Annie Besant - a fascinating atheist to look into

docphin5

Well-known member
Annie Besant (1847-1943) was an atheist who evolved into a very active, humanistic, spiritual advocate for women’s rights and social causes. She might serve as an example for atheists wanting to explore a spiritual side of themselves. She did it by basically rising above sectarian religion and discovered the common ethical thread within all religions.

Here are some of her more well known quotes from the following link.Quotes by Annie Besant. I think the last one is directed at her fellow atheists.

“I was a wife and mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty and a proud self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me, and while I was in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of outside work or outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.”

“No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.” [probably as an alternative to Christian orthodoxy, the dominant religion in England at the time.]

“Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.”


[This ^^^^ sounds similar to Paul’s exhortation to his fellow Jews that we are no longer under the Mosaic Law (a code of supposed morals) for we now live by the Spirit within us manifest as virtues (Gal 5:22). BTW, Paul’s ethics and faith were universal in scope, iow, for all humanity: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28)]

“Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”

“Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”
 
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In an effort to understand how an atheist like Annie Besant could be so opposed to Christianity yet open to theosophy, I watched a YouTube documentary about Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical movement, which Annie Besant became the leader of after Madame Blavatsky’s death. The video is titled, “Who was Madame Blavatsky? The esoteric movement…”. (2, I will try to provide the link below)

Anyways, Helena makes the claim that the mysteries of Christianity were never handed down to the successors of the apostles. Therefore, the popular form of Christianity today, has “no foundation” and its doctrines oppose the very essence of the spiritual teachings of Jesus. It is an interesting claim and one I have found to be true through my own investigation. i just wanted to echo her sentiment here and recommend the video to anyone who is curious.

We are accustomed to say to the Buddhist, Mohammadin, Hindus, or the Parsi, the road to theosophy lies for you through your own religion.

We say this because those creeds possess a deeply philosophical and esoteric meaning explanatory of the allegories under which they are presented to their people (1). But we cannot say the same things to Christians. The successors of the apostles never recorded the secret doctrine of Jesus, the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven referred to in Mark 4:11.

These have been suppressed, destroyed. What has come down the stream of time are the parables, fables, which Jesus expressly intended for the spiritually deaf and blind and which modern Christianity either takes literally or interprets to the fancy of the Father’s of the secular church so that now Christianity has no foundation known to those who pass it. Almost at every point the doctrines of the church and practices of the Christians are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus. It is useless therefore, to try and convince such minds.”


I share all this with atheists because there is a spiritual life outside Christian orthodoxy available to you if that is what you seek.
—-
1) In much the same way Paul did for his people: “Now this may be interpreted allegorically:” (Gal 4:24)

2)
 
Kudos for a sincere and interesting thread; I wish it was getting more attention.

For myself, I've already found spirituality in material things: nature (and travelling through it on foot), musical performance, a deep need to understand how others perceive and react to things differently from the ways I do, etc. If other people find spirituality in things other than these, that's fine; I'm open to finding it elsewhere, but I haven't yet.

As for Annie Besant, I like most of the quotes you provided. I haven't watched the video, but I don't think her opposition to Christianity and openness to theosophy is all that difficult to understand. Like all of us, she was a product of her environment: a predominantly Christian worldview she found stifling. It's not surprising to me that she'd reject the religion while trying to maintain the aspects of religion she valued: a sense of meaning, acceptance of the unknown as a motive force, simple human community and decency, etc.
 
While I find her outlook on religion refreshing, the problem I have with her is the same problem I have with most religions in that eventully she backs into the exact same error.....

“Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”

Here is where she defies the reality she herself experiences and substitutes the same fanciful backdrop of disembodied spiritual essence that leads to all sorts of esoteric fabrications and falsehoods. Man's flesh is the origin of man's spiritual intelligence, not the other way around. If this were not true, and her model was, then we would all have inherited a clear and common vision of these "creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”
 
Man's flesh is the origin of man's spiritual intelligence, not the other way around. If this were not true, and her model was, then we would all have inherited a clear and common vision of these "creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”

You use the word "then" as a synonym for "therefore." Don't you think you left out a few steps? Like maybe something akin to a proof? I have noticed that a great deal of your comments contain unproven presuppositions that no spiritual realm exists independent of our imaginations. When asked to support these presuppositions, you seem to have nothing more to offer other than the fact that a belief in a spiritual reality does not "comport" with YOUR experience with reality. And that itself presupposes that you yourself have had an exhaustive experiential life.
 
You use the word "then" as a synonym for "therefore." Don't you think you left out a few steps? Like maybe something akin to a proof? I have noticed that a great deal of your comments contain unproven presuppositions that no spiritual realm exists independent of our imaginations. When asked to support these presuppositions, you seem to have nothing more to offer other than the fact that a belief in a spiritual reality does not "comport" with YOUR experience with reality. And that itself presupposes that you yourself have had an exhaustive experiential life.
Once again, the fundamentalist fails to recognize the difference between a presupposition and a conclusion.
 
You use the word "then" as a synonym for "therefore." Don't you think you left out a few steps? Like maybe something akin to a proof? I have noticed that a great deal of your comments contain unproven presuppositions that no spiritual realm exists independent of our imaginations. When asked to support these presuppositions, you seem to have nothing more to offer other than the fact that a belief in a spiritual reality does not "comport" with YOUR experience with reality. And that itself presupposes that you yourself have had an exhaustive experiential life.
The silliness of your positions and their shallowness never disappoint. It does not take exhaustive personal experience to know what experiences are possible with the materials at hand. For example you can take a tree and make wood products from it. You cannot smelt it down and get steel. I don't need to exhaust a journeymanship in carpentry or metallurgy to figure this out.

In that same sense you cannot take the emergence of imagination and will via the human experience and think it is attached to anything other than a human experience. What warrant or "experience" do you have for anything beyond that? The teaching of churches and bibles? Certainly not your own anecdotal imaginative experience of God. That internal experience of yours proves my point, not yours.
 
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The silliness of your positions and their shallowness never disappoint. It does not take exhaustive personal experience to know what experiences are possible with the materials at hand.

See, THERE'S your screwup. "Materials at hand," thus presupposing an exclusively material world from which experiences can be obtained.

Man, that was too easy. Talk about shallow.
 
See, THERE'S your screwup. "Materials at hand," thus presupposing an exclusively material world from which experiences can be obtained.

Man, that was too easy. Talk about shallow.
Of course you need to skip the explanation that followed because it sinks your nonsense. The emergent non-material experience you bluster on about is a direct result of the materials at hand that it emerges from, just like your silly thoughts about God. We are the only material that provides these thoughts any substance at all. I'm not presupposing anything because every thought ever produced that ANYBODY is aware of is produced from a brain. Can you involve me in any other disembodied conversations we can simultaneously have with such a disembodied mind? Nope, so it's not a presupposition at all. It is merely a knowledge of what begets what.... like trees beget wood and ore begets iron, and man begets God concepts.

How about a book of God's wisdom that predates man's own multi-faceted and nuthouse mental reflections and illusions of a God. Now that would be something to prove that man is not necessary for a record of God.

You hand it to me on a platter with every post.
 
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Of course you need to skip the explanation that followed because it sinks your nonsense. The emergent non-material experience you bluster on about is a direct result of the materials at hand that it emerges from, just like your silly thoughts about God. We are the only material that provides these thoughts any substance at all. I'm not presupposing anything because every thought ever produced that ANYBODY is aware of is produced from a brain.

You have always had a problem differentiating conveyance from that which is conveyed. You are like a rat confined under the hood of a Chrysler, incapable of discerning any reality other than the engine which his narrow and limited world brings to his senses, thus mistakenly concluding that the motion he experiences is initiated from within that big bulky mechanism he hears with mobile pistons and cylinders, since it is only that which "comports with his experience of reality," oblivious as he is to the free will actions of the old man behind the wheel, pressing his foot on the accelerator.

