In the following chapter we will contrive to explain some of the esoteric speculations of the initiates of the sanctuary, as to what man was, is, and may yet be. The doctrines they taught in the Mysteries—the source from which sprung the Old and partially the New Testament, belonged to the most advanced notions of morality, and religious revelations. While the literal meaning was abandoned to the fanaticism of the unreasoning lower classes of society, the higher ones, the majority of which consisted of Initiates, pursued their studies in the solemn silence of the temples, and their worship of the one God of Heaven.
The speculations of Plato, in the Banquet, on the creation of the primordial men, and the essay on Cosmogony in the Timæus, must be taken allegorically, if we accept them at all. It is this hidden Pythagorean meaning in Timæus, Cratylus, and Parmenides, and a few other trilogies and dialogues, that the Neo-platonists ventured to expound, as far as the theurgical vow of secresy would allow them. The Pythagorean doctrine that God is the universal mind diffused through all things, and the dogma of the soul’s immortality, are the leading features in these apparently incongruous teachings. His piety and the great veneration Plato felt for the Mysteries, are sufficient warrant that he would not allow his indiscretion to get the better of that deep sense of responsibility which is felt by every adept. “Constantly perfecting himself in perfect Mysteries, a man in them alone becomes truly perfect,” says he in the Phædrus.[477]
He took no pains to conceal his displeasure that the Mysteries had become less secret than formerly. Instead of profaning them by putting them within the reach of the multitude, he would have guarded them with jealous care against all but the most earnest and worthy of his disciples.[478] While mentioning the gods, on every page, his monotheism is unquestionable, for the whole thread of his discourse indicates that by the term gods be means a class of beings far lower in the scale than deities, and but one grade higher than men. Even Josephus perceived and acknowledged this fact, despite the natural prejudice of his race. In his famous onslaught upon Apion, this historian says:[479] “Those, however, among the Greeks who philosophized in accordance with truth, were not ignorant of anything ... nor did they fail to perceive the chilling superficialities of the mythical allegories, on which account they justly despised them.... By which thing Plato, being moved, says it is not necessary to admit any one of the other poets into ‘the Commonwealth,’ and he dismisses Homer blandly, after having crowned him and pouring unguent upon him, in order that indeed he should not destroy, by his myths, the orthodox belief respecting one God.”
Those who can discern the true spirit of Plato’s philosophy, will hardly be satisfied with the estimate of the same which Jowett lays before his readers. He tells us that the influence exercised upon posterity by the Timæus is partly due to a misunderstanding of the doctrine of its author by the Neo-platonists. He would have us believe that the hidden meanings which they found in this Dialogue, are “quite at variance with the spirit of Plato.” This is equivalent to the assumption that Jowett understands what this spirit really was; whereas his criticism upon this particular topic rather indicates that he did not penetrate it at all. If, as he tells us, the Christians seem to find in his work their trinity, the word, the church, and the creation of the world, in a Jewish sense, it is because all this is there, and therefore it is but natural that they should have found it. The outward building is the same; but the spirit which animated the dead letter of the philosopher’s teaching has fled, and we would seek for it in vain through the arid dogmas of Christian theology. The Sphinx is the same now, as it was four centuries before the Christian era; but the Œdipus is no more. He is slain because he has given to the world that which the world was not ripe enough to receive. He was the embodiment of truth, and he had to die, as every grand truth has to, before, like the Phœnix of old, it revives from its own ashes. Every translator of Plato’s works remarked the strange similarity between the philosophy of the esoterists and the Christian doctrines, and each of them has tried to interpret it in accordance with his own religious feelings. So Cory, in his Ancient Fragments, tries to prove that it is but an outward resemblance; and does his best to lower the Pythagorean Monad in the public estimation and exalt upon its ruins the later anthropomorphic deity. Taylor, advocating the former, acts as unceremoniously with the Mosaic God. Zeller boldly laughs at the pretensions of the Fathers of the Church, who, notwithstanding history and its chronology, and whether people will have it or not, insist that Plato and his school have robbed Christianity of its leading features. It is as fortunate for us as it is unfortunate for the Roman Church that such clever sleight-of-hand as that resorted to by Eusebius is rather difficult in our century. It was easier to pervert chronology “for the sake of making synchronisms,” in the days of the Bishop of Cæsarea, than it is now, and while history exists, no one can help people knowing that Plato lived 600 years before Irenæus took it into his head to establish a new doctrine from the ruins of Plato’s older Academy.
