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FUNDAMENTALS

OF THE

ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY

By

G. de PURUCKER

M.A., D.LITT.

Edited by

A. TREVOR BARKER

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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky

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PREFACE

DR. DE PURUCKER, the present Leader of The

Theosophical Society, which has its International

Headquarters at Point Loma, California, delivered the

lectures contained in this volume to members of the

Esoteric Section during the years 1924-1927. They were given

under the direction of Katherine Tingley, then Leader of The

Theosophical Society, in fulfilment of a long cherished plan to

give to the world a work which would serve not only as a com

mentary upon The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky, but at the

same time would be the means of giving out certain esoteric

keys, which would enable students to unlock for themselves the

treasure of knowledge therein contained. Many are the educated

men and women who have been forced to lay aside The Secret

Doctrine as too abstruse and difficult, because they had no

instruction and therefore no understanding of the fundamental

conceptions upon which the Esoteric Philosophy is based.

To those who hunger for truth and spiritual knowledge, and

who bring an open mind to the study of this book, it is not too

much to say that in asking they will receive, and in seeking

they will find.

The original stenographic report of these lectures was corrected

by the Author, but he has not had the time to read the proofs,

the reaffonsibility for which he left to the Editor. The book

owes much to the collaboration of Dr. J. H. Fussell who, in

addition to doing some of the preliminary work of preparing the

MS. for publication, undertook the selection of the quotations

which appear at the head of each chapter. It should be mentioned

that all references to The Secret Doctrine are to the original

Edition (1888) of that work.

A certain amount of criticism was aroused among students of

Theosophy by the announcement that Dr. de Purucker had given

in these pages teaching which is not contained in the works of

H. P. Blavatsky. Moreover, these critics appear to base their

objections upon isolated quotations from Mme Blavatsky, in an

endeavour to show that it is impossible at this time that further

genuine teaching can be given, and ipso facto anything that is

given must be false. But students will recognise that anything

in the nature of dogmatism is contrary to the spirit of the Esoteric

Philosophy, and for that reason should be avoided. Inevitable

vi PREFACE

child of crystallized thought, it begins its lethal work by laying

a shadow on the mind, and ends by producing a sect.

The tendency of the dogmatist is to read only those parts

of the teaching which suit his own peculiar purpose, and

the rest of the Teacher's writings are pushed into the back-

ground and thus prevented from doing their beneficent vfbik.

Shall we not see for ourselves how H. P. Blavatsky regardeft the

problem ? In her Five Messages to the American Theosophists,

she wrote :

" Orthodoxy in Theosophy is a thing neither possible nor desirable.

It is diversity of opinion, within certain limits, that keeps the Theo-

sophical Society a living and a healthy body, its many other ugly

features notwithstanding. Were it not, also, for the existence of a

large amount of uncertainty in the minds of students of Theosophy,

such healthy divergencies would be impossible, and the Society woul d

degenerate into a sect, in which a narrow and stereotyped creed would

take the place of the living and breathing spirit of Truth and an ever-

growing Knowledge.

According as people are prepared to receive it, so will new Theo-

sophical teaching be given. But no more will be given than the

world, on its present level of spirituality, can profit by. It depends

on the spread of Theosophy the assimilation of what has been already

given how much more will be revealed and how soon/ 1

Again in the Introductory to The Secret Doctrine she

wrote :

" In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far

better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and

irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya ;

and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of

all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for

many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found. "

These statements are quite enough to show that Mme Blavatsky

never meant it to be understood that under no circumstances

would additional teaching be given. On the contrary she clearly

indicated that although the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine

contained all that could be given to the world in the nineteenth

century, the giving of further teaching would depend necessarily

upon the readiness of people to receive it.

So far from claiming that her writings contain the whole of

Theosophy she pointed out in her Introductory to The Secret

Doctrine that she had raised " but a small corner of the dark

veil " and " after long millenniums of silence and secrecy " had

given but an " outline of a few fundamental truths ", " because

that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a

hundred such volumes ". The Esoteric Doctrine in its totality

has always existed in the keeping of The Adepts in The Sacred

PREFACE vii

science, and it is therefore a complete system of thought which

does not evolve or change. But the whole of it never has and

never will be given out publicly, and therefore since from time

to time additional teaching is given, this does constitute for the

public a further unfolding or evolution of the age-old Doctrine.

In dther* words Theosophy the Wisdom of the Gods is eternal

in Nature, but our understanding of it grows, and as " those who

have ears to hear " become fit and ready to receive more teaching,

more will be given. This fact is clearly brought out also by

William Q. Judge :

" If any persons regard H. P. B/s writings as the infallible oracles

of Theosophy, they go directly against her own words and the works

themselves ; they must be people who do not indulge in original

thinking and cannot make much impression on the times.

As for the Theosophical Society, the moment it makes a hard and

fast definition of Theosophy it will mark the first hour of its decay.

Inasmuch as Theosophy is the whole body of truth about man

and nature, either known now or hereafter to be discovered, it

has the ' power of growth, progress and advancement/ since every

new truth makes it clearer. But among the truths will not be

reckoned at any time the definitions, dogmas, creeds or beliefs laid

down by man. 11

None the less it is a fact, paradoxical though it may seem to

some, that no teaching calling itself Theosophical will bear the

test of a thoroughly impartial investigation, unless it is consistent

with the teaching of H. P. Blavatsky ; and this precisely because

her writings bear the stamp of consistency with the recorded

teachings of all the great Sages and Seers of Antiquity.

Herein lies the strength of Dr. de Purucker, not only in this

work but in his other writings. True to the lines laid down by

Mme Blavatsky, he makes no appeal to dogmatic authority, but

claims his right to an impartial hearing on the ground that his

teaching " closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of

uniformity and analogy'*. "Proof," he defines, "as the pre-

ponderance of evidence bringing conviction to the mind," and

goes on to show that if Knowledge is to grow in us then it is

necessary to check any tendency to crystallization of thought,

i.e., to limit the understanding by closing the doors of the mind

to further light upon any particular subject of study. The truth

is that in the search for the Great Knowledge, progress is seen

to be as endless as boundless Infinitude inwards and upwards

for ever towards the Unutterable. Herein perhaps also is the

secret of humility.

The meaning of any part of this book is not to be understood

by merely dipping into it here and there. A particular doctrine

is touched upon in one chapter, outlined in another, then dealt

viii PREFACE

with in fuller detail until in some later chapter the key thougnt

to the whole subject is revealed if the preceding ideas have been

grasped. Thus the mind of the reader is opened gradually to

receive teaching which becomes ever deeper with each succeeding

chapter, unfolding before the inner eye a vision of the age-old

Path that leads at last from darkness into Light.

A. TREVOR BARKER

70 QUEEN'S GATE,

LONDON, S.W. 7,

Dec. 2&th, 1931.

INTRODUCTION

WE sometimes lock ourselves in little boxes of opinion,

and will not be free for fear. But still sun shines,

winds blow, waves " boom and blanche on the

precipices" ; and the winds and sun of the spirit,

the waves of time. While some are busy proving that no

Teacher can come, one has appeared among us who Teaches.

The spirit will not be confined by rules that the petty mind

dictates to it, and we can impose no Thou shalt nots upon

inspiration. There are certain marks by which we may know

what comes from the heights : a light to illumine life and the

hidden things ; a sublimity to enlarge the Soul. Do you not

see that what is ever-living cannot be cribbed and cabined

within what was spoken in this year or that, even by Speakers

with Authority ; because words are finite things : of value as

carriers of the messages of the Spirit ; harmful and tyrannous

when we bow our souls to them, and would make their finite-

ness an absolute ?

H. P. Blavatsky came not to shackle us with new creeds, but

to bring greatness and freedom to our minds. She pointed the

way to sublimity of life and thought : her keynote is sublimity.

She never said, there is a place where evolution stops, or where

knowledge stops. Because some have given out ridiculousness

in place of her sublime, it does not mean that the great Lodge

and its powers and wisdom are exhausted, or that there must

be no advance in knowledge.

As I understand the book, it makes this appeal : Turn your

eyes to the mountain-tops of being ; feed your souls on the

grandeur of Truth. Who has H. P. Blavatsky as a living

power in his thought is not coffined in a creed, but judges each

new idea that comes to him by its power to illumine life.

KENNETH MORRIS

LLWYNYPIA,

Nov. 22nd, 1931.

IX

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS . . i

CHAPTER II

WHERE is REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE NATURE

ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS '. THREEFOLD, FOURFOLD, FlVE-

FOLD, OR SEVENFOLD 8

CHAPTER III

THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF MORALS :

ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY OF THE ALL. THE

SELF AND THE "SELVES" 17

CHAPTER IV

FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. How DOES MANIFESTA-

TION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PR ALA Y A . . . . .26

CHAPTER V

THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY. GODS BEHIND

THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE is IMPERFECT . . . . -37

CHAPTER VI

THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF THE INTERMINGLING

OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE." PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM

AND THE DOCTRINE OF HIERARCHIES 48

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAOB

" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY.

THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE LADDER OF LIFE :

THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI 60

CHAPTER VIII

TRACES OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY IN GENESIS .... 73

CHAPTER IX

OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC COSMOGONY. GLOBES, ROUNDS AND RACES :

COSMIC TIME-PERIODS 84

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTRINE OF SWABHAVA SELF-BECOMING CHARACTERISTIC INDI-

VIDUALITY. MAN, SELF-EVOLVED, His OWN CREATOR. Monadologie OF

LEIBNITZ CONTRASTED WITH TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 96

CHAPTER XI

THE COSMIC PILGRIMAGE FROM UN-SELF-CONSCIOUS GODSPARK TO FULLY

SELF-CONSCIOUS GOD ......... 108

CHAPTER XII

PSYCHOLOGY : ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. IMMORTALITY

is CONDITIONAL : THE Loss OF THE SOUL . . . . .120

CHAPTER XIII

THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. SELF, EGO, AND SOUL : " I AM " AND " I

AM I " 127

CHAPTER XIV

" HEAVENS " AND " HELLS " : TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY,

AND OF THE EXOTERIC RELIGIONS . . . . . J 37

CHAPTER XV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE " ABSOLUTE ". GENERALIZED PLAN OF EVOLUTION

ON ALL PLANES. SEVEN KEYS TO WISDOM AND FUTURE INITIATIONS 147

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER XVI

PACK

ATMA-VIDYA : How THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY. " LOST SOULS " AND

" SOULLESS BEINGS ". MAN, A COMPOSITE BEING : No ABIDING

PRINCIPLE IN MAN 159

CHAPTER XVII

THE SILENT WATCHER 178

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF ADEPTS. THE " WONDROUS-

BEING ", THE BUDDHAS, NlRMANAKAYAS, DHYAN-CHOHANS . . IQI

CHAPTER XIX

THE SEVEN JEWELS AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF INITIATION . .213

CHAPTER XX

T^E HIGHER ASPECT OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. INITIATION AND THE

MYSTERIES : AVATARAS, BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS, THEIR

RELATION TO GLOBES, ROUNDS, AND RACES 230

CHAPTER XXI

INITIATIONS AND THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. ROOT-RACES AND THEIR SUB-

DIVISIONS. GLOBE-ROUNDS. PLANETARY ROUNDS. SOLAR KALPAS :

How CALCULATED. RACIAL CATACLYSMS 243

CHAPTER XXII

THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION. THE INCARNATION OF THE MANASAPUTRAS 254

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SUN AND THE PLANETS : THEIR ROLE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY DRAMA 271

PART II

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TEN STAGES OF BEING ACCORDING TO THE SYRIAN SYSTEM. ESOTERIC

METHOD OF TEACHING : PARADOXES : INTUITION . . .285

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXV

FAOB

THE MYSTERIES OF SEPTENARY NATURE. CORRESPONDENCES : GLOBES,

ELEMENTS, HUMAN PRINCIPLES. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS OF THE

ANCIENTS. RACIAL TIME-PERIODS AND CATASTROPHES . . . 295

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MICROCOSM, A MIRROR OF THE MACROCOSM. ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLES.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ONE LIFE. RELATIVITY : A FUNDAMENTAL

CONCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM 305

CHAPTER XXVII

THE Two FUNDAMENTAL KOSMICAL HIERARCHIES : MATTER AND SPIRIT-

CONSCIOUSNESS. CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS. GODS-MONADS-ATOMS . 312

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ADVENTURE OF AN ATOM. LAYA-CENTERS : SUN, COMETS, AND

PLANETS : SOUL AND MONAD. THE KEYNOTE OF OCCULTISM . 321

CHAPTER XXIX

SPACE : THE BOUNDLESS ALL. INFILLED WITH INTERLOCKING, INTER-

PENETRATING UNIVERSES. ONE ACTION, ONE HIERARCHICAL IN-

TELLIGENCE, ONE COURSE OF OPERATION THROUGHOUT NATURE :

ONE ORGANISM, ONE UNIVERSAL LIFE 328

CHAPTER XXX

THE INTERRELATION OF GODS, MONADS, ATOMS A KEY TO THE DOCTRINE

OF EVOLUTION. SUCCESSIVE EMANATIONS : SHEATHS. HIGHER

BEINGS EMANATING AND CLOTHING THEMSELVES IN HOSTS OF LOWER

, BEINGS. MORALITY BASED ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE . 336

' CHAPTER XXXI

THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS. THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL LAW THROUGH-

OUT LIFE AND BEING : AN ENDLESS LADDER OF PROGRESS. ANA-

LOGICAL PROCESSES OF COSMICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.

THE RIVER OF LIFE 344

CONTENTS xv

CHAPTER XXXII

PAGE

OUT OF THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE. FROM THE VISIBLE INTO THE

INVISIBLE. THE MAGNUM OPUS 356

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LIFE- WAVE AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS. THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

AS TAUGHT BY THE STOICS 365

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE SPACES OF SPACE. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, A UNIFIER : UNIVERSAL

KEYS. DOCTRINES OF " THE VOID " AND OF " THE FULLNESS "

CONTRASTED 373

CHAPTER XXXV

OCCULTISM AND THE MYSTERY-SCHOOLS. SEVEN DEGREES OF INITIATION :

MAN BECOMES A GOD. SEVEN KOSMIC PLANES : OUR PLANETARY

CHAIN OF SEVEN GLOBES ON THE FOUR LOWER PLANES : THE PASSAGE

OF THE LIFE- WAVE THERETHROUGH 385

CHAPTER XXXVI

INTERPENETRATING SPHERES OF BEING. LOKAS AND TALAS : BI-POLAR

COSMICAL PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS. THE " HERESY OF SEPARATE-

NESS " ........... 396

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE FRAME- WORK OF THE KOSMOS. LOKAS AND TALAS : PRINCIPLES

AND ELEMENTS : WORLDS NOT STATES MERELY. SPACE THE

ULTIMATE REALITY 409

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DEGENERATION AND CLOSING OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE MYSTERIES. NEO-

PYTHAGOREAN AND NEO-PLATONIC SYSTEMS : MAIN SOURCES OF

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC TEACHINGS :

SYMBOLISM , 417

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXIX

THEOSOPHY AND OCCULTISM. OCCULTISM : THE QUINTESSENCE OF TRUTH,

REALITY : A COMPLETE WHOLE. OCCULTISM AND MORAL RESPONSI-

BILITY. OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: A KOSMIC ATOM : " EGG OF BRAHMA " 429

CHAPTER XL

DEFINITIONS OF DEITY : ATHEISM : PANTHEISM. Is THERE A SUPREME

PERSONAL GOD ? KOSMIC ARCHITECTS AND BUILDERS. REALLY TO

KNOW, ONE MUST BECOME 435

CHAPTER XLI

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES. THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM AND

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS : WHY " SACRED " ? 447

CHAPTER XLII

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES IN ITS FOUR ASPECTS. THE SEVEN SACRED

PLANETS AND THEIR RECTORS : THEIR RELATION TO OUR EARTH-

CHAIN. THE CIRCULATIONS OF THE KOSMOS : OUTER ROUNDS AND

INNER ROUNDS : SISHTAS. ONE UNIVERSAL BASIC LAW : As ABOVE,

so BELOW. THE " EYE " AND THE " HEART " DOCTRINES . . 458

CHAPTER XLIII

ANALOGY : THE LIFE OF MAN AND THE LIFE OF A PLANETARY CHAIN.

OCCULTISM AND ETHICS : " LIVE THE LIFE IF THOU WOULDST KNOW

THE DOCTRINE " 471

CHAPTER XLIV

PRINCIPLES OF THOUGHT AND STUDY : CAN OCCULTISM BE TAUGHT ?

ANCIENT ASTROLOGY A TRUE SCIENCE. OUR EARTH-CHAIN OF GLOBES,

THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS, AND THE TWELVE ZODIACAL SIGNS.

LIFE- ATOMS : THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF THE UNIVERSE . .481

CHAPTER XLV

PHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PNEUMATOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE. TEN

AND TWELVE PLANES OF THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM : INTERMEDI-

ATE CRITICAL PLANES. ALL MANIFESTED BEING A GRADED CONTINUUM

OF INTERRELATED, INTERLOCKED HIERARCHIES : EACH WITH ITS

OWN BEGINNING AND END. SISHTAS AND THE "SURPLUS OF LIF*" 496

CONTENTS xvii

CHAPTER XLVI

PAGE

THE CHELA-LIFE. SEVEN AND TEN LIFE- WAVES : THE COURSE OF THE

MONADS AROUND THE SEVEN GLOBES : LAWS OF " ACCELERATION "

ON THE DOWNWARD AND OF " RETARDATION " ON THE UPWARD ARC.

FIFTH AJJD SIXTH ROUNDERS. THE SACRED " WORD " . . .514

CHAPTER XLVII

TEACHER AND PUPIL. REQUISITES OF CHELASHIP .... 527

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE. THE WAY TO PEACE, BLISS, UNDERSTAND-

ING, is WITHIN. THE GREAT QUEST : KNOW THYSELF : THE WHOLE

SECRET OF INITIATION. OUR RESPONSIBILITY : ETHICAL VALUES AND

THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE : HARMONY 535

PART I

FUNDAMENTALS OF

f HE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

PART I

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CHAPTER I

THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE

ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT

RELIGIONS.

. . . neither the collective Host (Demiurgos) , nor any of the working powers

individually, are proper subjects for divine honors or worship. All are entitled

to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever

striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his

ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incog-

nizable Kdrana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine

and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart invisible, intan-

gible, unmentioned, save through " the still small voice " of our spiritual con-

sciousness. Those who worship before it ought to do so in the silence and the

sanctified solitude of their Souls ; making their spirit the sole mediator between

them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their

sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 280.

FELLOW-STUDENTS of the Ancient Wisdom :

We stand on holy ground. The Leader's call seems like

the clarion voice of the Law, of the Ancient Wisdom, which,

echoing down the ages, rings in our hearts at a moment

like this, and seems to tell us in accents that we may interpret if

we have the heart and the soul so to do : " Fideles, surswn cor da :

Up hearts, ye faithful ones ! " And may we not answer in the

same spirit which the Leader has shown, has manifested to us

this evening : " Yea, verily, in the name of Truth, we lift our

hearts to the shining god within each one of us " ?

We are here this evening in the presence of the agent and the

representative of the Exalted Men who form the Guardian-Body

of the Esoteric Philosophy. We must feel called. The hour is a

solemn one. It is time for us to rise above personality and, face

to face with ourselves, search our hearts, and endeavor so to

speak the words which we have learned that, as the Teacher has

told us, others who have had less chance than ourselves may in

their turn pass on these truths of the inner life.

