"There being but ONE Truth, man requires but one church, the Temple of God within us; walled in by matter, but penetrable by any who can find the way; the pure in heart see God.”—(Isis Unveiled, II. 635.) "Matter is the vehicle for the manifestation of Soul on this plane of existence, and Soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of Spirit, and these three are a trinity synthesised by LIFE, which pervades them all."-(Secret Doctrine, I. 49.) COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY PREFACE The Editor of this Abridgment has long felt the need of a shorter, a simpler and a less expensive version of the Secret Doctrine. The wealth of material that embarrassed the author of the bookor perhaps we should say the transcriber-gave rise to endless digressions wherein the thread of the subject is often lost for whole chapters, while many quotations, comprehensible only to special students, increase the bulk of the volumes, and add to the difficulty of understanding their contents. Many foreign idioms (notably the use of the word actual in the sense of present) and frequent misprints make the meaning of the text still more obscure, and the many and complicated parentheses add to the labor of the reader. The enormous length of the book makes it so expensive that comparatively few students can afford to buy it, and the most valuable legacy of theosophic information yet given to the world is thus unavailable to many of those who most need it. Fifteen years' study of the Secret Doctrine, together with the help of many other students, has enabled the Editor to trace the thread of the argument far more clearly than at first, and the remorseless cutting out of what is now obsolete science, and of all controversial matter (while carefully retaining all ethical and spiritual teachings), together with occasional transpositions of sentences and paragraphs, have made the whole text very much simpler. All Sanskrit terms have been put into English, and the triune constitution of man (as |
