Blavatsky H.P. - Theosophy and Spiritism: Difference between revisions

The mysteries of life as well as of death, of the visible and invisible worlds, have been fathomed and observed by initiated adepts in all epochs and in all nations. They have studied these during the solemn moments of union of their divine monad with the universal Spirit, and they have recorded their experiences. Thus by comparing and checking the observations of one with those of another, and finding none of the contradictions so frequently noticed in the dicta, or communications of the mediums, but on the contrary, having been able to ascertain that the visions of adepts who lived 10,000 years ago are invariably corroborated and verified by those of modern adepts, to whom the writings of the former never do become known until later—the truth has been established. A definite science, based on personal observation and experience, corroborated by continuous demonstrations, containing irrefutable proofs, for those who study it, has thus been established. I venture to believe that this science is just as good as that which relies on the accounts of one or even of several somnambulists.

We cannot, therefore, refrain from smiling when we see Mr. Rosen pointing out to us the truism “that the physical body is not entirely composed of solid matter,” and that it “contains a large proportion of gases and liquids. The Oriental Gentlemen who would give us instruction, ought to consult the physiologists,” he tells us. I am really afraid that the European physiologists may find it necessary {{Page aside|52}} before long to consult the Oriental Gentlemen—of the year 8,000 before the vulgar era. He who wrote the sentence that has been quoted from the Fragment knew as well as any other physiologist that the human body contains as much gas and liquid as it does solid matter, and even more so. But the Occultists recognize but One Element which they divide into seven parts, which include the five exoteric elements and the two esoteric ones of the ancients. As to that Element, they call it, indifferently, matter or spirit, claiming that as matter is infinite and indestructible and Spirit likewise, and as there cannot exist in the infinite Universe two omnipresent Eternal elements, any more than two Indestructibles or Infinites can exist—hence Matter and Spirit must be one. “All is Spirit and all is Matter,” they say: Purusha Prakriti are inseparable and the one cannot exist without the other. So it is not the Oriental Gentlemen who have forgotten to consult the physiologists, but rather Mr. Rosen who has forgotten to consult the Occultists upon their method of expression; rather, in order not to displease the modern scientific gentlemen, let us say that the liquid, gaseous and solid states are the three qualities or conditions of matter, which amounts to the same thing. If we add to these three the radiant matter of Mr. Crookes we shall have four—three other states of matter being held in the keeping of Occultists until the Gentlemen of the Academy discover them for themselves. Matter, then, is but a state of Spirit, and vice-versa.

Now, for the lecture of Mr. T. . . ., “Fellow of the Theosophical Society of Paris.” Of all the lecturers at the famous meetings of the 6th and 21st of March, he it is who gives his brothers of Oriental Theosophy the hardest knocks. Entrenched behind his Hieratic Code of Gôtomô or “divine Institutes,” the divine science which has revealed to him all the secrets of past, present, and future Theosophy, Mr. T. . . . speaks of the Theosophy of our Society— which he continually confuses with Occultism—as being {{Page aside|53}} “in brief, a doctrine without proof, without authority and without prestige in its origin,” and to render it still more odious in the eyes of the Spiritists, he asserts that:

1st. “The Theosophists proclaim the belief in the immortality of the conscious Ego absolutely false.”

2nd. They say “that the spiritual ego . . . disappears without carrying with it one single particle of the individual consciousness, and proceeds to fall back into the region of primeval cosmic matter.”

4th. “The doctrine of the Theosophists [Occultists, if you please] which insists on calling itself divine Science but which is only the teaching of a particular kind of Occultism with curious ideas . . . resting on no serious foundation, a style which affects to be magisterial . . . in short a great profession of assertions, nothing but assertions, always and everywhere assertions . . . a doctrine which has annihilation as an end can have nothing but emptiness for a foundation.”

5th. “The assertions of the Theosophists not being supported by serious argument, by demonstration, or by proof . . . as is the customary procedure in scientific matters . . . so much the worse for a doctrine which sets out to pass off fantasies as realities.”

