Fohat Summer 2002

7/30/2019 Fohat Summer 2002

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MonadS

Volume VI, Number 2 Summer 2002

- The Views ofTheosophists andTwetan Buddhists

Compared

who Was theReai]esus?

The One Life vs Separatism:

A Look at Current Events in India

AVehicle for the Ancient Wisdom Tradition


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Recently Published

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D.

With an Addenda: His Stay in Georgetown, Colorado, USA. Compiled with AnnotatedEnglish Translations from the German, French, Spanish and Italian by RobertHtwohl. The German-born Medical Doctor, Franz Hartmann, was a student of H.P.Blavatsky, having travelled with and learned from her. An extensive bibliographiccompilation of his articles and books, self-authored as well as those translated fromother writers are brought together with adjoining annotations or translations intoEnglish. As well, as best as could be gathered, descriptive announcements abouthis works, mentions and notices by others, his lectures, letters and obituaries are

included. The Appendix includes findings from old newspapers in Colorado. Numerous photo-graphs intersperse the text. 144 pp. Published 2001. ISBN 0-9651315-4-8. US $12.95

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The Serpents Path: The Magical Plays of Florence Farr and Shakespear. Edited withIntroductory Note by Darcy Kntz. 48 pp. Containing the plays: 1: The Beloved ofHathor. 2: The Shrine of the Golden Hawk. 3: The Mystery of Time: A Masque. 4: ADialogue of Vision. 5: Review of the Egyptian Plays by W.B. Yeats. Bibliography.$9.95 USD plus $1.50 shipping.

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This magazine is an invitation for followers of all traditions to enter into adialogue whose goal is Truth and whose means is Universal Brotherhood.


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FOHATA Quarterly Publication of Edmonton Theosophical Society

ContentsEditor

Robert Bruce MacDonald

Managing Editor

JoAnne MacDonald

Assistant Editors

Rogelle PelletierDolorese Brisson

Publisher

Edmonton TheosophicalSociety

The pages of Fohat are an openforum dedicated to the pursuit ofTruth, and consequently theviews and opinions expressedherein are those of the authorsand do not necessarily reflect theviews of the publisher unlessotherwise specifically stated.

Any articles or correspondencemay be sent to:

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Cover Design: Donna Pinkard

ISSN 1205-9676

Volume VI, No. 2

Summer 2002

Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Letters to the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Who Was the Real Jesus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30by David Pratt

Monads in Theosophy and Tibetan Buddhism . . . . . 35

by Gerald Schueler, Ph.D.

India and Pakistan: Poisoning by Separatism . . . . . 39

Musings From a Secret Doctrine Class:

A Question of Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

by A Student

Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life

by Mike Ashley

To Light a Thousand Lamps, A Theosophic Vision

by Grace F. Knoche

To be featured in coming issues:

Thoughts and Habits - Conqueringour Cyclic Tendencies

Keep an eye out for our upcoming Judge issue.


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Academics and Students of TheosophyIt is possible to criticize an institution or association

whether it be political, religious, commercial or oth-erwise because that group has a constitution thatdescribes its reason for existence, its goals, and themeans to obtain those goals. The motivations of thegroup are open and not hidden. As spiritual beings

we can criticize that institution and judge its motivesagainst some inner moral light that we almost allpossess to some degree. For those who deny a spiri-tual dimension they can judge, I suppose, againstsome moral code they have developed somehow andcan express more or less perfectly. The motivationsof an individual are not so clear and, in fact, are mostoften not clear at all. We can surmise possible moti-vations but we must always remember that suchsurmise is fiction not worthy of a public forum. Withindividuals we do not try to judge motive but muststick to criticizing behavior which is public and inthe end open to debate. However, there are times

when the motive of the individual seems to becomeclear and that is when the individual belongs to agroup with a clearly defined constitution and hismotives seem to be commensurate with the motiva-tions of the group. However, even in this situation wemust tread with care. Peoples motives for joining agroup are not always due to absolute sympathies

with the agenda of that group.

A Student of Theosophy understands the above and

is always careful about judging individuals and im-plying motive. In the Mahatma Letters, K.H. writes,We, my dear sirs, always judge men by their motivesand the moral effects of their actions: for the worldsfalse standards and prejudice we have no respect( p . 3 8 6 )

. For an adept, the motives of men and the moraleffects of actions are clearly discernible. For the restof us who lack their wisdom, we must be careful. Thisis made clear in another letter where K.H. writes ofthe words of the Arhats Lord and Master:

O ye Bhikkhus and Arhats be friendly to therace of men our brothers! Know ye all, that he,

who sacrifices not his onelife to save the life of his

fellow-being; and he who hesitates to give up morethan life his fair name and honour to save thefair name and honour of the many, is unworthy ofthe sin-destroying, immortal, transcendent Nir-vana. ( p . 3 8 7 )

It makes one wonder who is the worst criminal, hewho takes the life of another or he who destroys thename and honour of another. The name and honourof a man can live a lot longer than his physical body.By allowing people to undermine a persons honour,

we assent to the undermining of the value of honourand the moral good and pave the way for its replace-ment with the worlds false standards and preju-dice. From the point of view of the Theosophist, theAcademic who tries to replace a moral heart with hisintellectual false standards is an enemy of morality.

Students of Theosophy, when writing on people fromthe past, have to remember this. However, it mustbe remembered that it is better to justifiably criticizeanother for their words or actions than to stand byand let them destroy the honour of another. Therehave been wrongs in the Societys past that requirecorrecting. The names and honour of the Societysfounders have been unfairly blighted by some. DavidPratt mirrors something similar to this when he looksat the life of Jesus in Who Was the Real Jesus? Wecan see the life of the reformer made into somethingit was not and his teachings rewritten to suit theinstitution of the Christian Church in a way thatBlavatsky and Judge could very well suffer if they arenot stood up for. This issue also features GeraldSchueler, Ph.D. writing on Monads in Theosophyand Tibetan Buddhism. Gerald Schueler continuesto do the hard work of making a bridge between

Theosophy and some of the other great world phi-losophies. This work has to be done in order to save

Theosophy from disfigurement at the hands of edi-tors who believe they know the minds of the founders

better than the founders knew it themselves. Aca-demics write commentaries on original texts. Theresearchers of the Academic world want to work fromoriginal texts as much as possible so by making

Theosophy an academic discipline, its writings willbe saved from the all-knowing editors of the future.While the Student of Theosophy works at getting adeeper understanding of the One Life through study-ing Theosophys original texts, the Academic is inter-ested in comparing these texts with other philoso-phies and looking for internal consistency orinconsistency. Blavatsky knew that the works wouldstand up for themselves and fully expected and

wanted this type of inspection for the Academicswould ensure the unaltered continuation of the lit-erature. Gerald Schuelers treatment of monads isanother step (and a brilliant one at that) along thisroad. We also go back to the beginning of the Indiaand Pakistan conflict and see how false standardscan lead to the terrible mess we are now in in thearticle India and Pakistan: Poisoning by Separa-tism. In addition we have some book reviews andanother Musings. Enjoy.

editorial

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Letters to the Editor:

David Pratts extensive theosophical research, con-veniently available on his web site, is an importantcontribution. His restatement of the theosophicalattitude to Christianity (only a small part of it)combines the material passed down from HPBthrough the Point Loma tradition with some of the

latest writings by secularists, New Agers and liberalbiblical scholars. But the total effect is, I wouldsuggest, too negative.

As David notes, the many theorists on Christianorigins interpret the data according to their beliefs.If they are militant Humanists or liberal scholars,they are likely to reject as myth anything miracu-lous, knowing nothing of the powers latent in man.

Giving very late dates to source material is alsocommon among polemicists. I find it helpful to keepin mind that John Robinson, who wrote Honest to

God( 1 9 6 3 )

the famous English rejection of orthodoxtheology, also wrote Redating the New Testamentwhich explored the idea that all of the N.T. wascompleted before CE 70. Most biblical scholars donot agree with this they think a lot was writtenbetween 70 and 100, but there is no knock downargument to contradict Robinson who knew thematerial intimately.

Dating Acts from 150-177 CE( p a g e 9 o f h i s f i r s t p a p e r

i n F o h a t )

especially raises my eyebrows. No, it does

not read like a fantasy novel, although in the earlierparts the author knits together a limited number of

traditions. In the main chapters about Paul, thedetail, geographical and administrative, is quite ac-curate, as scholars of ancient and law have found.

I was also concerned about the passage on Josephus( p a g e 8 )

. About five years ago, I found myself unex-pectedly for a time a member of Kings College Lon-don library, and I took the opportunity over severalmonths to investigate Josephus, using variousmonographs and literature surveys of whose pre-vious existence I was in the main unaware. Myparticular interest was in the Slavonic Josephusmanuscript and whether it might turn out to be more

reliable. (It didnt.) But I also read a number of recentassessments of the Jesus passages. It was quiteclear that the majority view (by scholars of all or nobeliefs) was that Josephus did mention Jesus buthad been amended by Christians later.

In assessing Madame Blavatskys statements, Iwould suggest, we can usefully distinguish betweencore assertions (mainly metaphysical) and inciden-tal detail, on subjects where she was content to usesecondary authorities to make a case. Thus in herremarks on Neoplatonism in Key to Theosophy, asDr Siemens has shown in his TH occasional paper,

she uses Wilder who in turn used Mosheim, and soher picture is not always correct.

