Illuminated Brahmanism

Front matter

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THET

E THEOSOPJIY.

Chapter I. The Original Significance Of The Doctrine Of Eeincae- Nation

The original doctrine of one God.— Spirits come from this Being. — He never taught that spirit return to Om destroyed the individuality. — The companionship of spirits determined by the grade of their development. — When the planet once is able to produce a Buddha it ever after is able to produce others. — India's decline through substitution of the perverted for the original ideas. — The equality of the sexes in Brahminism.

Chapter II. The Wisdom Of The Gods

The original idea. — The visible gods. — The spirits of men. — Themistake of supposing the spirits of undeveloped mortals to be the wisdom gods. — The deceptive voices that speak from the shrines in the name of the great Brahma. — The Christian god only a Buddha. — The savage character of the early European peoples. — Egyptian materiality. — The eternal evolution of spirit. — Om alone to be worthy of worship.

Chapter III. The Wisdom Of The Sacked Caste In Ancient Days

The Brahmin caste the repositories of intellectual and spiritual wisdom. — External rites no safeguard against declension in spiritual wisdom. — Asceticism a failure in producing spiritual enlightenment. — The Buddhahood always a part of the Brahmin doctrine. — The sacred caste have lost the spiritual knowledge. — The symbols, mere expressions for the instruction of the unlearned. — The Brahmo Somaj. — Spiritual knowledge followa the law of evolution.

VI CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. The Wisdom Of The Divine Word

Dm the Logos of the Greeks. — Brahm, the god of earth, as a creator of planets. — Vishnu the preserving power of life ou the planet. — Siva, the power of death. — The Christian travesty on the Hindoo Triad, — The Greek philosophers familiar with the meaning of the word. — The Christian world in the dark as to its meaning. — The barbaric character of its people. — The bloody theology abhorrent to the Hindoo. — The Om was never embodied in any one Avatar. — The incompetency of the Christian clergy to teach India. — The spiritual birth of the nations of the West not yet fully accomplished.

Chapter V. The Coming Of The Buddha To All, Nations

The Buddha state a condition of spiritual evolution. — The preparation of the mother's mentality. — Buddhas are not incarnations of developed spirits, but more perfect evolutions of mental life. — They are in sympathy with the better developed minds in spirit life. — When they pass to spirit life they should not be worshiped. — Gautama, the last of the great Buddhas. — He should have taught the doctrine in its purity. — The reason why the Buddha light does not come to the present priesthood of earth.

Chapter VI. The Coming Of The Missionaries

The spiritual light of Europe imperfect. — The conceit of the Christian world. — The East the true source of the religious systems of earth. — The invisible foe of the missionary. — Egypt not high in the grade of spirituality.— Greece and Rome.— The brutality of Romish thought. — The ignorance of Protestant teachers. — They brought back the transmitted light of the age of Gautama.— The missions are part of a great spiritual movement. — The release of the spirit hosts from their bondage to the ideas of earth.

Chapter VII. The Influx Of Oriental Ideas Among The Western Nations

The rise of the spiritual movement in Europe and America.— The opposition of the Christian priesthood.— Their ignorance and degradation.— Theii- inordinate pride and vanity. —The break-

CONTENTS. VH,

ing of the chains of fear. — The treachery of the priestly class.

— The irruption of tlie ignorant spirits of the European heavens. — The impregnability of Christian superstition. — The source of a spiritual influx of a true order. — Its effect upon America.

CHAPTER YIII.

THE TEUE HISTOKY OF THE CHEISTIAN'S GOD.

The Avatars of India. — The Messianic prophecies. — Joshua, the original of the Christian Jesus. — His death at the hands of the priesthood. — His return as a spirit. — The introduction of Buddhism. — The combination of the two teachers. — The Christian priesthood in spirit life. — India holds the key to the problem.,

— The true light.

