Sense of Soul - Theosophy, Blavatsky and The Higher Spiritual Pathology

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have, William Wilson Quinn earned the M.A. from the University of Chicago Divinity School and thereafter the Ph.D. from that University in the philosophia perennis. He later earned a J.D. degree. In the 1970s, he was employed by the Theosophical Society, which he joined in 1969, where he was Editor of Quest magazine and Associate Editor of the Theosophical Publishing House. Since 1971 he has published scores of articles and four books, including The Only
Tradition and The Chela’s Handbook. He is joining us to tell us about his recent book, The Higher Spiritual Path. This book is predicated on the immemorial core or "first" principles of the universal perennial philosophy, which finds expression from Lao Tzu to Ramana Maharshi in the East and from Pythagoras to René Guénon and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in the West, The Higher Spiritual Path details how those on the higher spiritual path must address and master its requirements. This book is as practical as it is philosophical -- or theosophical -- since it is based on the specifics of “sacred science,” or spiritual science, an inextricable component of the perennial philosophy. Many of the requirements of the higher spiritual path are based on the truths of this ancient spiritual science, formulated over millennia by jivanmukti, or liberated beings, who serve as the teachers of those currently engaged in treading this hieratic path. The goals of ascending this path are the loftiest; the hierarchical order of its spiritual teachers is the holiest; and the totality of its evolutionary and compassionate purpose is the most sacred. You can order his book here and learn more here: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/o-books/authors/william-quinn To learn more about the Theosophical Society, the organizational body of Theosophy, an esoteric new religious movement. It was founded in New York City, U.S. in 1875. Among its founders were Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic and the principal thinker of the Theosophy movement. Visit  https://www.theosophical.org www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have an extraordinary man, William Wilson Quinn, among having many degrees. In the 1970s, William was employed by the Theosophical Society, which he joined in 1969,

where he was an editor of Quest Magazine and associate editor of the Theosophical Publishing House. Since 1971, William has published many articles and four books. His latest book is The Higher Spiritual Path, which he is joining us today to share his wisdom of how he came to his higher spiritual path. And I'm super excited because he knows a lot about one of the most influential people I came across during my Sophia journey. And that is Helena Petrovna Lovasky, who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. A remarkable woman from Russia who lived in the 1800s, who wrote many books under the initials HPB. So it's my honor today to welcome William so I can be his student today and learn more about theosophy and how to reach a higher spiritual path.

Hello, how are you? Well, how are you? I am good. It's so nice to meet you. Likewise. Very excited for this conversation. I did get a chance to listen to a talk of yours on YouTube. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And I have a great love for Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Yeah. What a woman. She was quite a woman. That's for sure. Her last biographer was a guy named Gary Lachman.

It was a Penguin Tarture book published in 2012. The Lachman's subtitle was The Mother of Modern Spirituality. So the title was Madame Blavatsky, colon, The Mother of Modern Spirituality. You know, there have been more than 30 biographies written about Blavatsky. 30 in English. I don't know about other foreign languages. Probably in other languages, too, but at least 30 in English. I don't know about other foreign languages, probably in other languages too, but at least 30 in English. Wow. All of how I ended up to Lovasky was full of synchronicity. But you know, I try to stalk my guest a little bit before I get

on. And I first came to this video of this quite handsome guy. He was a military dude. He had the same name as you. Yeah. That was my father. Are you related? He was your father? My father, yeah. So where do you come from? Tell me a little bit about you. Well, you already know that my father was a career military officer, right? So where I come from is the planet Earth. I was born in Washington, D.C. I spent the first four years of my life in Japan. When I left Japan, I didn't speak much English, but I spoke almost fluent

Japanese because I had a nanny the whole time. And my parents were otherwise occupied. So that's where I learned to speak. So I had to learn English when I got back to the States. We lived in, let's see, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and then we got stationed to Greece. I lived in Athens for two years in the first and second grade, and we got sent to Germany. I lived there in the third grade. Then we got sent to Fort Carson, Colorado. I lived there for a year, And then we went up to Fort Lewis, Washington State, and I lived there for a year. And then we went back to DC and I lived there for three years. Then I went off to a boarding school in Connecticut for three years. Then I came back to DC and went to school there for a year. And then finally, my father got stationed in Germany again. And I

left there and I graduated from high school in Switzerland. So that's where I come from. Everywhere. Wow. That's, yeah. Sounds like the typical, what do they call you guys? The military brats. Yeah.