Similarly in her remarks about Christian origins,which were numerous from Isis Unveiled onwardswe have to ask to what extent she was using con-veniently available material by Enlightenmentscholars and others to generally refute the Catholicand Protestant orthodoxies of her day. In my edito-rial Jesus in Theosophical History in that maga-zine of July 1985, I considered that in relation to the

Jesus lived 100 B.C. theory. I later wrote to GezaVermes about this theory; he replied that Jesus

fitted into the first century time frame where he wasplaced. It appears to be the case that no Jewishscholar today puts this most famous of Jews in anearlier era.

The Theosophical exemplar I would suggest is G.R.S.Mead, for whom David and I both have high regard,

who was always ready to revise his views in the lightof later research, and who managed to write about

This is my sixth year as a subscribing member toFohatand I would like to thank the Editor and team

for putting together such an excellent magazine.Fohat is a refreshing read in a world where glossy,distracting, over-advertised reading materials arerampant. It offers mindful, intelligent reading thatI cannot easily find elsewhere. With so many inter-esting, thought-provoking topics covered, one can-not help but be positively affected by the enlargedperspective that it brings what a difference! Ialways look forward to the delivery of my quarterlysubscription and will continue to support such anexcellent communication vehicle that delivers suchmindful content.

Hooray Fohat Keep up the great work!Lynne Chaisson

Toronto, Canada

Fohat

Christian Origins

. . . continued on page 43

SUMMER 2002 29


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Who Was the Real Jesus?David Pratt

[Reprinted with permission from David Pratts webpage http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/jesus.htm]

Jesus as fiction

The story of Jesus as presented in the four gospelsof the New Testament is essentially a piece of fiction.

There are no authentic references to such a figure inthe works of any historians of the early 1st centuryCE (common era). The pre-gospel writings of the earlyChristians also make no reference to the life andteachings of a recent historical Jesus. Paul, for in-stance, was supposedly Jesus contemporary, yet henever claimed to have met him in the flesh or to havemet anyone else who had done so; he encounteredhim only in visions, as a spiritual being. The Chris-tian groups of the 1st century CE held extremely

diverse theological views, and this would be hard toexplain if they were the followers of a single, recentteacher. Remarkably, they showed no interest in theholy sites and relics associated with Jesus allegedearthly career; it was not until the 4th century thatpieces of the true cross began to surface, and thatthe first shrine was set up on the supposed mountof Jesus death.

It is only in the four canonical gospels and certainother New Testament writings that the now orthodoxstory of Jesus is to be found. The gospels, however,

were largely written in the 2nd century, have suffered

numerous alterations and additions, and containsignificant contradictions and inconsistencies. Theirshortcomings are recognized by Christian and non-Christian scholars alike. Some theologians are nowprepared to question not only the virgin birth andmiracles, but even the much more fundamental doc-trine of the resurrection. Theology professor BurtonMack, for example, goes as far as to call the gospelsportrayal of Jesus fantastic, the result of a layeredhistory of imaginative embellishments of a founderfigure. 1 But even the very existence of a great Chris-tian founder figure living at the start of the 1stcentury is highly implausible, given the silence of

contemporary historians and even 1st-centuryChristians. 2

H.P. Blavatsky stated that the story of Jesus wasinvented after the 1st century. Jesus, she says,

is a deified personification of the glorified type ofthe great Hierophants of the Temples, and hisstory, as told in the New Testament, is an allegory,assuredly containing profound esoteric truths,but still an allegory. . . . Every act of the Jesus ofthe New Testament, every word attributed to him,

every event related of him during the three years

of the mission he is said to have accomplished,rests on the programme of the Cycle of Initiation,a cycle founded on the Precession of the Equi-noxes and the Signs of the Zodiac.3

The gospel figure of Jesus is a Jewish adaptation ofthe mythical godman found under many differentnames in ancient pagan mystery religions: in Egypthe was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia MinorAttis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in PersiaMithras. All the major elements of the Jesus story,from the virgin birth to the crucifixion and resurrec-tion, can be found in earlierstories of pagan godmen.

As G. de Purucker puts it:the Gospel story is merely an idealized fiction,

written by Christian mystics in imitation of eso-teric mysteries of the Pagans, showing the initia-tion trials and tests of the candidate for initiation;and it is not very well done, there being much errorand many mistakes in the Gospels.4

A historical Jesus?

The fact that key elements of the gospel story of Jesusare clearly mythical does not automatically meanthat the entire portrayal is fiction. Over the past two

centuries scholars have produced many differentreconstructions of the real Jesus. He has beendepicted, for example, as a priestly zealot fomentingpopular unrest against the Roman occupation, anapocalyptic prophet, a progressive Pharisee, a Gali-lean healer and miracle-worker, and a Hellenisticsage. Commenting on the many historical Jesuses,Robert Price writes:

All tend to center on particular constellations ofgospel elements interpreted in certain ways, leav-ing other data to the side as spurious . . . Whatone Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the nexttakes up and makes its cornerstone. . . . Eachsounds good until you hear the next one. 1

The Jesus Seminar, an association of progressivebiblical scholars based in California, was formed inthe 1980s and has played an important role inexposing the unreliability of the early Christian re-cord. Its members believe that Jesus was primarilya sage who taught that the kingdom of heaven is

within. They dismiss the gospel stories of him work-ing miracles, and regard him as too enlightened tohave threatened his opponents with damnation on

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Judgement Day. In fact, they reject as inauthenticsome three quarters of the sayings attributed to

Jesus in the gospels. But their selective portrayaltells us more about their own preconceptions andpreferences than about an historical Jesus. 2

Marks Gospel, the shortest and simplest, is widelybelieved to have been the first of the four canonicalgospels to be written. The authors of the Gospels of

Matthew and Luke copied large chunks of it, but alsoappear to have been in possession of another docu-ment, now lost, known as Q (standing for Quelle, aGerman word meaning source), which apparentlycontained the sayings of Jesus. Q is thought to havebeen written in three stages: Q1 contains wisdomsayings, Q2 more sectarian, apocalyptic sayings, andonly Q3 refers to a founder figure called Jesus. Thislegendary figure is depicted as a purely humanteacher, which is how early Christians such as theEbionites and Nazoreans regarded Jesus; there is nomention of Jesus being the son of God, or of hiscrucifixion and resurrection.

Some scholars, however, believe that even Q1 maybe based on the life of an actual itinerant Galileanpreacher of the 20s or 30s, who was one of theprototypes of the gospel Jesus. 3 Opponents of thisview argue that the sayings represent ideas widelyheld in various brotherhoods and mystery schoolslong before Christianity was created. In particular,they bear ample marks of Cynic origin, with parallelsin the works of Seneca, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertius,etc. Robert Price states that the sayings convey notthe personality of an individual but that of a move-ment, the sharp and humorous Cynic outlook on

life.4

The Jewish historian Josephus mentions three char-acters who people thought were messiahs and who

were crucified by the Romans: Yehuda of Galilee (6CE), Theudas (44 CE), and Benjamin the Egyptian(60 CE). It is possible that the Jesus story is partlybased on their lives.5

G.A. Wells maintains that Paul regarded Jesus as aheavenly, preexistent figure who had come to earthperhaps one or two centuries before his own time.Alvar Ellegard has gone a step further and has

suggested that the main prototype for Jesus was theTeacher of Righteousness mentioned in the Dead SeaScrolls (discovered in the late 1940s and early 50s). 6

Ellegard argues that this figure was the founder ofthe Judaic reform movement known as the Essenes,and died around 100 BCE (before common era). He

was looked upon as a great prophet and also as amartyr, who had been harassed and eventually putto death by the Jewish priestly hierarchy. Accordingto Ellegard, Paul and his colleagues were the first to

refer to this figure as Jesus, and it was they whointroduced the idea that he was the messiah orsaviour. He acknowledges that the Teacher of theScrolls differs in many ways from the Jesus of thegospels, but stresses that the latter is largely afictional figure.

There is disagreement as to whether Paul and hisfellow-believers saw Jesus as a man who had lived

on earth at some more distant time in the past orwhether they saw him entirely as a mythical figure,a spiritual being who lived and operated in thesupernatural world, like all the other saviour godsof the time. Although Paul makes it clear that hehimself had never met an historical Jesus, there area handful of passages in his writings that could beinterpreted as referring to a previous earthly exist-ence of Jesus. Earl Doherty, however, argues thatthese are better interpreted in line with Platonicthinking about counterpart realities in the higherspiritual world.7 In his view, pre-gospel Christianrecords do not provide any evidence of a widespread

tradition about a human founder who was a prophet,teacher, miracle-worker and interpreter of scripture

in either the recent or distant past.

In a highly speculative reconstruction of the life ofthe Teacher of Righteousness (who may have beencalled Judah), Michael Wise argues that he was apriestly prophet, a member of the elite, and rose topreeminence around 105 BCE as a leader of thepolitical coalition that supported King Alexander

Jannaeus (who reigned from c. 103 to 76 BCE). 8

Alexander was supported by the Sadducees andoppressed the Pharisees, but when his wife, Alexan-

dra, became queen, she did an about-face and em-braced the Pharisees. Judah, who came to regardhimself as the messiah, defied the new regime, label-ling it Satans dominion. He was arrested, charged

with false prophecy, and exiled around 74 BCE, andwithin a few years he had been killed. Wise does notspecifically link the Teacher with the Essenes.