Pray take note of the sentences we have italicized. They are extremely important, and the first and second affirmations of Mr. T. . . . having already been proved false and baseless, are considered by us as . . . Fragment No. I, which is said to incriminate us, appeared in The Theosophist, in October, 1881. Two months later (The Theosophist, Vol. III, January, 1882) the incomplete and vague expressions were explained by Subba Row, a Brâhmana of the highest class and a distinguished occultist. Several other occultists sent refutations explaining the phrases of the Fragment, as we have done in the preceding pages.

 

{{Page aside|54}}In The Theosophist of August of the same year, pp. 288-89, in the article “Isis Unveiled and The Theosophist on Reincarnation” by the Editor of the magazine your humble servant—in the classification of the groups of human principles, it is said:

|<center>GROUP I</center>

|<center>SPIRIT</center>

|{{Style P-No indent|7. Âtman—“Pure Spirit.”}}

{{Style P-No indent|6. Buddhi—“Spiritual Soul or}}  

{{Style P-No indent|Intelligence.”}}  

|{{Style P-No indent|Spiritual Monad or “Individuality”—}}  

{{Style P-No indent|and its vehicle. Eternal and}}  

So much for ANNIHILATION!<ref>See The Theosophist, Vol. III, March, 1882, page 151, first column, a note by a chela, disciple, of the Initiates, “D.M.”, who says: “There can be no annihilation for the ‘Spiritual Ego—as an INDIVIDUALITY’—though often as a PERSONALITY.” (i.e. for the fifth Principle)</ref>

Now, the Spiritists generally, who, not being able to read English, are dependent upon Mr. T. . . ., who does read it, to give them a just idea of our Theosophical doctrines, are requested to judge of the fidelity with which he has explained them. Thus we have no complaint against any other Spiritists but Mr. T. . . ., “Fellow of the Theosophical Society.” Has he or has he not read The Theosophist? That is the principal question. If he has read it, he must know that our teachings were perverted by him, which does not speak in his favor; if he has not read it or if he was not sure of his facts, even after having read it, the conclusion is still less to his advantage. Repeating his own words, we say: these assertions would have to be supported by demonstration, by proof. “Who is being deceived now?” he asks his audience. “No one, sir—at least on the side of Oriental Theosophists,” we reply, “on the Spiritistic side, it is only you who have been deceived, and, consequently, though without intending it, you have deceived others.”

But we are not only accused of preaching annihilation, but we are charged with teaching a pseudo-Theosophy, {{Page aside|55}} a collection of incongruous things: Spiritualism, mysticism, science, nihilism, astrology, magic, divination, etc. Our Theosophy with “its unwholesome and unclean concept of Elementaries and Elementals,” is a hybrid doctrine originating with the Chaldeans, which, having persisted throughout the darkness of the Middle Ages, is once again in the land of its birth, making dupes of us.

How does Mr. T. . . . know all this? Ah! here we have his GRAND EVIDENCE! Evidence so irrefutable, that it is on the ground of history that the Spiritists are invited to follow him, and to be regaled by the historical origin of his brand of Theosophy, his divine science. Let us listen with confidence and thoughtful consideration to our learned brother Theosophist!

This is what he says. Attention, ladies and gentlemen! “Toward the end of the TRETA YOUGO [yuga, if you please] the third [!!] age, according to Hindu chronology [?] there lived in India . . . Gôtomô. As the sacred books of India declare [?], Gôtomô was descended from a line of sages which goes back to Vedic times and reckons among its direct descendants the celebrated Gôtomô Śâkyamuni, the Buddha, who has often been wrongly confused with him. Among the works which this personage of the TRETA YOUGO left to posterity, the two most remarkable ones are the NYÂYAS, which is a treatise on logic, [and] the Hieratic Code . . . divine science which represents the synthesis of human knowledge, a collection of all the truths amassed during a long series of ages by the contemplative sages (Moharshy) . . .”

Enough! These few lines are sufficient to prove to any elementary Sanskrit student that Mr. T. . . . knows nothing about the Yugas (written “yougo” by him) nor does he understand the meaning of the Sanskrit terms. I appeal to the whole army of great European Sanskritists and to the best modern Brâhmana pandits in India.

