“Enq: Can you attain the “Secret Wisdom” simply by study? Encyclopedias define Theosophy pretty much as Webster’s Dictionary does, i.e., as “supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge by physical means and chemical processes.” Is this so?
Theo: I think not. Nor is there any lexicographer capable of explaining, whether to himself or others, how superhuman knowledge can be attained by physical or chemical processes.
Had Webster said “by metaphysical and alchemical processes”, the definition would be approximately correct: as it is, it is absurd.
Ancient Theosophists claimed, and so do the modern, that the infinite cannot be known by the finite – i.e., sensed by the finite Self – but that the divine essence could be communicated to the higher Spiritual Self in a state of ecstasy. This condition can hardly be attained, like hypnotism, by “physical and chemical means.”
Enq: What is your explanation of it?
Theo: Real ecstasy was defined by Plotinus as “the liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming one and identified with the infinite.”
This is the highest condition, says Prof. Wilder, but not one of permanent duration, and it is reached only by the very few. It is, indeed, identical with that state which is known in India as Samadhi. The latter is practiced by the Yogis, who facilitate it physically by the greatest abstinence in food and drink, and mentally by an incessant endeavor to purify and elevate the mind.
Meditation is silent and unuttered prayer, or, as Plato expressed it, “the ardent turning of the soul toward the divine; not to ask any particular good (as in the common meaning of prayer), but for good itself – for the universal Supreme Good” of which we are a part on earth, and out of the essence of which we have all emerged.
Therefore, adds Plato, “remain silent in the presence of the divine ones, till they remove the clouds from thy eyes and enable thee to see by the light which issues from themselves, not what appears as good to thee, but what is intrinsically good.”
“This is what the scholarly author of “The Eclectic Philosophy”, Prof. A. Wilder, F.T.S, describes as “spiritual photography”:
“The soul is the camera in which facts and events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of them. Beyond our everyday world of limits all is one day or state – the past and future comprised in the present.”
…Death is the last ecstasis on earth. Then the soul is freed from the constraint of the body, and its nobler part is united to higher nature and becomes partaker in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the higher beings.”
Real Theosophy is, for the mystics, that state which Apollonius of Tyana was made to describe thus:
“I can see the present and the future as in a clear mirror. The sage need not wait for the vapors of the earth and the corruption of the air to foresee events. …The theoi, or gods, see the future; common men the present; sages that which is about to take place.”
“The Theosophy of the Sages” he speaks of is well expressed in the assertion, “The Kingdom of God within us.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 