Blavatsky and Confucius
John Algeo
Yang and yin, the two great cosmological principles whose
combination generates the ten thousand things of nature, may be
associated, respectively, with the West and the East, the
proactive and receptive cultural hemispheres. They may also be
associated with two great teachers: Western Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky and Eastern Confucius. Yang and yin are not opposites,
but complements. They merge together, each becoming the other,
in the revolving diagram of the t’ai chi or absolute (). So
also Blavatsky and Confucius, like West and East, interact, each
articulating the same Ancient Wisdom, though with different
accents. Theosophists know a lot about Blavatsky, but less about
Confucius, though he greatly merits our attention.
“Confucius” is a Latinized form for the name of the
greatest Chinese philosopher and teacher, who lived for some
seventy-two years (551-479
BC).
The Chinese appellation from
which the name “Confucius” comes is K’ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi
(depending on the transliteration system one uses), which means
“Master Kung.” And a very great master he was. If we judge a
teacher by the number of persons influenced by his teaching,
Master Kung is arguably the greatest teacher ever to have lived
on this planet. His teachings have deeply influenced the
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 1
societies of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for two and a half
millennia and thus have guided the lives of more human beings
than any other system of beliefs.
Although recognized by H. P. Blavatsky and her teachers as
one of the Elder Brothers, Master Kung has been accorded
relatively little attention by Theosophists. That is
unfortunate, because his teachings are wisely Theosophical. Of
all the great spiritual traditions of humanity, Confucianism is
the closest to Theosophy in certain respects. Many religious
traditions think of this world as a place to be escaped from.
But Confucianism and Theosophy think of it as a place where
self-realization can be achieved. One scholar of Confucianism
put it this way:
The art of Confucian spirituality might be described
as discovering one’s cosmological being amidst daily
affairs. For the Confucian the ordinary is the locus
of the extraordinary; the secular is the sacred; the
transcendent is in the immanent. What distinguishes
Confucian spirituality among the world’s religious
traditions is an all-encompassing cosmological context
that grounds its world-affirming orientation for
humanity. This is not a tradition that seeks
liberation outside the world, but rather one that
affirms the spirituality of becoming more fully human
within the world. (Tucker 1)
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 2
Much the same thing could be said of Theosophical spirituality.
Both Confucianism and Theosophy are world-affirming, rather than
world-denying.
As for the person of Master Kung, in Isis Unveiled (2:159),
Blavatsky mentions that there are two classes among the great
teachers. One is those holy (that is, “whole”) ones who have
permanently united with their spiritual selves; they include
Buddha, Christ, and Krishna. The other category is those who
have been so united at intervals; they include Moses,
Pythagoras, Apollonius, Plotinus, Plato, Iamblichus, and
Confucius.
We should not, however, think of the latter group as somehow “second class” Masters. They too are Elders, far ahead of us
in evolution. Our species is now in a stage of its evolution
known in Theosophical literature as the Fourth Round. Blavatsky,
however, explains (Secret Doctrine 1:162) that Confucius and
Plato are Fifth-Rounders because they have evolved psychically,
mentally, and spiritually to the level that will be the norm of
humanity in the next round after our current one—ages in the
future. In making this observation, Blavatsky was quoting one of
her teachers, Koot Hoomi (or K.H.), who wrote: “Plato and
Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord [Buddha] a sixth
round man” (Mahatma Letters, chronological letter 66, 3d ed.,
14).
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 3
In her earliest writing, Blavatsky was less sympathetic to
Confucius than in her later works. In July 1875, before the
foundation of the Theosophical Society, she wrote of his “cold,
practical philosophy” (Collected Writings 1:108), and she
observed that he “confined his attention solely to his own
country.” Even so, she recognized that he was “trying to apply
his profound wisdom and philosophy to the wants of his
countrymen.” Her judgment of Confucius in this regard seems less
sympathetic than it was later to become, perhaps because in her
later years Blavatsky grew better acquainted with the teachings
of Master Kung.