In our last two meetings we studied the Three Fundamental

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Postulates or Principles in H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful* work,

The Secret Doctrine. I remember in particular the Teacher's words

in comment after the meeting had ended. They struck me as very

beautiful, profoundly suggestive. She said :

" Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful, spiritual-

izing force ; one cannot think toward it without a dispcjsition

either to think more or feel more without opening up the inner

consciousness of man. And when that inner consciousness is

awakened, the soul finds itself closer to the infinite laws, closer

to THAT, or that Great Center that no words can express."

We have endeavored to reach two planes, which we have to

compare, to reach, by the appeal to the Inmost within ourselves.

We are taught that there exists in man a link with the Unutter-

able, a cord, a communication, that extends from It to the inner

consciousness ; and that link such is the teaching as it has

come down to us is the very Heart of Being. It arises in that

super-sensory Principle, that Unutterable Mystery which H. P.

Blavatsky defines in the first of the Three Fundamental Pro-

positions as above human mind. Becoming one with that link,

we can transcend the powers of ordinary human intellect, and

reach (even if it be by striving out, upward, towards) that Uc-

utterable, which is though it is beyond human power to express

it in words, or beyond human thought which is, we know, the

Concealed of the Concealed, the Life of Life, Truth of Truth,

the ALL.

Here is the thought, it seems to me, which illustrates so well

the Teacher's words ; striving toward this inwards, towards the

Inmost, we can attain to some conception, if not understanding,

of the Infinite Principle of all that is. From It, in the course of

endless duration, there spring into manifestation so the teaching

runs at the end of the great universal or cosmic Pralaya, the

beginnings of things. These beginnings eventuate in the forms

of life and being that H. P. Blavatsky describes in the Second

and Third Fundamental Propositions.

This inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient

India by the term SELF, which has been often mistranslated

' Soul '. The Sanskrit word is Atman, and applies, in psychology,

to the human entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, to

use human terms, was called Paramatman, or the ' Self Beyond ',

the permanent SELF words which describe neatly and clearly

to those who have studied this wonderful philosophy, somewhat

of the nature and essence of the thing which man is, and the

source from which, in that beginningless and endless duration, he

sprang. Child of earth and child of heaven, he contains both in

himself.

We pass now from considering the First Proposition to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 3

Secorfd and the Third. And in order that we may understand

what we mean when we use certain words, it will be useful to

illustrate our usages of such words. Let us take up the very

interesting and remarkably well translated book entitled The

Song Celestial, the work of Sir Edwin Arnold. It is a translation

into ipngHsh verse of the Bhagavad-Gitd. That work is an episode

or an interlude in the Mahdbhdmta, the greater of the two great

Hindti epics. It is found in the sixth book of the Mahdbhdrata,

i.e., the ' Great Bharata ' ; and in the style of the Hindti writings

it comprises a dissertation on religious, philosophical, and mystical

subjects. It has been several times translated, more or less

successfully. Possibly the best has been that of our second

Teacher, William Quan Judge. His work is a recension, rather,

of a translation by Wilkins, modified by Cockburn, and in turn

corrected, according to the Esoteric Philosophy, by Mr. Judge.

Sir Edwin's Song Celestial, in book the second, has the following :

... The soul which is not moved,

The soul that with a strong and constant calm

Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently,

Lives in the life undying ! That which is

Can never cease to be ; that which is not

Will not exist. To see this truth of both

Is theirs who part essence from accident,

Substance from shadow. Indestructible,

Learn thou ! the Life is, spreading life through all ;

It cannot anywhere, by any means,

Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.

But for these fleeting frames which it informs

With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,

They perish. ....

Never the spirit was born ; the spirit shall cease to be never ;

Never was time it was not ; End and Beginning are dreams !

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever ;

Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems !

Now these words are exquisitely beautiful. They nevertheless

contain a mistranslation, a misrendering of the text of this

wonderful little work. In the first place, Sir Edwin translates

the Sanskrit word TAT, which we explained in our last study,

first by the word soul and next by the word spirit. Of course,

analogically, it has a reference to the Soul and the Spirit of Man ;

but the Sanskrit of it does not point particularly to the Soul of

Man. I will read a translation in prose, of these same verses,

made with no attempt at poetic thought, no attempt to use

beautiful language, but simply to express the thought :

The man whom these do not lead astray, Bull among men ! who

is the same in pain and pleasure, and of steady soul, he partakes of

immortality.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

There is no existence for the unreal ; there is no non-existence for

the Real. Moreover, the ultimate characteristic of both these is seen

by those who perceive true principles.

Know THAT to be indestructible by which this whole Universe was

woven.

The Sanskrit word for That is TAT ; and by that word the

Vedic Sages described this Unutterable Principle, from which all

sprang. The figure is that of the weaving of a web.

The destruction of this Imperishable, none is able to bring about.

These mortal bodies are said to be of the imbodied Eternal, Inde-

structible, Immeasurable One. . . .

He who knows It as the slayer, and he who thinks It to be the slain :

both of them understand not. It slays not, nor is it slain.

It is not born, nor does it ever die ; It was not produced, nor shall

it ever be produced.

It is unborn, constant, everlasting, primeval. It is unhurt when

the body is slain.

The application that the writer in the Bhagavad-Gitd makes,

is to the link which we have spoken of, the deathless, undying

principle within us ; and he describes it by the word THAT, and

contrasts it with the manifested Universe, which, following t^e

Ancient Teachings of India, was invariably spoken of as THIS :

the Sanskrit word is ID AM.

The Sages of Olden Times left on record the inner teaching of

the religions of the peoples among whom they lived. This inner

teaching was the Esoteric Philosophy, the Theosophy of the

period. In Hindusthan this Theosophy is found in the Upanishads,

a part of the Vedic literary cycle. The word itself implies ' Secret

Doctrine ' or ' Secret Teachings '. From the Upanishads and

from other parts of the wonderful Vedic literature, the ancient

sages of India produced what is called to-day the Ved&nta a com-

pound Sanskrit word meaning ' the End (or Completion) of the

Veda ', that is to say, instruction in the final and most perfect

exposition of the meaning of the Vedic tenets.

In Ancient Greece there were various Schools and various

Mysteries ; and the Theosophy of Ancient Greece was held very

secret ; it was taught in the Mysteries and it was taught by

different teachers to select bodies of their disciples. One of such

great teachers was Pythagoras ; another was Plato ; and this

Theosophy was more or less clearly outlined and imbodied, after

the fall of the so-called Pagan religions, in what is to-day called

the Neo-Platonic philosophy. It represents actually the inner

teachings of Pythagoras, Plato, and the inner sense of those

mystical doctrines which passed current in Greece under the name

of the Orphic poems.

Of the Theosophy of Egypt we have but scanty remainings

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 5

such as exist in what is called ' The Book of the Dead '. Of the

Theosophy of ancient America, of the Incan, the Mayan, empires

we have next to nothing. The Theosophy of ancient Europe has

passed away. All that remains to us is a certain number of

mystical writings such as the Scandinavian Eddas, and the

Germanic* books, which are represented, for instance, in the

Sagas found written in the old High German and in the Anglo-

Saxon tongues.

A study which anyone can make of the doctrines contained in

'the Upanishads, in ' The Book of the Dead ', in the Neo-Platonic

philosophy, in the Scandinavian Eddas, and elsewhere, shows

that they had one common basis, one foundation, one common

truth. Various men in various ages at various times taught the

same truth, using different words and different tropes, different

figures, different metaphors ; but underneath always was the

Ancient Doctrine, the Secret Wisdom.

The Theosophy of the Jews was imbodied in what was later

called the Qabbalah, from a Hebrew word meaning ' to receive ' ;

that is to say, it was the traditional doctrine handed down, or

received (according to the statements of the Qabbalah itself)

through the prophets and the sages of Jewry ; and was said to

have been first taught by " God Almighty to a select company of

angels in Heaven ".

We must understand, when we approach the teachings of the

Ancient Wisdom, that the ancient teachers spoke and thought

and taught anthropocentrically ; that is, that they all insisted on

following the psychological laws of the human mind, and there-

fore taught in human figures of speech, oft using quaint metaphors,

very odd, and yet so instructive as figures of speech. How wise

that was ! because they were able to carry on the Ancient Teach-

ings, and did so in such fashion that least of all did this anthropo-

centric system encourage the dogmatic rulings that have most

truly blasted all that was best in the teachings of the Christian

Church. These tropes, these metaphors, were so quaint that the

mind understood almost instantly that they were but the vehicle

imbodying the Truth. Let us remember this, and our work

becomes immensely more easy.

Now let us take the Qabbalah as a sample of the manner in

which one Theosophy the Jewish approaches the mystery of

how the Unmanifest produces the Manifest, how from that which

is endless and beginningless duration, sprang forth matter, space

in the sense of material extension, and time. But first let me

quote from another Sanskrit work, one of the Upanishads, the

Kena-Upanishad. Speaking of this Unutterable Mystery, it says :

The eye reacheth it not, language reacheth it not, nor does thought

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

reach to it at all ; verily, we know not nor can we say how onff should

teach it ; it is different from the known, it is beyond the unknown.

Thus have we heard from the men of olden times, for they taught it

to us.

The great Sankaracharya, perhaps the most famous of Indian

commentators on the Upanishads and the marvelously beautiful

system of philosophy drawn from them called the Veddnta, says,

commenting on the Aitareya-Upanishad :

There is the One, sole, alone, apart from all duality, in which there

appear not the multitudinous illusory presentments of unreal bodies

and conditions of this universe of merely apparent reality ; passion-

less, unmoving, pure, in utter peace ; knowable only by the lack of

every adjective epithet ; unreachable by word or by thought.

The Qabbalah is the traditionary teaching of the sages among

the Jews. It is a wonderful teaching ; it contains in outline or in

epitome every fundamental tenet or teaching that our own Secret

Doctrine contains. The teachings of the Qabbalah are often

couched in very quaint and sometimes amusing language ; some-

times its language rises to the height of sublimity. What does the

Z6har t the second of the great books that remain of the Jewish

Qabbalah (the word ' Zohar ' itself meaning ' Splendor '), have to

say of the manner in which the Jewish religious books should be

studied ? It says this (iii, 152 a) :

Woe be to the son of man who says that the Torah [the Hebrew

Bible, especially the Pentateuch, or rather the first four books of the

Bible excluding Deuteronomy, the fifth] contains common sayings

and ordinary narratives. If this were the case we might in the present

day compose a code of doctrines from profane writings which would

excite greater respect. If the Law contains ordinary matter, then there

are nobler sentiments in profane codes. Let us go and make a selection

from them and we shall be able to compile a far superior code. No !

Every word of the Law has a sublime sense and a heavenly mystery.

... As the spiritual angels had to put on earthly garments when

they descended to this earth, and as they could neither have remained

nor be understood on the earth without putting on such a garment,

so it is with the Law. When it descended on earth, the Law had to

put on an earthly garment, in order to be understood by us, and the

narratives are its garment. . . . Those who have understanding do

not look at the garment but at the body [the esoteric meaning] beneath ;

whilst the wisest, the servants of the heavenly King, those who dwell

on Mount Sinai, look at nothing but the soul,

i.e., at the ultimate Secret Doctrine or sacred wisdom hid under

the ' body ', under the exoteric narratives or stories of the Bible.

In these days, when Modernists and Fundamentalists quarrel

quarrel unnecessarily, quarrel about exoteric superficialities,

quarrel about things which arise out of the egoism of men, quarrel

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 7

about Ihe dogmatic teachings of the Christian Church, every one

of them probably based on ancient Pagan Esoteric Philosophy

it is an immense pity that they do not know and understand that

this teaching of the Qabbalah as expressed in the Zohar is a

true one ; it is the teaching of our three Leaders and Teachers ;

for under every garment is the life. As Jesus taught in parables,

so the Bible was written in tropes, in figures of speech, in

metaphors.

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CHAPTER II

WHERE IS REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE

NATURE ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS : THREEFOLD,

FOURFOLD, FIVEFOLD, OR SEVENFOLD.

The fundamental Law in that system [i.e., the Esoteric Philosophy], the central

point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon

which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUB-

STANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.

..." Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led,

From cause to cause to nature's secret head,

And found that one first Principle must be . . ."

It is called " Substance-Principle," for it becomes " substance " on the plane

of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a " principle " in the

beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. It is the omni-

present Reality : impersonal, because it contains all and everything. Its

impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every

atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 273.

It is the True. It is the Self, and thou art It.

Chhdndogya- Upanishad.

The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao ; the name

which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning

of Heaven and Earth ; with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one

who is eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence ;

he who is ever clogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. These

two things, the spiritual and the material, though we call them by different

names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness is a mystery the

mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all spirituality.

The Sayings of Lao Tzti (LIONEL GILES, Trans.).

E open Volume I of H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine

this evening at page 13, and we read the second

paragraph, which is as follows :

The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only

of the Cosmogony of our own planetary System and what is visible

around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to

the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they

could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there

seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are

allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say

openly that not even the highest Dhy&ni-Chohans have ever pene-

trated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the

milliards of Solar systems from the " Central Sun/ 1 as it is called.

Therefore, that which is given relates only to our visible Kosmos,

after a " Night of Brahma/'

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 9

We*choose this as the general text of our study this even-

ing. Following the Teacher's instructions, as we understand

them, it seems not only appropriate but necessary to open our

study of the more secret matters of which The Secret Doctrine

treats, by asking in what manner or by what method do we obtain

an understanding and a realization of these doctrines ? Do they

come to us as dogmatic teachings, or are they derived, following

the definition that Webster gives of Theosophy in his dictionary,

by inner spiritual communion with ' God ' ? There is something

in Webster's definition which is true. The Theosophist does

believe that he has within himself the faculty of approaching

divine things, of raising the inner man so that he can thereby

obtain a more accurate mental representation of things as they

are, or of Reality.

But on the other hand, if everyone did this, without proper and

capable guidance and leading and teaching, extreme vanity and

human conceit as well as many other forces in the human economy,

would inevitably lead to an immense diversity of opinions and

teachings and doctrines, each man believing that he had the

truth and he only, and hence that those who followed him and

preached his views should form with him a special ' church ' or

' sect ' of their own. The words themselves would probably be

avoided, but it would amount to that.

Therefore, here we find the use, the benefit, the appositeness, of

the Theosophical doctrines which our Teachers have given to us,

to the effect that these teachings have come down to us from

immemorial antiquity transmitted from one Teacher to another

and that originally they were communicated to the nascent

human race, when once it became self-conscious, by Beings from

a higher sphere Beings who themselves were of divine origin ;

and further, that this communication or emanation of their

spiritual and higher intellectual selves into us, gave us our own

higher principles. For the Teachers have told us that these

doctrines have been checked or proved age after age, generation

after generation, by innumerable spiritual seers, to use Helena

Petrovna Blavatsky's own words checked in every respect,

checked as to fact, checked as to origin, checked as to operation

on the human mind.

Now then, as the older students of this School many of whom

are here present know well, the faculties by which man can

attain a knowledge of truth, of the Real, can be called upon or

evoked at any moment in any place, provided the right conditions

are made, so that the striving soul may thus reach successfully

upward or inward, and know. Sometimes, in the most simple

teachings are found the most divine truths. And why ? Because

the simple teachings are the fundamental ones.

io

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Consider for a moment, therefore, the seven principles 8f man,

in their connexion with the seven principles of the universe. The

seven principles of man are a likeness or copy of the seven cosmic

principles. They are actually the offspring of the seven cosmic

principles, limited in their action in us by the workings of the

Law of Karman, but running in their origin back "into That

which is beyond : into that which is the Essence of the universe

or the Universal ; in, beyond, within, to the Unmanifest, to the

Unmanifestable, to that first Principle which Helena Petrovna

Blavatsky enunciates as the leading thought of the Wisdom-

Philosophy of The Secret Doctrine.

These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy

by which the human, spiritual, and psychical economy has been

explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles,

or parts, of man were differently reckoned the Christian reckons

them as Body, Soul, and Spirit, and does not know the difference

between the soul and the spirit : he thinks there must be a

difference but does not know what it is ; and many say that the

soul and spirit are the same.

Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold

entity, others into a fivefold. The Jewish philosophy, as found in

the Qabbalah which is the esoteric tradition of the Jews, teaches

that man is divided into four parts :

1. The highest and most spiritual of all, that principle or art

which is to us a mere breath of being, they called Neshdmdh.

2. The second principle was called Ruahh or Spiritual Soul,

spelled sometimes Ruach according to another method of trans-

literation.

3. The Astral Soul (or Vital Soul) was called Nefesh, the third

next lower, which man has in common with the brutes.

4. Then comes the Guf or physical vehicle, the house in which

all these others dwell.

Over all, and higher than all, higher than the Neshdmdh

which is not an emanation of this Highest, not a creation, not an

evolution, but of which it was the production in a sense which we

shall later have to explain there is the Ineffable, the Boundless,

called Ain Suf.

The Sanskrit terms which have been given by our Teachers to

the seven principles of man in our own Theosophical Philosophy,

are as follows, and we can get much help from explaining the

original Sanskrit meanings of them, and illustrating the sense in

which those words were used, and why they were chosen.

I. Sthula means coarse, gross, not refined, heavy, bulky, fat in

the sense of bigness. Sartra comes from a root which can best be

translated by saying that it is that which is easily dissolved, easily

worn away ; the idea being something transitory, foam-like, full

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ri

of holes, as it were. Note the meaning hid in this : it is very im-

portant.

2. The second principle let us call the Linga-Sartra. Linga is

a Sanskrit word which means characteristic mark ; hence model,

pattern. It, as we all know, forms the model or pattern on which

the physical body is built this physical body, composed mostly

of porosity, if the expression be pardoned ; the most unreal thing

we know, full of holes, foamy as it were. We will revert to this

thought later.

3. The third principle, commonly called the Life-Principle, is

Prdna. Now this word is used here by our Philosophy in a general

sense. There are, as a matter of fact, a number of life-currents,

vital fluids. They have several names. One system gives the

number as three ; another as five, which is the commonly accepted

number ; another as seven ; another twelve, as is found in some

Upanishads ; and one old writer even gives them as thirteen.

4. Then there is the Kama-principle ; the word kdma means

desire. It is the driving or impelling force in the human economy ;

colorless, neither good nor bad, only such as the mind and soul

direct its use.

5. Then comes Manas ; the Sanskrit root of this word means to

think, to cogitate, to reflect mental activity, in short.

6. Then comes Buddhi, or the Spiritual Soul, the vehicle or

carrier of the highest principle of all, the Atman. Now Buddhi

comes from a Sanskrit root budh. This root is commonly trans-

lated, to enlighten, but a better translation is to awaken and, hence,

to understand ; Buddha, the past participle of this root is applied

to one who is spiritually awakened, no longer living a living death,

but awakened to the spiritual influence from within or from

' above ' 9 Buddhi is the principle in us which gives us spiritual

consciousness, and is the^ vehicle of the most high part of man.

This highest part is the Atman.

7. This principle (Atman) is a universal one ; but during in-

carnations its lowest parts, if we can so express it, take on attri-

butes, because it is linked with the Buddhi as the Buddhi is

linked with the Manas, as the Manas is linked to the Kama, and

so on down the scale.

Atman is also sometimes used of the Universal Self or Spirit

which is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the

Brahman or Universal Spirit is also called the Paramatman, a

compound Sanskrit term meaning the highest or most universal

Atman. The root of Atman is hardly known. Its origin is un-

certain, but the general meaning is that of self.

