Islam and Theosophy: Are Jesus and Buddha “Divine Messengers?”

Are Jesus and Buddha “Divine Messengers?” (Two-Fold Answer): The concept of the lineage of Prophetic Wisdom and Divine (or Spiritual Messengers) is a concept I came to when studying the history of both Manichaeism and Islam. This is not an odd thing to hear among Muslims. Some simply mention to me, that traditionally, there are 100,000 Prophets and 315 Messengers, with 25 specifically mentioned in the Quran. In Islam, there is a distinction between prophets, messengers, philosophers of God and so forth. It has been, that sometimes therefore, Muslims and non-Muslims have tried to argue whether, e.g., people like Zarathustra, Siddhartha Gautama, Mahavira and others might be included in these numbers as “messengers of Allah.” Of course, Jesus is considered a prophet and one of the “messengers of Allah” in Islam, but with Siddhartha, that is different for many Muslims.

In my experiences, there are particularly South Asians who are so affected by past conflicts, that they would never permit themselves to find anything good in Islam as a Buddhist, or in Buddhism as a Muslim. The case is delicate and difficult.

Perhaps, pre-Partition India when there existed much more syncretism, there were groups and persons who reconciled systems and concepts. What would happen hypothetically if Siddhartha Gautama met Muhammad? Do people even think of these things? Hardly. I also cannot say entirely what exists much now similar to such models as Theosophy and Ishraq. There are Muslims who conceptualize Islam as the one true religion (like the exclusivist Christians do), because Islam is seen as the final prophetic message of THE GOD to humanity, thus even representing Islam as the WISDOM TRADITION. However, the Quran does not mention these other religions in-depth, and Muslims do not think the Quran required an elaboration of them.

However, this has created problems in how Muslims think about other religious tradition. This directly contributes to limitations in the learning of Muslims towards Zoroastrianism and the Brahmanical systems, e.g., often referring ignorantly and mockingly to Zoroastrians as literal “fire-worshippers.” We know, what is meant spiritually by the concept of FIRE, even in the New Testament (deriving it from the Greek mysteries), because the ancient Greek, Jewish, Aryan and Chaldean systems all teach about the NOUMENAL FIRE — not spirits dancing in the flame on your campfire for the lamb!

This is a small example of the importance of ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY against orientations born from dogmatic literalism, where dialogue between the Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book) and other great religions and philosophical schools can be highly fruitful. Although this (People of the Book, i.e., the monotheistic in contrast to Dharmic tradition) is another constructed limitation as to what constitutes authentic HOLY WISDOM and TRADITION.

The concept of divine messengers (or spiritual messengers) gets too uncontrollable in the twentieth-century. The New Age concept develops within contemporary Western culture as a theological error and invention. It cannot be said to derive simply, e.g., from Gnosticism, like a Christian polemicist would assert. Neither can it be said to derive purely from Theosophy, or through innovated corruptions of concepts in Islamic esoteric systems through the German Rosicrucian concept of the fratres lucis (Brotherhood of Light). Not entirely, but there are semblances and connections. Sometimes, it comes to us through bad, simple innovating, or twisting of concepts.

In a letter written to their main correspondent Alfred P. Sinnett in Feb 1882, (Letter no. 49), K.H. actually anticipates the development of new bogus angelologies, as constructed within the copyist milieu pre-New Age (i.e., pseudo-theosophic developments post mid-1880s into the twentieth-century). THEOSOPHY is not a Religion. A theosophist should not be saying, e.g., that Christ, or Muhammad, or Jesus represent the only way to Absolute Truth, but neither that they all represent a secret Heavenly Fraternity of some sort.

No theosophist could construct collectively for all theosophists a system of ritualism for singular devotion to any specific object, or god. Each theosophist represents their school, their religious tradition — and they are joined in fraternity, brotherhood, or association in the spirit of study and discipline. They cannot force on the Muslim, Jew, or Christian theosopher a uniformity of worship, e.g., conducting prayers to spirits of the dead, Hindu devatas, a particular god, leader or man at a Theosophical Conference or meeting!

This is why the Theosophical Society Adyar in Madras, India erected shrines and temples reflecting a pre-Partition India, but also simply represents the representative traditions of the Society and its commitment to the principles and ideal of universal brotherhood.

These shrines and temples include a:

1. Buddhist Vihara (Shrine), which is located in the coconut grove by the Adyar River, enshrining a gray sandstone image of the Lord Buddha from Eastern India. It is surrounded by a lotus pond and a Zen memorial stone.
2. Hindu Temple, known as the Temple of Light, and is a non-sectarian temple that contains no idol, but only a flame. It is a place of worship for devotees who perform the Bharata Samaj Puja at sunrise every morning.
3. Christian Chapel, a non-sectarian architectural design, although most activity taking place there is through the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, which holds services according to the rites of the Liberal Catholic Church.
4. Zoroastrian Temple, also architecturally designed to be non-sectarian, with figures of Assyrian origin deeply symbolic and deserving of reflection.
5. Mosque completed in 1937 and modelled on the famous Pearl Mosque at Agra, with interiors designed according to Islamic teachings and architecture.
6. Sikh Shrine built in 1978 that symbolizes the direct path to the Divine with its simple prayer hall.
7. Great Banyan Tree known locally as the Adyar Aala Maram or the Adyar Bodhi tree, which is a landmark of Adyar and Chennai, estimated to be around 450 years old.

