Esoteric Buddhism

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Introduction To The American Edition

This book was written in the early part of 1883, and now that I am venturing to recommend it to public notice afresh in the latter part of 1884, after three English editions have passed through the press, I find myself in possession of much additional information bearing on many of the problems dealt with. But I am glad to be able to say that such later teaching as I have yet received only reveals incompleteness in my original conceptions of the esoteric doctrine, — no material error so far. Indeed, I am happy enough to have received, from the great adept himself from whom I obtained my instruction in the first instance, the assurance that the book as it now stands is a sound and trustworthy statement of the scheme of Nature as understood by the initiates of occult science, which may have to be a good deal developed in future, if the interest it excites is keen enough to constitute an efficient demand for further teaching of this kind on the part of the world at large, but will never have to be remodeled or apologized for.

Further than this, the reception of the book in India has shown that the doctrines thus for the first time set forth in a coherent and straightforward way are recognized, when thus stated, by various schools of Oriental philosophy as consonant with their fundamental views. A Brahman Hindoo, writing in the Indian magazine, "The Theosophist," for June, 1884, criticises the present volume as departing unnecessarily from accepted Sanskrit nomenclature ; but his objection merely is that I have given unfamiliar names in some cases to ideas which are already expressed in Hindoo sacred writings, and that I have done too much honor to the religious system commonly known as Buddhism, by representing that as more closely allied with the esoteric doctrine than any other. " The popular wisdom of the majority of the Hindoos to this day," says my Brahman critic, " is more or less tinged with the esoteric doctrines taught in Mr. Sinnett's book, misnamed 'Esoteric Buddhism,' while there is not a single hamlet or village in the whole of India in which people are not more or less acquainted with the sublime tenets of the Vedanta philosophy. . . . The effects of Karma in the next

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birth, the enjoyment of its fruits, good or evil, in a subjective or spiritual state of existence prior to the re-incarnation of the spiritual monad in this or any other world, the loitering of the unsatisfied souls or human shells in the earth (Kamaloca), the pralayic and manwantaric periods, . . . are not only intelligible but are even familiar to a great many Hindoos, under names different from those made use of by the author of ' Esoteric Buddhism.' " So much the better from the point of view of Western readers, to whom it is a matter of indifference whether the exoteric Hindoo or Buddhist religion is nearest to absolutely true spiritual science, which should certainly bear no name that appears to wed it to any one faith in the external world more than to another. All that we in the West can be anxious for is to arrive at a clear understanding as to the essential principles of that science, and if we find the principles defined in this book claimed by the cultured representatives of more than one great Oriental creed as equally the underlying truths of their different systems, we shall be all the better inclined to believe the present exposition of doctrine worth our attention.

In regard to the complaint itself, that the teachings here reduced to an intelligible shape are incorrectly described by the name this book bears, I cannot do better than quote the note by which the editor of " The Theosophist " replies to his Brahman contributor. He says: " We print the above letter, as it expresses, in courteous language and in an able manner, the views of a large number of our Hindoo brothers. At the same time it must be stated that the name of ' Esoteric Buddhism ' was given to Mr. Sinnett's latest publication, not because the doctrine propounded therein is meant to be specially identified with any particular form of faith, but because Buddhism means the doctrine of the Buddhas, the Wise, i. e. the Wisdom Religion." For my own part I need only add that I fully accept and adopt that explanation of the matter. It would, indeed, be a misconception of the design which this book is intended to subserve, to suppose it concerned with the recommendation, to a dilettante modern taste, of old world fashions in religious thought. The external forms and fancies of religion in one age may be a little purer, in another age a little more corrupt, but they inevitably adapt themselves to their period, and it would be extravagant to imagine them interchangeable. The present statement is not put forward in the hope of making Buddhists from among the adherents of any other system, but with the view of conveying to thoughtful readers, as well

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in the East as in the West, a series of leading ideas, relating to the actual verities of Nature, and the real facts of Man's progress through evolution, which have been communicated to the writer in their present shape by Eastern philosophers, and thus fall most readily into an Oriental mould. But the value of these teachings will perhaps be most fully realized when we clearly perceive that they are scientific in their character, rather than polemical. Spiritual truths, if they are truths, may evidently be dealt with in a no less scientific spirit than chemical reactions. And no religious feeling, of whatever color it may be, need be disturbed by the importation into the general stock of knowledge of new discoveries about the constitution and nature of Man on the plane of his higher activities. True religion will eventually find a way to assimilate such fresh knowledge in the same way that it finally acquiesces in a gradual enlargement of knowledge on the physical plane. This, in the first instance, may sometimes disconcert notions associated with religious belief, — as geological science at first embarrassed biblical chronology. But in time men came to see that the essence of the biblical statement does not reside in the literal sense of cosmological passages, and religious conceptions grew all the purer for the relief thus afforded

