The Traditions
India
The Indian tradition as the original technology of consciousness: yoga, meditation, the Vedas, and a system of practice that has been refined for millennia.
The Eternal Doctrine: From the Vedas to the Light of Asia Welcome, seekers of the light. Today, we embark on a journey to the very cradle of human spirituality. We turn our gaze toward India, the sacred land that is not merely the mother of nations and diverse civilizations, but the hearth of the greatest religious inspirations. We shall uncover the Secret Doctrine, that fundamental truth found at the base of all great religions.
But whence does it come? What manner of men first conceived it?.
One. The beginning.
To find the most ancient writings, we must look not to parchment, but to the heavens. The stellar worlds, softly radiating throughout the quiet night, were the eternal and divine scriptures, consulted by men long before they learned to write. Yet, upon the earth, the Vedas stand as the first books to which this great doctrine was entrusted.
Picture, if you will, the primitive religion of India cast in the mould of the Vedas. It was a patriarchal faith, simple as the life of a man without desires, breathing an atmosphere both strong and serene amidst the splendid nature of the East. The Vedic hymns rise to a moral elevation equal to the noblest lyrics ever penned.
In this ancient wisdom, they worshipped Agni, the fire, symbol of the Eternal Masculine or creative spirit. They revered Sômâ, the fluid of the sacrifice, representing the Eternal Feminine, the Soul of the World, that ethereal substance. In the perfect union of these two principles, they perceived the Supreme Being, Zyaus, or God.
The Vedas reveal a profound cosmology: The Supreme One immolates and divides Himself to produce universal life. Thus, the world and all its creatures, having issued from God, must return to Him through ceaseless evolution. Here, in the dawn of time, we find the theory of the fall and the reascension of souls. At the break of day, the father of the family, acting as priest, would kindle the sacred flame. As the smoke ascended into the azure vault, it carried a prayer to the One living power hidden behind nature’s transparent veil. And mark this truth: during this sacrifice, the Vedas tell us that the Asouras (superior spirits) and the Pitris (souls of ancestors) surrounded the participants, uniting with them in prayer.
Thus, we see that the belief in spirits and communication with the unseen existed in the world's earliest ages. The Vedas explicitly assert the immortality of the soul and reincarnation. They ask of the soul: "Whence proceeds it? Some come to us and go back again; others go back and again return". While the pages abound with allegories of Devas, secondary divinities representing natural forces, the system was monotheistic. The name of the Great First Cause was held so sacred that to speak it was to incur the penalty of death.
From the interpreters of this secret doctrine, the Rishis, anchorites living in the sylvan retreats of great woods, arose the hermit fraternity that gave birth to Brahmanism.
Two. Krishna.
From this backdrop emerges the noble figure of Krishna. Raised by ascetics in the heart of the cedar forests beneath the Himalayas' snowy peaks, Krishna stands in history as the first religious reformer, the first divine missionary. He renewed the Vedic doctrines, grounding them in the Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and its successive births. Before sealing his work with his blood, he bequeathed to India an ideal that has sustained it for thousands of years.
Krishna traveled from place to place, teaching that the body is but a finite envelope, while the soul within is invisible, imponderable, and eternal. He illuminated the mystery of rebirth: just as the depths of heaven are open to the radiance of stars, the depths of life are crystallized by truth. He taught that when the body dissolves, if wisdom is in the ascendant, the soul departs for the regions of pure beings. But if passion predominates, or if the soul is darkened by ignorance, it is drawn back to dwell amongst earthly matters and unreasonable beings. Every rebirth is the strict consequence of deeds performed in anterior existences.
But Krishna revealed a greater mystery: The Science of Unity. He taught that we must elevate ourselves to the Divine Being who transcends both soul and mind, yet resides within each of us. He said, "Thou bearest in thee a sublime friend whom thou dost not know, for God has His abode within every man". The soul that finds this inner God is delivered from rebirth, from death, and from sorrow, drinking of the waters of immortality.
Krishna spoke of his own nature with sublimity. He told his disciples that while they had forgotten their previous births, he remembered his. He is not subject to birth or death by nature, yet from age to age, when virtue fails and vice prevails, he makes himself visible to save the just and rehabilitate virtue. His ethics were pure and challenging. He taught that the evils we inflict on neighbors follow us like a shadow. He urged us not to fear living among the wicked, that we might return them to righteousness.
