the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

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THE EQUINOX
is non-existent. Each man is, as it were, a thought in an
universal brain, each thought jarring against the next and
prolonging the dream. As each individual thought dies it
enters Nibbâna and ceases to be, and eventually when all
thoughts die the dream passes and Nibbâna wakes.* This
bad dream seems to be caused by a separateness of Subject
and Object which means Sorrow; when sleep vanished this
separateness vanishes with it, things assume their correct
proportion and may be equated to a state of bliss or non-
Sorrow.
Thus we find that Nirvana and Nibbâna are the same† in
* Comapre “Mândûkya Upanishad,” 1, 16.
In the infinite illusion of the universe
The soul sleeps; when it awakes
Then there wakes the Eternal,
Free from time and sleep and dreams.
† Most Buddhists will raise a terrific howl when they read this; but, in spite
of their statement that the Hindu Nirvana, the absorption into Brahman,
corresponds not with their Nibbâna, but with their fourth Arûpa-Vimokha, we
nevertheless maintain, that in essence Nirvana and Nibbâna are the same, or in
detail, if logic is necessaryin so illogical an argument, it certainly sided rather
with Nirvana than Nibbâna. Nibbâna is Final says the Buddhist, when once an
individual enters it there is no getting out again, in fact a kind of Spiritual Bastille,
for it is Niccain, changeless; but Brahman is certainly not this, for all things in
the Universe originated from him. This is as it should be, though we see little
difference between proceeding from to proceeding to, when it comes to a matter
of First and Last Causes. The only reason why the Buddhist does not fall into the
snare, is, not because he has explained away Brahman, but because he refuses to
discuss him at all. Further the Buddhist argues that should the Hindu even
attain by the exaltation of his selfhood to Arûpa Brahma-loka, though for a
period incalculable he would endure there, yet in the end Karma would once
again exert its sway over him, “and he would die as an Arûpabrahmaloka-
Deva, his Sankhâras giving rise to a being according to the nature of his unexhausted
Karma.” In “Buddhism,” vol. i, No. 2, p. 323, we read: “To put it
another way; you say that the Universe came from Brahman, and that at one