Was Helena Blavatsky right? Do we have the power to "break free"?

[scotslad]

(apparently yes.)

Interesting wee video explaining how spiritual awakening reveals your divine nature and already exists within, thus challenges the matrix of social programming that keeps us all believing in artificial self imposed limitations.

It reveals a hidden truth simple yet profound: enlightenment isn't something to achieve but layers of conditioning to remove, allowing us all to break free from self-imposed prisons we've all been defending our entire lives.

You decide.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D2QeC-6m4co

[shaberon]

Posted by scotslad (here)
It reveals a hidden truth simple yet profound: enlightenment isn't something to achieve but layers of conditioning to remove

Yes, of course. There is not really my spirit and your spirit, but the spirit, which we living beings mentally bury and block. The burial is the Grounds, from which is produced the Path.

In her work, HPB made a technical misunderstanding of my school at least, because she presented the Alaya as something like Vishnu because it comes from a root meaning "storehouse". This is backwards. The real meaning of Alaya is storehouse of all the karmic seeds which lead to mental deviations and are tightly bound up in the subconscious. To us, it is something that takes lifetimes to burn out.

It's difficult. I've spent a lifetime asking for these invisible seeds to drop out and ripen, to get rid of these subtle flaws, and because that actually works and it really happens, it doesn't exactly lead to cheerful moments at all times. Nevertheless I have made a decision that I stick to even if it kills me.

On the other hand, the way in which the Grounds are the Path is the basis of meditation, Revolution of the Basis, Asraya Paravrtti, which at least temporarily stops and reverses these outflows from the Alaya. Path is doing this better and better until nothing is left.

That is an error that crept in to Voice of the Silence, while it properly belongs as the explanation to our basic psychological terms which are strewn into some of the Stanzas in The Secret Doctrine.

I say this because HPB actually was brought in to the independent work of the Panchen Lama, however, she did not access the majority of advanced instructions, that are now simply hosted online. She is up to her ears with mythology and the occult from every place, except she went to Buddhism as an ordinary student. Of course, it is that moment going forward that is entirely responsible for our ability to post these materials, and, well, everything else in history coming from Kalimpong since the early 1900s.

The main intention is just as you posted, yes, that is so.

[norman]

Blavatsky accessed some aspects of intellectual 'knowledge' more as a gate crasher with an inappropriate self development background than as an 'invitee'.

She singlehandedly propelled the intellectualisation of spiritual awareness into a sky high intellectual capture net around us at precisely the same time that our dark-age bird cage doors were flung open to enable the technological revolution which was going to require a hyper stimulated cultural and social creativity.

Rudolf Steiner wrote about the mess Blavatsky made of all things 'spiritual' at a time when an intelligent adversary couldn't have desired it to be more perfectly timed.

Steiner didn't say it like that. I'm saying it like that.


This is a reading of Steiner's words that I'm referring to:

mp3 - 6 mins
Rudolf Steiner, on Blavatsky and Theosophy
https://app.box.com/s/elmpu1sgic9c1l3geu35s6s9xl1oebgo

[Flash]

Posted by norman (here)
Blavatsky accessed some aspects of intellectual 'knowledge' more as a gate crasher with an inappropriate self development background than as an 'invitee'.

She singlehandedly propelled the intellectualisation of spiritual awareness into a sky high intellectual capture net around us at precisely the same time that our dark-age bird cage doors were flung open to enable the technological revolution which was going to require a hyper stimulated cultural and social creativity.

Rudolf Steiner wrote about the mess Blavatsky made of all things 'spiritual' at a time when an intelligent adversary couldn't have desired it to be more perfectly timed.

Steiner didn't say it like that. I'm saying it like that.


This is a reading of Steiner's words that I'm referring to:

mp3 - 6 mins
Rudolf Steiner, on Blavatsky and Theosophy
https://app.box.com/s/elmpu1sgic9c1l3geu35s6s9xl1oebgo

Very interesting, thank you all. I was wondering what was the ‘sin’ of Blavatsky, where she went wrong. Finally got an answer. I recognise the same mistake in me. Intellectualizing.

[thepainterdoug]

By natural happenstance, being dyslexic, poor in school ,very mechanical, loving wildlife and nature, becoming an artist , a musician , and working by myself as a piano tuner, I woke up one day and realized I escaped a good deal of the matrix. I have lived naturally in the spirit this video demonstrates and expresses. In fact, for most of my life it seemed a deficit for me.

My feeling at present is that watching this at a later time in life will only have you wish for and try to emulate it . You cannot act it.
You cannot study how to be to aquire it.
Regardless, no matter how or who is what and why ?, we are all going to die .
just be yourself. your good at it

[onawah]

There are people incarnating on Earth at present on many different levels of spiritual development, and each level responds differently to different stimuli.
The assumed terms with such a question as "Do We Have the Power to Break Free?"will not apply equally to all of humankind.
Who exactly is "we"?
Even individuals at the same level may respond differently to the same stimuli.
What may lead to advancement to one level may lead to confusion and stagnation to another level that is unprepared.
Whatever it is that needs to be broken free from for some, for others may not be an obstacle at all since they do not even have the need to encounter it at their level.
For others, the question may simply be moot.
Such queries are too generalized and nonspecific to provide much in the way of clarity.

