Category: The Key To Theosophy (1889): H. P. Blavatsky

"Enq:  Would you call the Soul, i.e., the human thinking Soul, or what you call the Ego - matter?   Theo:  Not matter, but substance assuredly; nor would the word "matter", if prefixed with the adjective, primordial, be a word to avoid. That matter, we say, is co-eternal with Spirit, and is not our visible, [...]

"Enq:  If the "Spirit", or the divine portion of the soul, is pre-existent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other semi-Christians and semi-Platonic philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than eternal?  And what matters it in [...]

"Enq:  It is stated in Isis Unveiled that such planetary Spirits or Angels, "the gods of the Pagans or the Archangels of the Christians", will never be men on our planet.   Theo:  Quite right. Not "such", but some classes of higher Planetary Spirits. They will never be men on this planet, because they are [...]

"Enq:  I have read a good deal upon the subject, and it seems to me that the notions of the older philosophers differed a great deal from those of the medieval Kabalists, though they do agree in some particulars.   Theo:  The most substantial difference between them and us is this. While we believe with [...]

"Enq:  I am glad to hear you believe in the immortality of the Soul.   Theo:  Not of "the Soul", but of the divine Spirit; or rather in the immortality of the reincarnating Ego.   Enq:  What is the difference?   Theo:  A very great one in our philosophy, but this is too abstruse and [...]

"Theo (cont):  This is Nirvanic bliss, and no Theosophist could describe in plainer though esoteric language the mental joys of Devachan, where every man has his paradise around him, erected by his consciousness. But you must be aware of the general error into which too many even of our Theosophist fall.   Do not imagine [...]

"Theo (cont):  Plutarch divides the latter into three groups, and makes of the body a compound of physical frame, astral shadow, and breath, or the triple lower part, which "from earth was taken and to earth returns"; of the middle principle and the instinctual soul, the second part, derived from and through and ever influenced by [...]

"Enq:  We have magnificent Greek and Latin, Sanskrit and Hebrew scholars. How is it that we find nothing in their translations that would afford us a clue to what you say?   Theo:  Because your translators, their great learning notwithstanding, have made of the philosophers, the Greeks especially, misty instead of mystic writers. Take as [...]

"Enq:  Still you can hardly escape the charge of having invented a new division of man's spiritual and psychic constituents; for no philosopher speaks of them, though you believe that Plato does.   Theo:  And I support the view. Besides Plato, there is Pythagoras, who also followed the same idea. "Plato and Pythagoras", says Plutarch, [...]

"Enq:  The Egyptians revered Nature-Spirits, and deified even onions:  your Hindus are idolaters, to this day; the Zoroastrians worshipped, and do still, worship, the Sun; and the best Greek philosophers were either dreamers or materialists - witness Plato and Democritus. How can you compare?   Theo:  It may be so in your modern Christian and [...]