DEFINITIONAL ESSAYS

The Definitional Essays are the Trust's own extended treatments of key terms in Theosophy, from Absolute Abstract Space to Yoga. Each essay sets out what the term means, how H.P. Blavatsky and Raghavan Iyer use it, and how it bears on study and practice. All 172 can be read online, and each has a free PDF. Shorter entries for thousands of terms are in the Theosophical Glossary.

A

• Abhinivesha Abhinivesha is tenacious clinging to phenomenal existence, the fifth of the kleshas or afflictions in Patanjali's yoga, often approached through the fear of death but reaching further into the insistence that life continue under the conditions by which the personal self has learned to recognize itself. PDF
• Abhyasa Abhyasa is sustained or assiduous practice, the continuous effort to abide in a steady state — not mere repetition, anxious striving or the accumulation of countable exercises, but repeated wakefulness, the conscious return again and again to what is true. PDF
• Absolute Abstract Duration Absolute Abstract Duration is the timeless continuity of the One Reality, beyond the succession by which ordinary time is measured, and not to be confused with the length of a cosmic age or the interval between universes. PDF
• Absolute Abstract Motion Absolute Abstract Motion is the symbol, placed by H.P. PDF
• Absolute Abstract Space One of the deepest symbolic terms in Theosophy, and among the most easily misread by the literal-minded reader. PDF
• Adepts Adepts are those who have attained mastery of occult knowledge of Nature and consciousness, a term that by itself says nothing of the moral use to which such mastery is put, since H.P. PDF
• Aditi Aditi is the Vedic name for the Mother of the gods, the shoreless expanse and primordial matrix of manifestation, through which Theosophical philosophy approaches the mystery of the unbounded. PDF
• Agni Agni is the Vedic fire principle, interpreted in Theosophical teaching on spiritual, cosmic, and human levels, belonging to the mystery of creative intelligence and sacrifice rather than to combustion alone. PDF
• Ah Hi Ah-hi, in the commentary on the Stanzas of Dzyan, names the collective hosts of spiritual intelligences, identified by Blavatsky with the Dhyan-Chohans and described as the vehicle through which divine or universal thought and will become active in a universe. PDF
• Ahankara Ahankara means "I-making," the activity by which consciousness says "I" in relation to experience and gathers a world around that center. PDF
• Ahimsa Yagna Ahimsa Yagna names a sacrificial practice of nonviolence in which self-knowledge becomes cooperation with the life of Nature, ahimsa meaning non-harming and yagna, also written yajna, meaning sacrifice or offering. PDF
• Akasa Akasa is far more than the Sanskrit word for 'ether' or 'space' in the everyday, popular sense that often obscures its real meaning in the Ageless Wisdom. PDF
• Alaya Alaya is the Universal Soul, described in Buddhist and Theosophical teaching alike as indivisible from the whole of manifested existence rather than as one soul among the many individual souls it underlies. PDF
• Anahata Anahata is the spiritual or subtle heart center in Theosophical teaching, named by Professor Iyer as man's sacred connection with cosmic consciousness, while the related term Anahata Shabda belongs to the teaching of subtle sound. PDF
• Anamnesis Anamnesis is recollection in its Platonic and Theosophical sense: the recovery of knowledge belonging to the soul, understood here in connection with the continuity of an immortal individuality through successive incarnations. PDF
• Anasakti Anasakti is nonattachment, understood in Professor Iyer's teaching as the freedom from possessive claim upon the fruits of action that makes selfless action possible. PDF
• Aparigraha Aparigraha is non-possession or non-possessiveness, one of the five yamas of yoga, and it concerns less the number of objects a person owns than the inward grasp by which things, advantages and even relationships are made secure extensions of the self. PDF
• Aquarian Age The Aquarian Age is, as Professor Iyer presents it, a zodiacal and evolutionary cycle interpreted esoterically as an opportunity for heightened self-consciousness and regeneration, commencing on June 19, 1902, in his reckoning. PDF
• Army of the Voice Army of the Voice is the Theosophical name for the differentiated host of conscious intelligences through which divine thought becomes manifest as an ordered universe, the One becoming articulate through the many. PDF
• Asmita Asmita is egoism in Patanjali's precise sense: the identification of the power of the Seer with the instrument of seeing, a mistaken location of selfhood from which pride and defensiveness follow rather than a merely unpleasant manner. PDF
• Asteya Asteya is non-stealing, the third of the five yamas in the discipline of yoga, which establishes a relation of honesty towards what belongs to others and towards the resources of the shared world. PDF
• Atma Buddhi Atma-Buddhi names the spiritual Monad in its twofold aspect — universal Spirit (Atma) joined inseparably to its nearest luminous vehicle (Buddhi) — and together they form the higher duality standing above the more familiar, more perishable elements of the human constitution. PDF
• Atma Buddhi Manas Atma-Buddhi-Manas is the immortal spiritual triad in Theosophical accounts of the human constitution, in which Atma is universal Spirit, Buddhi its spiritual vehicle, and Manas, in its higher aspect, the self-conscious mind that together express the higher individuality behind the succession of earthly personalities. PDF
• Atma Vidya Atma Vidya is knowledge of the Self in its highest Theosophical sense — the wisdom of Atman, the universal spiritual Self, and the inward science by which the immortal centre of consciousness is distinguished from the transient vestures through which it acts, rather than any study of personality, biography or temperament. PDF
• Atman Atman is the universal Self — not the personality with its name and history, not the restless mind with its opinions and moods, and not any private spiritual possession belonging to one person more than another. PDF
• Atom, Atomic Long before physics arrived at the atom as a scientific concept, occult philosophy already held its own doctrine of ultimate, indivisible units of substance, developed through very different means and toward a very different end. PDF
• Avatar Avatar means a divine descent into embodied existence — in Theosophical usage, an exalted being who has passed beyond the necessity of rebirth and freely enters a human vehicle for the assistance of the world. PDF
• Avidya Avidya is the fundamental spiritual ignorance by which the changing field of experience is mistaken for the lasting ground of existence, a matter of how reality is apprehended rather than of how much information a person possesses. PDF

