“Laboulaye, the learned and skeptical French savant, does not believe a word of the miraculous portion of Buddha’s life; nevertheless, he has the candor to speak of Gautama as being only second to Christ in the great purity of his ethics and personal morality. For both of these opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed at this scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that “ce savant distingue n’a point etudie cette question.”
“I do not hesitate to say”, remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire, “that, except Christ alone, there is not among the founders of religions, a figure either more pure or more touching than that of Buddha. His life is spotless, His constant Heroism equals his convictions. He is the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age of twenty-nine, his father’s court to become a monk and a beggar…and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of having found the truth.”
This deserved panegyric is no stronger than the one which Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned des Mousseaux’s wrath. “It is more than difficult”, adds the former, “to understand how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high and approached so near the truth.” Curious, that there should be so many lofty souls “not assisted by revelation!”
And why should anyone feel surprised that Gautama could die with philosophical serenity? As the kabalists justly say, “Death does not exist, and man never steps outside of universal life. Those whom we think dead, live still in us, as we live in them. The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die.” And, we might add, that he who lives for humanity, does even more than him who dies for it.
The Ineffable name, in the search for which so many kabalists – unacquainted with any Oriental or even European adept – vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man. This mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds cηοιμετο σροπηαλιγνι (?)”, can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And “when Elijah heard it he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood in the entering of the cave. And behold, there came the voice.”
When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the “small voice”, he used to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed both his feet, after having performed certain magnetic passes, and pronounced not the “name” but an invocation well known to every adept. Then he drew the mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or astral spirit was free. On ordinary occasions he wore wool no more than the priests of the temples. The Possession of the secret combination of the “name” gave the hierophant supreme power over every being, human or otherwise, inferior to himself in soul-strength. Hence, when Max Muller tells us of the Quiche “Hidden majesty which was never to be opened by human hands”, the kabalist perfectly understands what was meant by the expression and is not at all surprised to hear even this most erudite philologist exclaim: “What it was, we do not know!””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 