Esoteric Buddhism.

  • Alfred Percy Sinnett
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Esoteric Buddhism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    found recorded in any books. In Europe the notion of secrecy as applied to science is so repulsive to the prevailing instinct, that the first inclination of European thinkers is to deny the existence of that which they so much dislike. But circumstances have fully assured me during my residence in India that the conviction just referred to is perfectly well founded, and I have been privileged at last to receive a very consider- able mass of instruction in the hitherto secret knowledge over which Oriental philosophers have brooded silently till now; instruction which has hitherto been only imparted to sympathetic students, prepared themselves to migrate into the camp of secrecy. Their teachers have been more than con- tent that all other inquirers should be left in doubt as to whether there was anything of importance to learn at their hands. With quite as much antipathy at starting as any one could have entertained to the old Oriental policy in regard to knowledge, I came, never- theless, to perceive that the old Oriental knowledge itself was a very real and important possession. It may be excusable to regard the high grapes as sour so long as they are quite out of reach, but it would be foolish to persist in that opinion if a tall friend hands down a bunch and one finds them sweet Eor reasons that will appear as the present ex- planations proceed, the very considerable block of hitherto secret teaching this volume contains, has been conveyed to me, not only without conditions of the usual kind, but to the express end that