Robert Eisenman contends that the Dead Sea Scrollshave been dated a century too early, and that theyshould be seen as 1st-century CE works stemmingfrom the community led by James the Just. Accord-ing to this view, it is the latter who was called the

Teacher of Righteousness. The Teacher is said tohave been ambushed, betrayed and killed by a

wicked priest, and this closely parallels the plot ofAnanus the High Priest to trap and kill James.9 If thistheory is confirmed, it would rule out Ellegardshypothesis that the Teacher of Righteousness wasthe historical Jesus and undermine Wises attemptedreconstruction of his life. A more important candi-date for an historical Jesus is found in the Jewish

Talmud.

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Jesus in the Talmud

The Talmud contains a number of passages that referto a certain Jeshu (or Joshua) ben Pandera, who livedaround 100 BCE. 1 Jeshu is said to have been thedisciple of Joshua ben Perachiah, who was certainlyan historical figure, being one of the most prominentrabbis of the time. During the persecution of thePharisees by Alexander Jannaeus, which beganaround 94 BCE, Joshua ben Perachiah fled with

Jeshu to Alexandria in Egypt, where Jeshu is said tohave learned magic. Described as a learned man,

Jeshu was expelled for heretical tendencies from theschool over which Joshua presided. He became areligious teacher, had several disciples, andpreached to ordinary people. He was accused ofpractising sorcery, deceiving Israel and estrangingpeople from God. After being tried and convicted, he

was stoned to death and his body was then hung upas a warning to others.

Some Jews still adhere to the 100 BCE date for Jesus

and argue that many gospel stories are specific re-sponses to the Talmudic picture of Jeshu (Jesus isthe Latin form of Jeshu or Yeshu). 2 Christians, onthe other hand, claim that the Talmud Jeshu ispartly based on the real, gospel Jesus, and that thestories about Jeshu reflect the Jews intense hostilitytowards the Christians.3 Many writers who arguethat the gospel Jesus is a fictional character alsodeny the historical reality of the Talmud Jeshu.4

Theosophical writers such as H.P. Blavatsky and G.de Purucker, on the other hand, insist that there wasan historical Jesus who lived around 100 BCE, on

whom the gospel Jesus is partly based, and they give

credence to the Talmudic tradition.5

Blavatskywrites:

However cautious one ought to be in acceptinganything about Jesus from Jewish sources, itmust be confessed that in some things they seemto be more correct in their statements (whenevertheir direct interests in stating facts is not con-cerned) than our good but too jealous [Church]Fathers.6

The Talmud was compiled between the 2nd and 6thcenturies CE from earlier traditions. In the middleages, the scattered passages referring to Jeshu were

worked up, together with other material, into a book,the Toldoth Jeshu (Life of Jesus). Whereas the Tal-mud is a fairly sober work, the Toldoth Jeshu is fullof wild tales, which are clearly not intended to beregarded as historical. The statements made about

Jesus in the Talmud and Toldoth are sometimesrather confused, and some were probably writtenafter the gospel story emerged in order to ridiculeChristian beliefs (e.g. the story about Jesus motherbeing an adulteress and Jesus a bastard, and the

story that Jesus disciples stole his dead body andhid it).

The Talmud also speaks of a man named ben Stada(strayed one), who sometimes stands for Jesus, butone of the passages implies that he lived around 100CE nearly 200 years after King Jannaeus death.However, this should not be used as an excuse toreject the whole rabbinical tradition about Jesus as

unhistorical and unreliable, especially since benStada appears originally to have been a separatecharacter who was later confused with Jeshu.7

G.R.S. Mead shows that the 100 BCE date is part ofthe oldest deposit of the Talmud and predates thestories containing the later date, which were devel-oped by the Lydda (or Lud) school of rabbis forpolemical purposes. 8

The early Christians were well aware of the Jewishstories about Jesus. The pagan philosopher Celsus,

who was famous for his arguments against Christi-anity, referred to the Jewish tradition current in his

own day (c. 170 CE) that Jesus went to Egypt wherehe learned magic and later returned home andstarted claiming he was a god. Jesus mother, Mary,had allegedly been divorced by her husband, a car-penter, after it had been proved that she was anadulteress. She wandered about in shame and bore

Jesus in secret, his real father being a soldier namedPanthera (or Pandera). The 3rd-century church fa-ther Origen found this story to be of sufficient impor-tance to go to the pains of arguing against it in hisbook against Celsus. At the end of the 2nd century,the fiery church father Tertullian, in a diatribeagainst the Jews, indicated that he was aware of

several elements of the Talmud Jesus stories, andalso several additional elements not mentioned in the

Talmud but included in the Toldoth Jeshu, which wasnot written down until many centuries later. 9

In the 4th century the Christian saint Epiphaniusgave a Christian genealogy in which Panthera ismentioned as the grandfather of Jesus. He evenstates that Jesus lived in the time of King Jannaeus,but then goes on to say that Jesus was born in 2BCE, some 70 years after Jannaeus death!1 0

Epiphanius was trying to dispose of the Jewishtradition about Jesus by incorporating elements of it

into his own (clearly fictional) account, apparentlyunconcerned by the blatant incongruity to which thisgave rise.

According to Matthews Gospel, Joseph and Maryhad to flee with the baby Jesus to Egypt because KingHerod had ordered all infant boys born in Bethlehemto be killed. As already mentioned, the Talmud saysthat ben Perachiah fled to Egypt with Jeshu to escapebeing killed by King Jannaeus. In contrast to theChristian story of the slaughter of the innocents

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under Herod, for which there is no historical evidencewhatsoever, the persecution of the Pharisees by Al-exander Jannaeus is a historical fact. 1 1 Jannaeus(supported by the Sadducees) overcame the Phari-sees around 88 BCE after six years of fighting. Heallegedly crucified 800 of them and had the throatsof their wives and children cut in front of them;another 8000 rabbis fled Judea. The slaughter of theinnocents may be partly based on this fact (initiates

were sometimes called innocents or infants). How-ever, it should be noted that the theme of a divine orsemi-divine child who is feared by an evil king is verycommon in pagan mythology.

According to the gospels, Jesus was crucified. How-ever, Paul and Peter, who were writing before thegospels were composed, say he was hanged on a tree(Galatians 3:13; Acts 5:30, 10:39). The Talmud Jesusis said to have been stoned and hanged on a tree (inaccordance with Jewish law). Jesus crucifixion isalso, of course, symbolical. Christ represents boththe spiritual sun (whose emblem is the physical sun)

and the spiritual self in each individual. The crossrepresents the intersection of the ecliptic and thecelestial equator, and also the interdependence ofspirit (the vertical bar) and matter (the horizontal).

Just as the sun is reborn at the vernal equinox,when it crosses the celestial equator and begins itsnorthward journey along the ecliptic, so the aim ofinitiation is to end the crucifixion of the higher selfin the world of matter by bringing about a second orspiritual birth, in which the lower nature is trans-muted and united with the higher. During the trialsof initiation the candidate often lay on a cruciformcouch.

The theme of a divine or semi-divine being who issacrificed against a tree, pole or cross and thenresurrected is frequently found in pagan mythology.For instance, at the vernal equinox, pagans in north-ern Israel would celebrate the death and resurrectionof the virgin-born Tammuz-Osiris. In Asia Minor(where the earliest Christian churches were estab-lished) a similar celebration was held for the virgin-born Attis, who was shown as dying against a tree,being buried in a cave and then being resurrected onthe third day. 1 2

Jesus the Nazar

The Hebrew name for Christians has always beennotzrim, and although modern Christians claim thatChristianity only started in the 1st century CE, the1st-century Christians in Israel considered them-selves to be a continuation of the notzri movement,

which had been in existence for about 150 years.1 Inthe rabbinical tradition, Jeshu ben Pandera is alsocalled Jeshu ha-Notzri (Jesus the Nazar). The Greek

equivalent of notzri is nazoraios (or nazaraios/nazi-raios). The stem of this word means to keep oneselfseparate an indication of the ascetic nature of thissect. The early Christians conjectured that nazoraios(variously rendered Nazar/Nazarite, Nazorean orNazarene) meant a person from Nazareth and so it

was assumed that Jesus lived in Nazareth. However,the original Hebrew for Nazareth is Natzrat and aperson from Nazareth is a Natzrati. The expression

Jesus of Nazareth is therefore a mistranslation ofJeshu ha-Notzri.

At the time of the emergence of Christianity, theMiddle East was the scene of great religious diversity,as has been confirmed by the Nag Hammadi writingsand Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of the various sects e.g. Essenes, Therapeutae (lit. healers), Nazars,Nabatheans, Ebionites and Gnostics were closelyinterrelated and often difficult to tell apart. As H.P.Blavatsky says, they were all, with very slight differ-ences, followers of the ancient theurgic mysteries. 2

Several scholars have pointed to similarities between

eastern religious traditions (especially Buddhismand Brahmanism) and the ideas of the Essenes,Nazars and Gnostics. Trade routes between theGreco-Roman world and the Far East were openingup at the time Gnosticism flourished (80-200 CE),Buddhists were in contact with gnostic Christians insouthern India, and for generations Buddhist mis-sionaries had been proselytizing in Alexandria andelsewhere in the Middle East. 3

According to Blavatsky, the Essenes were the con-verts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrunEgypt, Greece, and even Judea at one time, since the

reign of Asoka (mid-3rd century BCE).4

She statesthat although Jesus was a pupil of the Essenes, he

was not a strict Essene as he disagreed with his earlyteachers on several questions of formal observance.

