Welcome to the
Wheaton Olcott Lodge
of the Theosophical Society in America
“The adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths — the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, SHIVA the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator.” -Mahatma Letter17
SPECIAL NOTICE TO OUR LOCAL LODGE MEMBERS
Meetings have resumed for the 2021-2022 season, continuing our study of the Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett. As always, we meet from 7 to 8 p.m. Central time on Wednesday evenings, and we are now meeting in person again in the Olcott Library, with Zoom access as well. During our first two meetings (27 October & 3 November) we reviewed last season’s readings (Letters 1 through 29, chronological). We also read Letter 36, which seems to have been mis-dated and apparently belongs before Letter 30. We will continue with the chronological letters up through Letter 43, and will then turn to the Cosmological Notes. These are further records of correspondence between the Mahatmas and their questioners, A.P. Sinnett and A.O. Hume. Chronologically, they fall roughly between Letters 43 and 44. When we have finished the Cosmological Notes we will return to Letter 44.
The Lodge is using the Mahatma Letters portal on the Theosophy Wiki as our source material (https://theosophy.wiki/en/Mahatma_Letters_Portal). Lodge members receive a weekly e-mail summarizing our current study and containing a Zoom link for those who wish to attend remotely. Please do not share this link as our meetings are private and for members of this lodge exclusively.
Thank you.
Marina Maestas
1957-2020
Marina Maestas, our lodge member and beloved friend to so many, left this incarnation September 5 after suffering injuries in an accident. Marina was loved by many member of this lodge, the TS family in America and around the world, and our most sincere condolences go out to her daughter Jade and her family. Below please find information to honor her by a donation to her honorary fund supporting the work of her passion, the Olcott Library. Marina, we love you and will always treasure your contribution to this group and our lives.
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett
In the summer of 1880, The Founders visited the Alfred P. Sinnett and his wife, Patience, at their summer home in Simla. There, H. P. Blavatsky performed some amazing phenomena, claiming that these were done by the “Brothers,” that is, the Mahatmas with whom she was psychically in contact.
In spite of his conviction of the genuineness of the phenomena, Sinnett felt that they were not always surrounded by the necessary safeguards, and that it would not be very difficult for any thoroughgoing skeptic to cast doubt on their validity. He was eager to have some phenomenon produced which would, as he expressed it, “leave no opening for even the suggestion of imposture.” He wondered whether the Mahatmas themselves might not always realize the necessity for rendering their test phenomena unassailable in every minor detail.
So, Sinnett wrote a letter “To the Unknown Brother,” where he suggested a test which he was sure would be absolutely fool-proof and which could not fail to convince the most profound skeptic. A day or so after he handed the letter to Blavatsky, he told him he was to have an answer. This so encouraged him that he sat down and wrote a second letter, feeling that perhaps he had not made his first letter quite strong enough to convince his correspondent. After the lapse of another day or so, on the evening October 17, 1880, he found on his writing table the first letter coming from Mahatma K.H.[1] This was the beginning of a correspondence that would last until 1885. The original letters are on display at the British Museum, as depicted below with Joy Mills.
Evolution of the Higher Consciousness
Recommended reading: Evolution of the Higher Consciousness by Pablo Sender.
You can order a copy online by clicking here or by sending a check. If paying by check, first, send an email containing your order to: orders@fohatproductions.com then send the check to: PO box 1043, Ojai, California 93024
The Wheaton Olcott Lodge
There is a $3 per meeting per person suggested donation to attend and we share vegetarian and alcohol-free snacks after our formal meeting.
Meeting Schedule
To participate in the Lodge meetings for members online, by webinar, please send an email to WheatonOlcottLodge@gmail.com requesting an ID and password to access the webinar room.
Download application for Theosophical Society membership by clicking the link below.
For any other questions contact us at: WheatonOlcottLodge@gmail.com
Theosophy Wiki
Theosophical Search
Theosophical Search is a handy web-based program that leverages Google and Bing to search Theosophical books and web sites. Click on the link below:
http://www.theosophicalsearch.org/
The Sunlight of Eternal Truth
The wise listen most readily to those whose habits of thoughts are most alien from their own, knowing that thus they may chance to catch a glimpse of some new aspect of truth, instead of seeing once more the mere reflection of the aspect already familiar. Men’s racial habits, traditions, surroundings, are as coloured glasses through which they look at the sun of Truth; each glass lends its own tint to the sunbeam, and the white ray is transmitted as red, or blue, or yellow—what you will. As we cannot get rid of our glass and catch the pure uncoloured radiance, we do wisely to combine the coloured rays and so obtain the white.
From: Reincarnation by Annie Besant
To the question of whether Theosophy is a religion, Madame Blavatsky replied: Most assuredly it is not, since it is the essence of all religion and of absolute truth, a drop of which only underlies every creed. To resort once more to metaphor. Theosophy, on earth, is like the white ray of the spectrum, and every religion only one of the seven prismatic colours. Ignoring all the others, and cursing them as false, every special coloured ray claims not only priority, but to be that white ray itself, and anathematizes even its own tints from light to dark, as heresies. Yet, as the sun of truth rises higher and higher on the horizon of man’s perception, and each coloured ray gradually fades out until it is finally re-absorbed in its turn, humanity will at last be cursed no longer with artificial polarizations, but will find itself bathing in the pure colourless sunlight of eternal truth. And this will be Theosophia.
From: The Key to Theosophy by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Man’s Journey through the Arc of Evolution
As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe — the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return.
From: The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett – in Chronological Sequence, Letter No. 67