If we consider Confucian teachings parallel to those of
Theosophy, we can understand why Blavatsky came to hold the
Chinese teacher in such high regard. To be sure, “parallel to”
does not mean “equivalent to” or “the same as.” In any coherent
system of thought, every idea in the system derives its meaning
from, and is connected with, other ideas in that system. Thus no
two ideas from different thought systems can ever be exactly
equivalent because they have separate connections, each within
its own frame of reference. But ideas from different systems can
be like each other in some respects and thus be parallel. The
ideas cited here from Theosophy and Confucianism are not the
same ideas, but they echo each other in notable ways.
Blavatsky and Master Kung were both fundamentally
concerned, not with intellectual abstractions, but with human
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 4
behavior, that is, with ethics or moral action. Yet all action
needs to be considered within a view of the nature of the cosmos
in which we act. Blavatsky and Master Kung both relate human
behavior to the larger cosmos. Here are nine ways in which their
teachings are parallel.
1. Because of their shared concern for ethics, Blavatsky
early commented on Master Kung’s version of the Golden Rule, and
referred to it repeatedly. In Isis Unveiled (2:239, 338) she
noted that the Christian “Golden Rule” is paralleled in
Confucius’s Analects. Perhaps the clearest statement is Analects
15.24, where a disciple asks the Master whether some single word
can sum up how we ought to live. The Master replied: “It is
perhaps shu (= consideration of others). What you do not wish
for yourself, do not impose on others.” In another passage
(4.15), the Master said that his teaching was simple and easy to
understand. One of his disciples explained: “The doctrine of our
master consists in doing what we should, and in being
considerate of others.” Those two principles are parallel with
two concepts that H.P.B. often cited: dharma and ahimsā. The
first principle, “doing what we should,” is living according to
our dharma or duty in life. The second principle, “consideration
of others” (in Chinese shu, often translated as “reciprocity”),
advises us not to harm others, but to treat them as we would
want them to treat us, and so is equivalent to ahimsā.
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 5
2. Blavatsky found Confucius’s attitude toward “spirits”
(specifically, spirits of the dead) compatible with her own. She
believed that most of the “spirits” contacted in séances were
not what they seemed to be. In 1872 she wrote to her relatives
about the belief of Spiritualists: “Their spirits are no spirits
but spooks—rags, the cast off second skins of their
personalities that the dead shed in the astral light as serpents
shed theirs on earth.” So Blavatsky quotes Confucius’s words as
one of “the wise conclusions of some of the greatest
philosophers” (Collected Writings 2:178). She is referring to
his advice to his students: “Respect the spirits and—keep them
at a distance.” When one of his students asked Confucius how to
serve the spirits, the Master responded: “You cannot serve men
yet; how can you serve the spirits?” (Analects 11.12).
Confucius’s reluctance to talk about otherworldly matters is
much like a similar reluctance by the Buddha and the Christ.
3. One of the great themes in both Isis Unveiled and The
Secret Doctrine, and indeed all of Blavatsky’s writing, is that
the Wisdom is ancient, not new. None of the great teachers ever
put forth new ideas, but only restated ancient traditions in a
form appropriate to their time and place. Blavatsky consequently
looks with favor on Confucius, who also claimed to do only that.
She cites the Analects (7.1), where Confucius said: “I only hand
on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and
therefore I love them.” But just as Blavatsky restated the
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 6
Ancient Wisdom for the West in the late nineteenth century,
Master Kung did the same for China in the fifth century
BC.
As
one scholar puts it, “Confucius’s ‘transmission’ is not simply
imposing the past on the present . . . . Rather, his
transmission is a dynamic process of meeting new challenges with
resources accumulated in the past, which become revitalized and
renewed in being made useful and relevant to the present” (Sorhoon Tan, 71). That is also what Theosophy does—or should do.
4. Blavatsky (Secret Doctrine 1:441) calls Confucius a
“great sage” and “one of the greatest sages of the ancient
world,” who believed in and practiced “ancient magic,” that is,
the divination of the I Ching or “Book of Changes,” which is one
of the Confucian Five Classics or central scriptures. She says
that he also taught the sphericity of the Earth and the
heliocentric system. In several other places in The Secret
Doctrine, Blavatsky refers admiringly to Confucius, especially
to those aspects of his teaching that are most like the Wisdom
Tradition she was presenting in that book. For example, the IChing or Yijing, which Confucius certainly knew, mentions the
“great Extreme” (or “Supreme Ultimate,” as the Chinese term t’ai
chi or taiji is also translated). It is the ground and source of
everything (Secret Doctrine 1:356) and thus is the same as
Blavatsky’s concept of Parabrahm, the Absolute.
