Julia Keightley (1850-1915), who also wrote under pen names such as Jasper Niemand and Julius, was a close colleague of William Q. Judge in the USA and a personal esoteric pupil (from a distance) of H. P. Blavatsky. She is most well known in the Theosophical world for compiling the first two volumes of “Letters That Have Helped Me” by William Judge, many of which letters were written to her. She married Archibald Keightley, who was one of HPB’s favourite pupils and co-workers in London. She was known to have remarkable mystical insights and intuitive perceptions, and to at times receive both inspiration and communications from some of the Masters of Wisdom or Mahatmas. Her wise mentor W. Q. Judge, by whose assistance all these faculties had been activated or deepened in her, recognised that her nature was too sensitive (psychically and physically) to allow her to be placed in a position of public prominence or great responsibility and leadership. Following the major disruption of the Theosophical Society after the passing of both HPB and WQJ, and the problems with Katherine Tingley, Julia (and Archibald) remained an active and devoted member of The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York, which people sometimes refer to for ease of reference as the Griscom/Hargrove/Johnston Theosophical Society. The Keightleys, like most of the other members of this Society, believed it to be one and the same organisation as the original Theosophical Society that had been founded in New York in 1875, and thus considered it the only legitimate Theosophical organisation. Our article The Forgotten Theosophical Society is an extensive exploration of this. In time, Archibald and Julia Keightley relocated to Wales and became responsible for the British Section of the New York headquartered Theosophical Society. They both recognised Genevieve Griscom (also known as Cavé), who was the esoteric head of the Society, as a direct agent of the Masters. We have quoted part of this article before, in Approaching Theosophy Through The Intellect or The Heart, but here present almost the whole of it. It was written for “The Theosophical Quarterly,” the main magazine published by The Theosophical Society headquartered in New York, which Society is sadly long since defunct.

THEOSOPHY APPLIED TO DAILY LIFE
BY JULIA KEIGHTLEY
(UNDER THE PEN NAME OF “JASPER NIEMAND”)

IN “THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY” JANUARY 1905

When we consider the application of a philosophy to the lives of men, we are met at the outset by the necessity of defining the system of Thought which we would thus see applied. The actual need of such application would in itself appear to be beyond dispute, if the philosophy be anything more than a scholastic curiosity. The scientific observer, no less than the religious teacher, has always admitted that the true test of a belief is its effect in the life. It is not really a belief, which is not lived, which is mere lip service and sentimental rhapsody, or which serves merely as an intellectual exercise; such are but figments of the over active brain, shreds of the garments of self-esteem and emotion.

There is more than justice in the imposition of this test to the reality of any system of Thought; there is universal Law in it. This must be plain to the most casual observer, if so be he will think at all. For when a man comes to us with a fact and urges our acceptance of it, or if he puts it forward, the common tenets of good faith among mankind demand that he shall have tested the fact which he professes to believe, if he would have us in our turn accept his belief as a fact. There is a consensus of opinion among mankind in favor of this test being applied. If a belief be vital at all, it is lived. . . . Thought which is barren, which is quite without outcome in the life of the thinker is an artificial product, a mere verbosity. It is idle to dignify it by the name of Thought at all, seeming as it does to be a string of words, without meaning, because without actuality, without Being. . . .

Where a religious professor, where a church or a sect put forward a system of belief which is not lived, and where men conform to it for reasons arising out of the material nature, whether in sloth or in comfort, in gain or in inertia, then we have a very real danger to humanity. We attack the foundations of man’s belief in man, and in so doing, we undermine belief in God. It is a very old and a profoundly true saying: “If he loves not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, whom he hath not seen?” [1 John 4:20] And by “God,” we understand the Divine Spirit. . . .

Hence it is a grave danger to the community when we find religious belief becoming devitalized by want of sincerity, by the absence of expression of the faith in the life of the man. Hypocrisy, that supreme form of untruth, is bred and becomes ingrained thereby. It will be remembered that that great Teacher, whom we call Jesus of Nazareth, was unsparing in one denunciation only – the condemnation of hypocrites. It is doubtless on account of the necessity for vitality in belief, that we find him saying that a man must live the life to know the doctrine: the denunciation of the idle word – though that is far from being a word, as we understand the term – is a statement of the same order. There is no soundness in life where there is no vitality and expression of belief in action.

Taking it then for granted that the right to demand the application of belief is admitted, we come at once to the further point: what is this which we are about to use? We make inquiry concerning the nature of the belief which we are about to apply to the stress and strain of our living. In the present instance this system of Thought is that which we call by the ancient term, Theosophy.

