Verse 4 of the first stanza from the “Book of Dzyan” given in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine begins by saying “the seven ways to bliss were not.” This verse, as found at the beginning of The Secret Doctrine, then as commented on in the body of The Secret Doctrine, then as found in the first draft Secret Doctrine Wurzburg Manuscript, is:
4. The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
4. The seven ways to bliss (Moksha or Nirvana) were not. The great causes of misery (Nidana and Maya) were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
4. The seven Ways to Bliss (Moksha, or Nirvana) — were not. The great causes of Misery (Nidana and Maya) — were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
Blavatsky in her commentary does not say what the seven ways to bliss are (vol. 1, pp. 38-39). When she was later asked what are the seven ways to bliss, she replied: “They are certain faculties of which the student will know more when he goes deeper into occultism.” (Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 25). In the unedited transcript of her reply at the Blavatsky Lodge, she said “they are practically faculties . . .” In reply to the next question (omitted in the edited book), “Then the seven ways are not actually mentioned?” she said, “No, they are not mentioned in The Secret Doctrine, are they? They are not, I should say not.” (Secret Doctrine Commentaries, p. 46; or Secret Doctrine Dialogues, p. 46). Her concluding “I should say not” suggests that she did not intend to give them.
Indeed, in her article, “The Mystery of Buddha,” she said about the Buddha revealing a part of the secret teachings that he should not have: “In His anxiety to make away with the false Gods, He revealed in the ‘Seven Paths to Nirvana’ some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arupa (formless) World. A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.” (H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 388). She goes on to speak of “His new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the Esoteric Teaching without its vivifying Soul, . . . “
The seven lights of the arūpa world are referred to in verse 6 of stanza 5 of the “Book of Dzyan”: “Thus were formed the Arupa and the Rupa (the Formless World and the World of Forms): from one light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven lights.” In her commentary on this, she wrote (vol. 1, p. 133): “To the highest [world], we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us.”
Elsewhere Blavatsky made reference to the highest class of nirvāṇis, “the Nirvāṇīs ‘without remains’—the pure Arūpa, the formless Breaths” (Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 436). Similarly, she wrote in her commentary on verse 4 of stanza 5 of the “Book of Dzyan” (vol. 1, p. 120): “The ‘Divine World’—the countless Lights lit at the primeval Light—the Buddhis, or formless divine Souls, of the last Arupa (formless) world; . . .” This allows us to think that the seven ways to bliss may pertain to faculties of the seven different classes or orders of spiritual beings that each person is connected with by way of their inner principles. But we do not know.
Blavatsky always tried to annotate the stanzas from the “Book of Dzyan” with reference to known books, to help give them credibility by showing exoterically available echoes of the hitherto secret teachings. After glossing “bliss” in “the seven ways to bliss” by giving “Moksha or Nirvana” in parentheses, she further gives other forms of the word Nirvana in a footnote: “Nippang in China; Neibban in Burmah; . . .” (vol. 1, p. 38). The “Neibban in Burmah” leads us to a book that she quoted elsewhere, The Life or Legend of Gaudama: The Buddha of the Burmese, by P. Bigandet. We know that she used the 1880 third edition in two volumes rather than the 1858 first edition or the 1866 second edition in one volume, because she quotes the book by page number in a couple places (Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 7, and vol. 5, p. 249 fn.), and these page numbers match the third edition (the pagination was unchanged for the 1911-1912 fourth edition).
This book has a section titled, “The Seven Ways to Neibban,” vol. 2, pp. 189-239 (1st ed., pp. 285-316; 2nd ed., pp. 431-481). Bigandet was a missionary rather than an orientalist, so he was not concerned to provide references to his sources. The main part of his book is a translation of a Burmese translation made in 1773 of an obscure book written in Pali on the life of the Buddha. The author of the Burmese translation states the name of his book at the end, transcribed phonetically by Bigandet as Malla-linkara-wouttoo (vol. 2, p. 151). From this, we may deduce that the title is Mālālaṅkāra-vatthu. But the “The Seven Ways to Neibban” is an abridged translation of a different book, added by Bigandet to supplement the account of the life of the Buddha with an account of the teachings of the Buddha. Bigandet tells us only that it “was composed at first in the Siamese language at Bangkok, and has been subsequently translated into Burmese” (vol. 2, p.191).