5. Although the Chinese are sometimes said to have no
cosmogony, Blavatsky affirms that they do (Secret Doctrine
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 7
1:440–41). The “Great Extreme” is the source of “changes” (that
is, all forms of cyclicity). Cyclicity, in the form of changing
circumstances, is the subject of the I Ching. And change or
periodicity is affirmed by the second of The Secret Doctrine’s
three fundamental propositions.
6. Blavatsky says that the “Great Extreme” first produces
two energies, which are represented by two figures: yang, a
solid line representing unity, and yin, a broken or divided
line, representing duality. These two lines in turn combine to
produce four “images,” which are the possible combinations and
orderings of the two lines. The two lines also combine in groups
of three to produce eight “symbols,” each consisting of three
lines, in all the possible combinations of the yang and yin
lines. Blavatsky says that these “wise symbols” “represent
precisely the same idea” as “the Stanzas [of Dzyan] given in our
text.” The unfolding of duality and then of multiplicity from
the Unity that underlies all existence is the great theme of The
Secret Doctrine’s cosmogony and also of the lines of the I
Ching.
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 8
Together, these Confucian concepts of the Great Extreme and
the Changes parallel the first two fundamental propositions of
The Secret Doctrine: an Absolute that is the source of
everything and a process of manifestation by cycles, which can
be found everywhere in this world.
7. Blavatsky also says (Secret Doctrine 1:440) that
Confucius did not believe in a future life, but rather in the
“changes,” that is, transformations or rebirths: “He denied
immortality to the personality of man—as we do—not to
MAN.”
Theosophical teachings about the afterlife and reincarnation
have often been misunderstood because we tend to identify
ourselves with the personality, which neither survives nor is
reborn. Only the individuality or “thread-self” endures from
life to life. This is the distinction Blavatsky alludes to here.
Confucius did not talk about reincarnation, because that
involved what happens after death, which is another subject he
avoided. When one of his students asked Confucius what death is,
the Master responded: “You do not understand life yet; how can
you understand death?” (Analects 11.12). Confucius’s concern was
how to live well in this life. But, as Blavatsky points out,
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 9
Confucius regards the “changes” as pervasive in the world, and
reincarnation can be seen as an aspect of those changes.
While recognizing a spiritual order of existence, Master
Kung emphasized life in this world. He was concerned
especially with how we can live together in society peacefully
and productively. He emphasized the centrality of human
relationships: between parent and child, ruler and subject,
husband and wife, elder and younger sibling, and friend and
friend. His emphasis on human community and the family can be
seen as parallel to the first Object of the Theosophical
Society: “to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood (or
family) of humanity.”
By the time H.P.B. wrote The Key to Theosophy, near the end
of her life, Confucius had risen greatly in her estimation,
precisely because of the moral strength of his teaching. In The
Key, she says that Theosophical ethics “are the essence and
cream of the world’s ethics, gathered from the teachings of all
the world’s great reformers. Therefore, you will find
represented therein Confucius and Zoroaster, Laotze and the
Bhagavat-Gita, the precepts of Gautama Buddha and Jesus of
Nazareth, of Hillel and his school, as of Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plato, and their schools” (48-49). Notice that in listing “the
world’s great reformers” in the realm of ethics, she mentions
Confucius first. And later in The Key (239), she expressed the
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 10
wish that human beings “would live up to the standard of
Confucius and their other sages.”
8. With respect to ethical teachings, Master Kung spoke of
four categories of human beings who are distinguished by their
evolutionary progress toward a realization of the great
principles of life. He emphasized that all human beings are
fundamentally the same, but he also recognized that by
experience and evolution they develop diversely (Analects 17.2).
The four human categories he recognized are these (Analects
16.9):
(a) Those who have innate wisdom, who are the divine Sages
(that is, avatars or Sixth-Rounders, like the Buddha, Christ,
and Krishna). Such far advanced souls are very rare.