Yeah, military brats. Army brats. That's right. Yeah. Well, that's quite the path. Yeah. So how did that affect you? And I would think finding home within yourself, that would have been important.

Yeah. I'm not sure that that early life experience had a lot to do with my connections to spirituality. I mean, it had a major impact in other ways, certainly. I mean, one learns to be guarded in terms of making friends because he's losing them, you see. So you suffer these little emotional injuries throughout the course of your life, it tends to make that whole group of military brats a lot less gregarious, I think, and a lot more guarded in terms of putting themselves out there. Because in their minds, that's only a temporary relationship. It will only always be a temporary relationship. And when that's impressed in a young person's brain at an early age, it's very hard to shake going through life, you see. And there have been a lot of books written about army brats, by army brats,

or military brats. Yeah, all sort of conclude the same type of thing that one has to sort of rely on oneself and be an isolate in some ways in order to find sanctuary, solitude, because it's too uncertain out there. So one relies on oneself. And so maybe that has some relationship with spirituality, because as we know, true spirituality is not a social activity. It's an individual activity. And because, you know, you're trying to meditate and go within and open up those elements of one spiritual nature that can only be done through meditation and self-reflection. So certainly there are church socials, right? And other types of socials, and that's a social activity, but that's really not a spiritual activity per se. It's a social activity within a spiritual or religious setting,

right? Anyway, so that might've had a bearing on it. But now I would say that you would probably have an easier time grasping impermanence. Impermanence was a hard one for me because I'm so rooted. Change has always been an issue for me. So I guess that's one thing. You know, another thing I saw when I was stalking you, I'm just joking. I wasn't stalking you, but that you're also, am I correct in saying you're a lawyer? Tell me about that journey. How did you get there? An interesting journey. I was an English major at the university. I went to the undergraduate at the University of Arizona, and they had a pretty good English department there. So I became an English major in literature and writing, and I started writing a lot. And it was in that period of time of my life where I was

coming into spirituality and reading a lot of books on theosophy and Asian religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, all of that. And so I started writing about that in my courses. And it was at that time that I joined the Theosophical Society. In 1969, I joined the Theosophical Society. So I've been a member of quite a while. And so I submitted an article to their monthly journal. It's now called Quest, but back then it was called the American Theosophist. And the editor was so impressed by what I had submitted. This is very unusual that upon my graduation,

they sent me a job offer. Wow. Yes. And so, you know, as if I understand, like I get it, I understand the whole process of spiritual development and reincarnation and karma and all that. So and I write well, so that helps too too so after doing a trip around the world quickly that took about a year i i landed there at the headquarters of the theosophical society accepted their position i became the assistant editor of the magazine and later on the associate editor of the publishing house that published they used used to publish quest books before, you know, Amazon took it off the map. And so while I was there, I was receiving manuscripts from a lot of professors and a lot of very well-educated people because, you know, metaphysics and spirituality is not an easy subject, really, if one studies it scholastically or academically.

And that can be done. But that's a side issue. That's not true spirituality. That's just an enhancement. And so I didn't feel qualified to edit these things because they were sort of above my educational pay grade. Okay. Well, I need to improve that. So, you know, this was right outside of Chicago and downtown Chicago has the University of Chicago, which is one of the great universities in the United States.