B

• Bhakti Bhakti is devotion: the loving dedication of thought, feeling, and will to the Divine, a sustained orientation that draws the person beyond a private demand for reassurance toward participation in a universal good. PDF
• Bhava Bhava is conditioned becoming or existence, the tenth link in the twelvefold chain of dependent origination, sustained by Upadana, clinging, and conditioning Jati, birth. PDF
• Bodhi Bodhi is awakening or enlightenment, the realization of wisdom that transforms the way consciousness knows and lives, set in the Theosophical sources within the ethical context of the bodhisattva path of compassionate service. PDF
• Brahma Vidya Brahma Vidya is divine knowledge or sacred science — wisdom concerning Brahman and the cosmic order — which H.P. PDF
• Brotherhood of Bodhisattvas The Brotherhood of Bodhisattvas is, in Professor Iyer's Theosophical teaching, the fellowship of awakened beings who preserve spiritual wisdom and work for the welfare of humanity, a term concerning the custodianship of wisdom and the possibility of help under law rather than curiosity about membership in a hidden order. PDF
• Buddhi Buddhi is the principle of spiritual discernment and luminous moral perception in the sevenfold Theosophical constitution — and it is important from the outset to say what it is not: not cleverness, not emotion however elevated, and not abstract reasoning however rigorous. PDF
• Buddhi Manas Buddhi-Manas names mind illumined by Buddhi — spiritual discernment and self-conscious intelligence joined in working union, rather than left as the two separate and often conflicting faculties most people experience them to be. PDF

C

• Causal Body The causal body is a Theosophical term for the spiritual basis through which the enduring human individuality carries the fruits of experience across changing lives, and its language asks for care, since body here means neither an anatomical structure nor a second physical person concealed within the first. PDF
• Chitta Chitta is the mind-field in Patanjali's yoga — the operative life of mental consciousness, embracing perception, imagination, memory and the inward effects of experience — and not merely reasoning, since yoga gathers under this one term the functions Sankhya distinguishes as intellect, egoity, mind and the powers of sensation and action. PDF
• Chittavritti Chittavritti is a modification or movement of chitta, the mind-field, and in Patanjali's yoga, as expounded by Professor Iyer, such modifications become central to spiritual discipline because the mind habitually identifies with them. PDF
• Compassion Compassion is intelligent, selfless care rooted in the unity of life — not a passing sympathetic feeling, though it includes tenderness, but the active expression of the kinship of all beings arising within one spiritual reality. PDF
• Consciousness Consciousness is the presence of experience — the capacity to perceive, feel, or know — which Theosophy places within a far wider conception of life, in which awareness has many modes and degrees expressed through different beings and their instruments of perception. PDF

