Madame Blavatsky Cuts Down to Size the Venerable Swami of Almora

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 13 pages

Thirteen pages answering the Venerable Paramahansa of Almora, and using the quarrel to set out a position on Advaita philosophy generally. The specific claim she takes issue with is his statement that he had composed himself into the state of Nirvikalpa — which, as she points out via Monier Williams, is defined as a state destitute of all reflection, and therefore not one from which reports can be brought back.

The doctrinal correction underneath the argument is the reason to read it: that no merging or absorption can take place without dissolution and the absolute annihilation of the previous form, which is a harder saying than the popular language of union usually admits. Around it sit some of the clearest short statements in the library of the spirit-matter doctrine — that the two are illusionary aspects of the One Reality veiling its splendour, ever-opposing yet inseparable, interdependent and interchangeable permutations of one life and consciousness; and that there is as much latent spirit in a piece of wood or a stone as in a week-old human foetus. The closing section states the claim for the Eastern tradition: that it alone proceeds from principles clearly defined and accurately known.

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