Beyond Brahman is the Para-Brahman. Para is a Sanskrit

word meaning beyond. Note the deep philosophical meaning of

this; there is no attempt here to limit the Illimitable, the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Ineffable, by adjectives ; it simply means beyond the Br&hman.

In the Sanskrit Vedas and in the works deriving therefrom and

belonging to the Vedic literary cycle, this beyond is called That,

as this world of manifestation is called This. Other very expres-

sive terms are Sat, the Real ; and A sat, the Unreal or the mani-

fested universe ; in another sense Asat means ' not Sat 4 ', i.e., even

beyond (higher than) Sat.

Now this Para-Brahman is intimately connected with Mula-

prakriti a word we shall explain in a moment. Their interaction

and intermingling cause the first nebulous thrilling, if the words

will pass, of the Universal Life when spiritual desire first arose

in it in the beginnings of things. Such is the old teaching, employ-

ing of necessity the old anthropocentric tropes, clearly understood

to be only human metaphors, human similes ; for the conceptions

of the Seers of ancient times, their teachings, their doctrines, had

to be told in human language to the human mind.

Now then, a man can reach inward, going ' upward ' step by

step, climbing higher as his spiritual force and power wax greater

and more subtil, until he reaches beyond his normal faculties,

and steps beyond the ' Ring Pass Not ', as Helena Petrovna Blavat-

sky calls it in her Secret Doctrine. Where and what is this ' Ring

Pass Not ' ? It is, at any period of man's consciousness, the

utmost reach that his spirit can attain. There he stops, and looks

into the Beyond into the Unmanifested from which we came.

The Unmanifest is in us ; it is the Inmost of the inmost in our

souls, in our spirits, in our essential beings. We can reach towards

it. We can actually reach it never.

Now, where is Reality ? Is the Real, is the True, to be found in

these lower vestures of materiality ? Or is it to be found in the

State of Being from which everything came ?

The ancient Stoics in their really wonderful philosophy taught,

and the same teaching originated in the esoteric philosophy of

Hellas or Greece as found later in the Neo-Platonic teachings

these ancient Stoics taught that Truth can be known ; that the

most real thing, the greatest thing, was to be found in ever-

receding vistas, as the Spirit of man strived inward, ^nd beyond,

veil after veil falling away as the Wise Man (their technical term)

advances in the evolution of his soul. They taught that the

material universe was illusory precisely as our Teachers tell us of

the Maya ; and the Stoic understood (and this teaching is our

own) that this apparently dense, gross, heavy, material universe

is phenomenally unreal, mostly built up of holes, so to say a

teaching which is beginning to be re-echoed even to-day in the

writings and thoughts of the more intuitional of our scientists.

The Stoics taught that the ether was denser than the most dense

material thing, fuller than the most full material thing using

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 13

humar^ words, of course. To us, with our human eyes, trained

only to see objects of illusion, it appears to be the most diaphanous,

the thinnest, the most ethereal. What was the Reality, the Real,

behind this All ? The real thing ? They said it was God, Life of

Life, Truth of Truth, Root of Matter, Root of Soul, Root of Spirit.

When the Stoic was asked : What is God ? he nobly answered l

What is God not ?

Turning now to the Ancient Wisdom of Hindusthan, to the

Ufianishads, let us take from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, mainly

in the sixth lecture, a conversation between a father and his son.

Hearken to the Ancient Wisdom, going back far beyond the time

when the ancient Brahmanic teachings and the Brahmanas became

what they are today to the time when real men taught real

things. The son asks :

" If a man who has slept in his own house, rises and goes to another

village, he knows that he has come from his own house. Why then do

people not know that they have come from the Sat ? " [A Sanskrit

word meaning the Real, the Ineffable of which we have spoken.]

And the father teaches his son as follows :

" These rivers, my son, run, the eastern towards the east, the

western towards the west. They go from sea to sea. They become

indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not

know, I am this or that river,

" In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have

come from the True [that is the Real] know not that they have come

from the True [on account of the Maya], Whatever these creatures

are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge,

or a gnat, or a mosquito, that they become again and again."

Now listen :

" That which is that subtil essence, in it all that exists has its self.

It is the True, It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." " Please,

Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my child," the

father replied.

Now the son is supposed to ask, " How is it that living beings,

when in sleep or death they are merged again in the Sat [that is,

the Real], are not destroyed ? Waves, foam, and bubbles arise

from the water, and when they merge again in the water, they are

gone/'

" If someone were to strike at the root of this large tree, here,"

says the father, " it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its

stem, it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its top, it would

bleed, but live. Pervaded by the living Self that tree stands firm,

drinking in its nourishment and rejoicing ;

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? But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its branches, that

branch withers ; if it leaves a second, that branch withers ; if it

leaves a third, that branch withers. If it leaves the whole tree, the

whole tree withers. In exactly the same manner, my son, know this."

Thus he spoke :

" This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living self has left

it ; the living Self dies not. That which is that subtil essence, in it

all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou,

O Svetaketu, art it."

" Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my

child I " the father replied. " Fetch me from thence a fruit of the

Nyagrodha tree." " Here is one, Sir." " Break it." " It is broken,

Sir." " What do you see there ? " " These seeds, almost infinitesimal."

" Break one of them." " It is broken, Sir." " What do you see there ? "

" Not anything, Sir." The father said : " My son, that subtil essence

which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great

Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the subtil

essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self,

and thou, Svetaketu, art it." " Please, Sir, inform me still more,"

said the son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied.

" Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning."

The son did as he was commanded. The father said to him : " Bring

me the salt, which you placed in the water last night." The son having

looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted. The father,

said : " Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it ? " The

son replied : " It is salt." " Taste it from the middle. How is it ? "

The son replied : "It is salt." " Taste it from the bottom, how is

it ? " The son replied : " It is salt." The father said : " Throw it

away and then wait on me." He did so ; but salt exists for ever.

Then the father said : " Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not

perceive the True [Sat], my son ; but there indeed it is.

" That which is the subtil essence [that is, the saltiness of the salt],

in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou,

O Svetaketu, art it." " Please Sir, inform me still more," said the

son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied. (Translation by Max

Miiller).

Let us turn to another part of this Upanishad, to the eighth

lecture. And we read as follows : " Harih, Om." Hari is the

name of several Deities of Siva, and Vishnu, but here, appar-

ently, it is used for Siva, which, as our first Teacher has taught

us, is pre-eminently the divine protector of the mystic occultist,

' Om ' is a word considered very holy in the Brahmanical litera-

ture. It is a syllable of invocation, and its general usage, as

elucidated in the literature treating of it, which is rather volumin-

ous, for this word ' Om ' has attained to almost divinity, is that

it should never be uttered aloud, or in the presence of an out-

sider, a foreigner, or a non-Initiate, but it should be uttered in

the silence of one's heart, in the intimacy of one's inner closet.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 15

We a^ have reason to believe, however, that it was uttered, and

uttered aloud in a monotone by the disciples in the presence of

their Teacher. This word is always placed at the beginning of

any scripture that is considered of unusual sanctity.

The teaching is, that prolonging the uttering of this word, both

of the and the Af, with the mouth closed (precisely as the

Teacher has taught us to do it in this School), it re-echoes in and

arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be

pure, the different nervous centers of the body for great good.

The Brahmanas say that it is an unholy thing to utter this

word in any place which is unholy. I now read :

There is this city of Brahman [that is, the heart and the body],

and in it the palace, the small lotus (of the heart), and in it that small

ether.

The Sanskrit word which Miiller, the translator, has not given

here for ' small ether ', doubtless because he knew not how to

translate it, is antardkdta, a compound Sanskrit word meaning

within the Akdia. He called it ' small ether ', doubtless because he

knew not how to translate it too difficult. I read again :

Now what exists within that small ether, that it is to be sought for,

that is to be understood. And if they should say to him : " Now

with regard to that city of Brahman, and the palace in it, i.e., the

small lotus of the heart, and the small ether within the heart, what

is there within it that deserves to be sought for, or that is to be under-

stood ? "

Then he should say : " As large as this ether (all space) is, so large

is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained

within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and

stars ; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and

whatever is not [i.e., ' whatever has been or will be ' says Max Miiller],

all that is contained within it."

And if they should say to him : "If everything that exists is con-

tained in that city of Brahman, all beings and all desires (whatever

can be imagined or desired), then what is left of it, when old age

reaches it and scatters it, or when it falls to pieces ? "

Then he should say : " By the old age of the body, that (the ether,

or Brahman within it) does not age ; by the death of the body, that

(the ether, or the Brahman within it) is not killed. That (the Brahman)

is the true Brahma-city (not the body). In it all [true] desires are

contained. It is the Self, free from sin, free from old age, from death

and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it

ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine.

Now as here on earth people follow as they are commanded, and

depend on the object which they are attached to, be it a country or

a piece of land,

" And, as here on earth, whatever has been acquired by exertion,

perishes, so perishes whatever is acquired for the next world by

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

sacrifices and other good actions performed on earth. THbse who

depart from hence without having discovered the Self and those

true desires, for them there is no freedom in all the worlds. But

those who depart from hence, after having discovered the Self and

those true desires, for them there is freedom in all the worlds."

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CHAPTER III

THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF

MORALS : ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY

OF THE ALL. THE SELF AND THE " SELVES ".

May& or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything

that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance

which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power

of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmean-

ing confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly

a face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute

existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences

belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in

degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colorless screen ;

but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the

things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things

possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash

through the material world ; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly,

so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into

the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting

in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our

only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during

the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and

the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each

advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached " reality " ;

but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our

own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 39, 40.

The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary

therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to

the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the

Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the

mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is

real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.

Ibid., I, 274.

IN taking up again this evening our study of The Secret

Doctrine at the point we reached a fortnight ago, I open

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's book, the first volume, at

page 17, and read the third fundamental postulate at least

a portion of it :

The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul,

the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root ; and the obli-

gatory pilgrimage for every Soul a spark of the former through the

Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity ") in accordance with Cyclic and

Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely

spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious)

existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the

Universal Sixth principle or the OVER-SOUL has (a) passed through

i8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara,

and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by

self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus

ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to

the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel

(Dhyani-Buddha).

Paul, the Apostle of the Christians " to the Gentiles ", as they

call him, according to the Christian Gospels in Acts, xvii, verses

2^-28, spoke to an assembly of the Athenians on Mars Hill, com-

monly called the Areopagus, and he said the following (the transla-

tion being ours) :

For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with

this inscription : " To the Unknowable God." For in It we live and

move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said,

" For we are also of Its line. 1 '

The poets of whom Paul speaks were probably Cleanthes the

Stoic, and Aratus. It is perhaps well to mention that the sense

of ' Unknowable ', as used in connexion with this word Agnosias,

is that employed by Homer, by Plato, and by Aristotle* This

Greek word Agnostos also permits the translation 'unknown',

but merely because the Unknown in this connexion is the

Unknowable.

The Athenians had raised an altar to the Ineffable, and with

the true spirit of religious devotion they left it without further

qualification ; and Paul, passing by and seeing it, thought he

saw an excellent chance to ' make hay while the sun shone ', so

to say, and claimed the Unknowable to which this altar had

been raised, as the Jewish God, Jehovah.

A fortnight ago, following the Teacher's instructions, we stated

how it was that man could form some conception of that Ineffable

Principle of which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky speaks on pages

14-19 of her Secret Doctrine, as being the first of the three funda-

mental postulates, necessary in order to understand the true

teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom ; and we saw that man has in

himself, as was then said, a faculty transcending the ordinary

human intellectual power something in Jbdm by which he can

raise himself upwards or, perhaps better, inwards, towards the

Inmost Center of his own being, which in very truth is that

Ineffable : from It we came, back to It we are journeying through

the aeons of time.

All the ancient philosophers taught the truth concerning this

same fundamental principle, each in his own way, each with

different terms, each in the language of the country where it was

promulgated, but always there was taught the central truth :

that in the inmost being of man there lives a divinity, and this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 19

divinity is the offspring of the Highest, and that man can becdme

a God in the flesh or he can sink as the Teacher's words have

told us this evening lower even than the common average of

humanity, so that he becomes at first obsessed or beset, and

finally possessed by the daemons of his own lower nature and

by those df the lower sphere ; and by these particular daemons

we mean the elemental forces of life, of chaotic life, or of the

material sphere of being.

Again, how is it that man cannot see these truths intimately and

immediately ? We all know the answer is, on account of the

illusion under which his mind labors, the illusion which is a part

of himself, not cast upon him from the outside : he sees, for

instance, and his mind reacts to the vision, and the reaction is

conducted along the lines of the illusion, which, taking the ancient

Sanskrit word, our first Teacher has called Maya.

This is a technical term in the ancient Brahmanical philosophy.

Let us examine its root. What does the word Maya come from ?

It comes from a Sanskrit root md ; the meaning of ma is to

measure, and by a trope of speech that is by a figure of speech

it comes to mean to effect, or to form, and hence to limit. There is

an English word mete, meaning to measure out, from the same

Indo-European root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon as the root

met, it is found in the Greek as med, and it is found in the Latin

also in the same form.

Now Maya, as a technical term, has come to mean ages ago

in the wonderful Brahmanical philosophy it was understood very

differently from what it is now usually understood to be the

fabrication by man's mind of ideas derived from interior and

exterior impressions, and hence the illusory aspect of man's

thoughts as he considers and tries to interpret and understand

life and his surroundings and thence was derived the sense

which it technically bears, illusion. It does not mean that the

exterior world is non-existent ; if it were, it obviously could not

be illusory ; it exists, but ^'s not. It is ' measured out ' or it

stands out to the human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we

do not see clearly and plainly and in their reality the vision and

the visions which our mind and senses present to the inner life

and eye.

The familiar illustrations of Maya in the Vedanta, which is the

highest form that the Brahmanical teachings have taken, and

which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such

as follows : A man at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground,

and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope is there, but

no serpent.

Another illustration is what is called the ' horns of the hare '.

Now the animal called the hare has no horns, but when it also

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

is seen at eventide its long ears seem to project from its head in

such fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as being a

creature with horns. The hare has no horns, but there is then

in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns exists

there.

That is what Maya means: not that a thing seen does not

exist, but that we are blinded and our mind perverted by our

own thoughts and our own imperfections, and do not as yet

arrive at the real interpretation and meaning of the world, of the

universe around us. By ascending inwardly, by rising up, by

inner aspiration, by an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards

or rather inwards toward that plane where Truth abides in

fullness.

Bernard of Clairvaux, the French mystic of the Middle Ages,

said that one way of doing this, and he spoke truly, was by

' emptying the mind ', pouring out the trashy stuff it contains,

the illusory beliefs, the false views, the hatreds, suspicions, care-

lessness, etc., and that by emptying out all this trash, the temple

within is cleansed, and the light from the God within streams

forth into the soul a wonderful figure of thought for a Christian

Mystic, but a true one.

It may be asked : What relationship has our wonderful philo-

sophy to the many so-called idealistic systems of Europe, par-

ticularly in Germany, and represented by Bishop Berkeley in

Britain ? The answer is that there are points of contact, naturally,

because the men who evolved these systems of philosophy were

earnest men, and no man can earnestly think and strive upwards

without arriving at some visions of truth, some faint perceptions

of the inner life but none of the systems of idealism which they

taught is exactly the idealism ; which Theosophy is. Theosophy is

not an absolute idealism, it does not teach that the external

universe is absolutely non-existent and that all external phe-

nomena merely exist in the mind.

Theosophy is not exactly either the idealism of Kant nor the

wonderful pessimistic idealism of Schopenhauer wonderful as

this great thinker was, and wonderful precisely because he

derived his knowledge (and confessed it openly) from the Orient.

The idealism of Theosophy is nearest to the philosophy of the

German philosopher, von Schelling, who taught (principally) that

truth was to be perceived by receding inwards and taking it from

the Spirit, and that the outward world is ' dead mind ' or perhaps

rather inert mind not the mind of the thinker obviously, but

the mind of the Deity. Now thi is called ' objective idealism '

because it recognises the external object as having existence :

it is not non-existent, as absolute idealism would put it. Schell-

ing's ideas come nearest but by no means equal the grandiose

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 21

teaching which our great Teachers have taught us is the

Truth.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume

of The Secret Doctrine :

Esoteric ^philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism though it

regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mdyd, temporary

illusion draws a practical distinction between collective illusion,

Mahdmdyd, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objec-

tive relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this

illusion lasts.

The teaching, as all older students of the Esoteric School know

and I believe that many of them are here present this evening

is that Maya is thus called from the action of Mtilaprakriti, or

root-nature, the co-ordinate principle of that other line of co-

active consciousness which we call Parabrahman. We remember

that we discussed these questions at our former meeting, and we

say that from the moment when manifestation begins, it acts

dualistically, that is to say, that everything in Nature from that

point onwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long and

short, high and low, night and day, good and evil, consciousness

and non-consciousness, etc., and that all these things are essen-

tially mayic or illusory real while they last, but the lasting is

not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of opposites that

the self-conscious soul learns Truth.

What is the basis of morals ? This is the most important ques-

tion that can be asked of any system of thought. Is morality

based on the dicta of man ? Is morality based on the conviction

in most men's hearts that for human safety it is necessary to have

certain abstract rules which it is merely convenient to follow ?

Are we mere opportunists ? or is morality, ethics, based on Truth,

which it is not merely expedient for man to follow, but needful,

necessary ? Surely upon the latter !

And in the third Fundamental Postulate which we read at the

opening of our study this evening, we find, as was before said, the

very elements, the very fundamentals, of a system of morality

greater than which, profounder than which, more persuasive than

which, perhaps, it would be impossible to imagine anything.

On what, then, is morality based ? And by morality I mean not

merely the opinion which some pseudo-philosophers have, that

morality is more or less that which is ' good for the community ',

based on the mere meaning of the Latin word mores, ' good cus-

toms ', as opposed to bad. No ! morality is that instinctive hunger

of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man

because it is good and satisfying and ennobling to do so.

When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and

outwards, high and low ; that he is one with them, not merely

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as members of a community are one, not merely as individuals

of an army are one, but like the molecules of our own flesh, like

the atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom, com-

posing one unity not a mere union but a spiritual unity then he

sees Truth.

Everyone of us belongs to, and is an inhering part of, that

Sublime and Ineffable Mystery the ALL which contains and

is individual and spiritual unity.

We have all of us one inward universal Self, and each one has

also his individual ego. The ego springs from the Self and the

Self is the Ineffable, the Inmost of the Inmost, one in all of us

giving each one of us that sense of selfhood ; although by exten-

sion of meaning we also speak, and properly speak, of the ' lower

self ', because this is a tiny ray from the Highest. Even the evil

man, as our present great Teacher has taught us, has in himself

not merely the spark of the divine, but the very ray of divinity

itself : he is both the selfish ego and the Universal Self.

Why then are we taught that when we attain selflessness, we

attain the Divine ? Precisely because selflessness is the attribute

of the Paramatman, the Universal Self, where all personality

vanishes. Paramatman is a Sanskrit compound, meaning highest

or supreme self.

If we examine our own spirits, if we reach inwards, if we stretch

ourselves inwards, as it were, towards the Inmost, every one of us

may know that as he goes farther, farther, farther in, the self

becomes selfless, the light becomes pure glory.

What a thought, that in the heart of each one of us there

dwells, there lives, the Ever-Unfolding, the Constant, the Eternal,

the Changeless, knowing no death, knowing no sorrow, the very

divinity of all ! How it dignifies human life ! What courage does

it give to us ! How does it clear away all of the old moldy super-

stitions 1 What unspeakable visions of Reality, of the Truth, do

we obtain when we go inwards, after having emptied the mind,

as Bernard says, of all the mental trash that encumbers it 1

These are the doctrines of our Teachers ; our present Outer

Head is telling us it daily, hinting at it in this way and in that

way, using these words and those words, taking the opportunity

on every occasion that presents itself to awaken us, to instil these

eternal truths into us.