[T]he Nazarene Reformer, after having received hiseducation in their [the Essenes] dwellings in thedesert, and been duly initiated into the Mysteries,preferred the free and independent life of a wan-dering Nazaria, and so separated or inazarenizedhimself from them, thus becoming a travelling

Therapeute, a Nazaria, a healer.5

She describes the Nazars as a class of Chaldean

initiates and kabalistic gnostics.

6

Regarding Jesusmission, she writes:

The motive of Jesus was evidently like that ofGautama-Buddha, to benefit humanity at large byproducing a religious reform which should give ita religion of pure ethics . . .

In his immense and unselfish love for humanity,he considers it unjust to deprive the many of theresults of the knowledge acquired by the few. Thisresult he accordingly preaches the unity of a

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spiritual God, whose temple is within each of us,and in whom we live as He lives in us in spirit. 7

The Mandeans asserted that Jesus was Nebu, thefalse messiah, and the destroyer of the old orthodoxreligion, while other opponents said he was thefounder of a new sect of Nazars. The Hebrew wordnaba means to speak by inspiration, and Nebo isthe god of wisdom and also the planet Mercury. The

Hindus call this planet Budha (wise man), and it isclosely connected with the Buddha (awakened one).Similarly, the Talmudists hold that Jesus was in-spired by the genius or regent of Mercury. 8 Accordingto the modern theosophical tradition, there is anintimate link between Jesus and Buddha, connected

with Jesus status as an avatara.

Jesus as avatara

The term avatara signifies the descent of a divinebeing who overshadows and works through a humanvehicle. Mahatma KH stated that the man Jeshu wasa mortal like any of us, an adept more by his inherentpurity and ignorance of real Evil, than by what hehad learned with his initiated Rabbis and the already(at that period) fast degenerating Egyptian Hiero-phants and priests. 1 Jesus was chrestos (good andholy), and became christos (anointed, i.e. glorified)only when the celestial power began to work throughhim. As Blavatsky explains:

Western Theosophists accept the Christos as didthe Gnostics of the centuries which precededChristianity, as do the Vedantins their Krishna:they distinguish the corporeal man from the divinePrinciple which, in the case of the Avatara, ani-

mates him.2

To make a complete avatara, a third element isnecessary: the physical-astral body and the spiri-tual-divine entity must be linked by a psychologicalapparatus, which is provided by a master of wisdom

with the status of a buddha. Blavatsky and Puruckerindicate that in the case of Jesus, it was the adeptknown in his last incarnation as Gautama Buddha

who provided this link. 3 When the Buddha achievedenlightenment, his spiritual self is said to have en-tered the state of nirvana, while his intermediate self,the bodhisattva, remained after his death in the

earths ethereal atmosphere as a nirmanakaya sothat it could continue to help on human evolution. 4

Purucker explains that avataras are humans of ex-traordinary spiritual and intellectual powers em-bodying a divine ray, who have no human karmabecause they are not the reincarnations of an ordi-nary human soul evolving on this earth. They are

created by an act of white magic at cyclical points inhuman history for the purpose of introducing thespiritual influence of a divine being into humanaffairs. 5 The chosen child, even before it is born, isovershadowed by the soul of the Buddha, who

watches over and strengthens the body concerneduntil it can receive the fuller incarnation of theBuddhas spiritual and intellectual powers. Some-

what later, usually when the borrowed body has

reached adulthood, the soul of the Buddha risesthrough the ether and links itself with the waitingdivinity, and from that instant, which usually takesplace during initiation at the time of the wintersolstice, the avatara exists as a complete entity andgoes about its work. 6 Purucker writes:

An avatara usually happens in our world when adivinity is passing through initiation, and a hu-man being provides the vehicle to enable it todescend into what is an underworld to the divinespheres. When a human being undergoes a corre-sponding initiation, the man descends into theunderworld where a denizen thereof cooperates to

lend its thinking conscious vehicle to allow thehuman monad to manifest and work there. 7

The gospel Jesus appears to be a patchwork charac-ter, partly mythical and partly based on a number ofhistorical characters, including the Talmud Jeshu.As for the avatara Jesus mentioned in the theosophi-cal tradition, Purucker points out that there is noexoteric proof that such a figure did live and teach. 8

He is said to have been born around 107 BCE,9 andBlavatsky quotes an obscure passage from a secret

work, which could be interpreted to mean that hedied in his 33rd year (i.e. in 75-74 BCE). 1 0 *

In the Talmud, Balaam (a name meaning destroyeror corrupter of the people) who sometimes denotes

Jeshu is said to have died when he was 33 yearsold. The Toldoth Jeshu indicates that Jeshu outlived

Jannaeus, who died between 79 and 76 BCE. He wassucceeded by his wife, Salome, who reigned for somenine years and, unlike her husband, was favourableto the Pharisees. It may have been only after Jan-naeus death that both Joshua ben Perachiah and

Jeshu returned to Judea. 1 2

The New Testament does not indicate how old Jesuswas when he died, though he is said to have begunhis ministry at the age of 30. Some of the earlyChristians gave the time of his ministry as one year.

The church father Irenaeus dismissed this andstated that Jesus ministry lasted 20 years. Theaccepted opinion among Christians today is that hismission lasted 3 years, and that he was crucified inhis 33rd year. 1 3

* S h a n k a r a c h a r y a , t h e g r e a t V e d a n t i c t e a c h e r o f I n d i a , i s a l s o s a i d t o h a v e b e e n o v e r s h a d o w e d b y t h e B u d d h a . B o r n i n 5 1 0

B C E , h e c h o s e t o d i e i n h i s 3 3 r d y e a r . A c o m m e n t a r y e x p l a i n s : A t w h a t e v e r a g e o n e p u t s o f f h i s o u t w a r d b o d y b y f r e e w i l l , a t

t h a t a g e w i l l h e b e m a d e t o d i e i n h i s n e x t i n c a r n a t i o n against his will .


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Monads in Theosophyand Tibetan Buddhism

Gerald Schueler, Ph.D.

Monad, Monas [from Greek monas a unit, individual, atom] A unit, a one; something nondivisible and which istherefore conceived of as real, in contradistinction to compound things which (as compounds) are not real.( h t t p : / / w w w . t h e o s o c i e t y . o r g / p a s a d e n a / e t g l o s s / m i - m o . h t m )

The Monad . . . is nothing else than a simple substance, which goes to make up composites; by simple, we meanwithout parts.

( L e i b n i z , T h e M o n a d o l o g y )

The Monad in Theosophy

The potential for development of the atoms, parti-cles, etc., which are required to create a universe,requires the development of a multiplicity of cells,all of which are the same essence. This is thedoctrine of the monad in The Secret Doctrine.( S e l l o n , 1 9 9 6 , p . 1 9 )

The ancient doctrine of monads is used in modernTheosophy to explain the composition of materialobjects and how living beings and inanimate objectsevolve. By definition, a monad is any indivisible unit.It can be composed of anything from divinity itself,through spirit down to matter so long as it is partlessor indivisible. According to Blavatskys presentation,there is a close relationship between gods, monads,and atoms.

The term Monad is a generalizing term. There aredivine Monads and spiritual Monads, intellectual

Monads and astral Monads, even physical Mo-nads. Then following another line of degrees, thereis the Monad of our Home Universe. There is theMonad of a solar system which is its Sun. Thereis the Monad of every planet. There is the Monadof every atom. ( P u r u c k e r , 1 9 4 8 , p . 4 1 3 )

The use of the term monad, a partless particle bydefinition, for so many different things on virtuallyall cosmic planes and systems can be confusing, andso we need to begin with some clear definitions of justhow Theosophy employs this term. According to G.de Puruckers Occult Glossary, A monad is a spiri-

tual entity which to us humans is indivisible; it is adivine-spiritual life-atom( p . 1 0 8 )

and Monads arespiritual-substantial entities, self-motivated, self-impelled, self-conscious, in infinitely varying de-grees, the ultimate elements of the universe

( p . 1 0 9 )

.Thus in one sense a monad is an entity and inanother sense it is an ultimate element both beingnon-physical. The monad as a life-atom is ex-plained in Theosophy as the life-principle or vitaliz-ing essence within the atomic particles that exist onevery plane

( L o n g , 1 9 6 5 , p . 5 2 )

. This is how Theosophy

explains the teaching that everything in the universeis alive. Blavatsky made the multi-functionality ofmonads clear when she wrote that monads

may be separated into three distinct Hosts, which,counted from the highest planes, are, firstly,gods, or conscious, spiritual Egos . . . Then come

the Elementals, or Monads, who form collectivelyand unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors ofeverything connected with their respective realms.Lastly, the atoms, or material molecules. . .

( T h e

S e c r e t D o c t r i n e , V o l I , p . 6 3 2 )

In the above quote, she uses the idea from Leibniz( 1 9 3 1 )

that every monad is a mirror of the universe( p . 2 6 5 )

to describe monadic elementals standing half-way between gods and atoms. So, Theosophy recog-nizes a direct connection between spiritual partlessparticles and physical atoms. Here she seems to beaccepting physical atoms/molecules, but she is ac-tually referring only to these as the physical coun-

terparts of monads (monads per se are subjective/spiritual consciousnesses that have objective/mate-rial bodies). While clearly alluding to this connection,G. de Purucker

( 1 9 4 9 )

says that the Elemental King-doms . . . are aggregates or groups of evolving mo-nads

( p . 5 0 )

. These comprise what are called physicalor mineral monads.

