The Secret Doctrine Vol. I

…suggests what to them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use in their case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred in his inner spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs, and special religions. Moreover, Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens Latin: "Being" or "Existence.". It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions—gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever-Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein only its legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the "Dan" or "Jan-na" ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics—grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom Religion of antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and physiological aspect of the Wisdom-Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen and incorporeal," the mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats Initiated adepts or saints.. The latter received their Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni of the Mahavansa The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka.) near Mount Baibhâr (the Webhâra of the Pali manuscripts). This cave was in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Magadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian A Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to India., as rightly suspected by some archaeologists.†

Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philo-

• Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term for the esoteric schools and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as "to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan."

† Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archaeologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it.