When man has reached the state where he realizes this and has

so ' emptied his mind ' that it is filled only with the Self Itself,

with the selfless selfhood of the Eternal what did the ancients

call this state ? What did they call such a man himself ? They

called the state, ' Bodhi ' ; and they called the human, ' Buddha ' ;

and the organ in and by which it was manifested, 'Buddhi'.

All these words came from a Sanskrit root, meaning to awaken.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 23

When rflan has awakened from the living death in which we live,

when he has cast off the toils of mind and flesh and, to use the old

Christian term, has put on the ' garments of eternity ', then he has

awakened, he is a Buddha. And the ancient Brahmanical teachings,

found today even in the Vedanta, state that he has become one

with not * absorbed ' as is constantly translated but has become

one with the Self of selves, with the Paramatman, the Supreme

Self.

Hearken a moment to the wisdom of the ancient Orient, not the

voice of modern Brahmanism (excepting the Vedanta) but to a

book which was ancient before our ancestors knew anything

higher than the quasi-barbaric ideas which Europe had two

thousand years ago.

We read from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, one of the most

important of the 108 or more Upanishads. The very word

'Upanishad' signifies 'Esoteric treatise'. We read from the

eighth lecture, seventh, eighth, and ninth sections. They con-

tain such truth that the Teacher has permitted us to take up our

time in reading it.

" Prajapati said " we interrupt by saying that Prajapati is a

Sanskrit word meaning governor or lord or master of progeny.

The word is applied to many of the Vedic gods, but in particular

to Brahma that is to say the third step from Parabrahman the

evolver-creator, the first and most recondite figure of the triad

consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma is the Emanator

or Evolver, Vishnu the Sustainer or Preserver, and Siva, which

may be translated euphemistically perhaps as ' beneficent ', the

Regenerator. This name is very obscure. However :

Praj^pati said : " The Self which is free from sin, free from old age,

from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing

but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought

to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we

must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and

understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires. 11

We interrupt to ask why ? Because this Self of selves, this

Inmost, is all worlds : it is All, it is Everything. Now to quote :

The Devas [gods] and Asuras [demons] both heard these words,

and said : " Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has

searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained/ 1

Thus saying Indra went from the Devas, Virochana from the Asuras,

and both, without having communicated with each other, approached

Praj^pati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom for pupils

approaching their master.

They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then

asked them : " For what purpose have you dwelt here ? "

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They replied: " A saying of yours is being repeated, Viz. 'the

Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief,

from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to

desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is

which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand.

He who has searched out that Self and understands it,, obtains all

worlds and all desires/ Now we both have dwelt here because we

wish for that Self/'

Prajkpati said to them : " The person that is seen in the eye, that is

the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless,

this is Brahman/ 1

Interrupting : the Self that is seen in the eye is a figure of speech

not infrequently found in the ancient Sanskrit writings ; it signi-

fies that sense of an indwelling presence that one sees when he

looks into the eyes of another.

They asked : " Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is

perceived in a mirror, who is he ? "

He replied : " He himself indeed is seen in all these/'

(Eighth Section) " Look at your Self in a pan of water, and whatever

you do not understand of your Self, come and tell me."

They looked in the water-pan. Then Prajapati said to them:

" What do you see ? "

They said : " We both see the self thus altogether, a picture even

to the very hairs and nails/'

Prajapati said to them : " After you have adorned yourselves, look

again into the water-pan."

They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best

clothes and cleaned themselves, looked into the water-pan.

Prajapati said : " What do you see ? "

They said : " Just as we arc, well adorned, with our best clothes and

clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes

and clean."

Prajapati said : " That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless,

this is Brahman."

Then both went away satisfied hv their hearts.

And Prajipati, looking after them, said : " They both go away

without having perceived and without having known the Self, and

whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this

doctrine will perish."

Interrupting : they saw Maya and not the Self.

Now Virochana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and

preached that doctrine to them, that the self (the body) alone is to be

worshipped, that the self (the body) alone is to be served, and that

he who worships the self, and serves the self, gains both worlds, this

and the next.

Therefore they call even now a man who does not give alms here,

who has no faith, and offers no sacrifices, an Asura, for this is the

doctrine of Asuras. They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 25

flowers, and fine raiment by way of ornament, and think they will

thus conquer that world.

(Ninth Section) But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas,

saw this difficulty.

Interrupting : the difficulty now comes which Indra saw.

As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when thet>ody

is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, well

cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the

body is blind, lame, if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled,

and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see

no good in this (doctrine).

Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to Praj^pati.

Praj&pati said to him : " Maghavat [Indra], as you went away with

Virochana, satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come

back ? "

He said : " Sir, as this self (the shadow) is well adorned, when the

body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed,

well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind,

if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is

crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. There-

fore I see no good in this (doctrine)."

" So it is indeed, Maghavat/' replied Praj^pati ; " but I shall explain

him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two

years. 1 '

Indra was able to see beyond the maya of the personal self, and

therefore was searching for the Real, for the True, the Self Itself.

The translation is Max Miiller's. It may be well to add in con-

clusion that all translations which have been made and may

hereafter be made are made by ourself, from any one of the

ancient languages, and if any quotation is taken from another

translator, his name will be given.

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CHAPTER IV

FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. 'HOW DOES

MANIFESTATION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PRALAYA.

The Scintillas are the " Souls," and these Souls appear in the threefold form

of Monads (units), atoms, and gods according to our teaching. " Every atom

becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere

of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral,

vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esoteric Catechism.) Again,

" God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body

(Atma, Manas, and Sthula-Sarlra) in man." In their septenary aggregation they

are the " Heavenly Man " (see Kabala for the latter term) ; thus, terrestrial man

is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. ..." The Monads (Jivas) are the

Souls of the Atoms, both are a fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) clothe

themselves when a form is needed." (Esoteric Catechism.)

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 619.

Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Conscious-

ness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and

of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass

in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast

of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as

independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm)

which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.

Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the

Absolute is essential to the existence of the " Manifested Universe." Apart from

Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual conscious-

ness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as

" I am I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind

at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic

Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness

could ensue.

The " Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it

were, the very essence of its EX-istence as " manifestation." But just as the

opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the

One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there

is " that " which links spirit to matter, subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the

occultists Fohat. It is the " bridge " by which the " Ideas " existing in the

" Divine Thought " are impressed on Cosmic substance as the " laws of Nature."

Ibid.. I, 15, 16.

BEFORE we open our study of The Secret Doctrine this

evening, it should be said that the Teacher has asked

me to repeat what was before stated with reference to

the nature of these studies, that is, that they are a sim-

plification of The Secret Doctrine in the sense of an explanation

and unfolding of the meaning of the teachings that the book

contains ; and in order to achieve these ends, it will be of course

necessary to bring to bear upon these doctrines for comparison

and in order to show analogy or identity, lines of thought from

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 27

the great religions of the world and from the great minds of ancient

times ; because these, in their essence, have sprung from the

central source of men's thought and religion which we to-day

call Theosophy.

Yet before we can really embark upon the study of The Secret

Doctrine itsfelf, as a book, it will be necessary during the course

of our studies to clear from our path certain stumbling-blocks

which are in the way of each of us ; certain ideas and so-called

principles of thought which have been instilled into our minds

from childhood, and which, on account of the psychological

effect they have on our minds, really prevent us from grasping

the truths of Being that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky has so

masterly given us in The Secret Doctrine.

In addition, it will be necessary to investigate certain very

ancient principles of thought, and to penetrate more deeply into

the real meaning of the ancient religions and philosophies than

has ever been done in any modern books, because those books

have been written by men who know nothing about the Esoteric

Philosophy, men who were mostly rebels against the barren

ecclesiasticism of the Christian Church; who, in order to gain

freedom from those chains of ecclesiasticism, actually went too

far the other way, and saw nothing but priestcraft and evil-doing

in these old religions, and in the acts and teachings of the men

who taught them, priests, philosophers, or scientists.

We really, also, cannot understand The Secret Doctrine unless

we have made these preliminary studies. We may read it as a

book, as we would take down a book from the shelf in the public

library and read it, but in doing so we do not get the essence, the

heart, the core of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's meaning.

Another point always to keep in mind is, that we are, as the

Teacher has told us more than once in these meetings, actually

assembled here as fellow-students and members of the Inner

School we are undertaking the study of the very doctrines which

formed the core of the heart of the teachings of the Mysteries

of ancient days. These Mysteries were divided into two general

parts, the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater.

The Lesser Mysteries were very largely composed of dramatic

rites or ceremonies, with some teaching ; the Greater Mysteries

were composed of, or conducted almost entirely on the ground of,

study, and later were proved by personal experience in initiation.

In the latter was explained among other things the secret

meaning of the mythologies of the old religions, as for instance

the Greek.

The active and nimble mind of the Greeks produced a mythology

which for grace and beauty is perhaps without equal, but it

nevertheless is very difficult to explain ; the Mysteries of Samo-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

thrace and of Eleusis the greater ones explained amcfog other

things what these myths meant. These myths formed the basis

of the exoteric religions ; but note well that exotericism does

not mean that the thing which is taught exoterically is in itself

false, but merely that it is a teaching given without the key to it :

such teaching is symbolic, illusory, touching on the truth : the

truth is there, but without the key to it which is the esoteric

meaning it yields no proper sense.

We open our study of The Secret Doctrine, this evening, by

reading from Vol. I, page 43, second and third paragraphs :

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every-

thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has

neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe "

is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons of

Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each

one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and

being a cause as regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured

as an out breathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is

eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the

Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When

" the Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is

regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One Existence

which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos.

(See Isis Unveiled.) So also it is when the Divine Breath is inspired

again the Universe disappears into the bosom of " the Great Mother,"

who then sleeps, " wrapped in her invisible robes."

A fortnight ago we were studying the question of Maya and the

relationship of the inner being of man to the Ineffable Essence ;

it remains for us briefly to study how man, who has a personal

element in him, sprang forth from the very essence of imperson-

ality, if one may so call it. We can say at once that the Infinite

and Impersonal never becomes finite and personal. How, then,

does the spirit of man (already the first film over the face of the

Absolute, as it were) come into being ? Let us remember that

the manifestation of worlds, and, deductively, of the beings

who inhabit those worlds, took place in the extension of matter

popularly called ' space '. A center, first, is ' localized ' a very

poor word to use ! and is, de facto, not infinite, not eternal ; if

it were, it could neither manifest nor come into outward existence,

for this is limitation. The Eternal, the Ineffable, the Infinite,

does not ever manifest at all, either partially or in toto. Words

themselves are misleading in treating of these subjects ; but what

can we say ? We must use human expressions in order to convey

our meaning.

How then arose manifestation ? The Ancient Wisdom tells

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 29

us the following : In the seeds of life remaining in space from a

planet which had previously run its Manvantara and had passed

into latency or Prakriti-Pralaya there came (when the hour

struck for manifestation to begin again) into being in these seeds

of life the activity called in Sanskrit trishnd (thirst, if you like,

desire for manifestation), thus forming the center around which

was to gather a new universe. It had by karmic necessity its

particular place in space and was to produce its particular kind

of progeny : gods, monads, atoms, men, and the three elementary

or elemental kingdoms of the world as we see it around us :

from the karmic seeds which were brought over and which were

lying latent from the preceding Manvantara.

The Universe reimbodies itself (it does not ' reincarnate ', which

means coming into flesh), following precisely the analogical lines,

mutatis mutandis, that the soul of man does in reincarnating,

making the necessary allowances for varying conditions. As

man is the product of his former life, or rather of his lives, so is a

universe, a solar system, a planet, an animal, an atom the very

great as well as the so-called infinitesimal the fruitage, the

flower, of what went before. Each of these bears its load of

karman precisely as the soul of man does.

The teachings relating to the evolving of the inner planes of

Being, which precede and produce the outer planes, are very

esoteric, as our Teachers have told us, and belong to a study

higher than we venture to approach at the present time, but we

can form some general idea of how it is done, as has already been

said, by analogy and by comparison with the life of man.

When manifestation begins, what is called ' duality ' super-

venes. It would seem to be a procession something like this,

were we to symbolize it by a diagram. (See page 30).

Consider this uppermost straight line a hypothetical plane :

it may be, humanly speaking, immeasurable miles in depth or in

extension, but mere extension has nothing to do with the general

concept. Above it stretches the infinitude of the Boundless, and

below the diagram is the Boundless, and inwards through it is the

Boundless, interpenetrating everywhere ; but for purposes of

our present illustration we will say that it is ' above '.

Let us place anywhere we may please a point A, another one

A 7 here, and a third A" there. We have now reached, after a long

period of latency or pralaya has passed, a period of manifestation

or manvantara ; such a point as A, or A" or A", we will call the

Primordial Point, the first breaking-through into the cosmic

plane below ; the spirit-force above arising into activity in the

seeds of being and forcing its way down into the lower life of

manifestation not pushed nor moved by anything outside of itself

is driven into manifestation by the karmic life of its own essential

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 31

being, by the thirst of desire or blossoming forth, like a fresh

upspringing in early summer of a flower, in which the tendency

in manifestation is outward. This first appearance is conceived

of in philosophy as the First or Primordial Point ; this is the

name given to it in the Jewish Theosophy called the QabMllh.

From the moment that the Point, as it were the seed of life,

the germ of being all these are but names for the one thing,

the spiritual atom, the spiritual monad, call it what you will

from the moment that it bursts through into the lower life as it

were, differentiation or duality sets in and continues thencefor-

ward to the end of the Great Cycle, forming the two side-lines

of the diagrammatic triangle. We may call one A B the Brahma

(masculine), and the other A C the Prakriti or Nature (feminine).

Brahm. is frequently also called Purusha, a Sanskrit word

meaning Man, the Ideal Man, like the Qabbalistic Adam Qadmdn,

the primordial entity of space, containing in Prakriti or Nature

all the septenary scales of manifested being.

At all times, from the very first instant when duality sets in,

there is an unceasing attraction between these two lines or poles,

and they join. Remember that this symbol is merely a paradigm,

that it is merely a paradigmatic scheme or representation.

Absolutely, it would be absurd to say that life and beings pro-

ceed into manifestation as geometric triangles only ; but we can

represent it symbolically to our minds in this fashion. When

these two join, the Father and the Mother, spirit (or Reality)

and illusion (or may a), Brahma (or Purusha) and Prakriti (or

Nature), their union produces the Son. In the Christian scheme

they give the spiritual or primordial Son the name of Christos ;

in the Egyptian scheme Osiris and Isis (or her twin sister Neph-

thys which is merely the more recondite side of Isis) produce

their son Horus, the spiritual Sun, physically the sun or the

Light-Bringer ; and so similarly in the different schemes that

the ancient world has handed down to us.

From the interaction of these three, by inter-polar action, by

the spiritual forces working in and out, two other lines fall down-

wards according to the mystical way in which this scheme of

emanation is taught and they also join and form the square

or the manifested Kosmos.

Now from the Central or Primordial Point is born or proceeds

the Sun of Life. By It and through It is our union with the

Ineffable. Man may be down here a physical being on earth,

or anywhere else a luminous, ethereal entity : but it matters not

where he is or what his body : for once the seven principles of

his being are in action, man the thinking entity, is produced,

linked by his seventh principle, and his sixth, with that Sun of

Life.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

To every ' man ' of the unnamable multitudes of self-conscious

beings belonging to this Kosmos or Universe, there extend

respectively upwards or downwards, two natures : one of which

is a ray of spirit connecting him with the divine of the Divinest,

and from that extending upwards in all directions and linking us

in every sense of the word with the Ineffable, the Boundless,

which is, therefore, the core of our being, the center of our

essence.

The appearance and evolution of man as a human being on

this planet Terra, follow the same line of Nature's wonderful

analogical working that a planet does in space, or a sun does

with its brothers of a solar system, the planets. Man, thus being

in very truth a child of Infinity, the offspring of the Ineffable,

has latent within himself the capacity of the Universe.

And on this fact depends what we have so often been told of

the getting of ' powers '. The very method by which we do not

get them, the very way of missing and losing them, is to run after

them, strange as it may sound, because this is the impulse of

vanity and selfishness. If we, then, selfishly seek them, what do

we get ? We get the action of the lower powers upon us ; it is a

growing thirst for sensation which we do get, and this leads us

towards and into the nether abyss of Matter, the opposite pole of

the Boundless, if it is followed.

But in the great Soul who has passed by and thrown off this

thirst for personal acquisition, in whom the grasping spirit for

self is no longer dominant, who feels his Oneness with everything

that is, who feels that every human being, yea the very pismire

that laboriously crawls up a sand-knob only to tumble down again,

is himself no metaphor but an actuality : a different body, but

the same life, the same essence, the same things latent in it as in

him in him indeed lies the power of ascending the ladder of

Being, drawn by the link with the Highest in his innermost

nature. He and they are both filled full of latent powers and

forces, and he and they may become in time very Gods, blazing,

as it were, with power like the Sun ; and the only way is utter

selflessness, because selflessness, paradoxical as it may sound,

is the only way to the Self, the Self Universal. The personal

self shuts the door before us.

Of course we cannot crush out of our being the sense of self-

hood, nor is that desirable ; but in the lowest aspect it takes upon

itself the forms of all selfishness, until the being of the man

who follows the ' left-hand path ', as they call it, or the path

downwards, ends in what the early Christians stealing from the

Greeks called Tartarus, the place of disintegration.

When man ascends beyond the reach of matter, he has cast off

the bondage of Maya, or illusion. Let us remember that when

FUNDAMENTALS OF HIE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 33

manifestation opens, Prakriti becomes or rather is Maya ; and

Brahma, the Father, is the spirit of the consciousness, or the

Individuality. These two are really one, yet they are also the two

aspects of the one Life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much

as a man himself can say, " I am I ". He has the faculty of self-

analysis, or* self-division ; all of us know it, we can feel it in our-

selves ; one side of us, in our thoughts, can be called the Prakriti

or the material element, or the Mayavi element, or the element of

illusion ; and the other, the spirit, the individuality, the God

within.

Yet as man sees life, as he runs his eye down the scale of beings,

he sees it through Maya ; in fact, he is the child of Maya on one

side, as he is of the Spirit on the other. Both are in him. His

lesson is to learn that the two are one and that they are not

separate ; then he no longer is deceived. His lesson is to under-

stand that Maya, the great Deluder, is the famous snake or serpent

of antiquity, which leads us out from the ' Garden of Eden '

(employing a Biblical metaphor), through experience and suffering

to learn what illusion is and is not.

Also matter, which is the mayavi manifestation of Prakriti on

this plane (and I mean here physical matter), itself is not sub-

stantial. The most dense and rigid things we can think of, per-

haps, are the metals, and actually they are, perhaps, the most

porous, the most foamlike, the most evanescent, as seen from the

other or higher side of being, from the other side of the plane.

So well is this now beginning to be understood that even our more

intuitive scientists are telling us that ' space ', which seems to

us so thin, and tenuous, is in reality more rigid than the hardest

steel. Why is it that electricity prefers metals as a path, to

common wood, or cotton-wool, or some other such thing ?

Before we go further, it would seem necessary to study a

little what we mean by the words Manvantara and Pralaya. Let

us take Manvantara first. This word is a Sanskrit compound,

and as such means nothing more than ' between two Manus ' ;

more literally, ' Manu between '. ' Manu ', or Dhyani-Chohan,

in the Esoteric System, is the entities collectively which appear

first at the beginning of manifestation and from which, like a

cosmic tree, everything is derived or born. Manu actually is the

(spiritual) tree of life of any Planetary Chain, of manifested being.

