“Enq: But surely Buddha must have repudiated the soul’s immortality, if all the Orientalists and his own Priests say so!
Theo: The Arhats began by following the policy of their Master and the majority of the subsequent priests were not initiated, just as in Christianity; and so, little by little, the great esoteric truths became almost lost.
A proof in point is, that, out of the two existing sects in Ceylon, the Siamese believes death to be the absolute annihilation of individuality and personality, and the other explains Nirvana, as we theosophists do.
Enq: But why, in that case, do Buddhism and Christianity represent the two opposite poles of such belief?
Theo: Because the conditions under which they were preached were not the same. In India the Brahmins, jealous of their superior knowledge, and excluding from it every caste save their own, had driven millions of men into idolatry and almost fetishism.
Buddha had to give the death-blow to an exuberance of unhealthy fancy and fanatical superstition resulting from ignorance, such as has rarely been known before after.
Better a philosophical atheism than than such ignorant worship for those – “who cry upon their gods and are not heard, or are not heeded – ” and who live and die in mental despair.
He had to arrest first of all this muddy torrent of superstition, to uproot errors before he gave out the truth. And as he could not give out all, for the same good reason as Jesus, who reminds his disciples that the Mysteries of Heaven are not for the unintelligent masses, but for the elect alone, and therefore “spake he to them in parables” (Matt. xiii. 11) – so his caution led Buddha to conceal too much.
He even refused to say to the monk Vacchagotta whether there was, or was not an Ego in man. When pressed to answer, “the Exalted one maintained silence.”
Buddha gives to Ananda, his initiated disciple, who enquires for the reason of this silence, a plain and unequivocal answer in the dialogue translated by Oldenburg from the Samyuttaka Nikaya: –
“If I, Ananda, when the wondering monk Vacchagotta asked me: ‘Is there the Ego?’ had answered ‘The Ego is’, then that, Ananda, would have confirmed the doctrine of the Samanas and Brahmanas, who believed in permanence.
If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, ‘Is there not the Ego?’ had answered, ‘The Ego is not’, then that, Ananda, would have confirmed the doctrine of those who believed in annihilation.
If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, ‘Is there the Ego is?’ had answered, ‘The Ego is’, would that have served my end, Ananda, by producing in him the knowledge: all existences (dhamma) are non-ego?
But if I, Ananda, had answered, ‘The Ego is not’, then that, Ananda, would only have caused the wandering monk Vacchagotta to be thrown from one bewilderment to another: ‘My Ego, did it not exist before? But now it exists no longer!'”
This shows, better than anything, that Gautama Buddha withheld such difficult metaphysical doctrines from the masses in order not to perplex them more.
What he meant was the difference between the personal temporary Ego and the Higher Self, which sheds its light on the imperishable Ego, the spiritual “I” of man.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 