About the book
How does everyday duty become a spiritual practice? In The Path of Discipleship, Annie Besant moves from work and family responsibilities to the training of attention, the building of character and her account of the disciple’s life and initiation, ending with a speculative vision of humanity’s future.
Besant delivered these four lectures at Adyar, Madras, on 27–30 December 1895, during the Theosophical Society’s twentieth anniversary. It is a work of religious philosophy and spiritual self-culture; renunciation here is not simply withdrawal from ordinary life, and descriptions of unusual powers are not evidence that every claim about them is true.
This HIPS Books edition follows the 1899 second printing. The text is newly typeset, with vocabulary before each lecture and a reader guide afterwards that sends you back to the original passages.
What this edition includes
173 pages. All four historical lectures with their printed subtitles; a HIPS editorial introduction; four vocabulary sections (52 entries); four reader guides with reading and discussion questions; a 52-term glossary; clickable contents, 38 internal contents links and 19 PDF bookmarks; sources and recorded editorial decisions.
Inside the book: selected contents
A reading overview, not the complete text.
- First Steps: Karma-Yoga, duty, desire and action without attachment to reward.
- Qualifications for Discipleship: thought, meditation, ethical responsibility and character.
- The Life of the Disciple: discrimination, detachment, endurance, probation and initiation.
- The Future Progress of Humanity: Besant’s speculative picture of religion, education, medicine, art and government.
Key concepts for reading
HIPS editorial explanations of the historical text.
- Karma-Yoga: acting from duty without demanding personal reward, as Besant presents it.
- Dharma: duty or right order, a term she borrows from Indian philosophy.
- Discipleship: her idea of a pupil’s path under spiritual Masters, a Theosophical belief rather than a documented institution.
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How is this different from an archive scan?
An archive scan preserves photographed pages. This is a prepared reading edition: reset text and modern reading support, with the historical author’s words kept distinct. The edition details and preview pages above show what is included in this particular book.
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