[rgray222]

Much of the conflict, politics, and negative emotions we experience are intentional traps designed to anchor our focus in this material world. These distractions aim to mislead humanity, causing chaos and destruction on Earth. Everything is set up to prevent man from searching for the divine, finding the truth.

Once you understand that you are living in an illusion, a human construct and your reality is by mutual human agreement, and it is all done intentionally to mislead you, then you have taken the first step in your pursuit of the divine truth. Every war, conflict, and political divide is meant to steal a piece of your soul. Hopelessness is the playground of despair.

Only commitment to the journey in search of the divine will get you to the truth. If you never begin the search for truth, then you are simply a victim on the battlefield between good and evil.

[scotslad]

Hmmm, I like that, cheers. I agree that “we” is too broad a term. People come to these questions from very different levels of readiness and experience.

For some, the message is freeing. For others, it can feel confusing until they have the context or practices to hold it.

In my own work, I’ve noticed seven inner distortions — control, mistrust, manipulation, over-safety, insecurity, approval-seeking, and fear of abandonment. These don’t just cloud judgement; they hijack emotional clarity, drive negative thinking and self imposed limitation, and often lead to burnout or collapsed boundaries.

It’s not always indecision — sometimes it’s just our signal compensating for an unresolved wound.

Not strength — clinging tight, pushing hard, craving control

Not trust — doubting quietly, holding back

Not care — over-giving, exhausting yourself

That framing has helped me see where “breaking free” really begins. Hope that makes sense

[shaberon]

Posted by Flash (here)
I was wondering what was the ‘sin’ of Blavatsky, where she went wrong. Finally got an answer. I recognise the same mistake in me. Intellectualizing.

Not exactly.

That is why Annie Besant was never a chela of the same Theosophical Mahatmas.

For the immortal principle, rather than the Greek Monad, HPB was told to use Sanskrit Amrita, and never did. And of course that simple maneuver would have enabled the next enquirer to go, oh, is there such a thing as an "Amrita doctrine" and there is, and maybe intellectual history would have picked up on that trail. But it went rather cold.

One of the specific points she makes is the Path of the Eye and the Path of the Heart, and it would be useless to speculate she might not be doing the Path of the Heart, because she had way more of it than the average person. She was a former aristocrat who preferred poor people for this reason. It came with a fiery temper, but she was not insincere. How was one to present barbarian ideas to a mindset coming through the Victorian era? And what she brings is not a critical translation of any given text, but rather a type of unfalsifiable argument that represents nothing in particular by making piebald of many such translations.


In her legacy, particularly from the Maharaj at Gaekwad, we do get a series of such publications, but that is not what she did. She railed against nascent attitudes in Emil Schlagentweit's Buddhism in Tibet (1860s) and translations like Vishnu Purana (1840s) and the linguistics of Max Muller, the types of things that project academic superiority over any body of evidence, and the type of thing now known as western scholars writing India's knowledge back to her. One of the most useful texts to me personally is Subhasita Samgraha which was published around 1907 because the translator wanted to show how disgusting and blasphemous it is.

So I, at least, take academic backlash with a grain of salt.


HPB's publications refrain from conveying any particular spiritual practice. It's not a unit of anything, more like an orientation to everything. The real purpose is to create a multi-cultural world order. With the British Raj not being seen as a viable option, Indian political nationalism is in the lurch with its loss of connection to its own intellectual history from over five hundred years of foreign occupation.


As an unrelenting critic, facing the tendency that her writing style is often cumbersome and unnecessarily difficult and thick, I would tend to say the main issues in it are the issues of the Puranas.



Going from the reaction of Steiner, it is correct Aleister Crowley said something like that. That this is unhelpful or doesn't hold much of value.

Now, the reason behind this "mess" is in considering what would get the English public to listen to a Russian woman with no formal education yet writing in her fifth language.

That is why her "big books" starting with Isis Unveiled are stuffed with so many quotes of "respected male authors". Consequently, some of these are inaccurate and not useful. For example, if we were to characterize it as sheer anti-Papal propaganda, that is what it is to a great extent. And so the expression "gate crashing" is significant here, because this is definitely what she was doing, even if there are issues in her arguments. For example:


Sepher Toldoth Yeshu is a Jewish document which asserts the "real Jesus" was born about 150 B. C. E. and of course changes the story, which HPB more or less took as true in order to say the church was conflating two Jesuses. Actually, the piece is satire if not an outright insult. It's not a historical document. It's a mockery of Christian beliefs.

Another tale I forget the name of, claims that the Gospels were selected by an act of magic. This piece is much later, from the 600s or 800s or something, and so again it is just kind of a meaningless allegation with no real substance.


In retrospect, that weakens or waters down her argument, which comes after the Jesuits bribing her to never mention Jesus and in the 1870s an Infallible Papal Bull attempting to suppress the "Johannine Heresy" which in this case is historically valid because it refers to the Mandeans, which the church certainly does not want anyone to know about.

Given decades after her writings, scholars can kind of disassemble them and come out with a dismissive or disposable attitude.

Despite the mistakes, it is heavily saturated with Puranic Hinduism and Pahlavi Zoroastrianism. In fact, it is so Zoroastrian, it is inconceivable she was not guided by members of what ought to be properly called Yasna Mazda or Wisdom Religion, which is cognate to Yajur Veda. If so, this is scarcely visible among her known companions. However the depth and closeness of it seem better than what she did with my school.


