Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00908)

Thank you for this posting. It is good to be reminded again and again, why
we meet here.

Rudy

>Comments by MK Ramadoss:
>
>        The following message is from theos-roots. It may give some idea
>about what the "Founders" had in their mind when the TS was started. This
>letter is considered by many to be the most important letter ever received
>from the Adept Teachers as it communicates the views of the Great Master as
>regards the role of Theosophy and Theosophical Society. Many things said in
>it seems to be appropriate in 1996 as it was in 1880.
>
>===========================================================================
>=====
>Following is the post by Nicholas Weeks (and credit is due to him):
>
>
>
>
>                           THE GREAT MASTER'S LETTER
>     _________________________________________________________________
>
>     [This article was printed in Lucifer without signature as "An
>     Important Letter," prefaced by the statement that it "was circulated
>     by H.P.B. among many of her pupils, and some quotations from it have
>     been published from time to time." The Letter belongs to the early
>     days of the Theosophical Society in India and was part of the
>     correspondence received (through H.P.B.) by A. P. Sinnett and A. O.
>     Hume from the Theosophical Adepts. His Adept-teacher introduced the
>     letter to Mr. Sinnett as "an abridged version of the view of the
>     Chohan on the T.S. from his own words as given last night"--in reply
>     to objections about the conduct of the Society and especially to the
>     "Brotherhood plank."
>
>     Although the text of the complete letter was not published until
>     after H.P. Blavatsky and Wm. Q. Judge had left the scene, both
>     provided a setting for the statements made, and both quoted in their
>     magazines some passages for particular attention.--Eds.]
>***************************
>
>   The doctrine we promulgate being the only true one, must--supported by
>   such evidence as we are preparing to give--become ultimately
>   triumphant, like every other truth. Yet it is absolutely necessary to
>   inculcate it gradually; enforcing its theories (unimpeachable facts
>   for those who know) with direct inference, deduced from and
>   corroborated by the evidence furnished by modern exact science. That
>   is why Col. H. S. Olcott, who works to revive Buddhism, may be
>   regarded as one who labours in the true path of Theosophy, far more
>   than any man who chooses as his goal the gratification of his own
>   ardent aspirations for occult knowledge. Buddhism, stripped of its
>   superstition, is eternal truth; and he who strives for the latter is
>   striving for eternal truth; and he who strives for the latter is
>   striving for Theo-Sophia, divine wisdom, which is a synonym of truth.
>   For our doctrines to practically react on the so-called moral code, or
>   the ideas of truthfulness, purity, self-denial, charity, etc. , we
>   have to preach and popularize a knowledge of Theosophy. It is not the
>   individual and determined purpose of attaining Nirvana--the
>   culmination of all knowledge and absolute wisdom, which is after all
>   only an exalted and glorious selfishness--but the self-sacrificing
>   pursuit of the best means to lead on the right path our neighbour, to
>   cause to benefit by it as many of our fellow-creatures as we possibly
>   can, which constitutes the true Theosophist.
>
>   The intellectual portion of mankind seems to be fast dividing into two
>   classes: the one unconsciously preparing for itself long periods of
>   temporary annihilation or states of non-consciousness, owing to the
>   deliberate surrender of intellect, and its imprisonment in the narrow
>   grooves of bigotry and superstition--a process which cannot fail to
>   lead to the utter deformation of the intellectual principle; the other
>   unrestrainedly indulging its animal propensities with the deliberate
>   intention of submitting to annihilation pure and simple, in case of
>   failure, and to millenniums of degradation after physical dissolution.
>   Those intellectual classes, reacting upon the ignorant masses--which
>   they attract, and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to
>   be followed--degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and
>   guide. Between degrading superstition and still more degrading brutal
>   materialism, the White Dove of Truth has hardly room whereon to rest
>   her weary unwelcome feet.
>
>   It is time that Theosophy should enter the arena. The sons of
>   Theosophists are more likely to become in their turn Theosophists than
>   anything else. No messenger of the truth, no prophet, has ever
>   achieved during his life-time a complete triumph--not even Buddha. The
>   Theosophical Society was chosen as the cornerstone, the foundation of
>   the future religions of humanity. To achieve the proposed object, a
>   greater, wiser, and especially a more benevolent intermingling of the
>   high and the low, the alpha and the omega of society, was determined
>   upon. The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of
>   fellowship to the dark nations, to call the poor despised "nigger"
>   brother. This prospect may not smile for all, but he is no Theosophist
>   who objects to this principle.
>
>   In view of the ever-increasing triumph, and at the same time the
>   misuse, of free thought and liberty (the universal reign of Satan,
>   Eliphas Levi would have called it), how is the combative natural
>   instinct of man to be restrained from inflicting hitherto unheard-of
>   cruelty and enormous tyranny, injustice, etc., if not through the
>   soothing influence of brotherhood, and of the practical application of
>   Buddha's esoteric doctrines?
>
>   For everyone knows that total emancipation from the authority of the
>   one all-pervading power, or law--called God by the priests, and
>   Buddha, Divine Wisdom and enlightenment or Theosophy, by the
>   philosophers of all ages--means also the emancipation from that of
>   human law. Once unfettered and delivered from their deadweight of
>   dogmatism, interpretations, personal names, anthropomorphic
>   conceptions, and salaried priests, the fundamental doctrines of all
>   religions will be proved identical in their esoteric meaning. Osiris,
>   Krishna, Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and
>   the same royal highway to final bliss--Nirvana.
>
>   Mystical Christianity teaches Self-redemption through one's own
>   seventh principle, the liberated Paramatma, called by the one Christ,
>   by others Buddha; this is equivalent to regeneration, or rebirth in
>   spirit, and it therefore expounds just the same truth as the Nirvana
>   of Buddhism. All of us have to get rid of our own Ego, the illusory,
