[Adepts and Marriage]
Theosophist, November, 1882
Article selection from “The Three Grades of Ancient Theosophists” by A. Sankariah, F.T.S. | Note by H.P.B.
. . . They are but nominal Theosophists who are not disciplined in the third grade of Love, Hope, and Charity. The Internal Regulation of the senses and the nervous system which characterises the second grade will then replace the External Regulation. The men of the First or Highest grade are a law unto themselves and must not be criticised or imitated by the ignorant and impatient Chela or Reformer. Sri Sankara Chariar is alleged to have lived with a widow princess, in “parakâyam;” Arjuna is accused of having married a widow, and Krishna to have had a thousand wives.1 These examples are unsuited to and misinterpreted and ill-followed by Theosophists of the third and second grades and a fortiori by the uninitiated.
1. These examples are “unsuited” because these are not historical facts, but allegorical fictions that are accepted literally but by the ignorant. No adept—while one at any rate—has ever “lived with a widow (or no widow) princess”; nor has he married anyone; least of all, no adept had, since the world’s evolution, even one, let alone a “thousand wives.”
