352
incomplete, is correct so far as it goes. The first thing I have to emphasise is, that Christ and Buddha do not signify one and the same thing: Christ is a principle, and Buddha is a state. It is not necessary for every Monad to pass through Buddhahood in its progress towards Nirvana.*[1] Every man who passes through the last state of initiation does not necessarily become a Buddha. The historical view of the case is after all the correct one, and no confusion has been made by Mr. Sinnett between "similarity" and "identity" as suggested by Mr. Maitland on page 22.
I shall now conclude my review of the misconceptions charged on, and arguments urged against, the teachings contained in "Esoteric Buddhism," by calling attention to Mr. Maitland's sarcastic reference to the "chief inspiring adept himself," as he calls the Master. Mr. Maitland considers it "worthy of note that although the being of God, or of any absolute good, is strenuously denied, that of "absolute evil" is...maintained, the phrase being used by the chief inspiring adept himself of the book." The phrase quoted by him is so completely separated from the context of what the said "adept" really asserts, that to draw inferences from such an isolated expression without having it more clearly defined by what precedes and what follows it—is not far removed from misrepresentation. Begging Mr. Maitland's pardon, it is distinctly stated on page 61, "that when your race, the fifth, will have reached the zenith of its physical intellectuality and developed its highest civilization...unable to go on any higher in its own cycle, its progress towards absolute evil will be arrested (as its predecessors...were arrested in their progress toward the same)." Strange, indeed, must be the construction by which, from the above citation, the Vice-President's proposition can be extracted "that the existence
- ↑ * It must be here borne in mind that no man,—Gautama Buddha, Christ, or any other is here referred to. The state which Siddhartha Gautama attained by placing himself in direct rapport with a particular ray of the Absolute Wisdom is called—Buddha.