Manu is thus (in one sense) the third logos ; as the second is the

Father-Mother, the Brahma and Prakriti ; and the first is what

we call the Unmanifest Logos, or Brahman (neuter) and its cosmic

veil Pradhana.

Pradhana is also a Sanskrit compound, meaning that which

is ' placed before ' ; and from this, it has become a technical

term in philosophy, and means what we would call the first

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

filmy appearance of root-matter, ' placed before ', or rather* around,

Brahman, as a Veil. Root-matter is m&la-prakriti, root-nature,

and corresponding to it as the other or active pole, is Brahman

(neuter). That from which the First or Unmanifest Logos pro-

ceeds is called Para-Brahman, and Mulaprakriti is Its Kosmic

Veil. Parabrahman is another Sanskrit compound, meaning

' beyond Brahman '. Mtilaprakriti, again, as said above, is a

Sanskrit compound meaning mtila root, prakriti nature.

First, then, the Boundless, symbolized by the O I then Para-

brahman, and Mulaprakriti its other pole ; then lower, Brahman

and its Veil Pradhana ; then Brahma-Prakriti or Purusha-

Prakriti (Prakriti being also maya) ; the manifested Universe

appearing through and by this last : Brahma-Prakriti, Father-

Mother. In other words, the second logos, Father-Mother, is the

producing cause of manifestation through their son, which in a

Planetary Chain is Manu. A Manvantara, therefore, is the period

of activity between any two Manus, on any plane, since in any

such period there is a root-Manu at the beginning of Evolution,

and a seed-Manu at its close, preceding a Pralaya.

Pralaya : this is also a Sanskrit compound, formed of laya, from

a Sanskrit root lt t and the prefix pra. What does li mean ? It

means to dissolve, to melt away, to liquefy, as when one pours

water upon a cube of salt or of sugar. The cube of salt or of sugar

vanishes in the water ; it dissolves, changes its form ; and this

may be taken as a figure, as a symbol, of what Pralaya is : a

crumbling away, a vanishing away of matter into something

else which is yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it.

That is Pralaya, usually translated as the state of latency, state

of rest, state of repose, between two manvantaras or life-cycles.

If we remember distinctly the meaning of the Sanskrit word, our

minds take a new bent in direction, follow a new thought ; we get

new ideas ; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that takes

place.

Now there are many kinds of Manvantaras ; also many kinds of

Pralayas. There are, for instance, the Universal Manvantara and

the Universal Pralaya, and these are called Prakritika, because

it is the pralaya or vanishing away, melting away, of Prakriti or

Nature. Then there is the solar pralaya. Sun in Sanskrit is

Sfirya, and the adjective from this is Saurya ; hence, the saurya-

pralaya, or the pralaya of the solar system. Then, thirdly, there

is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. The Sanskrit word for

earth is Bhflmi, and the adjective corresponding to this is Bhau-

mika : hence, the bhaumika-pralaya. Then we can say that there

is the pralaya or death of the individual man. Man is purusha ;

the corresponding adjective is paurusha : hence, the paurusha-

pralaya, or death of man. So, then, we have given examples of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 35

various praiayas : first of the Prakritika, or dissolution of Nature ;

next the solar pralaya, the saurya ; next the bhaumika or the

passing away of the earth ; and then the paurusha, or the death

of man. And these adjectives apply equally well to the several

kinds of Majivantaras, or life-cycles.

There is another kind of Pralaya which is called Nitya. In its

general sense, it means ' constant ' or ' continuous ', and can be

exemplified by the constant or continuous change life and death

of the cells of our bodies it is a state in which the entity, the

indwelling and dominating entity, remains, but its different

principles and rftpas undergo continuous change. Hence it is

called Nitya. It applies to the body of man, to the outer sphere

of earth, to the earth itself, to the solar system, and to all Nature.

It is likewise represented by a symbol that our first great

Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has given us from the Oriental Wisdom,

the out-breathing and in-breathing of Brahman. This symbol,

by the way, is not solely Indian. It is found in the ancient Egyp-

tian texts, where one or another of the Gods, Khnumu, for in-

stance, breathes forth from his mouth the cosmic egg. It is

also found alluded to in the Orphic Hymns, where the cosmic

serpent breathes forth as an egg the things which are to be, or

the future universe. Everywhere, especially where ancient religion

or philosophy has longest retained its hold, there do we find

the symbol of the cosmic egg. Religions of less age and of less

influence do not so often employ it. The cosmic egg was found as

a symbol in Egypt ; it was found in Hindfisthan ; it was found

in Peru, where the ' Mighty Man ', the Sanskrit Purusha, the Ideal

Man, the Paradigmatic Man, was called Manco Capac, and his wife

and sister was called Mama Oello, which means ' Mother-egg ' ;

these brought the universe into being, becoming later the sun and

the moon respectively.

Why did the Ancients symbolize the beginning of manifestation

under the form of an egg ? Let us ask : Is it not a fine symbol ?

As the egg producing the chick contains the germ of life (laid by

its mother, the hen, and fructified by the other pole of being) so

the cosmic egg, which is the Primordial Point of which we spoke

in the early part of our study this evening, also contains the germ

of life. The egg itself also can be called the germ of life, and the

germ of life within the egg can be called the inner germ that

more subtil point which receives those impulses of which we have

spoken before, coming down from the highest center of com-

munication between the outward world and the inner, the lines

of inner magnetic action and reaction. And when the chick within

the egg is formed, it bursts its shell and comes forth into the light

of day, precisely as we saw was the case with the Primordial Point.

When the karmic hour had struck, it burst forth, as it were, into

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

other spheres of manifestation and activity. The Ancients,

carrying the figure still farther, even spoke of Heaven as a dome-

like affair, as the upper part of an egg-shell.

Let us think more deeply of these ancient symbols. The

Ancients were not fools. There is a deep meaning in these olden

figures of speech. Why did Homer speak of his Olympus, the

abode of Zeus and the Gods, as being brazen, like brass, one of the

hardest and most intractable things that the Greeks knew ? Why

did Hesiod speak of the same as made of iron ? Because they

realized that the life here in matter and of matter, was based upon

an evanescent substratum, and that the lower world of matter is,

as has been so often said, evanescent, foamy, full of holes, as it

were, and unreal.

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CHAPTER V

THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY.

GODS BEHIND THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE IS IMPERFECT.

To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual

and psychic, as well as physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the

anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his

shell-side and in ignorance of the interior work. . . .

. . . The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space,

not merely with its illusive appearance and behavior. That of official physical

science is to analyse and study its shell the Ultima Thule of the Universe and

man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of

such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir W. Herschel, who believed

in a Spiritual world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfac-

tory compromise. But the views of those physicists differed vastly from the

latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschel had in their mind's eye specula-

tions upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as the present aspect, of the

Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint ; whereas modern

Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mys-

teries of being. The result is what might be expected : complete failure and in-

extricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called scientific

theories, and in this theory as in all others.

The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a primeval

matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as

everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the

sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial

pregenetic matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out

through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 588-590.

WITH the Teacher's permission there are three points

which it would seem necessary to touch upon slightly,

before we begin our evening's study.

The first is with regard to the question of morals,

that is to say, right conduct based upon right views, right think-

ing. We have touched upon this matter at nearly every meeting

of this Lodge, because the line, the path, of duty of right conduct

based upon right views is the Path of all who would tread on-

ward to the Ancient Wisdom and to the Ancient Mysteries. Our

Teachers have told us this again and again, and the great thinkers,

philosophers, and religious men, of all ages, have told us the same

thing.

These meetings, as our present Teacher has told us so often,

are not for purposes of intellectual study only, nor to amuse

ourselves with abstruse and mystic knowledge ; but mainly, firstly,

principally, for the purpose of gaining a right foundation for right

views, which shall govern human conduct. When we have this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

foundation we have the beginnings of all laws ; we can affect the

world not only by our own views and by our own acts, but by

those of other members who will come in and swell our number ;

and, further, we shall be able in time to affect for good even the

governments of the world, not directly and immediately perhaps,

but at least indirectly and in the course of time. All the horrible

things that perplex and confuse and distress mankind today arise

wholly, almost, out of a lack of right views, and hence, a lack of

right conduct. We have the testimony of the Greek and Roman

initiates and thinkers that the Ancient Mysteries of Greece taught

men, above everything else, to live rightly and to have a noble

hope for the life after death.

Next, the second point : in our last meeting we touched upon

the Ancient Mysteries in the ancient Mystery-Schools, and we

took as examples those of Greece, from which the Romans derived

their own Mysteries but we touched upon one point only, the

mythological aspect ; and this mythological aspect comprises

only a portion a relatively small portion of what was taught

in the Mystery- Schools, principally at Samothrace and at Eleusis.

At Samothrace was taught the same Mystery-teaching that was

current elsewhere in Greece, but here it was more developed and

recondite ; and the foundation of these Mystery-teachings was

morals. The noblest and greatest men of ancient times in Greece

were initiates in the Mysteries of these two seats of esoteric

knowledge.

In other countries farther to the east they had other Mystery-

Schools or " colleges ", and this word " college " by no means

necessarily meant a mere temple or building ; it meant " associa-

tion," as in our modern word colleague, " associate ". The Teu-

tonic tribes of northern Europe, the Germanic tribes which

included Scandinavia had their. Mystery-colleges also ; and

teacher and neophytes stood on the bosom of Mother-Earth, under

Father-Ether, the boundless sky, or in subterranean receptacles,

and taught and learned. We state here at once that the core, the

heart, the center, of the Ancient Mysteries was the abstruse

problems dealing with Death. These teachings we still have, and

when the Teacher says that it is time to give them out, they will be

forthcoming ; she is the judge as to when this shall be.

The third point is with regard to the paradigms or diagrams

which we may find necessary to use from time to time in order to

illustrate certain teachings. Remember that these paradigms are

relative and changeable ; they are not hard and fast or absolute

things ; this fact must be kept always clear in the mind, and

around these diagrams or paradigms the mind should never be

allowed to crystallize. Why ? Because any paradigm, any par-

ticular combination of geometrical lines, can illustrate different

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 39

thoughts or things, as, for instance, the paradigm of the triangle

from which hangs the square (as used at our last meeting) can

apply equally as well to the highest combined principle in man, the

spiritual-mental monad, as to the lower principles into which the

monad falls at the beginning of incarnation or manifestation, and

from whichf it will resurrect when the first chimes of the pralayic

bells are heard in the Aka6ic spaces.

We will now resume our study. We take up, as our general

theme, the same two paragraphs on p. 43 of Vol. I of The Secret

Doctrine, which we read at our last meeting : paragraphs one and

two :

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every-

thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has

neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe "

is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons

of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes,

each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor,

and being a cause as regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as

an outbreathing and inbreathing of " the Great Breath/' which is

eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the

Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When

the " Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath,

and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One

Existence which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes

the Kosmos. (See Isis Unveiled.) So also is it when the Divine Breath

is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the

Great Mother/' who then sleeps " wrapped in her invisible robes/'

It was the intention to take up this evening the dawn of mani-

festation as it is found in the " Hebrew Book of Beginnings",

called Genesis, and to study this and to show its similarity and

likeness, and the fundamental identity of truth on which it is

based, as compared with the other religions of the world. But in

view of the fact that we were obliged at our last study to touch

upon the first coming-into-being of the veil cast over the face of

the Ineffable, it would seem best this evening to undertake, if we

have time, a short sketch of what in science is called the Nebular

Theory, how far the esoteric teachings run with it, and where and

when they part from it.

The Nebular Theory, as originally taught in science by the

Frenchman Laplace but derived by him from the great German

thinker and philosopher, Immanuel Kant stated that the space

which is now occupied by the planets of the solar system, was

originally filled with a very tenuous form of matter, in a highly

incandescent (or burning) state. Let us say just here that this

particular theory of Laplace as regards incandescence, has never

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

been proved, that it is not subject in all respects to mathematical

demonstration, and cannot be, and that it itself, if taken as a

whole, forms one of the greatest proofs against the truth of the

nebular theory as it was then stated, and as it has since been modi-

fied in some degree by modern thinkers.

Laplace further stated that this nebula was in a cbndition of

slow rotation, or circular moving, in the same direction in which

the planets now move around in their orbits, and in the same

direction in which the planets and the sun now move around their

axes. In other words, the present orbital revolution and rotation

of the planets are derived from this mechanical, original, circular

motion of the primal nebula.

Laplace further stated that this hot, immense object cooled,

and as it cooled it shrank, according to a certain law of heat, and

this shrinking, according to a law of dynamics, increased the

velocity of rotation, and the momentum of any point on its sur-

face. Now, as everyone knows, the parts of a wheel which are

nearest the periphery, the circumference, move with the greatest

momentum, and the greatest speed, though no faster, in another

sense, than do the particles at the hub. This increase of rapidity

in whirling around grew so great that a time came when the

centrifugal force overcame the centripetal or cohesive force, and

then this whirling nebula threw off a ring, and this ring also con-

tinued going around, and condensing, and finally formed a sphere

or ball which became the outmost planet, Neptune. And so

progressively the other planets came into being, the core of the

nebula remaining as our sun. In brief, as the nebular body con-

tracted and condensed its matter, the same phenomenon occurred

again in the same way, and thus the second outermost planet,

Uranus, was thrown oft, and so on until all the planets had come

into being as spheres. Now some of these tenuous, still nebulous

planets, by contracting and thus increasing their rotational

velocity, themselves evolved rings around themselves, which in

their turn were thrown off from their parent-planets, and following

the same course as their parent-planets, became spheres, which

thus became the satellites, the moons of the respective planets ;

while the center of the original nebula condensed into the (sup-

posedly) incandescent or fiery ball which is the sun.

When H. P. Blavatsky first brought the Theosophical teachings

to the Western world, questions of cosmogony, or the beginning

and primal development of the universe, came much to the fore,

and she was asked, and her Teachers were also asked through her,

in what respect the nebular theory ran side by side with and

" corroborated " the exposition of the theory of the occultists,

the esoteric theory ; and the answer then given was called " an

evasive answer "* It aroused criticism and some angry language.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 41

Why, i{ was asked, if the Teachers know these wonderful truths,

had not they illuminated the world with the splendor of their

teachings ? Why did they keep them and other things hid ? No

teaching can be bad for man, if it is true, it was argued. Which

was a very foolish argument, indeed, so far as it goes, because

many teachings are true, and are yet utterly unfit for the average

man to have. However, we are going to investigate that question

to-night.

The nebular theory, the Teachers said, was, in its main outlines,

and in certain respects only, fairly representative of what the

esoteric teaching was, but it yet, for all that, had vital defects ;

and these defects they did not entirely specify nor did they fully

outline them ; but they gave clear hints where the defects lay and

what they were ; and they also gave a clear, logical, and concise

reason for their reticence, which was obligatory and unavoidable.

Now the main defect in the theory of Laplace was as probably

the older students who are assembled here this evening know well

enough that it was a purely mechanical, purely mechanistic,

purely materialistic hypothesis, in some respects uncorroborable

even by mathematics, and based upon nothing but the fact that

in the vast abysses of space, astronomers, investigating wastes

of stellar light, found nebulae and nebulosities, and, adopting

Kant's idea, argued dogmatically upon it. But, nevertheless,

there was truth in the nebular theory there was some truth.

Now what is that truth ? And what was the most vital defect ?

The most vital defect, first, was the fact as hinted above that it

(the theory) omitted all action of spiritual beings in the universe

as the drivers, the agents, the mechanics (or mechanicians) of

the mechanism which undoubtedly exists. We are taught that

the Esoteric Philosophy does not deny mechanical action in the

Universe, but declares that where there is mechanical action there

is government, or, specifically, mechanicians at work, producing

the movements of the mechanism, in accordance with Karman.

There must be " law "-givers or " law "-makers or " law "-

impulsors, if the expression may be used ; and behind these there

must be the Universal Life. In other words, the vital defect was

that this nebular theory omitted the first truth of all Being

that the Gods were behind the Kosmos, spiritual Beings, spiritual

Entities the name matters nothing. Not God, but Gods.

" Nature " is imperfect, hence of necessity makes " mistakes ",

because its action derives from hosts of Entities at work. What we

see around us all the time is proof of it. " Nature " is not perfect.

If it had sprung from the " hands of the Immutable Deity ",

hence perfect and immutable like its Parent, knowing no change,

it would be a Perfect Work. It is much to the contrary, as we

know, and its imperfections or " mistakes " arise from the fact

4*

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

that the beings existing in and working in and controlling and

making nature extend in endless hierarchies from the Inmost of

the Inmost, from the Highest of the Highest, downwards for ever,

upwards for ever, in all degrees of imperfection and of perfection,

which is precisely what we see in the scenes of manifestation

surrounding us. Our intuition tells us the truth concerning this,

and we should trust it.

This was well known to the ancients. The Stoics expressed it

and taught it in their magnificent philosophy. The Stoics of

Rome and of Greece originally expressed it by what they called

Theocrasy. Theocrasy has a compound meaning Theos, a god,

divine being, and krasis, meaning an intermingling an inter-

mingling of everything in the universe, intermingling with every-

thing else, nothing possibly separable from the rest, the Whole.

It is the cardinal heresy of the Oriental religions to-day, notably

in that of the Buddhists, if a man thinks that he is separate or

separable from the universe. This is their cardinal heresy, the

most fundamental error that man can make. The early Christians

called it the " sin against the Holy Ghost ". If we look around us

and if we look within, we realize that we are one entity, as it were,

one great human host, one living tree of human life, woven in-

separably into and from Nature, the ALL.

The next defect of the nebular theory was that the nebula was

declared to be in its earliest stages incandescent, burning. The

esoteric teaching is that it is indeed glowing, but glowing with a

cold light, the same as, or similar to, that of the firefly, if you like.

There is no more heat in a nebula than there is in the light of the

firefly. This light in the nebula, this luminosity, is not from com-

bustion of any kind ; but, then, what is it from ? It is from the

indwelling Daivl-Prakriti, " divine nature or light ", in its mani-

festation on that plane, the same light which in sentient beings

manifests in a higher form as consciousness in all its degrees,

running from dull physical consciousness up through the soul and

the ego : through the self up into the Selfless Self of the Paramat-

man, or the " Supreme Self " a mere expression of convenience

as meaning the acme or summit of a Hierarchy, because really

there is no Supreme Self, which would mean a limit, hence finite-

ness. If there were, there would be a lowest self. Self is boundless,

endless, the very heart of being, the foundation and dimensionless

core of all that is.

Next, the third vital defect : The planets and the sun were not

evolved or born in the manner stated by the nebular theory. How

are the sun and the planets born ? (Let me say here by way of

parenthesis, that this subject should come much later in our

study, but there is a reason for referring to it now.) Every solar

or planetary body, the sun and planets in our solar system, and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 43

analogically (that is, by analogy), everywhere else, is the child or

rather the result or reimbodiment of a former cosmic entity, which,

upon entering into its pralaya, its Prakritika-pralaya the dis-

solution of its lower principles at the end of its long life-cycle,

exists in space in the higher activity of its spiritual principles, and

in the dispersion of its lowest principles, which latter latently

exist in space as Skandhas, in what our Teachers have taught us

is called in Sanskrit a toy0-condition, from the root It, referred to

in our last meeting, meaning to dissolve or to vanish away ; hence,

a laya-center is a " point of disappearance " which is the Sans-

krit meaning, and even the dictionary meaning ; a laya-center

is the mystical point where a thing disappears from one plane, if

you like, and passes onwards to reappear on another plane.

