Brahmanism

• priesthood › lineal descendants of Sethite priests of second garden

79:3.3The su­pe­rior cul­ture and re­li­gious lean­ings of the peo­ples of In­dia date from the early times of Dra­vid­ian dom­i­na­tion and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priest­hood en­tered In­dia, both in the ear­lier And­ite and in the later Aryan in­va­sions. The thread of mono­the­ism run­ning through the re­li­gious his­tory of In­dia thus stems from the teach­ings of the Adamites in the sec­ond gar­den.

79:3.4As early as 16,000 B.C. a com­pany of one hun­dred Sethite priests en­tered In­dia and very nearly achieved the re­li­gious con­quest of the west­ern half of that poly­glot peo­ple. But their re­li­gion did not per­sist. Within five thou­sand years their doc­trines of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity had de­gen­er­ated into the tri­une sym­bol of the fire god.

• priesthood › lineal descendants of Sethite priests of second garden

79:4.6Of the four great castes, all but the first were es­tab­lished in the fu­tile ef­fort to pre­vent racial amal­ga­ma­tion of the Aryan con­querors with their in­fe­rior sub­jects. But the pre­mier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brah­mans of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ are the lin­eal cul­tural de­scen­dants of the priests of the sec­ond gar­den, al­beit their teach­ings dif­fer greatly from those of their il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors.

79:4.7When the Aryans en­tered In­dia, they brought with them their con­cepts of De­ity as they had been pre­served in the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the re­li­gion of the sec­ond gar­den. But the Brah­man priests were never able to with­stand the pa­gan mo­men­tum built up by the sud­den con­tact with the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can af­ter the racial oblit­er­a­tion of the Aryans. Thus the vast ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion fell into the bond­age of the en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tions of in­fe­rior re­li­gions; and so it was that In­dia failed to pro­duce the high civ­i­liza­tion which had been fore­shad­owed in ear­lier times.

• never entirely lost Trinity concept
• priesthood › lineal descendants of Sethite priests of second garden

92:5.91. The Sethite pe­riod. The Sethite priests, as re­gen­er­ated un­der the lead­er­ship of Amo­sad, be­came the great post-Adamic teach­ers. They func­tioned through­out the lands of the And­ites, and their in­flu­ence per­sisted longest among the Greeks, Sume­ri­ans, and Hin­dus. Among the lat­ter they have con­tin­ued to the pres­ent time as the Brah­mans of the Hindu faith. The Sethites and their fol­low­ers never en­tirely lost the Trin­ity con­cept re­vealed by Adam.

• Aryans brought B. to India

94:1.1In the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek, In­dia was a cos­mopoli­tan coun­try which had re­cently come un­der the po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious dom­i­nance of the Aryan-And­ite in­vaders from the north and west. At this time only the north­ern and west­ern por­tions of the penin­sula had been ex­ten­sively per­me­ated by the Aryans. These Vedic new­com­ers had brought along with them their many tribal de­i­ties. Their re­li­gious forms of wor­ship fol­lowed closely the cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices of their ear­lier And­ite fore­bears in that the fa­ther still func­tioned as a priest and the mother as a priest­ess, and the fam­ily hearth was still uti­lized as an al­tar.

• priesthood › assumed control over expanding Vedic ritual

94:1.2The Vedic cult was then in pro­cess of growth and meta­mor­pho­sis un­der the di­rec­tion of the Brah­man caste of teacher-priests, who were grad­u­ally as­sum­ing con­trol over the ex­pand­ing rit­ual of wor­ship. The amal­ga­ma­tion of the one­time thirty-three Aryan de­i­ties was well un­der way when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated the north of In­dia.

• priesthood › rejected Salem teaching of salvation through faith

94:1.5The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies preached the one God of Mel­chiz­e­dek, the Most High of heaven. This por­trayal was not al­to­gether dishar­mo­nious with the emerg­ing con­cept of the Fa­ther-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doc­trine was non­ritu­al­is­tic and hence ran di­rectly counter to the dog­mas, tra­di­tions, and teach­ings of the Brah­man priest­hood. Never would the Brah­man priests ac­cept the Salem teach­ing of sal­va­tion through faith, fa­vor with God apart from rit­u­al­is­tic ob­ser­vances and sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ni­als.

