Theos-Talk Archives (January 2003 Message tt00204)

Dear BAG:

Many thanks for the interesting comments. I have some stupid 
questions for you.

Even if the Vedas are 7000 years old as you say, which would make 
them about contemporaneous with the earliest manuscripts of the I 
CHING, what do you make of the fact that the human race is believed 
to have originated at least 50,000 years ago according to some 
reckonings, and as many as 2m years ago by others? If Vishnu is 
real, why did he wait so long to reveal himself?

BAG: "ALL of the extant separate Shaivite, Shakti, Advaitan, and 
Buddhist Sanskrit texts (Mahayana Buddhist Texts are originally in 
Vaishnava Sanskrit) are much later than the Vedic?Vaishnava texts. 
However one dates the Vaishnava Sastras and these later texts, and 
the traditions they represent, the separated 
traditions are clearly based on the former existence of the Vedic?
Vaishnava Tradition. Thus the common inheritance / genealogy of the 
separated traditions in is Vedic?era Purusha or Vishnu worship.

So this, in other words, is the mysterious "primitive wisdom 
religion" spoken of by Godfrey Higgins and others and taken from them 
by HPB into her system?

BAG: "popular Western view of 'Hindusim' completely ignores this 
reality.

I am missing something. How is that possible when the "popular 
Western view of 'Hindusim'" is the Hare Krishna bunch and all those 
comic books they publish?

BAG: "The Vedic?Vaishnava Purusha doctrine of His once?and?all?
sufficient Cosmic Sacrifice comes down to the present as a vibrant 
living tradition not only in Vaishnavism, but is at the core of the 
Judeo?Catholic doctrine of the atoning cosmic sacrifice of Messiah?
Christ

It should be said that the idea of human sacrifice to appease demons 
is not Jewish but pagan, and was taken into Christianity from Greek 
and Roman rather than Jewish sources.

BAG: "these sacrifices were and are always ahimsa or NON?
BLOODY vegetarian or lacto?vegetarian offerings. These are related to 
the Jewish 'praise' and 'thanks' offerings, and the 
unbloody offerings of the Nazarites and the priesthood of Mechizedek

Are you talking about the prohibition against touching a corpse while 
under the Nazarite vow?

BAG: "In the Mediterranean the sattvic practices of the Heliopolitan 
Ascetics, including the Nazarite Jews etc.

Are you saying the Nazarites are connected with the Egyptian 
priesthood from the city of On?

BAG: "For theosophists who are 'standing on the shoulders of giants' 
to insult those giants is a pretty small?minded and arrogant thing.

Hear hear. Theosophists are arrogant as hell. I like that 
phrase "pretty small?minded," too, Hear hear.

BAG: "The Vedic Hymns cannot be understood without reference to the 
Vaishnava Sattvic (canonical ) Puranas, which context them and 
explain them.

It should be mentioned that THE VISHNU PURANA is medieval vintage and 
therefore represents a considerably later stage of intellectual 
development than do the Vedas.

BAG: "She used the Vishnu Purusha?centric Vedas and the Puranas 
extensively in her writings, but like the atheistic Buddhists and 
Mayavadis before her, systematically removed devotion to the Personal 
God Vishnu from what she used.

Which makes sense, since she proclaimed herself a Buddhist and 
therefore not a theist. Nor are Sikhs theists.

BAG: "Outside of the Sanskrit Vedic?Vaishnava Literatures or their 
later Buddhist and Shaivite versions, the 'Stanzas' of Dzyan had 
apparently had no existence.

Wow, what a burn. I always suspected that was true but did not know 
if anyone could prove it. That does not diminish its value, but it 
does reveal the "stanzas" to be a sort of hatrack of the mind, on 
which one could hang ideas. rather than an actual book.

BAG: "The Theos and Thea Supreme 'God and Goddess' and Their 
expansions or emanations and incarnations as various 'gods and 
goddesses' throughout the ancient world were all part of the same 
primal EMANATIONAL AND INCARNATIONAL MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIO?CUTURAL 
SYSTEM. This one RIG VEDIC RELATED ancient religious culture was 
also predominant AT A VERY EARLY TIME in the Mediterranean Region

In simpler language, are you saying that you accept the PWR 
hypothesis?

That out of which creation has arisen,
whether it held it firm or it did not,
He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He surely knows ? or maybe He does not! 

It should be mentioned that Blavatsky somewhere quotes this very 
verse. I believe in the book FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.