To repeat an illustration which we used in our last meeting :

pour water on a cube of sugar or salt, and watch it dissolve

vanish as a cube or discrete entity. It has entered its laya-state

as a cube or entity of sugar or salt. The form of it has gone, and

itself the sugar or salt has entered into something else. When

the higher principles of a cosmic body enter into something else,

what is that something else into which they enter ? They enter

into the highest cosmic aether, first, and in due course go still

higher into the intense activity of the spiritual planes ; there long

aeons are passed in states and conditions to us almost unimagin-

able. In due course of time, they begin their downward course

into matter again, or re-imbodiment, and finally, by attraction,

re-collect their old skandhas hitherto lying latent, and thus form

for themselves a new body, by passing into manifestation through

and by the laya-center where those skandhas were waiting.

Those lower principles were meanwhile in Nirvana, what we

would call Devachan after the death of man, for Devachan as a

state applies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but

only to the middle principles of man, to the personal ego, or the

personal soul, in man. Applied to us this condition is the state of

Devachan the " land of the gods ", if you like ; but applied to

a cosmic body it is the state of Nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit

compound, nir, out, and vdna the past-participle passive of the

root vd, blow, i.e., literally " blown out ".

So badly has the meaning of the ancient Indian thought (and

even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many

years very erudite European scholars were discussing whether

being " blown out " meant actual entitative annihilation or not.

I remember once talking with a Chinese savant he happened to

be a Chinese Buddhist and he told me that the state of man after

death was " like this " and he took up a lighted candle which was

on the table and blew upon it, and the light went out. And he

said, " That way ". He was right, because he was referring to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

lower principles in man. They (not we, our monadic or excitative

essence), they are merely the vehicle in which we live ; and when

we die, our physical body is " blown out ", breaks up, enters into

its pralaya or dissolution, and its molecules, its particles, go into

the laya-state, and pass a certain time there until Nature calls

them forth again : or, to put it more accurately in another way,

until the indwelling impulse in each physical monadic particle

through the thirst for active being, rises forth into manifestation

again, and it re-enters some body of appropriate kind and of

similar evolutional degree.

This is one and only one facet of the secret of the much mis-

understood doctrine of transmigration into animals. The lower

elements, the astral body and the astral dregs of the animal or

physical man, become the principles not the latent higher, but the

intermediate principles of the beast-world. They are human

dregs cast off by man.

Now, the cosmic dust resulting from the dissolution of a former

world rests in a laya-center ; while the highest principles of that

world or planetary chain are in their para-nirvana, and remain

there until the divine thirst for active life on the highest plane of

descent, which re-arises in the cosmic monad of a planet or sun,

pulls, pushes, or urges, or impels, that monad to the spiritual

frontiers of manifestation ; and when it arrives at those frontiers,

it bursts through them as it were, or breaks through, or goes

through, or cycles downward through, into the plane below it,

and thus again and again through many planes, till finally the

cycling monad reaches and touches or lightens all those lower

elements which are remaining in the laya-center : awakens them,

re-awakens them, revivifies them, recalls them into being, re-

illuminates them from within ; and this produces the luminosity

or nebulosity seen in so many parts of interstellar space. There-

fore, it is, actually, daivi-prakriti, " divine Nature ", " divine

light ", in one of its lowest forms the seventh, counting down-

wards and this same light, or force, on this our plane (our

Teachers have told us) in one of its very lowest forms, is electricity

and magnetism. Our Teachers have also told us that the physical

universe here in which we live the stones, metals, trees, etc.

is corporealized light. They are all formed of atoms, and these

atoms, so to speak, are the mystic atoms of this light, the corpus-

cular part of light, because light is corpuscular : it is not a mere

" mode of motion " or a wave or something else. Light (our

light) is a body, as much a body as electricity one of its forms

is a body, i.e., material, or subtil matter.

Now, then, when this nebula of which we have been speaking

let us give it the scientific name has attained the point of

development or evolution downwards into manifestation where the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 45

re-imbodying principles of the former world or cosmos, or sun, or

planet, as the case may be, have sufficiently entered into it, it

begins to rotate by a characteristic energy, similar to electro-

magnetism, inherent in itself. Plato tells us that circular motion

is one of the first signs of entitative, free, existence a saying

which is often laughed at by our young savants of science, and

quondam bigwigs of a transitory era of dogmatic thinking. Plato

defines being as a " body which is capable of acting and being

acted upon ". It is a good definition to remember, for it implies

both passive and active existence or manifestation : and he

said that, with reference to the highest essence of the cosmos

the Primal Principle of which our first great Teacher speaks as the

Ineffable That, as the Sanskritists call it it is not " a " being,

hence limited, possessing bounds, because neither does it act nor

is it acted upon. It is All, eternally, endlessly All.

So this cosmic nebula drifts from the place where it first was

evolved, the guiding impulse of Karma directing here and direct-

ing there, this luminous nebulosity moving circularly, and con-

tracting, passing through other phases of nebular evolution, such

as the spiral stage and the annular ; until it becomes spherical,

or rather a nebular series of concentric spheres. The nebula in

space, as just said, takes often a spiral form, and from the core,

the center, there stream forth branches, spiral branches, and they

look like whirling wheels within wheels, and they whirl during

many ages. When the time has come when the whirling has

developed pari passu with the indwelling lives and intelligences

within the cosmic nebula then the annular form appears, a

form like a ring or concentric rings, with a heart in the center,

and after long seons, the central heart becomes the sun or central

body of the new solar system, and the rings the planets. These

rings condense into other bodies, and these other bodies are the

planets circulating around their elder brother, the sun ; elder,

because he was the first to condense into a sphere.

The idea of modern scientists that the nebular sun threw off the

planets, and that the earth after partial solidification threw off

the moon, and that the other planets having moons did likewise,

is not the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy. It has never been

proved, and it is criticized daily by men as eminent as those who

propounded these theories. The nebular theory as propounded

and ' modified from time to time, Science has never proved ;

scientists have never been able to prove why so much heat could

develop and be retained in so tenuous, so diaphanous an object.

Why, if the luminosity arises from combustion of gaseous matter,

does it not burn itself out ? It had billions of years, countless

ages, in which to burn out, and the sky is dotted with nebulae

which have not burned out yet ; and similarly with regard to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

sun. The sun is formed of the same matter as the nebtite, later

becoming cometary matter. The sun does not burn ; it has no

more heat in it than has a pane of glass which transmits the solar

ray.

The sun is not in combustion : it is the generator and storehouse

of the mighty ocean of force and forces which feed our entire

solar system. Matter is corporealized or crystallized Force ;

Force, inversely, may be called subtil Matter or matter in its

fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh states, for Force and Matter are

One. The sun is a storehouse and generator of Forces, and is

itself Force in its first and second states i.e., matter in its sixth and

seventh states, counting upward. We shall study this subject more

fully in a later lecture.

These are a bare outline of the teachings that we have received

on the subjects treated of. The moon comprises another subject,

which will merit in due time very particular study, indeed.

First a nebula ; then a comet ; then a planet ; but the above

sketch outlines the state of a solar system in the first era of

the solar manvantara. Now let us take any one planet and

shortly, briefly, touch upon the nature of a planetary manvantara.

The sun, of course, remains throughout the solar manvantara.

It began with it, and when the solar system comes to an end, its

(the sun's) pralaya will also come. But the planets are different

in certain respects. They have their manvantara also, each one

of them, lasting usually many billions of years ; and when a

planetary chain or body has reached its term, when its hour strikes

for going into rest, or into pralaya or dissolution, the manvantara

ends, and pralaya begins, but in this case it is not a Prakritika-

pralaya, which, you remember, we alluded to in our last meeting

it signifies or means the dissolution of Nature. The planetary

body remains dead, as is now the moon itself, but it sends its

principles (precisely as the former solar system did which we

were studying) into a laya-center in space, and they remain there

for "innumerable ages". Meanwhile the other planets of that

solar system go through their cycles ; but the planet which we

have picked out for illustration, when its time comes again to

descend into manvantara, follows its line of development in

precisely the same way as outlined before. It descends again into

manifestation through the inner divine planetary thirst for active

life and is directed to the same solar system, and to the same

spot, relatively speaking, that its predecessor (its former self)

had, attracted thither by magnetic and other forces on the lower

planes. It forms, in the beginning of its course, or journey, down-

wards, a planetary nebula ; after many aeons, it becomes a comet,

following ultimately an elliptic orbit, around the sun of our solar

system, thus being " captured ", as our scientists wrongly say,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 47

by the sun ; and finally condenses into a planet in its earliest

physical condition. The comets of short periodic time are on their

way to rebecoming planets in our solar system, provided they

successfully elude the many dangers that beset such ethereal

bodies before^ condensation and hardening of their matter shield

them from destruction.

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CHAPTER VI

THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS

UNIVERSE SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF

THE INTERMINGLING OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE."

PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF

HIERARCHIES.

(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3)

esoteric, within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the

Zodiac ; the seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the

Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual,

semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings.

The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary,

or the " four bodies and the three faculties " of Brahma exoterically, and the

Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist

system.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 213.

. . . The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable

and intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit

of our age. All that science has a right to affirm is that there are no invisible

Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-

blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under totally different

conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world ; nor can it deny that

there may be a certain limited communication between some of those worlds

and our own. To the highest, 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.

Ibid., I, 133.

WE open our study this evening by reading from

H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 258,

the second paragraph :

" Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active

life ; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of

Life) ; Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE, which is neither

Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book of Dzyan,

Comm. iii, par. 18). ..." Spirit is the first differentiation of (and in)

SPACE : and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is

neither Spirit nor Matter that is IT the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit

and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the

ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath."

In our study of a week ago, we embarked upon a brief dis-

cussion, or rather a short excursus, with regard to certain

astronomical factors which enter very largely into the occult or

4 8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 49

Esoteric teaching which leads to a proper comprehension of

Cosmogony or World-Building, and also of Theogony or the

Genesis of the Gods or Divine Intelligences who initiate and

direct Cosmogony, as these are outlined in The Secret Doctrine.

Within the time at our disposal we shortly reviewed the Esoteric

formulae in which the ancient wisdom is imbodied, and the

effectual agencies which act at the Dawn of Manifestation ; and

this evening we shall undertake briefly to review the causal

agencies or aspects of the same subject.

The dawn of manifestation, as The Secret Doctrine tells us,

begins in and with the awakening of a laya-center. The Sanskrit

word laya t as we saw before, signifies in Esotericism that point

or spot any point or any spot in space, which, owing to karmic

law, suddenly becomes the center of active life, first on a higher

plane and later descending into manifestation through and by

the lower planes. In one sense it (such a /oya-center) may be

conceived of as a canal, a channel, through which the vitality

of the superior spheres is pouring down into, and inspiring,

inbreathing into, the lower planes or states of matter, or rather

of substance. But behind all this vitality there is a driving

force, as was before remarked. There are mechanics in the

universe, mechanics of many degrees of consciousness and power.

But behind the pure mechanic stands the spiritual mechanician.

It would seem absolutely necessary first to soak our minds

through and through with the thought that everything in our

cosmical universe, i.e., the stellar universe, is alive, is directed

by will and governed by intelligence. Behind every cosmic

body that we see, there is a directing intelligence and a guiding

will.

If Theosophy has one natural enemy against which it has

fought and will always fight it is the materialistic view of life,

the view that nothing exists except dead unconscious matter,

and that the phenomena of life and thought and consciousness

spring from it. This is not merely unnatural and therefore

impossible ; it is absurd as a hypothesis.

On the contrary, as we may read in The Secret Doctrine, the

main, fundamental, and basic postulate of being is that the

universe is driven by will and consciousness, guided by will and

consciousness, and is spiritually purposive. When a laya-center

is fired into action by the touch of these two on their downward

way, becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a

planet of a solar system, the center manifests first on its highest

plane. The Skandhas (which, as it will be remembered, we

described in a former study) are awakened into life one after

another : first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and

lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitatively speaking.

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In such laya-centers the imbodying life shows itself tirst to

our physical' human eyes as a luminous nebula matter, which

we may describe as being of course on the fourth plane of Nature

or Prakriti, but nevertheless in the second (counting downwards)

of the seven principles or states of the material universe. It is a

manifestation in that universe of Daivi-Prakriti, i.e., " shining "

Prakriti, or " divine " Prakriti. As the aeons pass, this laya-

center now manifesting as a nebula, remains in space steadily

though slowly developing and condensing (following the impulses

of the forces that have awakened it into action on this plane)

as the aeons pass, I say, it is drawn towards that part or locality

in space if we are speaking of a solar system or towards that

sun, if we are describing the coming into being of a planet, with

which it has karmic skandhic affinities, or magnetic attraction,

and eventually manifests in the latter case as a comet, the matter

of which, by the way, is entirely different from the matter we

have any knowledge of on earth, and which it is impossible to

reproduce under any physical conditions in our laboratories,

because this matter, while on the fourth plane of manifestation

(otherwise we should not sense it with our fourth-plane eyes), is

matter in another state than any known to us probably in the

sixth state, counting from below, or the second state counting

from above.

Of such matter is the sun, or rather the solar body, in its

outward form, composed. It is physical matter in the sixth state,

counting upwards, or in the second state counting downwards or

outward ; and its nucleus, which, as H. P. Blavatsky tells us in

The Secret Doctrine, is a particle or a solar atom of primal matter-

stuff, or spirit-stuff , is matter in the seventh state counting upwards,

or the fii;st or highest, counting downwards.

This comet in time, if it succeed in pursuing its way towards

becoming what it is destined to be, becomes finally a planet ; it

so becomes unless it meet with some disaster, as when it is

swallowed up by one or another of the suns which it may pass

in its far-flung orbit. Some comets have already, in our solar

system, so nearly reached the planetary state in its first stages, on

the way to becoming a full-grown planet of the solar system,

that their orbits lie within the confines or limits of this system.

Such, for instance, is Encke's comet, having an elliptical orbit,

and moving around the sun in a closed curve in the space of two

and a half or three years. Another one is Biela's, which, I

believe, has not been seen again, after it appeared to break into

two, I think in the 'fifties of last century. Another one was

Faye's, having the largest orbit of all these three. Two others

are de Vico's and Brorsen's.

It would seem as if all those comets which are drawn into

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 51

elliptical orbits around our sun, were so drawn because they were

karmically destined ultimately to become planets of our system ;

but others, again, suffer another fate. They perish, absorbed

or torn to pieces by the inexpressibly active influences which

surround not merely our own but all other suns, because each

sun, while being the center of its own system of planets, and their

life-giver, from another aspect is a cosmical vampire.

There is much more on this subject that must be said, but it

is very doubtful whether, at the present stage of our study, it

would be wise to embark upon a wider exposition now ; and also

because we know not whether the Teacher would approve of

our going into the matter more fully at present.

If possible, we desire this evening to return to the point where

we were, before embarking upon this excursus, and to take up

again the same thread of thought then interrupted, continuing

it this evening with a study of the beginning of things as outlined

in the Jewish book of Genesis, or " Beginning ", and as illustrated

more particularly by the Jewish Theosophy called the Qabbalah.

If the time allotted to us be insufficient to do so this evening, we

hope to begin that study at our next meeting.

Nothing in the universe is separate from any other thing. All

things hang together not merely sympathetically and magnetic-

ally but because all beings are fundamentally one. We have one

self, one Self of selves, manifesting in the inmost of the Inmost

being of all. But we have many egos, and the study of the ego

in that branch of our thought which is embraced under the head

of psychology, is one of the most inherently necessary and one

of the most interesting and important that can be undertaken.

Around the ego center, so far as we humans are concerned,

some of the most important teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom.

Without going into this study at some length, it is impossible

for us to understand certain of the teachings in The Secret

Doctrine. The ancient Stoics (the very wonderful philosophy

originating with some of the Greek philosophers, and which

became so deservedly popular among the deeper thinkers of

Rome) taught that everything in the universe is intermingled,

or interwoven, not by fundamentally distinct essences or entities

interpenetrating each other, nor in what we theosophists today

call " planes of being ", merely, but by various aspects or differ-

entiations of one common substance, the Root of all, and they

expressed the principle through the three Greek words, Krasis

di 'holou, a mingling through everything, an intermingling of all the

essences in the Cosmos, arising out of, and differentiated from,

the Root-substance common to all. This is also the teaching of

our own Esoteric Wisdom. It is the manifestation, in other

words, of all beings, of all thinking, unthinking, and senseless

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

beings, and of all the gods giving direction and purpose to the

complex universe, which we see around us today ; and in this

varied life was placed the primal cause of all the beauty, the

concord, as well as the strife and discord that do exist in Nature,

and which is the cause of the so-called mistakes that Nature

makes. The origin, in other words, of what some people and

some Christians call the " insolvable riddle " of the " Origin of

evil ". What is the " origin of evil " ? The Ancient Wisdom says

that it is merely the conflict of wills of evolving beings an

inevitable and necessary phase of evolution.

Properly to understand this Intermingling involves another

important subject of study which we shall take up at a later

date, and this is the doctrine of Hierarchies. Hierarchy, of

course, merely means that a scheme or system or state of delegated

directive power and authority exists in a self-contained body,

directed, guided, and taught by one having supreme authority,

called the Hierarch. The name is used by us, by extension of

meaning, as signifying the innumerable degrees, grades, and

steps of evolving entities in the Kosmos, and as applying to all

parts of the universe ; and rightly so, because every different

part of the universe and their number is simply countless is

under the vital governance of a Divine Being, of a God, of a

Spiritual Essence, and all material manifestations are simply the

appearances on our plane of the workings and actions of these

Spiritual Beings behind it. The series of Hierarchies extends

infinitely in both directions. Man may, if he so choose, for

purposes of thought, consider himself at the middle point, from

which extends above him an unending series of steps upon steps

of higher beings of all grades growing constantly less material

and more spiritual, and greater in all senses towards an ineffable

point, and there the imagination stops ; not because the series

itself stops, but because our thought can reach no farther out

nor in. And similar to this series, an infinitely great series of

beings and states of beings descends downwards (to use human

terms) downwards and downwards, until there again the

imagination stops merely because our thought can go no farther.

The eternal action and interaction or what the Stoics also

called the intermingling of these beings produce eternally the

various so-called " planes of being ", and the action of the will

of these beings on matter or substances is the manifestation of

what we call the " laws of Nature ". This is a very inaccurate

and misleading phrase ; but it seems justifiable in a metaphorical

sense, because as a human legislator or a human law-giver will

set forth or set down certain rules of conduct, certain schemes of

action, which are to be obeyed, so the Intelligences behind the

actions of Nature do the same thing, not in a legislative way, but

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 53

by the action of their own spiritual economy. So man himself, in

similar fashion, lays down the " laws " for the less lives which

compose his essences the principles under the center which he

governs and which comprise even the physical body, and the

lives building it. Each one of these lives, as was said before, is

a microcosmic universe or cosmos, that is to say, an ordered

entity, an entity ruled by inescapable or ineluctable habit, which

the scientists of our own race, applying the rule to universal

cosmical action, call the " laws " of Nature.

