Esoteric Buddhism

by A. P. Sinnett (London: Trübner, 1883; 5th ed. 1893)

Esoteric Buddhism (5th ed., 1893)

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ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

New American Edition. With Introduction pre- pared expressly for it by the Author. i6mo, $1.25.

THE OCCULT WORLD.

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ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

A. P. SINNETT

PRESIDENT OF THE SIMLA ECLECTIC THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AUTHOR OF "THE OCCULT WORLD "

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE.

The fifth English edition of Esoteric Bud- dhism consists of the text of the fourth Amer- ican edition, together with the larger part of the preface specially furnished by Mr. Sinnett for the American edition. He took the opportunity afforded by a new edition, also, to append to some of the chapters annotations upon points calling for explication. These annotations are now added to the sixth American edition as an appendix. The present edition therefore cor- responds with the latest English edition, and has besides matter in the author's preface not incorporated in any English edition.

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

This book was written in the early part of 1883, and now that I am venturing to recom- mend it to public notice afresh in the latter part of 1884, after three English editions have passed through the press, I find myself in pos- session of much additional information bearing on many of the problems dealt with. But I am glad to be able to say that such later teach- ing as I have yet received only reveals incom- pleteness in my original conceptions of the eso- teric doctrine, — no material error so far. In- deed, I am happy enough to have received, from the great adept himself from whom I obtained my instruction in the first instance, the assur- ance 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 de- veloped in future, if the interest it excites is keen enough to constitute an efficient demand

6INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 philoso- phy 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 un- necessarily from accepted Sanskrit nomencla- ture ; 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 doc- trines taught in Mr. Sinnett's book, misnamed 'Esoteric Buddhism,' while there is not a sin- gle hamlet or village in the whole of India in which people are not more or less acquainted with the sublime tenets of the Vedanta philoso- phy. . . . The effects of Karma in the next INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 7 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 pe- riods, . . . 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 understand- ing 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 atten- tion. In regard to the complaint itself, that the teachings here reduced to an intelligible shape are incorrectly described by the name this book

8INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
bears, I cannot do better than quote the note by which the editor of " The Theosophist " re- plies 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 broth- ers. 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 doc- trine of the Buddhas, the Wise, i. e. the Wis- dom Religion." For my own part I need only add that I fully accept and adopt that explana- tion of the matter. It would, indeed, be a mis- conception of the design which this book is in- tended 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 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 9 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 phi- losophers, and thus fall most readily into an Oriental mould. But the value of these teach- ings will perhaps be most fully realized when we clearly perceive that they are scientific in their character, rather than polemical. Spirit- ual 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 consti- tution 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 phys- ical 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

10INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 bright- ened all the better for the process. Especially, as such processes continue, will the internal dis- sensions 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 cer- tainty with which we comprehend some pri- mary 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 senti- ment. Externals of religious thought would still differ in different climates and among dif- ferent races, — as dress and dietaries differ, ■ — but such differences would not give rise to in- tellectual 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 super- ficially divergent views, not to provoke a trial . INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 11 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 gen- eral 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 re- garded as trenching at all on the domain of religion. Would the domain of religion be in- vaded by a discovery, for example, that should go one step behind the action of the nerves, and disclose a finer set of activities manipulat- ing 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 posi- tive fact of Nature, clearly shown to be such, as hostile to religion. Being a fact, it is inevi- table that it should fit in with all other facts, and with religious truth among the number. So with the great mass of information in refer- ence to the evolution of Man embodied in the present statement. Our best plan evidently is,

12INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
to ask, before we look into the report I bring forward, not whether it will square in all re- spects with preconceived views, but whether it really does introduce us to a series of natural facts connected with the growth and develop- ment 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, re- garded as an all-embracing account of creation ; but, properly understood, it paves the way for a comprehension of the higher concurrent pro- cess, 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 in- stinctive craving of every self-conscious entity for perpetuity of individual life. The dis- jointed series of improving forms on this earth INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 13 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 require- ments 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

14INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 intellec- tual life with which the present state of hu- manity renders us familiar. But through suc- cessive 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 ex- perience which is summed up in its higher de- velopment. In the intervals between its physi- cal incarnations, it prolongs and works out, and finally exhausts or transmutes into so much ab- stract 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 in- tervening 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 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 15 progress. In the following pages the elucida- tion 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 en- gaged attention and speculation so widely of recent years in most civilized countries. It was time, in fact, that the esoteric doc- trine 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 manifes- tation of some extra-physical laws and forces of Nature in others — have been latterly ac- cumulating 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 neces- sary that they should do so now, in order to reach an intellectual standpoint from which the whole range of possibilities in regard to com- munications that may be established between

16INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 Na- ture, while we in the West have been pushing forward our physical civilization to its present great height. Different races in the world ad- vance in this way along different lines of prog- ress ; or, rather, — to state the idea more sci- entifically in the light of the occult doctrine, — all races have their cyclic progress to accom- plish, at one period of whkh they are concerned with physical and at another with spiritual cul- ture. We of the white race in Europe and America — embodying within the last few cen- turies one phase of the progress of our sub- section of humanity — have been concerned al- most 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 investiga- tion of the facts of Nature in the spiritual re- gion. We have keenly investigated these facts on the physical plane, for that was the proper function of our age ; but all earnestness of ef- fort on the part of Oriental races, in the mean- while, has been turned in another direction. There, physical civilization has been stagnant, INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 17 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 discov- eries in spiritual science as we in the West have been with the literature and research of physics. That kind of activity is itself a mani- festation of material civilization. But the Asi- atic races have fermented with capacities for great spiritual development, and the conse- quence has been that many Eastern people have devoted their lives to spiritual study and research, always, of course, pursuing the meth- ods of research and the modes of life appro- priate to a cycle of spiritual progress, — meth- ods 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 ma- terial civilization, nor the East slackening its devotion to spirituality, but we here are cer-

18INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION,
thinly readier now than we were a generation or two ago to recognize the possibility of ac- quiring real knowledge of spiritual science, and are more generally impressed with the neces- sity of such acquisitions. The East on the other hand has partially relaxed its hitherto inviola- ble 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 differ- ent 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 conserva- tive devotees of occult science in the East, a book which sets forth in plain language, which all who run may read, the hitherto secret in- terpretations 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 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 19 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 knowl- edge here set forth is no new discovery for those by whom it is now revealed, it is a new revela- tion for the whole world, — Eastern and West- ern 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 un- seen 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 observa- tion of the phenomena of the relatively nar- row subdivision of that realm brought within our cognizance almost exclusively by casual and

20INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 far- reaching 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 spiritual- ists who have conceived it hostile to their own acquired knowledge, will be discovered, on a closer examination, to include these experi- ences, and only to disconcert some of the con- INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 21 elusions derived from them. It must be re- membered that my statements concerning the phenomena of Kama loca, — the astral world, from which most of the phenomena of spirit- ualism emanate, — have been the fruit of my own questions and inquiries rather than a por- tion of a carefully adjusted series of lessons in occult science, dictated by professors applying themselves to the art of teaching. That, in- deed, 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 mi- croscopy, the application of higher and higher powers will always continue to reveal a grow- ing wealth of detail ; and the sketch of an or- ganism 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 minu- tiae are brought to notice. In this way, while no mistake has been made as regards any state- ment 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 expan- sions of it, if these become practicable, than to

22INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 dissolu- tion of the human principles after death, though one cannot help speaking of the process as one of dispersion, is not actually a mechanical sepa- ration 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 em- phasizing 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 be- tween 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 consider- able extent, — retarded. It is this considers INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 23 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 de- parted human beings. Such intercourse, though dictated from this side by the purest affection, may seriously retard and embarrass the spirit- ual 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 inter- course on the earth plane, but may evidently be none the less exhilarating to the higher per- ceptions. 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,

24INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.
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 revela- tions which are made here go far enough to es- tablish a good claim on our respectful attention for the present, so that some embarrassments they may still leave to trouble our understand- ing 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 vol- ume let in a flood of light on questions con- nected with Buddhist doctrine which have deeply perplexed previous writers on that re- ligion, 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 under- stood, will be found to advance an overpower- ing claim on the attention of earnest thinkers. Its tenets are not presented to us as the in- vention of any founder or prophet ; its testi- mony is based on no written scriptures; its views of Nature have been evolved by the re- searches of an immense succession of investiga- tors, qualified for their task by the possession of spiritual faculties and perceptions of a higher order than those belonging to ordinary human- ity. In the course of ages, the block of knowl- edge thus accumulated, concerning the origin of the world and of man, and the ultimate des-

26PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
tinies of our race, — concerning also the na- ture of other worlds and states of existence dif- fering 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 activ- ity 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 specula- tions outrunning the limits of physical experi- ment, 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 con- siderable 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 ex- ists, as a mine of entirely trustworthy knowl- edge, 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 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 27 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 deter- mined 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 observa- tion of those by whom they are communicated. Will it be supposed that the very magnitude of the claim now made on behalf of the eso- teric doctrine, lifts the present statement out of the region of inquiry to which its title re- fers, — inquiry as to the real inner meaning of the definite and specific religion called Bud- dhism ? 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

28PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
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 consti- tute 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 read- ers 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 with- out, 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 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 29 approaching it for the first time, any other des- ignation would be a misnomer. The statement I have to make must be con- sidered in its entirety before the reader will be able to comprehend why initiates in the eso- teric doctrine regard the concession involved in the present disclosure of the general outlines of this doctrine as one of startling magnitude. One explanation of this feeling, however, may be readily seen to spring from the extreme sacredness that has always been attached by their ancient guardians to the inner vital truths of Nature. Hitherto this sacredness has al- ways prescribed their absolute concealment from the profane herd. And so far as that policy of concealment — the tradition of count- less ages — is now being given up, the new de- parture which the appearance of this volume signalizes will be contemplated with surprise and regret by a great many initiated disciples. The surrender to criticism, which may some- times perhaps be clumsy and irreverent, of doc- trines which have hitherto been regarded by such persons as too majestic in their import to be talked of at all except under circumstances of befitting solemnity, will seem to them a ter« rible profanation of the great mysteries. From the European point of view it would be un- reasonable to expect that such a book as this

30PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
can be exempt from the usual rough-and-tumble treatment of new ideas ; and special convictions or commonplace bigotry may sometimes ren- der such treatment in the present case pecul- iarly inimical. But all that, though a matter of course to European exponents of the doc- trine like myself, will seem very grievous and disgusting to its earlier and more regular repre- sentatives. They will appeal sadly to the wis- dom of the time-honored rule which, in the old symbolical way, forbade the initiates from cast- ing pearls before swine. Happily, as I think, the rule has not been allowed to operate any longer to the prejudice, of those who, while still far from being initi- ated, in the occult sense of the term, will prob- ably have become, by sheer force of modern culture, qualified to appreciate the concession. Part of the information contained in the fol- lowing pages has been thrown out in a frag- mentary form during the last eighteen months in " The Theosophist," a monthly magazine, published hitherto at Bombay, but now at Madras, by the leaders of the Theosophical So- ciety. As almost all the articles referred to have been my own writing, I have not hesi- tated to weld parts of them, when this course has been convenient, into the present volume. A certain advantage is gained by thus showing PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 31 how the separate pieces of the mosaic, as first presented to public notice, drop naturally into their places in the (comparatively) finished pavement. The doctrine or system now disclosed in its broad outlines has been so jealously guarded hitherto, that no mere literary researches, though they might have currycombed all India, could have brought to light any morsel of the infor- mation thus revealed. It is given out to the world at last by the free grace of those in whose keeping it has hitherto lain. Nothing could ever have extorted from them its very first letter. It is only after a perusal of the present explanations that their position generally, as regards their present disclosures or their previous reticence, can be criticised or even comprehended. The views of Nature now put forward are altogether unfamiliar to European thinkers ; the policy of the graduates in esoteric knowledge, which has grown out of their long intimacy with these views, must be considered in connection with the peculiar bearings of the doctrine itself. As for the circumstances under which these revelations were first foreshadowed in " The Theosophist," and are now rounded off and ex- panded as my readers will perceive, it is enough for the moment to say, that the Theosophical Society, through my connection with which the

32PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
materials dealt with in this volume have come into my hands, owes its establishment to certain persons who are among the custodians of eso- teric science. The information poured out at last for the benefit of all who are ripe to receive it has been destined for communication to the world through the Theosophical Society since the foundation of that body, and later circum- stances only have indicated myself as the agent through whom the communication could be con- veniently made. Let me add, that I do not regard myself as the sole exponent for the outer world, at this crisis, of esoteric truth. These teachings are the final outcome, as regards philosophical knowl- edge, of the relations with the outer world which have been established by the custodians of esoteric truth, through me. And it is only regarding the acts and intentions of those eso- teric teachers who have chosen to work through me, that I can have any certain knowledge. But, in different ways, some other writers are engaged in expounding for the benefit of the world — and, as I believe, in accordance with a great plan, of which this volume is a part — the same truths, in different aspects, that I am commissioned to unfold. A remarkable book, published within the hist year or two, "The Perfect Way," may be specially mentioned, as PREFACE TO TEE FIRST EDITION. 33 showing bow more roads than one may lead to a mountain-top. The inner inspirations of " The Perfect Way" appear to me identical with the philosophy that I have learned. The sym- bols in which those inspirations are clothed, in my opinion, I am bound to add, are liable to mislead the student ; but this is a natural con- sequence of the circumstances under which the inner inspiration has been received. Far more important and interesting to me than the discrepancies between the teachings of " The Perfect Way " and my own, are the identities that may be traced between the clear scientific explanations now conveyed to me on the plane of the physical intellect, and the ideas which manifestly underlie those communicated on an altogether different system to the authors of the book I mention. These identities are a great deal too close to be the result either of coincidence or parallel speculation. Probably the great activity at present of mere ordinary literary speculation on problems lying beyond the range of physical knowledge, may also be in some way provoked by that policy, on the part of the great custodians of esoteric truth, of which my own book is cer- tainly one manifestation, and the volume I have just mentioned, probably another. I find, for example, in M. Adolphe d'Assier's recently

84PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
published " Essai sur PHurnanite* Posthume," some conjectures respecting the destination of the higher human principles after death, which are infused with quite a startling flavor of true occult knowledge. Again, the ardor now shown in " Psychical Research," by the very distinguished, highly gifted, and cultivated men who lead the society in London devoted to that object, is, to my inner convictions, — knowing, as I do, something of the way the spiritual aspirations of the world are silently influenced by those whose work lies in that department of Nature, — the obvious fruit of efforts parallel to those with which I am more immediately con- cerned. It only remains for me to disclaim, on behalf of the treatise which ensues, any pretension to high finish as regards the language in which it is cast. Longer familiarity with the vast and complicated scheme of cosmogony disclosed, will no doubt suggest improvements in the phraseology employed to expound it. Two years ago, neither I nor any other European living knew the alphabet of the science here for the first time put into a scientific shape, — or subject, at all events, to an attempt in that direction, — the science of spiritual causes and their effects, of super-physical consciousness, of cosmical evolution. Though, as I have ex« PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 35 plained above, ideas had begun to offer them- selves to the world in more or less embarrassing disguise of mystic symbology, no attempt had ever been made by any esoteric teacher, two years back, to put the doctrine forward in its plain abstract purity. As my own instruction progressed on those lines, I have had to coin phrases and suggest English words as equiv- alents for the ideas which were presented to my mind. I am by no means convinced that in all cases I have coined the best possible phrases and hit on the most neatly expressive words. For example, at the threshold of the subject we come upon the necessity of giving some name to the various elements or attributes of which the complete human creature is made up. " Element " would be an impossible word to use, on account of the confusion that would arise from its use in other significations ; and the least objectionable, on the whole, seemed to me " principle," though to an ear trained in the niceties of metaphysical expression this word will have a very unsatisfactory sound in some of its present applications. Quite possibly, therefore, in progress of time the Western nomenclature of the esoteric doctrine may be greatly developed in advance of that I have provisionally constructed. The Oriental no- menclature is far more elaborate, but metaphys-

36PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
ical Sanskrit seems to be painfully embarrassing to a translator, — the fault, my India friends assure me, not of Sanskrit, but of the language in which they are now required to express the Sanskrit idea. Eventually we may find that, with the help of a little borrowing from familiar Greek quarries, English may prove more re- ceptive of the new doctrine — or, rather, of the primeval doctrine as newly disclosed — than has yet been supposed possible in the East. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. ESOTERIC TEACHERS. PAGE Nature of the Present Exposition. — Seclusion of Eastern Knowledge. — The Arhats and their At- tributes. — The Mahatmas. — Occultists generally. — Isolated Mystics. — Inferior Yogis. — Occult Training. — The Great Purpose. — Its Incidental Consequences. — Present Concessions .... 41 CHAPTER II. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. Esoteric Cosmogony. — Where to Begin. — Working back from Man to Universe. — Analysis of Man. — The Seven Principles 60 CHAPTER m. THE PLANETARY CHAIN. Esoteric Views of Evolution. — The Chain of Globes. — Progress of Man round them. — The Spiral Advance. — Original Evolution of the Globes. — The Lower Kingdoms 75

38CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV. THE WORLD PERIODS. PAGE Uniformity of Nature. — Rounds and Races. — The Septenary Law. — Objective and Subjective Lives. — Total Incarnations. — Former Races on Earth. — Periodic Cataclysms. — Atlantis. — Lemuria. , — The Cyclic Law 94 CHAPTER V. DEVACHAN. Spiritual Destinies of the Ego. — Karma. — Divis- ion of the Principles at Death. — Progress of the Higher Duad. — Existence in Devachan. — Sub- jective Progress. — Avitchi. — Earthly Connection with Devachan. — Devachanic Periods . . . .121 CHAPTER VI. KAMA LOCA. The Astral Shell. — Its Habitat. — Its Nature. — Surviving Impulses. — Elementals. — Mediums and Shells. — Accidents and Suicides. — Lost Per- sonalities 150 CHAPTER VII. THE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE. Progress of the Main Wave. — Obscurations. — Twi- light and Dawn of Evolution. — Our Neighboring CONTENTS. 39 PAGE Planets.— Gradations of Spirituality.— Prematurely Developed Egos. — Intervals of Re-Incarnation . 171 CHAPTER VIII. THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY. The Choice of Good or Evil. — The Second Half of Evolution. — The Decisive Turning-Point. — Spirituality and Intellect. — The Survival of the Fittest. — The Sixth Sense. — Development of the Principles in their Order. — The Subsidence of the Unfit. — Provision for All. — The Excep- tional Cases. — Their Scientific Explanation. — Justice Satisfied. — The Destiny of Failures. — Human Evolution Reviewed 188 CHAPTER IX. BUDDHA. The Esoteric Buddha. — Re-Incarnations of Adepts. — Buddha's Incarnation. — The Seven Buddhas of the Great Races. — Avalokiteshwara. — Addi Buddha. — Adeptship in Buddha's Time. — San- karacharya. — Vedantin Doctrines. — Tsong-ka-pa. — Occult Reforms in Tibet 209 CHAPTER X. NIRVANA. Its Remoteness. — Preceding Gradations. — Par- tial Nirvana. — The Threshold of Nirvana. — Nir-

40CONTENTS.
PAGE vana.— Para Nirvana. — Buddha and Nirvana. — Nirvana attained by Adepts. — General Progress towards Nirvana. — Conditions of its Attainment. — Spirituality and Religion. — The Pursuit of Truth 233 CHAPTER XL THE UNIVERSE. The Days and Nights of Brahma. — The Various Manvantaras and Pralayas. — The Solar System. The Universal Pralaya. — Recommencement of Evolution. — " Creation." — The Great First Cause. _ The Eternal Cyclic Process .... 246 CHAPTER XII. THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED. Correspondences of the Esoteric Doctrine with Visi- ble Nature. — Free Will and Predestination.— The Origin of Evil. — Geology, Biology, and the Esoteric°Teaching.— Buddhism and Scholarship. _ The Origin of all Things. — The Doctrine as Distorted. — The Ultimate Dissolution of Con- sciousness.-Transmigration.- The Soul and the Spirit. — Personality and Individuality. — Karma 265 ESOTEEIC BUDDHISM.

Esoteric Buddhism

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