Abbe Roca - Reply to Madame Blavatskys Observations on Christian Esotericism: Difference between revisions

  | alternatives = [https://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v9/y1888_031.htm KH]

{{Style P-Title|REPLY TO MADAME BLAVATSKY’S OBSERVATIONS ON CHRISTIAN ESOTERICISM<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[In spite of its earlier date, it has been thought advisable to have this essay of Abbé Roca appear at this particular place, as it has a direct connection with H. P. B.’s Reply which immediately follows it. ––Compiler.]}}</ref>}}

{{Vertical space|}}

<center>[Le Lotus, Paris, Vol. II, No. II, February, 1888, pp. 258-271]</center>

{{Vertical space|}}

<center>[Translated from the original French]</center>

I.—There are some men whom nothing can discourage and nothing cast down, because they have faith, faith critically examined, scientifically established. I am one of those.

Far from complaining of the “drubbing” I have received under the guise of a hearty reception, and as a testimony of welcome, upon my first appearance in Le Lotus, on the contrary, I am gratified by Madame Blavatsky’s courteous manner and the complete frankness of her language. In my eyes, these are evidences of her sincerity and cordiality, the less equivocal the more forthrightly given. No one would suspect this lady of toadyism with respect to Catholic priests—usually so readily cajoled, and for good reasons, in Ultramontane circles (Ultramundane, some would say), where the religion of Christ has all to lose and nothing to gain. I am indebted, very greatly indebted, to her virile intellect, her Amazonian gait and her unceremonious pen, for presenting at the very outset the burning question of Christ “with a masculine vigor,” as the Editor remarks, and also, “without ambiguity and without partisanship.”

Without partisanship . . . . . hum! We shall see. It may happen as it often does, that partisanship exists without one suspecting it oneself. We deceive ourselves so easily! It is so difficult to rid oneself of all personal interest, and, still more, of all partisanship of school, sect, church, caste, etc.!

It is not then without reason that Jesus Christ said: “Deny yourselves, and do not swear by any Master, so that you may hold only to the pure Truth.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Paraphrase of Matt., v, 34.—Compiler ]}}</ref> In his own terms, quite as categorical as those of the Mahârâjâs of Benares, our Christ also declared: “There is no religion higher than Truth.” We shall soon see how he expressed himself on this point.

Now Madame Blavatsky, and with her the Chelas and the Theosophists, have taken unto themselves Masters, the Mahâtmas. They {{Page aside|180}}make no secret of it, and I do not blame them. From what the Adepts tell us, it would seem that they are ready to offer themselves to the world in their turn as doctors and teachers. That they have many things to teach us, I have not the least doubt. In the article to which my learned interlocutor replies, I have not done otherwise than render my homage to their wisdom. But when, perhaps a little intoxicated by the heady fumes of these encomiums, the Editor of Le Lotus exclaims and tells me by nods and winks, “who loves us, follows us,” I answer: Patience; I should greatly desire to love you at first sight; it would be easy and, moreover, perfectly Christian. I should like to follow you also, but on sure grounds, con pasos contados, and with the knowledge of where I am going.

I find myself rather in the attitude of Aristotle; for me as for him, there is something which is of greater value than Plato, that is Truth. The phrase is well-known: “Amicus Socrates, sed major Veritas”! If then you are Truth, let us have it, but I must have absolute proof.

Before Madame Blavatsky, it happens that another presented himself to the world who said squarely, “I am the TRUTH—Ego sum Veritas”! He also told us: “Come unto me without fear, trust in my words, I am the Master, the unique Master, and the only true Doctor.” And again: “I am the Way, I am the Life, I am the Resurrection.”<ref>[Paraphrases of passages from John, xi, 25 and xiv, 6.]</ref>

You will agree, gentlemen, that the way in which Christ puts the matter is even more daring and more masculine than that of your noble Directress. Here, indeed, one can say it is done “without ambiguity and without partisanship,” without any personal interest of any kind and with perfect renunciation of self. The testimony in favour of it is such that it stares at you and takes complete possession of you. None can be ignorant of the fact that the life of Jesus Christ was spent in multiplying undeniable evidences of his disinterestedness, and that his death was the supreme confirmation of it, the . Hence, overwhelmed by so many proofs, a very unlikely philosopher, J. J. Rousseau, once cried: “If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God!” Socrates exemplifies the highest and purest personification of virtue in the West, and I emphasize this because I agree that the East has seen incarnations of Wisdom superior to that which expressed itself in Socrates, and for that reason closer to that which was accomplished nineteen centuries ago in the Son of Mary. You see I am not niggardly over my admiration for India.

