HPB-SD(ed.1) v.3 ch.Introductory: Difference between revisions

Our age is a paradoxical anomaly. It is preëminently materialistic and as preëminently pietistic. Our literature, our modern thought and progress, so called, both run on these two parallel lines, so incongruously dissimilar and yet both so popular and so very orthodox, each in its own way. He who presumes to draw a third line, as a hyphen of reconciliation between the two, has to be fully prepared for the worst. He will have his work mangled by reviewers, mocked by the sycophants of Science and Church, misquoted by his opponents, and rejected even by the pious lending libraries. The absurd misconceptions, in so-called cultured circles of society, of the ancient Wisdom-Religion (Bodhism) after the admirably clear and scientifically-presented explanations in ''Esoteric Buddhism'', are a good proof in point. They might have served as a caution even to those Theosophists who, hardened in an almost life- long struggle in the service of their Cause, are neither timid with their pen, nor in the least appalled by dogmatic  

{{Style P-No indent|assumption and scientific authority. Yet, do what Theosophical writers may, neither Materialism nor doctrinal pietism will ever give their Philosophy a fair hearing. Their doctrines will be systematically rejected, and their theories denied a place even in the ranks of those scientific ephemera, the ever-shifting "working hypotheses" of our day. To the advocate of the "animalistic" theory, our cosmogenetical and anthropogenetical teachings are "fairy-tales" at best. For to those who would shirk any moral responsibility, it seems certainly more convenient to accept descent from a common simian ancestor and see a brother in a dumb, tailless baboon, than to acknowledge the fatherhood of the Pitris, the "Sons of God," and to have to recognise as a brother a starveling from the slums.}}

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Thus, in the scholarly appreciation of our modern Orientalists and Professors, Science was in its infancy in the days of the Egyptian and Chaldean Astronomers. Pânini, the greatest Grammarian in the world, was unacquainted with the art of writing. So was the Lord Buddha, and everyone else in India until 300 B.C. The grossest ignorance reigned in the days of the Indian Rishis, and even in those of Thales, Pythagoras, and Plato. Theosophists must indeed be superstitious ignoramuses to speak as they do, in

statements of those who, in spite of the fact that Plato was an Initiate, maintain that no hidden Mysticism is to be discovered in his works, have to be first examined. Too many of the present scholars, Greek and Sanskrit, are but too apt to forego facts in favour of their own preconceived theories based on personal prejudice. They conveniently forget, at every opportunity, not only the numerous changes in language, but also that the allegorical style in the writings of old Philosophers and the secretiveness of the Mystics had their ''raison d'être''; that both the pre-Christian and the post-

{{Style P-No indent|Christian classical writers – the great majority at all events – were under the sacred obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets communicated to them in the sanctuaries; and that this alone is sufficient to sadly mislead their translators and profane critics. But these critics will admit nothing of the kind, as will presently be seen.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|been "incapable of induction, or generalization in the modern sense"; * he may have been ignorant also, of the circulation of the blood, which, we are told, "was absolutely unknown to him," † but then, there is naught to disprove that he knew what blood ''is ''- and this is more than any Physiologist or Biologist can claim nowadays.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|{{Style P-No indent|they seemed to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church . . . and the Neo- Platonists had a method of interpretation which could elicit any meaning out of any words. They were really incapable of distinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and another, or between the serious thoughts of Plato and his passing fancies. * . . . [But] there is no danger of the modern commentators on the ''Timaeus ''falling into the absurdity of the Neo-Platonists.}}}}

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{{Style P-Quote|{{Style P-No indent|important doctrines to persons duly instructed and disciplined, imposing on them the obligations of secresy, as was done before him by Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and in the Mysteries. Except a few treatises of his disciples we have only the declarations of his adversaries from which to ascertain what he actually taught. * }}}}