You anthropomorphize neurons and synapses. They are strictly material, being fed. I have sometimes been fed poorly, it is true. But you are being fed by one who denies both the Feeder and himself.
 
Annie Besant (1847-1943) was an atheist who evolved into a very active, humanistic, spiritual advocate for women’s rights and social causes. She might serve as an example for atheists wanting to explore a spiritual side of themselves. She did it by basically rising above sectarian religion and discovered the common ethical thread within all religions.

Here are some of her more well known quotes from the following link.Quotes by Annie Besant. I think the last one is directed at her fellow atheists.

“I was a wife and mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty and a proud self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me, and while I was in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of outside work or outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.”

“No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.” [probably as an alternative to Christian orthodoxy, the dominant religion in England at the time.]

“Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.”


[This ^^^^ sounds similar to Paul’s exhortation to his fellow Jews that we are no longer under the Mosaic Law (a code of supposed morals) for we now live by the Spirit within us manifest as virtues (Gal 5:22). BTW, Paul’s ethics and faith were universal in scope, iow, for all humanity: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28)]

“Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”

“Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”
How can something have no code of morals and be the embodiment of the highest morality? And your interpretation of Paul is plainly out of context.
 
While I find her outlook on religion refreshing, the problem I have with her is the same problem I have with most religions in that eventully she backs into the exact same error.....

“Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”

Here is where she defies the reality she herself experiences and substitutes the same fanciful backdrop of disembodied spiritual essence that leads to all sorts of esoteric fabrications and falsehoods.
I thought that quote was very interesting because it parallels the world development process of early Christianity. I don’t think that was her point to revive an idea found in early christianity. Presumably, she found it in Eastern religions and/or neoPlatonism or personal vision, etc. I don’t know for sure. I am reading the Secret Doctrine trying to get a better idea how she areived at that conclusion. Haven’t found it yet.

But I would not necessarily characterize it as defying reality as you claim. She is arguably perceiving intelligible things in the past and the future presumably using inner spiritual intuition, clairvoyance, meditation, prayer, etc. She apparently presumes that there is more to learn about our world than what we have already learned. To someone who does not believe in an inner spirit then it sounds impossible. I get that. What should be interesting to an atheist, IMO, is that she came to this conclusion outside Christianity, as an atheist.

Man's flesh is the origin of man's spiritual intelligence, not the other way around.
Man’s flesh is the seat of his consciousness, but man’s consciousness is the seat of spiritual or intelligible things, to include a moral intellect. Through our consciousness we can travel time and space, but always returning to earth where our feet our firmly planted. The mind is a very powerful thing bound by flesh. When freed from its chains can search the unknown, postulate solutions to the greatest enigmas, ascend to the highest ideals, look back in time, ponder the future, …search out its source. That is what the mind can do, that the flesh cannot do. I think that is where she is coming from, and NOT coming from religious dogma by any one religious sect.

If this were not true, and her model was, then we would all have inherited a clear and common vision of these "creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.”
How could you say that when you do not believe it is possible to obtain? You deny its possibility then judge others for claiming it because you don’t have it yourself. Only you can know why it is not the same for you but others, to include an atheist, non-Chrsitian, have come to a different conclusion.

Clearly, we all start off ignorant of such things, as a baby, right?. Therefore, the knowledge of these things must grow in degrees in us, like anything. Presuming some effort is required on our part then the presumed reason we all do not have the same vision could be attributed to individual effort or environment or genes. And effort necessitates a prior will to seek. And seeking requires believing something is to be gained. And believing requires a condescension to the fact we do not know all things. And condescension requires humility to a source presumably greater than ourselves, even a source unknown to Christian orthodoxy, as Annie Besant apparently found.
 
How can something have no code of morals and be the embodiment of the highest morality? And your interpretation of Paul is plainly out of context.
No “code” or rules, or laws, as in, Mosaic Law, or commonly prescribed by religious sects, usually outward rituals, because the individual has a mature moral consciousness, available to anyone, anywhere, that guides them, summed up as, love your neighbor.