D

• Daiviprakriti Daiviprakriti is divine prakriti — the luminous, spiritual nature inseparably associated with the Logos in Theosophical cosmology, as distinct from prakriti in its ordinary, material sense. PDF
• Dana Dana is giving — charity, generosity, alms-giving — and, in The Voice of the Silence, the first paramita and first golden key to the portals of the Path, "the key of charity and love immortal." This essay explains why giving stands first, before shila, kshanti, viraga, virya, dhyana and prajna, as the initial loosening of the closed self and the beginning of a re-education of identity, and it widens dana beyond the transfer of objects to generosity in thought, word and deed: attention without grasping, speech without violence, knowledge without vanity, forgiveness without superiority, service without the need to be seen. PDF
• Devachan Devachan is the Theosophical name for a state of spiritual rest and ideal fulfilment between successive earthly lives, entered by the enduring Ego after its separation from Kama Rupa and the disintegration of the lower principles. PDF
• Dharana Dharana is the deliberate concentration of consciousness upon a chosen focus, the sixth limb of Patanjali's ashtangayoga, following the disciplines that prepare conduct, body and senses for inward work. PDF
• Dharma Dharma is the sustaining law of right relation, a word that may mean duty, law, righteousness, teaching, or the nature of a being, its precise sense depending upon context. PDF
• Dharmakaya Dharmakaya means the Truth-Body or Body of Dharma, and in the teaching H.P. PDF
• Dharmamegha Dharmamegha, the cloud of dharma, is the supreme samadhi named in Professor Iyer's exposition of Patanjali's "Kaivalya Pada," a condition of perpetual discernment in which the residuum of karma and the kleshas is destroyed at the root. PDF
• Dhyani chohans Dhyani-chohans are the orders of conscious intelligences through which cosmic law is expressed in the Theosophical account of a living universe, named the Lords of Meditation and, in Blavatsky's Theosophical Glossary, the Lords of Light. PDF
• Dialectic Dialectic is commonly taken to mean argument, dialogue, or reasoning through opposing positions, but in the Gupta Vidya current it names the living movement of truth through thought, speech, choice, negation, synthesis and spiritual recognition, rising at its highest into the divine dialectic, a golden bridge between the Absolute and the relative. PDF
• Divine Darkness 'Darkness' in this context is not absence, negation or evil — the associations the word ordinarily carries — but a name deliberately chosen for the unmanifest Absolute, which is described as darkness precisely because it is too luminous for any conditioned mind to perceive as light. PDF
• Double Evolution Double Evolution names the interwoven development of consciousness and form in Theosophical philosophy, in which consciousness unfolds from spiritual sources into increasingly differentiated modes of expression while substance moves from relative simplicity toward the complexity of living forms, the two movements meeting in the human being. PDF

E

• Elementals Elementals are the lives and formative agencies through which Nature is understood to work in Theosophical teaching, a term reaching well beyond the familiar folklore of gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines. PDF
• Eros Eros is the creative power of love in the Greek symbolic language examined by Theosophy, reaching beyond particular attachment toward the impulse that joins, gives life and seeks unity. PDF
• Eros and Kamadeva Eros and Kamadeva name the primordial power of creative love in the Greek and Vedic symbolic languages compared by Theosophy, pointing to the first movement of desire in manifestation and the bond between Entity and Non-Entity. PDF

F

• Fifth Root Race The Fifth Root Race names the present major humanity-cycle in the evolutionary cosmology of Theosophy, belonging to the Fourth Round, following the Atlantean or Fourth Root Race, and concerned characteristically with the development and moral education of Manas, self-conscious mind. PDF
• First Logos The First Logos marks the first conceivable moment of self-limitation of the Absolute — a moment that remains itself unmanifest, unexpressed, and prior to any distinction between subject and object, yet is nonetheless the seed-point from which all subsequent manifestation proceeds by logical and cosmological necessity. PDF
• Fohat Fohat is the dynamic, electric energy of the cosmos in Theosophical teaching — the constructive, ceaselessly active force through which abstract ideation present in the Universal Mind is impressed upon substance and progressively built into worlds, systems and the innumerable forms that populate them. PDF
• Fourth Root Race The Fourth Root Race is the Atlantean humanity-cycle in the evolutionary cosmology of Theosophy, belonging to the Fourth Round on this globe and following the Third or Lemurian Root Race. PDF

G

• Gupta Vidya Gupta Vidya means Secret Wisdom or Hidden Knowledge — Divine Wisdom, the accumulated wisdom of the ages and the unrecorded inheritance of humanity, secret not because truth is withheld but because its deepest meaning requires transformation of the knower. PDF

H

• Hanuman Hanuman is the devoted ally of Rama in the Ramayana, traditionally represented in monkey form and described in H.P. PDF
• Heart Doctrine The Heart Doctrine is the inward teaching through which spiritual knowledge becomes compassionate understanding and service, the living assimilation by which an idea enters the mind, awakens conscience, and alters the quality of conduct. PDF
• Higher Manas Higher Manas is the enduring thinking individuality that gathers the spiritual and moral fruits of experience through successive lives, standing behind the changing personalities through which that experience is gained. PDF
• Hiranyagarbha Hiranyagarbha is the golden womb or golden embryo, a symbol of the luminous matrix of manifestation — the cosmic egg within which the possibilities of a universe unfold into order, and a term related in different contexts to Brahma, Prajapati and Mahat. PDF
• Hope Hope, in the Theosophical and Gupta Vidya sense, is not optimism, wish, prediction or personal expectation, but the soul's fidelity to hidden Light when outer conditions are dark, and the power to receive a ray in a difficult hour and then quietly become a bearer of strength to others. PDF

