The book of Dzyân - Reality or a romance of the wildest kind?

An email correspondent sent me a link to a posting on a website
titled as above.

The link to the posting is:

http://www.thesco.org/blog/Dignus/19

What do you think???

Daniel
Blavatsky Study Center
http://blavatskyarchives.com

I think the bloggers' notion is not likely, for several reasons.

One simple one is that HPB knew & used the word "Jain" - so why befuddle by using this version. Especially when she gives her own, different, derivation of Dzyan.

Also that would give the meaning of Book of Victors, which while not impossible, since the content has to do with Wisdom or the teachings of the Buddhas/Tirthankaras, Book of Wisdom (Jnan) seems, as David Reigle thinks, more likely.

Well Daniel, that’s a provocative question. I have to declare a personal interest: having spent a big chunk of my time writing my own interpretation of Dzyan (drawing on HPB’s explanations in the SD, of course) I would hate to think I had wasted 7 years of my life on a romance of the wildest kind.

The SD is a cornerstone of theosophy, and a large part of the SD is given to explaining Dzyan, and so to dismiss Dzyan would be to dismiss theosophy as we know it. But neither would I claim that Dzyan is reality plain and simple. The language is poetic and enigmatic, and I think we have to assume that ancient truths were wrapped up in a memorable format that could be handed down from generation to generation (and even from Race to Race).

We in the West are reliant on modern translations, and so no doubt we have lost something along the way, but I believe that the essence of Dzyan is very relevant to understanding our history and our destiny. Read it and re-read it, or if you like, read O Lanoo! and then re-read Dzyan. It presents a view of the cosmos that makes sense of everything we experience.

Whether Dzyan and Jain are one and the same, or whether one draws on the other, is an academic question that does not affect the authenticity of the teachings that can be drawn from Dzyan.

Harvey Tordoff
www.olanoo.com

Hi everybody!

I would venture to say that the Book of Jain is only a recent version of a book that is many, many thousands of years old. (In this respect, I would say it is similar to the Bible, and that both books come from the same original source.)

According to Theosophy, The Stanzas of Dzyan comes from the same source. However, according to the same theory, the Stanzas of Dzyan (in English) is a direct translation from the original text in a language called Senzar, while the Bible, the Book of Jain, etc., are versions (of the very same original that the Bible and Book of Jain came from) that have been re-translated (and re-edited) many, many times down through the centuries.

Therefore, to some people, the Book of Jain is a copy of a copy of a copy, while the Stanzas of Dzyan is a first-generation copy.

It is an interesting topic for discussion by many I suppose. There seemed to be a reaction to dogmatic thinking that drew many away from religion toward science. A man named August Comte was accomplished at exposing many false spiritualists, mediums, and proceeded to illustrate positivism - I still hear his name mentioned with reverence by sociologists even today - and ultimately even he and his followers displayed an urge toward the spiritual. They invented something that included communal families and Divine feminine being worshipped. Anyway, along these lines is one reason for going back to the ancient and primeval. A way to sort of go back to the start to see how we went wrong.

But really? are we going to have people making statements that they possess the primordial Wisdom written down on their texts? The original human Mystery revealed in this text that is claimed to be as old as is humanity? I have a very strong suspicion that humanity is eternal in that it never fully reaches the pinnacle of perfection. Who has a book that old? If a man reaches Knowing by Being in everything, how does a man write all this down? and how does it avoid being tainted by men who are not completely free of the physical?

Hi everybody!

Here is a story about the Jewish Torah and Christian Bible possibly being a copy of a copy of a copy. According to Annie Besant, the first sub-race of the Fifth Race was the Indian (in India, not American Indians) civilization. The second root-race was the Iranian/Persian civilization. Annie said that the writings in the early Indian culture (writings that would be eventually handed down to the Jews) had no mention of the Devil. Somehow, when those writings were later passed on to the Iranian/Persian civilization, the first mention of the Devil appeared, and the idea of a Devil has persisted in the forms that have been handed down into today's Tora and Bible.

I think it is a Theosophical axiom that all religious teachings become corrupted as they are passed down through countless centuries. Fortunately, we have the Stanzas, which do not suffer from this limitation.

What do you or anyone think about the part that says Kiu-te is Tantras?

HPB often used phonetic versions of Tibetan words, this is an example. rGyud-sde is the proper transliteration of the word which does mean "tantra".

I think it's more likely that the suspicions of Reigle are correct. The book of Kiu Te as Tibetan tantra. Most tibetan Buddhism is tantric in the technical sense. Doesn't mean it's all tantric as in tantric s*x.

Doesn't have anything to do with Jainism which is something else totally.