>   apparent self, to recognize our true Self, in a transcendental divine
>   life. But if we would not be selfish, we must strive to make other
>   people see that truth, and recognize the reality of the transcendental
>   Self, the Buddha, the Christ, or God of every preacher. This is why
>   even esoteric Buddhism is the surest path to lead men towards the one
>   esoteric truth.
>
>   As we find the world now, whether Christian, Mussulman, or Pagan,
>   justice is disregarded, and honour and mercy are both flung to the
>   winds. In a word, how--since the main objects of the Theosophical
>   Society are misinterpreted by those who are most willing to serve us
>   personally--are we to deal with the rest of mankind? with that curse
>   known as the struggle for life, which is the real and most prolific
>   parent of most woes and sorrows, and all crimes? Why has that struggle
>   become almost the universal scheme of the universe? We
>   answer,--because no religion, with the exception of Buddhism, has
>   taught a practical contempt for this earthly life; while each of them,
>   always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and
>   damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we
>   find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian
>   countries, most prevalent in Europe and America. It weakens in the
>   Pagan lands, and is nearly unknown among Buddhist populations. In
>   China during famine, and where the masses are most ignorant of their
>   own or of any religion, it was remarked that those mothers who
>   devoured their children belonged to localities where there was none;
>   and where the Bonzes alone had the field, the population died with the
>   utmost indifference. Teach the people to see that life on this earth,
>   even the happiest, is but a burden and an illusion; that it is our own
>   Karma [the cause producing the effect] that is our own judge--our
>   Saviour in future lives--and the great struggle for life will soon
>   lose its intensity. There are no penitentiaries in Buddhist lands, and
>   crime is nearly unknown among the Buddhist Tibetans. The world in
>   general, and Christendom especially, left for 2,000 years to the
>   regime of a personal God, as well as to its political and social
>   systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure.
>
>   If the Theosophists say we have nothing to do with all this; the lower
>   classes and the inferior races (those of India, for instance, in the
>   conception of the British) cannot concern us, and must manage as they
>   can, what becomes of our fine professions of benevolence,
>   philanthropy, reform, etc.? Are those professions a mockery? And if a
>   mockery, can ours be the true path? Shall we devote ourselves to
>   teaching a few Europeans--fed on the fat of the land, many of them
>   loaded with the gifts of blind fortune--the rationale of bell-ringing,
>   of cup-growing, of the spiritual telephone, and astral body formation,
>   and leave the teeming millions of the ignorant, of the poor and
>   oppressed, to take care of themselves, and of their hereafter, as best
>   they can? Never! perish rather the Theosophical Society with both its
>   hapless Founders, than that we should permit it to become no better
>   than an academy of magic, and a hall of occultism! That we, the
>   devoted followers of that spirit incarnate of absolute self-sacrifice,
>   of philanthropy, divine kindness, as of all the highest virtues
>   attainable on this earth of sorrow, the man of men, Gautama Buddha,
>   should ever allow the Theosophical Society to represent the embodiment
>   of selfishness, the refuge of the few with no thought in them for the
>   many, is a strange idea, my brothers!
>
>   Among the few glimpses obtained by Europeans of Tibet and its mystical
>   hierarchy of perfect Lamas, there was one which was correctly
>   understood and described. The incarnations of the Bodhisattva
>   Padmapani or Avolokiteshvara, of Tsong-ka-pa, and that of Amitabha,
>   relinquished at their death the attainment of Buddhahood--i.e., the
>   summum bonum of bliss, and of individual personal felicity--that
>   they might be born again and again for the benefit of mankind. In
>   other words, that they might be again and again subjected to misery,
>   imprisonment in flesh, and all the sorrows of life, provided that they
>   by such a self-sacrifice, repeated throughout long and weary
>   centuries, might become the means of securing salvation and bliss in
>   the hereafter for a handful of men chosen among but one of the many
>   planetary races of mankind.
>
>   And it is we, the humble disciples of these perfect Lamas, who are
>   expected to allow the Theosophical Society to drop its noblest title,
>   that of the Brotherhood of Humanity, to become a simple school of
>   philosophy! No, no, good brothers, you have been labouring under the
>   mistake too long already. Let us understand each other. He who does
>   not feel competent to grasp the noble idea sufficiently to work for
>   it, need not undertake a task too heavy for him. But there is hardly a
>   Theosophist in the whole Society unable to effectually help it by
>   correcting erroneous impressions of outsiders, by himself actually
>   propagating this idea. Oh! for noble and unselfish men to help us
>   effectually in that divine task! All our knowledge, past and present,
>   would not be sufficient to repay him.
>
>   Having explained our views and aspirations, I have but a few words
>   more to add. The true religion and philosophy offer the solution of
>   every problem. That the world is in such a bad condition, morally, is
>   a conclusive evidence that none of its religions and philosophies,
>   those of the civilized races less than any other, has ever possessed
>   the truth. The right and logical explanations on the subject of the
>   problems of the great dual principles, right and wrong, good and evil,
>   liberty and despotism, pain and pleasure, egotism and altruism, are as
>   impossible to them now as they were 1880 years ago. They are as far
>   from the solution as they were; but to these problems there must be
>   somewhere a consistent solution, and if our doctrines will show their
>   competence to offer it, then the world will be the first to confess
>   that there must be the true philosophy, the true religion, the true
>   light, which gives truth and nothing but the truth.
>
>  [Lucifer, August, 1896]
>*******************************
>
>--
>Nicholas <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles
>"Morality is water that cleanses stains of wrongdoing; it is moonlight
>cooling hot passions. As a snowy peak in the midst of men, its noble
>presence peacefully unites all beings."  Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419)

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