In just the same way, when positive scientific knowledge begins to embrace a comprehension of laws relating to the spiritual development of Man, some misconceptions of Nature long blended with religion may have to give way, but still it will be found that the central ideas of true religion have been cleared up and brightened all the better for the process. Especially, as such processes continue, will the internal dissensions of the religious world be inevitably subdued. The warfare of sects can only be due to a failure on the part of rival sectarians to grasp fundamental facts. Could a time come when the basic ideas on which religion rests should be comprehended with the same certainty with which we comprehend some primary physical laws, and disagreement about them be recognized by all educated people as ridiculous, then there would not be room for very acrimonious divergences of religious sentiment. Externals of religious thought would still differ in different climates and among different races, — as dress and dietaries differ, ■ — but such differences would not give rise to intellectual antagonism.

Basic facts of the kind that must, when they come to be widely recognized as such, have a tendency in this way to blend together superficially divergent views, not to provoke a trial

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of strength between them, are developed, it appears to me, in the exposition of spiritual science we have now obtained from our Eastern friends. It is quite unnecessary for religious thinkers to turn aside from them under the impression that they are arguments in favor of some Eastern, in preference to the more general Western, creed. If medical science were to discover a new fact about Man's body, were to unveil some hitherto concealed principle on which the growth of skin and flesh and bone is carried on, that discovery would not be regarded as trenching at all on the domain of religion. Would the domain of religion be invaded by a discovery, for example, that should go one step behind the action of the nerves, and disclose a finer set of activities manipulating these as they manipulate the muscles? At all events, even if such a discovery might begin to reconcile science and religion, no man who allows any of his higher faculties to enter into his religious thinking would put aside a positive fact of Nature, clearly shown to be such, as hostile to religion. Being a fact, it is inevitable that it should fit in with all other facts, and with religious truth among the number. So with the great mass of information in reference to the evolution of Man embodied in the present statement. Our best plan evidently is, to ask, before we look into the report I bring forward, not whether it will square in all respects with preconceived views, but whether it really does introduce us to a series of natural facts connected with the growth and development of Man's higher faculties. If it does this, we may wisely examine the facts first in the scientific spirit, and leave them to exercise whatever effect on collateral beliefs may be reasonable and legitimate, later on.

Ramifying, as the explanation proceeds, into a great many side paths, it will be seen by the readers of this book that the central idea now presented to us completes and spiritualizes the great conception of physical anthropology, which accounts for the evolution of Man's body by successive and very gradual improvements of animal forms from generation to generation. That is a very barren and miserable theory, regarded as an all-embracing account of creation ; but, properly understood, it paves the way for a comprehension of the higher concurrent process, which is all the while evolving the soul of Man in the higher spiritual realms of existence. The circumstances under which this is done reconcile the evolutionary method with the instinctive craving of every self-conscious entity for perpetuity of individual life. The disjointed series of improving forms on this earth

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have no individuality, and the life of each in turn is a separate transaction which finds no compensation for suffering involved, no justice, no fruit of its efforts, in the life of its successor. It is possible to argue on the assumption of a new independent creation of a human soul, every time a new human form is produced by physiological growth, that in the after spiritual state of such soul justice may be awarded ; but then this conception is itself at variance with the fundamental idea of evolution, which traces, or believes that it traces, the origin of each soul to the working of highly developed matter in each case. Nor is it less at variance with the analogies of Nature, as these come under our observation ; but without going into that, it is enough for the moment to perceive that the theory of spiritual evolution, as set forth in the teaching of esoteric science, is, at any rate, in harmony with these analogies, while at the same time it satisfactorily meets the requirements of justice and of the instinctive demand for continuity of individual life.