This doctrine of God being the universal mind diffused through all things, underlies all ancient philosophies. The Buddhistic tenets which can never be better comprehended than when studying the Pythagorean philosophy—its faithful reflection—are derived from this source as well as the Brahmanical religion and early Christianity. The purifying process of transmigrations—the metempsychoses—however grossly anthropomorphized at a later period, must only be regarded as a supplementary doctrine, disfigured by theological sophistry with the object of getting a firmer hold upon believers through a popular superstition. Neither Gautama Buddha nor Pythagoras intended to teach this purely-metaphysical allegory literally. Esoterically, it is explained in the “Mystery” of the Kounboum,[480] and relates to the purely spiritual peregrinations of the human soul. It is not in the dead letter of Buddhistical sacred literature that scholars may hope to find the true solution of its metaphysical subtilties. The latter weary the power of thought by the inconceivable profundity of its ratiocination; and the student is never farther from truth than when he believes himself nearest its discovery. The mastery of every doctrine of the perplexing Buddhist system can be attained only by proceeding strictly according to the Pythagorean and Platonic method; from universals down to particulars. The key to it lies in the refined and mystical tenets of the spiritual influx of divine life. “Whoever is unacquainted with my law,” says Buddha, “and dies in that state, must return to the earth till he becomes a perfect Samanean. To achieve this object, he must destroy within himself the trinity of Maya.[481] He must extinguish his passions, unite and identify himself with the law (the teaching of the secret doctrine), and comprehend the religion of annihilation.”
Here, annihilation refers but to matter, that of the visible as well as of the invisible body; for the astral soul (perisprit) is still matter, however sublimated. The same book says that what Fo (Buddha) meant to say was, that “the primitive substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its highest revelation is the pure, luminous ether, the boundless infinite space, not a void resulting from the absence of forms, but, on the contrary, the foundation of all forms, and anterior to them. “But the very presence of forms denotes it to be the creation of Maya, and all her works are as nothing before the uncreated being, SPIRIT, in whose profound and sacred repose all motion must cease forever.”
Thus annihilation means, with the Buddhistical philosophy, only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish, i.e., change that shape; therefore, as something temporary, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Maya; for, as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed away for ever; hence, even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter, so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvana. He exists in spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated, and thus will die no more, for spirit alone is no Maya, but the only REALITY in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms.
It is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded the principal tenets of their philosophy. “Can that spirit, which gives life and motion, and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to nonentity?” they ask. “Can that sensitive spirit in brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die, and become nothing?” And Whitelock Bulstrode, in his able defence of Pythagoras, expounds this doctrine by adding: “If you say, they (the brutes) breathe their spirits into the air, and there vanish, that is all I contend for. The air, indeed, is the proper place to receive them, being, according to Laertius, full of souls; and, according to Epicurus, full of atoms, the principles of all things; for even this place wherein we walk and birds fly has so much of a spiritual nature, that it is invisible, and, therefore, may well be the receiver of forms, since the forms of all bodies are so; we can only see and hear its effects; the air itself is too fine, and above the capacity of the age. What then is the ether in the region above, and what are the influences or forms that descend from thence?” The spirits of creatures, the Pythagoreans hold, who are emanations of the most sublimated portions of ether, emanations, BREATHS, but not forms. Ether is incorruptible, all philosophers agree in that; and what is incorruptible is so far from being annihilated when it gets rid of the form, that it lays a good claim to IMMORTALITY. “But what is that which has no body, no form; which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible; that which exists and yet is not?” ask the Buddhists. “It is Nirvana,” is the answer. It is NOTHING, not a region, but rather a state. When once Nirvana is reached, man is exempt from the effects of the “four truths;” for an effect can only be produced through a certain cause, and every cause is annihilated in this state.
These “four truths” are the foundation of the whole Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana. They are, says the book of Pradjuâ Pâramitâ,[482] 1. The existence of pain. 2. The production of pain. 3. The annihilation of pain. 4. The way to the annihilation of pain. What is the source of pain?—Existence. Birth existing, decrepitude and death ensue; for wherever there is a form, there is a cause for pain and suffering. Spirit alone has no form, and therefore cannot be said to exist. Whenever man (the ethereal, inner man) reaches that point when he becomes utterly spiritual, hence, formless, he has reached a state of perfect bliss. Man as an objective being becomes annihilated, but the spiritual entity with its subjective life, will live for ever, for spirit is incorruptible and immortal.
It is by the spirit of the teachings of both Buddha and Pythagoras, that we can so easily recognize the identity of their doctrines. The all-pervading, universal soul, the Anima Mundi, is Nirvana; and Buddha, as a generic name, is the anthropomorphized monad of Pythagoras. When resting in Nirvana, the final bliss, Buddha is the silent monad, dwelling in darkness and silence; he is also the formless Brahm, the sublime but unknowable Deity, which pervades invisibly the whole universe. Whenever it is manifested, desiring to impress itself upon humanity in a shape intelligent to our intellect, whether we call it an avatar, or a King Messiah, or a permutation of Divine Spirit, Logos, Christos, it is all one and the same thing. In each case it is “the Father,” who is in the Son, and the Son in “the Father.” The immortal spirit overshadows the mortal man. It enters into him, and pervading his whole being, makes of him a god, who descends into his earthly tabernacle. Every man may become a Buddha, says the doctrine. And so throughout the interminable series of ages we find now and then men who more or less succeed in uniting themselves “with God,” as the expression goes, with their own spirit, as we ought to translate. The Buddhists call such men Arhat. An Arhat is next to a Buddha, and none is equal to him either in infused science, or miraculous powers. Certain fakirs demonstrate the theory well in practice, as Jacolliot has proved.