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- Lucifer, vol. 6, no. 32, April 1890, pp. 145-151
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Title for references: Fawcett E.D. - A Talk with Sumangala
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OF all the suggestions which Theosophy has been instrumental in impressing on public attention, there are few of more momentous import than that which accredits every great world-religion with two sides, an exoteric and an esoteric. Needless here to advert to the wealth of testimony forthcoming in support of these happy distinctions. The historic fact of the existence of secret lodges and hierarchies of Initiates side by side with the prevalence of popular legends and extravagances, the testimony of pictograph, symbol, tradition, and lastly that of the cultured occultist of to-day, unite in emphasising this truth. Of course it goes almost without saying that considerable reservations may be necessary when we seek to apply this principle of research to the case of any specific creed. There is, for instance, every reason to believe that a fair proportion of human religious beliefs are based on a simple nature or ghost-worship, innocent of any possible “occult” coloring. But in dealing with the various phases of religious thought grouped under the heads of Buddhism, Brahmanism, of Zoroastrianism and even Christianity, recourse must be had to a deeper and far more significant clue. It is, indeed, hopeless to account for the phenomena attendant on the mere origination of all the great types of belief, if we refuse to recognise the leading part played by the custodians of the Secret Science in the arena of human progress. All research points in fact to the existence of an Esoteric Doctrine, constituting that “unexplored remainder of theological controversy” over which the rationalists and the religionists have so long and so fiercely fought. And it is on the recognition of this fact that the hope of an eventual honorable compromise between the contending parties may be said mainly to depend.
Now among those types of exoteric creeds which have most closely approximated to what some of us hold to be the esoteric doctrine or “Wisdom Religion”, Southern Buddhism occupies a prominent place. Nothing, indeed, is more impressive than the continual insistence of the Pitakas on that basal postulate of the occultists, viz, a Nirvana attainable by the “Ego” after innumerable “descents” into physical rebirth. In this particular respect its claims to consideration immeasurably outweigh those of the current western faiths whose faint tincture of esoteric lore – dimly discoverable amid a farrago of biblical trash – scarcely repays research. But despite its indubitably vivid esoteric impress, Southern Buddhism easily lends itself to misapprehension at the hands of the Western critic. On the one hand we note the too hasty Theosophist who dubs it “materialistic”; declaring that its modern representatives have entirely lost the key to its inner meaning. On the other, we confront the professional Orientalist, a worthy to whom the bare notion of “esotericism” is repugnant, fathering on it the denial of a soul, Nirvanic annihilation and so forth.[1] So prevalent, indeed, are opinions of this sort that the expres146sion “materialism of the Southern Buddhistic Church” is rapidly becoming a stock household phrase. How utterly erroneous is this popular ascription of materialism to Sumangala and his school, will be speedily made apparent.
During our recent stay in Ceylon, Col. Olcott arranged for a discussion between the Right Rev. H. Sumangala and myself with a view to eliciting some definite pronouncements on the leading issues of the case. Though fully conscious ourselves of the absurdity of classing under the head of materialism a system which not only inculcates the anti-materialist idea of Reincarnation, but admits the reality of “Gods”, “devas”, mystic knowledge, powers attainable by Dhyana, etc., etc., we were not altogether unprepared for a savor of modern rationalism. In view moreover of the assertions of those Orientalists who have so kindly consented to interpret Buddhism for the Buddhists, we had grounds for anticipating as our fare a maximum of “exotericism” and a minimum of “esotericism”. Was it not the fact that the potent seigniors referred to had hurled at our heads their vast experience, gleaned in arm-chairs at home, and blandly dispelled the illusion that Buddhism and the “Secret Doctrine” had aught in common? Animated, however, by a lingering suspicion that possibly a High Priest of Buddhism might be the right person to apply to after all, we sallied forth one sunny afternoon, on heckling designs intent, to the Oriental College, and before long found ourselves ensconced in the roomy Library of that useful structure. There, in addition to the High Priest, was to be seen his Sub-Principal, Hiyeyentaduwe Devamitta Thero, together with a few yellow-robed monks. Mr. L. Corneille Wijesinha, Government translator of the “Mahawansa”, accompanied us in the capacity of interpreter. This gentleman’s complete mastery of English and Sinhalese served us in excellent stead, and it is no exaggeration to state that the highly successful issue of the discussion was in great part due to his singularly able mediation.