I

• Indra Indra is the Vedic lord of the firmament, chief of the celestial host and god of thunder and rain, whom Theosophy reads as an image of the splendour and the ambiguity of intelligence itself. PDF
• Initiation Initiation, in the Wisdom Tradition, is an inward admission into spiritual knowledge accomplished through a corresponding transformation of the knower, so that ceremony may symbolize the passage and instruction may prepare it, but neither can establish it. PDF
• Ishvarapranidhana Ishvarapranidhana is surrender or devoted dedication to Ishvara, the divine Lord who is the spiritual focus of Patanjali's yoga, understood as a persistent turning of attention, will and aspiration towards the Supreme Spirit within the heart. PDF

J

• Jaramarana Jaramarana means aging and death, the twelfth link of dependent origination, conditioned by Jati or birth, where aging names the weakening of embodied faculties and death the dissolution of the living compound. PDF
• Jati Jati is birth, the eleventh link in dependent origination, conditioned by Bhava, becoming, and conditioning Jaramarana, aging and death. PDF
• Jivatman Jivatman, also spelled Jivatma, joins the ideas of life and Spirit, pointing toward universal life considered through its spiritual origin and through the divine presence in the human heart rather than toward an isolated individual soul or a person's physical vitality. PDF

K

• Kaivalya Kaivalya is emancipation or supreme spiritual freedom in Patanjali's yoga, the release of Purusha, the Seer, from mistaken identification with Prakriti, the changing field of Nature. PDF
• Kalachakra Kalachakra means Time's circle, the Wheel of Time, and in Professor Iyer's treatment it is inseparable from Kalahansa, the Swan in and out of time, the Great Bird bridging kala and khandakala, the unconditionally Timeless and conditioned Time. PDF
• Kama Kama is desire — the attraction toward experience, possession, relationship, or continued existence — which in the Theosophical account of the human constitution belongs to the changing personal nature, yet which Blavatsky also relates to the Vedic impulse toward creation and universal good. PDF
• Kamadeva Kamadeva is the divine figure of desire and love, understood in these Theosophical sources not through romantic attraction but through the earlier Vedic sense in which desire first arose as the primal germ of mind, the bond connecting Entity with Non-Entity. PDF
• Karana Sharira Karana Sharira is the causal body or causal vesture, associated in Theosophical teaching with the higher individuality and the spiritual harvest of experience gathered across many incarnations. PDF
• Karma Karma means action, and in Theosophical teaching it also names the universal law of ethical causation, through which thought, motive, speech and deed bear their corresponding consequences on physical, mental, moral and spiritual planes. PDF
• Kleshas Kleshas are the afflictions that obscure consciousness and bind it to mistaken identification — avidya, ignorance; asmita, egoism; raga, attachment; dvesha, aversion; and abhinivesha, tenacious clinging to mundane existence. PDF
• Kriyashakti Kriyashakti is creative spiritual power, rendered also as creative action or creative imagination, and defined in The Secret Doctrine as the occult power of thought to produce perceptible results by its own inherent energy when attention and will are deeply concentrated. PDF
• Kumaras Kumaras, literally youths, are the spiritual progenitors associated in Theosophical teaching with the awakening of self-conscious mind, described in the sources as mind-born sons of Brahmā or as related to Rudra-Shiva, and distinguished from the agencies that furnish humanity's bodily forms. PDF
• Kundalini Kundalini is named in Theosophical literature as the power of life, the serpent power or mystic fire, an electro-spiritual force underlying organic and inorganic matter, and, in its highest meaning in The Voice of the Silence, Buddhi considered as an active rather than a passive principle. PDF
• Kuvera Kuvera, also spelled Kubera, is the divine figure of wealth and the regent of the North in the Hindu pantheon, appearing in Theosophical sources both as a Lokapala or world-guardian and as a Plutonic figure associated with treasures, hidden regions and elemental influences. PDF
• Kwan Yin Kwan Yin is the figure of compassion whom Blavatsky calls the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge, and whose name also carries the meaning of the Divine Voice, associated with Kwan-Shai-Yin and the Logos. PDF

L

• Life Atoms Life-atoms are living centres or carriers through which the One Life is expressed in the innumerable forms of Nature, bearing energy, affinity, memory and response as they build, sustain and dissolve embodied existence. PDF
• Light Light is one of the master-symbols of the Wisdom Tradition, not merely physical brightness but the first radiance of manifestation, the noumenal energy of the Logos, and the secret fire in the spiritual heart through which wisdom becomes compassion. PDF
• Logos Logos — 'the Word' — names the principle of ordered, intelligent expression through which the unmanifest Absolute becomes articulate as a structured, knowable universe rather than remaining forever silent and undifferentiated. PDF
• Love Love, in the Theosophical and Gupta Vidya sense, is not merely emotion, attraction, tenderness or personal attachment, but a cosmic and spiritual principle before it is a human feeling — the power of affinity through which Spirit and Soul are drawn toward union. PDF
• Lower Manas Lower Manas is the personal expression of the thinking principle, working through the brain, senses, memory and circumstances of a particular lifetime, remembering appointments, following arguments and interpreting what the senses report. PDF
• Lunar Pitris The Lunar Pitris are the ancestral builders of the human form in Theosophical cosmology, associated with the Barhishad Pitris and described as lunar ancestors or lower creative Dhyanis, whose work is to furnish the astral prototypes and lower vestures through which the Monad may enter embodied evolution. PDF

