Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00559)

One thing that readers may note is the difference between an 
occidentally-oriented historian and an orientally-oriented 
historian. There is much to say regarding the seven keys.  
Historians of Theosophy tend to interpret this philosophy with the 
literal key only, making their research incomplete at best and 
inaccurate, at worst.

Lucifer, The Origin of Evil, October, 1887, H. P. Blavatsky:

"...Such pantheism can be qualified as "pessimistic" only by a 
believer in a personal Providence; by one who contrasts its negation 
of the reality of anything "created" – i.e., conditioned and limited –
with his own blind unphilosophical faith. The Oriental mind does not 
busy itself with extracting evil from every radical law and 
manifestation of life, and multiplying every phenomenal quantity by 
the units of very often imaginary evils: the Eastern Pantheist simply 
submits to the inevitable, and tries to blot out from his path in 
life as many "descents into rebirth" as he can, by avoiding the 
creation of new Karmic causes. The Buddhist philosopher knows that 
the duration of the series of lives of every human being – unless he 
reaches Nirvana "artificially" ("takes the kingdom of God by 
violence," in Kabalistic parlance) – is given, allegorically in the 
forty-nine days passed by Gautama the Buddha under the Bo-tree. And 
the Hindu sage is aware, in his turn, that he has to light the first, 
and extinguish the forty-ninth fire1 before he reaches his final 
deliverance. Knowing this, both sage and philosopher wait patiently 
for the natural hour of deliverance; whereas their unlucky copyist, 
the European Pessimist, is ever ready to commit, as to preach, 
suicide. Ignorant of the numberless heads of the hydra of existence, 
he is incapable of feeling the same philosophical scorn for life as 
he does for death, and of, thereby, following the wise example given 
him by his Oriental brother..."