THEOSOPHY
KARMA

A Study in
Karma
by
Annie Besant
 
Published in
1917
 

Annie Besant
1847 - 1933
 
INDEX
 
Karma
 
Fundamental Principles
 
Laws: Natural and Man-Made
 
The Law of Laws
 
The Eternal Now
 
Succession
 
Causation
 
The Laws of Nature
 
A Lesson of The Law
 
Karma Does Not Crush
 
Apply This Law
 
Man in The Three Worlds
 
Understand The Truth
 
Man and His Surroundings
 
The Three Fates
 
The Pair of Triplets
 
Thought, The Builder
 
Practical Meditation
 
Will and Desire
 
The Mastery of Desire
 
Two Other Points
 
The Third Thread
 
Perfect Justice
 
Our Environment
 
Our Kith and Kin
 
Our Nation
 
The Light for a
Good Man
 
Knowledge of Law 
 
The Opposing
Schools
 
The More Modern View
 
Self-Examination
 
Out of the Past
 
Old Friendships
 
We Grow By Giving
 
Collective Karma
 
Family Karma
 
National Karma
 
India’s Karma
 
National Disasters
 
How The Ego Selects
 
Englands’s Karma
 
The French Revolution
 
A Noble
National Ideal 
 
______________________
 
 

Annie
Besant Visits Cardiff 1924
Annie
Besant and two Theosophical Society officials from India 
are
greeted by Cardiff
Theosophists at Cardiff Central Station.
Annie
Besant was International President of the 
Adyar Theosophical Society from 1907 until her
death in 1933
 
History of the Adyar Theosophical Society  
 
 

Leading
Theosophists in London 1891
Annie Besant,
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (Seated)
and  
William Quan Judge in London after the funeral of 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1891 
 
 

Annie Besant and Mohandes K Gandhi
Annie Besant was at one time President of The
Indian National Congress 
and put under house arrest for her stand on Indian
Home Rule in 1917. 
Her dream of an Anglo-Indian Commonwealth became unrealistic 
after the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar 1919.
 
Welsh Theosophists Protest Against 
Internment of Annie Besant 1917
 
 

The Match Girls Strike 1888
Annie Besant, The Social Reformer
On 23rd June 1888, Annie Besant wrote an article in her newspaper, 
The Link. The article, entitled "White Slavery in London", complained 
about the way
the women at Bryant & May were being treated. 
The company
reacted by attempting to force their workers to 
sign a
statement that they were happy with their working conditions. 
When a group of
women refused to sign, the organisers of the group 
was sacked. The
response was immediate; 1400 of the women at
 Bryant & May went on strike.
 
 

Annie Besant at Le Bourget
Annie Besant arrives in France at Le Bourget from 
Croydon Aerodrome on her way back to India after 
visiting Cardiff Theosophical Society in 1924
______________________
 
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KARMA

 
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William Quan Judge
1851 - 1896
 
The Ocean of Theosophy
William Quan Judge
 
Preface   
Theosophy and the Masters    General Principles
 
The Earth Chain    Body and Astral Body    Kama – Desire
 
Manas    Of Reincarnation    Reincarnation Continued
 
Karma    Kama Loka   
Devachan   
Cycles
 
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Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
 
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What is Theosophy ?  Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
 
Three Fundamental Propositions  Key Concepts of Theosophy
 
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Ascended Masters  After Death States
 
The Seven Principles of Man  Karma
 
Reincarnation   Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
 
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott  William Quan Judge
 
The Start of the Theosophical
Society
 
History of the Theosophical
Society
 
Theosophical Society Presidents
 
History of the Theosophical
Society in Wales
 
The Three Objectives of the
Theosophical Society
 
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The Theosophical Order of
Service (TOS)
 
Ocean
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William Quan Judge
 
Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
 
Worldwide Theosophical Links
 
 
 
 
 
Elementary Theosophy
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
 
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man?  Body and Soul    
 
Body, Soul and Spirit  Reincarnation  Karma
 
The Seven in Man and Nature
 
The Meaning of Death
 
 
 
