Theos-Talk Archives (August 2007 Message tt00284)

Let's just briefly compare some Theosophical subjects in ESOTERIC 
BUDDHISM and ISIS UNVEILED.

Take the following 5 chapters from ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.  I give but a 
brief summary of the chapters from the Table of Content:

-------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI - The Universe
The Days and Night of Brahma - The Various Manvantaras and Pralayas - 
The Solar System - The Universal Pralaya - Recommencement of 
Evolution - "Creation" - The Great First Cause - The Eternal Cyclic 
Process

CHAPTER III -The Planetary Chain
Esoteric Views of Evolution - The Chain of Globes - Progress of Man 
round them - The Spiral Advance - Original Evolution of the Globes - 
The Lower Kingdoms

CHAPTER IV -The World Periods
Uniformity of Nature- Rounds and Races - The Septenary Law - 
Objective and Subjective Lives - Total Incarnations - Former Races on 
Earth - Periodic Cataclysms - Atlantis - Lemuria - The Cyclic Law

CHAPTER VII - The Human Tide-Wave
Progress of the Main Wave - Obscurations - Twilight and Dawn of 
Evolution - Our Neighbouring Planets - Gradations of Spirituality - 
Prematurely Developed Egos - Intervals of Re-Incarnation

CHAPTER VIII - The Progress of Humanity
The Choice of Good or Evil - The Second Half of Evolution - The 
Decisive Turning-point - Spirituality and Intellect - The Survival of 
the Fittest - The Sixth Sense - Development of the Principles in 
their Order - The Subsidence of the Unfit - Provision for All - The 
Exceptional Cases - Their Scientific Explanation - Justice Satisfied -
The Destiny of Failures - Human Evolution Reviewed
----------------------------------------------------------------
[For the actual text of these 5 chapters, consult the online edition 
at:  http://esotericbuddhism.net  ]

These 5 chapters give a very good birdeye's view of a tremendous 
evolutionary process.

Now having carefully read these chapters and gained an "overview" 
understanding, one can then go to HPB's first work ISIS UNVEILED and 
find all sorts of material that starts to make sense and ALSO helps 
to elucidate and expand on ESOTERIC BUDDHISM and vice versa!  

In other words, ESOTERIC BUDDHISM helps one to find one's way thru 
many of the pages of ISIS UNVEILED and the relevant extracts 
scattered throughout ISIS help to expand and show the depth of the 
teachings summarised in ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.  

I give BELOW just three extracts from ISIS for readers to compare 
with the material in some of the 5 chapters listed above.  In fact I 
could give hundreds of relevant quotes that are scattered through the 
pages of the 2 volumes of ISIS UNVEILED.

If you turn to page 263 of volume II of ISIS, you find this remarkable
paragraph:

---------------------------------------------------------------
The grand cycle . . . includes the progress of mankind from its germ
in the primordial man of spiritual form to the deepest depth of
degradation he can reach -- each successive step in the descent being
accompanied by a greater strength and grossness of the physical form
than its precursor -- and ends with the Flood. But while the grand
cycle, or age, is running its course, seven minor cycles are passed,
each marking the evolution of a new race out of the preceding one, on
a new world. And each of these races, or grand types of humanity,
breaks up into subdivisions of families, and they again into nations
and tribes, as we see the earth's inhabitants subdivided to-day into
Mongols, Caucasians, Indians, etc.
---------------------------------------------------------------

This paragraph certainly illuminates what Mr. Sinnett has written on
the Root Races in ESOTERIC BUDDHISM and vice versa.

Or take these passages from Isis, Volume 1, pp. 1-2:
-------------------------------------------------------------
...matter has in time become, through sin, more gross and dense than
it was at man's first formation; that, at the beginning, the human
body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall,
mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since that
time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the
world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that,
before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died
out, each giving place in its turn to another....

As the cycle proceeded, man's eyes were more and more opened, until
he came to know "good and evil" as well as the Elohim themselves.
Having reached its summit, the cycle began to go downward. When the
arc attained a certain point which brought it parallel with the fixed
line of our terrestrial plane, the man was furnished by nature
with "coats of skin," and the Lord God "clothed them."...
-------------------------------------------------------------

Or on the planetary chain of globes given in ESOTERIC BUDDHISM,
consider the following from ISIS, Vol. I, pp. 348-249:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a given point in space as the primordial one; then with
compasses draw a circle around this point; where the beginning and
the end unite together, emanation and reabsorption meet. The circle
itself is composed of innumerable smaller circles, like the rings of
a bracelet, and each of these minor rings forms the belt of the
goddess which represents that sphere. As the curve of the arc
approaches the ultimate point of the semi-circle -- the nadir of the
grand cycle -- at which is placed our planet by the mystical painter,
the face of each successive goddess becomes more dark and hideous
than European imagination is able to conceive. Every belt is covered
with the representations of plants, animals, and human beings,
belonging to the fauna, flora, and anthropology of that particular
sphere. There is a certain distance between each of the spheres,
purposely marked; for, after the accomplishment of the circles
through various transmigrations, the soul is allowed a time of
temporary nirvana, during which space of time the atma loses all
remembrance of past sorrows. The intermediate ethereal space is
filled with strange beings. Those between the highest ether and the
earth below are the creatures of a "middle nature"; nature-spirits,
or, as the kabalists term it sometimes, the elementary.
---------------------------------------------------------------

By taking various subjects and terms used in ESOTERIC BUDDHISM, one
can then consult the 139 page index to the COLLECTED WRITING'S
edition of ISIS UNVEILED and look up these subjects and find relevant
material in ISIS to annotate and illuminate what Mr. Sinnett has
written AND VICE VERSA!

Daniel
http://hpb.cc