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Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine on the Problem of Sex
George Cardinal LeGros
from Legros' newsletter Messiah, circa 1987
George Cardinal LeGros (1905-1988) was a Theosophist and astrologer who was widely known in Theosophical circles for his writings, magazines, and correspondence courses.
Introduction
The writer [Legros] sincerely hopes that nothing in the following pages will strike the reader as "goody goody" moralizing, nor that he, the writer, will appear as a simpering "holier-than-thou" harlequin. The Theosophical Movement has enough comic figures. [A]
But the fact is that we are living in the most sexually permissive age since the fall of Rome, and only Theosophists or those familiar with the Eastern occult teachings know that sex is a cosmic force greater than nuclear bombs, representing in every human destiny an ultimate challenge involving immortality or annihilation.
Although regular chelaship and the chastity it demands are several lifetimes away for most Messiah readers, the present is as good a time as any to consider what H.P. Blavatsky (the Masters' Messenger in the last century and this) has to say on the matter.
We have no other court of appeal. One can expect little help from medical men, psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage counselors, priests, preachers, and educators because, with, of course, a number of happy exceptions, all are infected with the virus of the "New Morality" which would have us abandon all sexual restraints and "liberate" ourselves from the "unhealthy repressions" of our puritan ancestors.
A refreshing exception among medical men is Dr. Val Davajan, chief of the reproductive biology section of the Medical Center at the University of Southern California. Says the doctor: "No matter what the sexologists say, the New Morality is immoral. And I don't care what the Gay Liberation people say, homosexuality is a perversion, and homosexuals are not normal."
One of the latest results of the "New Morality" was revealed by a Gallup survey of student attitudes commissioned by Oklahoma Christian College. It was found that as students move along from year to year they tend increasingly to approve smoking, drinking, legalized marijuana, abortion, and pre-martial sex. Among freshmen, 30 percent identified their political philosophy as left-of-center or far left. By the senior year the number had grown to 53 percent.
The foregoing is an exoteric picture. the esoteric is something else, and we can do no better than begin with some highly illuminating material by Dr. G. de Purucker, himself an initiated chela and the last Leader of the original Theosophical Society.
SEX A PASSING PHASE
In his Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, pp. 342-6, he states:
"...sex is but a passing phase in racial evolution, and, strictly speaking, is not normal to mankind on Globe D of our planetary chain. This method of procreation actually was copied from the beasts, which 'separated' before 'man' ... As a matter of fact, the Atlantean and Atlanto-Lemurian karma has weighed so heavily upon us, the fifth race, that we are actually belated, and have not at the present date, the middle-point of the fifth race, reached that stage as regards the evolving of the physical body which otherwise we should have reached.
"As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of our own fifth race, men and women will be disappearing as opposite sexes; and that by the middle of the Sixth Root Race (the race to come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer. The race will consist of beings who are physiologically neither men nor women; ...
"The humans of that period (the Sixth Root-Race) will produce children by meditation and by will; during the Seventh Root-Race, the last to come on this Globe, during this Fourth Round – a race which to us now would seem glorious – the humans of that race will produce their kind in the same general manner; but by consciously exercised will and meditation, but still more impersonally ... than the Sixth Race will do.
"The main point then, here, is to realize that this present physiological state of sex is a passing racial evolutionary phase; and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or what the world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the evolutionary 'law' ... and that while it is true that the present method is the one which nature has evolved at the present time, as said before it is not really the method which primordial humanity might have followed ... Nature has followed that line, as it were, under protest, through the evil doing involved in our past karma, as the only way by which souls can find incarnation at present ..."
THE GREATEST CURSE
We find confirmation of Dr. de Purucker's views in The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 216: [HPB]
"From the possession of the double principle in one, that is the Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was made, presenting two opposites whose destiny it was, for ever after, to seek reunion into the original one condition.
"'The curse was this, viz: that nature, impelling the search, evaded the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from that reunion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature lives."
In a footnote on the same page H.P. Blavatsky adds:
"By which (human) nature lives, not even the animal – but the misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which man, not nature, created."
This is abstruse metaphysics, but establishes that sexual reproduction for humanity was not in Nature's original plan. On page 262, II, The Secret Doctrine, we read:
"As has been shown in the present volume (Anthropogenesis), it is the speechless animal that first started sexual connection, having been the first to separate into males and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow the bestial example – as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species by the animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the women."
Ambition is the first curse, says Light on the Path, [see Rule #1 Here] but sex is the greatest, says The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 412:
"...the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality. It is that which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall." ... It has degraded man into a "helpless, scrofulous being, who has become the richest heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals."
The deliberate profanation of sex in Atlantis led to the worship of the physical body (the Easter Island statues attest to this), and finally to the sex principle in itself. Phallic sorcery followed, with half of the Fourth Root-Race falling into Black Magic practices which survive today in African Voodoo, Tibetan Dugpa Lamaism, Hindu Tantrika, and various corrupt "New Thought" branches of Western metaphysics.
The Secret Doctrine, II, 295-6:
"The question is often asked, why should celibacy and chastity be a sine qua non rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary ... During human life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation."
IMPORTANT NOTE. At this point the writer wishes to emphatically state that the purpose of these pages is NOT to rail against marriage and human love nor suggest that anyone take the yellow robe of asceticism. Its purpose is solely educational and informative. It is believed that by knowing the esoteric truth about sex and mankind's Tomorrow, one would be better able to deal with the challenging human relation problems in our immediate experience.