Chapter IX. The Teue Theosophy

The religious reform of the Unitarian separation from the orthodox interpretation of the godhead. — Thetheosophy of SakyaMuni. — The mixture of the Egyptian ideality with it. ^ The closing of the doors of spiritual influx by the Christian fathers. — The attitude of tlie church toward spiritual science. — The Buddhahood and' Theosophy. — The fallacious thought of the Christian world regarding it. — True Tlieosophy teaches the ultimate redemption of all spirits througli evolution. — Pantheism.

Chapter X. The Symbolism Of Axcient Woeship

The ignorance of the missionaries. — The ball and cross the same symbol as the phallus. — The images of the lesser gods. — The true signification of all symbols. — The Jewish scriptures a copy of the Zoroastrian doctrines and laws of Menu of India. — The saints in Christian churches. — The treatment accorded to all who have spiritvial gifts by the Christian system. — Its eftect in the Christian heavens. — The deception of the priesthood and ministry in the Christian wprld.

Chapter XI

THE EKEOE OF THE DOCTEINE OF EEINCA.ENATION AS TAUGHT BY THE THEOSOPHISTS OF EAETH.

Planetary life the inceptive life of the spiritual entity. — Prema■^ ture removal to be deprecated. — Elementals and elementaries

Vlll CONTENTS.

only spirits prematurely detached from the body. — Their magnetic relations with powers in the form. — A good Karma not not to be gained by reincarnation. — The better the conditions the better the spiritual unfoldment. — -The necessity of magnetic attachment to earth to perfect the fomi powers. — The necessity of planets to give a perfect expression to spiritual entities. — The influx of modern Hindoo thought fraught with danger. — The fallacy of all forms of creedalism. — Fanaticism and credulity the chief characteristics of the movement. — Xeither Hindoo nor Christian theology of the present age reliable.

CHAPTEK XII.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SPIRITUAL ENTITY.

India the first nation to develop a true scheme of metaphysics. — The present fictitious drapery of the subject. — The segregation of the Infinite Spirit. — Nature produces through planetary relations the essences of the elements in form. — The elemental theory not strictly true. — Man follows the law of evolution the same as the reptilian and mammalian types. — The sacred character of all life. — Planetary conditions as essential to the evolution of conscious entity in spirit as to produce the crystalliue or cell relations of the elements. — The office of India in spiritualizing the philosophy of Greece and Egypt.

CHAPTER XIIL

THE FRATERNIZATION OF THE ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL NATIONS.

England's conquest of India. — The light of spiritual wisdom that India acquired in the ancient days. — The influx of the present theosophy. — Its defects. — The true birth of the spirit in the sphere of intellectual and moral purity. — Its possibility of attainment while in the mortal environment. — Keligious systems perish when they fail to relieve human needs of the soul. — Intellectual spirituality to come from India. — The relations between America and India in the future. — America the child of India in spirit. — All nations to. partake of the gifts of the spiritual life. — Sketch of the life of the great teacher called Brahma.

POETRY.

The Coming of Brahma.

IInTEODUOTOEY.

In writing of tlie mysteries of the ancient faith, I ask the reader to remember that it has been many centuries since I was upon earth in mortal form, and that in spirit even I have been aware that the declension of knowledge has been proportionate to the perversion of the ideas which I once taught to the multitudes of India, rather than to any special class ; but as the spiritual father of many peoples, I have spoken to all races, so to the Brahmin priesthood of Benares would I speak with special emphasis, warning them that they must broaden their conceptions of the scope of creative power, and recognize the universal principles that enable all souls to be through creative processes.

India has power of intellect in excess of all the mentality of earth. She has preserved the form of Divine knowledge, although she has perverted its application, and from the sacred circle which is now open, according to the prophecy of the Vedas, the great Brahma,* speaks

* The great Brahma, who figures so extensively in Indian theol - ogy, was a teacher whose early history is involved in much obscu - rity, he should not be confounded with the god Brahma, (who is the central figure of the Hindoo triad,) but was a great teacher of the primitive faith of Zarathustra, the ancient Persian sage. From the system of Oriental metaphor, the application of Brahma to their great teachers seems to imply that the minds that were wiser than

X INTRODUCTORY.

to all the nations of the earth, instructing them in a knowledge of the ancient doctrines, as well as opening new truths to their comprehension.

