“Between the worshippers of Christna and Christ, or Avany and the Virgin Mary, there is less substantial difference, in fact, than between the two native sects, the Vishnavites and Sivites. For the converted Hindus, Christ is a slightly modified Christna, that is all. Missionaries carry away rich donations and Rome is satisfied. Then comes a year of famine; but the nose-rings and gold elbow-bangles are gone, and people starve by thousands. What matters it? They die in Christ, and Rome scatters her blessings over their corpses, of which thousands float yearly down the sacred rivers to the ocean.
So servile are the Catholics in their imitation, and so careful not to give offense to their parishioners, that if they happen to have a few higher caste converts in a Church, no pariah nor any man of the lower castes, however good a Christian he may be, can be admitted into the same Church with them. And yet they dare call themselves the servants of Him who sought in preference the society of the publicans and sinners; and whose appeal, “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”, has opened to him the hearts of millions of the suffering and the oppressed!
Few writers are as bold and outspoken as the late lamented Dr. Thomas Inman, of Liverpool, England. But however small their number, these men all agree unanimously, that the philosophy of both Buddhism and Brahmanism must rank higher than Christian theology and teach neither atheism nor fetishism. “To my own mind”, says Inman, “the assertion that Sakya did not believe in God is wholly unsupported. Nay, his whole scheme is built upon the belief that there are powers above which are capable of punishing mankind for their sins. It is true that these gods were not called Elohim, nor Jah, nor Jehovah, nor Jahveh, nor Adonai, nor Ehieh, nor Baalim, nor Ashtoreth, yet, for the son of Suddhadana, there was a Supreme Being.
There are four schools of Buddhist theology in Ceylon, Tibet, and India. One is rather pantheistical than atheistical, but the other three are purely theistical. On the first the speculations of our philologists are based. As to the second, third, and the fourth, their teachings vary but in the external mode of expression. We have fully explained the spirit of it elsewhere. As to practical, not theoretical views on the Nirvana, this is what a rationalist and a skeptic says: “I have questioned at the very doors of their temples, several hundreds of Buddhists, and have not found one but strove, fasted, and gave himself up to every kind of austerity, to perfect himself and acquire immortality; not to attain final annihilation. There are over 300,000,000 of Buddhists who fast, pray, and toil. …Why make of these 300,000,000 of men idiots and fools, macerating their bodies and imposing upon themselves most fearful privations of every nature, in order to reach a fatal annihilation which must overtake them anyhow?”
As well as this author, we have questioned Buddhists and Brahmanists and studied their philosophy. Apavarg has wholly a different meaning from annihilation. It is but to become more and more like Him. Of whom he is one of the refulgent sparks, that is the aspiration of every Hindu philosopher and the hope of the most ignorant is never to yield up his distinct individuality. “Else”, as once remarked an esteemed correspondent of the author, “mundane and separate existence would look like God’s comedy and our tragedy; sport to Him that we work and suffer, death to us to suffer it.” The same with the doctrine of metempsychosis, so distorted by European scholars. But as the work of translation and analysis progresses, fresh religious beauties will be discovered in the old faiths.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 