Note I.
In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the
fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese, and Tibet by
Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the
province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the
great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages. According to these
records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of
Wisdom" and the "Brothers of the Sun." The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207
B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult
wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him--for he was the
first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal
authority--from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old
Egyptians and the Chaldees; that which we know to have existed in the
Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet--namely, all the
learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were
concentrated within the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their
caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no
ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present. They practice the
Bhon religion, their sect is a pre-and anti-Buddhistic one, and they
are to be found mostly in the province of Kam. That is all that is
known of them. But even that would justify the supposition that they
are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise forefathers.
Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their
rites--now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship--remind
one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the
records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious
practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure
reason and spirituality), as alleged by some. Generally, little or no
difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly
with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know
better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow
Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of
Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so
greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our
Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian
Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an
undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here,
proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of
the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether
we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the
primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question.
Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric
doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And when we remember that the Vedas came,
agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the
Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on
the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as
having proceeded from one and the same source; and to thus call it the
"Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. "Seek
for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet,"
was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.
Note II.
Not necessarily, we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these,
Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were
never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations
of the West included under the generic name of India many of the
countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper,
a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period
of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient
classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary
were considered by them as forming part of India. When we say,
therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of
the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia,
and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India,
India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost "Atlantis"
formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and
ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.
Note III.
To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study
well the Chinese sacred and historical records--a people whose era
begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate, and
by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its
so much boasted modern science were anticipated--such as the compass,
gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.--known and practiced
thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans,
ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze down to
Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references
to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts. In the "Catena
of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese," by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there
is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which
our opponents ought to read. Translating the rules of that most
celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K'hae,
called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming
to the sentence which reads "That which relates to the one garment
(seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school
of the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after the
last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics
of the school of the "Haimavatas," or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are
not to be found in the general census records of India. Further, Mr.
Beal translates a rule relating to "the great professors of the higher
order who live in mountain depths remote from men," the Aranyakas, or
hermits.
So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart
from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese
and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the
people of Tibet. The fair island is no more, but the country where it
once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of
the "great teachers of the Snowy Mountains," however much convulsed and
changed its topography by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh year these
teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the "Happy Land."
According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of
Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions,
inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in
between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of
the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of
Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China,
west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude
to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur Nur and the
Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and
speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of
incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the
esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island.
In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic
Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern
geologists-that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the
substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?
Note IV.
We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference
between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a
kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as
transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism applies the term
jivatma to the seventh principle--the pure and per se unconscious
spirit--it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of
existence--(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the
vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or
illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent
one. Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the
universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are
but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and
complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists,
on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to
that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator
nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the
insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in
the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation,
and wherever there is relation there is dualism." The ONE LIFE is
either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to
anything nor to any one; or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and
then it cannot be called the absolute; the limitation, moreover,
necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all
the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony
admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated
UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for
want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the
universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever
was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether
there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles
of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara,
and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and
natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which
take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti; guided by
the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a
conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an
eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or "Fan,
Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness,"
is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the
Abyss.") The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to
the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or
contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can
develop active conscious life; and that to the question "how can
unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be: "Was the
seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?"
Note V.
To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must
not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection
with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God. The Upanishads--the Vedanta
Scriptures--mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any
allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute
of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with
the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists
rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or
increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of
Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout
the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness,
the one Life and the only Reality.
--H.P. Blavatsky