists are always perfectly free to think, speak, believe, and act however they wish. There is no “officially binding” Theosophical doctrine, nor should there be any dogma or attempts at orthodoxy. (See The “Original Lines” for Theosophical Work) But in our experience, those Theosophical students who have been born and raised in the West often need to accept and embrace the “God” word to some extent – in an esoterically informed sense, of course – in order to be able to translate abstract doctrine and metaphysical complexities into personal, direct MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. And that is what Theosophy really is: not a set of words but the progressive attainment of a divine state or spiritual condition or experiential universal “realisation,“ to which the words point.

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“Let your aim be to find God; your motive, to know yourself for the sake of Theo-Sophia and humanity: your desire, to help humanity, and the True Will will be developed, the heart opened and you will not only control the Astral body but all in the Astral.” (William Q. Judge, “Answers to Questioners”)

“As we are striving to reach God, we must learn to be as near like Him as possible.” (WQJ, “Letters That Have Helped Me” p. 22)

“Be true lovers, but of God, and not of each other. Love each the other in that to one another ye mirror God, for that God is in you each.” (WQJ, “Letters That Have Helped Me” p. 130)

“The desire to find God, the desire to know one’s self, our possibilities and capabilities, that we may be of true use to the world, these are the motives. The thought should be unselfish, undisturbed by material affairs — free from wonder-seeking curiosity, concentrated, and in entire accord with the motive, the search for God.” (WQJ, “Answers to Questioners”)

“Man is a being who may be raised up to perfection, to the stature of the Godhead, because he himself is God incarnate. This noble doctrine was in the mind of Jesus, no doubt, when he said that we must be perfect even as is the father in heaven. This is the idea of human perfectibility. It will destroy the awful theory of inherent original sin which has held and ground down the western Christian nations for centuries.” (WQJ, “Three Great Ideas”)

“Theosophy, meaning knowledge of or about God (not in the sense of a personal anthropomorphic God, but in that of divine “godly” wisdom), and the term “God” being universally accepted as including the whole of both the known and the unknown, it follows that “Theosophy” must imply wisdom respecting the absolute; and, since the absolute is without beginning and eternal, this wisdom must have existed always.” (WQJ, “An Epitome of Theosophy” p. 7)

“But if you postulate a God, you must put man either in him or outside; and if the latter then your God is not infinite, but has in his universe something that is not himself — for the Infinite must be all. It is much safer to construe these Bible verses in the old Theosophical way, which would in the present instance show that man is made in the image of his God, who is his Higher Self.” (WQJ, “Forum Answers” p. 56)

“But I view God and Man and Universe as one whole. As an unmanifested whole I can only name it the Absolute; when it manifests it becomes what is called Spirit and Matter, still of the whole. Without such manifestation there would be nothing: it would abide in itself as what we should have to call “nothing,” because then there would be neither cognizer nor cognized. Since it is evident that it has manifested, it must follow that it has done so for its own purposes, said by us to be for obtaining consciousness and experience. If so, any “descent into matter” will not be a fall nor a degradation at all, since those are relative terms altogether, and since spirit and matter acting together do so for the one purpose. Man’s present state is described by man to be a fallen one, but that is because living in a world of relative things he has to use terms to describe his present state. It does not follow that he will always deal in such words. When evolution shall have carried the whole race to a point of immense progress, knowledge, and wisdom, the mind of man will see more of truth, and doubtless be well satisfied with all the work and discipline gone through, leading up to the new and better state. . . .

“I do not admit that “we were once divine and have fallen”; but say that we are divine and always were, and that the falling is but apparent and due to the personal consciousness which calls that soul which is not and that not which is. We are God, and working out in various personalities and environments the great plan in view, and that plan is well known to the dweller in the body who calmly waits for all the material elements to come to realization of their oneness with God.” (WQJ, “Forum Answers” p. 104-105)

“When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man’s immortality?

“It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man’s spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man’s own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man’s spirit with the Universal Soul – God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man’s spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit [i.e. “nothing comes from nothing”]; prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers – you have proved God!” (H. P. Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 1, Preface, p. vi)

“Some of us have asked this many times before, in ancient births of ours in other bodies and other lands; others are making the request now; but it is more than likely in the case of those who are spurred on to intense effort and longing to know the truth, and to strive for unity with God, that they have put up the petition ages since.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 20)

“A continuance of belief in that false ego produces a continuance of ignorance, thus delaying salvation. The beginning of the effort to dissipate this false belief is the beginning of the Path; the total dissipation of it is the perfection of yoga, or union with God.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 44)

“For only those ideals can be dissipated which rest upon a lower basis than the highest aim, or which are not in accord with nature’s (God’s) law.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 45)

“But as the wheel of rebirth will eternally revolve, drawing us inevitably back to a mortal body, we are continually deluded and never succeed in attaining to God ― that being the goal for us all.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 64-65)