This well-known name – and it has been made to ring throughout the world in the last twenty-five years – has been interpreted to mean “Divine Wisdom, Knowledge of God,” or we might call it “The Study of the Gods.” Either definition will serve our present purpose. Under either term we can ask what it is that we mean when we use the term Theosophy. What is its heart, its fountainhead?

It would seem clear that we do not mean a body of doctrine, a given creed, for that were to misuse the words “Divine Wisdom.” When the Founder of the Theosophical Society in the last century, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, wrote in her Key to Theosophy that the great danger to the Society in the future would be that it should lend itself to the propagation of a creed, she no doubt had this fact in mind. Divine Wisdom cannot be a creed, a body of doctrine, however fine, however noble: it must be the living truth itself, if it be divine at all. And this ever-living Spirit of Truth can never be unfolded or confined in a set doctrine; it must be ever evolving, ever proceeding forth from the Eternal Spirit, ever approaching man and awaiting his understanding, his acceptance, his incorporation of its regenerative spirit into his daily life.

The very moment the human mind, with its law of crystallization and tendency to limitation and to compression within a form, approaches the definition of this living Spirit, that moment we find it escaping the mold. A man may know the entire body of universal data put forward by those scientific observers of Life who have been and who are “theosophists,” and may yet be without its vital breath, its essential life. And a man may be ignorant of the first word of the data, and may yet be a true theosophist, a very real follower of “Divine Wisdom,” and Theo-Sophia may guide his every step and radiate like the sun from his every deed. It is he who apprehends the Spirit and who lives it out in his daily life, he who makes intercourse with his fellows a communion with the Divine Spirit in man, who is the true theosophist, and not he who talks and studies – and who still fails to apply the essential Soul of the teaching.

{Compare the above paragraph and the article as a whole with this from William Judge: “You say that for three years you have been endeavoring to study Theosophy. Such being the case, you will meet with but little success. Divine Wisdom can not be a subject for study, but it may be an object of search. With the love for this same wisdom uppermost in our hearts, we ask you if it would not be wiser to lay aside the study of so called Theosophy and study yourself. Knowing yourself you know all men, the worlds seen and occult, and find Theo-Sophia. One cannot absorb Theosophy as a sponge does water, to be expelled at the slightest touch. Our conception of Theosophy is apt to be based upon the idea that it is an especial line of teaching – a larger, wider, and greater doctrine than others perhaps, but still a doctrine, and therefore limited. We must bear in mind that the true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all; that he can find the true object of his search equally as well in the Hebrew bible as in the Yoga philosophy, in the New Testament equally as well as in the Bhagavad-Gita.” (“Answers to Questioners,” “William Q. Judge Theosophical Articles” Vol. 2, p. 461-462)}

What then is the essence of Theosophy? When I take this word upon my lips I do not mean the system of Cosmogenesis put forward in the Secret Doctrine, though that is grandiose. Nor do I mean the Anthropogenesis, magnificent though it be. I may indeed believe these to be true. But the more I believe them and the more I put them forward, colored by my own mentality, the more do I run the risk of consolidating them into a creed unless I am careful to manifest the free and true Spirit within them all – that which has been defined as: “That united Spirit of Life which is your only true Self.” [“Light on The Path”]  This is that essential aspect to which I am committed if my belief be vital. It is impossible that I or any other mind – should grasp this enormous system of Thought fully and entirely, so that the more I put it forward in hard and fast fashion, as an inalterable body of doctrine, the more I am on the way to build up yet another creed with which to challenge all other creeds: and so the time-long war of creeds is again perpetuated. The moment comes to us all when the heart cries out for something vital, something immanent, something interior, of daily support and comfort, by which to soften the hard struggle of existence and to touch to some divine issue the purpose of our days.

It must have been something of this kind which Madame Blavatsky had in mind when she said: “Do not write like the Peripatetics [i.e. a school of Greek philosophers founded by Aristotle], but put your heart into it.” And indeed, if we consider carefully her method, we find from the outset that she put forward the unity of all religions at their base, striving to show the same teachings in each, and not so much the identity of universal facts in each, but the unity of spiritual belief, the universality of Soul.

