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  CREATED BY WISDOM DRAGONS                                             Adyar Pamphlet No. 19   Occultism, Semi-Occultism, and Pseudo-Occultism by Annie Besant First printed: September 1912 Reprinted: January 1920 This Edition Was Published In 2021                               YOU CAN DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION OF THIS BOOK CLICKING ON ON THE BUTTON BELLOW. DOWNLOAD             CONTENTS  PART 1 --FINAL OCCULTISM, SEMI-OCCULTISM AND PSEUDO-OCCULTISM

  CHAPTER XII   OUR ELDER BROTHERS   WE have traced the steps by which a man may climb to the status of the super-man. Let us now consider the relation to the world of Those who stand at that great height, and who yet are of the human family, our Elder Brothers.   All religions look back to a founder, who rose high above humanity; all ancient history tells of lofty Beings, who laid the foundations of nations, and guided them during their infancy and youth. We hear of divine Kings, of divine Dynasties, of divine Teachers; the testimony of the past is so unanimous, and the ruins remaining of past civilisations are so mighty, that we cannot reasonably declare the testimony to be worthless, nor the civilisations to be the unaided product of an infant humanity.   It is also noteworthy that the most ancient scriptures are the noblest and most inspiring. The Classic of Purity of China, the Upanishads of India, the Gathas—fragmentary as they are—of Per...

  CHAPTER XI   STEPS ON THE PATH   THE normal course of human evolution leads man upwards, stage by stage. But an immense distance separates even the genius and the saint from the man who 'stands on the threshold of divinity'—still more from him who has fulfilled the Christ's command: 'Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect Are there any steps which lead up to the gateway of which it is written: 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'? Who are 'the perfect', of whom Paul the Apostle speaks?   Truly are there steps which lead up to that Portal, and there are few which tread that narrow way. The Gate is the Gate of Initiation, the second birth, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of Fire; the Way leads to the knowledge of God, which is life in the Eternal.   In the western world the stages, or steps, have been called: Purgation, Illumination, Union; by those stages the mys...

  CHAPTER X   THOUGHT-POWER AMD ITS USE   ONE of the most striking features of the present day is the recognition on all hands of the power of thought, the belief that a man can mould his character, and therefore his destiny, by the exercise of this power which makes him man. In this our modern ideas are coming into line with the religious teachings of the past. 'Man is created by thought', was written in a Hindu scripture. 'What a man thinks on that he becomes; therefore think on the Eternal.' 'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he', said the wise King of Israel, giving warning against association with an evil man. 'All that we are is made up of our thoughts', said the Buddha. 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart', declared the Christ. Thought is the parent of action; our nature sets itself to embody that which is generated by thought. Modern psychology states that the b...

        CHAPTER IX   THE THREE THREADS OF THE CORD OF FATE   TO the Greek there were three Fates who spun the cord of life. To the knower of the Wisdom there are three Fates also, each of them ever spinning a thread, and the three threads they spin are twisted into one, and form the strong cord of destiny which binds or loosens man's life on earth. These three Fates are not the women of the Greek legend; they are the three powers of the human consciousness; the power to will, the power to think, the power to act. These are the Fates which spin the threads of human destiny, and they are within the man, not outside him. Man's destiny is self-made, not imposed upon him arbitrarily from without; his own powers, blinded by ignorance, spin and twist the cord that fetters him, as his own powers, directed by knowledge, liberate his limbs from the self-imposed shackles, and set him free from bondage.   The most important of these three power...

  CHAPTER VIII   KARMA --LAW OF ACTION AND RE-ACTION   THE word Karma simply means action. But the connotation of the word is far-reaching, for much more goes to the making of an action than the ordinary person might think. Every action has a past which leads up to it; every action has a future which proceeds from it; an action implies a desire which prompted it and a thought which shaped it, as well as a visible movement to which the name of 'act' is usually confined. Each act is a link in an endless chain of causes and effects, each effect becoming a cause, and each cause having been an effect; and each link in this endless chain is welded out of three components, desire, thought and activity. A desire stimulates a thought; a thought embodies itself in an act. Sometimes it is a thought, in the form of a memory, that arouses a desire, and the desire bursts into an act. But ever the three components—two invisible and belonging to consciousness, one visible and...

  CHAPTER VII   THE RIDDLE OF LOVE AND HATE   To the great majority of us life presents a series of tangles and puzzles—tangles we cannot unravel, puzzles we cannot solve. Why are people born differing so widely in mental and in moral capacity? Why has one infant a brain denoting great intellectual and moral power, while another has a brain which marks him out as one who will be an idiot or a criminal? Why has one child good and loving parents and favourable circumstances, while another has profligate parents who detest him, and is reared amid the foulest surroundings? Why is one 'lucky' and another 'unlucky'? Why does one die old and another die young? Why is one person prevented by 'accidents' from catching a steamer or a train that is wrecked, while scores or hundreds of others perish unaided? Why do we like one person the moment we see him, while we as promptly dislike another? Questions like these are continually arising, and are as continually le...