Seven Mysteries
In one of his letters to A.P. Sinnett, the Mahatma known as KH wrote the following unusual claim:
Karma and Nirvana are but two of the seven great MYSTERIES of Buddhist metaphysics; and but four of the seven are known to the best orientalists, and that very imperfectly.[82]
Certainly 'four noble truths' were known to Buddhist scholars last century, but the four truths don't appear to relate to a set of seven metaphysical mysteries which included Karma and Nirvana. Yet this century the central importance of Maitreyanatha's Ratna-gotra-vibhaga to Buddhist studies has become evident. The opening verse of this text, translated by David Reigle, reads,
Buddha, doctrine (dharma), community (gana = sangha), element (dhatu), enlightenment (bodhi = nirvana), virtuous qualities (guna), and lastly buddha-action (karma); these seven diamond-like subjects (vajra-pada), are in brief, the body of the whole text.[83]
Reigle notes that dhatu is "perhaps the key term in the Ratna-gotra-vibhaga," a synonym for the esoteric doctrine of the tathagatagarbha ("buddha-seed"). Discussion on this central and hotly disputed doctrine will take place in chapter three below. Suffice it to say that here, in one place, seems to be an indication of the scholarship of Blavatsky's teacher, as well as an instance of a bona fide 'esoteric' doctrine of Buddhism - esoteric in that it was revealed by an (as yet) unidentified Maitreyanatha to his disciple, Asanga in secret.
Asanga
Blavatsky makes Asanga not only the founder of the Yogacara school, but also the founder of an apparently separate esoteric school. First, it must be acknowledged that much of what Blavatsky says about Asanga appears to have come from written sources of her day. HPB writes,
Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though Csoma di Koros places him, for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who lived during the first centuries of our era and the Hungarian scholar most probably confused the two.[84]
However, Blavatsky in her dating of Asanga appears to be entirely dependent on Wilson (writing in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. VI, London 1839, p. 240) who believed it "established, that [Aryasanga's works] have been written at the latest, from a century and a half before to as much after, the era of Christianity." Importantly, this exact quote of Wilson, with citation of journal and page, may be found on page 32 of Schlagintweit's Buddhism in Tibet, as well as the prefix "Arya" to Asanga's name. But whatever Blavatsky's dating of Asanga, and whether there were one or two important Buddhist figures by that name, Blavatsky makes the important claim that he founded an esoteric school. Now, whatever one may make of the Yogacara tradition, it has never been known to have been 'esoteric,' in the sense of hidden from the masses. To what can Blavatsky have been referring?
It turns out that according to Buddhist tradition, or at least according to the famous historian Taranatha, Asanga was the founder of the Tantric school as well. Benoytosh Bhattacharyya writes,
…according to the Tibetan and Chinese traditions the Tantras were introduced by Asanga from Tushita heaven where he learnt the Shastra from Maitreya Buddha… Taranatha further tells us that the Tantras immediately after introduction were transmitted secretly in an uninterrupted manner from preceptor to disciples for nearly 300 years before they got publicity through the mystic teachings of the Siddhas and Vajracaryas.[85]
It may be that here Taranatha gives a pious fiction, attempting to legitimate Vajrayana tradition by tying the origin of the esoteric Tantras to a well-respected figure in history. Be that as it may, it is not clear how Blavatsky could have been aware of this tradition, other than being exposed to it orally from a Buddhist teacher, as Taranatha's history was not known in the West last century.
Fohat
Blavatsky first writes of this term in 1885 while discussing the several souls in Chinese philosophy: "At death the hwan [hun] or spiritual soul wanders away, ascending, and the pho [p'o] (the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a ghostly shade (the shell)."[86] Afterwards, however, she consistently spells the term as Fohat. In her posthumous Theosophical Glossary, (1892) HPB writes,
Fohat (Tib.) A term used to represent the active (male) potency of the Sakti (female reproductive power) in nature. The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daiviprakriti, primordial light; and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power.[87]
Of course there is no mention of a Sanskrit Daiviprakriti in any Sanskrit texts, even today-another mystery term. But the connection between Fohat and primordial light is an important one to keep in mind. In her occult cosmogony, The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky elaborates,
He is, metaphysically, the objectivised thought of the gods; the "Word made flesh," on a lower scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and human ideations: the active force in Universal Life… In India, Fohat is connected with Vishnu and Surya in the early character of the (first) God; for Vishnu is not a high god in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root vish, "to pervade," and Fohat is called the "Pervader" and the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms from crude material...[88]
The spelling of this 'Fohat' misled Theosophists for over a century, but I have now identified it as the Tibetan verb '??? ('phro-wa) and/or the noun form '??? (spros-pa). These two terms are listed in Jaschke's Tibetan English Dictionary (1881) but with inadequate translations. For the verb form 'phro-wa, Jaschke gives "to proceed, issue, emanate from, to spread, in most cases from rays of light…"[89] while for the noun spros-pa he gives "business, employment, activity."[90] Jaschke's definition of the verb certainly corresponds well with one sense of HPB's definition, that of "pervading" like Vishnu, but leaves untouched the mental and creative aspects of the term. But a comprehensive search of 20th century Tibetan dictionaries, word lists and Sanskrit translations has turned up a wealth of information that would appear to validate HPB's understanding of a cosmic, psycho-creative force. Most importantly, Lokesh Chandra in his Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary, gives for spros-pa several Sanskrit equivalents, including 1. sarga 2. prapanca. According to the most authoritative Sanskrit dictionary, that of Monier-Williams, Sarga is defined as "Emission or creation of matter, primary creation… creation of the world (as opposed to its pralaya, 'dissolution,' and sthiti, 'maintainence in existence')."[91] From the same source, we find Prapanca: "Expansion, development, manifestations (Mandukya Upanishad)… (in philosophy) the expansion of the universe, the visible world (cited in Upanishads; Kapila's Saµkhya-pravacana; Sarvardarsana-saµgraha)."[92] But in Buddhist philosophy, prapanca is much more than this: it is the mental fabrication of dualistic consciousness which literally creates the world as the non-enlightened perceiver experiences it. In seeing the activity of dualistic consciousness on a cosmic scale, HPB sees prapanca as many Tantric texts do. This 'Tantric' worldview will be investigated more fully in chapter three.
83
Translated and commented upon by David Reigle, "Book of Dzyan Research Report:
85
Bhattacharyya, Benoytosh, ed.
86
Blavatsky's foonote to an article entitled "Zoroastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man," reprinted in