HPB-SD(ed.1) v.1 ch.Introduction: Difference between revisions

This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The “Wisdom Religion” is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over, though the statement was made in “Esoteric Buddhism” (''Preface'' to the original Edition) that “two years ago (''i.e. ''1883), neither I ''nor any other European living,'' knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put into a scientific shape,” etc. This error must have crept in through inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is “divulged” in “Esoteric Buddhism”— and much more—''many years'' before it became her duty (in 1880) to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two ''European ''gentlemen, one of whom was the author of “Esoteric Buddhism”; and surely the present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and education. Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy  

This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say “a ''few'' truths,” advisedly, because that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the little that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown—which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist— is rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena—a true valley of discord and of eternal strife—a necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The “amiable infidels and accomplished profligates” of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival of the ''dead'' sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to them now; and ''now'' much more than ten years ago, when “Isis Unveiled,” or even the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were published.

{{Style P-No indent|to those who follow the methods of research prescribed by official Science; but to the students of Occultism, and to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main body of the Doctrines given is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already translated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual,— others still awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of verifying the statements herein made, and of checking most of the quotations. A few new facts (''new'' to the profane Orientalist, only) and passages quoted from the Commentaries will be found difficult to trace. Several of the teachings, also, have hitherto been transmitted orally: yet even those are in every instance hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical, Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature.}}

Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, from the astronomical and chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple, and covering a period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it—''also lost.'' Eusebius used these extracts in writing his ''Chronicon'' (270—340 A.D.). The points of resemblance— almost of identity—between the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his ''rôle'' of defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho—so much so that Bunsen† charges him with mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the fifth century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.

In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history, it is a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny, ''a priori, ''everything that does not dovetail with their special conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and sciences having existed far back in the night of time, even the knowledge of writing is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited with barbarism instead of culture. Yet the traces of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This civilization is undeniably ''prehistoric.'' And how can there be civilization without a literature, in some form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the broken links in the history of departed nations. The gigantic, unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper course of the river Khuan-Khé down to the Kara-Korum hills, witnessed a civilization during millenniums of years, and would have strange secrets to tell mankind. The Eastern and Central portions of those regions—the Nan-Schayn and the Altyne-taga—were once upon a time covered with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting sand, and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to the traveller. Within those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible even to the native profane traveller. Hurricanes may “tear up the sands and sweep whole plains away,” they are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such oases, there is little fear that anyone should discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes where—  

More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had ''invented'' a new religion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all ''transmitters, ''not original teachers. They were the authors of new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the latter were based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand verities— actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer—out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the ''adyta'' of the temples through initiation, during the {{Style S-Small capitals|Mysteries}} and by personal transmission—they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient