You will find these seven Jewels in all the ancient sacred scriptures, scattered about, will find them if you look for them. Perhaps not altogether in a single scripture, you will find two or three in a single scripture, or one here, one there and another elsewhere. They maybe named differently and explained in older terms, still they are available. Only in theosophical books will you find them in listed and categorical form.
Collectively they comprise the full treasury of human wisdom and knowledge. All initiations in the Secret School are but enlargements of understanding of these seven fundamental principles of knowledge which point with forceful finger to the structure of the universe.
All of H.P.Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine was written, so to speak, around these Seven Treasuries of Wisdom, these seven mystery-keys, ‘Jewels’ as they have properly called. Furthermore, all the religious and philosophic books of the ancients, especially those dealing with the Mysteries, have been written around them. Truthfully, these Jewels are filled with meaning, the more you study them the more you finally come to realize that they are esoteric keys opening up to you all the portals of comprehension of your own inner Inmost Self.
There is no problem that our study of theosophy can give to us which cannot be answered by a sufficiently adequate study of these sapta-ratnâni or Seven Jewels of Wisdom.
1. The first is rebirth, or rather reimbodiment, better still, regeneration.
In Sanskrit it is called punarjanman, and in Greek palingenesis,
both words representing practically the same thought: the first element
in each word meaning "again" or "anew," and the second
element in each meaning "generation" or "birth," "coming
into being."
2. The second jewel, counting upwards, is the doctrine or fact in nature called karma, the doctrine of results.
3. The third jewel is the doctrine of hierarchies, of which the Sanskrit term is lokas.
4. The fourth is the doctrine of swabhava, this Sanskrit word having two general philosophical meanings: first, self-begetting, self-generation, self-becoming, the general idea being that there is no merely mechanical or soulless activity of nature in bringing us into being for we brought ourselves forth, in and through and by nature, of which we are a part of the conscious forces, and are our own children. The second meaning is that each and every entity that exists is the result of what he actually is in his own higher nature; he brings forth that which he is in himself interiorly, nothing else. A particular race, for instance, remains and is that race as long as the particular race-swabhava remains in the racial seed and manifests thus, and so forth. Likewise is the case the same with a man, a tree, a star, a god — whatnot!
5. The fifth jewel, is the doctrine of evolution. This esoteric teaching is not the doctrine of transformism, which is, the correct name for the materialistic doctrine of Darwin and of the Frenchman Lamarck from whom, doubtless, he drew the idea. Rather it is the theosophical idea of unfolding, or unwrapping, a doctrine — with its corollary, involution —expressed by two Sanskrit words, the first being, pravritti, meaning the "unfolding forth" of the spirit-entity into matter, or of matter-lives into spirit-entities, as the case may be; and second, nivritti, meaning the "infolding" of spirit-entities into matter, or of matter-lives into spirit-entities, as the case may be.
6. The sixth jewel is the doctrine expressed here also by two compound words: first amrita-yana, a Sanskrit word meaning "immortality-vehicle," "carriage or bearer, or rather path, of immortality," and referring to the individual man; and the other word is pratyeka-yana, a Sanskrit word meaning the "path of each one for himself." It may perhaps be approached by the theosophic idea latent in the word personality; and the mysterious relation of individuality to personality is included in these two compound catchwords or technical terms; and there from hangs an entire doctrine of the wonderful philosophy of occultism, the esoteric doctrine.
7. The seventh jewel is called atma-vidya, literally meaning the "knowledge of the self"; this compound is only a catchword as are the others, but it imbodies and hides a doctrine which is truly sublime.
- quoted and paraphrased from G.de. Purucker's writings.