It is not uncommon among students of Theosophy – particularly those who follow the later, Leadbeater-Besant-Bailey teachings – to depreciate mysticism and rank it as inferior to occultism, while stating or suggesting that one has to make a choice between the two, i.e. a decision to follow either the occult path or the mystic path.

Neither H. P. Blavatsky, her closest colleague William Q. Judge, or the Masters of Wisdom who they served, made such a distinction and division. Yes, there is a difference between mysticism and occultism, but they are mutually complementary and indeed mutually necessary. Let’s make clear what these terms actually mean:

MYSTICISM – The practical cultivation of the heart and of love, in a deep devotion aimed at union, unison, or communion with the Divine, or with the Divine as focused in or represented by a great Master or Teacher, such as Christ in the Gospels, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, or some other. This approach, when truly taken, leads fairly quickly to various tangible experiences of metaphysical realities, particularly during periods of meditation and in dreams. There is no such thing as “theoretical mysticism,” for by its very nature it is practical, experiential, and relates to the spiritual heart and intuitional faculty, not to the head or intellect. The only theoretical aspect is accounts of or guidance regarding the practice. Mysticism is not necessarily esoteric, although it can be.

OCCULTISM – Exists in two divisions: (1) theoretical occultism, (2) practical occultism. (1) is the study and learning of various principles, components, relations, and laws of the hidden (which is what “occult” literally means) side of life or the actual, inner reality of both the human being and the cosmos. (2) is the putting of such theoretical knowledge and understanding into potent application, through what has often been termed Magic (in its original, elevated sense), enabling direct interaction with and use of those occult laws and aspects of Nature. If this is done entirely unselfishly and solely to help and benefit others, it is white magic or pure practical occultism; if for some self-seeking or sensually gratifying purpose, or with the intent of harming another, it is black magic, which is impure practical occultism.

HPB and William Judge repeatedly explain that it would be thoroughly dangerous to teach practical occultism to people of the present era, since almost everyone lacks the great degree of personal purity, high ethics, and profound understanding that are needed in order to handle such forces without harming oneself or others. Their writings provide much of theoretical occultism, or the science, but practical occultism, or the art, is imparted by genuine Masters only at initiation. That does not mean their works are devoid of any practical value; they can and do bring much practical benefit – especially ethically and psychologically – but not in terms of giving readers the secrets of precisely how to summon and control elementals, or how to create and project a Mayavi Rupa or other type of astral body, or how to send and receive telepathic messages, influence another’s thoughts, see and understand people’s auras, give aid to the deceased, or reliably read the contents of the Astral Light, etc., etc.

We can say that practical occultism is where theoretical occultism and mysticism merge with one another, at least to a degree. Meanwhile, it is with theoretical occultism and mysticism that we have to deal. Like just about everything else in life, both carry risks:

Mysticism – Can quite easily descend into mere psychism and astral delusions, since the line between mysticism and psychism is often very thin, at least at the beginning. If one’s “mystical experiences” are resulting in personal self-glorification, strengthening of egotism, such as in a belief of one’s unique importance in the destiny of humanity, or convictions of being a “Saviour” figure and suchlike, or if separativeness, division, hostility, or aggression towards others are ensuing, one can confidently assume that this is not true mysticism but psychism. Mysticism also carries the risk of crossing over into sheer emotionalism. However, one should not feel unduly concerned about this prospect, since a large part of the mystic’s aim is to FEEL . . . to really feel love, compassion, sympathy, devotion, adoration, and to expressly cultivate and attempt to induce such feelings if they are not readily forthcoming due to a naturally over-intellectual character. As one does so, tears – of more than one kind – are inevitable and are to be welcomed. The problem is if this tips over into general tearfulness in daily life, melancholy, hysteria, sentimentalism, etc.

Theoretical Occultism – Can very easily become mere intellectualism, with a mental fixation on the most abstruse, complex, and practically unhelpful (though intellectually stimulating) metaphysical subjects and statements, and a rigidity of thought, definitions, and terminology. It may take on the form of a creed to be believed, rather than a life to be lived. Worse than this, dogmatism, spiritual pride, orthodoxy, and interpersonal coldness are a risk, thus vitiating some of the main aims for which the Theosophical Society was founded. The theoretical occultist might become very good at thinking, yet highly incompetent at feeling. They may even spurn all spiritual practice in their own lives, preferring reading, studying, and cogitating instead, and dismissing as “boring” or “unimportant” large swathes of Theosophical and religious literature if it does not provide intellectual food as strong as “The Secret Doctrine,” for example.

It should hopefully now be clear how theoretical occultism can help guard against the pitfalls of mysticism, and how mysticism can help guard against the pitfalls of theoretical occultism. Each provides what is lacking in the other, and so to attempt to separate one from the other and choose only one of them to follow, is not advisable.

