Theos-Talk Archives (November 1997 Message tt00346)

At 06:07 AM 11/20/97 -0800, Rodolfo Don wrote:
> doss... go ahead and post it. I think that it is a good idea for all of us
>to be reminded again and again what it is we're doing here. Just like
>sailors in the middle of the ocean check their compass to find out where
>true north is.
>
>Rudy
==
MKR:

Here is the letter I was referring to. It is from theos-roots theosophy
maillist. It gives some idea about what the "Founders" had in their mind
when the TS was started. This letter is considered by many to be the most
important letter ever received from the Adept Teachers as it communicates
the views of the Great Master as regards the role of Theosophy and
Theosophical Society. Many things said in it seems to be appropriate in 1997
as it was in 1880. Parts of the letter has been widely quoted by every
Theosophical leader from HPB onwards.


==
Following is the post by Nicholas Weeks (and credit is due to him):


 THE GREAT MASTER'S LETTER
 _________________________________________________________________

 [This article was printed in Lucifer without signature as "An
 Important Letter," prefaced by the statement that it "was circulated
 by H.P.B. among many of her pupils, and some quotations from it have
 been published from time to time." The Letter belongs to the early
 days of the Theosophical Society in India and was part of the
 correspondence received (through H.P.B.) by A. P. Sinnett and A. O.
 Hume from the Theosophical Adepts. His Adept-teacher introduced the
 letter to Mr. Sinnett as "an abridged version of the view of the
 Chohan on the T.S. from his own words as given last night"--in reply
 to objections about the conduct of the Society and especially to the
 "Brotherhood plank."

 Although the text of the complete letter was not published until
 after H.P. Blavatsky and Wm. Q. Judge had left the scene, both
 provided a setting for the statements made, and both quoted in their
 magazines some passages for particular attention.--Eds.]
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 The doctrine we promulgate being the only true one, must--supported by
 such evidence as we are preparing to give--become ultimately
 triumphant, like every other truth. Yet it is absolutely necessary to
 inculcate it gradually; enforcing its theories (unimpeachable facts
 for those who know) with direct inference, deduced from and
 corroborated by the evidence furnished by modern exact science. That
 is why Col. H. S. Olcott, who works to revive Buddhism, may be
 regarded as one who labours in the true path of Theosophy, far more
 than any man who chooses as his goal the gratification of his own
 ardent aspirations for occult knowledge. Buddhism, stripped of its
 superstition, is eternal truth; and he who strives for the latter is
 striving for eternal truth; and he who strives for the latter is
 striving for Theo-Sophia, divine wisdom, which is a synonym of truth.
 For our doctrines to practically react on the so-called moral code, or
 the ideas of truthfulness, purity, self-denial, charity, etc. , we
 have to preach and popularize a knowledge of Theosophy. It is not the
 individual and determined purpose of attaining Nirvana--the
 culmination of all knowledge and absolute wisdom, which is after all
 only an exalted and glorious selfishness--but the self-sacrificing
 pursuit of the best means to lead on the right path our neighbour, to
 cause to benefit by it as many of our fellow-creatures as we possibly
 can, which constitutes the true Theosophist.

 The intellectual portion of mankind seems to be fast dividing into two
 classes: the one unconsciously preparing for itself long periods of
 temporary annihilation or states of non-consciousness, owing to the
 deliberate surrender of intellect, and its imprisonment in the narrow
 grooves of bigotry and superstition--a process which cannot fail to
 lead to the utter deformation of the intellectual principle; the other
 unrestrainedly indulging its animal propensities with the deliberate
 intention of submitting to annihilation pure and simple, in case of
 failure, and to millenniums of degradation after physical dissolution.
 Those intellectual classes, reacting upon the ignorant masses--which
 they attract, and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to
 be followed--degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and
 guide. Between degrading superstition and still more degrading brutal
 materialism, the White Dove of Truth has hardly room whereon to rest
 her weary unwelcome feet.

 It is time that Theosophy should enter the arena. The sons of
 Theosophists are more likely to become in their turn Theosophists than
 anything else. No messenger of the truth, no prophet, has ever
 achieved during his life-time a complete triumph--not even Buddha. The
 Theosophical Society was chosen as the cornerstone, the foundation of
 the future religions of humanity. To achieve the proposed object, a
 greater, wiser, and especially a more benevolent intermingling of the
 high and the low, the alpha and the omega of society, was determined
 upon. The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of
 fellowship to the dark nations, to call the poor despised "nigger"
 brother. This prospect may not smile for all, but he is no Theosophist
 who objects to this principle.

 In view of the ever-increasing triumph, and at the same time the
 misuse, of free thought and liberty (the universal reign of Satan,
 Eliphas Levi would have called it), how is the combative natural
 instinct of man to be restrained from inflicting hitherto unheard-of
 cruelty and enormous tyranny, injustice, etc., if not through the
 soothing influence of brotherhood, and of the practical application of
 Buddha's esoteric doctrines?

 For everyone knows that total emancipation from the authority of the
 one all-pervading power, or law--called God by the priests, and
 Buddha, Divine Wisdom and enlightenment or Theosophy, by the
 philosophers of all ages--means also the emancipation from that of
 human law. Once unfettered and delivered from their deadweight of
 dogmatism, interpretations, personal names, anthropomorphic
 conceptions, and salaried priests, the fundamental doctrines of all
 religions will be proved identical in their esoteric meaning. Osiris,
 Krishna, Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and
 the same royal highway to final bliss--Nirvana.

