Summary of study - Sunday, August 12, 2012

 

A summary of 

The Study of the text ISIS UNVELIED, vol. I.

Carried out on

Sunday, August 12, 2012, at ULT, Bangalore, India.

Portions covered  : Pages  438, para 2 to 445, para 2

Chapter xii of vol. I , entitled :  The “ Impassable chasm.”

Background note :

Chapter xii of vol. I of Isis continues the discussion, initiated in the previous chapters, on the wide chasm that exists between the modern science and ancient Wisdom-Science. Many an eminent Scientists is shown to have confessed to the limitation of empirical approach of the modern science based on Inductive logic inaugurated by Aristotle. The psychological and spiritual dimensions of the universe and man lie so much beyond the reach and the scope of modern science that the hiatus is confessedly is impassable.

Ancient Wisdom, on the other hand, represented in the Hermetic Science of ancient Egypt, and the Pythagorean and Platonic system, began with the Universal Principles and descended into numerous particulars, through training and development of latent divine faculty in man of apprehending directly truth of things, comprehended the whole of the Truth. This superior knowledge is shown to be recorded partly in the symbolism of sacred scriptures and philosophical systems  of ancient peoples. The sacred and secret knowledge is transmitted by great Adepts from remotest antiquity in oral teachings. Old Testament, for instance, is compiled from the oral tradition and is written in figurative allegory. The great Jewish scholar of 12^th century and still earlier scholar, Josephus, of the first century, are cited that this hidden wisdom is not to be revealed to public but only to such as are found morally and spiritually fit.

The Christian Church, ignorant of the hidden sense of the bible, has enforced its own dogmatic creed fashioned from the dead-letter meaning of the Bible, and has ever shut its eyes to the truth, and even persecuted those who dared to unravel the mystery, lest it should lose its hold on the minds of the ignorant masses.

Science, on the other hand, ignores to investigate psychological and spiritual phenomena, whenever and wherever these may occur, with its typical sceptical attitude and prejudice.

Thus sceptical materialism, and religious bigotry and superstition, thrive in the world, holding the mind of the race prisoner in the thraldom of ignorance and blotting out the Voice of the Spirit that speaks silently in the human heart.

It is to educate both religion and modern science out of their respective narrow grooves of thought and open the mind of the race to universal truths that Isis Unveiled is written by Madam H.P. Blavatsky.

Summary of portion studied

An account of the reincarnation of Buddha in a child in Tibetan temple in the 19^th century is given. The ceremonial event was allowed by the Buddhists to be witnessed by a correspondent of the French Institute, who relates what he witnessed : “An altar is prepared in the temple to receive the resuscitated Buddha, found by the initiated priesthood, and recognized by certain secret signs to have reincarnated himself in a new born infant.” (p. 437) The child suddenly rises into a sitting posture and proclaims in a clear loud voice : “I am Buddha, I am his spirit; and I, Buddha, your Dalai Lama, have left my old, decrepit body, at the temple of…..and selected the body of this young babe as my next earthly dwelling.” (ibid.)

The scientist was allowed by the priests to take the baby in his arms to a distant to ascertain for himself whether there was any ventriloquism or other fraud. He reports that looks gravely with eyes that made his flesh creep, and repeated the words he spoke as above.

The scientist made a detail report with signatures of eye-witnesses to the science academy of France at Paris. Members of the Institute received with the usual scepticism of scientists in general and dismissed it as a delusion of the reporter as either due to a sunstroke or have been duped. The attitude of the French academy is a typical instance of prejudice of scientists against such psychological marvels which they cannot explain, and dismiss them all as delusion of witnesses.

The famous historical French Friar, Abbe Huc, also narrates in detail psychological and magical marvels he witnessed in Tibet, and reported the facts to the Church of Rome. He was criticized and punished by ‘defrocking’ him. The Church ever received such events with severe disapproval, and when such was forced on her attention, they were all attributed to the handiwork of the ‘Devil.’

Is the Tibetan phenomenon of child prodigy the only one, far from European academies? By no means.