It's usually ranked up with the great Ivy League schools. So I thought, well, I'll give it a shot. They have their divinity school, just as Harvard and Yale do. And there are a couple of other divinity schools around. But that's where one goes to learn to study religions and spirituality generally at an academic level. So I applied and I thought this would be a great way for me to learn more about. So I'll be a better assessor of the materials that I get in the manuscripts. So I was accepted, which sort of

startled me. But anyway, there I was. So I started going part-time, commuting from Wheaton to downtown Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago campus is located. And to my great surprise, I did very well academically. So I was halfway through my master's degree program at the Divinity School, Master's in Religious Studies. And they said, well, you know, Mr. Quinn, you need to make sure that you graduate or get your degree within this time frame. And I said, what time frame? And they said, well, didn't you know there's an 18-month or 24-month time frame for this? So I could not continue going part-time. I had to make a choice at that point.

So I either withdraw and stay there at the Theosophical Society editing their books and magazine or go full-time. So I decided, you know, hey, I'm going to put I got my card on the table, I'm going to go in, I'm going to call or see or whatever poker players do. So I did, I did, I made that choice. Okay, I went to full time. So I found a little studio apartment down in Hyde Park, and I moved in and I finished my master's degree. And I had a professor there who was very interested in the perennial philosophy, you know, Theosophia, the strain or the continuity of these great first principles of metaphysics that go back to time immemorial. And so, you know, they pop up in various religions and various

movements over time, and you could actually plot those on a historical scale and see, you know, the Plotinus and the Neoplatonist movement in the fourth century, or the movement in Italy with Giordano Bruno and Pico di Marandola, where they studied ancient philosophy and so forth, and theosophical subjects. Esotericism, basically. This guy's name was Mircea Iliadi. And Mircea Iliadi was really a great scholar in his right. So he took me under his wing. And so he said, you know, you need to continue this, your studies, you need to get a PhD in this area. He said, you're wasted going back and editing a magazine, you need to expand your horizons. So I said, all right. So together, we decided to get myself enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Chicago. We first went to the Divinity School, and they said, no, you cannot study Theosophy or the

Perennial Philosophy or Esotericism in the Divinity School, you need to pick a religion and then learn its language, and then you can study here. So you need to find another home somewhere in the university. So that's what we did. We went to the Division of Humanities where they had a standing committee called the Committee on the History of Culture. And so I was accepted into that. And all three of my professors, my guidance professors, were Divinity School professors. So I sort of transported a little part of the Divinity School into the humanities division. Three years later, four years later, I finished, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the writings of Ananda Kumaraswamy and René Guénon. And these were mid-20th century perennial philosophers. They came after Blavatsky

and all of that because she was in mid to late 19th century. These guys were in the 20th century. Guenon has written, Guenon wrote maybe 20 or 25 books on esotericism. He was French. And then he later moved to Egypt where he adopted Islam and everything. But Kumar Swami was really something. He got his doctorate at the University of London and then was a Sanskritist. He translated from Sanskrit, Pali, Latin, Greek, and was fluent in about five or six. He was a polyglot and a brilliant man. He ended up being the curator for the Asian art section of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Anyway, so he lived there in Cambridge, Massachusetts for most of his

adult life until he died in 1947. So those two guys were the ones because I asked Iliadi, well, could I write a doctoral dissertation on Blavatsky? And he said, it's not a good idea, not in academia. Because as you know, there's a team on Blavatsky. I mean, she was accused of all kinds of stuff. Yeah. which none of which is really true. But it was in those days, it was like conspiracy theories. Yes. Today, right? Yeah, there was a lot there was a lot of conspiracy theories about Blavatsky at the time. And I know that that strain has already followed her followed her through her life. So even today, there's a divided camp about Blavatsky. So so Iliadi told me he said, you know, you don't want to get

