Preface of the Editor

(2013)

Alfred Percy Sinnett was a British journalist and occultist who played an important part in the affairs of the Theosophical Society during its first generation. In the early 1880s A.P. Sinnett corresponded with the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya. In these letters the Masters gave Sinnett the basic ideas of Theosophy on the constitution of man, the planetary chain, the world periods, life after death in Devachan and Kâma-loka, the progress of humanity, Buddha and Nirvana. In 1883 Mr. Sinnett wrote Esoteric Buddhism based on his understanding of these teachings. This classic was the first simple exposition of Theosophy in modern times.

The present publication is based on the Fifth Edition, 1885, annotated and enlarged by the author. With respect to that original edition, the text has been cleaned by some minor misspelling; the punctuation — sometimes confused — has been simplified; the quotations have been clearly highlighted and differentiated — where possible — from the main text; the original notes of the Author have been incorporated into the text in square brackets and marked by '*' symbol (the symbol '**' marks the few notes of the Editor). This results in a text more readable and suitable for modern reading devices.

Biographical note on Alfred Percy Sinnett

Alfred Percy Sinnett was born on January 18, 1840, in London. His father was a journalist who died when he was still young, since in the 1851 Census he is listed as living with his widowed mother Jane, a writer who had published numerous books. Sinnett became a journalist himself at the age of 19, working on the staff of the London Globe. Later he went to Hong Kong, where he became editor of the Daily Press. He returned to England in 1868 and became a writer on the Standard. In 1870, Sinnett married his wife Patience Edensor. He is listed in the 1871 Census as a Journalist, living with his wife and her mother. In the same year, Sinnett and his wife moved to India where he took a position as editor of the Pioneer (the leading English Daily of India) in Allahabad.

The Sinnetts were living there in Feb 1879 when Blavatsky and Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, landed in Bombay. On 25 Feb 1879 a letter arrived for them from Sinnett as editor of the Pioneer expressing interest and a willingness to publish any facts. Sinnett then published some articles on spiritualism; he and his wife also invited these two strangers to visit and stay for a time at their home, but Blavatsky and Olcott did not reach Allahabad until 4 Dec 1879, where they remained for six weeks.  Sinnett and his wife became members. The subsequent publicity given to Theosophy in the Pioneer assisted its membership growth, but it would soon cost Sinnett his job.

In 1880 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott visited the Sinnetts at their summer-home in Simla. The Mahatma Letters, which generated the controversy that later helped lead to the split of the Theosophical Society, were mostly written to Sinnett or his wife, Patience. These letters were all published much later, after Blavatsky and Olcott were both dead.

In 1881, at Simla, Sinnett with Allen Octavian Hume established the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society; Hume was it's president the first year, and Sinnett the second year.

In these years Sinnett wrote his first book: The Occult World, published in 1881 in London, and in 1882 in Boston; he wrote also a book, not published, referred to by Countess Wachtmeister as Memoirs which, at least in part, detailed the Occult phenomena taking place in the presence of Madame Blavatsky [...].

When Edward Maitland and Dr Anna Kingsfords anonymous book The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ appeared in Feb 1882, Sinnett wrote a book review of it for The Theosophist magazine.

Meanwhile, the proprietors of the Pioneer were becoming embarrassed by Sinnett's journalistic support of Blavatsky and informed him that his contract would not be renewed. There then followed an abortive attempt by Madame to raise funds to start her own periodical to be called the Phoenix.

After visiting Blavatsky at her new residence at Adyar in Mar 1883, Sinnett sailed for England. Arriving in London in April 1883, he joined the Theosophical Society there, then under the presidency of Dr Anna Kingsford. For a period, Sinnett was Vice-President of the Theosophical Society, but his independent views made it difficult for him to cooperate fully with other officials, although Sinnett's book The Occult World had attracted many individuals to the society. 

During his association with the society, Sinnett received a number of Mahatma letters, supposedly from the mysterious Masters who had directed the formation of the society. Sinnett's book Esoteric Buddhism, published in London in 1883, was said to have derived from communications from the Master K. H. on human evolution and cosmogony. One of the Mahatma letters comes addressed to him about the current controversy over who should be the President of the London T.S. This letter calls him the Vice-President of the Parent Society, which supposedly means he is next under Olcott.

It was in this period moreover that Sinnet became friendly with Frederic W. Myers, who (with Edmund Gurney and Henry Sidgwick) had founded the Society for Psychical Research a year earlier.

Constance Wachtmeister (who joined the Theosophical Society in 1881) stated that she met Blavatsky at the home of the Sinnetts in 1884 in London.