M

• Mahakaruna Mahakaruna is Great Compassion, understood in Professor Iyer's teaching as unconditional compassion inseparable from Prajna, spiritual wisdom, and not merely a moral virtue added to life from outside. PDF
• Mahamudra Mahamudra means the Great Seal, and in the Tibetan teaching Professor Iyer discusses in "The Mahamudra of Voidness" it names an irreversible orientation of consciousness toward the realization of voidness, sealed as firmly as a signature upon a binding contract. PDF
• Mahat Mahat is cosmic Mind or universal intelligence in Theosophical cosmology, Divine Ideation considered in relation to manifestation and, in one esoteric classification, the Third Logos, the synthesis of the seven creative rays. PDF
• Mahatma Mahatma means Great Soul, from maha, great, and atman, soul or Self, and in Theosophical usage it names, with Blavatsky, an Adept of the highest order whose knowledge and power correspond to an advanced stage of spiritual evolution, a greatness consisting in moral elevation and inward attainment rather than reputation or title. PDF
• Manas Manas is the self-conscious thinking principle, the power through which a human being reflects upon experience, forms intentions, examines judgments and becomes morally responsible. PDF
• Manasadharma Manasadharma is the dharma of Manas, the intrinsic law, duty and spiritual vocation of self-conscious mind, and in Professor Iyer's Gupta Vidya usage it names the living identity of human ideals and human nature as both act and essence. PDF
• Manasaputras Manasaputras means Sons of Mind, the spiritual intelligences through whom self-conscious mind is awakened in humanity, kindling the Manas that makes reflection, deliberate choice and moral responsibility possible. PDF
• Manushya Manushya is the Sanskrit term for a human being, understood in Professor Iyer's account not as an organism or a social identity but as the stage of a long spiritual pilgrimage at which Manas awakens into thought, reflection, deliberate action and moral responsibility. PDF
• Maya Maya is the relative, conditioned character of manifested existence, through which appearances can be mistaken for self-existent reality, though its scope is wider than individual error since it concerns the field of appearance itself. PDF
• Meditation Meditation, in the Theosophical sense, is the disciplined reorientation of consciousness toward the higher Self — not relaxation, psychic experience, private inwardness, or a temporary quieting of the nerves. PDF
• Metanoia Metanoia is a radical change of heart and mind, a reorientation of thought, feeling and will which, in Professor Iyer's account of gnosis, issues in a radically altered state of being. PDF
• Metaphysics Metaphysics is inquiry into the nature and fundamental principles of reality, including consciousness, causation and the relation of unity to multiplicity, and within Gupta Vidya it concerns the deepest grounds of consciousness, Nature and human responsibility. PDF
• Moha Moha is delusion, bewilderment or ignorance of truth — not mere absence of information, but the mind's captivity to unreality, the hardening of illusion into a way of being, in which the conditioned personality becomes the centre around which thought, speech and action revolve. PDF
• Mulaprakriti Mulaprakriti is root-nature — the primordial, undifferentiated substance-veil that clothes the unmanifest Absolute at the very threshold of manifestation, the first and darkest garment thrown over what otherwise remains entirely beyond conception. PDF

N

• Nada Brahman Nada Brahman is the Divine as Soundless Sound — not sound in the physical sense, nor the merely poetic notion that the universe is musical, but the primordial root-vibration through which manifestation is sustained, ordered, differentiated and inwardly recollected. PDF
• Namarupa Namarupa means name-and-form: in Buddhist dependent origination the fourth of the Twelve Nidanas, embracing the mental and bodily factors of experience, and in Theosophical exposition the named and formed personality, which H.P. PDF
• Nirguna Brahman Nirguna Brahman is Brahman without attributes, the discipline of refusing to circumscribe the Absolute by any quality or predicate, where Parabrahm names that unconditioned, Secondless Reality itself. PDF
• Nirmanakaya Nirmanakaya means a transformed body or vesture, and in Blavatsky's esoteric account it names the condition retained by an Adept who relinquishes final nirvanic fruition in order to remain available for the protection and help of humanity. PDF
• Niyamas Niyamas are the five binding observances of yoga — shaucha or purity, santosha or contentment, tapas or self-discipline, svadhyaya or self-study, and ishvarapranidhana or surrender to the divine — which Professor Iyer presents as the positive dimension of ethical probity in Patanjali's discipline. PDF
• Noetic Consciousness Noetic consciousness is awareness illumined by the higher mind, a term derived from nous, the Greek word for mind or intelligence, and used in Theosophical teaching for the activity of Buddhi-Manas, spiritual discernment brought into focus through self-conscious thought. PDF
• Noetic Psychology Noetic psychology is the study of the human being from the standpoint of the higher mind and the possibility of spiritual self-government, identified in Professor Iyer's The Gupta Vidya with Atma Vidya, the wisdom of the Self. PDF