Technically, it is difficult to see how spiritual unitiescan form the compounded aggregates of the physicalatoms that comprise the elemental kingdoms (The-osophy recognizes three separate elemental king-doms rather than the one mineral kingdom

recognized by modern science). Blavatsky hinted atan answer to this puzzle when she wrote that In-stead of saying a Mineral Monad, the more correctphraseology . . . would of course have been to call itthe Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti calledthe Mineral Kingdom

( T h e S e c r e t D o c t r i n e , V o l I , p . 1 7 8 )

.She suggests that physical atoms are not actuallymonads themselves, but rather the physical mani-festations or vehicles of monads. This would be inkeeping with Puruckers insistence that all monadsare actually spiritual.

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We may conclude then, that terminology such asmineral monad and human monad found through-out Theosophical literature is a matter of conven-ience and should not be taken literally. Thisconclusion is further substantiated when we con-sider Puruckers

( 1 9 4 9 )

statement that a monadnever leaves its own plane; so when we say that theearth-element is composed of concreted or dormantmonads, we do not mean the spiritual monads them-

selves; we mean the life-atoms, each life-atom beingthe representative of a monad on this cosmic plane( p p . 5 0 - 5 1 )

. We see then that Blavatskys Monad mani-festing in that form of Prakriti is called a life-atom,for convenience, to distinguish it from the physicalatom itself.

The doctrine of monads, as used in Theosophy,suggests that all material objects are composed ofsuch manifesting monads or life-atoms. But, asBlavatsky herself has pointed out, Matter has exten-sion

( T h e S e c r e t D o c t r i n e , V o l I , p . 2 5 1 )

. This idea of thephysical extension of compounded atomic objects

into three-dimensional space is a problem that trou-bles many Tibetan Buddhists, as we shall see later.

To help clarify this, Blavatsky makes it clear thatOur Gods and Monads are not the Elements ofextensionitself, but only those of the invisible reality

which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos( T h e

S e c r e t D o c t r i n e , V o l I , p . 6 1 4 , h e r i t a l i c s )

. Here again, she isinsisting on the inherent spirituality of monads. Thisidea was first formulated by Leibniz

( 1 9 3 1 )

who wrote,Now, where there are no constituent parts there ispossibly neither extension, nor form, nor divisibility( p . 2 5 1

). G. de Purucker( 1 9 7 4 )

expressly pointed outthat monads do not have physical extension or

weight when he said,When we say monad, do we give it magnitude,volume, or bulk? No, because our mind instinc-tively recognizes it as a point of consciousness, aninfinitesimal, whose essence nevertheless is uni-versal since it is a droplet of the universal con-sciousness. A monad (literally one) cannot everbe divided; it is an individual, yet it is all-embrac-ing because its heart is Infinity.

( p . 2 7 3 )

Finally, Blavatsky emphatically differentiated atomsfrom monads when she wrote,

the atoms (molecules, rather) of materialistic phi-

losophy can be considered as extended and divis-ible, while the monads are mere mathematicalpoints and indivisible. Finally . . . these monadsare representative Beings. Every monad reflectsevery other. Every monad is a living mirror of theUniverse within its own sphere . . . the monadsare not mere passive reflective agents, but spon-taneously self-active. ( T h e S e c r e t D o c t r i n e , V o l I , p . 6 3 1 )

In this passage she echoes Leibniz by suggesting thateach monad is like a crystal. Crystals have been usedextensively in Buddhist literature to demonstrate the

idea of reflection, often using metaphors such as thejewels of Indras net:

It is said in the Hwa Yen Sutra that high above inheaven, on the roof of the palace of the God Indra,there hang innumerable ornaments in the form ofsmall crystal marbles. They are interlaced in vari-ous patterns forming a great complex network.Because of the reflection of light, not only doeseach and every one of these marbles reflect the

entire cosmos, including the continents andoceans of the human world down below, but at thesame time they reflect one another, including allthe reflected images in each and every marble,

without omission. ( C h a n g , 1 9 7 1 , p . 1 6 5 )

The Monad in Tibetan Buddhism

When the Buddha first began teaching, he gaveteachings that were compatible to the under-standing of his students. These became the Hinay-ana teachings and were intended for shravakapractitioners. In these teachings, the Buddha saidthat there was no creator, instead everything was

made up of minute particles like atoms. This wasthe view of the Vaibhashika school. Another Hi-nayana teaching of the Buddha was that there

were small invisible particles which were hiddenfrom mind and from these the self and the external

world were created. This was the view of theSautrantika school. ( T h r a n g u R i n p o c h e i n R a n g j u n gD o r j e , 2 0 0 1 , p . 2 4 )

The generally acknowledged founders of the Mahay-ana school of Buddhism were Nagarjuna and hischief disciple Aryadeva. From their time until today,no Mahayana school has argued with the written

words of these two, and the various schools of the

Mahayana were primarily founded on different inter-pretations of their writings. Concerning monads,Aryadeva

( i n T i l l e m a n s , 1 9 9 0 )

wrote, One should ana-lyze as to whether atoms do or do not have parts( p . 1 3 9 )

. Here the Sanskrit word paramanu is trans-lated as atom and it is this paramanu of TibetanBuddhism that is equivalent to the monad of modern

Theosophy, especially in its atomic sense, or what iscalled a mineral monad which is directly expressedphysically as an atom.

In the Kalachakra Tantra system of Tibetan Mahay-ana Buddhism, we find that there are subtle parti-

cles that remain scattered during the period whenthe world-system has been emptied [of manifestedform]. These particles are not perceived by the limitedeye [consciousness of an ordinary person] but appearto the eye [consciousness] of a yogi. . . . The verysubtle particles that remain scattered [after the de-struction of a world-system] are termed emptiedsince they are merely a manifestation of mentalinstincts and not the object of sense perception

( T a y e ,

1 9 9 5 , p . 1 7 7 )

. These subtle particles are said to beindivisible or partless, and thus monadic.

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At least two Tibetan Hinayana schools teach theexistence of subtle partless particles (Sanskrit:

paramanu) that form our material universe:

Vaibhashikas assert partless particles that aggre-gate into gross objects. According to the Kasmirisub-school, the particles do not touch each otherbut are held together by space. Others say thatthe particles surround each other without inter-stice, while others say that they touch each other.

In any case, gross objects are formed through theaggregation of partless particles, and thus exter-nal objects objects which are entities externalto a perceiving consciousness are said to existtruly.

( H o p k i n s , 1 9 9 6 , p p . 3 3 8 - 3 3 9 )

According to this Sautrantika explanation, onlyinfinitesimal atoms and moments of conscious-ness are real.

( D r e y f u s , 1 9 9 7 , p . 8 5 )

The Svatantika Madhyamika, a Middle-Way Mahay-ana school founded by Bhavaviveka, a student ofNagarjuna, also recognizes partless particles or mo-nads.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the teaching of partless parti-cles or monads is often accompanied by a corre-sponding teaching of partless moments of time sothat both material objects and time are composed ofmonadic infinitesimal indivisible units. In theSvatantrika chapter of Jang-Gyas Presentation of Tenets, Jang-Gya ( 1 9 8 7 ) says that we assert that acomposite of conjoined minute particles is a substan-tially existent thing

( p . 3 0 9 )

. Furthermore he explainsthat a composite is a collection of monads of similartype, and that a collection is a group of dissimilarcomposites (he gives an army and a forest as exam-ples of collections).

These partless particles or atoms (paramanu) com-bine together to form aggregates or molecules(samghataparamanu). Each molecule is said to becomposed of at least eight substances (dravya).

These are the four elements of earth, water, fire, andair, and the four bhautikas which include visualform, smell, taste, and tactile sensations (the occa-sional accompaniment of sound makes a ninth sub-stance). These molecules are said to be laid or spreadout (spharitva) in space to form three-dimensionalobjects.

Most Tibetan Buddhist schools teach the Doctrine ofTwo Truths. According to this doctrine, our everydayphysical and mental world of causation is a conven-tional truth, and its emptiness of inherent existenceis an ultimate truth. Thus phenomena have conven-tional existence, but no inherent or permanent exist-ence in that they only exist temporarily and theytotally depend upon causes and conditions. Thisteaching is important when we look at how TibetanBuddhism perceives partless particles or monads.

The idea of monadic or partless particles can also befound in the writings of some exponents of theCittamatra or Mind-Only School, founded by Asangaand his brother Vasubandhu. According to Dhar-makirti, a later Mind-Only scholar and logician, ourphysical universe is reducible to partless atomsinteracting with moments of consciousness

( D r e y f u s ,

1 9 9 7 , p . 8 5 )

. Dharmakirti wrote that when differentatoms are produced in combination with other ele-

ments, they are said to be aggregates ( p p . 8 7 - 8 8 ) .However, in accordance with Mind-Only teaching, hegave these partless particles only conventional exist-ence with the idea that all phenomena are externalprojections of the mind. Rangjung Dorje

( 2 0 0 1 )

, thethird Karmapa of the Kagyu school, wrote that If the

wise examine well, they will know that nothing, suchas atoms and so on, exist externally, as anythingother than cognition

( p . 2 9 )

.