In opening the discussion I plunged at once in medias res by broaching the subject of “First Principles”. Did Southern Buddhism admit a duality of spirit and matter as the essential ground-work of kosmic evolution? What was the relation of consciousness to its physical basis – the time-honored problem known in the West as the “relation of psychosis to neurosis”? The elucidation of these points involved a very complex and lengthy treatment which threatened, at one time, to mar our metaphysical joust, but finally drew the following purely esoteric and radically anti-materialist admissions from Sumangala Maha Thero: –
There are two co-existent but mutually dependent principles underlying kosmic evolution. The first is NAMA, which may be said to correspond in a general way to the concept “Spirit”, that is to say, to a formless subjective reality which both transcends, and yet lies at the root of, consciousness. Nama is in fine, the impersonal Spirit of the universe, while Rupa denotes the objective basis whence spring the varied differentiations of matter. Consciousness or Thought (vinnâna) supervenes when a ray of Nama is conditioned in a material basis. There is thus no consciousness possible without Nama and Rupa co-operating – the former as the source of the ray which becomes conscious, the latter as the vehicle in which that process of becoming is alone possible. An excellent illustration was then furnished us by the High Priest, who compared this relation of vinnâna to rupa with that subsisting between a crew and their vessel. Though the crew [vinnâna] direct and control the vessel [rupa], they could not be carried along or even exist as a crew in its absence. Its existence renders possible their aggregation in such a manner as to admit of their directing it. Similarly vinnâna ‘informs’ rupa, but is itself only possible through rupa. The bearing of these admissions on the esoteric view of the relations between the “Logos”, or Purusha, and Mulaprakriti – the dual facets of 147the one Absolute Reality, is too apparent to call for comment. Furthermore the attitude taken up with regard to the foundation and conditions of consciousnes is especially worthy of note; constituting as it does the only thinkable reconciliation of current physiological psychology in Europe with the spiritual philosophies of the East, and embodying one of the most fertile and suggestive of the results arrived at by the best schools of German metaphysics. It is now warmly championed, though under a slightly different aspect, by Edward von Hartmann in his popular “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Von Hartmann pictures the Absolute as bringing the per se “unconscious subjectivity” of the “Idea” to individual consciousness in certain of the atom-aggregates which it has evolved on the objective side of its manifestation. And if objection is raised to von Hartmann on the score of speculative imaginings with which he has sought to deck his pessimistic creed, there remain distinguished writers in the sphere of positive psychology who have been forced into a very similar line of hypothesis. Witness, in this connexion, one of the leading English thinkers of the present day, Dr. Romanes, F.R.S., the author of that justly celebrated work “Mental Evolution in Man”. In the course of an article entitled “The World as an Eject” (Contemporary Review, July, 1886), he argues for the reality of a World Soul whose “level of psychical perfection may be higher than what we know as personality”. In accordance with this line of thought, he further remarks that “if the ultimate constitution of all things is psychical, the philosophy of the Kosmos becomes a ‘Philosophy of the Unconscious’ only because it is a Philosophy of the Superconscious”. In citing these parallelisms I am, of course, fully alive to the fact that the ontological stand-points occupied by these diverse schools conflict in no doubtful fashion. The esoteric Buddhist and Brahmanic teachings appear to me to emphasize the immanence or dualism in the stream of Kosmic phenomena. The speculations of Fichte and Hegel rest, on the other hand, on a pantheistic idealism; while the pantheistic creed of von Hartmann embraces a transcendental realism and inculcates a Kosmic dualism based on his ascription to the Absolute of the two attributes of Will and Idea. Romanes again oscillates between an attachment to materialistic Monism in psychology, and the scarcely consistent desire to resolve all natural phenomena into a flux of veiled psychical processes. But those who aim at detecting similarity in difference will not fail to note their very important agreement anent a recognition of the transcendental impersonal subjectivity, which finds its conditioned expression in our present individual consciousness. I lay great stress on this point as it lies at the root of the religious philosophy of the future. It stirs up, moreover, a whole hornet’s nest of attendant questions, to the consideration of which I hope shortly to return at considerable length.
