I wanted to re-articulate some points in a different way from the approach of providing a barrage of quotations in The Connection of Theosophy to Tibet, Iran and Chaldea, because this is not a light subject. I am not approaching it in the way Reigle does, to identify the origins of the Theosophical Positions, but in this article, I am dealing with it from a cultural view.
Because what is Blavatsky doing? Is she “borrowing” and creating a new pseudo-religion?”
Blavatsky is reconstructing the Zurvanite and Simorghian mythology of the Iranian branch of the Indo‑Iranian mythological family and attempts to restore the entire framework of the Ariyan or Aryan (Indo-Iranian) religious worldview as the source of Hinduism, Buddhism, and esoteric Zoroastrianism. Theosophy is about all this, with explanations of the origins of the esotericism of Tibetan Buddhism and the Bön.
It is very important to understand what the Tamil Vedantist, T. Subba Row once said in relation to this:
“No comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that so-called “Aryan doctrine,” . . . and fully comprehends the whole range of the ancient Aryan philosophy.”
— T. SUBBA ROW
That is the key.
The texts within the three dots puts things into perspective and after goes into the meaning of “Pre‑Vedic Buddhism.”
The Christian polemicists are still focused on “the evil doctrines of Babylon” and the “Fall of Babylon the Great Whore” from the Bible, and this is because the power these myths still have on how Christians interpret events in the world.
Well, the narrative Theosophy is focused on goes way beyond anything Christian conspiracists can comprehend or believe about any perceived threat to Christian dominance and truth-claims on the world. Right now, there are many Christians fearful of just even Islam. Within this history, the idea that Christianity represents the only Truth, True God or True Religion — all these accepted conventional truths are just extremely weak. There are many factors beyond the scope of Christianity in this history. The weakness of Islam is that the Christian is always arguing against it according to what the Bible says, and they are forced to contend against Muslims, because of Islam’s claim as being a corrective and continuation of prophetic tradition from the great patriarchs and through the Qur’an. This is not the case for other traditions, which need not depend on trying to align with whatever the Bible says.
It is noticeable, that clever Christian conspiracists do often lurk and read our works to incorporate statements and complex terminology in their ever evolving and revised attacks against “Occultism” and “Theosophy,” and they know this, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter, because as long as I have observed these developments since the late nineties on the internet, the rhetorical attacks are baked into the religious programming as a discouragement and deterrent against “foreign influences.” This is the issue for Americans, and I cannot say what are the issues and limitations in other countries. It is just that, as you find the religious and political Right as a combined force for Christian Nationalism in this country, everything seems bound to arguments about foreign influences and immigrants. Christianity is treated as something separate from all of this history, transcending it, or a corrective measure dictated or inspired by “God” over a Pagan world.
Theosophy challenges that narrative, and we are all asked to question and challenge that narrative. It challenges Christianity, and as much as the Western-focused esotericists felt offended by this and disliked Theosophy’s early pivot to “Eastern metaphysics,” there is no way to get to an understanding of Theosophy without challenging the dominant religious frameworks, orthodoxy and their truth-claims.
The term “Pre‑Vedic Buddhism” to describe the Theosophical System just describes the “primordial” Central Asian esoteric doctrine. There existed a primordial, universal, non‑theistic Wisdom Tradition preserved in Central Asia. It is the “root” from which both the Vedas and Buddhism later emerge, and it survives. From this ancient tradition, it was in one sense carried from its wide region of origin through Aryan migrations into India through the rishis, into Vedic ritualism and the early darshanas (schools) as partial and exoteric survival, and e.g., the Upanishadic philosophy represents its partial recovery, but then Siddhartha Gautama revives the original doctrine. There are many developments happening before Siddhartha Gautama, and contemporaries he is in dialogue with, or challenging himself.
“Pre‑Vedic Buddhism” represents the philosophical core of this entire Central Asian mythic‑historical framework Theosophy engages in.
The Secret Doctrine mythologizes the history by stating that “divine instructors” gave this doctrine to humanity in this present Epoch (same feature in the Simorgh myth) termed the fifth root-race. This is the same region where Theosophy places the trans‑Himalayan brotherhood; where the Iranian myth places the Simorgh; the Zoroastrian cosmology places Airyana Vaejah; where Zurvanism represents the Iranian expression of the same primordial, Central‑Asian pre‑Vedic esoteric current Theosophy keeps pointing back to; and it is where the Dabistān places its esoteric schools. Theosophy sees Buddhism as closer to the primordial doctrine than the Vedas, because the Vedas became ritualistic and priest‑dominated, while Buddhism preserved the non‑theistic, metaphysical, consciousness‑centered core. This is why Blavatsky argues that Buddhism is philosophically “older.” Theosophy connects to the Dabistān and Kaivan’s circle because that text preserves traces of this “Central Asian esotericism,” since it describes Zoroastrian‑Illuminationist mystics, Indian yogic sects, esoteric monotheists, pre‑Islamic Iranian metaphysics, and hidden schools of wisdom.
These are therefore preservations of the same primordial doctrine. The emphasis becomes about the survival of this tradition, which questions theories of Theosophy as a mixture or “borrowing” from Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism. These are the theories of scholars in the modern sense, who are often detached and do not think from the perspective of the actual teachers of the ideas. We want to be engaged with these philosophies, not detached from it. Hence, Simorghian cosmology, Iranian esotericism, Upanishadic metaphysics, Buddhist enlightenment and sunyata, and theosophical emphasis on “Wisdom‑Religion” express the record of this same pre‑Vedic framework. The scope of this mission and project of THEOSOPHY is only set back by a lack of understanding this scope and attempts to dilute and solely center the narrative in the primacy and supremacy of Christianity or Islam, which never explain or care about any of this history, except to subordinate it.
The American Minervan 
Leave a comment