Annie Besant did not need Christianity and its outward rituals, its dogmas, or its acceptance in order to obtain the highest moral consciousness. That essentially is what a Christ is, or a Buddha, or a mahatma, that is, one who becomes one with the universal moral intellect, —one with Christ, as Paul asserted.

Paul’s religion abrogated the moral code of Judaism and replaced it with a universal inner spirit, whom he called Joshua, according to the type in Hebrew scripture, guiding the steps of all humanity. Paul’s religion was a universal religion, unifying all things under one Source motivated by love, not the myths and superstitions, and impossible contradictory dogmas of Christian orthodoxy.
 
Kudos for a sincere and interesting thread; I wish it was getting more attention.

For myself, I've already found spirituality in material things: nature (and travelling through it on foot), musical performance, a deep need to understand how others perceive and react to things differently from the ways I do, etc. If other people find spirituality in things other than these, that's fine; I'm open to finding it elsewhere, but I haven't yet.
I am finding in the literature a correlation between spirit and intelligible things. The point being that one can appreciate the material things by the senses, for example, a sunset, a waterfall, etc., but spiritual things could be beyond the material senses and be things perceived by mind alone, for example, the single source of all souls and matter in our universe. As the James Webb telescope peers deeper and deeper into our past we are approaching the visible (sensible) source of souls and matter in the universe. But before the telescope, mystics, magis, heirophants long ago perceived it by their mind alone. They perceived an intelligible thing by the inner Spirit.

As for Annie Besant, I like most of the quotes you provided. I haven't watched the video, but I don't think her opposition to Christianity and openness to theosophy is all that difficult to understand. Like all of us, she was a product of her environment: a predominantly Christian worldview she found stifling. It's not surprising to me that she'd reject the religion while trying to maintain the aspects of religion she valued: a sense of meaning, acceptance of the unknown as a motive force, simple human community and decency, etc.
Agreed. That says a lot for atheism IMO, that Annie rejected Christianity, identified herself as atheist, but never lost her sense of the unknown, the values she held, and motivation to do what was right for her fellow humans.
 
You have always had a problem differentiating conveyance from that which is conveyed. You are like a rat confined under the hood of a Chrysler, incapable of discerning any reality other than the engine which his narrow and limited world brings to his senses, thus mistakenly concluding that the motion he experiences is initiated from within that big bulky mechanism he hears with mobile pistons and cylinders, since it is only that which "comports with his experience of reality," oblivious as he is to the free will actions of the old man behind the wheel, pressing his foot on the accelerator.

You anthropomorphize neurons and synapses. They are strictly material, being fed. I have sometimes been fed poorly, it is true. But you are being fed by one who denies both the Feeder and himself.
Another stupid analogy. It’s just another amateur version of the watchmaker fallacy. We know the difference between a mechanical creation and a natural occurrence because we can trace intended creations back to actual creators. You can’t do that with nature. You presupposed first that a car represents nature and then you presuppose an entity in the car that is superhuman, not just some dude. It’s as lame and thoughtless of an analogy as it gets.
 
I thought that quote was very interesting because it parallels the world development process of early Christianity. I don’t think that was her point to revive an idea found in early christianity. Presumably, she found it in Eastern religions and/or neoPlatonism or personal vision, etc. I don’t know for sure. I am reading the Secret Doctrine trying to get a better idea how she areived at that conclusion. Haven’t found it yet.

But I would not necessarily characterize it as defying reality as you claim. She is arguably perceiving intelligible things in the past and the future presumably using inner spiritual intuition, clairvoyance, meditation, prayer, etc. She apparently presumes that there is more to learn about our world than what we have already learned. To someone who does not believe in an inner spirit then it sounds impossible. I get that. What should be interesting to an atheist, IMO, is that she came to this conclusion outside Christianity, as an atheist.