THE "FALL OF THE ANGELS"
The history of mankind in its present form as separate sexes goes back about eighteen million years to the middle of the Third Root-Race in Lemuria, when the Mind element began to function.
Until then man was "an empty, senseless Bhuta" (form or shadow), the product of two streams of evolution: the Monadic or Spiritual, and the Physical or material. With the entry of Manas (Mind) a third stream of evolution was added, conferring self-consciousness and a sense of moral responsibility.
The early sub-races of the Third Root-Race (The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 275) evolved by sexless creative instinct an "intermediate race" in which the higher Dhyan Chohans incarnated at the time of the separation of the sexes. These were the Sons of Will and Yoga, representing the full incarnation of the Mind principle.
A second class of Ego did not incarnate fully at once, but chose to wait, projecting only "a spark." It is these (The Secret Doctrine, II, 167) who "constitute the average humanity which has to acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution."
The "Sin of the Mindless" resulted when certain males of the "separated" humanity (before Manas was awakened and also before sterility was established between the human and animal kingdoms) had sexual congress with female beasts. Thus unconsciously the first misuse of the sex force took place. (The Secret Doctrine, II, 185). "The sin of the brainless or 'mindless' Races, who had no 'spark' and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty." Thereupon, seeing this shameful Karmic result, the Sons of Wisdom endowed all men with Manas "lest worse should happen."
A third class of Egos deferred incarnation till the Fourth or Atlantean Root-Race, in which the worst sexual Karma was incurred because the Atlanteans renewed the Sin of the Mindless with knowledge and moral responsibility. It is stated (The Secret Doctrine, II, 302) that in this case it was "the Spiritual being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the 'Master' principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads."
The most significant statement of all in this connection is found on page 228, The Secret Doctrine, II:
"As to those 'Sons of Wisdom' who had 'deferred' their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of iniquity for aeons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had become defiled through their own procrastination.
"This was the 'Fall of the Angels,' because of their rebellion against Karmic Law. The 'fall of man' was no fall, for he was irresponsible."
CHELASHIP
Blavatsky's Teacher:
"Behold the truth before you! A clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for one's co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to the behests of TRUTH, once we have placed our confidence in, and believe the Teacher to be in possession of it; a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defense of those who are unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the secret science (Gupta Vidya) depicts - these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom. Say this to those who have volunteered to be taught by you."
Theosophy teaches that we are Spiritual Pilgrims imprisoned by Kosmic and Karmic necessity in bodies of flesh informed by animal instincts and desires. The Spiritual Beings we essentially are aspire toward the god worlds from which we came, while at the same time the "Call of the Wild" would lure us back to the steaming jungles of animalhood.
It is the old story of the god and beast, one of which must ultimately absorb our being. which brings us to the subject of chelaship. A chela is a man or woman who anticipates the crisis by prematurely bringing it upon himself. It means a terrible battle in the heart and mind between the two forces or polarities. Very few are ready for chelaship, but when one is, nothing on earth can stop him.
In The Theosophist of July 1883 H.P. Blavatsky wrote:
"One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for the mastery in which quarter is never to be given nor taken ... in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden blemish – do what he may, it shall and will be brought to light ... He is now in an atmosphere of illusions – maya. Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions try to lure the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement.
"If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind, the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly, then, for anyone to leave the smooth path of commonplace life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him? Well says the Bible: 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.' [B] – a test that would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the fray!"
[B. 1 Corinthians 10:12.]
THE ANSWER OF SOCRATES
It's a fantastic situation. Apparently when we were awakened to Manasic self-consciousness and were able to recognize our essential Divinity, it was in Nature's plan for us to carry on in an androgynous state. With Mind – a godlike faculty – active within us we deserved to live free from animality and beasthood.
But something went wrong, and Nature's plan had to be revised. So here we are – gods trapped in the bodies of animals which too often we mistake for ourselves, with heartbreaking consequences.
When Dr. G. de Purucker was asked: "Do Theosophists approve of marriage?" he said, among other things (Questions We All Ask, p. 137):
"Theosophists most certainly approve of marriage, decidedly so. The only trouble is that so many marriages are 'merely farces.' Marriage itself is beautiful. The principle is holy; and if true marriage takes place, life is sanctified for those two human hearts."
When H.P. Blavatsky was asked if a man must marry or remain a celibate (The Key to Theosophy, p. 262), she replied:
"It depends on the kind of man you mean. If you refer to one who intends to live in the world, one who, even though a good, earnest Theosophist, and an ardent worker for our cause, still has ties and wishes which bind him to the world, who, in short, does not feel that he has done for ever with what men call life, and that he desires one thing and one thing only – to know the truth, and to be able to help others –then for such a one I say there is no reason why he should not marry, if he likes to take the risks of that lottery where there are so many more blanks than prizes. Surely you cannot believe us so absurd and fanatical as to preach against marriage altogether? On the contrary, save in a few exceptional cases of practical Occultism, marriage is the only remedy against immorality."
There is the story about a young man who went to Socrates with the question of whether or not he should marry. "It doesn't matter much one way or another," said Socrates. "Whatever you do, you'll regret it."
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