O

• Oeaohoo A term drawn from the Stanzas of Dzyan, the ancient verses on which Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine is a commentary, Oeaohoo is deliberately constructed so that its very unpronounceability is part of its meaning, resisting the mind's habit of reducing every term to a neat, containable definition. PDF
• Om Om is the sacred syllable of invocation and consecration, also expressed as the triliteral Aum, pointing in Theosophical teaching toward the Soundless Sound, the keynote of Nature and the relation of spiritual consciousness to manifestation. PDF

P

• Parabrahm Parabrahm, also written Parabrahman, names the unconditioned One Reality beyond every distinction of subject and object, cause and effect, spirit and matter — the Secondless Reality that cannot stand in relation to anything whatsoever, and therefore cannot be a personal creator who wills an event and brings it about in time. PDF
• Paramatman Paramatman is the Supreme or universal Self, the indestructible, invisible, formless Reality in and beyond all beings, mirrored in the embodied Self, Jivatman, and known ultimately as Parabrahman. PDF
• Prajna Prajna is wisdom, insight and the capacity for perception, extending in Theosophical usage from the universal ground of cognition, linked in The Theosophical Glossary with Mahat, Universal Mind, to the illumination of a disciplined human mind. PDF
• Prana Prana is the life-current of embodied existence, the vital energy that animates the lower principles of the human constitution and energizes the whirling atoms of the objective plane. PDF
• Pranava Pranava is a name of the sacred Word, Aum or Om, which H.P. PDF
• Pranayama Pranayama is commonly rendered as regulation of the breath, but in Professor Iyer's Theosophical exposition the term reaches into the relation between life-energy, thought and spiritual awareness, prana naming the vital current of which breathing is one expression in embodied life. PDF
• Psychic Consciousness Psychic consciousness is the personal field of awareness associated, in Theosophical teaching, with lower Manas, desire, impressions and the changing conditions of embodied life, a broader meaning than the word's common association with extraordinary perceptions. PDF
• Purusha Purusha is the changeless Seer or pure consciousness distinguished from Prakriti, the field of Nature and its transformations, in Sankhya and Patanjali's Yoga, while in wider Theosophical usage the term also signifies Spirit and the cosmic or heavenly Man. PDF

R

• Raga and Dvesha Raga and dvesha are attachment and aversion, the paired movements through which consciousness becomes bound to its preferences, and in Professor Iyer's interpretation of Patanjali they stand as two of the five kleshas. PDF

S

• Sadhana Sadhana is sustained spiritual practice — the disciplined, repeated, inwardly ethical and contemplative effort by which a human being gradually reorients the whole of life toward truth, purification, meditation and liberation, and not merely a technique, a devotional mood or an occasional attempt to become calmer. PDF
• Saguna Brahman Saguna Brahman is Brahman approached with attributes, through divine qualities that give devotion and meditation an intelligible focus, as distinct from Nirguna Brahman, the attributeless Absolute that no quality can contain. PDF
• Salayatana Salayatana means the six sense-bases — eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind — which open respectively upon visible forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects and mental objects, and which stand as the fifth link in dependent origination, conditioning contact. PDF
• Samadhi Samadhi is meditative absorption, concentration and spiritual self-possession — the crown of Patanjali's path and the central subject of "Samadhi Pada" — and it is not ordinary sleep, passive trance, emotional ecstasy, psychic vision or pleasant relaxation. PDF
• Sambhogakaya Sambhogakaya is the Body of Enjoyment or spiritual fruition, the second of the three Buddhic vestures, which Blavatsky associates with perfected knowledge and the additional lustre of three perfections, one of them the entire obliteration of all earthly concerns. PDF
• Samskaras Samskaras are the residual impressions left by experience, through which past feelings, desires and habits continue to shape thought and character and make certain responses available before deliberate attention awakens. PDF
• Sarvatman Sarvatman is the Supreme Self, the Supreme Soul or All-Self, the indivisible unity of the Self in all beings, and not the personal ego made vast nor the psychological self expanded into a universal fantasy. PDF
• Sat Sat is Reality or Be-ness in Theosophical metaphysics and, in the Bhagavad Gita's teaching on action, what is true, good, and spiritually steadfast. PDF
• Second Logos The Second Logos marks the point at which the still-unmanifest potential contained in the First Logos becomes duality for the first time — spirit and matter, subject and object, or more generally the pairs of opposites through which any manifestation whatsoever must proceed, since nothing can become knowable except in relation to something else. PDF
• Self-study Self-study is the disciplined and compassionate examination of consciousness in the light of the higher Self — not self-obsession, psychological self-display, or mere analysis of personality, but the deliberate effort to see motive, thought, speech, desire, fear, memory and action as parts of a karmic field that can be purified and transformed. PDF
• Shabda Brahman Shabda Brahman means Brahman as sacred sound or Word, the Divine contemplated as a formative principle through which the ordered relations of a living universe become intelligible. PDF
• Shraddha Shraddha is usually translated as faith, but in the Theosophical and Gupta Vidya current it names a calm and confident spiritual conviction directed towards experiential confirmation, not credulity, emotional comfort or dogmatic assent. PDF
• Skandhas Skandhas are the groups or bundles of attributes — bodily form, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind and mental powers — whose combination constitutes the changing personality and carries karmic tendencies between lives. PDF
• Smriti Smriti is the Sanskrit term for memory, recollection and retentiveness, naming at once what is remembered, a class of inherited and transmitted sacred literature, and the purified recollection cultivated in meditation. PDF
• Spiritual Consciousness Spiritual Consciousness, in Theosophical teaching, is the awareness of Manas illumined by the light of Buddhi — the thinking principle become receptive to a discernment whose concern extends beyond the passing personality. PDF
• Stewardship Stewardship is conscious custodianship of what is entrusted to a human being — body, mind, speech, resources, talents, opportunities, relationships, knowledge, influence and inner force — and not merely management, generosity or social responsibility in the ordinary sense. PDF
• Surya Surya is the Sanskrit name of the Sun and a Vedic solar deity, which in Theosophical interpretation opens onto the visible source of daylight, the spiritual principle of illumination, a ray within cosmic order and a symbol of the human being undergoing purification. PDF
• Sushupti Sushupti is deep, dreamless sleep, the third of the four classical states of consciousness — jagrat, svapna, sushupti and turiya — which to the ordinary waking mind appears as sheer blankness, since one wakes and reports only that one knew nothing. PDF
• Sutratman Sutratman means thread-self or thread-soul, the enduring continuity through successive incarnations, pictured as a golden thread upon which the personalities of many lives are strung like beads. PDF
• Svabhavat Svabhavat is the Theosophical term for primordial spirit-substance, the Plastic Essence and root of all things, named in the Stanzas of Dzyan as the Father-Mother that abides in darkness before the seven sons are born from the web of light. PDF
• Svadhyaya Svadhyaya is self-study, self-examination, sacred study, recitation and contemplation of the Self, one of the niyamas in Patanjali's Yoga and, with tapas and ishvarapranidhana, one of the three chief elements of sadhana. PDF

