Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00602)

SUBJECT: Goswami versus Koot Hoomi??

". . . Pantheistic we may be called -- agnostic NEVER. If people are 
willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and 
unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more 
gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say with Spinoza that 
there is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance than 
God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his 
fourteenth proposition, "practer Deum neque dari neque concepi potest 
substantia" -- and thus become Pantheists . . . ." Koot Hoomi

". . . We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life 
is identical with that of the Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm. And 
no true philosophically brained Adwaitee will ever call himself an 
agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical in every 
respect with the universal life and soul -- the macrocosm is the 
microcosm and he knows that there is no God apart from himself, no 
creator as no being. Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on 
it and become agnostics. . . ." Koot Hoomi


The above extracts as well as many others were given in my Theos-Talk 
posting titled:

"Theism compared to A-Theism and Pan-Theism in the Mahatma Letters"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/8773

The compilation of extracts from various Mahatma letters covered the 
subjects of "God", "spirit", "matter", "atman", Parabrahm, etc. 

In that email I said that one might ponder on the words theism, 
a-theism and pan-theism and what they actually mean as one reads all 
these extracts.

Now Bhakti Ananda Goswami has posted two relevant emails as follows:

Part I: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/8934
Part II: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/8949

I thank Goswami for writing these postings since they contain much 
food for thought.

But after studying both emails I must say that for the most part 
Goswami's postings contain mere assertions without giving any 
documentation or reasoning that would help the reader to understand 
Goswami's thinking or that would help one to determine whether his 
assertions are true or not.  

Maybe Goswami will later provide such documentation and fuller 
details.

Notice what he writes in this excerpt:

"INSTEAD OF CORRECTLY ASSOCIATING THE MAHAYANA DOCTRINES, RITES, 
ICONOGRAPHY ETC. OF NEPALESE-TIBETAN BUDDHISM WITH EARLIER THEISTIC 
KRISHNA-CENTRIC VAISHNAVISM, THE T S MASTERS GENERALLY IGNORE THE 
PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT VAISHNAVA LINK, AND INSTEAD FOCUS ON 
THE 'ESOTERIC' DECONSTRUCTION OF OTHER-POWER SALVIFIC BUDDHIST 
TRANSCENDENTALISM, AND WATERING-DOWN OF THE THEISTIC ASSOCIATIONS 
WITH 'HINDUISM' TO RE-PRESENT N-TIBETAN BUDDHISM AS MERELY A COVERED 
FORM OF THERAVADA." 

"OF COURSE THIS CAMPAIGN OF THEOSOPHY REINFORCED THE EXOTERIC-THEISM-
VERSUS-ESOTERIC-ATHEISM DICHOTOMY ALREADY IN N-TIBETAN BUDDHISM. 
ESOTERIC VOIDISM HAUNTS MAHAYANA BUDDHISM IN THE SAME WAY THAT 
ESOTERIC ATHEISM HAUNTS 'HINDUISM' IN THE FORM OF EXTREME IMPERSONAL 
ADVAITA VEDANTA, AND ESOTERIC GNOSTICISM STILL HAUNTS CHRISTIANITY IN 
THE WEST. THUS WHILE CLAIMING A LOVE OF INDIA AND HER SACRED 
TRADITIONS, IN FACT, THE THEOSOPHISTS REJECTED HER AUTHENTIC 
TRADITIONS OF SALVIFIC TRANSCENDENTAL PERSONALISM, THE DOMINANT 
EXOTERIC BHAKTI TRADITIONS OF KRISHNA-VISHNU, SHIVA AND DEVI, TO 
PROMOTE A FORM OF EXOTERICALLY HINDU-IZED BUT ESOTERIC, COVERED 
SYNCRESTIC BUDDHISM. THE T MASTERS WERE NOT MASTERS OF THE CORPUS OF 
SANSKRIT OR SOUTHERN INDIAN DRAVIDIAN SACRED VISHNU, SHIVA, DEVI AND 
MARUGAN ETC, LITERATURES. THEY DID NOT TEACH ABOUT THE DIRECT 
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PURE LAND BUDDHISM AND VAISHNAVISM, AND THEY 
SEEMED TO KNOW LITTLE ABOUT THE GREAT DEVOTIONAL, SALVIFIC TRADITIONS 
OF EITHER NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN INDIA."

Pay special attention to this one sentence:

"THE THEOSOPHISTS REJECTED HER [India's] AUTHENTIC TRADITIONS OF 
SALVIFIC TRANSCENDENTAL PERSONALISM, THE DOMINANT EXOTERIC BHAKTI 
TRADITIONS OF KRISHNA-VISHNU, SHIVA AND DEVI. . . ."  

and compare and contrast it with Goswami's other statement:

"ESOTERIC VOIDISM HAUNTS MAHAYANA BUDDHISM IN THE SAME WAY THAT 
ESOTERIC ATHEISM HAUNTS 'HINDUISM' IN THE FORM OF EXTREME IMPERSONAL 
ADVAITA VEDANTA, AND ESOTERIC GNOSTICISM STILL HAUNTS CHRISTIANITY IN 
THE WEST."