Buddha has spoken to the Sudras, but Brahma sends his words of warning to the highest caste of India, that they may know that the great cycle* is again complete, and the ancient teachers of Persia and Hindoostan are again upon earth speaking to the souls of all the words of wisdom and eternal life.

the multitude were regarded as specially favored of Brahm, and thus obtained the appellation of Brahmas. The great Brahma probably preceded, or possibly was the original, from whom the Hebrews took their ancestral Abram, for the name has the identical root word in both cases. — B.

*The return of the period when the spiritual world is to be opened anew to earth, that the ancient (h.-ctrines may be declared directly, — B.

CHAPTEK I.

THE ORIGINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF RE-INCARNATION.

From the realm of creative energy in spirit, there comes to the world of physical expression a power of thought which fails to find full significance in the poverty of human language. It is limited in its range of appreciation by the undeveloped mind of earth, and unless specially guarded by repeated explanations, becomes subject to a construction that is often diametrically opposite to its original meaning.

Among the many primitive ideas that belonged to the early religious status of India, was the doctrine of the incarnation of spirit, and among the lamentable results of misunderstanding it is the midnight darkness of soul that envelops that unfortunate people who, by the perverted language of what was once a great truth, and is now, are victims of a malign superstition.

If there is any one blamable for this perversion, it is that priesthood that in my name has taught a doctrine, which as I taught it was indeed true, but which under its perverted form has become a source of the most pestilent spiritual mischief.

I taught that One Glod alone was Supreme, and the true object of adoration and praise. I taught that from this Being proceeded all that had life and existence in the world of spirit or mortal being. I taught that to this Being all who passed from physical life would return, but I never taught that returning to the 2 presence spiritual of the great Om* would result in the annihilation of the individual or his inability to return to earth as a spirit.

I did teach that all spirits could return to earth to manifest, and influence mortals, and I also taught that such a return would be determined by the mental bias of the individual. If of a low order, his affiliations spiritual would be to the companionship of beasts and reptiles, for I knew that all life of whatever order had its spiritual counterpart in the invisible world.

When I say I knew, it was because in my experiences in the study of spiritual truths I was observant of all the spheres of spiritual unfoldment, and I saw that not only did man have an immortal nature, but that the lower orders of life had their immortality likewise. So I forbade the destruction of life, although for many generations it was not obeyed by my professed disciples.

When I taught of the nature of eternal life and the methods whereby spiritual happiness was to be secured, I found the same obstacles to a perfect comprehension of the ideas that all reformers find in all ages of the world. There were those who could not understand how a spirit could come to earth without being re-embodied in physical life, and there were many who could not imagine that any life could be which was beyond the cognizance of the physical senses.

*The Sanscrit Om should be translated by the equivaleut All, or the complete powers of existence. It has been made the subject of much controversy, but the subtle Hindoo mind grasjHMl the signification of the all pervading source of being with marvelous a<jcuracy. Brahm is not Om, but the creator of the worlds, while Om is the ruling power of the universe itself, and greater than Brahm or the lesser gods.— B.

THE TRUE THEOSOPHY.

The mental development of the masses then was as imperfect as it is now, but there was not then, as now, among the mental teachers of the people, an abnormal development of the imagination, which has since then led to an absurd interpretation of the doctrine of metempsychosis.

To have cited my ideas of the spiritual nature as a basis for the degradation of the soul of man to the brutal realm, would have drawn from me a sharp rebuke, for I taught that the pathway of the race was upward not downward, and that the world of spirit held in itself the power to emancipate all souls from the thralldom of spiritual slavery.