This theory recognizes the evolution of the soul as a process that is quite continuous in itself, though carried out partly through the intermediation of a great series of dissociated forms. Putting aside, for the moment, the profound metaphysics of the theory which trace the principle of life from the original first cause of the Cosmos, we find the soul as an entity emerging from the animal kingdom and passing into the earliest human forms, without being at that time ripe for the higher intellectual life with which the present state of humanity renders us familiar. But through successive incarnations in forms whose physical improvement, under the Darwinian law of evolution, is constantly fitting them to be its habitations at each return to objective life, it gradually gathers that enormous range of experience which is summed up in its higher development. In the intervals between its physical incarnations, it prolongs and works out, and finally exhausts or transmutes into so much abstract development, the personal experiences of each life. This is the clue to that apparent difficulty which besets the cruder form of the theory of re-incarnation, which independent speculation has sometimes thrown out. Each man is unconscious of having led previous lives, therefore he contends that subsequent lives can afford him no compensations for this one. He overlooks the enormous importance of the intervening spiritual condition, in which he by no means forgets the personal adventures and emotions he has just passed through, and in which he distills them into so much cosmic

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progress. In the following pages the elucidation of this profoundly interesting mystery is attempted, ancf it will be seen that the view of events now afforded us is not only a solution of the problems of life and death, but of many very perplexing experiences on the border land between those conditions, — or rather between physical and spiritual life, — which have engaged attention and speculation so widely of recent years in most civilized countries.

It was time, in fact, that the esoteric doctrine should be offered to modern thinkers to assist them in grappling with the enigmas -which the spasmodic operation of very exalted spiritual faculties in some cases — the manifestation of some extra-physical laws and forces of Nature in others — have been latterly accumulating on our hands in great abundance. Rather, I imagine, because the conjectures put forward to account for them were unacceptable to the cultivated world at large, than because the occurrence of extra-physical manifestations of late years has been disbelieved altogether, have most people been unwilling to pay close attention to such occurrences. Nor is it necessary that they should do so now, in order to reach an intellectual standpoint from which the whole range of possibilities in regard to communications that may be established between the seen and the unseen worlds may be broadly comprehended. The higher culture of the East has been concerned with the investigation, in its own congenial retirement, of that side of Nature, while we in the West have been pushing forward our physical civilization to its present great height. Different races in the world advance in this way along different lines of progress ; or, rather, — to state the idea more scientifically in the light of the occult doctrine, — all races have their cyclic progress to accomplish, at one period of whkh they are concerned with physical and at another with spiritual culture. We of the white race in Europe and America — embodying within the last few centuries one phase of the progress of our subsection of humanity — have been concerned almost entirely, during the historic period, with the development of our material civilization. Our religions, meanwhile, have had to do rather with the maintenance of spiritual aspirations in a potential state, than with the keen investigation of the facts of Nature in the spiritual region. We have keenly investigated these facts on the physical plane, for that was the proper function of our age ; but all earnestness of effort on the part of Oriental races, in the meanwhile, has been turned in another direction. There, physical civilization has been stagnant,

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material progress quite unimportant, but spirit' ual aspirations have been not merely kept up as an underlying sentiment in people's minds, — they have operated to produce the greatest manifestations of activity with which the race has been concerned. I do not mean that the Indian or any other Asiatic race has been as active in writing books and publishing discoveries in spiritual science as we in the West have been with the literature and research of physics. That kind of activity is itself a manifestation of material civilization. But the Asiatic races have fermented with capacities for great spiritual development, and the consequence has been that many Eastern people have devoted their lives to spiritual study and research, always, of course, pursuing the methods of research and the modes of life appropriate to a cycle of spiritual progress, — methods which lead the student of — and still more the adept in — such science into seclusion and secrecy.

Probably it may be due in some way to an opposite fermentation of causes in the East and the West now that a certain interchange of methods begins to be possible. I do not mean that the West is turning away yet from material civilization, nor the East slackening its devotion to spirituality, but we here are certhinly readier now than we were a generation or two ago to recognize the possibility of acquiring real knowledge of spiritual science, and are more generally impressed with the necessity of such acquisitions. The East on the other hand has partially relaxed its hitherto inviolable reserve. The important movement of which this little book is one outcome constitutes a double illustration of the new tendency at last discernible. It is discernible in several different ways to acute observers who once possess themselves of the key to what is going on. But it is only of that particular effort in which my own willing services have been engaged that I need now speak. A book more or less, in this ocean of books which is constantly welling forth from active Western civilization, may seem a very small matter ; but to the highly conservative devotees of occult science in the East, a book which sets forth in plain language, which all who run may read, the hitherto secret interpretations of Nature's spiritual design that have hitherto been communicated only in the deadliest secrecy to students of long absorption in the pursuit of such teaching, constitutes a violation of the old occult usage which is quite bewildering and appalling. As my Brahman critic above referred to points out, now that the esoteric doctrine is once for all plainly

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stated, it is seen to be embodied, a bit here and a bit there, in the various sacred writings of India. But at the same time it was nowhere stated in such terms as to be comprehensible without prolonged and special study. And for the most part the doctrine, in so far as it was stated, was wrapped in allegory that Western readers have rarely had the patience to unravel. To all intents and purposes, though the knowledge here set forth is no new discovery for those by whom it is now revealed, it is a new revelation for the whole world, — Eastern and Western alike, — in its present explicit distinctness, and has only been prepared for in the West, but I trust prepared for sufficiently, by that widespread seething interest in spiritual things which has been working among us for some years past.