Quotes
from the Writings of
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
That which is to be
shunned is pain not yet come. The past cannot be changed or amended; that which
belongs to the experience of the present cannot and should  not be shunned; but alike to be shunned are
disturbing anticipations or fears of  the
future, and every act or impulse that may cause present or future pain to
ourselves or others.
Practical
Occultism, Page 87
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Perfection, to be
fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out
of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 100
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
It is only by the
attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites — Spirit and Matter — can be cemented
together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find
themselves wedded in Eternity.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 108
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Strength to step
forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. Where is this to be
found? Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their
strength. Its source is profound conviction.
Practical
Occultism, Page 67
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
It is the motive,
and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white,
beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the
slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator .... The powers and
forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as
by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend
themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine Magic.
Practical
Occultism, Page 7
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Finite reason
agrees with science, and says: “There is no God”. But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket,
does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for the
sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic
faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent in
man, when he has once fully realised it in himself.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
It may be a pleasant dream to attempt to conceive of
the beauties of the spirit world; but the time can be spent more profitably in
a study of the spirit itself, and it is not necessary that the subject for
study should be in the spirit world.
Modern Panarion
Page 70 
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Physical existence
is subservient to the spiritual, and all physical improvement and progress are
only the auxiliaries of spiritual progress, without which there could be no
physical progress.
Modern Panarion
Page 78
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Mankind — the majority at any rate — hates to think
for itself. It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a
moment outside the old well-beaten tracks and, judging for itself, to enter
into a new path in some fresh direction.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 3, Page 14
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Even ignorance is better than
Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.
The Voice of the Silence, Page 43
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Many theosophists
have had slight conscious relations with elementals, but always without their
will acting, and upon trying to make elementals see, hear or act for them, a
total indifference on the part of the nature spirit is all they have got in
return. These failures are due to the fact that the elemental cannot understand
the thought of the person; it can only be reached when the exact scale of being
to which it belongs is vibrated, whether it be that of colour, form, sound, or
whatever else
Annotation - The
Path, May, 1888
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Parabrahman is not
“God” because It is not a God. “It is that which is supreme, and not supreme”.
....It is supreme as cause, not supreme as effect.
The Secret Doctrine
, Proem [Volume 1], Page 35
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
The ancients .....
fully realised the fact that the reciprocal relations between the planetary bodies
is as perfect as those between the corpuscles of the blood, which float in a
common fluid; and that each one is affected by the combined influence of all
the rest, as each in its turn affects each of the others.
Isis, Volume 1,
Page 275
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Strength to step
forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. Where is this to be
found? Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their
strength. Its source is profound conviction.
Practical
Occultism, Page 67
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
There are two kinds
of magnetic attraction: sympathy and fascination; the one holy and natural, the
other evil and unnatural.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 210
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
In the phenomenal
and Cosmic World Fohat is that occult, electric, vital power, which, under the
Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them
the first impulse, which in time becomes law.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 1, Page 134
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Oaths will never be
binding till each man will fully understand that humanity is the highest
manifestation on earth of the Unseen Supreme Deity, and each man an
incarnation of his
God; and when the sense of personal responsibility will be so 
developed in him
that he will consider forswearing the greatest possible insult to himself, as
well as to humanity. No oath is now binding, unless taken by one who, without
any oath at all, would solemnly keep his simple promise of honour.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 2, Page 374
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
It is the motive,
and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become 
black, malignant,
or white, beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if
there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator .... The
powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and
revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of
spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine
Magic.
Practical
Occultism, Page 7
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Woe to those who
live without suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that
vegetates without change. And how can there be any change for the better
without proportionate suffering during the preceding stage?
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 498
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
The person who is
endowed with this faculty of thinking about even the most trifling things from
the higher plane of thought has, by virtue of that gift which he possesses, a
plastic power of formation, so to say, in his very imagination. Whatever such a
person may think about, his thought will be so far more intense than the
thought of an ordinary person, that by this very intensity it obtains the power
of creation.
Lucifer, December,
1888
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Finite reason
agrees with science, and says: “There is no God”. But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal
casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for
the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No
dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling
inherent in man, when he has once fully realised it in himself.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
Our voice is raised
for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement  from all tyranny, whether of Science of
Theology.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, I2.
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
If through the Hall
of Wisdom thou wouldst reach the Vale of Bliss, Disciple, close fast thy senses
against the great dire heresy of Separateness that weans thee from the rest.
Voice of the
Silence, Page 23
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
From strength to
strength, from the beauty and perfection of one plane to the 
greater beauty and
perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of fresh 
knowledge and power
in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego, which thus 
becomes its own
saviour in each world and incarnation.
The Key to
Theosophy, Page 105
 
Blavatsky Quotation
 
The assertion that
“Theosophy is not a Religion” , by no means excludes the fact that “Theosophy
is Religion” itself. A religion in the true and only correct sense is a bond
uniting men together — not a particular set of dogmas and beliefs. Now
Religion, per se, in its widest meaning is that which binds not only all Men
but also all Beings and all things in the entire Universe into one grand whole.
Lucifer, November,
1888
 
 
 
 
 
 
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