Importantly, though, there is one subject denounced by scholars, which in this case winds up being correct:


Dhyani Buddhas


What happened is, after her time, of course everyone started looking for answers in Tibet. But the correct information about Dhyani Buddhas was already published by Brian Hodgson in 1840. No one paid attention because it's not Tibetan. Hodgson definitely did not pursue it and probably did not even understand it. He was trying to be kind to the people of Nepal by making an accurate record of something that was important to them.

HPB correctly learned and drew the Tibetan equivalent. I cannot remember where I filed the picture. She tries to express them in all the other classical "correspondences", but they do not really correspond except for association to Five Elements like Pythagoras used. In 1879, she was ordered to teach a seven-fold occult system, and there is such a thing in Buddhism and it may have been a trend involving the Shurungama Sutra at the time. It's just not a complete correspondence, because Buddhism describes an utterly different mode of working than strictly a "table of correspondences" represents.



Although the core group denied having any specific doctrine of any "known, exoteric" school, it can be seen that the system of the Mahatmas was closest to that of Nepal.

On a human or cultural level, this essentially refers to the entire Indian trans-Himalaya where "Buddhism and Hinduism" function as a blend. Indian Buddhism was destroyed in the major areas because the institutions looked like fortifications. Nepal was damaged about 30% and most of the other locations are too remote to have been of any interest to the Mughals. The reason for so many Theosophical writings to emerge from hill station Simla are because this points to this stratum in Himachal Pradesh, where one finds young chelas such as Djwal Kul.

Therefor, speaking as a Buddhist I would say one of her most ridiculed "mistakes" is actually correct, while one of her most praiseworthy paeans is wrong about Alaya.

From the view of Yoga in general, it is possible to examine her last personal instructions to her inner group.

Well, the caliber of those people was such that it would never amount to anything. Morya scanned them one time and denounced them all as spineless. But the huge step being taken at the time was to get westerners to say Om. I don't suppose we'd call this a very advanced practice, but apparently it was a big deal at the time. There are however a couple of interesting things they would have been doing. HPB had crafted something I am not aware of from any western system called the Inverted Prism. Under analysis, I take it to be similar to the Buddhist Yoga symbol as found by Mme. David-Neel, the Inverted Stupa.

Secondly it can be verified that the expression "Central Sun" is *not* the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy near Sagittarius A*. In Indian astrology, this is the worst entity.

It can be seen that after her work, Zoroastrianism found itself in a predicament to explain how it was relevant. India discovered the Veda as if it were brand new. Their later literature highly obscures both of their original scriptures. The basic forms are really very similar.

Buddhism on the other hand, was able to reach me before I knew much about her, which is why I pursued the material. Moreover, I would have to conclude that she was part of an international apparatus that was "not just Buddhism" that had been set up for almost a hundred years. For example, in the 1750s, Count St-Germain spent about two years in Madras, the territory of the Theosophical Mahatma Narayan and future location of the Theosophical Society Headquarters.

In the 1770s, there is a record of an emissary from the Panchen Lama to establish relations with the Maharajah of Benares, from whom the Theosophical Society motto is copied.

The other thing the Panchen did was to pursue the technology of block printing in color. There are massive sets of over five hundred Buddhist deities published this way by around 1810, while something called Rime' or "non-sectarian" movement arises. This is important because Mahayana is a very broad class that has certain philosophies or schools, which are all valid limbs of the Mahayana, whereas a distortion or misrepresentation is a heresy. Because, like HPB, this is something many of us convert into, it is good to have the awareness that there are slightly different systems which may be appropriate for people of different temperaments. I only speak for one thing, while I speak of everything. It's a debate about minor variations, not a feud.

So, if we reflect on the modern age, when was the last time anyone wrote the most influential book in the world for about fifty years?

In the best confessional frame of mind I can put myself in, first of all I can credit HPB with getting me to care at all about things that are outside of my own way. It enabled me to sympathize.

Secondly she probably is the best resource about everything as a starting point. Because of who she really was, you get a comprehensive view of the Greco-Russian sphere and insight into the events of Europe that is otherwise unavailable.

The main reason Theosophy temporarily began in America was to:

combat necromancy


and the main reason for the major publications is as weaponry to combat:


Dogmatic Religion

and

Materialistic Science


and to do so it only makes references to classical traditions in various places.

Obviously I think she is the most important writer, while finding the mistakes that appear is educational.

The main difference from historical material is that Yoga and Buddhism are both things you can join.

Possibly one of the more accurate things she said was to designate the pre-Buddhist Yogacara text as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. This most likely *was* the prevailing practice when Buddha took birth in Nepal. Even Tsonkhapa still uses the same metaphor of Rider on the Winds. So, yes, I think we have an enhanced or refined version of this. This is all about removing veils, as it were, in the basic sense of the thread.

