East meets West:

Elements of Hindu Philosophy in Western thought

World Religions: Hinduism

March 2010

Sasha Chaitow
MA Eng. Lit., MA Western
Esotericism
sasha@sashanonserviat.net
 Western Sociocultural backdrop of 19th Century

• Post-Enlightenment Industrial Age of Reason and

Rationalism  Secularism, Materialism, Determinism &
Empiricism
• Exoteric (mainstream) religion no longer has strong
influence
• Mystical/esoteric traditions which saw their heyday during
the Renaissance survive “underground”, but are discredited
and derided as “superstitions belonging to a benighted
past”
• Cultural lack of direction: science and industrialisation
cannot provide answers to eternal ontological questions
• “Secularism and science replaced religion and mythology as the
uppermost areas for intellectual exploration, discrediting many long-
standing esoteric traditions.

• The effects spread from the arts and natural sciences to history, rhetoric
and government, with the utilitarian aim of “the promotion of a better
life on earth by making man more rational, and therefore wiser, more
just, virtuous and happy.”

• Achieved by avoiding the “uncritical acceptance of the evidence of

one’s senses […] of misunderstanding of words, of confusions bred by
the speculative fantasies of philosophers,” (Bacon) the “clouding of
reason by emotions” (Spinoza) and the “fallacies and confusions due to
the misuse of language” (Valla, Locke and Berkeley).

• Language had been handed over to the grammarians, knowledge to the

encyclopaedists,”and the emergence of a secular world-view left little
space altogether for esoteric and magical thinking.

Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities,’ Against the Current:
Essays in the History of Ideas (London: 1955; Pimlico, 1997), pp. 80-109 (pp. 83-87)
Christine Bergé, ‘Illuminism,’ Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, pp. 600-606 (p.
601)
 Post-Enlightenment counter-currents
(mid-18th – mid-19th centuries)
• Theosophy based on “revealed knowledge” & direct spiritual experience and visions
• Philosophy of artist & poet as “initiates”  Romanticism & Symbolism
• Re-discovery of the ‘sublimity’ of myth and poetry
• View of the “universe as the self-development of a primal, non-rational force that
can only be grasped by the intuitive powers of men of imaginative genius”
(Schelling)
• Pietism with an “emphasis on interior spirituality”

• Spiritualism: (psychic experiments, mediumship, communication with spirits)

• In UK & US gained over 8 million followers by late 19 th century BUT no clear
philosophical underpinnings
• Mesmerism: concept of élan vital or life force which can be directed for healing or
balancing the body and spirit

• Swedenborgianism: based on a “reformed Christianity” with an emphasis on angelic

hierarchies and communication with the spiritual world
• Though a scientist, following a spiritual vision in 1745, Swedenborg believed
higher knowledge is not something that can be acquired, but that it is based on
intuition. He believed that he received scientific knowledge from angels
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
1831-1891
• Born and grew up in the Ukraine – old aristocratic
family
• Exposed to occult literature from a very young age
through her grandfather’s library
• Youth marked by inexplicable incidents and
psychic phenomena
• Abandoned her husband during their honeymoon
(1849), travelled extensively around Europe, the
Middle East, India, Tibet, & North America
• 1875 – Establishes Theosophical Society in New
York (1877 in Corfu, 1879 at Adyar, India).
• 1877: Publishes Isis Unveiled
• 1888 – Publishes The Secret Doctrine
• The most influential occult books in modern times
– synthesising centuries of occult knowledge with
science and aspects of Hinduism & Buddhism
 Blavatsky’s Theosophy
• She sought a universal esoteric tradition in India and
the religions of the Orient in an attempt to find the
opposite pole to rationalist and materialist science
• Theosophy is a syncretic blend of Western Esoteric
traditions, contemporary science and evolutionism, and
a variety of philosophical and religious concepts from
Buddhism and the Hindu Advaita Vedanta tradition.
• Some of these include: cosmology, human spiritual
constitution, after-death states, reincarnation, karma, &
the idea of Ascended Masters guiding mankind
NO RELIGION HIGHER • Blavatsky did NOT import these philosophies
THAN TRUTH piecemeal, but uniquely adapted them into a hybrid of
Eastern and Western thought, “projecting an ancient
wisdom tradition to be shared by all mankind”
(Organisation) culture is the emergent result of the continuing negotiations about values,
meanings and proprieties between the members of that organisation and with its
environment. (Richard Seel, http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/culture-complex.htm )

