A Master of Wisdom on Higher Metaphysics

A Himalayan Master of Wisdom · The Masters Speak Series · 11 pages

Eleven pages of selections from The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, arranged under a contents page which gives each idea with its page number, and closing with a book review by Blavatsky. The frontispiece is by James White.

The first passage is about where power actually resides: the supreme energy is placed in the Buddhi, latent when wedded to Ātman alone, and active and irresistible only when galvanised by the essence of Manas. A practical corollary follows for anyone attempting to heal — that it requires perfect benevolence, untainted even by latent selfishness. The letter then addresses the reader's own position directly, telling him first to rid himself of the illusion that any living man can set up claims upon adepts: he may create irresistible attractions and compel their attention, but those will be spiritual, not mental or intellectual — advice explicitly directed at several British theosophists. Much of the middle of the file is a sustained complaint about Western scholarship on Buddhism. The unreformed Western mind is said to be incapable of grasping the essence of Buddhist exegesis, and the criticism is aimed at named men, Rhys Davids and Arthur Lillie, in the sharpest terms the correspondence uses — the blind and guilty leading the blind and innocent into the ditch. Against that background the twin faces of Avalokiteshvara are half-expounded, the reader being deliberately left to complete the chain himself as a test of intuition. The last sections turn on two propositions: that God geometrises, and that only the unshackled spirit shall see the things of the spirit without a veil. Blavatsky's closing review of Lillie's book, which she describes as a sarcophagus of old theories and exploded speculations, applies the same judgement in her own voice.

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