se of the priests assisting at public
ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are
therein mentioned. I am informed by persons competent to judge of the
matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning--one expressed by
the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the
swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas.
Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything
to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious
connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets.

Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived
their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient
Brahrnans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet; or,
again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the
same doctrine and derived it from a common source.* If you were to go
to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there
about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical
esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were
composed by Rakshasas** or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived
their secret knowledge from them.***

---------
* See Appendix, Note I.

** A kind of demons-devil.

*** And so would the Christian padris. But they would never admit that
their "fallen angels" were borrowed from the Rakshasas; that their
"devil" is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon;
or that the "war in heaven" of the Apocalypse--the foundation of the
Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels" was copied from the Hindu story
about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into
Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical Shastras.
---------

Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric
teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis--the continent that once
occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the
Pacific oceans? The assertion in "Isis Unveiled," that Sanskrit was the
language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to
suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else
might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.* But the real
esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the
Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be--