• priesthood › caste system perpetuated

94:2.1As the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated south­ward into the Dra­vid­ian Dec­can, they en­coun­tered an in­creas­ing caste sys­tem, the scheme of the Aryans to pre­vent loss of racial iden­tity in the face of a ris­ing tide of the sec­ondary San­gik peo­ples. Since the Brah­man priest caste was the very essence of this sys­tem, this so­cial or­der greatly re­tarded the prog­ress of the Salem teach­ers. This caste sys­tem failed to save the Aryan race, but it did suc­ceed in per­pet­u­at­ing the Brah­mans, who, in turn, have main­tained their re­li­gious hege­mony in In­dia to the pres­ent time.

• priesthood › exalted themselves above even their gods
• priesthood › sank in inertia and pessimism
• weakened through rejection of higher truth

94:2.2And now, with the weak­en­ing of Vedism through the re­jec­tion of higher truth, the cult of the Aryans be­came sub­ject to in­creas­ing in­roads from the Dec­can. In a des­per­ate ef­fort to stem the tide of racial ex­tinc­tion and re­li­gious oblit­er­a­tion, the Brah­man caste sought to ex­alt them­selves above all else. They taught that the sac­ri­fice to de­ity in it­self was all-ef­fi­ca­cious, that it was all-com­pelling in its po­tency. They pro­claimed that, of the two es­sen­tial di­vine prin­ci­ples of the uni­verse, one was Brah­man the de­ity, and the other was the Brah­man priest­hood. Among no other Uran­tia peo­ples did the priests pre­sume to ex­alt them­selves above even their gods, to rel­e­gate to them­selves the hon­ors due their gods. But they went so ab­surdly far with these pre­sump­tu­ous claims that the whole pre­car­i­ous sys­tem col­lapsed be­fore the de­bas­ing cults which poured in from the sur­round­ing and less ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tions. The vast Vedic priest­hood it­self floun­dered and sank be­neath the black flood of in­er­tia and pes­simism which their own self­ish and un­wise pre­sump­tion had brought upon all In­dia.

94:2.3The un­due con­cen­tra­tion on self led cer­tainly to a fear of the nonevo­lu­tion­ary per­pet­u­a­tion of self in an end­less round of suc­ces­sive in­car­na­tions as man, beast, or weeds. And of all the con­tam­i­nat­ing be­liefs which could have be­come fas­tened upon what may have been an emerg­ing mono­the­ism, none was so stul­ti­fy­ing as this be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion—the doc­trine of the rein­car­na­tion of souls—which came from the Dra­vid­ian Dec­can. This be­lief in the weary and monotonous round of re­peated trans­mi­gra­tions robbed strug­gling mor­tals of their long-cher­ished hope of find­ing that de­liv­er­ance and spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment in death which had been a part of the ear­lier Vedic faith.

94:2.4This phil­o­soph­i­cally de­bil­i­tat­ing teach­ing was soon fol­lowed by the in­ven­tion of the doc­trine of the eter­nal es­cape from self by sub­mer­gence in the uni­ver­sal rest and peace of ab­so­lute union with Brah­man, the over­soul of all cre­ation. Mor­tal de­sire and hu­man am­bi­tion were ef­fec­tu­ally rav­ished and vir­tu­ally de­stroyed. For more than two thou­sand years the bet­ter minds of In­dia have sought to es­cape from all de­sire, and thus was opened wide the door for the en­trance of those later cults and teach­ings which have vir­tu­ally shack­led the souls of many Hindu peo­ples in the chains of spir­i­tual hope­less­ness. Of all civ­i­liza­tions, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most ter­ri­ble price for its re­jec­tion of the Salem gospel.

94:2.5Caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan re­li­gio-cul­tural sys­tem, and as the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can per­me­ated the north, there de­vel­oped an age of de­spair and hope­less­ness. It was dur­ing these dark days that the cult of tak­ing no life arose, and it has ever since per­sisted. Many of the new cults were frankly athe­is­tic, claim­ing that such sal­va­tion as was at­tain­able could come only by man’s own un­aided ef­forts. But through­out a great deal of all this un­for­tu­nate phi­los­o­phy, dis­torted rem­nants of the Mel­chiz­e­dek and even the Adamic teach­ings can be traced.

