8. Conclusions.
The temple of modern Theosophy, the foundation of which was laid by Madame Blavatsky, rests upon the truth of the Mahatma stories. Disbelieve these, and the entire structure falls to the ground like a house of cards. After the numerous exposures, recorded in the preceding chapters, it is difficult to place any reliance in the accounts of Mahatmic miracles. There may, or may not, be sages in the East, acquainted with spiritual laws of being, but that these masters, or adepts, used Madame Blavatsky as a medium to announce certain esoteric doctrines to the Western world, is exceedingly dubious.
The first work of any literary pretensions to call attention to Theosophy was Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism.” Of that production, William Emmette Coleman says:
“‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ by A. P. Sinnett, was based upon statements contained in letters received by Mr. Sinnett and Mr. A. O. Hume, through Madame Blavatsky, purporting to be written by the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya—principally the former. Mr. Richard Hodgson has kindly lent me a considerable number of the original letters of the Mahatmas that leading to the production of ‘Esoteric Buddhism.’ I find in them overwhelming evidence that all of them were written by Madame Blavatsky. In these letters are a number of extracts from Buddhist Books, alleged to be translations from the originals by the Mahatmic writers themselves. These letters claim for the adepts a knowledge of Sanskrit, Thibetan, Pali and Chinese. I have traced to its source each quotation from the Buddhist Scriptures in the letters, and they were all copied from current English translations, including even the notes and explanations of the English translators. They were principally copied from Beal’s ‘Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.’ In other places where the ‘adept’ is using his own language in explanation of Buddhistic terms and ideas, I find that his presumed original language was copied nearly word for word from Rhys Davids’ ‘Buddhism,’ and other books. I have traced every Buddhistic idea in these letters and in ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ and every Buddhistic term, such as Devachan, Avitchi, etc., to the books whence Helena Petrovna Blavatsky derived them. Although said to be proficient in the knowledge of Thibetan and Sanskrit the words and terms in these languages in the letters of the adepts were nearly all used in a ludicrously erroneous and absurd manner. The writer of those letters was an ignoramus in Sanskrit and Thibetan; and the mistakes and blunders in them, in these languages, are in exact accordance with the known ignorance of Madame Blavatsky concerning these languages. ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ like all of Madame Blavatsky’s works, was based upon wholesale plagiarism and ignorance.”
FIG. 40. MADAME BLAVATSKY’S AUTOGRAPH.
Madame Blavatsky never succeeded in penetrating into Thibet, in whose sacred “lamaseries” and temples dwell the wonderful Mahatmas of modern Theosophy, but William Woodville Rockhill, the American traveller and Oriental scholar, did, and we have a record of his adventures in “The Land of the Laas,” published in 1891. While at Serkok, he visited a famous monastery inhabited by 700 lamas. He says (page 102): “They asked endless questions concerning the state of Buddhism in foreign lands. They were astonished that it no longer existed in India, and that the church of Ceylon was so like the ancient Buddhist one. When told of our esoteric Buddhists, the Mahatmas, and of the wonderful doctrines they claimed to have obtained from Thibet, they were immensely amused. They declared that though in ancient times there were, doubtless, saints and sages who could perform some of the miracles now claimed by the Esoterists, none were living at the present day; and they looked upon this new school as rankly heretical, and as something approaching an imposition on our credulity.”
“Isis Unveiled,” and the “Secret Doctrine,” by Madame Blavatsky, are supposed to contain the completest exposition of Theosophy, or the inner spiritual meaning of the great religious cults of the world, but, as we have seen, they are full of plagiarisms and garbled statements, to say nothing of “spurious quotations from Buddhist sacred books, manufactured by the writer to embody her own peculiar views, under the fictitious guise of genuine Buddhism.” This last quotation from Coleman strikes the keynote of the whole subject. Esoteric Buddhism is a product of Occidental manufacture, a figment of Madame Blavatsky’s romantic imagination, and by no means represents the truth of Oriental philosophy.
As Max Mueller, one of the greatest living Oriental scholars, has repeatedly stated, any attempt to read into Oriental thought our Western science and philosophy or to reconcile them, is futile to a degree; the two schools are as opposite to each other, as the negative and positive poles of a magnet, Orientalism representing the former, Occidentalism, the latter. Oriental philosophy with its Indeterminate Being (or pure nothing as the Absolute) ends in the utter negation of everything and affords no clue to the secret of the Universe. If to believe that all is maya, (illusion), and that to be one with Brahma (absorbed like the rain drop in the ocean) constitutes the summum bonum of thinking, then there is no explanation of, or use for, evolution or progress of any kind. The effect of Hindoo philosophy has been stagnation, indifferentism, and, as a result, the Hindoo has no recorded history, no science, no art worthy the name. Compared to it see what Greek philosophy has done: it has transformed the Western world: Starting with Self-Determined Being, reason, self-activity, at the heart of the Universe, and the creation of individual souls by a process of evolution in time and space, and the unfolding of a splendid civilization are logical consequences. In the East, it is the destruction of self-hood; in the West the destruction of selfishness, and the preservation of self-hood.
Many noted Theosophists claim that modern Theosophy is not a religious cult, but simply an exposition of the esoteric, or inner spiritual meaning of the great religious teachers of the world. Let me quote what Solovyoff says on this point:
“The Theosophical Society shockingly deceived those who joined it as members, in reliance on the regulations. It gradually grew evident that it was no universal scientific brotherhood, to which the followers of all religions might with a clear conscience belong, but a group of persons who had begun to preach in their organ, The Theosophist, and in their other publications, a mixed religious doctrine. Finally, in the last years of Madame Blavatsky’s life, even this doctrine gave place to a direct and open propaganda of the most orthodox exoteric Buddhism, under the motto of ‘Our Lord Buddha,’ combined with incessant attacks on Christianity. * * * Now, in 1893, as the direct effect of this cause, we see an entire religious movement, we see a prosperous and growing plantation of Buddhism in Western Europe.”
As a last word let me add that if, in my opinion, modern Theosophy has no right to the high place it claims in the world of thought, it has performed its share in the noble fight against the crass materialism of our day, and, freed from the frauds that have too long darkened its poetical aspects, it may yet help to diffuse through the world the pure light of brotherly love and spiritual development.