In the Summer of 1884, when Blavatsky was a guest in England, an American arrived who would be the cause of Sinnett's falling out with Blavatsky. Laura Holloway was a medium who had read Sinnett's work Occult World and wanted to become a pupil of the Mahatma Koot Hoomi. In a private seance, Laura was possessed by the spirit of Koot Hoomi who spoke to Sinnett directly for the first time, instead of through a letter. Williams says that Blavatsky was alarmed at this idea that someone else could possibly pull the strings and tried to corral Laura to her side, but Sinnett rebelled at this, realizing that at least some of the letters purportedly from the Mahatmas were really written by Blavatsky herself.

Sinnett wrote a book called Karma published in 1885. That same year his wife as Mrs A. P. Sinnett wrote a book called The Purpose of Theosophy. He edited Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky which was published in 1886 in New York and London. In 1886 he was stated to be at work upon another novel to be called United.

In 1890, with others, he was a director of the Hansard Publishing Union. In 1892 he wrote a book The Rationale of Mesmerism. In 1893 he wrote A New Theory of Stonehenge. The Black and White mocked him in 1893 for referring to a recently discovered process psychometry which purports to read the history of objects by touching them.

By 1887, Sinnett and his wife had formed associations with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the pioneering ceremonial magic society. In 1896 the poet William Butler Yeats, a prominent member of the Golden Dawn, wrote that Sinnett was in charge of the order's neophytes. Sinnett was also friendly with the important occult and mystical writer Arthur Edward Waite, and with Mary A. Atwood, who sent Sinnett her library of alchemical texts.

Sinnett's wife Patience died 9 Nov 1908; thirteen years later, he died 25 Jun 1921 at the age of 81.

Preface to the annotated edition

(1885)

SINCE this book was first published in the beginning of 1883, I have come into possession of much additional information bearing on many of the problems dealt with. But I am glad to say that such later teaching only reveals incompleteness in my original conception of the esoteric doctrine — no material error so far. Indeed I have received from the great Adept himself, from whom I obtained my instruction in the first instance, the assurance that the book as it now stands is a sound and trustworthy statement of the scheme of Nature as understood by the initiates of occult science, which may have to be a good deal developed in the future, if the interest it excites is keen enough to constitute an efficient demand for further teaching of this kind on the part of the world at large, but will never have to be remodelled or apologized for. In view of this assurance it seems best that I should now put forward my later conclusions and additional information in the form of annotations on each branch of the subject, rather than infuse them into the original text, which, under the circumstances, I am reluctant in any way to alter. I have therefore adopted that plan in the present edition.

As conveying an indirect acknowledgement of the general harmony to be traced between these teachings and the recognized philosophical tenets of certain other great schools of Indian thought, I may here refer to criticisms on this book, which were published in the Indian magazine The Theosophist in June, 1883, by a Brahman Hindoo. The writer complains that in interpreting the esoteric doctrine, I have departed unnecessarily from accepted Sanskrit nomenclature; but his objection merely is that I have given unfamiliar names in some cases to ideas already embodied in Hindoo sacred writings, and that I have done too much honour to the religious system commonly known as Buddhism, by representing that as more closely allied with the esoteric doctrine than any other.

The popular wisdom of the majority of Hindoos to this day, [says my Brahman critic,] is more or less tinged with the esoteric doctrine taught in Mr Sinnett’s book misnamed Esoteric Buddhism, while there is not a single village or hamlet in the whole of India in which people are not more or less acquainted with the sublime tenets of the Vedânta philosophy [...]. The effects of karma in the next birth, the enjoyment of its fruits, good or evil, in a subjective or spiritual state of existence prior to the re-incarnation of the spiritual monad in this or any other world, the loitering of the unsatisfied souls or human shells in the earth (Kâma-loka), the pralayic and manvantaric periods [...] are not only intelligible, but are even familiar to a great many Hindoos, under names different from those made use by the author of Esoteric Buddhism.

So much the better — I take leave to rejoin — from the point of view of Western readers, to whom it must be a matter of indifference whether the esoteric Hindoo or Buddhist religion is nearest to absolutely true spiritual science, which should certainly bear no name that appears to wed it to any one faith in the external world more than to another. All that we in Europe can be anxious for, is to arrive at a clear understanding as to the essential principles of that science, and if we find the principles defined in this book claimed by the cultured representatives of more than one great Oriental creed as equally the underlying truths of their different systems, we shall be all the better inclined to believe the present exposition of doctrine worth our attention.

In regard to the complaint itself, that the teachings here reduced to an intelligible shape are incorrectly described by the name this book bears, I cannot do better than quote the note by which the editor of The Theosophist replies to his Brahman contributor. This note says:

We print the above letter as it expresses in courteous language, and in an able manner, the views of a large number of our Hindoo brothers. At the same time it must be stated that the name of Esoteric Buddhism was given to Mr Sinnett’s latest publication, not because the doctrine propounded therein is meant to be specially identified with any particular form of faith, but because Buddhism means the doctrine of the Buddhas, the Wise i.e. the Wisdom Religion.

For my own part I need only add that I fully accept and adopt that explanation of the matter. It would indeed be a misconception of the design which this book is intended to sub-serve, to suppose it concerned with the recommendation, to a dilettante modern taste, of Old World fashions in religious thought. The external forms and fancies of religion in one age may be a little purer, in another a little more corrupt, but they inevitably adapt themselves to their period, and it would be extravagant to imagine them interchangeable. The present statement is not put forward in the hope of making Buddhists from among the adherents of any other system, but with the view of conveying to thoughtful readers, as well in the East as in the West, a series of leading ideas relating to the actual verities of Nature, and the real facts of man’s progress through evolution, which have been communicated to the present writer by Eastern philosophers, and thus fall most readily into an Oriental mould. For the value of these teachings will perhaps be most fully realized when we clearly perceive that they are scientific in their character rather than controversial. Spiritual truths, if they are truths, may evidently be dealt with in a no less scientific spirit than chemical reactions. And no religious feeling, of whatever colour it may be, need be disturbed by the importation into the general stock of knowledge of new discoveries about the constitution and nature of man on the plane of his higher activities. True religion will eventually find a way to assimilate much fresh knowledge, in the same way that it always finally acquiesces in a general enlargement of Knowledge on the physical plane. This, in the first instance, may sometimes disconcert notions associated with religious belief — as geological science at first embarrassed biblical chronology. But in time men came to see that the essence of the biblical statement does not reside in the literal sense of the cosmological passages in the Old Testament, and religious conceptions grew all the purer for the relief thus afforded. In just the same way when positive scientific knowledge begins to embrace a comprehension of the laws relating to the spiritual development of man — some misconceptions of Nature, long blended with religion, may have to give way, but still it will be found that the central ideas of true religion have been cleared up and strengthened all the better for the process. Especially as such processes continue, will the internal dissensions of the religious world be inevitably subdued. The warfare of sects can only be due to a failure on the part of rival sectarians to grasp fundamental facts. Could a time come when the basic ideas on which religion rests, should be comprehended with the same certainty with which we comprehend some primary physical laws, and disagreement about them be recognized by all educated people as ridiculous, then there would not be room for very acrimonious divergences of religious sentiment. Externals of religious thought would still differ in different climates and among different races — as dress and dietaries differ — but such differences would not give rise to intellectual antagonism.

Basic facts of the nature indicated are developed, it appears to me, in the exposition of spiritual science we have now obtained from our Eastern friends. It is quite unnecessary for religious thinkers to turn aside from them under the impression that they are arguments in favour of some Eastern, in preference to the more general Western creed. If medical science were to discover a new fact about man’s body, were to unveil some hitherto concealed principle on which the growth of skin and flesh and bone is carried on, that discovery would not be regarded as trenching at all on the domain of religion. Would the domain of religion be invaded, for example, by a discovery that should go one step behind the action of the nerves, and disclose a finer set of activities manipulating these as they manipulate the muscles? At all events, even if such a discovery might begin to reconcile science and religion, no man who allows any of his higher faculties to enter into his religious thinking would put aside a positive fact of Nature, plainly shown to be such, as hostile to religion. Being a fact it would inevitably fit in with all other facts, and with religious truth among the number. So with the great mass of information in reference to the spiritual evolution of man embodied in the present statement. Our best plan evidently is to ask, before we look into the report I bring forward, not whether it will square in all respects with preconceived views, but whether it really does introduce us to a series of natural facts connected with the growth and development of man’s higher faculties. If it does this we may wisely examine the facts first in the scientific spirit, and leave them to exercise whatever effect on collateral belief may be reasonable and legitimate later on.

Ramifying, as the explanation proceeds, into a great many side paths, it will be seen that the central statement now put forward constitutes a theory of anthropology which completes and spiritualises the ordinary notions of physical evolution. The theory which traces man’s development by successive and very gradual improvements of animal forms from generation to generation, is a very barren and miserable theory regarded as an all-embracing account of creation; but properly understood it paves the way for a comprehension of the higher concurrent process which is all the while evolving the soul of man in the spiritual realm of existence. The present view of the matter reconciles the evolutionary method with the deeply seated craving of every self-conscious entity for perpetuity of individual life. The disjointed series of improving forms on this earth have no individuality, and the life of each in turn is a separate transaction which finds in the next similar transaction, no compensation for suffering involved, no justice, no fruit of its efforts. It is just possible to argue on the assumption of a new independent creation of a human soul every time a new human form is produced by physiological growth, that in the after spiritual states of such soul, justice may be awarded; but then this conception is itself at variance with the fundamental idea of evolution, which traces, or believes that it traces the origin of each soul to the workings of highly developed matter in each case. Nor is it less at variance with the analogies of Nature; but without going into that, it is enough for the moment to perceive that the theory of spiritual evolution, as set forth in the teaching of esoteric science, is at any rate in harmony with these analogies, while at the same time it satisfactorily meets the requirements of justice, and of the instinctive demand for continuity of individual life.