This interest has been stimulated in various ways. The casual occurrence of phenomena linking our physical perceptions with the unseen world has kindled an ardent enthusiasm for inquiry along the path of investigation thus pointed out, but the laws of Nature affecting the vast realm of spiritual existence are far too complicated to be discovered from an observation of the phenomena of the relatively narrow subdivision of that realm brought within our cognizance almost exclusively by casual and irregular occurrences of the kind referred to. It is only with the help of esoteric science — the accumulated experience of a great school of inquirers, devoting faculties of the highest kind, for a long series of ages, to the exploration of spiritual mysteries — that a sufficiently wide view of Nature can be obtained to embrace the apparently disorderly phenomena of the astral world, — the first beyond the physical frontier, — in all-sufficing generalizations that cover the whole scheme of spiritual evolution. These farreaching and magnificent conceptions of Nature should not only recommend themselves, when properly understood, to minds that have shrunk from crude conclusions based on the imperfect data of modern spiritual observation in the West, but should also be recognized by modern spiritualists themselves as calculated to purify and expand their own doctrines, and guard them from liability to underrate the grandeur of the region into which they have partly penetrated, by relying, for its interpretation, too confidently on experiences gathered at its threshold. For the theosophic teaching, which has been too hastily resented by some spiritualists who have conceived it hostile to their own acquired knowledge, will be discovered, on a closer examination, to include these experiences, and only to disconcert some of the con-

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elusions derived from them. It must be remembered that my statements concerning the phenomena of Kama loca, — the astral world, from which most of the phenomena of spiritualism emanate, — have been the fruit of my own questions and inquiries rather than a portion of a carefully adjusted series of lessons in occult science, dictated by professors applying themselves to the art of teaching. That, indeed, has been the way in which the whole body of exposition which this book contains has been worked out, and it naturally follows that some parts of it are less complete than others, and that none can be much better than general outlines. In esoteric science, as in microscopy, the application of higher and higher powers will always continue to reveal a growing wealth of detail ; and the sketch of an organism that appeared satisfactory enough when its general proportions were first discerned, is betrayed to be almost worse than insufficient when a number of previously unsuspected minutiae are brought to notice. In this way, while no mistake has been made as regards any statement actually put forward in the following pages on the subject of human evolution after death, there will be more, I apprehend, to add to that part of the explanation in later expansions of it, if these become practicable, than to any other. The points which, meanwhile, I will ask spiritualist readers to bear in mind are especially these :

1st. It is already indicated that the dissolution of the human principles after death, though one cannot help speaking of the process as one of dispersion, is not actually a mechanical separation of parts, nor even a process analogous to the chemical dissolution of a compound body into elements on the same plane of matter. The discussion of the process as if it were a mechanical separation was represented from the first as " a rough way of dealing with the matter," and was adopted for the sake of emphasizing the transition of consciousness from one principle to another which goes on in the astral world after death. This transition of consciousness is, in fact, the struggle between the higher and lower duad.

2d. The struggle just referred to may be regarded as an oscillation of consciousness between the two duads ; and when the return of consciousness to the lower principles, during this struggle, is stimulated and encouraged by converse with still living entities on the earth plane, with the help of medium ship, the proper spiritual growth of the entity in Kama loca is, to that extent, — perhaps to a very considerable extent, — retarded. It is this considers

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tion which may, in a greater degree than any other, account for the disapproval with which the adepts of occult science regard the active practice of spiritualistic intercourse with departed human beings. Such intercourse, though dictated from this side by the purest affection, may seriously retard and embarrass the spiritual development of those who have gone in advance of us.

3d. It is recognized in the following pages -that intercourse between living human beings gifted with a very elevated sort of mecliumship, or spiritual clairvoyance, and departed friends with whom they have been closely united in sympathy during life, is possible on the higher spiritual plane, after such persons have passed through the struggle of Kama loca and have been completely spiritualized. That intercourse may be of a more subtle kind than can readily be realized by reference to examples of intercourse on the earth plane, but may evidently be none the less exhilarating to the higher perceptions.

