Author Govert SchullerPosted on Categories Theosophy If Theosophy is taken as a synthesis of science, philosophy and theology, together with its stated objectives of open dialogue, comparative investigation and experimentation, there will be a lot of room to overcome its own articles of faith, which in spite of its professed anti-dogmatic, free-thinking, non-partisan persona, are quite prevalent.
For example there are the Mahatmas as Theosophy’s collective God, the ever so interesting Helena Blavatsky as Their messenger and The Secret Doctrine as its Bible. Because of the strong intellectual, Buddhist and scientific elements within Theosophy the just enumerated sacred objects can be easily de-constructed. The Mahatmas are not unlike Zen masters, who can only point the way; Blavatsky was an advanced, but fallible, student; and The Secret Doctrine is no more than an interrelated set of hypotheses to be experimentally tested.
But after more than 125 years Theosophy needs to be updated with an integration of the latest breakthroughs in science, philosophy and theology. It will not suffice to deepen the understanding, as Theosophy can bring, of trans-personal psychology, or quantum mechanics, or existentialism, or history, or, as is often done, to merely recognize similarities between Theosophy and these investigations and be self-congratulatory satisfied with the congruencies. The real work lies in a more active attempt at integration of the most developed positions within science, philosophy and theology.
Personally I see a great potential in the integration of the very encompassing hypothesis of morphogenetic fields and morphic resonance as developed by Rupert Sheldrake (science), the epistemological and existential ideas coming out of the phenomenological movement (philosophy) and the spiritual philosophy of Krishnamurti (theology, if I may say so).
If this program is feasible is for now not clear as nobody has yet tried it. And such a trial might find the following obstacles: 1) Sheldrake’s hypothesis, now almost 40 years since its publication, has not fared well; and 2) the relationship between Krishnamurti and Theosophy might be more contradictory than assumed.
Personal note lifted and extended from a paper titled “The Tacit Dimension operative in Phenomenology“.