[leavesoftrees]

https://www.amazon.com/Mother-All-Re...sr=1-1-catcorr

Review of a new book by the Swiss scholar Urs App. Finally, somebody has done all the hard historical-philological work that is required to uncover the true foundations of Helena P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy, one of the most influential esoteric movements of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. App’s method rests on some simple and quite traditional but essential foundations. (1) Take the time to carefully study all the relevant primary sources, i.e. not just some part of what HPB wrote, but really *everything* she wrote; (2) consistently place those sources in a strict *chronological* order, if possible even on a day-to-day basis, so that you can see exactly how her thinking develops over time; (3) don’t be satisfied by just scanning the “discourse” in general terms, as is common in academia today, but analyze her *ideas*; and finally (4) do whatever you can to identify the exact written sources from which she drew those ideas at any moment in that chronological sequence.
This empirical-historical method of bottom-up historiography and textual criticism allows Urs App to establish beyond a shadow of doubt that Blavatsky did not have any first-hand familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism, as she famously claimed; that she invented her famous Mahatmas and those mysterious occult orders in which she said she had been initiated; that her ideas about Oriental Wisdom were based not on the Indian or more specifically Buddhist traditions she encountered in India but on Western Spiritualist and Orientalist literature about those traditions; and that her entire oeuvre is based on one single obsession - to prove the existence of a primordial wisdom tradition, “the mother of all religions,” which she imagined as a kind of Buddhism prior to and independent of historical Buddhism. Of course, most modern scholars of Theosophy already assumed or suspected most of these things (pioneering work having been done by scholars such as Joscelyn Godwin, Michael Gomes, or Pat Deveney), but the difference is that App succeeds in *demonstrating* them so completely and so conclusively that these debates can now be considered settled once and for all. It is not just a question of countless and usually unacknowledged borrowings, plagiarisms, or paraphrases from whatever book Blavatsky happened to have in front of her at the time she was writing. At least as important is her reliance on dictionaries of Oriental languages to build up a Theosophical vocabulary that, unfortunately, shows again and again that she did not know those languages and made countless elementary mistakes (contrary, of course, to her own claims of having “translated” many textual passages from mysterious Oriental sources). None of this is speculation. Again, App does not just suggest but demonstrates it, at a great many instances, by precise comparisons between HPB’s statements and what you actually find in those dictionaries and other sources if you just take the trouble to look them up - and of course, if you actually know something about Buddhism and its history, and can read the languages.
The result is a thrilling piece of historical detective work, beginning with Blavatsky’s early exposure to Allan Kardec in 1858 (a neglected topic, for while HPB was fluent in French, many modern scholars are not), from there to the crucial years 1874-1875, when she began creating her system, and then all the way up to her period in India and her return to Europe and finally her death. Devastating as the conclusions may be to true believers in Theosophy, it would be mistaken to think of this book as just another exercise in “debunking Blavatsky” by exposing her as a fraud. On the contrary, App is doing the work that historians of religion are supposed to do, quite similar to how the discipline of biblical criticism inevitably undermines traditional Christian doctrine - not out of some desire to destroy religious or esoteric beliefs but simply out of a commitment to truth. Certainly, Blavatsky was continually deceiving her readers, and probably herself as well, and yet there’s little doubt that she believed sincerely in her primordial wisdom tradition. Her sources might be fabricated and she might have been manipulating her readers and everybody around her; but she seems to have believed that this ultimately did not matter, because the doctrine itself was true, her intentions were good, and the results of her “pious deceptions” would ultimately benefit humanity. The end justified the means. Be that as it may, App is perfectly right to finish his book by reminding his readers of a basic Theosophical tenet: no religion higher than truth.

[shaberon]

The Swiss work above was basically already done by Paul Johnson around 1990.

Would we like to examine those points, or swallow a bundle of allegations?

Maybe the best starting point is "I am not infallible".


This is coming from a time when westerners tended to believe the earth was created in 4,004 B. C. E., and so to take the Puranic guess of over two billion years, it is still a mistake but it is closer to the truth.

Invention of the Mahatmas is a bit extreme. Only some were Buddhists. One was a Kashmiri Brahman which makes sense, because the oldest continuously-functioning Buddhist institution is Alchi in Ladakh, completed some time prior to 1,100. Another was a Rajput which makes almost no sense, except it turns out that Guru Nanak and his son were both friends with Buddhists:

The Forgotten Shrine of the Sikhs-- Books on Kathmandu are silent about this shrine. It is not on the tourist map. No coaches park below the small forested hill by the river on the road to Balaju. The temple is left to bird song and the occasional visitor who either knows it is there or by chance comes upon the small weathered sign which says, “Guru Nanak Math”.

It's interesting because since then, there actually has been this low level of friendly traffic from the Rajput Sikhs to the Nepalese Buddhists. Before long, this handles the end of an empire, if anyone has heard of Koh-i-noor, this is all involved. So although that part of India has no reason to have Buddhists in it, there is no reason on a small personal level someone could not have done so.


Hacking her character or integrity is useless. Critically examining the writing ought to be done -- same here as anywhere else. And so yes there is this conjecture Ancient Wisdom Religion. Not just that it exists but was global, give or take battles with black magicians.

Well, we still get posts about this thing of the Mayans is like that Egyptian stuff, or something along those lines.

The premise of Theosophy is that people are able to project an astral double that is interfaced with the physical world. Therefor, communication could be effected by people thousands of miles apart. I lack this ability, but it is of course ranked as a worldly yoga siddhi. Maybe it is possible.

If it were possible for a few people to do this, you wouldn't quite get a global wisdom religion.