Modestly enough, he abstains from “supplying the exact number of ages which separate us from the Treta yougo,” but he does not hesitate to challenge “the smiles of {{Page aside|56}} the officially learned scholars” (and the laughter of the Brâhmanas—astronomers and scholars indeed!) and courageously places “the age called Treta yougo . . . 28,000 years before our vulgar era.” “Thus,” he tells us, “we are WELL INFORMED regarding the origin of genuine Theosophy, the real Theosophy of life, of comfort, of happiness, the scientific Theosophy of Gôtomô, outside of which there is only Pseudo-Theosophy. . . .”

While going entirely against official science, and the calculations according to the zodiac (mathematically precise calculations if ever there were any) of the Brâhmanas, past, present and future; against those of Manu and of Gautama Rishi himself, the latter, according to him, being the author of the Nyâya, Mr. T. . . . does not hesitate to declare himself ready to prove “by the method of proceedings employed in parallel cases by science” that everything he tells us now is—history!

Indeed ! We declare ourselves also ready to knock over this fine edifice, this house of cards, with one blow, and we maintain that his Hieratic Code is an apocryphal manuscript. Mr. T. . . . assures us that the age of Tretâ yuga goes back 28,000 years! We tell him that according to all the calculations of the Vedic period and of the sacred books of the Brâhmanas, not excluding a single one, the age of the Tretâ yuga, that is to say the period elapsed between our vulgar era and the Tretâ yuga (the second age, if you please, “according to the Hindû chronology,” and not the third), is just 867,000 years; which is only a trifle of 839,000 years more than his 28,000 years, a little error, a lapsus linguae or a lapsus calami (we do not know which) of Mr. T.’s, but repeated rather too frequently however to be simply a mistake. We shall presently sustain this point by some figures. Truly, Gautama Buddha, the “direct descendant of Gôtomô of the Treta yougo,” by that reckoning must have a genealogical tree reaching from here to the moon. Only the former never was the descendant, direct or indirect, of the Rishi “Gôtomô” nor of Gautama, the well known author of the Nyâya. That has been fully {{Page aside|57}} proved to us by the Brâhmanas of that philosophical school, and to all those who know something of the history of the Rishis and of Buddhism, first, because Gautama Rishi was a Brâhmana, contemporary with Râma, while Buddha (Gautama S âkyamuni) was a Kshatriya (warrior caste), and the Gautama of the Nyâya is far more modern than the other; and, second, because Gautama-Rishi was a Sûryavanśa, of “the Solar Race,” and Gautama Buddha, a Chandra or Induvanśa, of the “Lunar Race.”<ref>The Vanśâvali or genealogies of the Races—Sûrya and Chandra two distinct races into which the ancient Hindûs were divided—the Brâhmanas and the Kshatriyas are generally traced to them—the first from Ikshvâku to Râma, and the second from the first Buddha to Krishna (see the Vanśâvali of the Râjput princes, the house of Oodeypore) Krishna belonged to the Lunar Race.</ref>

In order to prove what we put forward about the Yugas, we give here the two calculations, the one that is adopted by the Northern Brâhmanas and which is exoteric, and that of the Southern Brâhmanas which has hitherto been an esoteric calculation, and whose key is in the hands of the initiates. There are no others. Both are correct, because the totals are in agreement. The first can be found in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 32.

(See “Astronomical Essay,” founded on this calculation, in the Asiatic Researches; its accuracy is proved by comparison with the zodiacs.)

