Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part II- Esoteric Tenets Corroborated In Every Scripture
IN view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which from the modern scientific stand-point must seem absurd, some necessary and additional explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the Second Part of the Stanzas are even more difficult to assimilate than those which are embodied in Vol. 1, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to be questioned here, as Science will be in the Addenda (Part III.). Since our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both Materialism and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of either or of both.
The reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant quotations from various old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old as the world; and that the present work is a simple attempt to render, in modern language and in a phraseology with which the scientific and educated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as taught in certain Asiatic centres of esoteric learning. They must be accepted or rejected on their own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have been carefully compared with the corresponding theological dogmas and the modern scientific theories and speculations.
One feels a serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our age is destined to discover in each western nation even one solitary uninitiated scholar or philosopher capable of fully comprehending the spirit of archaic philosophy. Nor can one be expected to do so, before the real meaning of these terms, the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern esotericism, the words Sat and Asat, -- so freely used in the Rig-Veda, and elsewhere -- is thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to the Aryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony of the Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the average Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the "not yet existing"; for Sat is in itself neither the "existent," nor "being." SAT is the immutable, the ever present, changeless and eternal root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting.* Satis born from Asat, and ASAT is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana.
Barth started a reflection on the Rig-Veda which was meant for a stern criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original view of this archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, while criticising, that scholar revealed a truth, without being himself aware of its full importance. He premises by saying that "neither in the language nor in the thought of the Rig-Veda" has he "been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity, which so many are fain to see in it." Barth had Max Muller in his mind's eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford professor has throughout characterised the hymns of the Rig Veda, as the unsophisticated expression of the religious feeling of a pastoral innocent people. "In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths appear in their simplest and freshest form;" -- the Sanskrit scholar thinks. Barth is of a different opinion, however.
So divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the importance and intrinsic value of the Rig Veda, that those opinions become entirely biassed whichever way they incline. Thus Mr. Max Muller declares that: "Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of Greece more clearly felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the full grown and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is founded. The Veda is the real Theogony of the Aryan races, while that of Hesiod is a distorted caricature of the original image." This is a sweeping assertion, and perhaps rather unjust in its general application. But why not try to account for it? Orientalists cannot do so, for they reject the chronology of the Secret Doctrine, and could hardly admit the fact that between the Rig-Vedic hymns and Hesiod's Theogony tens of thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see that the Greek myths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the Initiates, the disciples of the gods-Hierophants, the divine ancient "sacrificers," and that disfigured by the distance, and encumbered by the exuberant growth of human profane fancy, they now stand like distorted images of stars in running waves. But if Hesiod's Cosmogony and Theogony are to be viewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the myths in the Hebrew Genesis in the sight of those, for whom they are no more divine revelation or the word of God, than Hesiod's Theogony is for Mr. Gladstone.
"The poetry it (the Rig Veda) contains appears to me, on the contrary," says Barth "to be of a singularly refined character and artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions (?) to mysticism and theosophic insight, and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated, than the poetic language of a large community." ("The Religions of India," p. xiii.)
We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the phraseology in use among the "initiated," or whether he belongs himself to such a group; for, in the latter case, he would hardly have used such language. But the above shows the remarkable disagreement between scholars even with regard to the external character of the Rig Veda. What, then, can any of the modern Sanskritists know about its internal or esoteric meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this Scripture has been compiled by INITIATES?
The whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The ancient adepts have solved the great problems of science, however unwilling modern materialism may be to admit the fact. The mysteries of Life and Death were fathomed by the great master-minds of antiquity; and if they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is because these problems formed part of the sacred mysteries; and, secondly, because they must have remained incomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If such teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in philosophy, it may be a consolation to the Theosophists to learn, on good proofs, that the speculations of modern psychologists -- whether serious Idealists, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering pseudo-Idealists -- are far more chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o'-the-wisps of materialistic imagination, of the brains that evolved them -- and no more. While they deny, we affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the sages of antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good reasons, we say: Certus sum, scio quod credidi; to which our critics reply: Credat Judaeus Apella. Neither is converted by the other, nor does such result affect even our little planet. E pur se muove!
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero, "Time destroys the speculations of man, but it confirms the judgment of nature." Let us bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the destruction of one's gods, whether they be true or false. And as theology and materialism have combined together to destroy the old gods of antiquity and seek to disfigure every old philosophical conception, it is but just that the lovers of old wisdom should defend their position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best, formed of new weapons made out of very old material.