Further, it must be observed that Jesus Christ himself declares that it is impossible to show greater devotion to one’s brothers than that exemplified by sacrificing oneself entirely for them: Nemo majorem Charitatem habet quam, etc.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The Vulgate text for John, xv, 13 is: “Majorem hac dilectionem memo habet, ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicis suis.”—Compiler.]}}</ref> When any of the Mahâtmas—Jesus Christ was not one, whatever Madame Blavatsky may think—can convince me that he burns with such a love for us, that he came into the world to prove it and at the same time to bear witness to the Truth, that he himself is in substance this divine Truth, and the Way which leads thereto, and the Life which results from it, and the Resurrection which restores that Truth and that Life to our hearts when they have been extinguished in them; when he shall have demonstrated to me experimentally, as Jesus Christ does every day in my soul, “that he is the unique Master and only true Doctor,” that he is the Light that lightens all men, and the Principle at the base of our understanding—Ego Principium qui loquor vobis; when, moreover, to sustain these witnesses and an infinity of others no less extraordinary, he shall have agreed to drink from the chalice that Jesus drained at Gethsemane (a cup far more bitter than the one from which Socrates in the West drank the hemlock, or that from which Krishna, Gautama of Kapilavastu, Siddhârtha and all the other Buddhas drank the bitterness in the East); when he shall, without complaint or murmur, sicut agnus, have delivered his body, a planta pedis usque ad summum verticis,<ref>[Isaiah, i, 6.]</ref> to the rods and whips of flagellation wielded to the uttermost by the arms of the soldiery and servants, his face to the bruisings, the blows and the spitting of the mob, his head and forehead to the sharp pricking of the crown of thorns, his hands and feet to the nails and hammers of crucifixion, his lips parched by agony to the vinegar and bitterness of the abominable sponge, and, still more grievous, his life, a whole life woven of good deeds and blessings, to the denial of his own disciples, to the insults, the sarcasms, the blasphemies and curses of the priests and pontiffs of his time; when, finally, to all the fury of that diabolical sabbath, to all that outburst of frenzy, of iniquities and atrocious madness, he will reply only with that sublime prayer: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!”. . . . . . Then, oh yes, then! my dear brothers, I will do more than love you; I will follow you blindly, in a dumb adoration, abandoning all to you; as I have abandoned all to my divine Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ. For then He would be you, and you would be but one with the Father; then you would have lost the great illusion that is called Ego-ism, to unite yourselves, like Him, with Âtma-Christos, with the Ego, absolute, eternal, divine; then you would have realized, through the humble and suffering Christ of flesh, the Christ-Spirit, glorious and {{Page aside|182}}triumphant, and you would be able to exclaim with our incomparable Paul: “I live, but not so! it is not I who lives, it is Christ who lives in me!<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Paraphrase of Gal., ii, 20.—Comp.]}}</ref> Vivo autem, iam non ego: vivit vero in me Christus!”

Like yourself, Madame, we distinguish between the of suffering and the of glory, and we know that which you appear to be ignorant of, i.e., that the unction refused by you to Jesus Christ has streamed upon him with the blood of his own immolation, because every sacrificed being is a being consecrated or Christified, and he is perfectly annointed who is completely offered in bloody holocaust. Nevertheless, you will agree with this, Madame, in recalling the Cycle of initiation: “No ‘sacrificial victim’,” you say rightly, “could be united to Christ triumphant before passing through the preliminary stage of the suffering Christ who was put to death.” Very good!

It is precisely to fulfil that ritualistic condition that “the Word made itself Flesh” according to St. John, and, consequently, that it becomes able, in our time, after nineteen centuries of crucifixion, to enter fully, before the whole world, into the divine light of the Christ-Spirit, because, as the wise Apostle of the Areopagus teaches, “Christ must suffer in order that he may enter into glory.”—“oportuit Christum pati et it a intrare in gloriam.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The Vulgate text for Luke, xxiv, 46 is: “Et dixit eis: Quoniam sic scriptum est, et sic oportebat Christum pati, et resurgere a mortuis tertia die.”—Compiler.]}}</ref> The law is absolute, universal, it applies to Him who is the head, the chief, the “Principium” of mankind, and it applies also to each of the Monads, the cells or individual units of the universal social body of which that Christ is the epigenesic principle. None of us will enter that glorified body, which is to me the beatific Nirvâna of the Buddhists, without traversing that path which the Gospel calls the “strait gate and narrow way, angusta porta, et arcta via” [Matt., vii, 14].

Also, listen to him on his return from Damascus: “I glorify myself not to know among you any other thing but Jesus Christ, and Jesus-Christ crucified.––Nihil me scire glorior inter vos, nisi Jesum-Christum, et hunc crucifixum.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The text of the Vulgate for I Cor., ii, 2 is: “Non enim judicavi, me scire aliquid inter vos, nisi Jesum Christum, et hunc crucifixum.” —Compiler.]}}</ref>

Then, let us say in passing, the Apostle would have taken good care not “to make one mouthful of Saint Peter” as Madame Blavatsky says, because, long before Paul, Peter had deciphered the Arcana of the Passion, and he knew perfectly well that behind the bleeding Christ was hidden, in a kind of chrysalis, the Christ-Spirit, glorious and divine. The proof of this is in the Gospel itself. “What think ye of me?” Christ once asked his disciples. Peter alone answered: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” “Credo quia tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi”<ref>[Matt., xvi, 16.]</ref>––“Thou art happy, Simon-Bar-Jona, because thou sayest what has not been revealed to thy spirit by any man, but by the Father only.” Would that Madame Blavatsky could go to Damascus, and on her journey meet what Paul encountered there! In order to become a perfect initiate and the greatest of Christian Buddhists, that alone is lacking.