Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00683)

As reductionists by culture, our ideas of truth follow the lines of 
current evolution, or physical intellectuality.  

HPB explains that revealing too much esoteric dogma biases and 
misguides immature minds, and HPB was sworn to secrecy on much.  She 
discusses the failure to keep appropriate secrecy was a failure of 
the Guatama Buddha that required him to return after death to 
correct errors of revealing too much that caused confusion among his 
followers.  This is covered in "The Collected Writings, Volume 
XIV."  

Buddha returned as Samkara to correct his error in the Vedantas.  

Best regards, Krsanna

THE COLLECTED WRITINGS, VOLUME XIV:

"Gautama had sworn inviolable secrecy as to the Esoteric Doctrines 
imparted to Him. In His immense pity for the ignorance—and as its 
consequence the sufferings—of mankind, desirous though He was to 
keep inviolate His sacred vows, He failed to keep within the 
prescribed limits. While constructing His Exoteric Philosophy 
(the "Eye-Doctrine") on the foundations of eternal Truth, He failed 
to conceal certain dogmas, and trespassing beyond the lawful lines, 
caused those dogmas to be misunderstood. In His anxiety to make away 
with the false Gods, He revealed in the "Seven Paths to Nirvâna" 
some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arupa (formless) 
World. A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.

"Truth and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.

"His new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the 
Esoteric Teaching without its vivifying Soul, had disastrous 
effects: it was never correctly understood, and the doctrine itself 
was rejected by the Southern Buddhists. Immense philanthrophy, a 
boundless love and charity for all creatures, were at the bottom of 
His unintentional mistake; but Karma little heeds intentions, 
whether good or bad, if they remain fruitless. If the "Good Law," as 
preached, resulted in the most sublime code of ethics and the 
unparalleled philosophy of things external in the visible Kosmos, it 
biased and misguided immature minds into believing there was nothing 
more under the outward mantle of the system, and its dead-letter 
only was accepted. Moreover, the new teaching unsettled many great 
minds which had previously followed the orthodox Brâhmanical lead."

"Thus, fifty odd years after his death "the great Teacher"* having 
refused full Dharmakâya and Nirvâna, was pleased, for purposes of 
Karma and philanthropy, to be reborn. For Him death had been no 
death, but as expressed in the "Elixir of Life,"† He changed

 "A sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter 
light.

 "The shock of death was broken, and like many other Adepts, He 
threw off the mortal coil and left it to be burnt, and its ashes to 
serve as relics, and began interplanetary life, clothed in His 
subtle body. He was reborn as Samkara, the greatest Vedântic teacher 
of India, whose philosophy—based as it is entirely on the 
fundamental axioms of the eternal Revelation, the sruti, or the 
primitive Wisdom-Religion, as Buddha from a different point of view 
had before based His—finds itself in the middle ground between the 
too exuberantly veiled metaphysics of the orthodox Brâhmans and 
those of Gautama, which, stripped in their exoteric garb of every 
soul-vivifying hope, transcendental aspiration and symbol, appear in 
their cold wisdom like crystalline icicles, the skeletons of the 
primeval truths of Esoteric Philosophy. 

"Was Samkarâchârya Gautama the Buddha, then, under a new personal 
form? It may perhaps only puzzle the reader the more if he be told 
that there was the "astral" Gautama inside the outward Samkara, 
whose higher principle, or Âtman, was, nevertheless, his own divine 
prototype—the "Son of Light," indeed—the heavenly, mind-born son of 
Aditi."