Apparently Goswami accepts SALVIFIC TRANSCENDENTAL PERSONALISM 
as "authentic" [true?] but considers ESOTERIC VOIDISM in Mahayana 
Buddhism and ESOTERIC ATHEISM IN THE FORM OF EXTREME IMPERSONAL 
ADVAITA VEDANTA in Hinduism as "inauthentic" "adulterated" 
and "false."

As I said above, Goswami provides his readers with none of the 
reasoning behind his statements. His reasoning, etc. may be valid but 
then again his reasoning may be faulty and based on false premises, 
etc. One cannot tell from what he has written.

I give BELOW some relevant excerpts from the Encyclopædia
Britannica on various concepts and ideas that need to be HIGHLIGHTED 
and EXPLORED as one tries to understand, compare and contrast the 
Mahatma Letter view with Goswami's viewpoint.  

One might ALSO read the related articles in the Encyclopædia 
Britannica on theism, monotheism, pantheism, and mysticism for more 
background information.

I will later try to post some relevant comments from Arthur W. 
Osborn's book THE COSMIC WOMB.

Daniel
 
Excerpts from the Encyclopædia Britannica 
-----------------------------------------
VAISHNAVISM also called Vishnuism, or Visnuism . . . [is] worship of 
the god Vishnu and of his incarnations, principally as Rama and as 
Krishna. It is one of the major forms of modern Hinduism—with
Saivism and Shaktism (Saktism). 

A major characteristic of Vaishnavism is the strong part played by 
bhakti, or religious devotion. The ultimate goal of the devotee is to 
escape from the cycle of birth and death so as to enjoy the presence 
of Vishnu. This cannot be achieved without the grace of God. . . .

The philosophical schools of Vaishnavism differ in their 
interpretation of the relationship between individual souls and God. 
The doctrines of the most important schools are: 

(1) visist advaita ("qualified monism"), associated with the
name of Ramanuja (11th century) and continued by the Srivais nava 
sect, prominent in South India; 

(2) dvaita ("dualism"), the principal exponent of which was
Madhva (13th century), who taught that although the soul is dependent 
on God it is not an extension of God, that the soul and God are 
separate entities; 

(3) dvaitadvaita ("dualistic monism"), taught by Nimbarka. . .

(4) suddhadvaita ("pure monism") of Vallabha. . .

(5) acintya-bhedabheda ("inconceivable duality and
nonduality"), the doctrine of Caitanya. . . 
---------------------------------------------------

DVAITA . . . (Sanskrit: "Dualism"), [dualism, or belief in a
basic difference in kind between God and individual souls] [is] an 
important school in the orthodox Hindu philosophical system of 
Vedanta. Its founder was Madhva. . . . 

Already during his lifetime, Madhva was regarded by his followers as 
an incarnation of the wind god Vayu, who had been sent to earth by 
the lord Vishnu to save the good, after the powers of evil had sent 
the philosopher Sankara, an important proponent of the Advaita 
("Nondualist") school. 

In his expositions, Madhva shows the influence of the Nyaya 
philosophic school. He maintains that Vishnu is the supreme God, thus 
identifying the Brahman of the Upanisads with a personal God, as 
Ramanuja (c. 1050–1137) had done before him. There are in
Madhva's system three eternal, ontological orders: that of God, that 
of soul, and that of inanimate nature. The existence of God is 
demonstrable by logical proof, though only scripture teaches his 
nature. He is the epitome of all perfections and possesses a 
nonmaterial body, which consists of saccidananda (being, spirit, and 
bliss). God is the efficient cause of the universe, but Madhva denies 
that he is the material cause, for God cannot have created the world 
by splitting himself nor in any other way, since that militates 
against the doctrine that God is unalterable; in addition, it is 
blasphemous to accept that a perfect God changes himself into an 
imperfect world. . . .

Madhva set out to refute the nondualistic Advaita philosophy of 
Sankara (d. c. AD 750), who believed the individual self to be a 
phenomenon and the absolute spirit (Brahman) the only reality. Thus, 
Madhva rejected the venerable Hindu theory of maya
("illusion"), which taught that only spirituality is eternal
and the 
material world is illusory and deceptive. Madhva maintained that the 
simple fact that things are transient and everchanging does not mean 
they are not real. . . .