This theory recognizes the evolution of the soul as a process that is quite continuous in itself, though carried out partly through the instrumentality of a great series of dissociated forms. Putting aside for the moment of profound metaphysics of the theory which trace the principle of life from the original first cause of the cosmos, we find the soul as an entity emerging from the animal kingdom, and passing into the earliest human forms, without being at that time ripe for the higher intellectual life with which the present state of humanity renders us familiar. But through successive incarnations in forms whose physical improvement, under the Darwinian law, is constantly fitting them to be its habitation at each return to objective life, it gradually gathers that enormous range of experience which is summed up in its higher development. In the intervals between its physical incarnations it prolongs and works out, and finally exhausts or transmutes into so much abstract development, the personal experiences of each life. This is the clue to the true explanation of that apparent difficulty which besets the cruder form of the theory of re-incarnation which independent speculation has sometimes thrown out. Each man is unconscious of having led previous lives, therefore he contends that subsequent lives can afford him no compensation for this one. He overlooks the enormous importance of the intervening spiritual condition, in which he by no means forgets the personal adventures and emotions he has just passed through, and in the course of which he distills these into so much cosmic progress. In the following pages the elucidation of this profoundly interesting mystery is attempted, and it will be seen that the view of events now afforded us is not only a solution of the problems of life and death, but of many very perplexing experiences on the borderland between those conditions — or rather between physical and spiritual life — which have engaged attention and speculation so widely of recent years in most civilized countries.

Preface to the original edition

(1883)

THE teachings embodied in the present volume let in a flood of light on questions connected with Buddhist doctrine which have deeply perplexed previous writers on the religion, and offer the world for the first time a practical clue to the meaning of almost all ancient religious symbolism. More than this, the esoteric doctrine, when properly understood, will be found to advance an overpowering claim on the attention of earnest thinkers. Its tenets are not presented to us as the invention of any founder or prophet. Its testimony is based on no written scriptures. Its views of Nature have been evolved by the researches of an immense succession of investigators, qualified for their task by the possession of spiritual faculties and perceptions of a higher order than those belonging to ordinary humanity. In the course of ages the block of knowledge thus accumulated, concerning the origin of the world and of man and the ultimate destinies of our race — concerning also the nature of other worlds and states of existence differing from those of our present life — checked and examined at every point, verified in all directions, and constantly under examination throughout, has come to be looked on by its custodians as constituting the absolute truth concerning spiritual things, the actual state of the facts regarding vast regions of vital activity lying beyond this earthly existence.

European philosophy, whether concerned with religion or pure metaphysics, has so long been used to a sense of insecurity in speculations outrunning the limits of physical experiment, that absolute truth about spiritual things is hardly recognized any longer by prudent thinkers as a reasonable object of pursuit; but different habits of thought have been acquired in Asia. The secret doctrine which, to a considerable extent, I am now enabled to expound, is regarded not only by all its adherents, but by vast numbers who have never expected to know more of it than that such a doctrine exists, as a mine of entirely trustworthy knowledge from which all religions and philosophies have derived whatever they possess of truth, and with which every religion must coincide if it claims to be a mode of expression for truth.

This is a bold claim indeed, but I venture to announce the following exposition as one of immense importance to the world, because I believe that claim can be substantiated.

I do not say that within the compass of this volume the authenticity of the esoteric doctrine can be proved. Such proof cannot be given by any process of argument; only through the development in each inquirer for himself of the faculties required for the direct observation of Nature along the lines indicated. But his prima facie conclusion may be determined by the extent to which the views of Nature about to be unfolded, may recommend themselves to his mind, and by the reasons which exist for trusting the powers of observation of those by whom they are communicated.

Will it be supposed that the very magnitude of the claim now made on behalf of the esoteric doctrine, lifts the present statement out of the region of inquiry to which its title refers — inquiry as to the real inner meaning of the definite and specific religion called Buddhism? The fact is, however, that esoteric Buddhism, though by no means divorced from the associations of exoteric Buddhism, must not be conceived to constitute a mere imperium in imperio — a central school of culture in the vortex of the Buddhist world. In proportion as Buddhism retreats into the inner penetralia of its faith, these are found to merge into the inner penetralia of other