It is true that Nepalese Buddhism honors Seven Historical Buddhas, but these are not Root Races because they are just understood as having a city for some time and history sweeps it away; Buddha is Buddha because his activity remains the world today. That line of thought is not a question we generally ask. But I would take into consideration, the difficulty, at the time, of discussing human beings as having been around for millions of years. I disagree with her on a very fundamental level because I would say the Flood Myth is pure myth. I don't have or use any of this stuff, and she follows Moses. And so I dislike that pie-shaped wheel of "eight great religions" because these are different, foreign and alien to each other.


Many things have been discovered since her time, and we have learned that civilization in the sense of construction and building larger and larger settlements originates in the foothills of Kopet Dag on the frontier of Turkmenistan, and expands across eastern Iran and Afghanistan by around 4,000 B. C. E.. It would therefor appear the people of India learned it, as the correspondences there do not begin until maybe 3,500 B. C. E.. The northern Kopet Dag portion of this is detectable at the dawn of agriculture and has the largest and longest continuity in Central Asia.

When we look at civilization as expressed in writing, this also appears in the Iranian record slightly before the Sumerian. It might be described as "attempts to form a writing style" as it does not seem to continue very long before the known kinds. One of its specimens is just a long series of geometric shapes, somewhat like "Senzar" has been proposed as. This has all only been discovered since 2004.


IVC script is not readable, but Sumerian and Egyptian are. Both employ the genre now called Wisdom Literature by scholars, and, I'm not sure they hammer out a universal doctrine of Root Races, but they are not mundane tax documents.


Here's the thing. If you are a fan of either of those, at any level, you will notice their descriptions of Heaven are inseparable from a substance -- Lapis Lazuli. It is in the myths and the Pharaonic Headdress. It was the most valuable substance in the ancient world.

That is because there are hardly any native sources. Instead, 80-90% of this blue stone -- which was equally precious to India -- came from Badakhshan in central Afghanistan, which remains almost inaccessible to this day. But these oldest known writings depend on it. That's called "common ground". Is it the same system, not really. If we look at some of the moral probings in the Wisdom Texts, then I would say, yes, certainly a type of positive hearted-centered experience was of value to someone, and this type of thing is widely similar in different regions, Buddhism remains similar. In the same way, Lapis Lazuli is similar from India to Egypt.

At a fundamental level, their systems have to be different because the seasons are different. HPB asserted the Dendera Zodiac has three Virgos, which, no, actually that's Virgo with two attendants. It is correct the temple of Aswan was aligned with Spica around 3,000 B. C. E.; but Egypt is kind of on its own, because the cycle dictated by the Nile is unique, and there is hardly any outer effect caused by the Egyptian language. At the height of this development, India has its hand from Syria to the Oxus River.

The headwaters of the Oxus are where HPB thought the "true secret history" to reside. Going north from here it is physically true until at least 20,000 B. C. E., but you can't assert any kind of intellectual history to it.


It might be plausible that Voice of the Silence is a veil over a Lamrim text that is common to all the Buddhist schools in Tibet, but I do not think they have it in China, Japan, etc., because these are not Sutras, they are instructions by teachers. It's the preliminary. It's not an in-depth familiarity. It's a type of commitment that might be free when you walk in the door some places. It would be what you would expect her to have.

On the other hand, even Col. Olcott understood Visuddhimagga. And then we find the Golden Dawn actually swipes this and changes it and re-brands it as themselves. Did anyone know that's how they started? That's part of it. TS just promoted it around Sri Lanka. In fact they remain celebrated to this day by some of the grateful natives. When you are reviving dormant Sinhalese Buddhism in a generally poor country, how is one to understand some kind of Buddhist authority in Tibet? I can imagine it would be awe-inspiring.

It's kind of true that the use of countless sourcebooks by HPB was an early equivalent of web surfing.

The TS is to "promote the study of" the subjects that are in it, which were largely unstudied at the time.

I don't have much expertise in Sumerian or Egyptian, but her claim:


secret Maitreya books


*is* true, although in a sort of roundabout way.

Ancient Wisdom Religion is true, in the sense that Yasna Mazda and Yajur Veda each have the basic meaning "wisdom religion", while the mysterious "ancient" part is really just the pristine texts rather than the Pahlavi and Puranic material used to describe it.



She says the Rahasya is Upanishadic:

“Translated as “esoteric doctrine”, or interpretation of the Vedas by the Vedânta methods. The third division of the Vedas appended to the Brâhmanas and regarded as a portion of Sruti or “revealed” word. They are, however, as records, far older than the Brâhmanas . . . It is from these treatises of the Upanishads – themselves the echo of the primeval Wisdom-Religion – that the Vedânta system of philosophy has been developed. . . . Yet old as the Upanishads may be, the Orientalists will not assign to the oldest of them more than an antiquity of 600 years B.C. . . . They treat of very abstruse, metaphysical questions, such as the origin of the Universe; the nature and the essence of the Unmanifested Deity and the manifested gods; the connection, primal and ultimate, of spirit and matter; the universality of mind and the nature of the human Soul and Ego. The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. . . . The “Kshatriya Kings” were in the olden times, like the King-Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors – the Dhyâni Buddhas or Kumâras. There was a time, æons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one “lip”, one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments.”

The very useful thing she says there is about "becoming a caste" because that did not come from the Veda.

As far as the "one speech" thing I am not sure. At least not for "earth". The large, continuous block of civilization referred to, must at least have been mutually intelligible to some extent.

