The Choice of Good or Evil-The Second Half of Evo- lution 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 Exceptional Cases-Their Scientific Expla- 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-Sankaracharya-Ve- Its Remoteness-Preceding Gradations-Partial Nir- vana-The Threshold of Nirvana-Nirvana-Para Nirvana-Buddha and Nirvana-Nirvana attained by Adepts-General Progress towards Nirvana- The Days and Nights of Brahma-The Various Man- Correspondences of the Esoteric Doctrine with Visible 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 Consciousness-Transmigration-The ESOTERIC BUDDHISM. CHAPTER I. ESOTERIC TEACHERS. THE information contained in the following pages is no collection of inferences deduced from study. I am bringing to my readers knowledge which I have obtained by favour rather than by effort. It will not be found the less valuable on that account; I venture, on the contrary, to declare that it will be found of incalculably greater value, easily as I have obtained it, than any results in a similar direction which I could possibly have procured by ordinary methods of research, even had I possessed, in the highest degree, that which I make no claim to possess at all-Oriental scholarship. Every one who has been concerned with Indian literature, and still more, any one who in India has taken interest in talking with cultivated Natives on philosophical subjects, will be aware of a general conviction existing in the East that there are men living who know a great deal more about philosophy in the highest acceptation of the word-the science, the true knowledge of spiritual things,-than can be B found recorded in any books. In Europe the notion of secrecy as applied to science is so repulsive to the prevailing instinct, that the first inclination of European thinkers is to deny the existence of that which they so much dislike. But circumstances have fully assured me during my residence in India that the conviction just referred to is perfectly well founded, and I have been privileged at last to receive a very considerable mass of instruction in the hitherto secret knowledge over which Oriental philosophers have brooded silently till now; instruction which has hitherto been only imparted to sympathetic students, prepared themselves to migrate into the camp of secrecy. Their teachers have been more than content that all other inquirers should be left in doubt as to whether there was anything of importance to learn at their hands. With quite as much antipathy at starting as any one could have entertained to the old Oriental policy in regard to knowledge, I came, nevertheless, to perceive that the old Oriental knowledge itself was a very real and important possession. It may be excusable to regard the high grapes as sour so long as they are quite out of reach, but it would be foolish to persist in that opinion if a tall friend hands down a bunch and one finds them sweet, For reasons that will appear as the present explanations proceed, the very considerable block of hitherto secret teaching this volume contains, has been conveyed to me, not only without conditions of the usual kind, but to the express end that I might convey it in my turn to the world at large. or Without the light of hitherto secret Oriental knowledge, it is impossible by any study of its published literature-English or Sanscrit--for students of even the most scholarly qualifications, to reach a comprehension of the inner doctrines and real meaning of any Oriental religion. This assertion conveys no reproach to the sympathetic, learned, and industrious writers of great ability who have studied Oriental religions generally, and Buddhism especially, in their ex ternal aspects. Buddhism, above all, is a religion which has enjoyed a dual existence from the very beginning of its introduction to the world. real inner meaning of its doctrines has been kept back from uninitiated students, while the outer teachings have merely presented the multitude with a code of moral lessons and a veiled, symbolical literature, hinting at the existence of knowledge in the background. The This secret knowledge, in reality, long antedated the passage through earth-life of Gautama Buddha. Brahminical philosophy, in ages before Buddha, embodied the identical doctrine which may now be described as Esoteric Buddhism. Its outlines had indeed been blurred; its scientific form partially confused; but the general body of knowledge was already in possession of a select few before Buddha came to deal with it. Buddha, however, undertook the task of revising and refreshing the esoteric science of the inner circle of initiates, as well as the morality of the outer world. |