Madhva . . . belonged to the tradition of Vaisnava religious faith 
and showed a great polemical spirit in refuting Sankara's philosophy 
and in converting people to his own fold. . . . He glorified 
difference. Five types of differences are central to Madhva's system: 
difference between soul and God, between soul and soul, between soul 
and matter, between God and matter, and that between matter and 
matter. Brahman is the fullness of qualities, and by his own 
intrinsic nature, Brahman produces the world. The individual, 
otherwise free, is dependent only upon God. The Advaita concepts of 
falsity and indescribability of the world were severely criticized 
and rejected. 

--------------------------------------------------------------

ADVAITA (Sanskrit: "Nondualism," or "Monism"), [is]
most influential of the schools of Vedanta, an orthodox philosophy of 
India. While its followers find its main tenets already fully 
expressed in the Upanisads and systematized by the Vedanta-sutras, it 
has its historical beginning with the 7th-century thinker 
Gaudapada. . . Gaudapada builds further on the Mahayana Buddhist 
philosophy of Sunyava-da ("Emptiness"). He argues that there
is no duality;the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya
("illusion"); and only nonduality (advaita) is the final
truth. This 
truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is no 
becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other 
thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only 
the atman (all-soul), in which individuals may be temporarily 
delineated just as the space in a jar delineates a part of main 
space: when the jar is broken, the individual space becomes once more 
part of the main space. 

The medieval Indian philosopher Sankara, or Sankaracarya (Master 
Sankara, c. 700–750), builds further on Gaudapada's foundation, .
. . Sankara in his philosophy does not start from the empirical world 
with logical analysis but, rather, directly from the absolute 
(Brahman). If interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanisads teach 
the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he develops a 
complete epistemology to account for the human error in taking the 
phenomenal world for real. Fundamental for Sankara is the tenet that 
the Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality, or 
plurality is an illusion. The self is nothing but Brahman. Insight 
into this identity results in spiritual release. Brahman is outside 
time, space, and causality, which are simply forms of empirical 
experience. No distinction in Brahman or from Brahman is possible. 

Sankara points to scriptural texts, either stating identity
("Thou art that") or denying difference ("There is no
duality
here"), as declaring the true meaning of a Brahman without
qualities 
(nirguna ). Other texts that ascribe qualities (saguna) to Brahman 
refer not to the true nature of Brahman but to its personality as God
(Isvara). . . . 

----------------------------------------------------

PANTHEISM in Hinduism
The gods of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India (c.1200 BC), 
represented for the most part natural forces. Exceptions were the 
gods Prajapati (Lord of Creatures) and Purusa (Supreme Being or Soul 
of the Universe), whose competition for influence provided, in its 
outcome, a possible explanation of how the Indian tradition came to 
be one of pantheism rather than of Classical Theism. By the 10th book 
of the Rigveda, Prajapati had become a lordly, monotheistic figure, a 
creator deity transcending the world; and in the later period of the 
sacred writings of the Brahmanas (c. 7th century BC), prose 
commentaries on the Vedas, he was moving into a central position. The 
rising influence of this Theism was later eclipsed by Purusa, who was 
also represented in Rigveda X. In a creation myth Purusa was 
sacrificed by the gods in order to supply (from his body) the pieces 
from which all the things of the world arise. From this standpoint 
the ground of all things lies in a Cosmic Self, and all of life 
participates in that of Purusa. The Vedic hymn to Purusa may be 
regarded as the starting point of Indian pantheism. 

In the Upanisads (c. 1000–500 BC), the most important of the
ancient scriptures of India, the later writings contain philosophic 
speculations concerning the relation between the individual and the 
divine. In the earlier Upanisads, the absolute, impersonal, eternal 
properties of the divine had been stressed; in the later Upanisads, 
on the other hand, and in the Bhagavadgita , the personal, loving, 
immanentistic properties became dominant. In both cases the divine 
was held to be identical with the inner self of each man. At times 
these opposites were implicitly held to be in fact identical—the
view earlier called identity of opposites pantheism. At other times 
the two sets of qualities were related, one to the unmanifest 
absolute Brahman, or supreme reality (sustaining the universe), and 
the other to the manifest Brahman bearing qualities (and containing 
the universe). Thus Brahman can be regarded as exclusive of the world 
and inclusive, unchanging and yet the origin of all change. Sometimes 
the manifest Brahman was regarded as an emanation from the unmanifest 
Brahman; and then emanationistic pantheism—the Neoplatonic
pantheism of the foregoing typology—was the result.

