Symbolical words and initiatory values

Many agree about the difficulty to understand a subject if we don’t know its terms and if we give a different value to their meanings. Therefore, even when talking about Theosophy, it would be better to be quite clear about the value to attribute to some fundamental terms. Very shortly, we should define the meanings on which most misunderstandings lay, perhaps because they are often used by neophytes.

I think that many people have asked themselves questions such as: what is necessary to become a Disciple? What does it mean to become one? What can be the (karmic) link created by the contact with an Elder Brother or a Master? Most of all: what is an Elder Brother or a Master?

What is the true meaning of Initiation and what is it for? Why Hierarchy is called so and what value should we give to this word? What is the big misunderstanding hidden behind the abused term of ‘soul’? Well, I’d like to reach a short and concrete answer to questions like these and similar.

The Initiates know that the ‘language’ is a necessary instrument to transmit ideas to the Aspirants and to the Disciples not yet ‘accepted’. But we know, words are like medicines; if you use them properly they are beneficial but they can kill the man who abuses them. Words are most of all symbolical agreements. They are sonorous devices used to transport ideas, whose meanings lack common physical form. Their meanings transmit values that go beyond physicity, not the words used to ‘transport’ them. For this reason only an advanced Disciple can conceive the so-called voice in the silence.

This is a symbolical representation of the essentiality of ideas that appear at the moment of inner (emotional) silence, for the benefit of people who wouldn’t understand otherwise. I’d like to conclude with some advice.

As soon as we know its use, a word becomes an access to the ‘world of ideas’.

The ‘world of ideas’ contains all the meanings; we just need to find them. Even if words are different, the meanings are the same. A thorough study of the meanings stops the diversity of words from dividing Brothers and Sisters. The ‘synthesis’ of the meaning is the fundamental value on which the universal Communion is built, trying to escape the chaos of the Tower or Babel.

Athos A. Altomonte