into that. He said, you can write about the perennial philosophy and the same principles that Blavatsky spoke of. And you can see them in the writings of René Guenon and Anandipul Morswami. And those would be acceptable within the academic milieu. So do that. So anyway, this is a very, very long response to your original question. No, but this is fascinating. Thank you. So anyway, so I got in and so I got into the program at the History of Culture and I started to attend all I attended all of Iliadi's courses while he was a professor there. And he was also quite a scholar on what he referred to as traditional or primitive religions, but he referred to them as traditional tribal religions, because all tribes have a mythology, which is their own religion. And all of those mythologies have cosmogony

about how the world was created. But they're all mythologically, you know, like the turtles swam into the water and came up and there was, you know, there were beings on it and it came to dry land and these types of myths. And there are a lot of similarities of those myths, whether you go to Africa or Southeast Asia or Oceania or South America or North America. So he was really interested in that. In fact, he wrote the groundbreaking book on shamanism.

It was published by Princeton University Press back in the 50s, I think it was. Iliadi did. And that was the name of his book, Shamanism, where he went and he sort of made comparisons between all the shamanic elements of worldwide traditional religion. Like found the core traditions? Yeah, exactly.

Or the motifs, not the traditions, but the motifs, which interestingly enough, all relate back in some way or another to the perennial philosophy and to those major first principles that have gone back, that you can trace back to proto-history and earlier even. So at that point, I became very well versed in the mythology of North American Indians, because I sort of focused on that a little bit while I was there studying with him. But I was taking courses. In fact, I took Gnosticism from Professor Robert Grant,

who was a great Gnostic scholar in those days. Yeah. And then I took, you know, a book, a course in the Southeast Asian departments on Tantra. And then because they had these courses, you know, here and there around the University of Chicago. I took a course on Plato in the philosophy department. Plato was an initiate and a writer of the perennial philosophy. So in any case, I finished my dissertation. I was awarded the PhD from Chicago. But there were no faculty positions for teaching that I could go to and say to some other university and say, you know, I was my graduate from Chicago. And I'd like to teach here and start off as an ethno-historian because they needed a researcher to research tribal histories of unacknowledged Indian tribes who were applying for federal recognition, you see. And so I landed in that job and we had a PhD cultural anthropologist,

a PhD ethno-historian, and a certified Indian lineage genealogist. And we worked in groups of three. And I was part of two. I was one of two ethno-historians there. We worked in two groups. And so I spent five years doing that work and studying the history, the culture, the religion of all of these Indian groups who were applying to the federal government for federal recognition, which gave them all kinds of benefits that they didn't have. So that's the first trace of my answering your question about how did I get to become a lawyer? So I did that experience in Chicago, where I did a little bit of studying in North American Indian religions and Indian cultures, which led me to the Bureau of Indian

Affairs, where I spent five years as an ethno historian, learning, among other things, that the real nature of the relationship between the United States and the Indian tribes is a legal one. It's based on the Constitution of the United States. It's based on all the treaties that Indian tribes entered into. It's based on a huge amount of statutory law, statutes that were enacted by Congress. And then finally, and most of all, a huge body of judicial case law from the U.S. Supreme Court and the courts of appeal, the circuit courts of appeal on Indian issues, which is generally known as federal Indian law. So I thought, you know, I've already got a pretty good leg up for this. I'm 40 years old, but maybe I ought to go to law school.

Oh, my goodness. What a journey. I did. And away I went. So I decided I wanted to live in Arizona because I fell in love with Arizona when I was at Tucson. You know, I mean, it was such a cool place down there. So I decided I wanted to live in Arizona because I fell in love with Arizona when I was at Tucson. You know, I mean, it was such a cool place down there. And I'd never really, really been to Arizona, but I love the climate and everything. Summers are a little hot and getting hotter, I guess. But still, in those days, that was in the mid-60s. It was really a very sort of quaint, cool place. So I applied to only two law schools, University of Arizona and Arizona State University and right outside of Phoenix in Tempe. At the time I was married. And so it sort of depended