Sankara, an outstanding nondualistic Vedantist and advocate of a 
spiritual view of life, began with the Neoplatonic alternative but 
added a qualification that turned his view into what was later called 
acosmic pantheism. Distinguishing first between Brahman as being the 
eternal Absolute and Brahman as a lower principle and declaring the 
lower Brahman to be a manifestation of the higher, he then made the 
judgment that all save the higher unqualitied Brahman is the product 
of ignorance or nescience and exists (apparently only in men's minds) 
as the phantoms of a dream. Since for Sankara, the world and 
individuality thus disappear upon enlightenment into the unmanifest 
Brahman, and in reality only the Absolute without distinctions 
exists, Sankara has provided an instance of acosmism.
---------------------------------------------------

ACOSMISM [is] in philosophy, the view that God is the sole and 
ultimate reality and that finite objects and events have no 
independent existence. Acosmism has been equated with pantheism, the 
belief that everything is God. G.W.F. Hegel coined the word to defend 
Benedict de Spinoza, who was accused of atheism for rejecting the 
traditional view of a created world existing outside God. Hegel 
argued that Spinoza could not be an atheist because pantheists hold 
that everything is God, whereas atheists exclude God altogether and 
make a godless world the sole reality. Furthermore, because Spinoza's 
cosmos is part of God, it is not what it seems to be. He is 
acosmistic insofar as "noncosmic" seems to deny the
cosmos—a position,
however, very alien to Spinoza's thought. 

Acosmism has also been used to describe the philosophies of Hindu 
Vedanta, Buddhism, and Arthur Schopenhauer; and Johann Gottlieb 
Fichte used the term to defend himself against accusations similar to 
those leveled against Spinoza.
-----------------------------------------------------

NIRVANA of the Buddhists

Nirvana ( Sanskrit Extinction, or Blowing Out )Pali Nibbana in Indian 
religious thought, [is] the supreme goal of the meditation 
disciplines. The concept is most characteristic of Buddhism, in which 
it signifies the transcendent state of freedom achieved by the 
extinction of desire and of individual consciousness. . . .

Nirvana is conceived somewhat differently within various schools of 
Buddhism. In the Theravada tradition, it is tranquillity and peace. 
In the schools of the Mahayana tradition, Nirvana is equated with 
sunyata (emptiness), with dharma-kaya (the real and unchanging 
essence of the Buddha), and with dharma-dhatu (ultimate 
reality) . . . . 

Some 600 years after Buddha, a new and more speculative school of 
Buddhism arose to challenge the 18 or 20 schools of Buddhism then in 
existence. One of the early representatives of this new school, which 
came to be known as Mahayana (Sanskrit "Greater
Vehicle")Buddhism, 
was Asvaghosa. Like Sankara (whom he antedated by 700 years), 
Asvaghosa not only distinguished between the pure Absolute (the Soul 
as "Suchness"; i.e., in its essence) and the all-producing,
all- conserving Mind, which is the manifestation of the Absolute (the 
Soul as "Birth and Death"; i.e., as happenings), but he also
held that the judgment concerning the manifest world of beings is a 
judgment of nonenlightenment; it is, he said, like the waves stirred 
by the wind— when the quiet of enlightenment comes the waves
cease, and an illusion confronts a man as he begins to understand the 
world. 

Whereas Asvaghosa treated the world as illusory and essentially void, 
Nagarjuna, the great propagator of Mahayana Buddhism who studied 
under one of Asvaghosa's disciples, transferred Sunya ("the
Void") into the place of the Absolute. If Suchness, or ultimate 
reality, and the Void are identical, then the ultimate must lie 
beyond any possible description. Nagarjuna approached the matter 
through dialectical negation: according to the school that he 
founded, the Ultimate Void is the Middle Path of an eightfold 
negation; all individual characteristics are negated and sublated, 
and the individual approaches the Void through a combination of 
dialectical negation and direct intuition. Beginning with the Middle 
Doctrine School, the doctrine of the Void spread to all schools of 
Mahayana Buddhism as well as to the Satyasiddhi (Sanskrit:
"perfect attainment of truth") group in Hinayana Buddhism.
Since the 
Void is also called the highest synthesis of all oppositions, the 
doctrine of the Void may be viewed as an instance of identity of 
opposites pantheism. 

In the T'ien-t'ai school of Chinese Buddhism founded by Chih-i, as in 
earlier forms of Mahayana Buddhism, the elements of ordinary 
existence are regarded as having their basis in illusion and 
imagination. What really exists is the one Pure Mind, called True 
Thusness, which exists changelessly and without differentiation. 
Enlightenment consists of realizing one's unity with the Pure Mind. 
Thus, an additional Buddhist school, T'ien-t'ai, can be identified 
with acosmic pantheism.

Indeed, although a mingling of types is discernible in the Hindu and 
Buddhist strands of Oriental culture, acosmic pantheism would seem to 
be the alternative most deeply rooted and widespread in these 
traditions.

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