But not all Tibetan Buddhist schools accept theexistence of partless particles or monads even con-ventionally. Tzongkapa

( 1 9 9 9 )

, the founder of the

Middle Way Gelugpa School, while discussing theMind-Only School in his Essence of Eloquence,agrees with Vasubandhus rejection of the doctrineof partless particles as presented in VasubandhusTwenty Stanzas. But for Tzongkapa, who followsNagarjunas disciple Candrakirti, these partless par-ticles dont even exist conventionally. Vasubandhuattacks the ultimate existence of building blocks ofexternal objects partless particles by consider-ing that, if they are spacially dependent, then theymust be surrounded by other particles. Thus theright side of one faces the left side of another, and soon so that they actually must have sides, and hence

parts, and so cannot be truly partless. The onlyremaining possibility is that they are not spaciallydependent, but if so, then they would overlap eachother and there would be no spacial extension at all.

This logical argument of Vasubandhu against par-tless particles being inherently existing atoms thataggregate to form conventionally existing materialobjects is echoed by several other prominent Tibet-ans, and has never been definitively refuted. Accord-ing to Lopez

( 1 9 8 7 )

If it is admitted that the centralparticle has sides that face the surrounding parti-cles, then it must be accepted that minute particleshave parts

( p . 1 8 4 )

. Echoing this logical argument,

Tzongkapas disciple, Kay-drup( m K h a s g r u b r j e , 1 9 9 2 )

also refutes the existence of atoms (paramanu) inhis A Dose of Emptiness where he says, One shouldrefute the special partlessness of physical compositethings, and the temporal partlessness of the non-physical

( p . 1 4 9 )

.

Furthermore, Tzongkapa( 1 9 9 9 )

thoroughly rejectsthe monads of Dharmakirti. In his Essence of Elo-quence, Tzongkapa distinguishes two types of mis-conceptions: innate and non-innate. Innate miscon-

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ceptions are those that have resided in the mentalcontinuum from beginningless time, and non-innatemisconceptions are those due to improper learningduring this life (i.e., from false religions or philoso-phies). One of the non-innate misconceptions that hepoints out is the idea that directionally partlessminute particles exist and that objects of apprehen-sion composed of directionally partless minute par-ticles exist

( p . 3 3 9 )

.

We also find great teachers like Santaraksita( 1 9 8 7 )

,said to be one of the founders of the Yogacara-Svatantrika-Madhyamika school (an eclectic combi-nation of Mind-Only and Middle Way), writingagainst the inherent existence of partless particlesusing the same argument:

[Particles] either abide in contact,Circling, or without interstice.What is the nature of the central particle

That faces an [other] particle?If you say that which faces other particlesIs the same [side of the central particle],

How would earth, water, and so forthBecome extensive?If the side facing another particleIs asserted to be other [than other sides]How could a particleBe a partless unit? ( p . 3 6 7 )

How can Santaraksita combine Mind-Only withSvantantrika while rejecting partless particles? Hedid so like Vasubandhu, by suggesting that monadsare a conventional truth. Monads are rejected in hisschool as having inherent existence, because theMind-Only School sees all external phenomena asbeing unreal mental projections. Only the mind has

reality (which is where the school gets its name Cittamatra literally means mind only.)

Vasubandhu, after becoming a Mahayanist, actuallycriticized the monadic ideas of his former Hinayanaschool. What Vasubandhu

( 1 9 9 9 )

actually says in hisTwenty Stanzas is as follows:

The object is [experienced]Neither as a single entity,Nor as many discrete atoms,Nor as an aggregate of them,Because not a single atom is obtained [in experi-ence at all].

One atom joined at once to six other atomsMust have six parts.On the other hand, if they are said

To occupy the same plane,Then their aggregate would meanNothing more than a single atom

( p p . 1 7 5 - 1 7 6 )

Kochumuttom( 1 9 9 9 )

calls this Vasubandhus rejec-tion of the theory of atomic realism. He concludes,Vasubandhus thesis [is] that the objects insofar asthey are experienced, are subjective forms of con-

sciousness, and therefore comparable to objects ex-perienced in dreams

( p . 1 8 0 )

. According to Vasu-bandhu, monads are purely theoretical in that we donot actually experience them as such, either singlyor as aggregates.

Dharmakirti was a student of Dignaga, who washimself a student of Vasubandhu and it is Dignaga

who is credited with providing the standard formu-

lation of Buddhist logic and epistemology in Indiaand Tibet

( D r e y f u s , 1 9 9 7 , p . 1 5 )

. But it is from Dhar-makirti that we learn the significance of monads inthe Mind-Only School:

Dharmakirtis thinking concerning external ob-jects follows the same line of Dagnagas. He doesnot seem to distinguish an aggregate from a col-lection. For him, atoms remain what they are

whether they are aggregated or not. How then doesDharmakirti account for our impression of exten-sion in external objects? Like Dignaga, he does soby maintaining that this impression does not re-flect the way things exist but the way we perceivethem. A material object is perceived through theintermediary of its representation or aspect (San-skrit: akara, Tibetan: rnam pa). Each of its atomscauses a perception that has such representationto arise so that we see such an extended object.

Thus, the impression of extension is a result of theaspected perception, not a reflection of the wayatoms exist. ( D r e y f u s , 1 9 9 7 , p . 1 0 2 )

Dharmapala, a Mind-Only proponent of the conven-tional existence of monads, wrote

( i n T i l l e m a n s , 1 9 9 0 )

The universal character (samanyalaksana) of thecollection of the atoms is a designation and is notsubstantial. The individual particular characters [of

the atoms] are not objects of the physical senses . . .If they do not lose their original characters when theycooperate together, then they cannot cooperate [toform a visible whole]. If [however] they do lose theiroriginal characters, then they cannot be atoms( p . 1 3 9 )

. Here we see the Mind-Only school use of logicto repudiate the idea of external existing atoms.External objects, including atoms/monads are men-tal projections, and not inherently real substantialobjects. Thus they cannot be objects of the physicalsenses even though they have that appearance. This

was also clearly stated by Asanga( 2 0 0 1 )

himself whenhe wrote,

Furthermore, it is said that a mass of matter(rupasamudaya) is composed of atoms. Here theatom (paramanu) should be understood as nothaving a physical body (nihsarira). The atom isdetermined (vyavasthana) by means of ultimateanalysis (paryantaprabhedatah) by the intellect(buddhya), with a view to the dispelling (vib-havana) of the idea of cluster (pindasamjna), and

with a view to the penetration of the non-reality ofthe substance (dravyaparinispattipravesa) ofmat-ter.

( p . 9 1 )


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India and Pakistan: Poisoning by

Separatism

Ever since the partitioning of India and Pakistan,there has been a darkness growing ever more deepover the Indian subcontinent. As the reasons for

separation have never been addressed, this festeringand poisoning wound can be used by the shadowyprovocateurs for centuries to come. If millions are tobe destroyed in an insane war, then one can onlyhope that the rest of the world watches closely andlearns from this horrible sacrifice. It is certainly morelikely at this point that the wrong lesson will belearned and the shadowy provocateurs who profitfrom fear and misery will gain another level of controlover the freedom-fearing populace of the world.

At one time India knew that the divine was no moreHindu than Buddhist, or Moslem, or Zoroastrian, or

anything else. The divine was impersonal as wereany effects felt here at the mundane level. It mat-tered not whether a temple built on a holy site wasMoslem, or Hindu, or Sikh. The site was not holybecause of the temple and was not going to be madeany more so because of it. Indians knew that thedivine would not be displeased if another religionbuilt a temple on the ruins of one of their templesbut rather that the divine would be displeased byhatred expressed by one brother towards another.At one time Indians knew that the universe workedin cycles and that temples built on holy places wouldcome and go like the religions that built them. Theyknew this so well at one time that it seems hundreds

of years after forgetting this they still felt strongenough about the symbol of the wheel that they putit on the flag of one of the nations of the poisonedIndian subcontinent.

At one time Indians knew that the impersonal divinecan never descend down to the mundane but ratherthat the individual must lift his personal ego throughgreat effort into the impersonal regions of the divine.At one time the Indians knew that there was no morenoble purpose for a nation than for the leaders toinspire its citizens to follow this path of illuminingthe personal ego through whatever means they felt

most comfortable with. At one time Indians knew thedifference between paying lip service to religiousdogmas and living a spiritual life. At one time theSoul of the Indian subcontinent was Spiritual innature but has allowed itself to be shadowed indarkness so that it now finds the empty promises offanatical religious sects and the lure of materialismas somehow promising of fulfilment.

I can tell you truly that any nation that has lost itsspiritual compass is open to the heresy of separa-

tism. I can tell you truly that any nation that doesnot understand that we are all merely aspects of theOne Life is destined to fight with his brothers again

and again until this Truth is realized. I can tell youtruly that any nation that does not know the Truthof the One Life will give away all of its freedoms, oneby one, to others who promise them security inexchange for freedom. I can tell you truly that in thesame way that citizens are willing to trade awayfreedom for security, nations that can be lured into

war again and again will trade away the freedomsthey have collected (their sovereignty) for interna-tional security. I can tell you truly that any nationthat allows itself to be led by materialists, whether ofthe crass commercial kind, or of the subtler religiouskind, its citizens will lose their freedom. I do not

know a lot of things, but of the One Life I know.