I have heard others reminding us how she thundered at Christianity, but it was not at the real Spirit of that teaching that Madame Blavatsky directed her thunders: far from it. The lightnings of her words were reserved for those who would make a form, a Church-and-State policy of that Christianity which was so truly taught on the shores of Galilee, and which had the Love of Humankind, as the Love of God, for all the Law and the Prophets. It was our latter-day conformity without the informing Spirit of human feeling and human good-will, without Love and without Charity, at which she aimed her attacks. In this respect, perhaps more than in any other, it is necessary to bear in mind that constant injunction of hers: “Follow the path I show, the Masters who are behind: Do not Follow Me or My Path.” [“She Being Dead Yet Speaketh”]  The italics are mine, and I would indeed have the thought italicized, for that which one may do rightly and do well, may be far from the duty of another with less knowledge. Moreover, the era was so different. . . . We see that the outgoing is different from the return, and that era differs from era; this we see with the intuitive mind. So it must be with the centuries; the close of a century must be the period for the breaking up of all set molds of Thought, for the destruction of forms – must be a period of demolishment of the purely formal – as the spirit of the century returns whence it came, to be succeeded by a new breath of Life, an advanced and spiritual order of Being for the new cycle about to begin. The period of dissolution is replaced by a new inspiration; the letter which killeth, and which has accreted round the life of human Thought, has now been broken up, and once again we see the emergence of the Spirit which maketh alive. We now again have to do with the united spirit of Life in which resides the real Self of Humanity.

So it comes about that we ask ourselves what is the true kernel of this faith? What is that within it which transcends data and fact and is, as it were, the basis for our acceptance? I think we shall find that this essence of Theosophy is the declaration of the existence and the universality of Soul. Much indeed is implied by this. In the first place, if the Soul exists, it must be eternal in its essence, eternally enduring; this gives us rationally the tenet of Re-incarnation. The Soul, if it be universal, must be guided by its own nature, and that nature is expressed as a Law, the Law of the Soul. That Soul, in truth, is the Law; these are one and the same thing. So we come to have that which we call Karma, or the Law of moral causation, of action and reaction on all planes of Being. But the great factor which emerges from this existence of Soul – and how majestic is the emergence – the chief and divine Truth arising from the universality of Soul is that principle of Compassion and Harmony which we call Toleration, or Love, or Charity, or Eros the One Ray, and which has many names among men but which has only one spirit by which all may recognize it – the spirit of undying Patience, Trust and Hope. This universal Compassion is not an attribute of the Soul, we are told in The Voice of the Silence: “Compassion is no attribute. It is the Law of LAWS – eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting right, and fitness of all things, the law of Love eternal.”

“The more thou dost become at one with it, thy being melted in its Being, the more thy Soul unites with that which IS, the more thou wilt become COMPASSION ABSOLUTE.”

Here, then, we have that by which we may test devotion to the heart of the teaching which to-day we call Theosophy, but which has been known for long ages and to many tongues and nations and men, all of which have sought to express the Spirit of Love, Compassion, Truth. If a man be possessed of this, whatever he does or thinks, he will be genuine in it; and if we wish to impart this life, we must see to it that we are living men; whatever our belief, whether Christian or Buddhist or Mahommedan, or followers of any other creed or of no creed, we shall truly live forth our belief, and Compassion as the heart of it; we shall be living men in our belief, and not dead and purely formal ones. For this is what we have as Souls to do: we have to impart and to breathe forth the Spirit of Life. And that Spirit is Peace and Good-Will to all the earth.

It is then this Spirit of Compassion that we must apply to our lives if we would make the application of Theosophy to them. A mighty undertaking, this; one to dazzle and confound at first sight.

And yet, since the Soul is universal, and since we are Souls, are THAT SOUL, it must follow that somewhat of this divine essence abides with us, resides in the meanest and the least of men and hallows by its presence, however hidden and however unsuspected, the darkest interiors of life.

This being so, it behooves us to find the application of this principle resident in the atom as in the angel, for by this alone can our lives be made sane and whole.

How shall we touch it? How declare it? Has not the Apostle of old answered for us? “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” [1 Corinthians 13:1-2]

What a declaration is here! Not only speech of all the spheres; not alone the gift of seership, and the psychic knowledge – yea, and that great, that immense occult dower of faith, that which alone and in its proper might can remove mountains – all these are as naught, even faith is naught, before the lack of charity. In the absence of this informing Soul, this breath of Life, all else is as dust, as nothingness.

“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” [1 Corinthians 13:3] And then follows a definition of this “charity,” concerning which we are not left to imagine that it consists in the bestowal of goods of any kind, or food even, to the poor. This “charity” it is which suffereth long and is kind; there is no envy in it, no vaunting; it seeks not its own, it is not easily provoked, being patience itself; it thinketh no evil. This it is that believeth all things, that beareth all, hopeth all, endureth all; it faileth never: and though there be these three, faith, hope and charity, yet “the greatest of these is charity.” So spoke one [i.e. St. Paul the Apostle] of whom we have reason to think that he was an initiate in the eternal order of the Soul.

