THEOSOPHY: The word theosophy means "divine wisdom" and can be used about several ESOTHERICAL religious systems, which claim to encompass knowledge about the Divine in nature and the relation to the universe, including a detailed cosmology. Gnosticism can be considered a theosophical religion. Frequently, this description is used in connection with a certain religious movement, which started in the 1870’s. The spreading of theosophy had two main aims: to bring science and religion closer to each other, proving that they are not incompatible; also, to prove that all religions really are aspects of the same basic truth. Believers of any religion in the world may become members of the Theosophic Society, founded by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel H.S. Olcott in New York in 1875; the membership demands only the support of the Society’s three objectives: to create a nucleus of Humanity’s Universal Brotherhood, without regard to race, creed, gender, caste or colour of skin. to encourage comparative studies between religion, philosophy and science explore the unexplained laws of nature and the powers, which are latent in nature. The innermost teachings in theosophy represent a combination of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Spiritualism. The human spirit is an emanation from the Universal Divine Spirit. God is both immanent and transcendental, and all living beings form part of the whole with is God. Apart from humanity, there is a great hierarchy of spiritual beings, great and small intelligent beings. The spirit is eternal and it develops. The human individual learns and develops through a number of incarnations, until it reaches a state of perfection, and incarnation is no longer necessary. Such an enlightened individual is called a Master or Mahatma. Masters can, in a discarnate state, continue to guide others, or they can choose to incarnate again in order to continue educating humanity, as the great founders of religions have done. Theosophists believe that when we are incarnated, we live on three planes: the physical, the astral and the mental, even though we are almost entirely focused on the physical. This focus changes to the astral plane immediately after death, and later to the mental plane between incarnations. Some people are conscious about the astral plane, while they are in their physical body. Back