Theos-Talk Archives (January 2004 Message tt00362)

Many thanks I like that one. Quite revealing of the areas where there
is still a great blank.

Dallas

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Have a look at this note by HPB on the antiquity of wisdom in Tibet and
central Asia

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EDITORIAL APPENDIX

On: "The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the 

SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN," 
in the Theosophist for January 1882, SUBBA ROW
=============================================================

[In his article, "The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the Sevenfold
Principle in Man," in the Theosophist for January 1882, Subba Row made
statements which drew comment from H.P.B., printed as the Notes of an
editorial appendix following his article. Before each of these five
Notes by H.P.B., we give in brackets the statement by Subba Row to which
it applied.]

NOTE I

[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.]

SANSKRIT

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.]

CHINESE HISTORY AND PRE-HISTORY

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.

WISE-MEN OF TIBET – SINCE ANTIQUITY

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. 

SCHAM-BHA-Los Angeles

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. 

JIVATMA

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." 

MUKTA or BADDHA

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
 
------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: sambloc
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 5:54 PM
To: 
Subject: Daydreaming-What if........

Dallas and All,

Additionally, you can purchase the same Earth at Night View in
Poster form to hang in your home here;

http://www.popartuk.com/general/earth-by-night-pp0427-poster.asp

John