We might well stand despairing before these counsels of perfection, not knowing how to attain to them, were it not that we have the counsellor within us; each one of us may hear this voice in his own heart: the heart is indeed that teacher of perfection; it whispers of this divine Love. Guided by the heart, followers of the Heart Doctrine, what shall we fear? What shall we lack? Would it not seem that we have indeed the very spirit of Theosophy when we have a breath of this Compassion stirring in the heart? And when we bend the head and listen well, what is it that we hear? “Compassion speaks and saith: Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?” [“The Voice of The Silence”]

We need not then be so concerned to put forward the correct doctrine or to know the occult hierarchies or to number the spheres, but rather to distil from our daily lives the spirit of compassion and of good will. The power to help every man to fulfil his own ideal, to be really that ideal; the power to realize that the ideal is the Soul of the man speaking to him and leading him on to higher and still higher ideals as he comes to fulfil each whole-heartedly; to this it is that we need to attain.

In the light of this thought the Secret Doctrine is seen to pulsate with new life. The grandeur of the Cosmogenesis, the origin and destiny of man have a wider scope. It is not now the data which strike us so much but the truth that man is a Soul, is the Universal Soul, and is indeed Compassion’s Self. A moment ago, and the Doctrine seemed too great, too remote; an intellectual concept we might be awed by, might be pleased with, but which we could hardly grasp. But now we come all at once to see that “the heart of it is Love, its consummation Peace.” [“The Light of Asia”]  We feel that here is something we can understand, can strive for; here is something the heart can embrace and the obedient mind follow after. It shuts no one out. It excludes no system of Thought. So that the religion and the follower are not lacking in this charity, there is no failure to fear, no limitation to harden. Disciples of this principle of loving toleration, we may seek in each religion and philosophy, in every life and sphere for that which seeketh not its own. All we need ask is that men shall truly be that which they profess to believe – and all enlightenment shall follow after. Though we may find in the Secret Doctrine that which to us is the Truth, yet also we may realize that the Truth is in all things and that the spirit of devotion and of simple piety are lights which lead in their due course to spiritual enlightenment. The Doctrine is but the expression, while the feeling of unity and of brotherhood is The Life.

When we come to apply this principle, this indwelling essence to our life, we see it all at once as under a ray of sunlight. The pitiful hardness and grossness of material existence is shown up and we behold ourselves to be wanting in Soul. But also we find in the homeliest good-will, in the least outpouring of kindness, the seed of the Divine. And we are encouraged greatly when we see that this simple devotion to the holier life is all that is asked of us by the witness within. It is not demanded that we shall know more, but that we shall love more: not that we shall do more, but that we shall be more; the Soul only asks of us that we shall manifest the Soul. Before this vision all minor differences fade away. We are in the Presence of the Mightiest, of that before which all the kingdoms of the world shall vanish, for it is itself the central factor and spirit of Being. We need not to speak of tenets or of doctrines. We need only to manifest the Doctrine of the Heart. But this doctrine is not a mere chatter of sweetness and of sentiment. It would not seem to be that of which a man might say that it professed much. How then shall we apply it in practical life?

It would seem that the application is not far to seek if we remember that the object and goal of our endeavor is the Soul. We are not yet adepts – at least it would not seem so, having in mind the nature of our lives. We are not able to put to use all this knowledge of the stars in their courses, of the march of the ages, of which we are sometimes pleased to talk so fluently and with the grand air. It is not ours to remember the birth of Humanity, and the descent of the Manasa-born. No. No. But we are quite able to conceive this principle of charity; we are able to live the life of dedication to the service of the Soul. The Spirit of Harmony, the complete recognition of Unity, of the Identity of Soul, these we can carry into the market place and the forum; we can manifest them at home as abroad; they need not be foreign to politics, to statecraft, any more than to the school or the nursery. Our devotion to these is something which we can take with us everywhere; it will exhale from our presence and be felt by all who come in contact with us, for it is, as it were, the atmosphere of the Soul. The Heart Doctrine only demands that we accord to each the right of search for his own ideal, and that we only ask of each that he shall truly manifest that ideal as he finds it. All are under the divine influx alike; no man so low that he may not become the recipient of the wisdom of the Soul, if he but serve that Soul. As the man enters the Gate of Compassion he hears the voice of the Soul and he has but to follow it.