(b) Those who have acquired wisdom by study and thus made
themselves into exemplary humans (that is, chohans or FifthRounders, like Moses, Pythagoras, Apollonius, Plotinus, Plato,
and Iamblichus). Such advanced souls are the great teachers and
example-setters of our species. The Chinese term for this
category of person (chun tzu or junzi, etymologically “son of a
ruler”) originally denoted an inherited rank, a condition
defined by one’s birth, that is, a great or noble person. But
Confucius agreed with Tennyson that “Kind hearts are more than
coronets, / And a noble soul, than Norman blood.” Confucius
believed that those who lead should not necessarily be those who
are born to power, but rather those who merit leadership by
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 11
their personal achievements. Confucius was the first promoter of
government by meritocracy. He was the first social democrat.
(c) Those who are learning, despite the limitations of
nature (that is, chelas, seekers, or disciples consciously
treading the Path, who are advanced Fourth-Rounders). Such
striving souls have recognized the need to take their own
evolution in hand and work toward perfection. They are the ones
who (as the Master K.H. says) “TRY.”
(d) Those who are of limited ability and have not yet
learned what is most important in life. They are ordinary,
common, or “little” persons (that is, the mass of humanity in
the Fourth Round). They are those of us who are progressing only
slowly and unconsciously because we have not yet come to a
realization of the need for personal effort to improve
ourselves.
With regard to those four categories, we must be careful
about where we place anyone—especially ourselves. In exercising
such care, Master Kung set us an example, as he did in many
other matters. As already noted, H.P.B. and the Masters clearly
identified Confucius as a member of the second category, a
Fifth-Rounder, who had mastered the lessons most of us are still
struggling with. But Confucius himself never claimed such a
status (Analects 7.33): “As to being a sage, or an exemplary
human, how dare I presume to make such a claim? But as to
striving tirelessly to achieve that, and also teaching others
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 12
without growing weary—that can be said of me, and that is all.”
This is not false modesty on the part of Master Kung; it is
rather his recognition of the truth of the saying in Light on
the Path: “You will enter the light, but you will never touch
the Flame.” We never achieve fully, but only strive to do so.
9. Tao or Dao is a very important Confucian concept. Its
literal meaning is “way,” and in Confucian use it is sometimes
parallel to the Theosophical concept of the Path. But it is not
merely the Path individuals tread; in a sense it is also
parallel with the Theosophical concept of the Plan, which is the
way the whole world evolves, the cosmic Path.
For Master Kung, treading the Path is a matter of learning
and of applying what one has learned. It is significant that he
is known in China as the “First Teacher” and his birthday,
celebrated on September 28, is known as “Teachers Day.” A joyous
emphasis on applied learning is expressed in the very first
sentence of the Analects (1.1): “To learn something and then to
practice it at the right time, is that not a pleasure?” And the
last verse of the Analects (20.3) rounds off Master Kung’s view
of the importance of learning that leads to understanding on
three levels: spiritual understanding of Heaven’s plan;
intellectual understanding of correct behavior; and social
understanding of other human beings. “The Master said: If one
does not understand the plan of Heaven, one has no way of
becoming an exemplary person; if one does not understand the
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 13
right way to do things (ritual), one has no way of taking a
stand; if one does not understand words, one has no way of
understanding people.”
Blavatsky and Confucius were two great exponents of living
the Ancient Wisdom. They each spoke in the idioms of their
times. Yet they also both speak timeless truths to us if we will
hear them.
REFERENCES
Blavatsky, Helena P. Collected Writings. 15 vols. Wheaton, IL:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1977-91.
———. Isis Unveiled. 2 vols. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1972, first published 1877.
———. The Secret Doctrine. 3 vols. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1978–79, first published 1888.
Confucius. The Analects. There are many translations of this
work; it is best to read several together so as to compare
them. Quotations above often combine several.
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. and
K.H. Transcribed by A. T. Barker. Ed. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr.
Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993.
Tan, Sor-hoon. “Three Corners for One: Tradition and Creativity
in the Analects.” In Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 14
with the “Analects”, ed. David Jones, 59-77.
Chicago:
Open Court, 2008.
Tucker, Mary Evelyn. Introduction to Confucian Spirituality,
vol. 1, ed. Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker. New York:
Crossroad, 2003.
Blavatsky & Confucius, p. 15