 Mystical Christianity teaches Self-redemption through one's own
 seventh principle, the liberated Paramatma, called by the one Christ,
 by others Buddha; this is equivalent to regeneration, or rebirth in
 spirit, and it therefore expounds just the same truth as the Nirvana
 of Buddhism. All of us have to get rid of our own Ego, the illusory,
 apparent self, to recognize our true Self, in a transcendental divine
 life. But if we would not be selfish, we must strive to make other
 people see that truth, and recognize the reality of the transcendental
 Self, the Buddha, the Christ, or God of every preacher. This is why
 even esoteric Buddhism is the surest path to lead men towards the one
 esoteric truth.

 As we find the world now, whether Christian, Mussulman, or Pagan,
 justice is disregarded, and honour and mercy are both flung to the
 winds. In a word, how--since the main objects of the Theosophical
 Society are misinterpreted by those who are most willing to serve us
 personally--are we to deal with the rest of mankind? with that curse
 known as the struggle for life, which is the real and most prolific
 parent of most woes and sorrows, and all crimes? Why has that struggle
 become almost the universal scheme of the universe? We
 answer,--because no religion, with the exception of Buddhism, has
 taught a practical contempt for this earthly life; while each of them,
 always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and
 damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we
 find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian
 countries, most prevalent in Europe and America. It weakens in the
 Pagan lands, and is nearly unknown among Buddhist populations. In
 China during famine, and where the masses are most ignorant of their
 own or of any religion, it was remarked that those mothers who
 devoured their children belonged to localities where there was none;
 and where the Bonzes alone had the field, the population died with the
 utmost indifference. Teach the people to see that life on this earth,
 even the happiest, is but a burden and an illusion; that it is our own
 Karma [the cause producing the effect] that is our own judge--our
 Saviour in future lives--and the great struggle for life will soon
 lose its intensity. There are no penitentiaries in Buddhist lands, and
 crime is nearly unknown among the Buddhist Tibetans. The world in
 general, and Christendom especially, left for 2,000 years to the
 regime of a personal God, as well as to its political and social
 systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure.

 If the Theosophists say we have nothing to do with all this; the lower
 classes and the inferior races (those of India, for instance, in the
 conception of the British) cannot concern us, and must manage as they
 can, what becomes of our fine professions of benevolence,
 philanthropy, reform, etc.? Are those professions a mockery? And if a
 mockery, can ours be the true path? Shall we devote ourselves to
 teaching a few Europeans--fed on the fat of the land, many of them
 loaded with the gifts of blind fortune--the rationale of bell-ringing,
 of cup-growing, of the spiritual telephone, and astral body formation,
 and leave the teeming millions of the ignorant, of the poor and
 oppressed, to take care of themselves, and of their hereafter, as best
 they can? Never! perish rather the Theosophical Society with both its
 hapless Founders, than that we should permit it to become no better
 than an academy of magic, and a hall of occultism! That we, the
 devoted followers of that spirit incarnate of absolute self-sacrifice,
 of philanthropy, divine kindness, as of all the highest virtues
 attainable on this earth of sorrow, the man of men, Gautama Buddha,
 should ever allow the Theosophical Society to represent the embodiment
 of selfishness, the refuge of the few with no thought in them for the
 many, is a strange idea, my brothers!

 Among the few glimpses obtained by Europeans of Tibet and its mystical
 hierarchy of perfect Lamas, there was one which was correctly
 understood and described. The incarnations of the Bodhisattva
 Padmapani or Avolokiteshvara, of Tsong-ka-pa, and that of Amitabha,
 relinquished at their death the attainment of Buddhahood--i.e., the
 summum bonum of bliss, and of individual personal felicity--that
 they might be born again and again for the benefit of mankind. In
 other words, that they might be again and again subjected to misery,
 imprisonment in flesh, and all the sorrows of life, provided that they
 by such a self-sacrifice, repeated throughout long and weary
 centuries, might become the means of securing salvation and bliss in
 the hereafter for a handful of men chosen among but one of the many
 planetary races of mankind.

 And it is we, the humble disciples of these perfect Lamas, who are
 expected to allow the Theosophical Society to drop its noblest title,
 that of the Brotherhood of Humanity, to become a simple school of
 philosophy! No, no, good brothers, you have been labouring under the
 mistake too long already. Let us understand each other. He who does
 not feel competent to grasp the noble idea sufficiently to work for
 it, need not undertake a task too heavy for him. But there is hardly a
 Theosophist in the whole Society unable to effectually help it by
 correcting erroneous impressions of outsiders, by himself actually
 propagating this idea. Oh! for noble and unselfish men to help us
 effectually in that divine task! All our knowledge, past and present,
 would not be sufficient to repay him.

 Having explained our views and aspirations, I have but a few words
 more to add. The true religion and philosophy offer the solution of
 every problem. That the world is in such a bad condition, morally, is
 a conclusive evidence that none of its religions and philosophies,
 those of the civilized races less than any other, has ever possessed
 the truth. The right and logical explanations on the subject of the
 problems of the great dual principles, right and wrong, good and evil,
 liberty and despotism, pain and pleasure, egotism and altruism, are as
 impossible to them now as they were 1880 years ago. They are as far
 from the solution as they were; but to these problems there must be
 somewhere a consistent solution, and if our doctrines will show their
 competence to offer it, then the world will be the first to confess
 that there must be the true philosophy, the true religion, the true
 light, which gives truth and nothing but the truth.

 [Lucifer, August, 1896]
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