In any case, the teachings of “The Seven Ways to Neibban” can be traced, since the Siamese and Burmese Buddhist sources are all derived from the Pali Buddhist sources. The most famous and most widely read Pali book on Buddhism is the Visuddhi-magga, “The Path of Purification.” That book is largely structured around seven purifications that are listed in the Ratha-vinīta-sutta, “The Relay Chariots,” sutta no. 24 of the Majjhima-nikāya. These seven purifications were helpfully summarized by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi in a note to their complete translation of the Majjhima-nikāya as The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (note 288, pp. 1213-1214, referring to p. 242, paragraph 9):
“In brief, “purification of virtue” (sīlavisuddhi) is the unbroken adherence to the moral precepts one has undertaken, explained by Vsm [Visuddhi-magga] with reference to the moral training of a bhikkhu as the “fourfold purification of virtue.” “Purification of mind” (cittavisuddhi) is the overcoming of the five hindrances through the attainment of access concentration and the jhānas. “Purification of view” (diṭṭhivisuddhi) is the understanding that defines the nature of the five aggregates constituting a living being. “Purification by overcoming doubt” (kankhāvitaraṇavisuddhi) is the understanding of conditionality. “Purification by knowledge and vision of what is the path and what is not the path” (maggāmaggañāṇadassanavisuddhi) is the correct discrimination between the false path of the ecstatic, exhilarating experiences and the true path of insight into impermanence, suffering, and not self. “Purification by knowledge and vision of the way” (paṭipadāñāṇadassanavisuddhi) comprises the ascending series of insight knowledges up to the supramundane paths. And “purification by knowledge and vision” (ñāṇadassanavisuddhi) is the supramundane paths.”
These seven purifications can be delineated as:
1. sīla-visuddhi, “purification of virtue,”
2. citta-visuddhi, “purification of mind,”
3. diṭṭhi-visuddhi, “purification of view,”
4. kaṅkhāvitaraṇa-visuddhi, “purification by overcoming doubt,”
5. maggāmagga-ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi, “purification by knowledge and vision of what is the path and what is not the path,”
6. paṭipadā-ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi, “purification by knowledge and vision of the way,”
7. ñāṇa-dassana-visuddhi, “purification by knowledge and vision.”
The seven distinct parts into which the author of “The Seven Ways to Neibban” divided his book were condensed into six articles in the abridged translation by Bigandet (see p. 191). These six articles are titled by Bigandet as:
1. Of the Precepts
2. Of Meditation and its various Degrees
3. Of the Nature of Beings
4. Of the Cause of the Form and of the Name, or of Master and Spirit
5. Of the True Meggas or Ways to Perfection
6. Of the Progress in Perfect Science
The seven purifications, then, can be seen to be “The Seven Ways to Neibban” of Bigandet’s abridged translation. “The Seven Ways to Neibban” are directly based on the teachings of the Visuddhi-magga. The four arūpa worlds are indeed among the many subjects taught in the Visuddhi-magga, being the subject of its short chapter ten, “The Immaterial States,” pp. 321-336 of Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli’s translation. Thus they are also found in “The Seven Ways to Neibban,” pp. 208-212. However, there is no mention of lights, whether seven or otherwise. As we recall, Blavatsky’s statement was that “He revealed in the ‘Seven Paths to Nirvana’ some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arupa (formless) World.” We must therefore wonder if the teaching of the mere existence of the fourfold arūpa world is where the Buddha is alleged to have revealed more than he should have, only suggesting some of the mysteries of the seven lights of that world.
When Blavatsky was instructed to bring out hitherto secret teachings in the form of stanzas from the “Book of Dzyan,” the seven lights of the arūpa world were openly referred to, as were the seven times seven lights formed from each of these seven. The seven orders of purely divine spirits belonging to the arūpa world were also openly referred to, as were the many classes or orders of spiritual beings belonging to the rūpa worlds that each person is connected with. But the seven ways to bliss were not delineated. Other than the hint that “They are certain faculties of which the student will know more when he goes deeper into occultism,” we are left on our own to determine what these seven ways are. We have in the known Buddhist texts a listing of the seven ways to nirvāṇa as the seven purifications. But if we regard the seven ways to bliss as “practically faculties” or “certain faculties,” then the seven purifications do not seem to be the seven ways to bliss referred to in the verse from the “Book of Dzyan.”