Nama and Rupa having been thus satisfactorily disposed of, the inevitable question of Nirvana – that pendant of all Buddhist controversies alike – came up for discussion. On this moot issue we found ourselves, like Milton’s dilettanti demon philosophers in Hell –
“In wandering mazes lost:”
the cause of which deadlock was subsequently apparent when, in answer to a not too premature enquiry, the High Priest expressed his opinion to the effect that the laws of thought do not apply to the problem. The Brahmanical idea of the absorption of the Ego into the Universal Spirit was, however, he declared, fallacious, as any such coalesence involved the idea of Cause and effect obtaining in Nirvana – a state pre-eminently asankatha, that is to say, not subject to the law of Causality. He then proceeded to deny the existence of any form of consciousness, whether personal or that of coalesced Dhyanic entities, in Nirvana; rejecting the most rarified notion of the survival of any consciously acquired memories in 148that state. Subsequently, however, he gave the lie to the annihilationists by admitting that this state was comprehensible to the intuition of the Arhat who has attained to the fourth degree of Dhyana or mystic development, and furthermore that the “true self”, i.e., the transcendental subject – about which anon – actually entered Nirvana. The obscurity in which this avowal was veiled might be judged from the fact that, according to him, the refined phase assumed by the Ego on the confines of Nirvana cannot be described as one of either consciousness or unconsciousness: the problem as to its condition being thus altogether removed from the sphere of intellectual research. Ordinary empirical thought works piecemeal by establishing unreal relations between ideas, and is hence incompetent to seize upon the mystery.
Touching on the modes of “meditation”, he specified two main divisions – Samartha, the attenuation of passion by reflection, and Vidarsana, the attaining of supernormal wisdom by reflection: each of which embraced twenty aspects. Buddhism, be it understood, does not trouble itself much about Vidarsana, subordinating, as it does, all aims whatever to the supreme struggle towards freeing the Ego from the misery of life, by the eradication of all desire and passion. En passant it is as well to note that the wisdom streaming in upon consciousness through the portals of Vidarsana was stated to be of an order transcending the purely empirical knowledge which constitutes the content of Vinnâna. It is independent of sensations and only to be described as clairvoyant and immediate realisation.
Questioned as to the possibility of a world-purpose, both the High Priest and his Vice-Principal replied that the resort to design was superfluous; objective nature being no more than the necessary succession of phenomena. Further queries elicited the remark that causation from the immaterial or subjective to the material or objective is, so far as regards the human body, an established fact. Is it not, indeed, implied in the bare statement of the law of Karma, one aspect of which ascribes to the re-forming skandhas of a past birth a positive modifying influence on the infant brain? Undoubtedly. Given, however, the actuality of a causation from subject to object in the case of the microcosm, man, are we to deny the fact of a similar causation from the World Spirit (Nama) to the “universal Rupa” or objective Nature? Analogy brands this limitation as arbitrary. It cannot, moreover, be contended by the Southern Buddhist leaders that the world-process as a whole is necessarily stereotyped through the eternities, for they also hold to the doctrine of alternating Maha-Manvantaras and Maha-Pralayas. Obviously, during the re-objectivation of Matter after a Great Pralaya, there would exist every scope for the origination of a new (or modification of the old) kosmic order by the clairvoyant ideation of Nama. Under any supposition it appears strange first to posit Nama and then to deny it all share in the world-process, save that of furnishing the raw material of consciousness. Subsequently, be it stated, Sumangala did go so far as to admit to Colonel Olcott the possibility of the aggregate subjective Karma of one Manvantara re-acting on and modifying the “tendencies” of its successor. Why not go further and accept the esoteric teaching en bloc?
Perhaps it is feared that any such move might prove open to misconception, owing to the absurd old Christian fashion of running the “design” argument as a prop to the idea of a “personal designer”. The bare reference to the already mentioned work of von Hartmann, a philosopher who lays the strongest emphasis on the teleological ordering of phenomena while emptying the vials of his satire on the head of Theism, will suffice to dispose of any such illusion. There is, in truth, no connexion between the two positions.
