The Origins of Self-Consciousness
In The Secret Doctrine
ISBN 978-0-9793205-4-5 and 0-9793205-4-2
by H. P. Blavatsky
Available at Amazon.com
This book is a compilation of passages skillfully chosen
from the approximately 1500+ pages of The
Secret Doctrine especially for inclusion in this volume. These passages
isolate and group together the Theosophical teachings about the mysterious
evolutionary origins of consciousness in Nature and self-consciousness in Man
into one organic work. The Table of Contents, the 41 Sections, the dedicated
Glossary, and the Index will all help to guide the reader through these
difficult teachings. All of the passages deal specifically with the subject of
the title - The Origins of Self-Consciousness in The Secret Doctrine - and show that, between the reflective
self-consciousness of man and the mentality of animals (both belonging to
distinctly different kingdoms), there is an impassable abyss.
As H.P. Blavatsky says in the Section
entitled “Man – A God in Animal Form”: “What is human mind in its higher
aspect, whence comes it, if it is not a portion of the essence – and, in some
rare cases of incarnation, the very essence – of a higher Being: one from a
higher and divine plane? Can man – a god in the animal form – be the product of
Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from
man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric,
and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad – seeing that the
intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the glow
worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal plus
a living god within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves
seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the
materialistic and the psychological modern sciences.”
Go to The Origins of Self-Consciousness
in The Secret Doctrine by HP Blavatsky
Go to Wisdom in Action
Go to The Dawning of Wisdom
Go to The Key to Theosophy
Go to Teachers of the Eternal Doctrine