By dwelling on the points of contact between the theosophic teachings and the experience of the higher spiritualism, I think it will be found that the alleged incompatibility of theosophy and spiritualism is much less complete than is supposed. It is impossible, I venture to assert, that there can be any true psychic experience which the doctrines of theosophy — or, to speak more accurately, of that esoteric science of which theosophy is the study — will fail to interpret and explain. And if this partial exposition of esoteric science may leave a good deal not yet explained in the vast region of mystery which separates death and re-birth, surely the revelations which are made here go far enough to establish a good claim on our respectful attention for the present, so that some embarrassments they may still leave to trouble our understanding may fairly be passed to a suspense account, while we await a further illumination, to be, perhaps, obtainable hereafter.

Preface To The First Edition

The teachings embodied in the present volume let in a flood of light on questions connected with Buddhist doctrine which have deeply perplexed previous writers on that religion, and offer the world for the first time a practical clue to the meaning of almost all ancient religious symbolism. More than this, the esoteric doctrine, when properly understood, will be found to advance an overpowering claim on the attention of earnest thinkers. Its tenets are not presented to us as the invention of any founder or prophet ; its testimony is based on no written scriptures; its views of Nature have been evolved by the researches of an immense succession of investigators, qualified for their task by the possession of spiritual faculties and perceptions of a higher order than those belonging to ordinary humanity. In the course of ages, the block of knowledge thus accumulated, concerning the origin of the world and of man, and the ultimate destinies of our race, — concerning also the nature of other worlds and states of existence differing from those of our present life, — checked and examined at every point, verified in all directions, and constantly under examination throughout, has come to be looked on by its custodians as constituting the absolute truth concerning spiritual things, the actual state of the facts regarding vast regions of vital activity lying beyond this earthly existence.

European philosophy, whether concerned with religion or pure metaphysics, has so long been used to a sense of insecurity in speculations outrunning the limits of physical experiment, that absolute truth about spiritual things is hardly recognized any longer by prudent thinkers as a reasonable object of pursuit ; but different habits of thought have been acquired in Asia. The secret doctrine which, to a considerable extent, I am now enabled to expound, is regarded not only by all its adherents, but by vast numbers who have never expected to know more of it than that such a doctrine exists, as a mine of entirely trustworthy knowledge, from which all religions and philosophies have derived whatever they possess of truth, and with which every religion must coincide if it claims to be a mode of expression for truth.

This is a bold claim indeed, but I venture to

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announce the following exposition as one of immense importance to the world, because I believe that claim can be substantiated.

I do not say that within the compass of this volume the authenticity of the esoteric doctrine can be proved. Such proof cannot be given by any process of argument ; only through the development in each inquirer for himself of the faculties required for the direct observation of Nature along the lines indicated. But his primd facie conclusion may be determined by the extent to which the views of Nature about to be unfolded may recommend themselves to his mind, and by the reasons which exist for trusting the powers of observation of those by whom they are communicated.

Will it be supposed that the very magnitude of the claim now made on behalf of the esoteric doctrine, lifts the present statement out of the region of inquiry to which its title refers, — inquiry as to the real inner meaning of the definite and specific religion called Buddhism ? The fact is, however, that esoteric Buddhism, though by no means divorced from the associations of exoteric Buddhism, must not be conceived to constitute a mere imperium in imperio, — a central school of culture in the vortex of the Buddhist world. In proportion as Buddhism retreats into the inner penetralia of its faith, these are found to merge into the inner penetralia of other faiths. The cosmic conceptions, and the knowledge of Nature on which Buddhism not merely rests, but which constitute esoteric Buddhism, equally constitute esoteric Brahmanism. And the esoteric doctrine is thus regarded by those of all creeds who are " enlightened " (in the Buddhist sense) as the absolute truth concerning Nature, Man, the origin of the Universe, and the destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending. At the same time, exoteric Buddhism has remained in closer union with the esoteric doctrine than any other popular religion. An exposition of the inner knowledge addressed to English readers in the present day, will thus associate itself irresistibly with familiar outlines of Buddhist teaching. It will certainly impart to these a living meaning they generally seem to be without, but all the more on this account may the esoteric doctrine be most conveniently studied in its Buddhist aspect ; one, moreover, which has been so strongly impressed upon it since the time of Gautama Buddha, that though the essence of the doctrine dates back to a far more remote antiquity, the Buddhist coloring has now permeated its whole substance. That which I am about to put before the reader is esoteric Buddhism, and for European students