on where my wife could get a job and support us through law school sort of, although I got a scholarship, actually, that helped me. I paid for my own law school in that regard. But in any case, I went to the Arizona State University, because that's where we ended up. And they had an Indian law program there, because they had a lot of, not a lot, but they had some Indian law students there. So I became part of this group. Finally, I got a job at an Indian law firm, a little niche law firm in Phoenix after I graduated law school. And that's how I ended up studying or representing Indian tribes and Indian people for most of

my career as a lawyer, which was 22 years. In the meantime, and also along with that, I was publishing articles and books on theosophical topics that didn't have anything to do with Native Americans or Indians or anything else. And the book that we're talking about now is my fourth book. But I also have almost, I don't know, 60 to 70 articles in various journals across internationally and everything else. So I wrote during all that time that I was working, either as an editor or as an ethno-historian or as an attorney. So I had three separate careers

in that timeframe. So I studied my ancestry for, now it's going on like eight years, went really deep. And I then started helping other people do theirs. So I've learned a lot about history. But being from Louisiana, I'm a French Creole. I'm also a Cajun. A lot of my journey sent me on my spiritual path. Most of my ancestors, almost all of them from Louisiana, were basically forced to be Catholic. Looking at how deeply rooted I was, and it so made sense, you know, because we're, you know, my family is, so I'm the first person to even go, even go to a public school ever on both sides of my family. It's not just something that I grew up with, but it's deeply rooted in me. And that was really difficult for me, shedding the conditions, living in a world

where I did not live by my own experiences, but really by just what everyone else told me to believe and do. And I didn't have the space to be able to climb the mountain freely. I had a direct path, that's what I had. And there was no going off the path or there was shame outside of that path yeah the name of your book the higher spiritual path i feel like that was something that also wasn't available for me in my religion where this white guy with a long beard sitting on a throne ready to judge you that was the highest spirit and self was not a thing in fact selfless so it was always everything outside of yeah well i would say one of the keystones of the genuine higher spiritual path is selflessness, where one puts the needs of humanity above one's own. And so that's really the hallmark of the higher spiritual path.

Really, in Buddhism, that's the ideal of the bodhisattva, right? The person who goes through the wheel of death and rebirth to the end of that process by balancing out the positive and O positive karma of that person's journey from entering into the human race to the end. And at that point, being able to enter into bliss or nirvana in Buddhism, moksha in Hinduism, at that point saying, no, I'm going to sacrifice this in order to return to earth as a jivan mukti, as a person who's been liberated, and help others to attain liberation. That right there is the ideal of the bodhisattva. And it is one word describes that, and that's selflessness. To make your selfless activities in favor of humanity as a whole, so that all of them at some point will achieve that point of release from the wheel of death and rebirth. That's

Olympic selflessness. I had to lose myself to return home to that self. Exactly. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. Another thing that I heard you say in your talk, and I'm so glad that I did because, in fact, later I'll be writing a lot about this. Thank you for giving me a breadcrumb kind of realization I had. You spoke about that we have like this,

and maybe even you were referencing Anne or Helena, but this higher self maybe in this lesser self, which we can sometimes see that as maybe our soul and ego or many many things in my journey and what kind of triggered me, which I won't go in and talk about, but the higher Sophia and the lesser Sophia. And so it just, it triggered me big time all of a sudden. Yeah. Right. Well, that's a great question. I mean, the Blavatsky and more importantly, Blavatsky's teachers,

these were very advanced individuals in the spiritual sense who were her teachers. And they don't appear a lot in the affairs of the world. They live fairly reclusive lives. They are these people who have reached the end and have come back to help people. And there's a loose association of these individuals, and they work on planes that aren't the spiritual plane, but the physical plane, although they do work on the physical plane too. Some of them have bodies that are still incarnate, and others are working on levels where they don't necessarily have physical bodies. What these adepts say and what Blavatsky teaches is that every human being is composed of various bodies or sheaths or envelopes, in a sense.