In all probability (as, indeed, our respected host seemed to intimate) the 149esoteric Buddhist priesthood has yet paid little or no attention to this and kindred questions anent the origin and evolution of things. Gautama himself declared that all such inquiries were profitless, as from the standpoint of his vividly practical philosophy they undoubtedly are. The complexities of human, not of Kosmic Karma, rivet the attention of his followers. Altogether students of esoteric lore can well afford to “bide a wee” before expecting to hear the last word of Southern Buddhism on this issue. Intellectual negotiations ought not to commence with an ultimatum.
A curious side light was thrown on the anthropology of the “Secret Doctrine” by some stray utterances à propos of the primeval races. The first men, whose “Egos” – if the terms is, Buddhistically speaking, permissible – descended into rebirth from the Brahma lokas, were stated to be ethereal, of great stature, and free from the physiological necessities consequent on the possession of an alimentary canal. Originally, they were highly spiritual and enjoyed a lengthy term of life, abandoning themselves, consequent on the gradual loss of their primal longevity, to those varied passions which constitute the bête noire of all respectable moralists. Intellect slowly became prominent as the flame of clairvoyant spirituality commenced to flicker, and has now attained its maximum degree of splendor coincidently with the present almost total obscuration of the higher consciousness.
What must, I think, be regarded as a very valuable concession, accrued to us from the results of the ensuing relay of questions. Was there any ground for believing that the doctrine of the “Higher Self” or “Transcendental Subject” met with an express recognition in Southern Buddhism? I say “express”, because it is pretty clear that the whole theory of Dhyana rests on the assumption that the four skandhas (vedanâ sanna, sankhârâ, and vinnâna) do not exhaust the totality of our inner subjective nature – that there is, in fact, an unexplored domain of the soul corresponding to what is treated of in theosophical literature as the Buddhi. How, otherwise, are we to account for the fact that Sakyamuni himself is said to have received “illumination”, to have penetrated by a clairvoyant wisdom into the veriest arcana of being, and to have recovered the memories or those multitudinous prenatal experiences which had chequered his path up to Buddhahood? How are we to explain the bare storing away of such memories, if the fluctuating mass of ideas and feelings summarised as the “four skandhas” represent the spiritual side of man in its entirety? How, again, are we to bridge the gulf between rebirths in the absence of a Higher or transcendental Self as a back-ground to these skandhas, a sort of permanent basis in which the potentiality of their re-combination in some future birth must, in some way or other, inhere? It is because they have failed to detect the traces of the Higher Self doctrine in Buddhism, that the Orientalists have not unnaturally come to regard the whole law of Karma as a poetical and “airy nothing”. Rhys Davids, in the course of his interesting and eloquent work on Buddhism, furnishes a typical instance of this blundering. Confronted with the uncompromising teaching of Buddha to the effect that personality, i.e., the conditioned terrestrial subjectivity of man, is illusive and without permanent ground in reality, and lacking the true key to its interpretation, he very naturally fails to view aright what he terms the “stately bridge which Buddhism has tried to build over the river of the mysteries and sorrows of life”. Hence we find him alluding in feeling language to the “many despairing earnest hearts” who have
“been charmed, or awed perhaps, by the delicate or noble beauty of some of the several stones of which the arch is built; they have seen that the whole rests upon a more or less solid foundation of fact; that on one side of the key-stone is the necessity of justice, on the other the law of causality. But they have failed to see that the very key-stone itself, the link between one life and another, is a mere word – this wonderful hypothesis, this airy nothing, the imaginary
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cause beyond the reach of Reason – the individualised and individualising force of Karma.”