For Theosophy is not a doctrine; Theosophy is a life. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” [John 14:6]  The Love and the truth which we show day by day in our intercourse with our fellow men have a voice, and will teach us better than all the prophets and the seers. The forces which we engender are the key to the whole problem.

In something of the same way it would seem that our Theosophical Society might well be a place where we came together to meet all who would there join us, on the common platform of the study of all religions and systems of thought, seeking to find the truth in all, seeking to show accord at the root of all rather than difference. The Truth at the core; the underlying identity within all religions is the Soul. When we show sympathy with the thought-effort of another, we manifest in that more of the spirit of Truth than we do when we seek to show the superiority of our own belief. The sympathy is the Life breath; the data are but forms. Thus the object to bear in mind is the endeavor to harmonize, to show how the united spirit of Life underlies every mind and all philosophies; this central fact is that which we should manifest. For the Soul is able to teach these data to its devotees as well as we are, to say the least, while if that Soul of sympathy and toleration be absent from our assembly, then we should speak with the tongues of angels in vain.

Is it not the I-am-holier-than-thou spirit which has wrecked many high philosophies? The operative power of the Truth can be and is diminished by the fault of that follower who neglects the sympathy and charity which are the essence of the Soul. If we were to study all religions and even the history of honest disbelief in the spirit of comrades engaged in a world-wide search for that Truth which all need and by which all must benefit, should we not engender in our midst a spirit which would work wonders? What would not the perfect spirit of good-will effect as between man and man, as from nation to nation? . . .

It should not be supposed that this idea involves the abatement of one iota of interest in the Secret Doctrine. Much less the abandonment of the original lines laid down at the outset for the Theosophical Society. As we scrutinize those lines, in the three objects, we find provision made for just such study as is here suggested. Assuredly it would broaden the mind and expand the sympathies. “To live and reap experience the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it towards the Diamond Soul.” [“The Voice of The Silence”]  So that while we may and should put forward our own belief sincerely and with devotion, we owe it to our hearers to listen to their belief in turn, sure that there also shall identity be discovered; some trace of the universal, omnipresent Truth. In this way every religion proves and sustains the crowning Truth of Theosophy.

The Soul is as able to inform the life of man to-day as it was thousands of years ago, as it will be thousands of years hence. But we must first provide an atmosphere in which that Wonder-Worker can operate, through which it can reach the mind and heart. We must originate and maintain an attitude of consolidarity, of union in and for the purposes of Soul. Unless our fellow men feel us to be possessed of this spirit, all we can say and teach will be as the tinkling of cymbals. Our only salvation lies in the application of the spirit of Theosophy – of “that united spirit of Life” of which we spoke but a moment ago and which is the Life of Theosophy. Never shall we find the Soul in isolation; nor in that which is puffed up and seeks its own. . . .

It is for us as lovers of the Soul to go forth questioning others of their search, rather than to go forth as teachers who have nothing more to learn. The Soul does not so: it is not to be sequestrated: it abides everywhere, manifests on all sides. We can learn of it everywhere, wherever there is life, and most of all in the lives of humankind. It is not so vital that men should know the doctrine as that they should live the life, we have said. Should we not be wiser then to begin at that end of our problem? Our attraction and our helpfulness for others will not consist in that we know so much, as that we are of so loving a spirit. Gathered together in that name, we shall find the reality of the promise – “There am I in the midst of them.” [Matthew 18:20]  What this hard world needs to-day is that men should “with one accord” [Acts 2:1] seek the Soul: this accord can only be attained by the generation, in human society, of the spirit of harmony and unity.

Yet even here there is danger of overstraining the meaning. I seem to hear a voice which would say: “Beware of maudlin [i.e. overly emotional] sentiment. Love is founded on Justice and on Law. If we are more than just to one, another must have less. Some department of Nature must pay our debt. The Love not founded on absolute Justice is no Love at all.” And thus we come to see that wisdom is perfect balance. To this we must at last attain, meantime it must be our ideal. . . .

There is a blessing in the application of the spirit of Theosophy to daily life. May it descend upon us.

~ * ~

This article may have raised more questions about various things. Please make use of the site search function (the magnifying glass symbol at the top of the page) and visit the Articles page to see the complete list of over 400 articles covering all aspects of Theosophy and the Theosophical Movement. If you liked this article, you may particularly like others listed under the heading “SPIRITUAL LIVING AND PRACTICE” on the Articles page, along with Approaching Theosophy Through The Intellect or The Heart and The “Original Lines” for Theosophical Work.

~ BlavatskyTheosophy.com ~