The Voice of the Silence E-Book

H. P. Blavatsky

• Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 81

Beschreibung

According to Blavatsky, The voice of the Silence is  a translation of fragments from a sacred book she encountered during her studies in the East, called "The Book of the Golden Precepts". A reviewer for D. T. Suzuki's Eastern Buddhist Society commented: "Undoubtedly Madame Blavatsky had in some way been initiated into the deeper side of Mahayana teaching and then gave out what she deemed wise to the Western world...Here is the real Mahayana Buddhism".   

Leseprobe

H.P. Blavatsky

The Voice of the Silence

According to Blavatsky, The voice of the Silence is  a translation of fragments from a sacred book she encountered during her studies in the East, called "The Book of the Golden Precepts".

A reviewer for D. T. Suzuki's Eastern Buddhist Society commented: "Undoubtedly Madame Blavatsky had in some way been initiated into the deeper side of Mahayana teaching and then gave out what she deemed wise to the Western world...Here is the real Mahayana Buddhism".

Table of Contents

Preface

Fragment I The Voice Of The Silence

Fragment II The Two Paths

Fragment III The Seven Portals

Footnotes

Preface

THE following pages are derived from "The Book of the Golden Precepts," one of the works put into the hands of mystic students in the East. The knowledge of them is obligatory in that school, the teachings of which are accepted by many Theosophists. Therefore, as I know many of these Precepts by heart, the work of translating has been relatively an easy task for me.

It is well known that, in India, the methods of psychic development differ with the Gurus (teachers or masters), not only because of their belonging to different schools of philosophy, of which there are six, but because every Guru has his own system, which he generally keeps very secret. But beyond the Himalayas the method in the Esoteric Schools does not differ, unless the Guru is simply a Lama, but little more learned than those he teaches.

The work from which I here translate forms part of the same series as that from which the "Stanzas" of the Book of Dzyan were taken, on which the Secret Doctrine is based. Together with the great mystic work called Paramartha, which, the legend of Nagarjuna tells us, was delivered to the great Arhat by the Nagas or "Serpents" (in truth a name given to the ancient Initiates), the Book of the Golden Precepts claims the same origin. Yet its maxims and ideas, however noble and original, are often found under different forms in Sanskrit works, such as the Dnyaneshvari, that superb mystic treatise in which Krishna describes to Arjuna in glowing colors the condition of a fully illumined Yogi; and again in certain Upanishads. This is but natural, since most, if not all, of the greatest Arhats, the first followers of Gautama Buddha were Hindus and Aryans, not Mongolians, especially those who emigrated into Tibet. The works left by Aryasanga alone are very numerous.

The original Precepts are engraved on thin oblongs (squares); copies very often on discs. These discs, or plates, are generally preserved on the altars of the temples attached to centres where the so-called "contemplative" or Mahayana (Yogacharya) schools are established. They are written variously, sometimes in Tibetan but mostly in ideographs. The sacerdotal language (Senzar), besides an alphabet of its own, may be rendered in several modes of writing in cypher characters, which partake more of the nature of ideographs than of syllables. Another method (lug, in Tibetan) is to use the numerals and colors, each of which corresponds to a letter of the Tibetan alphabet (thirty simple and seventy-four compound letters) thus forming a complete cryptographic alphabet. When the ideographs are used there is a definite mode of reading the text; as in this case the symbols and signs used in astrology, namely the twelve zodiacal animals and the seven primary colors, each a triplet in shade, i.e. the light, the primary, and the dark-stand for the thirty-three letters of the simple alphabet, for words and sentences. For in this method, the twelve "animals" five times repeated and coupled with the five elements and the seven colors, furnish a whole alphabet composed of sixty sacred letters and twelve signs. A sign placed at the beginning of the text determines whether the reader has to spell it according to the Indian mode, when every word is simply a Sanskrit adaptation, or according to the Chinese principle of reading the ideographs. The easiest way however, is that which allows the reader to use no special, or any language he likes, as the signs and symbols were, like the Arabian numerals or figures, common and international property among initiated mystics and their followers. The same peculiarity is characteristic of one of the Chinese modes of writing, which can be read with equal facility by any one acquainted with the character: for instance, a Japanese can read it in his own language as readily as a Chinaman in his.

