Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00287)

Richard Ihle writes,

> Thus, I was keenly interested by your passing references to Egyptian,
> Buddhist, and Hindu scriptures.  Although I realize that you said the
cyclic
> ideas were not quite "spelled out" in these places, are there some specific
> writings you have in mind which might be worthy of further study as
possible
> "H.P.B. precursors"


Hmm.  A big topic, my friend.  Most of what (little) I know about the subject
I learned from the big girl herself.  Yup, HPB.  The SECRET DOCTRINE (with
index ffrom Theos. Co.) is a pretty good reference for most of what I would
consider parallel sources -- the Corpus Hermeticum, The Gnostic writings,
Buddhist (and especially Bonpo) cosmology -- particularly the Dzogchen
material, and the Hindu cosmology which is roughly laid out in the Puranas
(Vishnu esp.) and gotten at in more detail through some of the Sanskrit
commentaries on those texts.

What would be REALLY helpful is to track down the actual MSS sources of HPB's
VOICE OF THE SILENCE (which in my opinion is the most obviously Buddhist of
all HPB's writings) as well as the Senzar (?) source for her Stanzas of
Dzyan.

Dzyan by the way is the Tibetan word for "meditation" cognate to the Sanskrit
"dhyana."  So I really do believe that most of HPB's sources lie most
directly in Tibetan Buddhism, though the Masters were not slack in tracing
out some of the parallels in other cultures.

If we can get in touch with this Kalzang Rinpoche that I wrote about last
week -- and a considerable progress has been made on that front, including
tracking down the address of the lama's monastery in Kham province Tibet --
we may find out more about Master Morya.  This would give us a little more
concrete evidence in the form of Tibetan MSS than Paul Johnson has been able
to provide in his circumstantial speculations (no insult intended, Paul, if
you are reading this).

If in fact HPB's primary sources -- and Teachers -- were Tibetan Buddhist,
the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Senzar originals should exist and turn up
eventually.  Poor David Reigle out in Colorado has a whole Institute prepared
for the arrival of the original MSS for the Stanzas of Dzyan, and I for one
agree with him that they can't be far behind.  The Kalachakra Tantra cycle
hgas remarkable parallels with a lot of the S.D., but only the outer and some
of the inner part of that cycle of texts has been revealed by the Tibetan
lama custodians.  The rest of the inner and the entire "secret" sections of
those texts remain -- to my knowledge -- inaccessible at this time.

Maybe we can chat more about parallel sources to Theosophy in private posts,
I think the list will get bored of this right quick.