Her idea is roughly correct in that the Rg Veda is mainly about such Warrior Kings. But it is not really that old compared to the scale of archeological records. What it does say is that speech was created by man out of affection, which implies there was a time without speech and it says nothing about this whatsoever. It has no Genesis-like origin and descent. It only has its own tale which comes from a definite starting point.

I would say that is basically true, in chronological order, Upanishad is probably an older genre, a caste system arose, Buddha and others weakened caste, until it came in again around maybe our year 200.

I also agree with the value judgement and I don't see anyone being tricked or misrouted here; it would have just been impossible for them to say "ok" and pick up their books, because they hadn't got any; now it is easily done. The way she used it is not what "primordial" means in Buddhism, which I would not expect her to understand without elaborate and extensive training.

On a broad spectrum, HPB said that if people were to consider new ideas, it would be Karma and Reincarnation; more extensively, the Upanishads.

I, personally, already did that; didn't need her to tell me. It's the right background for any kind of yoga.

[shaberon]

I found the picture I mentioned.


I'll post it in context since it is coming from a reaction.


Things are published such as:

the "grandmother of the New Age,"


most of which she would have denied, having a very small number of what might be called successors.


There is the criticism:

Her central claims were that she enjoyed direct contact with members of an esoteric, Buddhism-associated brotherhood in Tibet who had initiated her to secret doctrines transmitted from the dawn of humanity, and that she had access to the world's most ancient religious scripture: the Book of Dzyan.

The actual claim would be participation in the Indian Renaissance in India and the Sinhalese Buddhist Revival in Ceylon, with Olcott Day still observed by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense.


Despite him going at it as the Upanishads of Buddha:

OLCOTT SOLIDIFIED HIS ROLE as a leader of the Sinhalese Buddhist Revival in the wake of a tragic Buddhist-Christian riot that occurred on March 25, 1883, in Kotahena, a Catholic stronghold of Colombo. On that day a Buddhist procession marched through the streets on the way to Mohottivatte Gunananda's newly decorated monastery, the Deepaduttama Vihara, where a new Buddha image was to be dedicated. When the procession approached a Roman Catholic cathedral located a few hundred yards from the temple, the cathedral bell sounded, followed almost immediately by bells in other Catholic churches in the area. As if in response to a signal, about a thousand men descended on the procession and a bloody brawl ensued. Authorities summoned eighty policemen, but their batons were no match for the clubs, swords, and stones of the mob. During the three-hour melee, one man was killed and forty others were injured.

He was told never to write on occult matters.

Instead he was managerial. So, yes, they are converting into Buddhism with a pre-conceived notion that heavily favors Upanishadic philosophy over what they perceive as ignorant folk superstition.

Going to the Stanzas of Dzyan, this is somewhat reasonable:

Urs App, the author of The Birth of Orientalism (2010) & The Cult of Emptiness (2012), and editor of Blavatsky on Buddhism (2023), describes how Blavatsky-much inspired by Romantic orientalist views of Buddhism-invented the world's primeval wisdom religion.

On the other hand, I am one of those people who came to all this not so much intellectually but because of Upanishadic yoga processes:

Instead of regarding Blavatsky as an adept with superior powers and an initiate of unchanging secret doctrines transmitted from remote antiquity, App studies her as one would any modern intellectual author by investigating the historical development of her thought.

Yes it's a reasonable line of inquiry, but it appears to delve into "fabrications" and the like, which is unnecessary. This is a very new 2025 work and I am surprised that anyone would be trying to put time into falsifying the Mahatmas. The realm I am coming from is the one where many Buddhists were converted Brahmans and at least four of the Nathas were considered equivalently both things.

HPB was neither an adept nor an initiate. She did have "powers".

In a Letter to Franz Hartmann, HPB says she was never allowed inside the the "Shakang" or private temple of the Tashi lama near Shigatse. She mentions "Om tram ah hri hum, which figures are roughly drawn sometimes on the Melong "mirrors" --- (a disk of brass) against evil spirits --- for the mob."


He has a friend who believes they saw a psychic vision of some place in Tibet. So she sends this stuff as a possible lead. She actually does know something, but if you examine the Tibetan script, there is a spelling error. Moreover, this does not seem to come from Tibet, but from Buddhism in Tibet, Leipzig 1863. It is the author's assessment of a pile of manuscripts collected by his brothers in the 1850s.

HPB almost repeats Schlagentweit's mistake of placing the visarga on everything:






The real anachronism is to use Tibetan to explain anything ancient. So her ancient esoteric school:


Narjol Chod Pa


is:

rNal-'byor spyod-pa, which simply means one who practices yoga, yogachara, chitta-matra or yogachara madhyamika svatantrika, none of which is secret or unpublished.


In her other Tibetan:

Ngo-vo-nyid-med par Mraba (“they who deny existence,” or “regard nature as Mâyâ”). Seems to come from Schlagentweit, as Ngo-bo-nyid-med-par-smra-ba, "proponent of no entity-ness".


The real issue here is not what is wrong about it, but what is right about it:


Kalachakrayana


This will become transparent.

It is the reason the Puranas have interfered with everything.


Now, if HPB were nothing more than a Buddhist student, by her own admission, how does that put her in a position to tell us much about a major tantra. It doesn't. To push the exuberance, yes, to generate an interest level would be the point.