The Book of the Golden Precepts-some of which are pre-Buddhistic while others belong to a later date-contains about ninety distinct little treatises. Of these I learnt thirty-nine by heart, years ago. To translate the rest, I should have to resort to notes scattered among a too large number of papers and memoranda collected for the last twenty years and never put in order, to make of it by any means an easy task. Nor could they be all translated and given to a world too selfish and too much attached to objects of sense to be in any way prepared to receive such exalted ethics in the right spirit. For, unless a man perseveres seriously in the pursuit of self-knowledge, he will never lend a willing ear to advice of this nature.

And yet such ethics fill volumes upon volumes in Eastern literature, especially in the Upanishads. "Kill out all desire of life," says Krishna to Arjuna. That desire lingers only in the body, the vehicle of the embodied Self, not in the SELF which is "eternal, indestructible, which kills not nor is it killed" (Katho Upanishad). "Kill out sensation," teaches Sutta Nipata; "look alike on pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat." Again, "Seek shelter in the eternal alone" (ibid). "Destroy the sense of separateness," repeats Krishna under every form. "The Mind (Manas) which follows the rambling senses, makes the Soul (Buddhi) as helpless as the boat which the wind leads astray upon the waters" (Bhagavad Gita II).

Therefore it has been thought better to make a judicious selection only from those treatises which will best suit the few real mystics in the Theosophical Society, and which are sure to answer their needs. It is only these who will appreciate these words of Krishna-Christos, the "Higher Self":

"Sages do not grieve for the living nor the dead. Never did I not exist, nor you, nor these rulers of men; nor will any one of us ever hereafter cease to be." (Bhagavad Gita II).

In this translation, I have done my best to preserve the poetical beauty of language and imagery which characterizes the original. How far this effort has been successful, is for the reader to judge. 

"H.P.B."

1889

Fragment I

The Voice Of The Silence

THESE instructions are for those ignorant of the dangers of the lower IDDHI.1

He who would hear the voice of Nada,2 "the Soundless Sound," and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana. 3

Having become indifferent to objects of perception, the pupil must seek out the Rajah of the senses, the Thought-Producer, he who awakes illusion.

The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.

Let the Disciple slay the Slayer.

For-

When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams;

When he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE-the inner sound which kills the outer.

Then only, not till then, shall he forsake the region of Asat, the false, to come unto the realm of Sat, the true.

Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion.

Before the Soul can hear, the image (man) has to become as deaf to roarings as to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as to the silvery buzzing of the golden fire-fly.

Before the soul can comprehend and may remember, she must unto the Silent Speaker be united just as the form to which the clay is modelled, is first united with the potter's mind.

For then the soul will hear, and will remember.

And then to the inner ear will speak-

THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE

And say:

If thy Soul smiles while bathing in the Sunlight of thy Life; if thy Soul sings within her chrysalis of flesh and matter; if thy Soul weeps inside her castle of illusion; if thy Soul struggles to break the silver thread that binds her to the MASTER;4 know, O Disciple, thy Soul is of the earth.

When to the World's turmoil thy budding

Soul5 lends ear; when to the roaring voice of the great illusion thy Soul responds;6 when frightened at the sight of the hot tears of pain; when deafened by the cries of distress, thy soul withdraws like the shy turtle within the carapace of SELFHOOD, learn, O Disciple, of her Silent "God," thy Soul is an unworthy shrine.

When waxing stronger, thy Soul glides forth from her secure retreat: and breaking loose from the protecting shrine, extends her silver thread and rushes onward; when beholding her image on the waves of Space she whispers, "This is I,"-declare, O Disciple, that thy soul is caught in the webs of delusion.7

This Earth, Disciple, is the Hall of Sorrow, wherein are set along the Path of dire probations, traps to ensnare thy EGO by the delusion called "Great Heresy".8

This earth, O ignorant Disciple, is but thedismal entrance leading to the twilight that precedes the valley of true light-that light which no wind can extinguish, that light which burns without a wick or fuel.

Saith the Great Law: "In order to become the KNOWER of ALL SELF9 thou hast first of