349
state. Mr. Maitland represents Mr. Sinnett to have said that the Dhyan Chohans perish like everything else. But, as has been shown before, no entity that has once reached Paranirvana can be said to perish; though the state of existence known as the Dhyan Chohanic, no doubt, merges into, or assimilates itself with, the state of Absolute Consciousness for the time being, as the hour of the Mahapralaya strikes, but to be propelled again into existence at the dawn of the following Manvantara.*[1] This, by no means, shows that the entities, who existed as Dhyan Chohans, perish, any more than the water converted into steam perishes. The Dhyan Chohans are, in fact, the gods mentioned allegorically in our Puranas. These exalted beings, in common with all the other classes of the Devi (god) kingdom are of two types—one consisting of those who have been men, and the other of those who will be men at some future period. It is distinctly mentioned in our books that those who are now gods lived once on this earth as men. The Dhyan Chohans are the Elohim of the Western Kabalists. I was obliged to make this somewhat lengthy digression to show that the doctrine of the Dhyan Chohans as taught in the Esoteric doctrine, and faintly delineated in "Esoteric Buddhism," is essentially the same as taught by the ancient Rishis, by Shankaracharya, and even by the present Brahmanical authorities—however distorted the modern forms. Those who consider this doctrine "as repugnant to common sense," and yet would, in the face of "the urgency of the demand in the West for fuller enlightenment from the East," "invite teaching from yet other schools of Occult Science" would ouly fall from the frying pan into the fire. There is not a school in India, whether esoteric or exoteric, that teaches any other doctrine as regards the Adityas or the Dhyan Chohans—unless, indeed, it be the world-famed Vallabhacharya or the "Black
- ↑ The word Manvantara literally means a "different Manu," or incarnate Dhyan Chohan. It is applied to the period of time intervening between two successive appearances of Manu on this earth, as the word Manu-antara shows.
