And there are still weightier reasons to believe that the priceless Bhashyas (Commentaries) on the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmins, by their greatest expounder, will remain for ages yet a dead letter to most of the Hindus, except the Smartava Brahmins.
This sect, founded by Sankaracharya, (which is still very powerful in Southern India) is now almost the only one to produce students who have preserved sufficient knowledge to comprehend the [[Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------]] * Also called "the Sons of Wisdom," and of the "Fire-Mist" and the "Brothers of the Sun" in the Chinese records.
Si-dzang (Tibet) is mentioned in the MSS .
of the sacred library of the province of Fo-Kien, as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages before Buddha.
The Emperor Yu, the "great" (2,207 years B .
C .), a pious mystic and great adept, is said to have obtained his knowledge from the "great teachers of the Snowy Range" in Si-dzang.
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dead letter of the Bhashyas.
The reason of this is that they alone, I am informed, have occasionally real Initiates at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the "Sringa-giri," in the Western Ghats of Mysore.
On the other hand, there is no sect in that desperately exclusive caste of the Brahmins, more exclusive than is the Smartava; and the reticence of its followers to say what they may know of the Occult sciences and the esoteric doctrine, is only equalled by their pride and learning.
Therefore the writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand to meet with great opposition and even the denial of such statements as are brought forward in this work.
Not that any claim to infallibility, or to perfect correctness in every detail of all that which is herein said, was ever put forward.
Facts are there, and they can hardly be denied.
But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects treated, and the almost insurmountable limitations of the English tongue (as of all other European languages) to express certain ideas, it is more than probable that the writer has failed to present the explanations in the best and in the clearest form; yet all that could be done was done under every adverse circumstance, and this is the utmost that can be expected of any writer.
Let us recapitulate and show, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, how difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.
(1.) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the Puranas.
But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs.
The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form.
But modern science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony.
It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals.
That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the [[Vol.
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traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.
That for long ages, the "Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching.
How did they do so?
It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree.
No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions -- so obtained as to stand as independent evidence -- of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences.
(2.) The fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.
.
.
.
"Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led From cause to cause to nature's secret head, And found that one first Principle must be.
.
.
." It is called "Substance-Principle," for it becomes "substance" on the plane of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a "principle" in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE.
It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains all and everything.
Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System.
It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.
(See in chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial Substance, and Divine Thought.") (3.) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence.
To call it "essence," however, is to sin against the very spirit of the philosophy.
For though the noun may be derived in this case from the verb esse, "to be," yet IT cannot be identified with a being of any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect.
IT is best described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both.
"Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti" are One, in reality, yet two in the Universal conception of the manifested, even in the conception of the One Logos, its first manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in the "Notes on the Bhagavadgita" shows, IT appears from the objective standpoint of [[Vol.
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the One Logos as Mulaprakriti and not as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not the one REALITY hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute.
(4.) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun.
Compared to the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp.
Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The Absolute is described primarily by negation: 'neither Spirit nor matter, but both,' 'cannot be identified with a being of any kind that can be conceived by human intellect,' and calling it 'essence' is said to 'sin against the very spirit of the philosophy.'
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage explicitly discusses the system's cosmogony as 'the most stupendous and elaborate system' and describes how the universe manifests periodically from the Absolute Essence.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The passage describes 'the one REALITY hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute' — the supreme principle concealed behind the veil of Mulaprakriti.
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The Substance-Principle is described as 'latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself' — the divine pervades all of creation rather than remaining solely transcendent.
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
The Substance-Principle is described as 'homogeneous,' 'impersonal,' containing all and everything without division, with its impersonality called 'the fundamental conception of the System.'
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage describes a cascade from the unconditioned Absolute through the One Logos to the manifested universe, with the Logos as first emanation and the universe as periodical manifestation.
A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).
The passage describes an unbroken chain of transmission: 'teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity' passed through 'thousands of generations of Seers' to the 'Wise Men of the Fifth Race.'
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The passage describes adepts who have 'developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree' and whose 'independent visions' serve as the basis of verification — knowledge through direct experiential perception rather than faith or ritual.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage's opening frames the esoteric Bhashyas as remaining 'a dead letter to most of the Hindus' and the entire work positions itself as revealing concealed inner meaning.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes the universe as the 'periodical manifestation' descending from the unconditioned principle through successive stages, with 'evolutionary progress' noted as the complementary ascent.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The One Logos is explicitly named as the first manifestation of the Absolute, through which the universe is ordered and from whose objective standpoint Mulaprakriti appears.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage's central metaphysical claim is 'the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause' — an absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity flows.
Sacred knowledge transmitted as living speech rather than fixed writing — scripture carried in memory, song, and telling, renewed in each generation; the unwritten canon of a tradition.
The passage explicitly states the system is 'the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another.'
The doctrine that reality has two registers — an Absolute truth as the divine or ultimate mind knows it, and a Relative truth as finite human reason perceives and must act on — with both held as legitimate on their own plane rather than the second being simply an error to correct. Distinct from apophatic_theology (a claim about how the divine may be described, by negation) and unity_of_being (a claim that being is ultimately one) in being a claim about two coexisting registers of truth-claim itself.
The passage distinguishes between the Absolute (the unconditioned Reality) and the relative plane of manifestation (MAYA), holding both as legitimate on their own plane: the universe is 'real enough to the conscious beings in it' while being temporary compared to the eternal ONE.
Organized, persisting groups — fraternities, orders, lodges — that maintain esoteric knowledge or practices as an institution distinct from public religion or mainstream society, holding 'the keys' collectively rather than through any one master-disciple pair. Distinct from esoteric_lineage (a genealogical chain of individual transmission, not an institution) and hidden_sayings (the concealment of a teaching's meaning, independent of whether any organized body holds it).
The Smartava Brahmins are described as an organized sect with 'real Initiates at their head in their mathams' that exclusively preserves esoteric knowledge and is 'desperately exclusive.'
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The passage asserts 'Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti are One, in reality' and that the Substance-Principle 'is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself' — all existence is one divine reality.