From these numbers we observe that the number 432,000 serves as the basis of the calculation, since it must be multiplied by 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively, to obtain the duration of the Kali, Dvâpara, Tretâ and Krita or Satya Yugas; hence we see that the period of Dvâpara is double that of Kali yuga, and that the period of Tretâ is three times that of Kali yuga. Now the present Kali Yuga (the age in which we are) having begun on the 18th of February 3,102 years before the Christian era, at midnight, on the meridian of Ujjainî at the death of Krishna, the figures, which are undesirable witnesses against assertions, convince us that Mr. T. . . . talks about the Yugas like a blind man about colors. If his “Gôtomô” had lived during the Tretâ yuga, even in the year 1,296,000 of that age, his Hieratic Code would then be just 868,985 years old because that is the figure we obtain by adding to his 864,000 years the 3,102 before our era and the 1,883 of our present era. And yet Mr. T. . . . says he is ready to prove his 28,000 years by scientific procedures! Certainly that is a highly respectable age for his Theosophy, “the real . . . the scientific Theosophy.”<ref>See the Laws of Manu (1, 64, 73) and the latest book of Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 188 and 229; Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, etc.</ref>

Krita yuga is another name (or term) for Satya yuga. The Brâhmanical books generally show the mythological bull, by which they represent Dharma or the esoteric religion, as standing firmly on its four feet in Satya Yuga, on three feet only in Tretâ Yuga, on two in Dvâpara Yuga and on one foot only in Kali Yuga (therefore tottering and on the point of falling).

{{Page aside|59}}SATYA OR KRITA YUGA IS THEN THE PERFECT SQUARE. Can Mr. T. . . . tell us the meaning of this? Till then, we shall continue to maintain that his 28,000 years (since his “Gôtomô” lived) are only fiction.

The name of Gautama Rishi, occultist of Vedic times, is mentioned in the Upanishads. As to Gautama of the Nyâyas, who is the one mentioned by Mr. T. . . ., he lived much later than Kapila (of the Sâmkhya), who himself was contemporary with and a little later than Gautama Buddha, since the system of our great Master Sâkyamuni is discussed by Kapila whose teachings are ridiculed by the author of the Nyâyas. Ergo, having shown Mr T.’s error and also his imperfect knowledge of Sanskrit, he who criticizes us so vigorously (apparently deceived by the phonetic sound of Tretâ which he must have taken for “trois,” and of Dvâpara which has a certain resemblance to “deux”) has imagined that his “TRETA YOUGO” represents “the third age,” and this, to be sure, according to the Hindû Chronology. With his ignorance established regarding the point in question, how is it possible to believe the rest? Let him hasten to produce his proof “according to the procedures employed by science”! If his “Hieratic Code” is some ancient apocryphal manuscript one or two hundred years old, extant at a time when no one in Europe had any idea even of the chronological calculations of the Brâhmanas, then it would not astonish us at all to learn that this is the marvelous manuscript from which Mr. T. . . has drawn his historical, chronological and theosophical data. Indeed, we are now “well informed regarding the origin of genuine Theosophy”! As to the “Homeric laughter” which he may rightly expect from European Orientalists, it has been even more uncontrollable and genuine among our Brâhmanical S âstrîs<ref>A Sâstri is one who gives a life-long study to the Sâstras, the sacred books of the Brâhmanas, an enormous literature.</ref> to whom we submitted a translation of the lecture of our “Fellow of the Theosophical Society of Paris.”

{{Page aside|60}}Moreover, the history of the Rishis who left philosophical and religious writings—we refer to the “six great Philosophical Schools” of the Brâhmanas—is too well known for anyone to construct a romance from any hiatus in it. Jaimini, the author of Mîmânsâ; Bâdarâyana, of the Vedânta, Gautama of the Nyâya; Kanâda, of the Vaiśeshika, which is the complement of the Nyâya; Kapila, of the Sâmkhya, and Patañjali, of the Yoga, are perhaps among the best known historically. What they have bequeathed to posterity, and what they could never have written, are both well known. Thus to attribute to Gautama, whose writings consist of only one work on logic, a work from which every allusion to occult and theosophical matters is eliminated; to attribute to that strict logician, we say, a “Hieratic Code,” is indeed to rely too confidently on the ignorance of the Spiritists in all that relates to Sanskrit literature. The choice is indeed unfortunate. Had he presented us Patañjali or Samkarâchârya, in short one of the older mystics, as the author of that unknown book, we would have taken the trouble to verify the claim. It is equivalent to being asked to believe that Baron d’Holbach, author of Le Système de la Nature, and the greatest atheist of his time, had bequeathed us a Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie under the pseudonym of Éliphas Lévi. Really, Mr. T. . . ., we are in India and we have among our Fellows the most renowned Sanskritists, as well as the greatest scholars of Indian literature in the world.