And in a metaphor of breathtaking beauty regarding self-sacrifice, he said: "The honest man should fall beneath the blows of the wicked, like the sandal tree which perfumes the axe that fells it". Regarding the spirits, Krishna confirmed that souls who have done good acquire the faculty of conversing with those who preceded them in the spiritual life, a truth still preserved in the doctrine of the Pitris.
Three. The Indian caste system.
However, time brings change. The Brahmins, borrowing from these religious conceptions, established a social order that eventually ossified. The ternary system degenerated into sacerdotal privileges; heredity imposed harsh rules; and woman, once honored in Vedic times, became a slave. Society froze into a rigid mould, leading to India's decadence and a lethargic sleep resembling death.
The Brahmins buried Krishna’s moral authority under a mass of gross formulas. We must distinguish, however, between the two parts of Brahmanism. The first is the vulgar faith, filled with fictions like metempsychosis, the scarecrow idea that guilty spirits reincarnate as animals or plants, designed to terrorize the weak. This is distinct from the secret, esoteric tradition found in the dark recesses of the pagodas, which contains the highest specificity on the soul and the Universal Cause.
Four. Buddha.
Into this stagnation, six hundred years before the Christian era, stepped Sakya Mouni, the Buddha. A King’s son, he fell prey to an immense pity for human suffering. He renounced his palace for the silent woods and, after years of meditation, brought a new rendering of the Law. Buddhism teaches that Desire is the cause of sin, suffering, and reincarnation. Passion rivets us to the material body. To rescue the soul, one must sacrifice the ego and acquire Knowledge. This knowledge includes the science of the visible and invisible nature.
The Buddha taught that the world is in perpetual evolution. Beings descend from the Great Unity and re-enter the world of matter to labor for their perfection. We return to perfection through Science or through Love, the two essential factors of the universe. As long as a being has not acquired love, it is condemned to the chain of terrestrial reincarnations.
And what is the destination? Nirvana. Let us clear away the misunderstanding of this word. According to the secret doctrine, Nirvana is not the absorption into nothingness. It is the conquest of perfection by the soul, its definitive enfranchisement from transmigrations. Each soul works out its own destiny. We are the result of our past. This is Karma: the sum total of merits or demerits acquired, the starting point for our future. The Buddha proclaimed: "All that we are is the resultant of what we have thought... If a man speaks and acts from out of a pure thought, happiness will follow him like a shadow". He taught that hatred is never appeased by hatred, but vanquished only by love.
Unlike religions that promise a future reward, a mercenary motive, Buddhism counsels righteousness because it is nature's supreme object. The Buddhist’s compassion extends to all beings: animals, vegetables, and even inorganic forms, for all are linked by the great law of evolution. To the esoteric initiate, Death is an illusion; it is merely an agent of renewal. Hell is nothing other than remorse and a lack of love. Purgatory is omnipresent, existing wherever matter evolves, even in the depths of the starry firmament. Through Dhyâna, or ecstasy, the spirit can communicate with souls that have departed earth.
Five. Conclusion.
Though Buddhism has undergone vicissitudes, becoming atheistic in the South or clouded by superstitious rites like prayer mills in Tibet and China, its primitive traditions remain preserved in the Sutras. It is said that the Mahatmas, wise men dwelling on the high plateaus of India, still guard the secret doctrine in its fullness, defying pain and death, awaiting the hour when humanity is ready to receive their arcane knowledge.
The esoteric philosophy opens strange vistas: For example the days and nights of Brahma (Manvantara and Pralaya), stupendous periods where the Great First Cause absorbs all beings into quiescence. Perhaps the end of time. Yet, one fact stands forth above all. The law of charity proclaimed by the Buddha is one of the most powerful appeals to righteousness the world has ever heard. Despite its shadows, Buddhism remains a doctrine of love and equality, a powerful reaction against caste, offering striking analogies with the Gospel preached by Jesus of Nazareth. And brought once again to the modern age, Spiritism.
Let us, therefore, take these ancient truths to heart: That we are eternal, that our thoughts shape our destiny, and that love is the key that unlocks the chains of the earth. Peace be with you.
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