To suppose, therefore, that in the statements which I left on record as to the nature of the soul there is or ever was any basis for the present theory of transmigration, is to pervert a great truth until it has become a most grievous error. There is one view of the subject of reincarnation that I privately taught, and have often endeavored to impress upon the intelligent Brahmins for many generations, which is this: Whenever any great soul arises upon earth, manifesting the attributes of wisdom and love, such a soul does not lose its power of expression upon earth, for there will ever be correlative spirits born there, through which the higher developed mind in spirit can give expression to its own existence. I might even go farther than this; for whenever the earth itself is able to evolve the intellectual or moral power of a Gautama* or Plato, it will ever after be -able to produce equally fine specimens of soul evolution, if not their superiors: and in that sense there will ever be re-

*The great Hindoo philosopher called Buddha, the same often called Sakva Muni.

THE TRUE THEOSOrHY.

incarnations of the essential spirit of a G-autama or Plato, although as individuals they can only return through the power of the spiritual transfer of thought, which enables them to register upon the mentality of mortals the wisdom that pertains to the world of developed mind.*

There has been a sad decline of spiritual power of a high character in India by the mistaken ideality of the nature of the soul. All souls are the offspring of planetary conditions, and originate in the concentration of forces which enter into planetary construction in individualization. They are evolutions of the planet, and take their inception there. They are not elementary or elementals in form awaiting incarnation previous to conception and birth in physical life. The planet is the gestating stage of all souls as well as bodies, and the ideas that are now taught as Hindoo theories of the origin of spirits belong to the lower rather than higher schools of Hindoo thought.!

Understanding this, therefore, the moral status of India may be uplifted by the idea that reincarnation and metempsychosis are not to be hereafter taught as truths in the old sense, but rather by their true explanation

* This statement sheds a world of light upon the original doctrines of transmigration and reincarnation of the spirit. It is singular that such a view of it should have been lost or obscured, but the probability is tliat in the lapse of ages Hindoo theologians, like their Christian imitators, sought to improve upon the original doctrines. They have made a strange medley of what was a simple fact in the evolution of the spiritual nature, and we have in the return of this spirit the corrective of this gigantic superstition that holds India in the mazes of error. — B.

f Here is a staggering blow to the theory taught by man> Thcosophists as to the nature of spirit, and a i)ositive contradiction to

THE TRUE THEOSOPHY.

the world can again take from India the knowledge of a spiritual philosophy that shall serve to elevate the nations of the earth above the plane of physical sense, and, at the same time, raise its intellectual status to a realization of the principle that once made India the mental light of the earth.

There is one effect of the doctrine of reincarnation of the souls of the dead that is felt with direful power in the spiritual world of India. Myriads who have left the physical life hover over the mortals of that country seeking for opportunities to become re-embodied, in order that they may realize the promised relief from their imperfect development in the former earth life. They are earth-bound to a degree that infects the mental atmosphere of its people with almost hopeless despair, for however intense may be their desire, they are never able to obtain the fancied reincarnation.

They indeed seek the presence of opportunities innumerable through mental impress of the sexes, but beyond inciting an abnormal sexual impulse they effect nothing toward producing the result desired, and in place of a new life in the physical world they only succeed in debasing their spiritual natures by recurrence to the sensations and thoughts of earth. India has suffered intensely in spiritual declension because of this, and many of its people have really become seri-

that school of Spiritualists who are ever prating of elenientals and reincarnation. With the higher thought from the spirit sages of India as a corrective, it is to be hoped that the misuse of these terms will pass away under the light of a truer interpretation of the Hindoo thought. Spirits or mortals who teach the existence of souls apart from planetary evolution need more instruction ere they become teachers. — B.

ously retarded in their progress toward an intellectual spirituality. *

In place of the profound thought that once characterized the Brahmin priesthood in the days when Pythagoras,^ of Grreece, and the other sages of the West journeyed to India to learn of the science of the soul, the sacred race has degenerated in its spiritual wisdom to the level of earthly cunning and intellectual subtlety, but in so doing has closed the eyes of the spirit to that higher light which should ever be the distinguishing power of the true follower of Brahm.

It is not in anger nor in disdain that I allude to the present status of the Hindoo mind which reflects so strongly the effects of perverted teaching of the primitive faith. The spirit of India has been broken by subservience to the Brahmin caste, but the priesthood has not been able in spite of its prerogatives to preserve its spiritual freedom. It has lost the vitality of the spirit of the thought which made Brahminism the controlling power of India, and, through its mental brilliancy, the governing force of the nations of the ancient world.

