THEOSOPHISM

ALTHOUGH ONE MAY FEEL OBLIGED to respect at least the good faith of the official orientalists even while deploring their lack of vision, the same no longer applies when dealing with the authors and propagators of certain theories that must now come up for discussion. These theories can only result in bringing discredit on Eastern studies and in turning away serious-minded though ill-informed people, by offering them a tissue of incoherent absurdities, quite unworthy of attention, as an authentic expression of Hindu doctrines. The spreading of such idle imaginings not only has the disadvantage just mentioned—which is bad enough in itself—but, like the dissemination of many other similar notions, it is also eminently suited to upset the balance of those feebler minds and unsteady intellects who take such things seriously. In this respect it constitutes a real danger for the average intelligence, a danger which has already revealed itself by only too many sad examples.

These activities are all the less innocuous because the Westerners of today show a marked tendency to let themselves be taken in by everything which savors of the extraordinary or the marvelous; the development of their civilization in an exclusively practical direction, by depriving them of all effective intellectual guidance, opens the door to every kind of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-metaphysical extravagance, unlikely though it is that such things could ever be sufficient to satisfy the sentimentalism that plays such an important part in their lives, as a secondary consequence of that same absence of true intellectuality. Furthermore, the habit of giving precedence to experimentation in the scientific field, of clinging almost exclusively to facts, and of attributing greater value to them than to ideas, helps to strengthen the hands of all those investigators who, in order to substantiate the most unlikely theories, claim to base their hypotheses on phenomena of some kind or other, whether real or imaginary, often insufficiently verified and in any case wrongly interpreted. Such people stand a much better chance of success with the general public than persons who, being desirous of teaching serious and well-founded doctrines only, address themselves exclusively to pure intelligence. This also makes it possible to explain quite naturally a fact which is noticeable in England and still more so in America, and which at first sight might appear rather surprising, namely the association of an exaggerated development of the practical outlook with the almost unlimited dissemination of all sorts of follies of a would-be religious nature, in which both the experimentalism and the false mysticism of the Anglo-Saxons are simultaneously pandered to; this goes to prove that, despite appearances, the most 'practical' mentality is not always the best balanced. Even in France, the danger we are describing is not negligible though it may be less obvious; indeed, quite the contrary is the case, since a propensity to imitate anything foreign, coupled with the influence of fashion and the intellectual snobbery of society, all work together to favor the expansion of such theories in certain quarters and to supply the material means for their still wider dissemination, through propaganda assuming many different forms in the hopes of reaching the most diverse sections of the public.

The nature of the danger and its gravity do not permit of any circumspection in our attitude toward those who are responsible; here we are in the realm of charlatanism and fantasy, and though one may sincerely pity the simple-minded people who make up the great majority of those taking pleasure in such things, the same cannot be said of certain others who consciously set out to mislead their followers for their own ends, of whatever nature these may be; such people are only fit to inspire contempt. Moreover, in matters of this kind there are several different ways of becoming a dupe, and adherence to the theories in question is far from being the only way; even those who for various reasons set out to combat these theories are for the most part insufficiently forearmed, so that they commit the involuntary but nevertheless cardinal error of mistaking what is only the product of a purely Western aberration for genuinely Eastern ideas; their attacks, often inspired by the most laudable intentions, are deprived on that account of all effective power. On the other hand, certain of the official orientalists take these theories seriously. We do not mean to say that they regard them as true in themselves for, given the special point of view they have adopted, the question of their truth or falseness does not even enter their minds; they wrongly consider them, however, to be representative of a certain part or aspect of the Eastern mentality, and it is through their own lack of knowledge of this mentality that they are deceived, the more so because they do not feel themselves threatened by any serious competition from that quarter. Sometimes strange alliances take place, notably in the field of the 'science of religions', where the case of Burnouf is an example; perhaps this fact can be explained quite simply by the anti-religious and anti-traditional tendency of this so-called science, which naturally places it in a relationship of sympathy and even of affinity with all the subversive elements which by different means carry on a parallel and corresponding activity. Anyone not content to rely solely on appearances could make some very curious and instructive observations in this as in other fields, showing how disorder and incoherence, or what appear as such, can sometimes be turned to account with a view to the execution of a well-defined plan, unperceived by those who act as its more or less unconscious instruments: these are in a sense political devices, though of a somewhat special kind; moreover, contrary to what might be supposed, politics, even taken in the narrower sense usually given to the word, is not altogether divorced from the matters which we are considering at the moment.