India and Pakistan were created by those who forgotthat the One Life is a fundamental Truth. India andPakistan were created by separatists, by material-ists, by those who would trade freedom for security.India and Pakistan never had a chance. They werecreated in relation to one another. A lie separatedthem and continues to keep them apart and untilthat lie is addressed they will not find peace. Indiaand Pakistan were created to fight. India and Paki-stan were modeled on the materialist Nations of theWest. A war in India and Pakistan that is too horribleto imagine could cause enough fear in Western Na-

tions that the will to trade the last of our freedomsfor security is realized. The sovereignty of Nations willbe lost to the tyranny of Multinational Corporations.

Theosophists should see this better than anyone.The Societys First Object is derived from the funda-mental Truth of the One Life. The Society fell prey toseparatism. The Society today exists as a fracturedentity festering in darkness from the wounds of thepast. The Society has refused to address the causeof the split and until it does it will never be able tomove on to do what it was created for. Members ofthe Society now see the survival of the Society (a

materialist concern) more important than the sur-vival of its Truths. At one time the Indian peopleknew that as long as they showed the greatest respectfor those who followed a spiritual path and its Truthsbased on the One Life, this was their best securityand the best protection of their peace and freedom.

This I know, the only wealth is Spiritual and it is tobe found by embracing the One Life. The winds, the

water, the earth, the plants, the animals, the moun-tains, the people of this earth, the stars in the sky,and all else that exists are truly aspects of the OneLife we are Brothers.

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Musings From a Secret Doctrine ClassA Question of Motion

If THAT (the Absolute) is unconditioned reality thenit can have no qualities. To speak of motion as anaspect or quality of THAT would be wrong. Perhaps

motion is not a quality of Spirit or Matter. When wespeak of qualities, we speak of the qualities of exist-ing things. Spirit can be spoken of in an abstractsense when it is looked at separated from being or in a concrete sense as a part of some existingthing. So when we ask if motion is a quality of Spiritor Matter, we seem to be talking in an abstract sense,for in the concrete, Spirit and Matter are always twoaspects of an existing thing and can never existapart. How does motion fit into this? Looking atCosmogony as outlined in The Secret Doctrine, whendoes motion appear?

Human intellect is unable to grasp the Absolute butone can ponder over Cosmic evolution following theFirst Emanation. When we speak of the qualities ofmatter, we are referring to matter made manifest,that is, how does this particular existing en-matteredthing present itself to a particular quality of con-sciousness? Similarly if we were to look at the evolu-tion of consciousness we could speak of its variousqualities depending on whether that consciousnessis more or less spiritual. Can we find qualities in thespiritual stuff emanating from the Absolute? In Vol.I, p.481 Blavatsky refers to the infinite Ocean of Light. . . whose one pole is pure Spirit lost in the abso-luteness of Non-Being, and the other, the matter in

which it condenses, crystallizing. . . . We again seethis abstract sense of Spirit and Matter in which theyare used to define the continuum in which themanifested universe exists, Spirit being the pole thatloses itself in the Absolute and Matter its opposite.Farther, in Vol. I, p.509, Force or energy is a quality;but every quality must belong to a something, or asomebody. Force or energy is a quality of someexisting thing but it is unclear how things possessforce. Further on we read on p.510, It is true thatpure force is nothingin the world of physics; it is ALLin the domain of Spirit. Finally of force and motion,occultism sees no difference between the two, neverattempts to separate them ( p . 5 1 2 ) . Blavatsky hasoutlined for us here that conditioned motion is aquality of somethings or somebodies and also thatforce and motion are in one sense not different. In

what way are they not different?

Of the Universal Soul, Blavatsky writes that

It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omni-present, without beginning or end, yet periodicalin its regular manifestations. . . . Its one absoluteattribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Mo-

tion is called in esoteric parlance the GreatBreath, which is the perpetual motion of theuniverse, in the sense of limitless, ever-presentSPACE. That which is motionless cannot be Di-

vine. But then there is nothing in fact and realityabsolutely motionless within the universal soul.( V o l . I , p . 2 )

In The Mahatma Letters we read that

since motion is all-pervading and absolute restinconceivable, that under whatever form or maskmotion may appear, whether as light, heat, mag-netism, chemical affinity or electricity all thesemust be but phases of One and the same universalomnipresent Force, a Proteus they bow to, as theGreat Unknown . . . and we, simply call the OneLife the One Law and the One Element. ( p . 1 5 9 )

The One Life (Spirit-Matter or Second Logos) is

identified as the universal omnipresent Force. It isthe Great Breath and we see eternal, ceaselessMotion as the one absolute attribute of the SecondLogos being one with IT. Further to the above, TheMahatma Lettersexplain when writing on light thatit is not an independent principle and according toOccult Science light, heat, etc. do not have inde-pendent existences but are the effect of the diver-sified motions of what we call Akasa

( p . 1 6 6 )

. Forcesare the effects of stuff in motion.

Without spirit or Force, even that which Sciencestyles as not living matter, the so-called mineral

ingredients which feed plants, could never havebeen called into form. . . . Matter, force, andmotion are the trinity of physical objective nature,as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that ofthe spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eter-nal because spirit is eternal. But no modes ofmotion can ever be conceived unless they be in aconnection with matter. ( M L p . 1 4 2 )

The fact that Force, however spiritual, must bring theuniverse into existence implies motion as we haveseen. In the unconditioned reality spirit-matter andthe motion that is an aspect of this emanation are all

withdrawn into the unconditioned. Of this we can-not say a thing but when the universe emanates once

again, motion will be there immediately guiding theuniverse into its myriad of forms. It stands withAkasa behind the forces that bring all things intobeing. It is in one sense the spirit of all manifestedthings. Force, Matter, Motion, there is that aboutthese three that makes of man a God if he woulddevelop the understanding. Matter and motion canbe two dimensional, but force implies a spiritualdimension for a force is Akasa in a particular modeof motion, and Akasa is spiritual stuff.

A Student

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Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life, by Mike Ashley. New York, Carroll & Graf, 2001.(Also published in U.K. by Constable and Robinson with title Starlight Man.) xiii + 395 pp. $28.00U.S.

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a

charter member of the Toronto Theo-sophical Society in 1891. On that basis,he can be said to be one of the pioneers

of Theosophy in Canada. It must be admitted how-ever, that preoccupied with unsuccessful businessenterprises, his love for the outdoors, and an earlydeparture from Canada, his participation in the or-ganization was short lived and not especially note-

worthy. This incident, of significance to CanadianTheosophists, is of course only a blip on the screenof a long life, which is meticulously recorded in thisfirst rate biography.

Briefly stated, that life was one of a mystic whoachieved fame as a writer. Indeed, he was one of themost widely read authors of occult fiction in the firsthalf of the 20th century. His gift for writing wasalready evident by the time he reached Toronto,though more than a dozen difficult years would passbefore he was able to give up trying to earn a livingin the world of business, for which he had littleinterest or aptitude. His short stories and articlessold well, and in the following forty or so years he

wrote hundreds, to say nothing of several full lengthnovels. He also wrote childrens stories.

Blackwood was born into a distinguished Englishfamily and was brought up in the relative luxury thatmoney and class provided in the 19th century. Edu-cated in private schools, in his teens he was enrolledin a Moravian school in Germany. He then went touniversity in Edinburgh, although he never stayedto graduate.

He was only 21 when he arrived in Toronto in 1890optimistic of starting a career there. He had alreadydeveloped a strong interest in eastern religions andphilosophy, and had read such books as the Bha-gavad Gita and Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms. Also,

according to Mike Ashley it is almost certain he hadread The Secret Doctrinesoon after its publication in1888. He was fascinated with unexplained laws ofnature and had even participated in psychical in-vestigations.

In the last quarter of the 19th century people withsimilar inclinations naturally gravitated to the Theo-sophical Society and Blackwood was no exception.Before he came to Canada Madame Blavatsky hadalready accepted an article of Blackwoods for publi-

cation in her magazine Lucifer. From the nature of

the article, Mike Ashley concludes that Blackwoodregarded himself as a Theosophist even though hehad not officially joined the organization

( 5 0 )

. Butuntil he reached Toronto he still had not taken thisstep. Perhaps he had waited until this time to avoidupsetting his parents, who were orthodox Chris-tians. Regardless, early in 1891 he applied for mem-bership in the TS, addressing his application to theheadquarters of the American Section in New York.He received a reply from William Q. Judge, recom-mending that he join through the Toronto Branch,

which Albert E.S. Smythe and others were thenendeavouring to start. So it came about that he was

one of the five members named on the Toronto TScharter.

The interests that led him to Theosophy in the firstplace remained with him for the rest of his life, and

were also reflected in his writings. And the basicprinciples of Theosophy were always part of hispersonal philosophy. He lived a theosophic life, andlived it well.

His departure from Canada in 1892 was not the endof his association with the Theosophical Society,although he was probably never very active in it. The

fact is, he was just not an organization person. Onleaving Toronto, his membership was transferred tothe Aryan TS in New York City. Later in the decade

when he returned to England to live and work hejoined the London Lodge, and enrolled in the GoldenDawn. He also attended meetings of the Quest Soci-ety, which G.R.S. Mead had founded after he left the

TS because of the Leadbeater scandal.

In 1923 Blackwood wrote an autobiography, Epi-sodes Before Thirty, in which he glanced back at theearly years of his life. It is a good read, but theepisodes are selective, and his memory was not

always accurate. Although he started on a sequel, itnever reached the publication stage. Fifty years afterhis death, his life history was still crying out to be

written at length, and this book is a fitting tribute tohis accomplishments. It could not have been an easytask, with so little documentation to go on. Black-

wood shunned possessions, and the few papers hehad saved were destroyed in the London blitz. In-triguingly he himself is quoted as admitting that hisbooks were more or less autobiographical

( x v i )

. It isa credit to Mike Ashley who, with his thorough

BOOK REVIEWS

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knowledge of the published writings (fifteen yearsearlier he compiled an exhaustive Blackwood bibli-ography) was able to link incidents in the stories withactual events in Blackwoods life and also fictionalcharacters with real people with whom he was ac-quainted.