“Arjuna’s doubt is the one which naturally arises in one who for the first time is brought face to face with the great duality of nature ― or of God. This duality may be expressed metaphysically by the words thought and action, for these mean in this the same as ideation and expression. Brahman, as the unmanifested God, conceives the idea of the Universe, and it at once expresses itself in what is called creation by the Christian and by the scientist evolution. This creation or evolution is the action of God. With him there is no difference in time between the arising of the idea and its expression in manifested objects. Coming down to consider the “created” objects, or the planes on which the thought of God has its expression through its own laws, we find the duality expressed by action and reaction, attraction and repulsion, day and night, outbreathing and inbreathing, and so on.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 83)

“This “inferior nature” [i.e. spoken of by Krishna in the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita] is only so relatively. It is the phenomenal and transient which disappears into the superior at the end of a kalpa. It is that part of God, or of the Self, which chose to assume the phenomenal and transient position, but is, in essence, as great as the superior nature. The inferiority is only relative. . . . Included in the inferior nature are all the visible, tangible, invisible and intangible worlds; it is what we call nature. . . . Experiment and induction will confer a great deal of knowledge about the inferior nature of God and along that path the science of the modern West is treading, but before knowing the occult, hidden, intangible realms and forces ― often called spiritual, but not so in fact ― the inner astral senses and powers have to be developed and used.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 133-134)

“This is the chapter on Unity, teaching that the Self is all, or if you like the word better, God: that God is all and not outside of nature, and that we must recognize this great unity of all things and beings in the Self.” (WQJ, “Notes on The Bhagavad Gita” p. 144)

“Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope, yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the understanding of a child. It is wisdom about God for those who believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and that darkness is around his pavilion. Although it contains by derivation the name God and thus may seem at first sight to embrace religion alone, it does not neglect science, for it is the science of sciences and therefore has been called the wisdom religion.” (WQJ, “The Ocean of Theosophy” p. 1) 

“No mind can comprehend the infinite and absolute unknown, which is, has no beginning and shall have no end; which is both last and first, because, whether differentiated or withdrawn into itself, it ever is. This is the God spoken of in the Christian Bible as the one around whose pavilion there is darkness.” (WQJ, “The Ocean of Theosophy” p. 19) 

“Going back for a moment to the time when the races were devoid of mind, the question arises, “who gave the mind, where did it come from, and what is it?” It is the link between the Spirit of God above and the personal below; . . .” (WQJ, “The Ocean of Theosophy” p. 53) 

“In this higher Trinity, we have the God above each one; this is Atma, and may be called the Higher Self.” (WQJ, “The Ocean of Theosophy” p. 57) 

“As the true will is the manifestation of the spirit through the soul, it must be at one with the divine, inasmuch as the spirit is the divine in man. It is the God in man, a portion of the all-pervading. Asserting itself through the soul, the true will is brought forth and in truth we say, “It is the will of God.” We may make our finite wills at one with the divine by elevating our aim, using it for good or in the search for God, in striving to find how to use it in harmony with the laws of God.” (WQJ, “Answers to Questioners”)

“For the Deity there is no fall. He can not fall. In the so-called descent into matter, He must manifest through something. Never does the Ineffable stand unveiled before mortal man. When the All Wise deemed it good to manifest Himself as individualities, He did so through the soul. . . . the Deity manifested Himself through the soul in the man. Nothing below man is immortal. Man is not immortal; his soul is not immortal; but the breath of God [i.e. the spirit, “spirit” and “breath” being closely linked etymologically and in religious philosophy], which is God’s life or God himself, is forever.” (WQJ, “Answers to Questioners”)

“In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and Invisible sun. The universe is his body, spirit and soul; and after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS. These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic Pleroma, the three “Kabalistic Faces,” for the ANCIENT of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no form.” The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into existence,” says the Sohar, the Book of splendor. The first light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing Intelligent life throughout creation. The second emanation condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle; sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses the unintelligent, blind life-principle into every form. The third, produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes and it becomes DARKNESS and the BAD – pure matter, the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 1, p. 302)

“The word “Karma” means “action,” and, in its larger sense, the action of the great unmanifested, whether that be called God or the Absolute. The moment the unmanifested begins to make itself manifest in creation or evolution, then its action and Karma begin. Hence, every circumstance great or small, every manifestation of life, every created thing and all of the facts and circumstances of man’s life are under the law of Karma.” (WQJ, “Forum Answers” p. 2)

“Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence – let alone blasphemy – toward the Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere is the boundless and endless one – the grand “CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN” by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible WILL we are surrounded – the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty FIAT. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only INFALLIBLE gospel we recognize.” (HPB, “Isis Unveiled” Vol. 1, p. 29)

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“This Consciousness of Joy in its own unmixed essence — of Joy as Life in itself — is the greatest imaginable lever in human existence. With it, Archimedes could indeed have moved his world, . . . Fine and small though it be, it is not difficult to find. Vast as it is, it does not escape the human sight. It is the simple, the abiding knowledge that God is in us; that we cannot escape this holy destiny. That the All-Father encompasses us as the ether surrounds and interpenetrates the earth. That all — all is well; all moves towards the rapt fulfillment of The Soul. Such is the certainty which evolves into the God-Consciousness which shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.”
(Julia Keightley, “The Uses of Joy,” “Theosophical Quarterly” January 1906)

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