This seems to be contagious. What is going on here? In the section "Mysticism", Schlagentweit begins with a brief reference to the "highest" portion:


Mysticism appears for the first time as a specific
system in the tenth century of our era; it is called in
the sacred books Dus kyi khorlo, in Sanskrit Kala Chakra,
"the circle of time."It is reported to have originated
in the fabulous country Sambhala (Tib. Dejung), "source
or origin of happiness." Csoma, from careful investigations,
places this country beyond the Sir Deriau (Yaxartes)
between 45° and 50° north latitude. It was first
known in India in the year 965 a.d.

..into Tibet from India via
Kashmir, in the year 1025 a.d. I cannot believe it
accidental that the beginning of the Tibetan era of
counting time, about which I shall have occasion to say
some words in a later chapter, coincides with the intro-
duction of this system.


Maybe he means the Tibetan calendar system, since that certainly would not be any first appearance, it is actually late.

This is correct:

The DharanI formulae may be of con-
siderable antiquity, and it is not unlikely that already
the Mahayana leaders took some of them into their
books.

He then goes on to a reasonably decent treatment of the Dhyani Buddhas along with their Sanskrit terms. Here is also a misspelling that HPB repeats:


Anupadaka


In that chapter, you more or less have the thesis or framework of The Secret Doctrine.


She commits a fatal mistake with Buddhist Yogacara, but, like a snake biting its tail, it collapses into itself and goes away. This is the anachronism she uses to describe a contemporary of Buddha:


Chagpa-Thog-med is the Tibetan name of Aryasanga, the founder
of the Yogacharya or Naljorchodpa School.



With respect to a "secret book of Maitreya", it is technically correct you might be able to think of this as "secret knowledge"; comparing manuscripts, Obermiller finishes with the Tibetan colophon:


Finished the teacher Aryasanga’s explanation of “ The Sublime
Science of the Great Vehicle,” the work of the Lord Maitreya.—

The Sanskrit and Chinese RGVs do not have the colophon.

It is correct that is a rare and possibly unique signature of the person usually called Asanga. But it's the same one from "about the fifth century" that she calls pseudo-Asanga, the author of the tantric system, which is the same system that Tsonkhapa is a brilliant exegete of. It's not two people. The RGV is semi-secret in the sense that only some lineages have it. She fumes on Asanga's Yogacara Bodhisattva Bhumi for reasons that are unclear:

It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and Tantrika magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty.

It is not true that Asanga had anything to do with tantra, in fact half of his tone is apologetic because it still re-iterates Pali Abhidharma. The RGV on the other hand is a Sastra or teaching drawn from multiple Mahayana Sutras, i. e. comes under the general description "secret doctrine". In that sense, it is the most important Yogacara text.

She has a mistaken idea about a signature found in Tibetan and tantra in general, but she is correct this would be Yogacara.

Let's just say that there are many other stranger ideas about lineages other than hers, which just refers to Buddha himself. There's a margin of error where someone might think "Arya" refers to an older generation; designations like this are sometimes made. This Aryasanga text is referring to Sutras as young as 420 to 440. It refers to the Bhagavad Gita.

She has a bit of difficulty with Madhyamaka in its early debates between these two:


Buddhapalita was in the position of trying to discern a difference between Buddhism and the Upanishads; if they were the same, there was no Buddhism. We have adhered more to Bhavaviveka. These pundits are in any standard curriculum.


Obviously we display such an affiliation for the philosophy being thrust all over the place, it leads to an institutional identity crisis. It's back to being the same premise in the OP.

The Kalachakra, on the other hand, imports Puranic doctrine into Buddhism. It's not used in Yogacara generally and goes in its own particular strand. But that's how it was already published, and, of course, the thing itself contains its own legend about a larger, lost version. This sort of hyperbole is common in tantras. It's not necessary for her to invent anything if it says this.

[shaberon]

I find this of great value because it has blended the two running concerns:


Is there such a thing as Liberation, and, if this is of value, how to go about it.

Was HPB right about some things and wrong about others, and, is this a matter of further review, or, is it grounds for ongoing clash.


The main purpose of the Theosophical Society was the establishment of what we now know as multi-polar order, which is really occurring, although the west is hardly involved.

The things she says about Ancient Wisdom Religion are specious and irrelevant, because it is a flowery way of referring to "spoken tradition". But we have the prior and best records of speech in the Zend Avesta and the Vedas, and anything prior to this is speculation. Those are important because they are Mantras. The worst re-interpretation of the one-ness of ancient humanity is taken up by the Synarchy and the belief in Agartha, which is a European innovation that has nothing to do with us.

Her take on it is like a fierce reaction to Schlagentweit's Buddhism in Tibet, where he accurately claims that Kalachakra has an emanation point in time, and mistakenly that it was the "first" such system; and it is its own lore that disputes this. She runs with this, combining it with a mistaken notion that Arya Asanga was a different person than actual Asanga.


The ongoing use of the Upanishads as a type of litmus test for Buddhism is correct and accurate. I even saw that in an interview with three Tibetan Geshes not too long ago; they couldn't figure it out. We have figured it out.

That is because, despite the numerous historical errors, when she uses them to make the point that Aryasanga is the origin of the "real esoteric Buddhist Yogacara", that is exactly right and is the system we are using.

Moreover, she agrees with this and supports it in other examples where she is dealing with the pith argument rather than the outer details.

Notice the dismissal of intellectuality in the following which is essentially correct:

Madhyamikas (Sanskrit) Mādhyamika-s Belonging to the middle way; a sect mentioned in the Vishnu-Purana, probably at first a sect of Hindu atheists. A school of the same name was founded later in Tibet and China, and as it adopted some of the esoteric principles taught by Nagarjuna, one of the great founders of the esoteric Mahayana system, it had certain elements of esoteric truth. But because of its tendency by means of thesis and antithesis to reduce everything into contrary categories, and then to deny both, it may be called a school of Nihilists for whom everything is an illusion and an error in the world of thought, in the subjective as well as in the objective universe. This school is a good example of the danger of wandering too far in mere intellectual disquisition from the fundamental bases of the esoteric philosophy, for such merely brain-mind activity will infallibly lead to a philosophy of barren negation.

It is correct that Nagarjuna was one of the first significant Mahayana figures, who employed the logical argument Catuskoti which was later taken up by Adi Shankara in an unattributed way. This is the school of Shakti and is not very different, and when HPB says the animosity between our groups has been blown out of proportion because it was not like that, this would be closer to correct. On the other hand, in Buddhism, it leads to a detectable split being that "schools of Nagarjuna" effectively ignore the fact that this name was re-used by several individuals over the centuries. Within this mis-conception develops a bundle of doctrines that are not Yogacara. To say Asanga is our leading exegete shifts the emphasis.


And so to follow her not as a Geshe of Tibetan Buddhism, but, as someone attempting to identify and pursue the "school of Asanga", she lands on something she thinks highly supports her esoteric meaning:

Svabhavika (Sanskrit) Svābhāvika [from svabhāva self-becoming] The Svabhavika school, perhaps the oldest existing school of Buddhism, is one of the principal Buddhist philosophical system and is still prevalent in Nepal. Its teachings are highly mystical, and when properly understood may be said to have remained faithful in large degree to the esoteric teachings of Gautama Buddha. The Svabhavika philosophers teach the becoming or unfolding of the self by inner impulse or evolution of the inherent seeds of individuality lying latent in every monad or jiva.

Yes, that is closer to the correct inner meaning while it is simply a historical mistake. That's the way it was published in the catalog from Brian Hodgson. It's not a "school". You might call it a "phase". It's a reference to a mantra, usually one of the first given, which I personally began using ages ago as I began to figure out how to properly work Buddhist meditation as distinct from Upanishadic or any other description. Again, this is a misunderstanding of something that was translated to English in 1840 which has generally been dismissed by academia because it is not Tibetan.

HPB has paid it the highest respect, which is correct if you were to do the "yoga of Asanga" this mantra will seal you out. One might be able to say it defines intellectualization and philosophy, in the sense that it has to dissolve these processes. The mantra is something like a barometer while you are on a diet of eschewing form overall. It's not something that we can sit here and discuss the meaning of, because it is only its own meaning, which is exactly this developmental stage in our yoga. It's not the Lamrim or Voice of the Silence, but might roughly be called the stage after that.

And then, I would put it that she really gives the key to our system in Stanza One of The Secret Doctrine:

Sva-samvedana (Sanskrit) Sva-saṃvedana Self-examination, self-knowledge; mystically regarded as self-analyzing reflection. The highest and purest form of knowledge, because essentially intuitive knowledge of the spiritual self. Consequently it is synonymous with paramartha. “The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the Self-analysing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will” (SD 1:53-4).

This is the critical operative principle of the Samputa Tantra, which in turn is effectively a secret doctrine of the tradition from the post-Asanga era until this comes out around the year 1,000. So yes, it would be the substrate of the divergence of Yogacara from various rationalist schools, and how this is mainly differentiated from Kalachakra.

Using all her powers to designate the inner meaning of the esoteric school she believes in, it actually does boil down to a Yogacara intent. Although of course we are a Voidist school that uses formless meditations, this is an incomplete analysis; the substrate from the terms of H. H. III Karmapa:


Luminosity and Suchness


The second rather strange-sounding term is based from the mysterious pronoun "That", which is of course Upanishadic and underlies all Tat- stems, i. e. Tathagata "gone to Suchness" and similar compounds. Moreover, "That" is derived from its same usage in Rg Veda. Obviously with Mahayana we are only giving a crafted response to the same subject.

And so if you look at that, in these very few places that express what she is trying to value, do, promote, or otherwise bring to prosperity comes down to the same motive. Those could accurately be described as the secret doctrine of Yogacara at Sutra and Tantra levels, Asanga ca. 500 and Samputa Tantra ca. 1,000. It does not necessarily support or suit her personal values, and she doesn't have advanced knowledge about it, which corresponds to memorizing something similar to a Lamrim and not understanding the mantra.

Instead, one finds Svabhava strewn into her work rather extensively.

Spared of her flea eggs, in dry technical terms she *is* trying to find the real Yogacara. I went through the same thing, except from within the Cloud of 84,000 Scriptures. So I will confirm in terms of inner meaning, she is on the right track. She doesn't know much to say about it, which is why it comes across as baited and lofty, but in those brief quotes just given, this is the right way.

I will leave it at that. The premise of the thread is whether HPB, as a message of the Upanishads and Buddhism generally, is useful in the context of Liberation. I have reported on how she has extracted some important fundamentals on the Path I personally follow, and that it is not generally this that the public has fiended on in the wake of her career.