T

• Tanha and Trishna Tanha, the Pali word for thirst or craving, and Trishna, its Sanskrit and Theosophical equivalent, name the desire for sentient existence — the eighth link in dependent origination, following Vedana, feeling, and conditioning Upadana, grasping. PDF
• Tapas Tapas is the inner heat of spiritual discipline: concentrated effort directed toward purification, self-mastery, and truth, often translated as austerity yet closer in meaning to a sustained contemplative attention than to hardship valued for its own sake. PDF
• Tat Tat means That, the Sanskrit pointer toward the unconditioned Real beyond every finite name and form, and, in the Bhagavad Gita's discipline of action, the mark of dedication without desire for personal reward. PDF
• Tetraktys Tetraktys is the Pythagorean sacred four, represented by ten points arranged in four rows of one, two, three and four, gathering unity, differentiation and completeness into a single contemplative image. PDF
• The Central Spiritual Sun Not the visible sun of astronomy, which is only its outermost and most material expression, the Central Spiritual Sun is presented in this essay as the hidden, noumenal centre of spiritual energy from which our physical sun itself draws the life it in turn radiates to the solar system. PDF
• The Fourth Round The Fourth Round is the fourth great circuit of the evolutionary life-wave through the seven globes of a planetary chain in Theosophical cosmology, with our Earth occupying the fourth position, designated Globe D. PDF
• The Great Breath The Great Breath names the eternal rhythm of the cosmos itself — the vast, ceaseless alternation of manifestation and rest, of universe breathed forth and universe withdrawn, that Blavatsky compares directly to inhalation and exhalation, but operating on a scale that dwarfs any single universe, encompassing what she calls Manvantara and Pralaya in unending succession. PDF
• The Logos The Logos is the intelligible expression of a reality that exceeds expression, a Greek word signifying word or reason which, in Theosophical philosophy, concerns the emergence of cosmic order and consciousness from an unconditioned source. PDF
• The Silent Spectator The Silent Spectator is Professor Iyer's designation for the higher witnessing intelligence within the human being, identified with higher Manas, the source of spiritual self-conscious will, which can know the activity of the personal mind without being confined to it. PDF
• The Soundless Sound A phrase drawn from The Voice of the Silence, Blavatsky's translation of fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts, the Soundless Sound points to a mode of perception that lies entirely beyond the physical senses — the inner hearing by which the disciple learns, gradually and often only after long practice, to recognise the voice of the Higher Self amid the ceaseless noise of ordinary thought and sensation. PDF
• Theosophy Theosophy means divine wisdom, and in the Theosophical tradition it names an understanding of life that unites spiritual insight, philosophical inquiry and ethical practice, with the transformation of human consciousness through knowledge, self-discipline and service as its practical purpose. PDF
• Third Logos The Third Logos completes the great triad of Logoi, marking the point at which the productive duality established by the Second Logos becomes fully differentiated, active manifestation — the visible, structured universe of forms, forces and beings that constitutes the cosmos as it is ordinarily experienced and studied. PDF
• Third Root Race Third Root Race names a major phase of humanity's development in Theosophical esoteric anthropology, commonly associated with Lemuria and with the Earth's Fourth Round, whose central theme is the awakening of self-conscious mind rather than any classification of present-day ethnic groups. PDF
• Turiya Turiya is spiritual wakefulness, the fourth and highest state of the soul, beyond jagrat the waking state, swapna the dreaming state, and sushupti deep dreamless sleep. PDF
• Twelve Links of Dependent Origination The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, called the Nidanas in Theosophical literature, describe how suffering and repeated becoming arise through conditions, each link being the effect of an antecedent cause and a cause of its successor. PDF