Man’s flesh is the seat of his consciousness, but man’s consciousness is the seat of spiritual or intelligible things, to include a moral intellect. Through our consciousness we can travel time and space, but always returning to earth where our feet our firmly planted. The mind is a very powerful thing bound by flesh. When freed from its chains can search the unknown, postulate solutions to the greatest enigmas, ascend to the highest ideals, look back in time, ponder the future, …search out its source. That is what the mind can do, that the flesh cannot do. I think that is where she is coming from, and NOT coming from religious dogma by any one religious sect.


How could you say that when you do not believe it is possible to obtain? You deny its possibility then judge others for claiming it because you don’t have it yourself. Only you can know why it is not the same for you but others, to include an atheist, non-Chrsitian, have come to a different conclusion.

Clearly, we all start off ignorant of such things, as a baby, right?. Therefore, the knowledge of these things must grow in degrees in us, like anything. Presuming some effort is required on our part then the presumed reason we all do not have the same vision could be attributed to individual effort or environment or genes. And effort necessitates a prior will to seek. And seeking requires believing something is to be gained. And believing requires a condescension to the fact we do not know all things. And condescension requires humility to a source presumably greater than ourselves, even a source unknown to Christian orthodoxy, as Annie Besant apparently found.
It’s not that I don’t believe in mysteries and discovery. I just don’t believe that a disembodied eternal Platonic dualism is the foundation of our nature and that the flesh is merely a reflection of that. I think it’s the other way around.

When you start to adhere to such concepts your grasp on usable themes of reality gets squishy… atheist or otherwise.
 
It’s not that I don’t believe in mysteries and discovery. I just don’t believe that a disembodied eternal Platonic dualism is the foundation of our nature and that the flesh is merely a reflection of that. I think it’s the other way around.

When you start to adhere to such concepts your grasp on usable themes of reality gets squishy… atheist or otherwise.
If I am hearing you right, you believe that our human species is the first intelligent thing with a moral intellect in existence and you refuse to believe that there could be any other superior intelligence either before or after us. And you conclude that because your five physical senses do not pick up another intelligent thing (superior to humans) at work in the universe.

Does that about sum up your position?

If so, then I can respect your position as equal to my own. IOW, I do not judge anyone who has tried with great effort to discover an intelligence superior to our own but without success. I am willing to concede other factors at work affecting our abilities to do so, not all them being due to effort alone. Environment, genes, social influences (e.g., popular opinion), and possibly even an imperfect intelligible power unseen by us can influence us in ways we do not fully appreciate.
 
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@5wize
Addendum:
When I said “equal” above, I meant morally equal to my own position. I still hold my position as true even if others disagree with me. But If someone tries to perceive a superior intelligence at work in the universe but fails to do so then there is no moral failure on his/her part. It may be due to circumstances out of the control of the person who tries. In that case, it is not my desire to add judgment on top of the circumstances for someone taking a different position than myself.

Maybe that is what the esoteric Jesus meant when he said, “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (John 12:47). Theoretically, the world is already judged, and Jesus would be rising from it in the souls able to free themselves from the circumstances of this world which hold us down.
 
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If I am hearing you right, you believe that our human species is the first intelligent thing with a moral intellect in existence and you refuse to believe that there could be any other superior intelligence either before or after us. And you conclude that because your five physical senses do not pick up another intelligent thing (superior to humans) at work in the universe.

Does that about sum up your position?
No. That is not my position.

My position is that whatever non material phenomenon exists, such as thought and emotion leading to moral intelligence, they do not exist in and of themselves. They originate and emerge from physical beings. There may have been, and exits now, plenty of biology from which a vastly superior intelligence emerges, but like us, it would die with them. Intelligence doesn't float around disembodied waiting to inhabit form. As a result, I oppose the below specific thought a Ann's as a result of it being a cause of to many problems with maintaining a proper conception of what it is to be human:

“Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh".

It's so obviously the other way around, not to mention that the term spiritual seems nothing more than a rebranding of intelligence and emotion. I don't believe there is anything real apart from thought and emotion that that word represents.
 
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