So the first one, and there are seven of those, according to this tradition. And they also relate to the seven force centers in the human being. The Sanskrit word being chakras, I'm sure you're aware of that. The first one we all know know it's the physical body bone, tissue, muscle, everything that's body number one the second one is a sort of etheric

counterpart to the body which is the and these are all interestingly enough these are all discussed in great detail in the Upanishads in particularly the Taithra Upanishad and the Katha Upanishad. Okay, so these aren't terms that were made up by Blavatsky or anything else. This goes way, way back, you know, in the discussion of spirituality in the Vedanta and even in the Vedas. And so then the third one is another one that we don't normally

deal with. We don't deal with numbers two and three very much. That's a life's energy body. There's a term for it, the Sanskrit term is Fohat. This is the energy of that body. And the energy for the second one body is the Akasha. So the first body is physical, then there's akasha and pohat, and those two, those three die together at the point of death. That leaves the other ones. The fourth body, it's called the kamarupa. And that is the seed of emotion and feeling and volition in the human being. Now we deal with that all the time, right? So that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. The fifth body is the mental body, right? So again, we shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we have a mental body because we all have brains. And that incidentally, as a footnote, is divided into the higher and lower mental bodies, the body of ordinary thought, and then the sub body of

abstract and ordinary thought, right? Then then the above that the sixth body is in the sanskrit term is called the buddhi which is the b-u-d-d-h-i that is the one's intuition and that differs from instinct that's not in okay so that's not discernment either yeah no it's actual ability to grasp the totality of the meaning of something instantaneously, right? And no matter how complex it may be. And that can be something minor or it can be something major, you know, but that's the ability to know prescience. All-knowing. Right.

And then finally is one's spiritual entity that is the same for everybody. It's a little piece of what is referred to as Atma, the spirit. So the higher person, the inner self, you know, it's been referred to as, you know, the inner person and the outer person is the higher and lower, the higher and lower self, the atma buddhimanas, the atma, the buddhi, the intuition and the mind. That's what forms basically that thing that goes from life to life to life to life. All the rest is disposed of at the end of one's life, right? And so when we talk about our higher selves or our inner selves or our spiritual selves, we are almost always talking about the highest three of these seven principles. Consciousness, it really is a matter of the fifth and the sixth principles,

the mind and the intuition, because the Atma is unconditioned. In other words, it is beyond contrary. Okay, so it's not measurable. It's not measurable. It's unconditioned. It's ineffable. It's immemorial. It's transcendent.

And all of us have this little, I mean, I hate to use metaphors about it but let's say it's a little little spark of divine white light that's sort of in the top of our heads here right yes and we all walk around with it and a lot of us are unaware that that's there and and you know for those people who are highly spiritually evolved, what they've done is that they've essentially purified themselves like an old lantern. They purify the lenses so that that white light can radiate. And those of us who are still struggling with our demons, maybe are not on a great path. All those lamps are soot, covered with soot. So you don't really see much of that light.

But it's there. It's there. And it always is there and never ceases. And that little atma, that little part of the spirit, accompanied by the intuition and the higher mind, is that thing that actually reincarnates. Okay. So when we talk about reincarnation or transmigration,

however you want it, whatever term you want to use for it, that's really in the so-called sacred science or spiritual science. Those are those three elements. And it's that septenary arrangement of the bodies that are correlated with the chakras, the force centers,

is extraordinarily helpful in order to understand the higher spiritual path. Because it is, in a sense, scientific. I mean, these are things that have been acknowledged about human beings from the very first recorded writings. You know, Chinese, Sanskrit, cuneiform, hieroglyphics. You know, you find the references to these things in all of those early writings. Yeah, it's not new age.