94:2.6These were the times of the com­pi­la­tion of the later scrip­tures of the Hindu faith, the Brah­manas and the Up­an­ishads. Hav­ing re­jected the teach­ings of per­sonal re­li­gion through the per­sonal faith ex­pe­ri­ence with the one God, and hav­ing be­come con­tam­i­nated with the flood of de­bas­ing and de­bil­i­tat­ing cults and creeds from the Dec­can, with their an­thro­po­mor­phisms and rein­car­na­tions, the Brah­manic priest­hood ex­pe­ri­enced a vi­o­lent re­ac­tion against these vi­ti­at­ing be­liefs; there was a def­i­nite ef­fort to seek and to find true re­al­ity. The Brah­mans set out to dean­thro­po­mor­phize the In­dian con­cept of de­ity, but in so do­ing they stum­bled into the griev­ous er­ror of de­per­son­al­iz­ing the con­cept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spir­i­tual ideal of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, but with a dis­tant and meta­phys­i­cal idea of an all-en­com­pass­ing Ab­so­lute.

94:2.7In their ef­forts at self-preser­va­tion the Brah­mans had re­jected the one God of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and now they found them­selves with the hy­poth­e­sis of Brah­man, that in­def­i­nite and il­lu­sive philo­sophic self, that im­per­sonal and im­po­tent it which has left the spir­i­tual life of In­dia help­less and pros­trate from that un­for­tu­nate day to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

94:2.8It was dur­ing the times of the writ­ing of the Up­an­ishads that Bud­dhism arose in In­dia. But de­spite its suc­cesses of a thou­sand years, it could not com­pete with later Hin­duism; de­spite a higher moral­ity, its early por­trayal of God was even less well-de­fined than was that of Hin­duism, which pro­vided for lesser and per­sonal de­i­ties. Bud­dhism fi­nally gave way in north­ern In­dia be­fore the on­slaught of a mil­i­tant Is­lam with its clear-cut con­cept of Al­lah as the su­preme God of the uni­verse.

• lacked belief in Father and ascendant progression
• noble reach into philosophy and metaphysics

94:3.1While the high­est phase of Brah­man­ism was hardly a re­li­gion, it was truly one of the most no­ble reaches of the mor­tal mind into the do­mains of phi­los­o­phy and meta­physics. Hav­ing started out to dis­cover fi­nal re­al­ity, the In­dian mind did not stop un­til it had spec­u­lated about al­most ev­ery phase of the­ol­ogy ex­cept­ing the es­sen­tial dual con­cept of re­li­gion: the ex­is­tence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of all uni­verse crea­tures and the fact of the as­cend­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the uni­verse of these very crea­tures as they seek to at­tain the eter­nal Fa­ther, who has com­manded them to be per­fect, even as he is per­fect.

94:3.2In the con­cept of Brah­man the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-per­vad­ing Ab­so­lute, for this pos­tu­late was at one and the same time iden­ti­fied as cre­ative en­ergy and cos­mic re­ac­tion. Brah­man was con­ceived to be be­yond all def­i­ni­tion, ca­pa­ble of be­ing com­pre­hended only by the suc­ces­sive nega­tion of all fi­nite qual­i­ties. It was def­i­nitely a be­lief in an ab­so­lute, even an in­fi­nite, be­ing, but this con­cept was largely de­void of per­son­al­ity at­tri­butes and was there­fore not ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble by in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists.

94:3.3Brah­man-Narayana was con­ceived as the Ab­so­lute, the in­fi­nite IT IS, the pri­mor­dial cre­ative po­tency of the po­ten­tial cos­mos, the Uni­ver­sal Self ex­ist­ing static and po­ten­tial through­out all eter­nity. Had the philoso­phers of those days been able to make the next ad­vance in de­ity con­cep­tion, had they been able to con­ceive of the Brah­man as as­so­cia­tive and cre­ative, as a per­son­al­ity ap­proach­able by cre­ated and evolv­ing be­ings, then might such a teach­ing have be­come the most ad­vanced por­trai­ture of De­ity on Uran­tia since it would have en­com­passed the first five lev­els of to­tal de­ity func­tion and might pos­si­bly have en­vi­sioned the re­main­ing two.

