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The Voice of the Silence

Helena Blavatsky

A short prose poem on the spiritual path, in three fragments: 'The Voice of the Silence', 'The Two Paths' and 'The Seven Portals'. It teaches the stilling of the mind ('the mind is the great slayer of the real'), the passage through the three halls of ignorance, learning and wisdom, and the choice between the path of personal liberation and the path of renunciation, that of the bodhisattva who remains to help others. It is the devotional text of Theosophy par excellence and one of the first to bring the Mahayana ethic of compassion to a Western public; the 14th Dalai Lama wrote a foreword to a centenary edition.