Are we following this important distinction here that has become lost with many people?

The letter mentioned mocks a Spiritualist’s claim, that Jesus and Siddhartha ought to be defined as “divine messengers” (as exhibited e.g., in the Besantian orientation) or are divine messengers, which would be a religious claim or construction of the idea that they compose a single group that mingle on Tuesdays and Sundays in the Summerland.

The idea, or rather the belief that Jesus and Siddhartha are divine messengers constitutes a religious and theological position, which the letters object to as expressive of what THEOSOPHY is. Hence, while one religion or sect will include a particular number of special spiritual personages, each will add or subtract personages from their map of the spiritual world and in accordance with importance. In the case of Alice Bailey’s inventive imagination, these so-called divine messengers still live on earth and hide among the people shaping world events. Of course, this is ridiculous, but these are the games modern “spiritual” frauds play at. It also tells us the difference between THEOSOPHY and the bad copyists, or the plainly misinformed.

Jesus and Siddhartha are portrayed in the letters only as adepts who taught against religious illusions, with both having roles in dismantling theism. In other letters (e.g., Letter no. 59), Jesus is written of, as being a pure (holy) human adept knowledgeable of both Jewish and Egyptian esotericism. The words of the writers in the books of the New Testament teach the cosmic symbolism of emanation. Hence, the letter critiques Christian literalism, while explaining the connection between the Christian symbolism of the concept of Christ (as the universal LOGOS) and Avalokitesvara. The same analogeticism is utilized in the letter again, when explaining the gender-dual symbolism between the Vedas, Kabbalism and Theosophy on the Christian Trinity’s hidden female aspect (e.g., the Holy Spirit as Sophia and Prakriti).

There is a consistent critique of Christian literalism and attention placed on pre-Christian esoteric roots, which orthodox Christians often deny as heresy, inauthentic, pagan, etc. Mediumistic visions are often dismissed as delusions, in one letter, describing Jesus as a non-historical spiritual abstraction, attributing mediumistic visions of spiritualists who claim to speak to Jesus, John the Baptist, etc., as experiences of subjective belief, not fact.

CHRIST is again equated with Buddha and the Augoeides, pointing us to the conclusion that true mystical Christianity leads to the transformative condition of inner regeneration, and even Nirvana, thus having nothing to do with vicarious atonement.

“Except insofar, that he constantly uses the terms ‘God’ and ‘Christ’ which taken in their esoteric sense simply mean ‘Good’ — in its dual aspect of the abstract and the concrete and nothing more dogmatic, Eliphas Levi is not in any direct conflict with our teachings.” (K.H., The Mahatma Letters, Letter No. 20c, 1881)

This demythologizes Jesus and instead portrays Jesus in his story as a human adept, whereas the Christos metaphysically is the principle of Good, a universally diffused principle in nature and in MAN.

Union with his (or her) god (the mystical voice, Christ) leads to new vestures, pneumatic life and nirvana (point at which differentiation of matter and its modifying relation to the manifested worlds vanishes; a passage of assimilation back to the ideal abstraction). This strips Christianity of its dogmatic understanding of divinity. Surprisingly, a number of comparisons are made between the errors of the Christians and the Spiritualists on after-death states, the nature of the soul, spirit, the absurdity of the concept of hellfire for souls, among other positions.

---

NOTE

I am speaking about the point that makes an association or federation of the great religious/philosophical bodies joined in the study of the esoteric wisdom of every ancient nation distinct from a singular religious body (or tradition), because the press in the early years of the Theosophical Society repeatedly mischaracterized Theosophy as a religion, or pseudo-religion. When we develop into the directions I made as being distinct from the Analogeticists, from THEOSOPHY and ECLECTICISM, then you get Islam, or a more recent example from the nineteenth-century in parallel development — you get the universalist religion of Bahá’u’lláh (founder of the Bahá’í Faith). While the men (or adepts) in The Mahatma Letter involved with the early Theosophical Movement present their philosophical explanations and positions as their positions, although supported by scholarship, they do not speak of their positions from a religious authoritative or prophetic angle, such as in the manner a “divine messenger of the Lord” (or from the “divine Hierarchy”) claimant speaks from. Their words are mainly stated as much, because their names were travestied and copied for the development of new hierarchical systems of authority via New Ageism and pseudo-theosophies, which their own words contradict.