And they in turn, these less lives, have similar universes under

them. It is unthinkable that the series can stop or have an end,

because if it did, we should have an infinity that ends, an un-

thinkable proposition. It is merely the paucity of our ideas and

the feebleness of our imagination which make us to suppose that

there may be a stop at certain points ; and it is this feebleness

of thought which has given birth to and promoted the rise of

the different religious systems ; in one case the monotheism of the

Christian Church, and in another case the monotheism of the

Mohammedan peoples, and in another case still the monotheism

of the Jewish people. Of these three, the Jews have had the

longest history and the wisest history, for the Jews originally

were never a monotheistic people. In their early history they

were convinced polytheists using the term in the philosophical

sense, lest people imagine when they hear of Polytheism that it

means our absurd modern Western misconception of what we

think the cultured Romans and Greeks thought about their gods

and goddesses, or what we think they ought to have believed,

which is conceited nonsense.

The popular mythology of the Greeks and Romans, as also

that of ancient Egypt or of Babylonia, and that of the Germanic

or Celtic tribes of Europe, was understood in a different way

from our gross misconception of it ; and conceived of in a different

way by the wise men in those days, who understood perfectly

well all the usual symbols and allegories by which the esoteric

teachings were outlined and taught in the popular mythologies.

And we must remember that " exoteric " does not necessarily

mean false. It means only that in exoteric teachings the keys

to the esoteric teachings have not been given out.

We often hear the claim made by monotheistic believers, that

the great " prophets " of Israel, the so-called wise men of that

people, knew better than their ancient predecessors what their

people ought to know and believe. They these prophets

taught monotheism, we are assured, and redirected the thoughts

of the people away from the ancient beliefs indeed, the multi-

plicity of beliefs towards one tribal God whom they called

Jehovah, a word, by the way, which the later orthodox Jewish

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

religionists held and still hold so sacred that tney would

not even pronounce it aloud, but in reading aloud substituted

for it another word, when this word " Jehovah " occurred in a

sentence in the Jewish Bible. Now this substitute word is

" Adonai ", and means " my Lords " in itself a tru confession

of polytheistic thought. Judaism is replete in its Law, or Bible,

at least, with polytheism ; and so prone is the human heart to

follow the instincts of its spirit, that when the Christian Church

in its blindness overthrew philosophical Polytheism, as an error

in religion, the reaction, fully to be expected as a consequence,

finally and, indeed, very soon set in, and that Church answered

the cry of the human heart by substituting " saints " for the

injured and banished Gods and Goddesses, thus inaugurating a

cultural adoration of dead men and women for Powers, Intelli-

gences, in Nature ! They had to give them saints in order to

supply the places of the forgotten Deities ; and even gave to

these saints more or less the same powers that the ancient gods

and goddesses were reputed to have exercised and to have had.

They had a saint as a patron or protector of city, state, or

country St. George for England, St. James for Spain, St. Denis

for France, and so on. The same thought, the same function,

the same desire satisfied the instincts of the human heart

cannot be ignored or violated with impunity. But how greatly

different was the initiate view of the Wise Men in " Pagan "

times I

Now when the Ancients spoke of the multiplicity of Gods they

did so with wisdom, understanding, and reverence. Is it con-

ceivable that the great men of the ancient days who then dis-

covered and established the canons of belief followed by us

usually ignorant of our great debt to them even to-day in all

our lines of thought, and which we value like little children and

have valued since the rebirth of literature in our Western world,

is it conceivable, I say, that they had no conception of cosmical

or of divine unity, something which even the average man of

intelligence to-day will come to ? How absurd I No ! They

could think and they knew as well as we do, but they also knew,

yea, even the degenerated thinkers in the early ages of the

Christian era, that if " God " made the world, being a perfect

and infinite Being, his work (or Its work) could be only a perfect

and infinite work, worthy of its perfect and infinite Maker, free

from vanity, free from limitations, free from sin, free from decrepi-

tude and ceaseless, gnawing change. Yet, as we see and consider

the things around us, as we know that the world, being an

exemplar of change and hence of limitations and decay, therefore

cannot be and is not infinite, we know the instincts of our being

tell us that it is the work of less beings, of minor and limited

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 55

Powers, however exalted spiritually ; and as we penetrate into

our own thoughts and study the life of the beings and of the nature

around us, we see also that there is life within life, wheel within

wheel, purpose within purpose, and that behind the outward

manifestations or action (the " laws of Nature ") of the so-called

Gods, there are still more subtil Powers, still more exalted Intelli-

gences at work : verily, wheels within wheels, lives within lives,

and so on for ever : an unending and boundless Unity in Multi-

plicity, and Multiplicity limitless and unbounded in Unity. So,

as said before, when we speak of the unity of Life, or of the

" divine unity ", we merely mean that here our penetrating

spirit has reached the limit of its present powers, a point at

which human thought can go no farther. It has run to its

utmost limits, and from the feebleness of it, we are bound in

truth to say, Here is as far as our thought can go. It is our

present " Ring called ' Pass Not ! ' " But this honest confession

of human limitation does not mean that there is " nothing "

beyond. On the contrary, it is a proof that Life and space are

endless.

Now the Neo-Platonists who first came into prominence in the

early centuries of the Christian era and who, with the Stoics,

provided Christianity with all that it had that was philosophically

good and spiritual and true taught that the summit, the acme,

the flower, the highest point (that they called the " hyparxis ")

of any series of animate and " inanimate " beings, whether we

enumerate the stages or degrees of the series as seven or ten or

twelve (according to whichever system we follow), was the

" divine unity "for that series or Hierarchy, and that this hyparxis

or flower or summit or beginning or highest being was again in

its turn the lowest being of the Hierarchy above it, and so extending

onwards for ever.

Change within change, wheel within wheel, each Hierarchy

manifesting one facet, as it were, of the divine cosmic Life, each

Hierarchy showing forth one thought, as it were, of the divine

thinkers. Good and evil are relative, and rigidly offset and equili-

brate each other. There is no absolute good, there is no absolute

evil ; these are mere human terms, only. " Evil " in any sphere

of life, is imperfection, for it. " Good " in any sphere of life, is

perfection, for it. But the good of one is the evil of another,

because the latter is the shadow of something higher above it.

Just as " light " and " darkness " are not absolute but relative

things. What is " darkness " ? Darkness is absence of light,

and the light that we know is itself the manifestation of life in

matter hence a material phenomenon. Each is (physically) a

form of vibration, each is, therefore, a form of life.

Various names were given to these Hierarchies considered as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

series of beings. For instance, let us take the standard and

generalized Greek Hierarchy as shown by writers in periods

preceding the rise of Christianity, though the Neo-Platonists, as

we have seen, had their own Hierarchies, and gave the stages or

degrees thereof special names. It is often asserted by those

people who know everything I mean the bigwigs of the modern

day, who even believe that they know better what the ancients

believed than the ancients did themselves that Neo-Platonism

was evolved merely to oppose and overthrow, and to take the

place of the wonderful, soul-saving, spiritual doctrines of

Christianity, forgetting that from Neo-Platonism and Neo-

Pythagoreanism, and Stoicism, early Christianity drew nearly

everything of religious and philosophic good that it had in it.

But the Neo-Platonic doctrine was, in sober fact, actually the

setting forth to a certain degree only of the esoteric doctrine of the

Platonic school, and was, in its esoteric reach, the teaching which

Plato and the early Pythagoreans taught secretly to their

disciples.

We now resume our thread. The hyparxis, as we showed,

means the summit or beginning of a Hierarchy. The scheme

started with the divine, the highest point of the series or its

Divinity :

(i) Divine. (2) Gods, or the spiritual. (3) Demi-gods, some-

times called divine heroes, involving a very mystical doctrine.

(4) Heroes proper. (5) Men. (6) Beasts or animals. (7) Vegetable

world. (8) Mineral world. (9) Elemental world, or what was

called the realm of Hades. As said, the Divinity (or aggregate

Divine Lives) itself was the hyparxis of this series of Hierarchies,

because each of these nine stages was itself a subordinate Hier-

archy. The names mean little, you may give them other names ;

the name itself matters not much ; the important thing is to get

the thought. Now, as said before, remember that this Esoteric

Wisdom taught that this (or any other) Hierarchy of nine, hangs

like a pendant jewel from the lowest Hierarchy above it, which

made the tenth counting upwards, which we can call, if you like,

the Super-Divine, the Hyper-Heavenly, and that this tenth was

the lowest stage (or the ninth, counting downwards) of still

another Hierarchy extending upwards ; and so on, indefinitely.

Now when the Christians finally overthrew the ancient

religion ; when the karmic cycle had brought about an era of

what Plato called spiritual barrenness and we remember to

divide the work of evolution into two parts, epochs of barrenness

and epochs of fertility when the Christian religion came in as

part of an epoch of barrenness, the Christians took over very

much of this ancient thought, as was only to be expected ;

history merely repeated itself. And they derived it, as was said

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 57

before, mainly from the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans and

the Neo-Platonists, but mostly from the Neo-Platonists. This was

done in very large part, at Alexandria, the great center of Greek

or Hellenistic culture at that time ; the chiefest thinkers of the

Neo-Platoqists also lived in Alexandria. This Neo-Platonic

stream of beautiful thought in the Christian religion, entered into

it with special force around the fifth century, through the writings

of a man who was called Dionysius the Areopagite, from the

" Hill of Ares ", or Mars, at Athens. The Christian legend runs

that when Paul preached at Athens, he did so on Mars Hill, or

the Areopagus, and that one of his first converts was a Greek

called Dionysius ; and Christian tradition goes on to say that

he was, later, the first Christian Bishop of Athens. Now this

may all be fable. However, the Christians claimed it as a

fact.

Now in the fifth or sixth century, five hundred years more or

less after Paul is supposed to have preached in Athens, there

appeared in the Greek world a work calling itself the writings of

Dionysius, the Areopagite claiming authorship from this same

man. It is evidently the work of a Neo-Platonist-Christian.

That is to say, of a Christian, who for reasons of his own, perhaps

policy (social or financial), remained within the Christian Church,

but was more or less a Greek pagan, a Neo-Platonist at heart.

This work, by coming out under the name of the first (alleged)

Bishop of Athens, Dionysius, almost immediately began to have

immense vogue in the Christian Church ; and it remains to this

day, not indeed one of the canonical works, but one of the works

which the Christians consider among the greatest they have on

mystical lines, and perhaps their most spiritual work ; it very

deeply affected Christian theological thought from the time of

its appearance.

One of the works comprised in this book, attributed by the

Christians themselves to Dionysius, Paul's first convert in

Athens, is a treatise on the Divine Hierarchies, in which the

teaching is that God is infinite and therefore did the work of

creation through less abstract and spiritual beings ; and a scheme

of Hierarchies is here set forth, one lower than another, one

derived from the other ; which is exactly the teaching in the

Qabbalah, the Theosophy of the Jews ; which also is exactly

the teaching of the Neo-Platonists and essentially that of the

Stoics, and of the old Greek mythology. It is a " pagan " teaching

throughout, and merely became Christianized because adapted

to the new religion, and because Christian names are used : and,

instead of saying and enumerating gods, divine heroes, demi-gods or

heroes, men, animals, etc., the names are God, Archangels, Thrones,

Powers, etc. But the schematic or essential thought is the same :

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

and, furthermore, there are actually passages in the works of

this Dionysius which are taken word for word wholesale

from the writings of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, who lived and

flourished and wrote voluminously on Neo-Platonic subjects in

the third century.

Now this work, particularly in the field of dogmatic ecclesias-

tical thought, formed the basis of much of the theology of the

Greek and Roman Churches ; we may even say that on it their

mediaeval theology was actually based. It formed the main

source of the studies and writings of the Italian Thomas Aquinas

(i3th century), one of the greatest mediaeval doctors of the

Christian religion, and of Johannes Scotus, called Erigena, an

Irishman (gth century), and probably of Duns Scotus (i3th

century), a remarkable Scot ; and of many more. Spenser,

Shakespeare, and Milton, to speak only of English literature,

are full of the spirit of these writings. They provided much of the

mystical thought of the Dark Ages, and ultimately in a degener-

ate form helped to give rise to the hair-splitting and quibbling

and squabbles of the quasi-religious writers known as the School-

men. But these men had lost the inner sense or heart of the thing

through the ecclesiastical growth and political power of the

Christian Church, and they began to argue about things of no

spiritual consequence whatever ; such as the query, Which came

first : the hen or the egg ? or, How many angels can dance on the

point of a needle ? or, If an irresistible force meets an immovable

obstacle, what then happens ? These most pragmatical and

useful diversions and intellectual vagaries lasted for a certain

time, and then, with the renaissance of thought in Europe, due

largely to the labors of the devotees of Science and natural

Philosophy, the European world gradually began to pull out of

this mental slough, and brought in an era, which is now in full

and strong current, and which has inaugurated and continued,

for good or for ill (perhaps both), the streams of human thinking

as we see it today. Do we Theosophists presume vainly to

interpret the lessons of universal history when we say that we

are the forerunners and the makers of the new era a far nobler

and more spiritual cycle which is to come, and is even now

dawning, albeit coming to being in no little sorrow and tribulation

of both soul and intellect ?

In conclusion, we may call attention to the fact that just about

the time when the first 5000 years of the Hindu cycle called the

Kaliyuga (lasting 432,000) came to an end, there also came to

an end a certain " Messianic " cycle of twenty-one hundred

years (actually, if we come to exact figures, 2160), which is,

note well, just one half of the Hindti-Babylonian root-cycle of

4320 years.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 59

In our next evening of study we hope to take up, with the

Teacher's permission, the outline of Cosmogony and Theogony

from the Polytheistic standpoint, as found in the Book of Genesis,

the first of the Jewish Bible.

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CHAPTER VII

" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY. THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE

LADDER OF LIFE : THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI.

Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of ;Eons

in time and space in our Round and Globe the Mysteries of Nature (at any

rate, those which it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils

of those same now invisible " heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols.

The keys thereto passed from one generation of " wise men " to the other. Some

of the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were brought therefrom

by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous " Triangle." The latter

figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and scientific

descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic,

as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed

" Geneses." The ten points inscribed within that " Pythagorean triangle " are

worth all the theogonics and angelologies ever emanated from the theological

brain. For he who interprets them on their very face, and in the order given

will find in these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the

uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial man.

And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were

evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by which the latter

was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the same

" Mother " as its fellow-globes he who will master the mysteries of our Earth

will have mastered those of all others.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, pp. 612, 613.

" It is that LIOBT which condenses into the forms of the ' Lords of Being '

the first and the highest of which are t collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagdtmd

(said figuratively to issue from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek

philosophers appearing at the beginning of every new Manvantara). From

these downwards formed from the ever-consolidating waves of that light, which

becomes on the objective plane gross matter proceed the numerous hierarchies of the

Creative Forces, some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others, again,

the lowest (Elementals) , having no form of their own, but assuming every form

according to the surrounding conditions."

Ibid., II, pp. 33, 34-

W'

The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated

by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings,

each having a mission to perform, and who whether we give to them

one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels are

" messengers " in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic

and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees

of consciousness and intelligence ; and to call them all pure Spirits

without any of the earthly alloy " which time is wont to prey upon "

is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was,

*E open our study this evening by reading from The

Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 274 :

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 61

or prepa&s to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or

a coming cycle (Manvantara).

When we ended our study last week, because of the short time

that the Teacher has set for us in which to speak, we left un-

mentioned a number of very important things, which we shall

have to take up this evening before we can proceed to the particu-

lar study that was to follow in proper course the excursus which

we embarked upon three weeks ago.

First a few words more concerning the Nebular Theory or

Hypothesis and the Planetary Theory deriving from it, as con-

sidered from the Theosophical standpoint, and consequently a

further explanation or rather development of the doctrine of

Hierarchies, which will lead us to the study towards which we

have aimed, that is to say, the consideration of Cosmogony or the

beginning of worlds as outlined in the Jewish Book of Genesis or

" Beginnings ".

About one hundred years ago, more or less within a few years

of each other, there died three remarkable men, namely Kant,

perhaps the greatest philosopher that Europe has produced ;

Sir William Herschel, the astronomer ; and the Marquis de

Laplace ; the first a German, the second a German-Englishman,

or an Anglo-German, and the third a Frenchman. All these three

men in some degree were responsible for the enunciation and the

development of the theory of world-beginning which eventuated

in the Nebular Hypothesis of Laplace. It is interesting also to

note that all three men were of humble birth, and by the force

of their own intelligence and character became, all three of them,

remarkable men. Kant was, I believe, the son of a saddler ; Sir

William Herschel was also of humble origin, and was in youth an

oboist in the Hanoverian Guards ; and Pierre Simon Laplace

was the son of a farmer ; Laplace was ennobled, and upon him

was conferred the nobiliary title of Marquis.

Now the Nebular Theory really originated with Kant ; he it

was who laid down the basic lines, the fundamental ground, as it

were, upon which the Nebular Theory was later developed

mathematically by Laplace. Coincident with Kant's work and

writings was the astronomical work of Herschel in England,

and those two men were responsible for the fundamentals of the

Nebular Theory. Laplace took it up after they had more or less

laid down the main lines, developed it into what is called the

" Nebular hypothesis or theory of Laplace ", and on account of

its explaining in mathematical form the mechanism of the

universe, that is to say, of the solar system and the planets, and

their satellites, it has been called a " magnificently audacious "

hypothesis. It was Laplace who carried the theory a good deal

farther than the work of Kant and Herschel than the point

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

where Kant and Herschel had left it ; and, in a sense/ Laplace

materialized it. As H. P. Blavatsky tells us, if the nebular

theory had remained at the point where Kant and Herschel had

left it, there would be little for the Theosophical writers and

thinkers to do except to develop it and explain it in accordance

with the Esoteric Philosophy.

It is very interesting to note that another great man, Sweden-

borg in Sweden, also worked upon the same theory and apparently

had very nearly the same ideas that Kant and Herschel had as

regards a nebular genesis of cosmical systems. Now these two

latter men had a spiritual idea back of the theory which they

enunciated, and it was the abandonment of that spiritual idea

by Laplace, and the substitution by him of a mechanico-mathe-

matical theory in its place, which furnished those influences which

directed the nebular hypothesis away from the line and thought

and teachings as laid down in the Esoteric Philosophy, as taught

by the ancient Teachers.

The nebular hypothesis has in some respects been much changed

since the day of Laplace ; scientists have thought more about it,

a fact which was also true in 1887 or 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky

wrote The Secret Doctrine. There has been an attempt by later

astronomers of our own day, Sir Norman Lockyer, and the

American astronomer and mathematician See, to replace a

nebular origin of cosmical bodies at least in part with what has

been called a planetesimal hypothesis or a planetesimal origin

that is to say, that the bodies of the solar system have been built

up of and by cosmic dust and tiny planets drawn together by the

force of gravitation. Now this theory is, philosophically speaking,

at an immense distance from the teachings of the Esoteric Philos-

ophy, although this Philosophy does admit and teach that at a

later stage in the evolution of cosmical bodies, collection and

concretion of stellar dust is, actually, one of the phases in the

growth of worlds.

Theosophy admits that a planet or a solar system, in the course

of its formation, does gather to itself " star-dust " and vagrant

bodies dispersed in space ; but this factor in its growth is not its

origin. The origin of a sun, of a solar system and of the planets

in it, and consequently of the entire universe within the encircling

zone of the Milky Way, has a spiritual background, has spiritual

essences or gods behind it, who form such a system, and direct it,

and are the mechanicians in it and of it. Their work is carried on

(more or less) along the main lines of the nebular theory as

enunciated by Kant and Herschel : that is to say, space is etern-

ally filled with matter in a certain state or condition of being,

and when this matter, as Kant and Herschel would have said,

receives the divine impulse, it is concreted and becomes luminous,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 63

and this* concretion is further (and later) strengthened by its

drawing into itself, from the immense spacial expanse in which

it is, material " star-dust " and larger bodies.