U

• Universal Brotherhood and Human Solidarity Universal Brotherhood and Human Solidarity join a Theosophical principle to its ethical expression: Universal Brotherhood names humanity's underlying unity within the One Life, while Human Solidarity names the recognition of that unity in responsibility, mutual care and common endeavour. PDF
• Universal Good Universal Good is the good of all, treated in Gupta Vidya not as a vague moral slogan but as a metaphysical and ethical principle rooted in the One Life, the Golden Thread and the welfare of all beings, and as the standard by which every private aim and spiritual aspiration must finally be tested. PDF
• Upadana Upadana is grasping, clinging or appropriation — the ninth link in the Twelve Nidanas, following Tanha, craving, and conditioning Bhava, becoming — the point at which desire says not only "I want" but "this is mine," "this is me," "this must continue." This essay presents Upadana as more intimate than possession, since one may own little and cling fiercely or carry many responsibilities without clinging, and it traces how the same structure of appropriation hides within what looks like love, loyalty, conviction, care or spiritual aspiration. PDF

V

• Vach Vach is the Sanskrit goddess and principle of the Word — speech and sound considered as a creative, cosmic power in their own right, rather than as mere human utterance directed at other human beings. PDF
• Vairagya Vairagya is detachment, dispassion or freedom from attachment — one of the most easily misunderstood terms in the spiritual life, since the ordinary mind hears "detachment" and imagines coldness, withdrawal or indifference rather than the calm, wakeful release of clinging that Professor Iyer describes. PDF
• Varuna Varuna is a Vedic deity whose Theosophical interpretation opens outward from the sea toward the encompassing depths of Space, since in Blavatsky's account the waters associated with him signify the Waters of Space, or all-investing Akasha, before they are understood as terrestrial oceans. PDF
• Vasana Vasana is latent craving, the force of desire and the unchecked impulse toward life in form, a trace of unfulfilled longing that remains dormant until conditions bring it into expression. PDF
• Vayu Vayu is air and wind in Sanskrit, and the deity associated with them in Vedic tradition, interpreted in the Theosophical reading developed by Professor Iyer as spiritual air within the triad of Agni, Vayu and Surya. PDF
• Vedana Vedana is feeling: the pleasant, painful or neutral tone of an experience, the seventh link in dependent origination, standing between Phassa, contact, and Tanha, craving. PDF
• Vijnana Vijnana is the Sanskrit term for consciousness or discriminative knowing, a word whose precise sense must be established by the teaching in which it appears rather than assumed in advance. PDF
• Virya Virya is energy directed towards truth — spiritual vigour, courage and the strength to persevere, giving aspiration continuity when enthusiasm fades or circumstances become difficult. PDF
• Viveka Viveka is spiritual discrimination, the inward faculty by which the seeker distinguishes the Real from the unreal, the Self from the not-Self, and the light of Buddhi from the changing reflections of desire, fear, memory and opinion. PDF
• Vivekakhyati Vivekakhyati is unbroken discriminative cognition — the steady discernment by which the Seer is no longer confused with the seen, the Self no longer mistaken for the mind, and Purusha no longer identified with Prakriti. PDF

Y

• Yajna Yajna means sacrifice, sacred offering, consecrated action and selfless service, linked in older Vedic usage with oblation, sacrificial fire, mantra and communication with divine worlds, yet never reducible in Gupta Vidya to ritual alone. PDF
• Yama Yama names ethical restraint in Patanjali's yoga and, at the same time, the divine figure associated with death in Indian religious tradition — two uses that open related questions about limits, responsibility and freedom, but which this essay insists on distinguishing before relating. PDF
• Yoga Yoga is one of the great words of the Wisdom Tradition, and in its Theosophical and Gupta Vidya sense it is not posture or relaxation but a complete science of spiritual self-emancipation — union through self-mastery, concentration through purification, and freedom through the cessation of the mind's restless modifications. PDF