We will not tarry over trifles such as, for example, the free translation which he offers us of the compound word Maharshi which Mr. T. . . . translates as “contemplative sages” and writes Moharshy—which is not even phonetically correct. Mahâ means “great” in the moral sense, and Rishi, literally translated, means “bard,” singer, and also walker or guide, one who leads others; the word Rishi being a derivative from Riś (those who march ahead), since the latter were always at the head of their clans. The Vedic Gautama was an occultist, that is to say a {{Page aside|61}} Brâhmana, as of course all the Rishis were; but while many of the others left great poems, philosophies, and books treating of Brahman and of Yoga Vidyâ (secret science), he has left only one code, not hieratic at all but civil, which is less poetical perhaps but more true. Yâjñavalkya (Dharma-Sâstra, I,3-5) mentioned it as the eighteenth in merit of the twenty codes enumerated by him, of which the first is that of Manu and the last that of Vasish˜ha. The author of the Parâśara Code said (in Stenzler’s Sanskrit Preface, where he cites Yâjñavalkya): “The laws of the various yugas differ among themselves.” The books of the laws of Manu belong to the Krita Yuga, those of Gautama to the Tretâ, those of Sankha and Likhita to the Dvâpara and those of Parâśara to the Kali-yuga. The code of Gautama’s Dharma-śâstra is known, and, with some variations, is but a repetition of the other codes of which forty-seven were written, each by a different author, but of which only twenty remain. Finally, those who left writings on the Vidyâ, Secret science or knowledge of the universal soul, are also known, and the name of Gautama is not found among them. As soon as Mr. T. . . .’s claims about his hieratic code reached us in India, we questioned in vain the most learned Brâhmanas, the most celebrated Yoga-Sâstrîs, those who know by heart all the literature of the initiates from Vedic times to the present day, and had from each and all, verbally or by letter, denials that can all be summed up in these words: “No, Gautama Rishi wrote nothing but his Dharma-śâstra, a civil and criminal code, and Gautama Rishi is not the Gautama of the Nyâyas. Their systems contradict each other; the first puts the efficacy of everything pertaining to this life and to the next in the Vedas, while the Nyâyas only recognize the omnipotence of ADRISHTA (the invisible principle), ‘Paramâtman’ or supreme soul, and of ‘Jîvâtman’ (the 7th principle), the eternal atom; and only mentions the Vedas to avoid being called atheistical (nâstika).”

{{Page aside|62}}Despairing for Mr. T. . . .’s cause, we addressed ourselves to the great “Samkarâchârya.” He is the Pope of India, a hierarchy which spiritually reigns by succession from the first Samkarâchârya of the Vedânta, one of the greatest initiated adepts among the Brâhmanas. Here is the letter received by T. Subba Row, from Mysore. Let us remember that the former is an initiated adept, the only man in India who now possesses the key to all the Brâhmanical mysteries and has spiritual authority from Cape Comorin to the Himâlayas and whose library is the accumulation of long centuries. Moreover, he is recognized, even by the English, as the greatest authority on the value of archaic manuscripts. Here is what he says: “If the manuscript [the ‘Hieratic Code’ in question] is written in Senzar Brahmabhâshya [secret sacerdotal language], it can only be read or understood by initiated Brâhmanas, who have already received the revelation of Atharvan and Angiras [the last and supreme initiation]. Now, none of these manuscripts, not even a copy, can possibly be in the possession of a Mlechchha [impure foreigner] because to begin with, the list of the books [codes] was carved on the column of the Âśrama [a sacred place, a temple] at the time when the Great and Holy ACHÂRYA, ‘Master’ [in this case, Samkarâchârya of the Vedânta himself, who founded the hierarchy, and built and lived in that temple of Mysore] traced the names thereof with his own hand, and they are all still there; and again, because in that list the name of Gautama Rishi is not found. That Rishi never wrote anything on BRAHMA VIDYÂ (Occult science). Gautama— the Aksha-pâda [having eyes in his feet, cognomen of the author of the Nyâya] was neither of the caste nor of the blood of Gautama Rishi, and a whole Yuga [the Dvâpara yuga of 864,000 years] separates them. If the above-mentioned Sûtra which is in France [Mr. T. . . .’s ‘code’] treats of and encourages intercourse with the pitris [the deceased ancestors, spirits] and if it be an authentic copy of one of the existing Sûtras, the original must be merely {{Page aside|63}} one of the Sûtras of the Sâma-Veda<ref>The Sâma-Veda is far inferior to the Rig and to the Yajur-Veda. The Rig treats of the Gods, the Yajur of religious rites, and the Sâma-Veda [of] Pitris (Spirits) and is consequently greatly discredited.</ref> treating of Pitris [Manu, IV, 124] whose sound alone is impure [aśuchi] because of its association and communication with the Piśâchas [the ‘Elementaries’ that Mr. T. . . . attributes to the Middle Ages]; for, as Kullûka [a great Commentator and historian] proves, the Sâma-Veda is only impure because of those ślokas [verses] which treat of intercourse with the dead, and contain ritual for the repetition of aśaucha and of Savam aśaucham [necromancy and rites concerning the bodies of the dead, whether physical or astral, which are considered most polluting].”