Now, when we look up at the sky we see material bodies,

fourth-plane bodies seen with our fourth-plane eyes, but behind

these fourth-plane bodies there are spiritual intelligences, which

are called in the Esoteric Philosophy, Dhyan-Chohans, or " Lords

of Meditation ". As the Ancients put it, every celestial body

is an " animal ". Now the word animal comes from the Latin,

and means a living being. Commonly, in speech, we speak of

" animals " when we should say " beasts " or " brutes " ; that

is to say, a " brute " is an entity which has not yet been raised

to the level of a self-conscious entity ; it is brute in the original

Latin sense, i.e., " heavy ", " gross ", hence irrational and incom-

plete ; it is not yet finished. But an animal really means a

living being, and in that sense the word applies to men ; also,

in the view of the Ancients, it applies to the stellar, solar, and

planetary bodies they are " animals " in the sense of being

living things, with a physical corpus or body, but nevertheless

animate or insouled : in the mystical teachings of the Esoteric

Philosophy they are insouled things, as indeed every atom is,

every tiny universe, or tiny cosmos.

Now this insouling is done by (or is the action of) what is

commonly called Hierarchies. There is not for every individual

entity in Kosmos, whether atom, beast, man, god, planet, or sun,

one concreted soul, as it were, derived from the universal World-

Soul, with nothing no connecting links above it and nothing

below it not at all. There are no true vacancies in Nature,

physical, astral, or spiritual : there are no vacuums. Everything

is linked on to everything else, by literally countless bonds of

union, which is another master-key to the teachings of the

Esoteric Philosophy. As in man, so in every other unit of being,

in every other entity, the universal life manifests through a

Hierarchy ; the multiform and varied qualities of beings are

but the life-rays of a Hierarchy, that is to say, grades or steps of

consciousness and matter, ascending from below upward, or if

you like, coming downwards from above, through all of which

the center of consciousness call it soul or ego for the moment

must pass in its evolution towards godhood.

Now this teaching of Hierarchies is fundamental. It is one of

the present-day " lost keys " of the Esoteric Philosophy. Nothing

can be understood adequately without a clear comprehension of

it. As man is in our ordinary psychology considered to be a

triad, or a triform entity body, soul, and spirit so he may be

considered from another point of view as a four-fold entity, or

as a five-fold, or a six-fold, or a seven-fold, or (the most esoteric

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

of all) as a ten-fold entity. Why ten ? Because ten, the*Teachers

have told us, is the key-number which explains the compound

fabric of the universe. The universe is built on a denary scale,

that is, on a scale counting by tens. In a few moments we shall

develop in outline the philosophical import of seven and ten.

Let us say now that man is septenary in our view (5nly because

we reckon in as principles, two elements of his being which are

not, strictly speaking, human principles ; one the physical

body which really is not a " principle " at all : it is merely a

house, his " carrier " in another sense, and no more belongs to

man except that he has excreted it, thrown it out from himself

this physical body, we say, is no more himself than is the

house in which his body lives. He is a complete human being

without it.

The second strictly non-human principle is the highest of all

the seven, the Higher Self, the Atman, the seventh non-human

because it is universal. The Self no more belongs to me than

to you or to anyone else. Selfhood is the same in all beings. But

beyond the Atman, there is the Paramatman, which we have

briefly studied before, the Supreme Self. The Atman is, as it

were, the star of our own self-issue, the Root of our selfhood, the

point where we cling, as it were, to the " Highest ". If we can

conceive of an ocean of superspiritual ether, so to speak, and in

that ocean call it consciousness a vortex, a laya-center, a

point, a Primordial Point, whence the six principles below it

flow forth into concrete manifestation through its vehicles the

souls or egos we obtain a very crude conception of the Root of

our being. It is the Atman, the channel or spiritual point where

the superspiritual breaks, as it were, from and through a barrier

downwards into individualized life. This process we shall

more fully explain later, and shall then illustrate it by

diagram.

Now this matter of Hierarchies as dealt with in the different

world-religions virtually in the same manner but under different

names and in different paradigmatic schemes. For instance, you

can think of the ten parts or grades or steps of a Hierarchy as one

under the other, like the floors in a house, or like the flats in an

apartment-house, a very gross simile, it is true, but having the

advantage of suggesting steps or planes, and of suggesting high

and low. We can think of a Hierarchy in another, more subtil,

manner, as consisting in triads of spheres, or living centers, three

triads hanging from the tenth or highest point ; and that highest

center is, as already explained, the point beyond which our

thought and imagination can soar no higher, and we merely say

that this center is the highest that the human intellect can reach.

But we know that beyond it, this tenth which is our highest,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 65

there is also the lowest center or plane of another Hierarchy still

higher from which our Hierarchy hangs as a pendant ; and so

on endlessly. We cannot say of Infinity, that the Infinite begins

here and ends there : if this were so, it would not be infinite, it

would not >e boundless. Our doctrine of Universal Life, of

Universal Consciousness, of one Universal " Law " working

everywhere, means that that " Law " manifests in every atom,

and in every part of Universal Being, and in all directions,

and for all duration, and in the same manner everywhere ;

because it cannot manifest in radically diverse ways ; if

so, it would be many fundamental " laws " and not one

" Law ".

For instance as regards Hierarchies in our last study we

considered the Hierarchy of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, which

is really the esoteric teaching of ancient Greece in the form that

Plato gave to it. And there were nine stages, nine degrees,

hanging, as it were, from the topmost, the spiritual sun or the

central sun. We can conceive of these Hierarchies as seven con-

centric circles around and deriving from a central point, the

Highest Triad, which we can call the infinite or the Primordial

Point ; or, again, we can call this primordial point the At man

or Self of the thinking entity, man, and then the other spheres

or circles of being around him, will stand for his six other

principles, somewhat in this fashion :

This is one way of representing a human individual Hierarchy,

the different spheres or concentric circles, six of them, all flowing

forth from the center, or seventh element, the Self. All Hier-

archies are divided into seven, nine, or ten. The reason for this

is a question that we shall have to go into by and by. There is

no need to represent all these methods or paradigmatic schemes,

but the idea is the same in all. Another way of representing a

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Hierarchy by paradigm is, as said before, by like lines, ten of

them, in this way :

. 5

.6

. 7

.8

or by representing the nine stages or spheres as three triads on

three planes, and the tenth on its own fourth plane :

We have studied the system of the Neo-Platonic Hierarchies

in brief outline ; and, if we have time, we shall take up this

evening two other paradigmatic schemes by which Hierarchies

are variously represented. Let us call earnest attention here to

the important fact, before going farther, that these schemes,

these paradigmatic representation^ on a flat surface, do not

mean that the grades or steps or planes of being are either flat

surfaces, or are like " nests " of boxes ; they merely show by

analogy, by hints, the relations and the functions of the grades

among themselves.

It is obvious to any thinking man that the Hierarchies of being

do not rise one above another like the floors of a house ; it is

perhaps true that all over the world they are so represented by

different systems ; but this is merely to show that there is a high

and a low, a series of conditions or states of spirit and matter.

Just as we would teach children, so the ancient Teachers taught

us, in simple ways. Nor are we to imagine that the Hierarchies

actually extend somewhere in space in the form of triangles or

circles. We represent them in this way in order to show their

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 67

intermingling relations and their interpenetrating functions

among each other. Why, however, do we separate the grades

into triads ? Because certain ones of these grades or planes are

more nearly related, intermingle more easily, function more

easily together, since their conditions or states are more closely

akin, (i) the first triad, the highest ; (2) the intermediate ;

(3) the lowest triad ; and all overshadowing the corpus, the

physical body. Or we can take another scheme, and have the

three lowest centers forming the bottom triad ; the three inter-

mediate centers next ; and then the three highest ; all the three

triads hanging from a point, the Primordial Point, " God ", if

you like.

Now let us consider the question : Have the Christians a

Hierarchy in their theology ? They have ; and by this I mean

that the Christians had one, apparently from the earliest times,

till the natural resiliency of the human mind began to exert

itself in rebellion against the dogmatism and materialization of

the Christian teaching which reached its climax in the epoch

preceding the Renaissance of thought, when the discoveries of

science freed the human mind from its dogmatic shackles.

Nevertheless, up till that time this teaching of Hierarchies con-

trolling living beings flourished in the Christian Church, and it

originated in the form it then had, as we pointed out in our last

study, in the writings of Dionysius, " the Areopagite ". One of

his works was called On the Celestial Hierarchy, and it showed

how all spiritual being was divided into a Hierarchy of ten degrees

or stages, the tenth or highest being God. This mystic writer

followed this work with another called On the Ecclesiastical

Hierarchy, and he claimed as a good Christian, or in order to

please his good Christian friends there is every reason to

believe that he copied the hierarchical scheme of the Neo-

Platonic philosophy, which was purely pagan, of course that

on earth the celestial Hierarchy was re-enacted or reflected or

repeated in an ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which was the Christian

Church, topped by Jesus as the highest representative thereof

and as the " Logos of God " !

Now what were the names that Dionysius gave to the grades

or stages of his Hierarchy ? First, God, as the summit, the

Divine Spirit ; then came the Seraphim ; then the Cherubim ;

then the Thrones, forming the first triad. Then Dominations,

Virtues, Powers, forming the second triad. Then Principalities,

then Archangels, then Angels, the third triad counting down-

ward.

It is interesting to note that this Hierarchy is syncretistic,

that is, composite, taken from different sources, and built up into

a unity. Seraphim and Cherubim are from the Hebrew. This

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

plural word Seraphim comes from a Hebrew root meaning to

" burn with fire ", hence, to be inflamed with love. Cherubim

is a curious -word, but scholars generally think that it means

" forms ". The Seraphim are mystically believed to be red in

color, and the Cherubim dark blue. The Thrones, the Domina-

tions, the Virtues, the Powers, the Principalities, are all taken

from the Christian teachings of Paul in the Epistles, Ephesians

i, 21, and Colossians i, 16, and are distinctly mystic. The two last,

the archangels and the angels, are not at all Christian in their

origin, but are derived in indirect and tortuous descent from the

ancient Greek and Asiatic especially old Persian system of

thought which recognized messengers or ministers or transmitters

between man and the spiritual world ; the Greek word angel

originally meant " messenger ", and the highest type of these

were called archangels, or angels of the highest degree.

Now the fault, or rather inadequacy, of this Christian system

is that its highest point reached no higher than this god here, a

modification on Greek lines of the Jewish Jehovah ; and it went

no farther below in reach or extent than man himself. The

Ineffable, Unthinkable, on the one hand, and the immeasurable

spheres of beings below man, on the other hand, are ignored. It

was merely a chapter torn out of the Ancient Wisdom and taken

over into Christianity ; but small and imperfect as it was, it

provided Christianity with all the mysticism and spiritualizing

thought that saved it from utter materialism in religion during

the Middle Ages.

Let us now take up another Hierarchy, the Jewish scheme of

the Qabbalah. You see that there are nine degrees here, nine

degrees all pendant from the Supreme Self or God. Now the

Jewish Qabbalistic Hierarchy, or Hierarchies, or system of Hier-

archies, is an outgrowth of the teachings and thinkings of the

Jewish doctors or Rabbis, from a time very far back, and is

actually a reflexion of esoteric Babylonian teachings.

As the Book of Genesis (the first few chapters of it at least) is

very largely taken from the Babylonians, so the Jews derived

their Angelology, or system of angels or angelical Hierarchies,

from that same source. Now this teaching found its finest

expression in the Jewish Theosophy, called the Qabbalah (this

word, as said before, meaning to receive i.e., traditionary lore

handed down from teacher to teacher), and the teaching of the

Hierarchies in the Qabbalah is fundamental, the whole system

being based on it : it implies the intermingling and the inter-

change of all life and all beings, between low and high, in this

regard exactly as in our own teaching. Hence the Qabbalah is,

so far as it goes, a faithful reflexion of the Esoteric Philosophy.

The Qabbalah, as outlined in the book Zohar a word meaning

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 69

splendor , this book is often called the " Bible of the Qabbalists "

is in large part exoteric from the Theosophical viewpoint,

because all our teachings, with regard to certain things,

are in the Zohar, but not all the explanations are there, and

this fact makes the book exoteric, in so far as the keys are

lacking.

Now the teaching in the Qabbalah with regard to the Hierarchies

and the Ladder of Life, is, that from the Boundless, or Ain Suph,

down to infinity below, the Ladder of Life consists of steps, or

degrees, or grades, of consciousness and of consciousnesses, and

of being and of beings, and that there is a constant interchange,

an interflow of communication, between these innumerable

grades of the various Hierarchies or worlds. Precisely our teach-

ing naturally ! The Qabbalistic Hierarchy consists of, or more

accurately is typified by, nine grades or planes or spheres hanging

from a tenth (or a first, if you like) , all together making ten. They

bore the following names. The first is called the Crown, the

Primordial Point, the first and highest of the Sefiroth (sometimes

spelt Sephiroth) or the grades, steps, planes, spheres, before

spoken of. The next Sephira is called Wisdom. (We have no

time now to give the Hebrew words here ; they may be found

in any book on the Qabbalah.) 1 The next, the third, is called

Understanding, or, perhaps better, Intelligence. These form the

head and two shoulders of the Adam Qadmon, or Archetypal Man,

or Ideal Man. According to the thinking of the Qabbalists, as

these Hierarchies are particularly and sympathetically related to

certain respective parts of the human body, so these three just

spoken of have each its respective relation : certain parts about

the crown of the head, or in the head, or from the head, or

belonging to the head, for the first Sephira ; the right shoulder

to Wisdom ; the left to Understanding. The right arm is called

Greatness, or sometimes Love ; the left arm is called Power, or

sometimes Justice, and is considered a feminine quality ; the

breast or region of the chest or heart is called Beauty. The right

leg (remember I am speaking generally of the Archetypal Man)

is called Subtility ; the left leg is called Majesty, and is con-

sidered a feminine quality. The generative organs are called

Foundation.

Now these make nine. Each of these grades is assumed to

emanate from the one above it. First the Crown ; from the Crown,

Wisdom ; from the Crown and Wisdom, Understanding ; from the

three Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding comes the fourth ;

from the four all together comes the fifth ; from the five all

together comes the sixth ; and so on down to the ninth ; and

1 See I sis Unveiled, II, 213; and Theosophical Glossary.

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the ninth, with all the forces and qualities of the others behind it,

produces this round being, an egg-shaped container or

" carrier ", or vehicle, an auric egg, and this auric

egg, as the tenth, is called Kingdom, or sometimes

Dwelling-Place, because it is the fruit or result or

emanation, or field of action of all the others,' manifesting

through these different planes of being.

Now why should the Hierarchies sometimes be numbered or

reckoned as seven, and sometimes as ten ? Because ten is the

most sacred fundamental number in occultism. It is that upon

which the universe is built. The fabric of being is built along the

lines of the decad or ten. The Pythagoreans, members of one of

the most mystic of the ancient Greek schools of thinking, had

what they called the sacred Tetractys, a word referring to the

number four ; and how did they represent this Tetractys ? In

this fashion : First a point above and alone, the Monad ; then

two points below that, or the Dyad ; then three points below

these, or the Triad ; and then four points below these, or

the Tetrad ten points altogether.

They had an oath which they con-

sidered the most sacred adjuration

of the Pythagorean School, which

they uttered when they swore by

the " Holy Tetractys ". What is

this oath? It is worth remem-

bering : " Yea, by the Tetraktys,

which has supplied to our soul

the fountain containing the roots

of everflowing nature ". This

is just full of profound thought. Finally, the tetraktys em-

blematized (among other things) the procession of beings into

manifestation. First the Primordial point, then the line, then

the superficies, then the cube i +2 +3 +4=10.

Now what, finally, is the difference between the system of

seven and that of ten ? The seven is the fundamental number

of the manifested universe ; but over the seven hovers eternally

the infinite and immortal Triad, the Unmanifest. This is the key.

Some religions specialize in sevens ; but all religions have the

ten, also, in their various numerical schemes.

As H. P. Blavatsky says we have not time to read her words

in full to-night, although I had intended to read, after finishing

this explanation, her own words on this very subject from her

esoteric Instructions No. i (we must remember that this is an

esoteric gathering) and also from The Secret Doctrine the

number ten is the secret or sephirical principle of the universe,

because on and through this denary system the universe is

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 71

formed and built. Man (as a whole) is tenfold, the universe (as

a whole) is tenfold, but both are septenary in manifestation.

Every atom, every living being, and every universe is a complete

Hierarchy of ten degrees : three highest considered as the Root,

and seven lower in active manifestation. This Root, or Highest

Triad, is a mystery-teaching, concerning which very little open

explanation is to be found even in the ancient literatures.

In The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 98, H. P. Blavatsky

first enumerates certain things which you can see for yourself

in the Stanza there printed, to wit : " The Voice of the Word,

Svabhavat, the Numbers, for he is One and Nine " ; to which

she joins the following as a foot-note :

Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the " Creator,"

the name given to the totality of the Creators blended by the Mono-

theists into One, as the " Elohim," Adam Kadmon or Sephira the

Crown are the androgyne synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand

for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularised Kabala.

The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern Occultists,

divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or Sephira,

Chochmah and Binah [that is, the Crown, Wisdom and Understand-

ing]) which leaves seven Sephiroth. . . .

Then on page 360 (very unfortunately we did not have time

to refer to this at our last meeting) she says here in relation to

other matters : " The 10, being the sacred number of the universe,

was secret and esoteric . . . " ; and on page 362 : "... the

whole astronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacer-

dotal language was built upon the number 10. . . ."

It may be interesting and well worth while to point out here,

that these quotations give the reason why the numerical com-

putations of the Esoteric Philosophy have not yet been satis-

factorily solved by students with a mathematical turn of mind

because they will persist in working with the number seven,

alone, in spite of Madame Blavatsky's open hints to the contrary,

for she says openly that the number seven must be used in

calculations in a manner hitherto unknown to Western mathe-

matics. The hint ought to be sufficient in itself alone, because

the seven, considered as a basis for computation, is a very

unwieldy and awkward number with which to calculate. The

subject is alluded to in veiled manner in Instructions No. I,

page 9, in speaking of Padmapani, or the " Lotus-handed " one

of the names in Tibetan mysticism of the Bodhisattwa Avalo-

kitewara. H. P. Blavatsky says, after narrating a legend

concerning this character :

He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding

that in case of failure he wished that his head would split into number-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

less fragments. The Kalpa closed ; but Humanity felt him not within

its cold, evil heart. Then Padmapani's head split and was shattered

into a thousand fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re-

formed the pieces into ten heads, three white and seven of various

colors. And since that day man has become a perfect number, or Ten.

In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOR, AND NUMBER is so

ingeniously introduced as to veil the real esoteric meaning. To the

outsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy-tales of

creation ; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and

magical, meaning. From Amitabha no color or the white glory are

born the seven differentiated colors of the prism. These each emit a

corresponding sound, forming the seven of the musical scale. As

Geometry among the Mathematical Sciences is specially related to

Architecture, and also proceeding to Universals to Cosmogony,

so the ten Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made

to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had

also to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has pro-

vided, as will be seen.

One more citation, in order to finish the subject. On page 15,

H. P. Blavatsky writes shortly as follows :

As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, arc ten, why

should we divide Man into seven " principles " ? This is the reason why

the perfect number ten is divided into two, a reason which cannot be

given out publicly : In their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually and

physically, the forces are TEN : to wit, three on the subjective and

inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that

I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles : (a) the

primordial triangle, which as soon as it has reflected itself in the

" Heavenly Man/' the highest of the lower seven disappears, returning

into " Silence and Darkness " ; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man,

whose Monad (Atma) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to

become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes.