The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Alfred Percy Sinnett
Alfred
Percy Sinnett
1840
-1921
Return to
Esoteric Buddhism Index
Esoteric Buddhism
Preface to the Annotated Edition
SINCE this book was first published in the beginning of 1883, I
have come into possession of much additional information bearing on many of the
problems dealt with. But I am glad to say that such later teaching only reveals
incompleteness in my original conception of the esoteric doctrine, - no
material error so far. Indeed I have received from the great Adept himself,
from whom I obtained my instruction in the first instance, the assurance that
the book as it now stands is a sound and trustworthy statement of the scheme of
Nature as understood by the initiates of occult science, which may have to be a
good deal developed in the future, if the interest it excites is keen enough to
constitute an efficient demand for further teaching of this kind on the part of
the world at large, but will never have to be remodelled
or apologized for. In view of this assurance it seems best that I should now
put forward my later conclusions and additional information in the form of
annotations on each branch of the subject, rather than infuse them into the
original text, which, under the circumstances, I am reluctant in any way to
alter. I have therefore adopted that plan in the present edition.
As conveying an indirect acknowledgement of the general harmony to
be traced between these teachings and the recognized philosophical tenets of
certain other great schools of Indian thought, I may here refer to criticisms
on this book, which were published in the Indian magazine the Theosophist
in June, 1883, by “a Brahman Hindoo.” The writer
complains that in interpreting the esoteric doctrine, I have departed
unnecessarily from accepted Sanskrit nomenclature; but his objection merely is
that I have given unfamiliar names in some cases to ideas already embodied in Hindoo sacred writings, and that I have done too much
honour 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 Hindűs to this day,” says
my Brahman critic, “is more or less tinged with the esoteric doctrine taught in
Mr Sinnett’s book misnamed
‘Esoteric Buddhism,” while there is not a single village or hamlet in the whole
of India in which people are not more or less acquainted with the sublime
tenets of the Vedânta philosophy . . . . The effects
of Karma in the next birth, the enjoyment of its fruits, good or evil, in a
subjective or spiritual state of existence prior to the reincarnation of the
spiritual monad in this or any other world, the loitering of the unsatisfied
souls or human shells in the earth (Kâma loca), the pralayic and manvantaric periods
. . . . are not only intelligible, but are even
familiar to a great many Hindűs, under names
different from those made use by the author of ‘Esoteric Buddhism.’ “ So much the better, -I take leave to rejoin, - from the
point of view of Western readers, to whom it must be a matter of indifference
whether the esoteric 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 Europe can be anxious for, is to arrive at a clear
understanding as to the essential principles of that science, and if we find
the principles defined in this book claimed by the cultured representatives of
more than one great Oriental creed as equally the underlying truths of their
different systems, we shall be all the better inclined to believe the present
exposition of doctrine worth our attention.
In regard to the complaint itself, that the teachings here reduced
to an intelligible shape are incorrectly described by the name this book bears,
I cannot do better than quote the note by which the editor of the Theosophist
replies to his Brahman contributor. This note says: -“We print the above letter
as it expresses in courteous language, and in an able manner, the views of a
large number of our Hindoo brothers. At the same time
it must be stated that the name of ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ was given to Mr Sinnett’s latest publication,
not because the doctrine propounded therein is meant to be specially identified
with any particular form of faith, but because Buddhism means the
doctrine of the Buddhas, the Wise i.e. the Wisdom Religion.” For my own
part I need only add that I fully accept and adopt that explanation of the
matter. It would indeed be a misconception of the design which this book is
intended to sub-serve, 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 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 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 present writer by Eastern philosophers, and
thus fall most readily into an Oriental mould. For the value
of these teachings will perhaps be most fully realized when we clearly perceive
that they are scientific in their character rather than controversial.
Spiritual truths, if they are truths, may evidently be dealt with in a no less
scientific spirit than chemical reactions. And no religious feeling, of
whatever colour it may be, need be disturbed by the
importation into the general stock of knowledge of new discoveries about the
constitution and nature of man on the plane of his higher activities. True
religion will eventually find a way to assimilate much fresh knowledge, in the
same way that it always finally acquiesces in a general enlargement of
Knowledge on the physical plane. This, in the first instance, may sometimes
disconcert notions associated with religious belief, - as geological science at
first embarrassed biblical chronology. But in time men came to see that the
essence of the biblical statement does not reside in the literal sense of the
cosmological passages in the Old Testament, and religious conceptions grew all
the purer for the relief thus afforded. In just the same way when positive
scientific knowledge begins to embrace a comprehension of the 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 strengthened all the
better for the process. Especially as such processes continue,
will the internal dissensions of the religious world be inevitably subdued. The
warfare of sects can only be due to a failure on the part of rival sectarians
to grasp fundamental facts. Could a time come when the basic ideas on which
religion rests, should be comprehended with the same certainty with which we
comprehend some primary physical laws, and disagreement about them be
recognized by all educated people as ridiculous, then there would not be room
for very acrimonious divergences of religious sentiment. Externals of religious
thought would still differ in different climates and among different races, -
as dress and dietaries differ, - but such differences would not give rise to
intellectual antagonism.
Basic facts of the nature indicated 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 favour of some Eastern, in preference to the more
general Western creed. If medical science were to discover a new fact about
man’s body, were to unveil some hitherto concealed principle on which the
growth of skin and flesh and bone is carried on, that discovery would not be
regarded as trenching at all on the domain of religion. Would the domain of
religion be invaded, for example, by a discovery that should go one step behind
the action of the nerves, and disclose a finer set of activities manipulating
these as they manipulate the muscles? At all events, even if such a discovery
might begin to reconcile science and religion, no man who allows any of his
higher faculties to enter into his religious thinking would put aside a
positive fact of Nature, plainly shown to be such, as hostile to religion.
Being a fact it would inevitably fit in with all other facts, and with
religious truth among the number. So with the great mass of
information in reference to the spiritual evolution of man embodied in the
present statement. Our best plan evidently is to ask, before we look
into the report I bring forward, not whether it will square in all respects
with preconceived views, but whether it really does introduce us to a series of
natural facts connected with the growth and development of man’s higher
faculties. If it does this we may wisely examine the facts first in the
scientific spirit, and leave them to exercise whatever effect on collateral
belief may be reasonable and legitimate later on.
Ramifying, as the explanation proceeds, into a great many side
paths, it will be seen that the central statement now put forward constitutes a
theory of anthropology which completes and spiritualises
the ordinary notions of physical evolution. The theory which traces man’s
development by successive and very gradual improvements of animal forms
from generation to generation, is a very barren and miserable theory regarded
as an all-embracing account of creation; but properly understood it paves the
way for a comprehension of the higher concurrent process which is all the while
evolving the soul of man in the spiritual realm of existence. The present view
of the matter reconciles the evolutionary method with the deeply seated craving
of every self-conscious entity for perpetuity of individual life. The
disjointed series of improving forms on this earth have no
individuality, and the life of each in turn is a separate transaction which
finds in the next similar transaction, no compensation for suffering involved,
no justice, no fruit of its efforts. It is just
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 states 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 workings of
highly developed matter in each case. Nor is it less at variance with the
analogies of Nature; but without going into that, it is enough for the moment
to perceive that the theory of spiritual evolution, as set forth in the
teaching of esoteric science, is at any rate in harmony with these analogies,
while at the same time it satisfactorily meets the requirements of justice, and
of the instinctive demand for continuity of individual life.
This theory recognizes the evolution of the soul as a process that
is quite continuous in itself, though carried out partly through the
instrumentality of a great series of dissociated forms. Putting aside for the
moment of profound metaphysics of the theory which trace the principle of life
from the original first cause of the cosmos, we find the soul as an entity
emerging from the animal kingdom, and passing into the earliest human forms,
without being at that time ripe for the higher intellectual life with which the
present state of humanity renders us familiar. But through successive
incarnations in forms whose physical improvement, under the Darwinian law, is
constantly fitting them to be its habitation at each return to objective life,
it gradually gathers that enormous range of experience which is summed up in
its higher development. In the intervals between its physical incarnations it
prolongs and works out, and finally exhausts or transmutes into so much
abstract development, the personal experiences of each life. This is the clue
to the true explanation of that apparent difficulty which besets the cruder
form of the theory of reincarnation 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 compensation for
this one. He overlooks the enormous importance of the intervening spiritual
condition, in which he by no means forgets the personal adventures and emotions
he has just passed through, and in the course of which he distills these into
so much cosmic progress. In the following pages the elucidation of this
profoundly interesting mystery is attempted, and 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 borderland between those
conditions - or rather between physical and spiritual life - which have engaged
attention and speculation so widely of recent years in most civilized
countries.
Return to
Esoteric Buddhism Index
The Theosophical Society,