The following therefore is what is fully established. The two Gautamas are entirely different personages, and hieratic manuscripts which treat of evocations of the dead are and have been from time immemorial (see the Laws of Manu, IV, 23, etc.) considered of a degrading, polluting and sacrilegious nature. We have only to read this sentence in Mr. T. . . .’s Lecture: “the reality of our communications with the spirits of the ancestors, taught by the ‘divine Science’ of Gôtomô . . .” to know what to think of his Hieratic Code. If the evidence provided by the Brâhmanas as well as by the European Sanskritists, and the authority on hieratic codes in general, and Occultism and Theosophy in particular, of a scholar and an initiate such as His Holiness Sri Samkarâchârya, are of no value and are rejected by Mr. T . . ., let him substitute his own authority in place of that of Samkarâchârya and of Manu, and let the Spiritists accept it. It will be all the same to us; but in order to discredit Oriental Theosophy he should not invent apocryphal Codes, for, with the exception of himself and some credulous Spiritists, the rest of the world will laugh at them and will not accept them any more than we do.

Henceforth the respective doctrines of our two {{Page aside|64}} Theosophies will have to be judged by their intrinsic value, and by judges of recognized impartiality.

Neither sectarians, nor partisans ought to have a voice in this subject; because, carried away by enthusiasm for their respective causes and preconceived notions, neither the one nor the other, are in a condition to judge rationally of things contrary to their beliefs. Mr. T. . . . promises proofs by means of the methods employed by science; as for us—we give them! And if we are obliged to support what we now assert or deny, by means of quotations from the books composing the sacred literature of the Brâhmanas and the Buddhists as well as the written evidence by witnesses who are recognized in India as authorities on the subject—we are quite ready to do so. Can Mr. T . . . “possessor of authentic documents,” do as much? If so, let him make haste! In the name of all our Oriental Occultists, as in the name of truth, we propose that he settle this dispute in the pages of the Bulletin. Does our antagonist maintain that the only true Theosophy, the divine science, is that which he believes he has discovered in a hieratic (unknown) code? We maintain that there is only one Theosophy—that of the Rishis, of the Magi and of the Buddhist Hierophants, and that we receive it from its very source.

{{Style P-Signature|H. P. BLAVATSKY.}}

 

{{Page aside|65}}{{HPB-CW-comment|In the September, October, and November, 1883, issues of the Bulletin, three consecutive installments of Tremeschini’s reply were published, under the titles of “Ma Deuxième,” “Ma Troisième,” and “Ma Quatrième.” These articles are to be found in H. P. B.’s Scrapbook XI (17).}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|Mr. Tremeschini’s lengthy explanations brought forth a final answer from H. P. Blavatsky, entitled “Ma Dernière,” which appears in the next volume of the present series.—Compiler.]}}