Thoughts build character.
Desires make opportunities, Actions make environments.
So that whatever one may suffer or enjoy, attain to or fall from is brought about as the result of his own action, in obedience to this law of absolute justice. It is the alternate experience of pleasure and pain which man encounters during his stages of ignorance that develops within him wisdom; and the oppor tunities guaranteed to him for the accomplish ment of this end through Reincarnation and Karma are well nigh limitless. These two doc trines are perhaps the most far-reaching of all the theosophic teaching, as they seem to clear up a host of perplexing questions and establish the basis for a satisfying philosophy.
the results of theo sophic propaganda is the restoration to the Western world of the said doctrines of Rein carnation and Karma, and the elimination of the many perversions of them existing in the East. Another is the occult proof produced of the definite objective reality and potency of thoughts and emotions, showing that these forces are as to their respective planes as visible and real as physical objects are on the physical plane, and that every thought is a living, active entity, persisting for a length of time proportional to the strength that is put into its creation and wields a greater or less influence on those with whom it may come into touch. (See Mr. Leadbeater's 'Man Visible and Invisible,' illus trated, and Mrs. Besant's 'Thought Forms,' illustrated). Still another is the order which it has brought out of the chaos of the appar ently unrelated data of metaphysics, mysticism and the neo-psychology, including the facts of clairvoyance, clairaudience, mesmerism, hypno tism, telepathy, astrology, apparitions, psychom etry and the like. And still another is the establishment by irresistible evidence of the basic unity of all the great world religions and their fundamental relation to an unprejudiced and open-minded science. To help the religions to clear away their non-essential accretions, to sink into insignificance doctrinal differences, to bring to the fore their points of unity, to study their doctrines and traditions in the spirit of brotherliness and to help each from his own particular standpoint is one of the chief ends to which the theosophist bends his efforts. He does not seek to found a religion, but to ex pound those we already have, and so give them a deeper meaning and a richer life. While the theosophist limits himself to no particular form of creed, yet the following three truths may be said approximately to include the broad scope of his belief :
1. God exists, and He is good. He is the great lifegiver who dwells within us and with out us, is undying and eternally beneficent. He is not heard, nor seen, nor touched, yet is per ceived by the man who desires perception.
2. Man is immortal and his future is one whose glory and splendor have no limit.
3. A Divine law . of absolute justice rules the world, so that each man is in truth his own judge, the dispenser of glory or gloom to him self, the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.
Unless he finds the religion to which he happens to be connected insufficient to meet the demands of his higher nature, the theosophist is apt to seek through the esoteric side of his philosophy the gateway of Occult ism, in order that he may prepare himself for a more serious religious life. Occultism,, as dis tinguished from the Occult Arts, or Magic, is that system of endeavor which, teaching the methods whereby the personality, or lesser, or more human side of man may be made to expand and embrace his higher or divine nature, leads its votaries along a difficult and narrow pathway of rigid virtue and mental and emo tional .control, and so requires a firm moral foundation upon which to build the extraordi nary powers pertaining to the unseen world. The true Occultist possesses unselfishness, jus tice and true knowledge; he has compassion and wisdom; his desire nature is purified and his habit of mental concentration fixed; "the con tents of his consciousness are something more than his five-sense perceptions plus the deduc tions he draws from them by his reason, and such vague ideas and intuitions as he may Through Occultism the aspirant, wearying of the phenomenal world, seeks to outstrip his fellows in evolution and within a few strenuous incarnations to accomplish what the mass of humanity in the normal course will only attain to in long reaches of time, namely, the highest adeptship or liberation from the "wheel of re birth, In doing so he treads a path which, according to occult teaching, has three great divisions: 1. The probationary period, before any defi nite pledges are taken or initiations (in the full sense of the word) are given. This carries a man to the level necessary to pass successfully through what in theosophical books is usually called the critical period of the fifth round.