A 15 moth old baby at Camisard, France, spoke and prophesied in 1875 of a coming calamity in 1876, and it happened as predicted.

There was another well authenticated Spiritual Mediumship of a 15 moth old child which wrote a 20 word message.

But scientists, as usual, with their typical attitude of scepticism cared little to investigate the phenomenon

Abbe Huc gives wonderful accounts of his travels in Tibet in 19^th century much to the discomfiture of  the Roman Catholic Church. An account the gives of the wonderful tree, Koumboum, the Tree of ten thousand images, is one of the marvels of the orient. The tree is believed to have grown from the hair of Tsang Ka Pa, a reincarnation of Buddha. Every pasrt oof the tree bears letters or sentences in sacred characters, containing in extenso the whole history of creation, and in substance the sacred books of Buddhism.

Similar phenomena is found in the temple of Dandera in Egypt which described by Professor W.B.  Carpenter, the President of the Britiish Association, in his lecture on Egypt in Manchestor. The monuments bear pictures which symbolically describe the history of creation. Prof. Carpenter shows that the Jewish book of Genesis is an expression of early Jewish ideas, based on the  pictorial records of Egyptians among whom they lived. But the Professor did not suspect that the account of creation given pictorially in Dandera was an allegorical account. He concluded that the Egyptian account dovetailed with the 6 days creation of the Bible, little suspecting that the 6 days is an allegorical representation of vast cycles of time. They may ell mean six successive epochs or aeaons or eternities. Egyptian cosmogony viewed man as the result of evolution and his progress to be marked by immensely lengthy cycles.

Abbe Huc in his travelogue gives a wonderful account of magic screen he witnessed in a certain Tibetan Lamasery in which a canvas hanging in there depicted the picture of the live moon moving in the sky amidst clouds, each change of its phased being faithfully represented, an exact Fac simile of the celestial event taking place outside.

H.P.B. says that in other parts of the world too such phenomena are exhibited. She says in Tibet and Japan there are live pictures which depict movement of the Sun.

When Abbe Huc reported this, the Church forthwith defrocked him and even suspended him from his office. The same fate would be met by an scientist were he to report his witnessing of such a phenomenon.

Hidden wisdom is to be found in the land of Brahmans and Goutama Buddha. It is for the future ages to discover the grand truths.

Max Muller expressed his exasperation at the incomprehensible verbiage and mythical language of the sacred scriptures he set our to translate, but after years of painstaking work he found that they began to make some sense : “we perceived a glimmer of light, where all was darkness at first.” (p. 442)

That which is now termed the superstitious  verbiage and gibberish of mere heathens and savages (as western scholars termed them in the last century) may be found to contain the master-key to all religious system.

“There is no false religion which does not contain some element of truth” (St. Augustine)

Ammonius Saccas, the ‘God-taught,’ the founder of the Neo-platonic school in 2^nd century A.D. said that Jesus was a most excellent man whose mission was to purify ancient religion, which become corrupted over centuries, and demonstrate the vibrant philosophic principles underlying them, and restore them to their original purity. He taught that all religions were based on one and the same truth which was universally diffused in all climes from remotest antiquity.

Books of Thoth Hermes was the source from which Pythagoras and Plato got their wisdom, which is identical with that which forms the contents of the Vedas of India. The Secret Doctrine was and is identical in every country.

Alexander Wilder shows that the name Thoth means a collge or an assembly, and the books under that name were collected oracles and doctrines of the Initiated Priests of Memphis, Egypt.

Who are the Hebrews or the Judeans ? A historical account of heir origins has to be found in the sacred books of India. It is there mentioned that during the reign of Kansa (during Krishna’s time, which should be about 3000 B.C.)  Yadus (Judeans ?) or sacred tribe of India left India and migrated to the west carrying with them the Vedas. Resemblance between the philosophical doctrines and religious customs of Egyptians and Eastern Buddhists is evident.

One thing is certain. Secret Doctrine is one and universal, found underlying in the religion of every country, and that in the oldest texts which are least polluted by subsequent forgeries that we have to look for the truth.

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