The distinct province of the primitive faith was to illuminate the mind of man with all knowledge. Its

*This explains why the spiritual life of luclia has so deteriorated through a false interpretation of the ideas of her great teachers. The spiritual life being an evolution, and its recipients, failing to obtain true ideas relating to it while upon the earth, crowd back to obtain the promised relief, which nature denying, plunges them into chaos and despair. By thought impress upon their mortal companions, they transfer this mental state to them also, so that the whole nation beconu's subject to helpless hoj)elessness. — B.

* Pythagoras, an ancient Greek phil()soi)l;er who went to India to complete his studies in spiritual science.

THE TRUE THEOSOPHY.

cosmogony was based upon the evolirfcionary powers of nature. The egg which floated in the vast waters aver which Brahm brooded, and from which was born the earth, was only a metaphor of speech which the sages of the modern age recognize as the source of all created form, and from which all visible life proceeds.*

All the transmutations and changes which material life exhibits were observed by the teachers of the ancient faith, and spiritual life, in the time of my earth life, was not disassociated with that life that is the basis of soul evolution from the material relations of being. There was as much recognition of the feminine nature in creative power as of the masculine, and Brahma, the world builder, had his soul mate in Yutiv or Saravasti, the mother of his different children.

Brahma might construct a world by manipulation of the chemical and mechanical forces, but he could not people it alone, and woman, in Hindoo mythology, stands equal with Brahma, if she does not grade higher, in the work of creating beings having an eternal nature.

For the world may dissolve and pass away forever, but the soul life that has come from its life is to endure in sentient existence through the countless cycles of

*This interpretation of the old cosmogony, as to all life coming from the egg, is another proof that the Oriental world had veiled in metaphor some of the great scientific discoveries of the ancient sages. It is a straightforward admittance that evolution is the method of planetary processes, and the wonder is that some of our modern scholars of Indian literature cannot give the credit to these master minds of the ancient world for their great insight into the works of nature. Probably the supreme egotism of the Western mind, and its ignorance of Oriental methods of convey hi g knowledge, are sufficient for the light esteem in which their ideas are held. — B.

THE TEUE THEOSOPHY.

being. Therefore, let the priesthood of Benares, as well as all through the borders of India, change the current of thought relative to the subject of the reincarnation of the sj^irit. It will not return again to reenter the sphere of embodied life, although it may cling to earth with the tenacity of a perverted imagination for centuries. It cannot progress toward the grade of an intelligent understanding of creative power as long as it seeks to re-enter the sphere of earth embodiment, and its purification can only be attained by rising above the conceptions of perverted thought or the atmosphere of sensuality or deception.

Like as the father pities the wanderings of his wayward children, do the risen hosts of India regard the spiritual declensions of the sacred order who have mistaken the perverted ideas of man for the revelations of the gods.

Proud and haughty in their fancied security, have the leaders of the Brahminical faith sought to monopolize the spiritual light of India for the sacred caste; but aside from the cultivation of the mental power that belongs to the plane of earth, they are unable to obtain the greater evidence that belongs to the pro\ince of spiritual unfoldment.

From the heights of mental insio-ht in the world of spirit, we see all that transpires in the temples and sacred circles, and if the gods have withdrawn from the shrines, and the oracles are filled with the voices of craft and deception, it is because in the plenitude of power the Brahmin priesthood has failed to preserve intact the spirit of the Vedantic writings.

O, priesthood of Benares, return to the faith of the fathers. How often I taught the ancient disciples the sacred character of all life, and that the Eternal Om was not to be mocked with frivolous pretensions. I warned them that unless sincerity and truth was a basis of their faith they would fail to attain the heights of eternal peace or absorption in the Supreme Brahm.

My w^ords have proven true, and in the declension from that spiritual exaltation which once marked the Brahmin as the son of divine wisdom, is seen the superstitious cunning that gives the Brahmin name contempt in the minds of the intelligent of other nations.

