Tibetan Teachings on After-Death States

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 21 pages

From Lucifer of September and October 1894, reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings VI, with a foreword by Boris de Zirkoff explaining how the text came about. Blavatsky had taken exception to a review of Arthur Lillie's Buddha and Early Buddhism by "M.A. (Oxon)" — the pseudonym of the Rev. Stainton Moses, the well-known Spiritualist — which contradicted Theosophical assertions and described the Buddha's teaching as permeated by uncompromising Spiritualism.

Rather than argue it personally, she says, she marked both numbers of the magazine throughout and sent them to be reviewed and corrected by two authorities: H. Sumangala Unnanse, Buddhist High Priest of Adam's Peak in Ceylon and the most learned expounder of Southern Buddhism; and the Chohan-Lama of Rinch-cha-tze in Tibet, Chief of the Archive-registrars of the secret libraries of the Dalai and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas, a Pan-chhen or great teacher and one of the most learned theologians of Northern Buddhism and esoteric Lamaism. The Chohan-Lama promised a reply in due course, and de Zirkoff's judgement — apparent, he says, from the essay's first paragraph — is that this text unquestionably contains it, or at least its substance. The teaching that follows is therefore presented as coming from within the Tibetan tradition rather than as a report about it.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.7 MB, 21 pages)