I would say it's kind of funny. It's about the oldest age there is, right? Exactly. But that's the perennial philosophy. That's Theosophia. I mean, that wisdom has never left. And those adepts that we speak of, that group has never left humanity either. And it keeps getting added to by people who have succeeded in climbing to the summit of their

spirituality and achieving release from the wheel of death and rebirth. But they don't advertise. They're not into self-promotion, these guys, these people. They're men and women. They're reticent. They're teachers from afar. And they taught Blavatsky. And they taught all the great bringers of light. And they were some of the great bringers of light refer to as inner self, higher self, spiritual self. Sometimes it's referred to the spiritual ego or the spiritual monad. Right.

So anyway, so that's. But, you know, it's very important to stay connected as you are human to those lower selves, to those lower parts of you. Of course, of course. And treat them well, treat them well, feed them well. Yes. But don't let them control you. Yes. You control them. The higher self ought to be the master of the lower self and not the other way around. And we see that, unfortunately. That's the goal. Lots of people, right? Yeah. You see that, unfortunately, in a lot of politics these days. The lower self is the predominant entity and the higher self, you know, because everybody's into power and wealth and greed and all of these elements that are antithetical to the spiritual path.

The world is led by such ego and power and control and all of these things. And you can see it just causes chaos because there's always this will that is so strong, that is just wanting and more and more and more and power and power. I've been so on this journey of connecting with the divine feminine. So I've been on this path of, you know, compassion and love and patience. We need so much more of that feminine energy to come forth. And I don't think it's necessarily has to be in the form of a woman. I'm not saying that, which it would be nice for women to step up as well. But when I talk about anyways,

Sophia, this wisdom, this inner wisdom that we have, there's a huge difference between knowledge and wisdom. There's a huge difference. People hear AI. I mean, AI has no ability to reach wisdom, only knowledge. That's right. That's correct. The higher spiritual path, where's your book leading people is what I want to ask. Right. Well, it's leading those people who have already some awareness of the basic notions of karma and reincarnation. And the fact that there are advanced teachers in the world who have left us a repository of their writings and their knowledge, including Blavatsky, who was one of their chelas, one of their pupils. I mean, that's right in their writings. But it doesn't have to be Blavatsky and her teachers. It can be the Aeneids of Plotinus, for that matter, or it can be the writings of Gunon and Kumarasw just the theosophical movement really is just a

restatement in modern English of that perennial philosophy. And it makes a lot of sense when you read it, particularly Blavatsky's works, you know, because she was the real source. So if somebody then has a basic knowledge of an understanding of the fundamental basic principles and has access to these teachers, at least to their works, the higher spiritual path then is whereby one seeks to purify oneself to the degree that one can be initiated into that order or that association. And no one ever starts out as an adept. I mean, Blavatsky was not an adept. She was a fairly high initiate in that ranking, but she wasn't on the same level as her teachers. So in any case, there is a process whereby through meditation and purification and all these things, one may become a probationer of one of these adepts or one of their senior chelas and began a process whereby they learn facts about

nature that are not known to everyone. Let's just say, for example, when Oppenheimer and his crew split the atom and created the atomic bomb, he was learning something about nature that was there. And there are lots of these types of forces and energies in there that have not yet been recognized or utilized by modern scientific community. They're working on them. And they're now getting a really nice fusion between theoretical and advanced physics and spiritual metaphysics, because there is a union of these at some point. But these are the types of facts,

generally unknown facts about nature, that these initiates study and they learn and they develop these rather remarkable abilities and powers they're all latent and part of it has to do also at the same time with activation of the various force centers along the way so you activate the muladhara chakra the base the root chakra and there are certain things that happen to yourself, you activate each of these other force centers and you begin to be able to do all types of things that you didn't know. And this is esotericism. You can also call it occultism, and it frightens people and they say, oh my God, what's this crazy old fool talking about, right? Very true. But the fact is that there is a process of doing

this to unfold these abilities that is safe. And that is when you're in loving hands. And, you know, because otherwise, if you take a wrong step on that path, it is extraordinarily problematic for you. So, I mean, some people try to do that on their own. And it can be done on its own. But, you know, if you have the most fugitive grain of selfishness, rather than selflessness, those powers expand everything. And once you gain those In this dimension, they roll. In this dimension. That's right. And that includes the little fugitive brain that then starts to grow.

