Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00036)

This is transcribed from pp 52-59, 2d ed., 8th impression, Rider
& Co., London, NY, Melbourne, Sydney, Capetown.  It's marked in
part "notes by KH" " Transcribed from a copy in Mr.Sinnett's
handwriting" "Received at Simla 1881-? '82

(Transcriber's note.  I'm sending this letter in 3 parts, in case
something happens while I'm typing, so I don't need to copy the
whole thing over a 2d time.  I'll be as careful as I can about
typing errors.)

Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of
all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H.  Our
philosophy falls under the definition of Hobbes.  It is
preeminently the science of efffects by their causes and of
causes by their effects, and since it is also the science of
things deduced from first priciple, as Bacon defines it, before
we admit any such principle we must know it, and have no right to
admit even its possibilit y.  Your whole explanation is based
upon one solitary admission made simply for argument's sake in
October last.  You were told that our knowledge was limited to
this our solar system: ergo as philosophers who desired to remain
worthy of the name we could not either deny or affirm the
existence of what you termed a supreme, omnipotent, intelligent
being of some sort beyond the limits of that solar system.  But
if such an existence is not absolutely impossible yet unless the
uniformity of nature's law breaks at those limits we maintain
that it is highly improbable.  Nevertheless we deny most
emphatically the position of agnosticism in this direction, and
as regards the solar system.  Our doctrine knows no compromise.
It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but that which
it knows to be the truth.  Therefore, we deny God both as
philosophers and as Buddhists.  We know there are planetary and
other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no such
thing as God, either personal or impersonal.  Parabrahm is not a
God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of
Avidya and Maya, ignora nce based upon the great delusion.  The
word "God" was invented to designate the unknown cause of those
effects which man has either admired or dreaded without
understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to
prove what we claim - ie the knowledge of that cause and causes
we are in a position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind
them.

The idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we
have but one thing in common with theologies - we reveal the
infinite.  But while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed
from the infinite and limitless space, duration and motion,
material, natural, sensible and known (to us at least) cause, the
theists assign them spiritual, super-natural and unitelligible
and un-known causes.  The God of the Theologians is simply an
imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach expreses it- a power
which has never yet manifested iteself.  Our chief aim is to
deliver humanity of this nightmnare, to teach man virtue for its
own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of
leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the
direct cause of nearly all human misery.  Pantheistic we may be
called - agnostic NEVER.  If people are willing to accept and to
regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its
eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic
misnomer.  But then they will have to say with Spinoza that there
is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance than God;
or as that famous amd unfortunate philosopher says in his 14th
propostion, "praeter Deum neque dari neque concepi potest
substantia" - and thus become Pantheists ..  who but a Theologian
nursed on mystery and the most absurd supernaturalism can imagine
a self existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent
outside the manifested boundless universe.  The word infinite is
but a negative which excludes the idea of bounds.  It is evident
that a being independent and omnipresent cannot be limited by
anything which is outsidse of himself; that there can be nothing
exterior to himsellf- not even vacuum, then where is there rooom
for matter? for that manifested universe even though the latter
limited.  If we ask the theist is your God vacuum, space or
matter.  they will reply no.  And yet they hold that their God
penetrates matter though he is not himself matter.  When we speak
of our One LIfe we also say that it penetrates, nay is the
essence of every atom of matter; & that therefore it not only has
correspondence with matter, but has all its properties likewise,
etc.  - hence is material, is matter itself.  How can
intelligence proceed or emantate from non-intelligence- you kept
asking last year.  How could a highly intelligent humanity, man
the crown of reason, by evolved out of blind unintelligent law or
force! But once we reason on that line, I may ask in my turn, how
could congenital idiots, non-reasoning animals, and the rest of
"creation" have been created by or evoluted from, absolute
Wisdom, if the latter is a thinking intelligent being, the author
& ruler of the Universe? How? says Dr.  Clarke in his examination
of the proof of the existence of the Divinity.  "God who hath
mada the eye, shall he not see? God who hath made the ear shall
he not hear?" But according to this mode of reasoning they would
have to admit that in creating an idiot God is an idiot; that he
who made so many irrational beings, so many physical and moral
monsters, must be an irrational being...

..We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life
is identical with that of the Adwaitees with regard to Parabrahm.
And no true philosophically brained Adwaitee will ever call
himself an agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and
identical in every respect with the universal life and soul - the
macrocosm is the microcosm and he knows that there is no God
apart from himself, no creator as no being.Having found Gnosis we
cannot turn our backs on it and become agnostics.

...  Were we to admit that even the highest Dyan Chohans are
liable to err under a delusion, then there would be no reality
for us indeed and the occult sciences would be as great a a
chimera as that God.  If there is an absurdity in denying that
which we do not know it is still more exctravagant to assign to
it unknown laws.

According to logic "nothing" is that of which everything can
truly be denied and nothing can truly be affirmed.  The idea
therefore either of a finite or infinite nothing is a
contradiction in terms.  And yet according to the theologians
"God, the self existent being is a most simple, unchangeable,
incorruptible being; without parts, figure, motion, divisibility,
or any other such properties as we find in matter.

for all such things so plainly and necessarily imply finiteness
in their very notion and are utterly inconsistent with complete
infinity." Therefore the God here offered to the adoration of the
XIXth century lacks every quality upon which man's mind is
capable of fixing any judgment.  What is this in fact but a being
of whom they can affirm nothing that is not instantly
contradicted.; Their own Bible the Revelation destroys all the
moral perceptions they heap upon him, unless indeed they call
those qualities perfections that every other man's reason and
common sense call imperfections, odious vices and brutal
wickedness.  Nay more he who reads our Buddhist sciptures written
for the superstitious masses will fail to find in them a demon so
vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so stupid as the celestial
tyrant upon whom the Christians prodigally lavish their servile
worship and on whom their theologians heap those perfections that
are contradiacted on every page of their Bible.  Truly and
veritably your theology has created her God but to destroy him
piecemeal.  Your church is the fabulous Saturn, who begets
children but to devour them.