Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00228)

In a message dated 05/27/04 10:04:23 AM, paul@actrix.co.at writes:

>It's a serious question.
>
>I am thinking of one of the passages in the Mahatma Letters, wherein KH
>implies very strongly a lack of belief in the Christian (or other 
>Monotheistic) version of God. In fact, he suggests that the view of the
>Adepts is quite close to a type of Atheism. They seem to deny the 
>existence of a single, isolated Divine Deity separate and apart from His
>creation, which I guess also denies the Dvaita of Vaishnavism. (See 
>http://www.dvaita.org/faq.shtml). To me, this is closest to Mahayana
>Buddhism, which apparently adopts a somewhat Atheistic approach.
>
>Atheism seems to follow three forms:
>
>The theistic position is belief in a deity. Then there are two atheistic
>positions. The first, called implicit (or weak) atheism, is a disbelief
>in a deity. The second, called explicit (or strong) atheism, is a belief
>that there are no deities. So what we actually have is:
>
>Theism -- positive claim
>Implicit Atheism -- neutral claim
>Explicit Atheism -- negative claim
>
>The following link however suggests that Mahayana does not in fact teach
>Atheism (being largely based on Vaishnavism), and suggests instead that
>pure Atheism is to be found in the Theravada school.
>
>http://www.vaisnavi.com/saragrahi/columns/one/one1/pure_land_bhakti_buddhism.
htm
>
>What do you'all think?
>-- 
>Paul Gillingwater
>Confused in Vienna

All those "schools" are purely exoteric and have little or no relationship 
with pure theosophy or "esoteric Buddhism" or "Budhi-ism" (as HPB spoke of it). 
This teaching does not deny God -- but only that It (the divine and ineffable 
source of all) is not to be personalized. Thus, since theosophy (and 
occultism) follows none of those exoteric schools, all confusion ends. :-)

Leon Maurer
Unconfused in New York ;-)