Among the pretended doctrines that exercise a nefarious influence over fairly extensive sections of the Western public, and that, being of quite recent origin, can in most cases be classified under the common denomination of 'neo-spiritualism', there are some, like occultism and Spiritism,^[1] of which we need say nothing here, because they have no point of contact with Eastern studies. The one with which we are more particularly concerned, though it has nothing Eastern about it except the exterior form under which it is presented, is what is known as 'Theosophism'. The use of this word, though people are not quite agreed about it, is sufficiently justified as a precaution against confusion; it is certainly not advisable in this case to employ the word 'theosophy', which has long served to describe something belonging to the field of Western speculation which is quite different and far more worthy of respect, its origins being traceable as far back as the Middle Ages.^[2] Here we are only concerned with conceptions that belong exclusively to the contemporary organization styling itself the 'Theosophical Society', the members of which are known as 'Theosophists'—an expression in common use in English—and not 'Theosophers'. We are not able, neither do we wish, to give here, even briefly, an historical account,^[3] however interesting it might be in some respects, of this 'Theosophical Society', the founder of which, thanks to the extraordinary influence she exercised on her surroundings, was able to turn to account the distinctly varied knowledge she possessed, which is however completely lacking in her successors; her so-called doctrine, made up of elements borrowed from the most diverse sources, often of doubtful value and assembled together in a confused and barely coherent syncretism, was first presented as an 'esoteric Buddhism', which, as we have mentioned earlier on, is purely imaginary; it has recently led to the formulation of a so-called 'esoteric Christianity', which is no less fanciful. This organization of American origin, while posing as international, has become purely Anglo-Saxon in its leadership, with the exception of a few dissident branches of little importance. In spite of all its efforts, supplemented by a protection that it owes to certain political considerations which we will not examine here, it has never succeeded in recruiting more than a small number of misguided Hindus, profoundly despised by their compatriots, but whose names help to take in ignorant Europeans. Besides, it is fairly widely believed in India to be nothing more than a Protestant sect of a rather special kind, an assimilation which its personnel, its methods of publicity, and its 'moralistic' tendencies alike seem to justify—not to mention its hostility, now disguised and now violent, toward all traditional institutions. Under the heading of intellectual productions, we have witnessed the appearance, after the earlier indigestible compilations, of quantities of fantastic narratives, the results of the special 'clairvoyance' that, so they say, is acquired through the 'development of the latent powers of the human organism'. There have also been some rather ridiculous translations of Sanskrit texts accompanied by still more ridiculous commentaries and interpretations, which their authors dare not exhibit too publicly in India, preferring rather to retail other works in that country which distort the Christian doctrine under the pretext of revealing its hidden meaning; if Christianity contained no greater mysteries than these, secrecy would be inexplicable and moreover objectless, for it goes without saying that it would be a sheer waste of effort to look for profound revelations in all these 'Theosophical' effusions.

What appears at first sight to be characteristic of Theosophism is the use of a rather complicated Sanskrit terminology, the words of which are often given a meaning quite different from the ones they really bear; this is not surprising, seeing that they serve merely to cloak essentially Western conceptions, as far removed as possible from Hindu ideas. Thus, to quote an example, the word karma, which, as already stated, means 'action', is regularly used in the sense of 'causality', which is worse than an inaccuracy; but what is more serious still, this causality is conceived in an entirely special way, by a false interpretation of the theory of the apūrva, which we set forth in our chapter on Mīmānsā, whereby people manage to distort it into a moral sanction. We have already given sufficient explanations on this subject to enable the reader to gauge the confusion of points of view which this travesty presupposes, even stripped of all the incidental nonsense with which it is surrounded. Howbeit, the chief point is that it shows to what extent Theosophism has been permeated by the sentimentality peculiar to Westerners. Moreover, in order to realize how far it has pushed moralism and pseudo-mysticism, it is only necessary to refer to any one of the works where these conceptions have been set forth; and indeed, when one examines publications of more recent date it is noticeable that these tendencies become even more accentuated, perhaps as a result of the ever-increasing intellectual mediocrity of the heads of the organization and perhaps also because this orientation is really the one that corresponds best with the goal they have set themselves. The only real use of the Sanskrit terminology in Theosophism is to endow that which occupies the place of doctrine in it—for we cannot consent to call it a doctrine—with an appearance calculated to create an illusion in the minds of Westerners and to win over a certain number of those people who hanker after whatever is exotic in form but who, as far as the substance is concerned, are only too glad to discover conceptions and aspirations agreeing with their own ideas, since they are incapable of understanding the least part of the authentically Eastern doctrines. This state of mind, which is typical of the so-called 'intelligentsia', is comparable to that of the philosophers who feel the need of having recourse to unusual and high-sounding words in order to express ideas which, fundamentally, do not differ greatly from those of the common herd.

