The Theosophical Society is composed of students belonging to any religion in the world or to none, who are united by their approval of the Society’s Objects by their wish to remove religious antagonisms and to draw together men of goodwill, whatsoever their religious opinions, and by their desire to study religious truths and to share the results of their studies with others. Their bond of union is not the profession of a common belief but a common search and aspiration for Truth. They hold that Truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity of life, by devotion to high ideals, and they regard Truth as a prize to be striven for not as a dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that belief should be the result of individual study or intuition and not its antecedent and should rest on knowledge not on assertion. They extend tolerance to all, even to the intolerant, not as a privilege they bestow but as a duty they perform, and they seek to remove ignorance not punish it. They see every religion as an expression of the Divine Wisdom and prefer its study to its condemnations and its practice to proselytism. Peace is their watchword as Truth is their aim.

Members of the Theosophical Society study these truths and theosophists endeavour to live them. Everyone willing to study to be intolerant, to aim high, and to work perseveringly is welcomed as a member and it rests with the member to become a true Theosophist.

Main focus of The Theosophical Society

The Society was founded to teach no new and easy paths to the acquisition of “powers”; and that its only mission is to rekindle the torch of truth, so long extinguished for all but the very few, and to keep that truth alive by the formation of a fraternal union of mankind, the only soil in which the good seed can grow.

The Theosophical Society does indeed desire to promote the spiritual growth of every individual who comes within its influence, but its methods are those of the ancient Rishis, its tenets are those of the oldest Esotericism. In this connection we would warn all our members, and others who are seeking spiritual knowledge, to beware of persons offering to teach them easy methods of acquiring psychic gifts; such gifts (loukika) are indeed comparatively easy of acquirement by artificial means, but fade out as soon as the nerve-stimulus exhausts itself.

The real seership and adeptship which is accompanied by true psychic development (lokotthara), once reached, is never lost. It must be remembered that the Society was not founded as a nursery for a supply of Occultists—as a factory for the manufactory of Adepts. It was intended to stem the current of materialism, and also that of spiritualistic phenomena that has now begun, and not to pander to psychic cravings which are but another form of materialism.

Its [Theosophical] aims are several; but the most important of all are those which are likely to lead to the relief of human suffering under any or every form, moral as well as physical. And we believe the former to be far more important than the latter.

Theosophy has to inculcate ethics; it has to purify the soul, if it would relieve the physical body, whose ailments, save cases of accidents, are all hereditary. It is not by studying Occultism for selfish ends, for the gratification of one’s personal ambition, pride, or vanity, that one can reach the goal; that of helping mankind. Nor is it by studying one single branch of the esoteric philosophy that a man become an Occultist, but by studying, if not mastering, them all. The function of Theosophy is to open men’s hearts and understandings to charity, justice, and generosity, attributes which belong specifically to the human kingdom and are natural to man when he has developed the qualities of a human being. Theosophy teaches the animal-man to be human; and when people have learned to think and feel as human beings should feel and think, they will act humanely, and works of charity, justice, and generosity will be done spontaneously by all.

— Madame Blavatsky

“There is a road, steep and thorny,
beset with perils of every kind, but yet a road,
and it leads to the very heart of the Universe:
I can tell you how to find those who will show you the secret gateway that opens inward only, and closes fast behind the neophyte for evermore.

There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer;
there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through;
there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount.
For those who win onwards, there is reward past all telling –
the power to bless and save humanity; for those who fail,
there are other lives in which success may come.”
H.P. BLAVATSKY, 1891,
Collected Writings(vol. 13:219)