Mystic, successful writer, outdoors enthusiast:throughout most of his adult life Algernon Black-

wood could be so labelled. At one time or another, hewas also a failed entrepreneur, spy and a pioneertelevision personality. It is no exaggeration to saythat he lived an extraordinary life, as suggested inthe subtitle of this excellent biography.

Ted G. Davy

To Light A Thousand Lamps, A Theosophic Vision, by Grace F. Knoche. Published by TheosophicalUniversity Press, Pasadena, CA., 2001; 209 pages, $17.95 cloth, $11.95 softcover.

This book can in many ways be com-pared to William Q. Judges The Oceanof Theosophy, with a modern perspec-tive. This title has been elsewhere de-scribed as both an excellent introduc-

tion and a helpful guide for long-time students, towhich this reviewer fully concurs.

The book consists of seventeen chapters. What IsTheosophy, Chapter 1, is succinctly covered inslightly more than eight pages. There it is defined, anhistorical retrospective is presented and the threefundamental propositions outlined. The chaptercloses with the concept of universal brotherhood andemphasis on the currently prevalent theme of one-ness related to seeing ourselves as participants inan eco-system of cosmic dimension

( p . 1 1 )

.

Each topic/chapter flows smoothly into the next andthe straightforward presentation provides logical as

well as inspirational information, for inquirers espe-

cially. Evolution from the standpoint of reciprocityof responsibility and caring as the dominant motifin natures economy

( p . 1 8 )

, and noting that the miss-ing link in scientific theory is consciousness, isthought provoking for those individuals less familiar

with theosophical concepts and is well-presentedhere.

Chapters follow on The Quickening of Mind, Rein-carnation, Death, A Doorway to Light, Remem-bering and Forgetting Past Lives and Karma. In thechapter on Karma and/or Grace the Christianbelief of Gods granting forgiveness for sin with no

requisite atonement for wrongdoing simply by ac-cepting Christ as his Savior

( p . 7 6 )

is explored, as isthe true meaning of the oft-used phrase: born again.It is a logical explanation which would not offendeven the staunchest subscriber to this fundamentalChristian notion. The following chapter The Chris-tian Message covers genesis, original sin and paral-lels in the lives of world saviors.

This is followed by Western Occultism which statesthat although the emphasis has been largely on

occult arts, a distinct change is under way. Due inlarge measure to Eastern philosophical and psycho-physical disciplines and interest in the rites andlore of traditional peoples of the Americas, Aus-tralasia and Africa, the spirit/consciousness energyis being recognized

( p . 1 0 1 )

. True occultism and self-transcendence are explored as well as the varioustypes of yoga and meditation. The chapter on Psy-chism touches upon the renewed interest in thegift of mediumship ( p . 1 1 7 ) modern day channel-ing with warnings from theosophical and Bud-dhist writings against it. G.F. Knoche here makes animportant statement to keep in mind: Physical waris not nearly so hazardous as the control of wills andof minds which increasingly is taking more subtleforms

( p . 1 2 5 )

.

The Two Paths (pratyeka versus boddhisatva) fol-lowed by The Paramitas provide both inspirationand basic instruction for attainment of the ultimategoal. The tone then switches to H.P. Blavatsky and

The Theosophical Society and Who Will Save Us?,where responsibility is placed squarely upon theindividual to follow the path, the sacred way ofinner mastery not for oneself, but for the upliftingof all beings everywhere

( p . 1 5 6 )

. The Daily Initiationand A New Continent of Thought provide the en-couragement. Sources and the Index completethis concise presentation.

Edmonton TS will be highly recommending thisbook, to inquirers especially. Topics touched uponare very relevant to aspirants seeking eastern inspi-ration on western terms. Much of the material origi-

nally appeared in Sunrise magazine and the grandideas as well as the practical concepts are very wellstrung together here.

Grace F. Knoche was born at International Head-quarters of the Theosophical Society when it waslocated at Point Loma, CA. She has been the Leaderof the Theosophical Society (Pasadena) since 1971and principal editor of Sunrise.

Rogelle Pelletier

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From the above, we can conclude that (1) the TibetanTheravadin schools accept monads as partless par-ticles that collect together to form real external enti-ties that comprise physical objects, (2) the Mind-OnlySchool allows for the conventional existence of mo-nads, teaches that these partless particles do notexist as they appear to, which is to say that they arenot physical, and explains three-dimensional exten-sion as the way in which our consciousness inter-prets monadic aggregates, and (3) The Middle-WaySchool does not even allow a conventional existencefor monads, they are said to have only an imputa-

tional nature in that their existence is merely im-puted by the mind.

The Non-Physical Monad

TH E H O U R H A D N O T Y E T S T R U C K ; T H E R A Y H A D N O T

Y E T F L A S H E D I N T O T H E

GE R M ; T H E

MA T R I P A D M A H A D

N O T Y E T S W O L L E N . HE R H E A R T H A D N O T Y E T O P E N E D F O R T H E O N E R A Y T O E N T E R , T H E N C E T O F A L L , A S

T H R E E I N T O F O U R , I N T O T H E L A P O F MA Y A . ( B l a v a t s k y ,H . P . , t r a n s . , S t a n z a s o f D y z a n , I I , v s 3 )

Blavatsky writes that the Divine Ray (the Atman)proceeds directly from the One

( S D , V o l I , p . 2 2 2 )

so thatatma is a divine ray within this mayavic universe.

Throughout her writings she calls atma-buddhi, thedivine monad but, curiously, she also says that

as the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Bound-less and Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form

what we, in our ignorance, call the IndividualMonads of men . . . The Monad is the combina-tion of the last two principles in man, the 6thand the 7th . . . . ( S D , V o l I . p p . 1 7 7 - 1 7 8 )

The above suggests that while the Monad, the innerspirituality of each and every living being, is atma-buddhi, a ray, there is a spiritual Monad abovethat from which the ray descends to fall into thelap of maya as the Stanzas of Dyzan have it. Echo-ing this idea, she says that The Seven Principlesare, of course, the manifestation of one indivisiblespirit

( C W , V o l X I V , p . 3 8 6 )

. G de Purucker( 1 9 7 4 )

callsthis one indivisible spirit paramatman ( d i a g r a m ,p . 4 3 5 )

which he shows overshadowing the seven prin-ciples.

Christianity without believing in it, but likewise with-out being unfair to it.

Recently the Adyar-affiliated Theosophical Society inAmerica began a reassessment of the Theosophicalattitude to Christianity, as reported in Quest. DavidPratts work, from another tradition, may contributeto this.

Leslie PriceSurrey, England

As Leslie Price says, the accuracy of Blavatskyssources should be checked wherever possible. How-ever, the 100 BCE date for Jesus cannot be disposedof by attributing it to unreliable sources; KH, too,rejected the idea of a 1st-century CE Jesus

( M a h a t m a

L e t t e r s , 2 n d e d . , p . 4 1 5 )

and endorsed the 100 BCE date( s e e C . J i n a r a j a d a s a , T h e S t o r y o f t h e M a h a t m a L e t t e r s , p . 1 3 )

.(Leslie himself mentions this in Theosophical History,

July 1985.) Most Jewish scholars no longer supportthe 100 BCE date mentioned in the Talmudic tradi-

tion, but I give two sources that do. Hard evidencefor a 100 BCE Jesus is, however, lacking.

The case against a 1st-century CE Jesus as de-scribed in the Bible and against early dating of theNew Testament seems to me to be absolutely over-

whelming. My articles only outline the argumentsbut a wealth of further details can be found in thesix recent scholarly books I refer to and on theassociated websites.

As regards the main passage about Jesus inJosephus, Bishop Warburton of Gloucester (1698-1779) labelled it a rank forgery, and a very stupidone, too. The passage interrupts the thread of

Josephuss narrative, and it was first mentioned inthe 4th century by the notorious Bishop Eusebius the king of falsifiers, as Blavatsky calls him. SomeChristian writers have conceded that Eusebius may

have inserted the passage himself.

The Acts of the Apostles is not quoted before 177 CE,and was apparently not known to Justin Martyr ageneration earlier. This suggests it was written be-tween 150 and 177 CE. One Christian translator hasadmitted that Acts often reads like a drugstore pa-perback, and even the Protestant Encyclopedia Bib-licaadmits it to be untrustworthy. That it containsa great deal of fantasy is hard to deny. For instance,ch. 5 tells of a Christian named Ananias who sold apiece of property but kept some of the proceeds forhimself and his wife instead of giving all the money

to the apostles. When Peter confronted him with hissinful deed, Ananias fell down and died. Shortlyafterwards Peter confronted the mans wife, and shetoo promptly dropped dead. Hardly one of the apos-tles most inspiring miracles!

David PrattThe Netherlands

. . . Letters continued from page 29

. . . Monads continued from page 38

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One of the central texts of the Mind-Only School, theUttaratantra, dictated by Arya Maitreya ( 2 0 0 0 ) toAsanga, says,

The perfect buddhakaya is

Documents

Fohat Summer 2002