From: "Brian Muehlbach" Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 19:13:59 -0000 Subject: [world-vedic] Key to Aryan Invasion Theory and Vedic Letters. It seems whoever adviced these letters presented information mined from the Vaishnava Bhakti Shastras avoiding all theistic implications, and concentrated on the cycles of time, and the progenitors (manus) of the Earthly human race, during various yugas or ages. The "Mahatmas" misrepresented the Vaishnava doctrines of the Earth yugas / ages and Manus as having something to do with their contemporary Aryanist idea of different human races and esoteric karmic evolutionary theory. They edited-out the Supreme Godhead from these scriptures, and appropriated created a mega-myth promoting an imagined aryan race as the current epitome of human evolution. Of course the Mahatmas' teachings were ultimately revealed to the world through H.P. Blavatsky, but there were some differences between what she wrote in the Mahatma letters 1880-1884, and what she wrote in the Secret Doctrine, first published in 1888. Something interesting happened between the days of the early Mahatma Letters, and the publication of the SECRET DOCTRINE in 1888. The already complex hodge-podge of secret doctrine / esoteric Eastern teachings in the Mahatma Letters shows an evolution from the principally voidist Buddhist perspective in 1880 to a much more developed Vaishnava Puranic set of teachings in the SECRET DOCTRINE published in 1888. Whereas the brahmins and their "shasters" are held in contempt by the Mahatmas in their Letters, in HPB's Secret Doctrine they are credited with possessing the highest knowledge. It is the Smarta Brahmins the Aryanist birth- caste and Advaita Vedanta atheists who are admired in the Secret Doctrine. Maybe HPB and friends' near alliance with some branch of a Mayavadi Sampradaya from Adi Sankaracarya had something to do with the glorification of their brahmin Advaita Vedanta in the Secret Doctrine. However while extolling the virtues of the wise Mayavadi (impersonalist) initiate brahmins, the Secret Doctrine quite overtly refers to the Vaishnava Puranas and other Sanskrit Krishna-Vishnu centric Scriptures. However HPB seems to have increasingly become conflicted over trying to reconcile theistic-and-atheistic, Mahayana-and-Theravadin, transcendental-personal-and-material-impersonal, incarnational-and- iconoclastic 'wisdom' teachings. Thus, contradictions concerning these subjects abound everywhere in the Secret Doctrine. The Stanzas of Dzyan, which the Secret Doctrine is supposedly a translation of, and commentary on, are explained from the Eastern perspective largely by HPB's detailed references to the Vaishnava Scriptures. One would think that this would win points with the Vaishnava Sampradayas (lineages), which would then support HPB's Theosophical mission? As for the Mayavadis' perspective regarding the Secret Doctrine, they would have been as equally offended by HPB's compromise and distortions of their teachings, which is probably why Subba Row and the Sankarites renounced their association with HPB and Theosophy. HPB's bold and amazing synthesis was an attempt to dissolve two historically incompatible (theistic-personal versus atheistic-impersonal) adversarial thought-systems into a stable third emulsion / substance. Because her perception of the historical reality was erroneous, she could not understand that it would never work. In her imagination, the hidden inner wisdom of the Bhakti Puranas, the Advaita Vedanta of the Sankarites and the anatta voidist wisdom of the Theravada Buddhists were all the same thing. In reality these were not at all the same thing, and could not be successfully mixed together. Like HPB, Olcott and other Theosophists, post-New Agers today commonly think of modern Hindu Advaita Vedanta and Theravadin Buddhist voidism as the same thing or at least compatible, but the fact is that historically there was a great contest between these two traditions of thought, during the time of Adi Sankaracarya. When Adi Sankaracarya (788-820 AD) first systematized his doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, it was somewhat in response to Theravadin Buddhism's influence in India. The Vaishnava perspective on this is that against the no-self and ultimate void (emptiness) doctrine of the Theravadin Buddhists, Sankaracarya asserted the existence of a single Self, or Plenum / Purnam / Full 'Ground of Being'. The Plenum (Krishna-Vishnu as the PURNAM of Isopanishad) was Brahman, and Brahman was identical to Atman. Thus if the Brahman was one, then Atman had to be one as well. In the system passed-on by Sankaracarya's disciples heading the Four Peets (lineages), there was a failure to distinguish between the PARAM-ATMAN, or Supreme Self and the JIV-ATMA, or finite self. Thus when the Mayavadis, as the Vaishnavas called them, identifying jivatman as Brahman, reinterpreted the Vedic-Vaishnava, Shaivite and Devi Bhakti Scriptures, they used 'esoteric' readings the theism from these texts. They wrote there was a form of moksha in which the jivatma merges into the impersonal Brahman, yet deviated from the Bhakti traditions in teaching that there was no other or higher experience of God and Self than that of the impersonal-merging-into-Brahman. HPB tried very hard to fuse the "absolute nothing" (see Maseo Abe) voidism of Theravadin Buddhism, the energy-positive but impersonal atheistic monism of the Advaita Vedanta of the Sankarites and the Bhakti Shastra Theistic Personal Puranic teachings on the cosmos, great rounds and manus etc. into one systematized thought-whole. She could not succeed in this, because her perception of these mutually exclusive traditions as being fundamentally compatible was flawed. One thing that HPB didn't realize was that there were various forms of theistic monist or advaitic teachings within the ancient orthodox Shastric Vaishnava lineages. These had always been there, and were associated with either 1. the Brahma-jyoti (Brahman effulgence, or Personal Transcendental Bodily 'Glory' and Shakti / Shekinah) of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and / or 2. The all-pervasive Purusha Presence as the holy spirit, PARAMATMAN within the material worlds. This form of Vaishnava Advaita Vedanta was compatible with Vaishnavism's transcendental personalism that the inventive Mahatmas and the Stanzas of Dzyan and traditional Puranas expounded on. This was the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya tradition of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who taught the doctrine of simultaneous, inconceivable difference and non-difference within the Persons of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and between the Self of the Supreme Being and the selves of all other beings. Based on the Radha-Krishna Bhakti Shastras, the Teachings of Caitanya explored RASA (flavors of Divine Love) and the relational dynamics of Transcendental Personalism in the internal 'mysteries', emanations and incarnations of the Giving Godhead and His Receiving Shakti / Shekinah. Had Theosophists studied non-dualism might they have found a synthesis of the personal and impersonal traditions that actually would work? The above is extracted from the apparently very informative reg. the influence of post-modernist Orientalism in the US and Europe today, by bhakti_eohn. By the way geologists in India say they have found an elephant fossil in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, supporting earlier theories that the vast desert was once a fertile area. During the Pleistocene epoch, India touched Eurasia and there were indications that Asian elephants moved south due to the prevailing ice-age in the northern hemisphere. From: Saraswati River Key to Aryan Invasion Theory? At: http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9