Importantly, HPB has altered Schlagintweit's text, especially the correspondences in the three realms - but there is no question that overall she has lifted this passage from his book originally. Nota bene Blavatsky's footnote, where she claims to be giving out statements from the secret portions of the Kalachakra Tantra. However, HPB's statements are merely rephrasings of Schlagintweit, taken from his chapter on Kalachakra, where he gives the Tibetan translation Dus Kyi Khorlo – a technically correct and not a phonetic spelling, which as we have seen (at length above) was the habit of HPB. In HPB's ten-page chapter entitled "The Mystery of Buddhism," which this passage is taken from, Blavatsky does not mention even once Schlagintweit, his book, or any contemporary Western author except A.P. Sinnett, her student. For all HPB's unique knowledge of Kalachakra Tantra, as described in the previous section, this appropriation of published work (and many others like it) would appear to be quite damaging to her claims.
But because volume three of The Secret Doctrine was published only posthumously from manuscripts left by HPB, Theosophists might have a right to object that Blavatsky would have edited the MSS. and added citations before it was published. Further, in the hundred pages surrounding the above quote from The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky does refer to Schlagintweit and specific page numbers several times, although not nearly as often as the expectations of modern scholarship would demand.
But even more clear-cut examples of appropriation from Schlagintweit exist, from documents HPB is known to have published under her own power. From Schlagintweit, p. 34:
Parinishpanna (Tib. Yong grub)… "completely perfect," or simply "perfect," is the unchangeable and unassignable true existence, which is also the scope of the path, the summum bonum, the absolute. Of this kind can be only that which enters the mind clear and undarkened, as for instance, the emptiness, or the Non-ego. In order, therefore, that his mind may become free from all that would in any way attract his attention, it is necessary that man view every thing existing as ideal, because it is dependent on something else; then only – as a natural consequence – he arrives at a right understanding of the Non-ego, and to a knowledge of how the voidness is alone self-existent and perfect.
The Secret Doctrine, volume one (1888):
"Paranishpanna" is the absolute perfection which all existences attain at the close of a great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they rest during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called Yong-Grub. Up to the day of the Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana [parinirvana] was taught publicly, but since then it has become entirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory interpretations of it. It is only a true Idealist who can understand it. Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the exception of Paranirvana, by him who would comprehend that state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non Ego, Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent and perfect.[110]
In the same section, Schlagintweit gives the Tibetan translation of parikalpita (i.e., Kung tag) and defines it as:
…the supposition, the error. Of this kind is the belief in absolute existence to which those beings adhere who are incapable of understanding that every thing is empty… some believing a thing existing which does not, as e.g. the Non-ego…
Blavatasky writes,
Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun-ttag [sic]) is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and illusionary nature of all; who believe some thing to exist which does not – e.g., the Non-Ego.[111]
Schlagintweit: Paratantra is whatever exists by a dependent or causal connexion."
Blavatsky: Paratantra is that, whatever it is, hich exists only through a dependent or causal connexion."[112]
Schlagintweit:
We come now to the two truths. They are: Samvritisatya (Tib. Kundzabchi denpa) and Paramarthasatya (Tib. Dondampai denpa), or the relative truth and the absolute one… A difference prevails between the Yogacaryas and the Madhyamikas with reference to the interpreration of Paramartha; the former say that Paramartha is also what is dependent upon other things (Paratantra); the latter say that is it limited to Parinishpanna, or to that which has the character of absolute perfection… Samvriti is that which is the origin of illusion, but Paramartha is the self-consciousness* of the saint in his self-meditation, which is able to dissipate illusions, i.e., which is above all (parama) and contains the true undertstanding (artha). [footnote] Sanskrit Svasamvedana, "the reflection which analyses itself."
Blavatsky:
[Re:] Paramartha: the Yogacaryas interpret the term as that which is also dependent upon other things (paratantral) [sic]; and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to Paranishpanna or absolute perfection… [footnote] "Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the "self-analysing reflection" from two words, parama (above everything) and artha (comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse. In Tibetan Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya – the relative truth only – "Samvritti" meaning "false conception" and being the origina of illision, Maya; in Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating appearance."[113]
What can be said in Blavatsky's defense? Similar 'appropriations' of published text were discovered also in the Mahatma Letters, written mainly to A.P. Sinnett, published from time to time in Theosophical journals. In one case, known as "The Kiddle Incident," a letter from Mahatma KH was showed positively to have appropriated large sections of text from a speech by a certain Henry Kiddle given at a gathering at Lake Pleasant, America, and printed in a Spiritualist journal Banner of Light. In a response, KH explains how an Adept such as himself uses occult means to dictate letters telepathically to students who may be at any distance away. The 'transmission' as it were can be received in a corrupted manner by a less than competent amanuensis, while the very process of telepathic impression is open to infiltration by unrelated thoughts. Writes KH,
Having-owing to our correspondence and your Simla [India] surroundings and friends – felt interested in the intellectual progress of the Phenomenalists, which progress by the by I felt rather moving backward in the case of American Spiritualists – I had directed my attention some two months previous to the great annual camping movement of the latter, in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pronounced them… In a case such as mine, the chela [disciple] had, as it were, to pick up what he could from the current I was sending him and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might… So I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current Spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom.[114]
110
Vol. I, p. 42. In his careful study of Blavatsky's technical terms in the "Stanzas of Dzyan," David Reigle cites parinishpanna as particularly significant for HPB's credibility, as "this meaning, 'absolute perfection,' is well enough attested in the Sanskrit Buddhist texts, but almost none of these were published when