Theosophism attaches considerable importance to the characteristically Western and modern notion of 'evolution', and like most of the branches of Spiritism, with which it is fairly closely connected through its origins, it associates this idea with that of 'reincarnation'. The latter conception seems to have first made its appearance among some of the socialist dreamers of the first half of the nineteenth century, who saw in it a way of accounting for the inequality of social conditions, which in their eyes was particularly shocking, though in reality it is quite a natural thing; to anyone who understands the principle of the institution of caste, which is founded on the differences of individual natures, the problem does not even arise. Besides, theories of this kind, like those of 'evolutionism', really explain nothing; while putting the difficulty back into the past, one might even say indefinitely, they finally let it stand in its entirety—given that a difficulty really does exist; and if it does not, why then this theorizing? With regard to the assertion that the origin of the 'reincarnationist' conception goes back to antiquity, this claim is founded on nothing but the misunderstanding of certain symbolical expressions, such as has lent support to a crude interpretation of the Pythagorean 'metempsychosis', in the sense of a sort of psychic 'transformism'; similarly, it has been found possible to take for a succession of terrestrial lives what is really, not only in the Hindu doctrines but also in Buddhism, an indefinite series of different states of existence, each state having its own characteristic conditions, differing from those of other states and constituting for the being a cycle of existence that it can only pass through once—earthly existence, or still more generally, corporeal existence thus representing only one particular state among an indefinite series of others. The real theory of the being's multiple states is of supreme importance from the metaphysical point of view;^[4] we cannot develop it here, but we have been obliged to allude to it, notably in connection with the apūrva and the 'concordant actions and reactions'. As for 'reincarnationism', which is but an inept caricature of this theory, all Easterners, with the possible exception of a few ignorant and more or less Westernized persons whose opinion is of no value whatsoever, are unanimously opposed to it; moreover, its metaphysical absurdity is easily demonstrable, because to admit that a being can pass more than once through the same state is tantamount to admitting a limitation of Universal Possibility, that is to say to denying the Infinite, and this denial is in itself contradictory in the highest degree.^[5] There are good reasons for making a special effort to combat the notion of 'reincarnation', firstly, because it is flatly opposed to the truth, as we have shown in a few brief words, and secondly from another more contingent motive, since this idea, made popular by Spiritism—which is the most unintelligent as well as the most widespread of all the 'neo-spiritualist' schools—is one of the principal agents of that mental aberration which we spoke of at the beginning of this chapter, and to which far greater numbers of people fall victim than might be thought likely by those who are not well acquainted with the facts. We cannot of course afford to spend much time over this question here, but it may be added that whereas Spiritists try to prove their theory of 'reincarnation', as well as the immortality of the soul, 'scientifically', that is to say by the experimental method—though this method is quite incapable of yielding the smallest result in this direction—the majority of Theosophists seem to see in the idea a kind of dogma or article of faith, which must be accepted from sentimental motives, but without seeking to establish it by means of any rational or sensible proof. This clearly shows that we are dealing with an attempt to establish a pseudo-religion, in competition with the real religions of the West, and more especially with the Catholic church, for as far as Protestantism is concerned it finds no difficulty in accommodating itself to a multiplicity of sects, to which it seems to give birth spontaneously because of its want of doctrinal principles. This Theosophical pseudo-religion is at present trying to assume a definite form by taking for its central theme the forthcoming appearance of a 'great teacher', who is represented by his prophets as the future Messiah and as a 'reincarnation' of Christ:^[6] among the various transformations of Theosophism, this one, which sheds a remarkably clear light on its conception of an 'esoteric Christianity', is the latest in date, anyway up till now, but it is not the least significant of its many changes.