[SUBBA ROW: Now it is extremely
difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived their doctrine from the
ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient Brahmans learned their occult
science from the adepts of Tibet; or again whether the adepts of both
countries professed originally the same doctrine and derived it from
a common source.]
In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention,
to the fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese,
and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved
in the province of Fo-kien (the chief head-quarters of the aborigines
of China)--as the great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages.
According to these records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of
Light," the "Sons of Wisdom," and the "Brothers
of the Sun." The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207 B.C.),
a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult wisdom and
the system of theocracy established by him--for he was the first one
to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal authority--from
Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians and the
Chaldees; that which we know to have existed in the Brahmanical period
in India, and to exist now in Tibet: namely, all the learning, power,
the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the
hierarchy of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines
of Tibet is a question which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly
at present. They practise the Bhon religion, their sect is a pre- and
anti-Buddhistic one, and they are to be found mostly in the province
of Kam--that is all that is known of them. But even that would justify
the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants of
mighty and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are
not pure Turanians, and their rites--now those of sorcery, incantations,
and nature-worship, remind one far more of the popular rites of the
Babylonians, as found in the records preserved on the excavated cylinders,
than of the religious practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse--(a religion
based upon pure reason and spirituality)--as alleged by some. Generally,
little or no difference is made even by the Kyelang missionaries who
mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul--and
ought to know better--between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects,
the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the
reform of Tzongka-pa from the first and have always adhered to old Buddhism
so greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists
to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal
worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an undeniable connection
between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the origin of the
aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which
superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians
(invented by F. Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees and
Assyrians--is out of question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call
the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And, when we
remember that the Vedas came--agreeably to all traditions--from the
Manssorowa Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmins themselves from the far North,
we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people
who once had or still has it--as having proceeded from one and the same
source; and, to thus call it the "Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine,
or Universal WISDOM Religion. "Seek for the LOST
WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, China and
Tibet," was the advice of Swedenborg, the seer.
NOTE II
[SUBBA ROW: Your assertion
in "Isis Unveiled" that Sanskrit was the language of the
inhabitants of the said continent (Atlantis), may induce one to suppose
that the Vedas had probably their origin there,--wherever else might
be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.]
Not necessarily--we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these,
Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were
never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations
of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries
of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower,
and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander;
and Persia--Iran is called Western India in some ancient classics. The
countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered
by them as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India
has civilized the world and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations,
arts and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even
Egypt, included) we mean archaic, prehistoric India. India of the time
when the great Gobi was a sea and the lost "Atlantis" formed
part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down
over Southern India Ceylon, Java, to far-away Tasmania.
NOTE III
[SUBBA ROW: . . . the knowledge
of the occult powers of nature possessed by the inhabitants
of the lost Atlantis was, learned by the ancient adepts of India and
was appended by them to the esoteric doctrine taught by the residents
of the sacred Island.]
To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study
well the Chinese sacred and historical records--a people whose era begins
nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so
accurate and by whom some of the most important inventions of
modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science, were anticipated--such
as the compass, gun-powder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.--known,
and practised thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the
Europeans--ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze
down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and
references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts. In
the Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese by the Rev.
Samuel Beal, there is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I
School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which our opponents ought to
read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school
and sect in China founded by Chin-che-Khae, called Che-chay (the wise
one) in the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads:
"That which relates to the one garment (seamless) worn by the GREAT
TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS,
the school of the Haimavatas" (p. 256) the European translator
places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may.
The statistics of the school of the "Haimavatas" or of our
Himalayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in the General Census Records
of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a Rule relating to "the
great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote
from men," the Aranyakas, or hermits.
So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart
from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the
Chinese and Tibetan Sacred Books: the legend is alive to this day among
the people of Tibet. The fair Island is no more, but the country where
it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some
of the "great teachers of the snowy mountains," however much
convulsed and changed its topography by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh
year, these teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-CHA-LO, the "happy land." According to the general belief
it is situated in the north-west of Tibet. Some place it within the
unexplored central regions, inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic
tribes; others hem it in between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains
and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, South and North, and the more
populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British-lndia),
and China, West and East, which affords to the curious mind a pretty
large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur
Nur and the Kuen-Lun Mountains--but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la,
and speak of it as a fertile, fairy-like land, once an island, now an
oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors
of the esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary
Island.
In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic
Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern geologists--that
the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof, that the substance of
those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?
NOTE IV
[SUBBA ROW: You said that
in cases where tendencies of a man's mind are entirely material, and
all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether absent from
his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or at the
time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it. Here, the
very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual's
mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there
is no spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him. You should
then have said that, whenever spiritual intelligence should cease
to exist in any particular individual the seventh principle ceases
to exist for that particular individual for all purposes. Of course,
it does not fly off anywhere. There can never be anything like a change
of position in the case of Brahmam.]
True--from the standpoint of Aryan Esotericism, and the
Upanishads; not quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan
esoteric doctrine; and it is only on this one solitary point that the
two teachings disagree, as far as we know. The difference is very trifling
though, resting, as it does, solely upon the two various methods of
viewing the one and the same thing from two different aspects.
We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference
between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was
a kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be
regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism
applies the term jívátma to the seventh principle,
the pure and per se unconscious spirit--it is because the Vedanta
postulating three kinds of existence--(1) the pâramârthika--(the
true, the only real one), (2) the vyavahârika
(the practical), and (3) the pratibhâsika (the apparent
or illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the
only truly existent one. Brahma or the ONE'S SELF
is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal
Life in toto while the other two are but its "phenomenal appearances,"
imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested
to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either
subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha
declares that there is neither Creator nor an ABSOLUTE
Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty
of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint--"wherever
there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation
there is dualism." The ONE LIFE is either "MUKTA"
(absolute and unconditioned) and can have no relation to anything nor
to any one; or it is "BADDHA" (bound
and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the ABSOLUTE;
the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as
the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat
secret doctrine on cosmogony, admits but of one absolute, indestructible,
eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate), of an element (the word being
used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything
else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence
which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none;
whether there is a universe, or no universe; existing during the eternal
cycles of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods
of Manvantara: and this is SPACE,
the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the
basis (as our correspondent rightly calls it) upon which take
place the eternal intercorrelations of Akása-Prakriti, guided
by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti--the breath or
power of a conscious deity, the theists would say--the eternal energy
of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space then, or "Fan,
Bar-nang" (Mâha Sûnyatâ) or, as it is called
by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness" is the nature of the Buddhist
Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the Abyss.") The
word jiva then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the
Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or
contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy)
can develop active conscious life; and that to the question "how
can Unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the
answer would be: "Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton
self-conscious?"
NOTE V
[SUBBA ROW: The term Jivatma
is generally applied by our philosophers to the seventh principle
when it is distinguished from Paramatma or Parabrahmam.]
The impersonal Parabrahmam thus being made to merge or separate itself
into a personal "jivatma," or the personal god of every
human creature. This is, again, a difference necessitated by the Brahmanical
belief in a God whether personal or impersonal, while the Buddhist Arahats,
rejecting this idea entirely, recognise no deity apart from man.
To our European readers: Deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must
not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this
connection with Brahma or Iswara--the personal God. The Upanishads--the
Vedanta Scriptures--mention no such God and, one would vainly seek in
them any allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahmam, or Parabrahm,
the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has
no connection with the masculine Brahmâ of the Hindu Triad, or
Trimûriti. Some Orientalists rightly believe the
name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or increase,
and to be, in this sense, the universal expansive force of nature,
the vivifying and spiritual principle, or power, spread throughout
the universe and which in its collectivity is the one Absoluteness,
the one Life and the only Reality.
Theosophist, January, 1882