94:3.4In cer­tain phases the con­cept of the One Uni­ver­sal Over­soul as the to­tal­ity of the sum­ma­tion of all crea­ture ex­is­tence led the In­dian philoso­phers very close to the truth of the Su­preme Be­ing, but this truth availed them naught be­cause they failed to evolve any rea­son­able or ra­tio­nal per­sonal ap­proach to the at­tain­ment of their the­o­retic mono­the­is­tic goal of Brah­man-Narayana.

94:3.5The karma prin­ci­ple of causal­ity con­ti­nu­ity is, again, very close to the truth of the reper­cus­sional syn­the­sis of all time-space ac­tions in the De­ity pres­ence of the Su­preme; but this pos­tu­late never pro­vided for the co-or­di­nate per­sonal at­tain­ment of De­ity by the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist, only for the ul­ti­mate en­gulf­ment of all per­son­al­ity by the Uni­ver­sal Over­soul.

• philosophy very near concept of Adjusters

94:3.6The phi­los­o­phy of Brah­man­ism also came very near to the re­al­iza­tion of the in­dwelling of the Thought Ad­justers, only to be­come per­verted through the mis­con­cep­tion of truth. The teach­ing that the soul is the in­dwelling of the Brah­man would have paved the way for an ad­vanced re­li­gion had not this con­cept been com­pletely vi­ti­ated by the be­lief that there is no hu­man in­di­vid­u­al­ity apart from this in­dwelling of the Uni­ver­sal One.

• failed to differentiate levels of reality, recognize soul

94:3.7In the doc­trine of the merg­ing of the self-soul with the Over­soul, the the­olo­gians of In­dia failed to pro­vide for the sur­vival of some­thing hu­man, some­thing new and unique, some­thing born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teach­ing of the soul’s re­turn to the Brah­man is closely par­al­lel to the truth of the Ad­juster’s re­turn to the bo­som of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but there is some­thing dis­tinct from the Ad­juster which also sur­vives, the mor­ontial coun­ter­part of mor­tal per­son­al­ity. And this vi­tal con­cept was fa­tally ab­sent from Brah­manic phi­los­o­phy.

94:3.8Brah­manic phi­los­o­phy has ap­prox­i­mated many of the facts of the uni­verse and has ap­proached nu­mer­ous cos­mic truths, but it has all too of­ten fallen vic­tim to the er­ror of fail­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the sev­eral lev­els of re­al­ity, such as ab­so­lute, tran­scen­den­tal, and fi­nite. It has failed to take into ac­count that what may be fi­nite-il­lu­sory on the ab­so­lute level may be ab­so­lutely real on the fi­nite level. And it has also taken no cog­nizance of the es­sen­tial per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, who is per­son­ally con­tactable on all lev­els from the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture’s lim­ited ex­pe­ri­ence with God on up to the lim­it­less ex­pe­ri­ence of the Eter­nal Son with the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• ancient gods of Aryans include Agni, Indra, and Soma

94:4.63. Vedic and post-Vedic de­i­ties. Many of the an­cient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, In­dra, and Soma, have per­sisted as sec­ondary to the three mem­bers of the Trimurti. Nu­mer­ous ad­di­tional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic In­dia, and these have also been in­cor­po­rated into the Hindu pan­theon.

• influence on Taoism

94:5.53. The Brah­man-Ab­so­lute con­cept of the In­dian philoso­phers, cou­pled with the de­sire to es­cape all evil. Per­haps the great­est ex­tra­ne­ous in­flu­ence in the east­ward spread of the Salem re­li­gion was ex­erted by the In­dian teach­ers of the Vedic faith, who in­jected their con­cep­tion of the Brah­man—the Ab­so­lute—into the sal­va­tion­is­tic thought of the Salemites.

• impersonal Infinity of

98:2.9In Pales­tine, re­li­gious dogma be­came so crys­tal­lized as to jeop­ar­dize fur­ther growth; in Greece, hu­man thought be­came so ab­stract that the con­cept of God re­solved it­self into a misty va­por of pan­the­is­tic spec­u­la­tion not at all un­like the im­per­sonal In­fin­ity of the Brah­man philoso­phers.