Quotes from book
The Occult World

Name: The Occult World
Author: Alfred Percy Sinnett

The Occult World is a book originally published in 1881 in London; it was compiled by a member of the Theosophical Society A. P. Sinnett. It was the first theosophical work by the author; according to Goodrick-Clarke, this book "gave sensational publicity to Blavatsky's phenomena" and the letters from the mahatmas, and drew the attention of the London Society for Psychical Research.

“Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils. Their motives for adopting that policy are readily intelligible, even if the merits of the policy may seem still open to discussion. At all events, their teaching has not been forgotten; it has been transmitted by secret initiation to men of our own time, and while its methods and its practical achievements remain secrets in their hands, it is open to any patient and earnest student of the question to satisfy himself that these methods are of supreme efficacy, and these achievements far more admirable than any yet standing to the credit of modern science.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

“Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

The Occult World, Introduction (1881)

“People in the present day will be slow to believe that any knowledge worth considering can be found outside the bright focus of Western culture. Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open method of investigation, and is very impatient of the theory that persons who ever attained to real knowledge, either in sciences or metaphysics, could have been content to hide their light under a bushel. So the tendency has been to conceive that occult philosophers of old- Egyptian priests, Chaldean Magi, Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Neo-Platonists, and the rest-who kept their knowledge secret, must have adopted that policy to conceal the fact that they knew very little. Mystery can only have been loved by charlatans who wished to mystify. The conclusion is pardonable from the modern point of view, but it has given rise to an impression in the popular mind that the ancient mystics have actually been turned inside out, and found to know very little. This impression is absolutely erroneous.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World

“For, strange as the statement will appear at first sight, modern metaphysics, and to a large extent modern physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly after knowledge which occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while. Owing to a train of fortunate circumstances, I have come to know that this is the case; I have come into some contact with persons who are heirs of a greater knowledge concerning the mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet evolved; and my present wish is to sketch the outlines of this knowledge, to record with exactitude the experimental proofs I have obtained that occult science invest its adepts with a control of natural forces superior to that enjoyed by physicists of the ordinary type, and the grounds there are for bestowing the most respectful consideration on the theories entertained by occult science concerning the constitution and destinies of the human soul.”

Alfred Percy Sinnett book The Occult World

Introduction
The Occult World