There can be no question as to the validity of this criticism in the event of a rejection by Buddhism of the aforesaid doctrine of a Transcendental Subject. It was therefore with no small sense of satisfaction that I was able to extract from the High Priest the admission (a) of the reality of this overshadowing Soul or “True Self”, never realisable under the forms of the empirical consciousness, (b) of its capacity to retain and store away the aroma of the experiences gleaned in incarnation, (c) of its direct manifestation as intuitive wisdom in the higher states of Dhyana, and (d) of its ultimate passage into Nirvana on the break-up of the groups of causally conditioned skandhas. It will now be seen that while the Southern Church does not attempt to deal with metaphysical niceties after the systematic fashion of the Esoteric Doctrine, it embodies nevertheless the vital truth at issue. If any one conclusion of modern psychology rests on a sound basis, it is that which affirms the content of experience to be drawn from sensations, and to develop simply by their association. Now Buddhism may accept this position without much demur – the derivation by its Founder of mental states from Phassa (contact) being itself a complete recognition of sensationalism – but it must at the same time link this belief on to the concept of a Permanent Transcendental Self, if it is concerned to preserve the theory of Karma from attacks. This position, as we have already seen, is practically conceded by Sumangala. How clear a light the acceptance of such a supplementary doctrine is calculated to throw on many obscure passages in the Pitakas, more especially on the celebrated verse regarding the “Maker of the Tabernacle”, in the Dhammapada, the Orientalist would do well to determine for himself.
À propos of the Karmic problem involved in animal suffering, the High Priest contended that the infliction of pain by a morally irresponsible creature carried with it a future retributive effect. Causation is, in fact, no respector of persons. It matters not whether any specific “evil” thought or deed of a creature is traceable to ignorance, impulse, or deliberate intention, a painful consequence either in the present or a future birth must ensue. Of course, it goes without saying that the degree of the Karmic suffering entailed by a vicious act depends on the intensity of the original disturbance set up in the skandhas – a disturbance immeasurably greater in the case of a man than in that of some mere animal automaton, such as a tiger or snake. Nevertheless, this necessary reservation does not materially affect the contention. After all it is an undeniable fact that a flame will burn the body of an incautious innocent child in the same way as that of a consciously heroic Mutius. It is simply an instance of the inexorable rule of Cause and Effect, tempered, as always, by the subsequent compensatory action of the Karmic scales.
Further conversation resulted in the discovery of various other parallelisms between exoteric Buddhism and the Esoteric Doctrine. Among such, mention was made of the existence of several strata of matter tenanted by appropriate organisms and characterised by distinctive natural forces; of sakwalas, or groups of worlds, answering to the general notion of planetary chains; of the acquiescence of Buddhism in the so-called Fire-mist Doctrine of astromony – subjects all replete with interest, but perhaps rather difficult to exploit in the course of two or three hours’ chat. However, having secured so fine a booty already, we were content to leave the remaining philosophical ideas of our venerable host unpillaged. So, after heartily thanking him, the Vice-Principal, and Mr. Wijesinha for their courtesy and kindness, we turned our steps homeward. And if our faces wore a look of unwonted hilarity that evening, was there not ample justification for our optimism? During those few hours we had succeeded in obtaining sufficient data to demolish for ever and for aye, the absurdly rotten indict151ments brought against Southern Buddhism. We had seen the accusations of Materialism and Nihilism crumble away before our gaze, as surely as ever did the spectre castle of King Arthur in Sir W. Scott’s “Bridal of Triermain” to that of its would-be tenants. We had recognised that the religion, or rather philosophy, underlying Sinhalese Buddhism, is one of an essentially spiritual character, the bare formulation of which would send typical European materialists and nihilists, such as Buchner and Renouvier, into a fit. A further series of searching questions as to the esoteric teaching of the Vissuddhi Magga and Abidharmma has now been submitted to the proper authorities, and when the results of this analysis put in an appearance, it will be possible to elaborate with more precision of detail the principles touched upon in the above-recorded conversation.
(Theosophist.)
Footnotes
- ↑ Outside the Orientalist world proper, there are many unbiassed European freethinkers who labor under a similar delusion, probably owing to their want of ability to penetrate the intricacies and vermiculations of Eastern metaphysics. I find for instance a passage in the Appendix to Buchner’s “Force and Matter,” where the teaching of Gautama is described as initiating a “remarkable atheistic and materialistic religion”!! Schopenhauer himself fell into the error of regarding the Nirvana as the absolute annihilation of subjectivity, and thus vitiated an important portion of his borrowings from Eastern thought.