Chapter 1 (part 9)

I have never desired to learn any sciences, but from early youth I strove after the salvation of my soul, and thought how I might inherit or possess the kingdom of heaven. Finding within myself a powerful contrarium , namely, the desires that belong to the flesh and blood, I began to fight a hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of God, I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to break it, and to enter wholly into the love of God in the Christ. I therefore then and there resolved to regard myself as one dead in my inherited form, until the Spirit of God would take form in me, so that in and through Him I might conduct my life. This, however, was not possible for me to accomplish, but I stood firmly by my earnest resolution, and fought a hard battle with myself. Now while I was wrestling and battling, being aided by God, a wonderful light arose within my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognised the true nature of God and man, and the relation existing between them, a thing which heretofore I had never understood, and for which I would never have sought." ( Tilk . 20–26.) The realisation of the truth that we are nothing, but that God is all, constitutes the beginning of the true p. 51 faith, which forms the basis of true knowledge and the first step on the road to spiritual unfoldment. To wish, to will, to desire, to know, to do nothing except what God desires, wills, wishes, knows, or does in and through man is true resignation; it is the deepest humility for the carnal mind, while at the same time it is the glorification of God in man, and therefore the highest attainable state. "I am continually waiting for my Redeemer, willing to submit myself entirely to Him, whatever He may do. If He wants me to know a certain thing, then do I want to know it; but if He does not, then am I not desirous of knowing it. In Him I have put my will, my knowledge, my science, my desiring and doing." ( Letters , viii. 60.) "Hundreds of times have I prayed to God, begging Him to take away from me all knowledge, if it did not serve for His glorification and for the amelioration of the condition of my brothers, and that He should only retain me within His love. But the more I prayed the more the internal fire within myself became ignited, and in such a state of ignition did I execute my writings." ( Letters , xii. 60.) This interior illumination of the mind by the light of eternal Truth alone, and not any other state or condition, is that which constitutes the true theosophy. Therefore true theosophy does not consist in intellectual learning of any kind, nor in morality, nor in being pious or virtuous, nor in belonging to any Church or society, nor in humanitarianism, or in anything that can be accomplished by man, but theosophy is the self-knowledge of God in man , the illumination of the mind by the light of the Christ, the eternal Truth itself. Such theosophy is not as some have claimed, "a branch of theology," nor any system of thought, nor a certain school, in which heretofore unknown secrets are divulged, but it is divine p. 52 wisdom itself, without any other qualification. It is beyond all merely human conception, inconceivable to the reasoning intellect, and can therefore not be explained.