The Lodge of Masters views the two as inherently one: real occultism is inseparable from real mysticism, and real mysticism is inseparable from real occultism. H. P. Blavatsky writes:

“According to our opinion . . . there is no essential difference between a “mystic” and a “Theosophist-Esotericist” or Eastern Occultist.” (“What Shall We Do for Our Fellow-Men?”)

In her preface to “The Voice of The Silence,” she describes the book, translated from the Book of the Golden Precepts, as “a judicious selection only from those treatises which will best suit the few real mystics in the Theosophical Society, and which are sure to answer their needs.” This explains why that work bears the inscription “Dedicated to the few.” HPB seems to regret the fact that there were only “a few real mystics” in the Society, for it is certainly the Masters’ wish that there should be many.

However, the largest concentration of Theosophical Mystics was to be found among the pupils and co-workers of William Q. Judge. Some of the most remarkably mystical – such as Julia Keightley (“Jasper Niemand”) and Genevieve Griscom (“Cavé”) – were developed under his tutelage and inspiration. The Judge supporters as a whole took a far more mystical approach to Theosophy and Esoteric Philosophy than the majority of the many other Theosophists of that era. In the 1930s, when looking back at the so-called “Judge Case” of 1893-1895 in which Judge was vigorously persecuted and slandered by Annie Besant, Col. Olcott, and their supporters, Ernest Hargrove commented that those who were so strongly against Judge were almost entirely devoid of mysticism and were predominantly intellectual, theoretical occultists and no more.

In the article The Forgotten Theosophical Society, which is about The Theosophical Society which was headquartered in New York (and which is now defunct) and which was made up primarily of people who had known and worked closely with WQJ (and in some cases HPB), including the Griscoms, the Keightleys, the Johnstons, and Hargrove, we said of that Society that “While adopting a scholarly approach to subjects when warranted, such as the study of world religions and translations of sacred texts, the Society also adopted a markedly mystical, practical, heart-centred, and devotional approach to Theosophy, much more than has any other Theosophical group. They asserted that whereas many Theosophists view Theosophy as a Doctrine and something to learn about, they viewed Theosophy as a Life and something to be experienced.” Most Theosophists of the present day would give verbal assent to such an approach but we know from close involvement with Theosophical activities for the past fifteen years that most do not truly take it to heart. If they were to do so, the state or condition of today’s Theosophical Movement would likely be so much better.

Theoretical occultism is dry without the waters of mysticism. Those waters may flood the mystic, if not guided by the knowledge of theoretical occultism.

Julia Keightley remarks: “Almost all Theosophists are content with the ideal of the existence of Great Souls who help the upward course of the race, and I find them caring but little about the exact plane from, to or by which that help comes. Students who are striving to live the life, to help themselves and others, mystics seeking deeper
and ever deeper, ever more inwardly, for the hidden Self, are very rarely scholiasts or precisians. The Mahâtma is. Intuition has revealed thus much to Mind. The humble seeker bends his head, reaches upward and inward, aspires, loves and believes. What to him are planes? He knows that he is helped, and knows no strife to verify the exact point in Mother Space from which that god-like aid descends to fill his brimming soul. He hears that the Mahâtma may be that help and yet be also a living man, and in the fact — if fact it be — he sees new proof of great Nature’s mysteries. Withdraw the fact — he feels no sense of loss; you have withdrawn from him a body, not a soul, and it is Soul he seeks, and would penetrate, even to those hidden deeps where the All-Soul
merges into the One-Spirit.” (“Letters to a Lodge,” “The Irish Theosophist” April 1895, published today in “Theosophical Writings of Julia Keightley”)

In this regard, one may recall the Buddha’s analogy of the poisoned arrow. Imagine, says the Buddha, a man who has been struck by a poisoned arrow. Rather than pulling it out or receiving assistance in actually removing it, he demands first to know all the possible theory and details about this arrow: where it came from, what it is made of, how it was shot, when it was manufactured, how long it takes to act, what relation it has to other arrows of different kinds, and so forth. Such a person will die with the arrow still stuck in them, and the poison coursing through their system, before they have been able to gratify their intellect and thirst for data and details. “He that has an ear, let him hear.”

“Jesus of Nazareth was the greatest of all mystics. It does not appear necessary to dilate upon the value of his mission. All the work of all the scientists that ever lived have not had so beneficial an effect upon the human race.

“St. Francis was a mystic. Last summer, at his church at Assisi, I was shown, as a special privilege, and because I was an obviously reverent observer, a little slip of paper on which he had written his dying blessing of his favorite disciple, Leo. And what was it? That Leo too might have the supreme satisfaction of entering into personal conscious communication with Christ. And St. Francis founded one of the greatest religious orders that the church has known and which, in spite of the faults from which weak human nature could not keep free, has been of inestimable service to mankind.