A paradigm is a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a

community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way a
community organises itself. (Capra 1997:6)
 Cultural Identity

Outward expression within:

Society
Politics
Values
 3 Points of convergence: The Perennial
Philosophy, Monism, Illusion of Matter
Advaita Vedanta
•Found in the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda: consolidated by Adi Shankara
(788 CE - 820 CE)
•Characterised by emphasis on Monism and panentheism (all is in God - Brahma
and God is in everything): no differentiation between material life, human soul
(Atman) and Brahma
•The secret for attaining moksha (liberation) from samsara (the reincarnation
cycle) is through absolute knowledge of Brahma and inner realization of this lack
of differentiation
•Brahman is the only truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is
ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self.
•Advaita Vedanta is based on śāstra ("scriptures"), yukti ("reason")
and anubhava ("experience"), and aided by karmas ("spiritual practices")
Advaita Vedanta
 Perennial Philosophy –
“That thou art”
•The universal recurrence of universal truths
independent of epoch or culture, including
universal truths on the nature
of reality, humanity or consciousness 
•Linked to the prisca theologia (pure, first
theology as given to Adam by God). Emphasis on
seeking the earliest possible revelations of truth.
The Sanskrit for swan is
•Sought after by numerous esoteric philosophers hamsa.
from the Renaissance onwards Repeated as a mantra it
becomes soham ("I am That").
•Blavatsky’s driving force and the core of her Just as a swan lives in
Secret Doctrine. Through amalgamating the water but does not become
essence of all esoteric philosophies (east & West) waterlogged, a liberated
Advaitin lives in this world full
she could produce a universal esoteric tradition,
of Maya but is untouched by its
above and beyond the material world as well as illusion
exoteric religion.
 Maya – Gnosticism -The Ring Pass-not

• Maya: “the veil”, the principal concept which manifests, perpetuates and
governs the illusion of duality in the phenomenal Universe
• The goal of enlightenment is to understand and experience this: to see
intuitively that the distinction between the self and the Universe is a false one.
• Plato and especially later NeoPlatonists describe this concept in a very similar
way.
• Gnosticism, a strongly dualist religion that developed c300 BCE and informs
the majority of W. Esoteric currents, bases its very essence on this division;
Matter is considered inherently evil and the material world seen as the creation
of “a lesser god”
• Boehme considers this the necessity of existence – for God to know Himself
duality had to come into being – thus explaining the necessity of evil
• Blavatsky speaks of the Ring Pass-Not, based on Gnostic mythology, but
takes a more Eastern view (echoed by Plato)– through enlightenment it can be
crossed; the veil can be lifted
• In Advaita Vedanta it is a false division caused by a playful god, and a
challenge to be met in the quest for enlightenment
 Further Reading
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas, Helena Blavatsky [Western Esoteric Masters
Series] (Berkley: North Atlantic, 2004)
• Hanegraaff, Wouter J., New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism
through the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1996)
• van Egmond, Daniël, ‘Western Esoteric Schools in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries,’ in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to
Modern Times, Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff eds. (Albany,
NY, SUNY: 1998)
• Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities,’
Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (London: 1955; Pimlico,
1997), pp. 80-109 (pp. 83-87)
• Christine Bergé, ‘Illuminism,’ Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism
• Godwin, Joscelyn, The Theosophical Enlightenment, (Albany, New York:
SUNY Press, 1994)

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