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Welcome to the 14th e-newsletter of The Foundation for Theosophical Studies, which lists our events for the next two weeks at the London headquarters of the Theosophical Society in England.
Please note that we will be closed on the Bank Holiday Sunday, 6 May.
This week's article is devoted briefly to Mme Blavatsky's major work, The Secret Doctrine, the study of which features in three of our events over the next two weeks. In future weeks, we will carry longer pieces about the SD by a variety of contributors.
Thank you, meanwhile, for all your comments so far about the newsletter. Please keep sending them and let us know if there are any topics you would like us to feature in the future. We also welcome contributors willing to submit the featured article. Do please forward this newsletter to your friends and fellow TS members and encourage them to sign up! And if you can't get to 50 Gloucester Place, you can always buy CDs or tapes of many of our lectures.
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Very best wishes,
Colyn Boyce
Publicity and Administrator
The Foundation is an educational charity which uses theosophical principles to promote knowledge and the study of religion, philosophy and science; which also researches the laws of nature and the powers latent in man; and which promulgates the unity of all people |
| The Next Two Weeks at 50 Gloucester Place |
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 SUNDAY 29 April 2007
11.0-4.0 pm:Dhyana Centre of The Theosophical Society: THE JOY OF MEDITATION
Leader: Alan Perry
For beginners, the Dhyana Centre holds regular introductory courses on weekdays and weekend intensives that cover the same ground in a truncated form. The courses teach the theory and practice of meditation as a spiritual discipline (Raja or Dhyana Yoga) including breathing, chakras, devotional visualisation and the use of mantra. No experience, preparation or registration is required. Just turn up at the start of any course or workshop.
Admission free, donations welcome
The Dhyana Centre also holds groups & retreats for more advanced meditators; please see the website at www.dhyanacentre.org or email Alan at info@dhyanacentre.org
2 pm: SPIRITUAL EXPLORERS' CLUB
Edward Archer
The adventure continues! Are you actively engaged in some form of spiritual quest? Do you have inner experiences? If so, here is a unique opportunity to meet others with similar aspiration, to talk about the experiences and to swap ideas, in an atmosphere of harmony, freedom and comradeship. Edward Archer is a musical instrument designer and writer with a long interest in inner development and spiritual experiences. He is a long standing TS member and has had a number of spiritual experiences of his own. Please be prompt! Arranged by the Theosophical Society in England
£7, £5 concessions + TS members
4.45-5.45 pm: THEOSOPHY: Way to Self- Discovery - Introductory Course on the Ageless Wisdom
 Colin Price, National President of The Theosophical Society in EnglandAn informal on-going class in which the basic teachings of Theosophy (Greek for Divine Wisdom) are explored and discussed. In this class we will consider the sevenfold nature of humanity and the cosmos and how karma and reincarnation are involved. The book Deity, Cosmos and Man will be used as the main source text for the meetings.
Admission free
6 pm: RE-AWAKE YOUR INTUITION
 Michael Bradford Your intuition is as much a natural part of you as breathing! Learn what intuition is, how to access, amplify and fine-tune it, how to see beyond illusion and how to tap into higher levels of consciousness! Tonight's presentation includes a talk and workshop. Michael Bradford is Managing Director of The Intuitive Advantage, Ltd. and Founder of the Universal Health Foundation. He specializes in mentoring, coaching, intuition training & energy clearing. £7, £5 concessions + TS members TUESDAY 1 May 20077-8.30 pm: THE SECRET DOCTRINE  Victor Hangya
In the midst of today's materialism and ruins of old religions you are invited to join the excavation of the perennial wisdom! The tool used in our exploration is The Secret Doctrine, which claims 'logical coherence and consistency' and expects to be treated as a 'working hypothesis', so freely accepted by modern science. The SD sheds light on some of the greatest mysteries concerning Man, God and the Universe.
Victor Hangya has been exploring the Ageless Wisdom for more than 20 years.
Admission free
SATURDAY 5 May 2007
10.30 am-5 pm: THE SECRET DOCTRINE - Spheres, Rounds & Races
Victor Hangya
This day workshop focuses on the Second Fundamental Proposition, the Law of Periodicity. We will consider such vexing questions as: Is everything in Nature - including us - going through linear growth? Is everything a matter of chance - and is God throwing the dice? This is some of the most complex theosophical teaching which requires our higher faculty rather than our rational mind. Arranged by the Theosophical Society in England
£12, £9 concessions, £6 TS members
SUNDAY 6 May 2007
BANK HOLIDAY: Closed
TUESDAY 8 May 20077-8.30 pm: THE SECRET DOCTRINE Victor Hangya  In the midst of today's materialism and ruins of old religions you are invited to join the excavation of the perennial wisdom! The tool used in our exploration is The Secret Doctrine, which claims 'logical coherence and consistency' and expects to be treated as a 'working hypothesis', so freely accepted by modern science. The SD sheds light on some of the greatest mysteries concerning Man, God and the Universe. Victor Hangya has been exploring the Ageless Wisdom for more than 20 years.
Admission free
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE
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The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, originally published as two volumes in 1888, is Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's magnum opus. The first volume is Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis. HPB, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society in 1875, proclaimed that it had been revealed to her by the Mahatmas, masters who had retained knowledge of mankind's spiritual history some of which they now wanted to reveal.
The truths of The Secret Doctrine therefore are not the result of one person's endeavours. Rather they have been preserved and extended according to a "scientific method" employed over long long centuries by adepts "testing, checking, and verifying" the results of fellow adepts. HPB explains:
The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages ... such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there ... It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the 'Wise Men' of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions - so obtained as to stand as independent evidence - of other adepts, and by centuries of experience.
The Secret Doctrine H P Blavatsky, Vol I, page 273.
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