“St. Theresa was a mystic. She founded the reformed Carmelite order which still has thousands of devoted adherents who give their
lives to the amelioration of the sorrows of humanity.

“Thomas a Kempis was a mystic and his little book will be read ages after the most learned work of the most learned scientist of the nineteenth century has passed into the realm of useless and forgotten things. I would rather have written The Imitation of Christ than The Critique
of Pure Reason. The first deals with eternal verities and will be as fresh and useful five thousand years from now as the sayings of Christ
are two thousand years after they were uttered. Who will venture to predict that Kant’s great work will be more than a philosophical and
historical curiosity a thousand years hence

“Buddha was a mystic and has given a satisfactory religious belief to a third of the human race.

“Why multiply instances. Can we contemplate the results of the lives of the five mystics named above and not grant at once that even from a materialistic, rational standpoint they have been responsible for greater good effects, for a wider and nobler influence upon the human race than all the common-sense practical people combined?” (Clement A. Griscom, Jr., “Mysticism,” “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 5, p. 381)

The Masters of Compassion and Wisdom speak indiscriminately of the great aim for which They are working, as occultism and mysticism, for the two are in reality one:

“He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and proclaim its reign near at hand, must give the example to others. He must be the first to change his modes of life; and, regarding the study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of Knowledge must loudly proclaim it such despite exact Science and the opposition of society. “The Kingdom of Heaven is obtained by force” say the Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and ready to either conquer or perish that the modern mystic can hope to achieve his object.” (Master K.H., “The Mahatma Letters” p. 6-7)

Many mystics outside of the nominal Theosophical Movement say that not everyone can be a mystic and that it all depends on whether or not God has chosen and selected one for a life of mysticism. In other words, the idea is that the possibility of a mystical life is solely dependent on God’s will and grace. We who study and accept the Esoteric Philosophy would see it differently. A person’s propensity for, and proficiency in, mysticism – and occultism, and just about anything else – is fashioned by one’s own Karma, the law of self-created destiny through cause and effect, action and reaction, sowing and reaping, sequence and consequence, etc. Our propensities for things in this life exist because we have developed ourselves in them in previous lifetimes. In the past, we created our present; in the present, we are creating our future. A deficiency is just something that needs to be filled with what is missing. We can all begin to do that today.

We close this article by quoting again from William Judge’s dear friend Clement Griscom:

“The characteristic of this sort of inspiration is that it is conscious. The person experiencing it knows that it comes from God. It may come in
a vision, seen by the “Spiritual eye,” like the Revelations of St. John. It may come in words like the “voice” of Tauler and teach him noble maxims, to be afterwards preached to a wondering and grateful world; or it may come in thoughts, to be laborously transcribed in many volumes of tortuous and mystifying words, like Boehme and von Ruysbrock and Madame Guyon. Education has nothing to do with it. Boehme was a self-taught shoemaker. Joan of Arc, a shepherd girl. George Fox, the son of a country storekeeper. Christ, the son of a poor carpenter. What, then, are the conditions which induce the mystical state?

“In a word — holy living. What the church, what all churches have taught for time immemorial, as the proper life for a man to lead. Renunciation of self; love of God and one’s fellow creatures; purity, physical, mental and moral; temperateness in diet; serenity and calmness of emotions; meditation and prayer, and the deliberate desire to reach Divine Communion. This is the Christian teaching. It is the teaching
of Buddhism, of Brahmanism, of the mystical sects of Mohammedanism, of Lao-tze; it may be found in a hundred mystical treatises of all ages
and of all people and is the Rule of Life of every great religion. It must be so, for the aim of all religions is union with God and the road to travel
is the same road in every age and in every clime. . .

“If we focus our prayers and meditations upon Jesus, it will be to Jesus that we shall ultimately reach. I mean this literally. The mystic believes that a proper course of living and training will actually enable a living man to communicate consciously, face to face, with Jesus Christ, who lived and died nineteen hundred years ago, but who, in a spiritual sense, is as much alive and in the world to-day as he ever was, and with whom it is just as possible to communicate to-day as it was when he walked by the shores of Galilee. I cannot put this too plainly. I . . . mean it . . . as a plain statement of fact. And its significance is so tremendous that to me it seems the essence of religion. What do dogmas, and creeds and formularies matter in the face of such a possibility? . . .

“To the mystic it is as clear as day that the possibilities of the spiritual life are in our own hands and that there is no limit but our own
weakness and inertia to the development of our inner natures. Man can communicate with God if he but wills to do so.” (Clement A. Griscom, Jr., “Mysticism,” “Theosophical Quarterly” Vol. 5, p. 384-385)

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