THE NATURE OF THEOSOPHY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 445, 2 January 1948, Page 5

THE NATURE OF THEOSOPHY

Sir-A great Scottish editor once wrote, "Opinions are free but facts are sacred." So that while your reviewer of Dr. Bhagavan Das’s book The Essential Unity of all Religions is entitled to his opinions (and I am in entire agreement with him on many points-the practice of adding words to quotations or altering them to suit is one that cannot be

too strongly condemned), I cannot allow one of his statements to pass unchallenged. He describes Theosophy as a "highbrow form of Hinduism." Now, while Theosophy may ~be difficult to define it is certainly not "a highbrow form of Hinduism." It may be thought of as a synthesis of philosophy, science and religion. As a philosophy it offers an intelligent explanation of life; as a science it examines and tabulates the laws governing that life and reveals to us something of our own essential nature and the nature of the worlds in which we live; LT [+> oo |

as a religion it offers its students a way of life based not on belief, but on an understanding of certain great spiritual laws. It is no new panacea for the world’s ills. It is sometimes called the "Ancient Wisdom" and is the esoteric or gnostic teaching to be found behind all the creat

world faiths.-

MILTON

THORNTON

(Auckland).

Sir,-I write to protest -against the review of The Essential Unity of all Religions, by Bhagavan Das. As a student of, and Lecturer upon, Comparative Religion and Philosophy, I find this book to be’a most scholarly and valuable exposition of the subject. A study of World Faith reveals the following doctrines common to them all, despite difference of nomenclature: The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. The Unity of the Source of all Life. The Evolution of Life and Form to a higher, state. The Immortality of the hunaan soul, Salvation, Liberation, Christhood as the assured destiny of every human being. The Omnipresence of the Divine Life and Love. . The existence of a Way of Holiness or Path of Discipleship, treading which man may attain swiftly to Salvation. The inviolable law of Cause and Effect or Sowing and Reaping. Pandit Bhagavan -Das, a_ deeply respected scholar, provides chapter and verse in support of his thesis on "The Essential Unity of All. Religions." I fear that far less than justice has Lae: done to him by vour reviewer.

GEOFFREY

HODSON

(Auckland).