And this is not a good thing for you because it's like a spiritual cancer in your soul. And then it and then ultimately it takes over. So that's why purification is such an important thing. And that's the higher spiritual path that I speak of in my book, right? The path of initiation, the path of probation, chaliceship and initiation into the highest. And that's all there. It's all in place. It's just a matter of one's self. They don't come to you.

You go to them. Okay. And you do that by, one does that by meditating, by leading a life of spirituality, by having chastity of thought, word, and deed, by being selfless, by helping your neighbors, by showing loving kindness to everybody that you meet, and not any antagonism or hatred or bias or bigotry. All of that has to go by the wayside. That's the higher spiritual path. I mean, I'm almost emotional because you're describing my journey,

the nature teaching me the most defined things ever. I had no idea who Lovasky was. I'd never even heard of her in my entire life, but she was around every corner. And I mean, I just found out even after the longest time that she had helped translate some of the Pista Sophia, which I was like, are you kidding me? And the only reason why I even looked is because I read her, her latest book, I would had only read her older books. And at the beginning of the book, I was listening to it in Audible. I was doing my dishes. And it's dedicated to Sophia, the goddess of wisdom. And when I heard that, I have goosebumps now, I dropped everything.

And I was like, she knows Sophia? I didn't even know. Like nothing came from like an academic search everything happened so divine I didn't know that she well I did know personally but I never knew of her to be so divine outside of what I know what a woman for her time oh i felt so connected to her when i found out that she was kind of on the same journey as i am i mean it gave me a lot of power to move forward and to do the things that i did i mean i've never heard anyone speak on her like that before so this is like really comforting for me right now and validating almost right well Well, there was a reason that she chose the Greek term Theosophia to describe what she was writing about and that they named their society the Theosophical Society because Theos and Sophia is the wisdom of God.

Right. I very much agree with Theosophy. That's right. Well, I mean, Plotinus used that term, Theosophia. He was one of the first in history to put those Greek words together. And I think the founders of the society reached back into that element and just took it and said, well, that's a nice name. We should use that. I feel my purpose to make sure everyone knows what that means. Yeah, good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I drip it in my podcast because I speak about lots of things, but my study has been very deeply around that. And I just came from just a blank slate. I mean, blank slate. I mean, to even

think of and imagine a feminine aspect of God was so far from anything my brain could comprehend. Well, unfortunately. But thank you so much. I feel like you brought so much wisdom to me today. And I really look forward to finishing reading your book. Tell everybody where they could find you, though, and find your book. Well, Shana, here's the problem. I don't have any social media presence. Zero. I've never been on Facebook. I don't know all the Instas and chats and grams, all the various social TikToks,

whatever. So I don't do any of that. Never have. Probably won't. And Gavin was very distraught when I told him this. He said, I'm sure he was. What? You don't have a website? You don't have a Facebook? I said, no, Gavin, I'm sorry. I'm just an old scholar sitting in his cave writing books. That's what I do. I don't self-promote. I don't market anything. He said, well, we got to fix you up. So anyway, thankfully, he sent me to you. So yeah. Awesome. Well, I definitely want to promote this for you.

I feel like it's a beautiful book and it's very needed in this world today. I can't think of anything more. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And it was a pleasure meeting you. Likewise. Right. I can tell that you have followed your intuition and maybe not even realizing it, but you followed that sixth principle, that buddhi, because it's led you to very good places and making decisions. And that's what the intuition does.

It takes symbols and archetypes and translates them into your activities and your thoughts. And you say, oh, I better do this now. Yeah. And you're a good example of that, I think. Thank you. That's the higher spiritual path, isn't it? That's part of it. That certainly is. Yeah. Thank you so much. Oh, you bet. Be well. Take care.

Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. Be well. Take care.