You pride yourselves upon the caste restrictions that have preserved your blood pure throughout all generations. You look with scorn upon the lower castes as unable to attain the heights of spiritual wisdom which you claim as a birthright, but you fail to grasp the true significance of all spiritual growth, for it comes to the soul in its weakness of the flesh as readily as to the spirit strong in the mental acquirements of countless generations.

Did not the god of your fathers speak, saying, '-I am the father of all flesh?" Whence then do ye aver that you have a special claim upon the consideration of eternal wisdom, or that to you are given special privileges above the other sons of Brahm, who equally with you are recipients of his bounty?

Not thus did I teach in the ancient days, and not thus do I teach now, but in wisdom and purity of life is to be found your redemption from the power of earthly imperfections.

Sons of Brahma, you are not wise in this. In looking for the return of the ancient wisdom, seek the inner light of the spirit. Dense darkness broods over the nation from the mountains to the dark waters, but Inclia that once lighted the Western world by the torch of a transcendent spiritual illumination has yet a mission of power and grandeur that shall be felt upon the earth forevermore.

She is not dead, but sleeping, and her priesthood are not beyond the power of a spiritual awakening that shall place her in the front of human progress far above the plane occupied by the priests of the Western world; for they have the blood of centuries of intellectual culture in their veins, and when they rise above the superstitions engendered by a false interpretation of the ancient doctrines, they will then be ready to act upon a plane of spirituality that the disciples of the Christian world dare not approach.

O, India, the pearl of the nations! thy glory may be obscured for a season, but as thou based thy civilization upon the eternity of the spirit thy nationality cannot perish, for thy glory is immortality. Earthly palaces and temples fall and decay, but in the invisible guardianship of thy spiritual children thou hast the guerdon of perpetual growth and stability. Egyptian, Grecian and Roman splendor have vanished in the night of eternal oblivion, but the land where Pythagoras and Apollonius * learned the secrets of the soul blooms forth afresh as each succeeding generation seeks as they sought the knowledge immortal at the shrines of a people who never have lost beyond recall the power to penetrate the secrets of the eternal world.

It is India that rules the mind world of Europe and America. It is India that gave them all that is valua-

* A great spiritual teacher born atTyaiia in Ca]ii)ado(Ma about the beginning of the Christian era. See Encyclopedia Brittannica for full account of his life.

THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. H

ble in their systems of mental and spiritual culture, although they know it not, and with childish greed and impatience demand a recognition from the Oriental world as though they were the original discoverers of spiritual and material knowledge.

Little do they realize, in their crude material development, that when their ancestors were emerging from the wilds of primitive savagery, the sages of India had discovered the secrets of eternal existence, and formulated a system whereby knowledge of spiritual powers could be preserved for a heritage to the nations.*

Regard not, O children of the Sun, the pretensions of these children of darkness to the possession of a monopoly of spiritual knowledge. They boast of one incarnation of Vishnu f as their god, but you know that India has had its numerous incarnations of that manifestation of Divine wisdom; and you also know that India never treated her avatars with the cruelty with which they treated the only one they claim to have ever had, and which they now aver was a part of the Divine purpose in sending him into the world to atone for the sins of a savage people.

*Here the source of that wonderful philosophy which originated ill the Oriental nations is clearly set forth, and some inkling of the marvelous mentality of its authors is discernible in these sentences. While the philosophers of the West were bound in a material life-thought, and stumbled at the threshold of the gateway of spiritual knowledge, the sages of India had penetrated the inner spheres of spiritual existence, and were quite familiar with the sources of mind power. They lacked the language to express the thought in scientific terms, but they had the ideas in essence, and a true interpretation of their symbols shows how nearly mental growth follows the same channel in all ages. — B.

f The second person of the Hindoo triad, or the savior of life.

Cruel as they claim the gods of India to have been, none of them equal in savage ferocity the God of the Christian world, according to Christian theology, for their God sent His only begotten son, in order that, through death. His savage wrath might be satiated by the blood of the innocent.*