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VOLUMES 1 and 2
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
1831-1891
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THE SECRET DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BY
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
AUTHOR OF "
"There is no Religion higher
than Truth."
VOL. I. -- COSMOGENESIS.
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
LIMITED.
7,
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE,
117,
THE MANAGER OF THE THEOSOPHIST,
Adyar,
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1888.
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"Entered according to Act of
Congress in the year 1888, by H. P. Blavatsky,
in the Office of the Librarian of
Congress at Washington, D. C."
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This Work
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists,
In every Country,
And of every Race,
For they called it forth, and for
them it was recorded.
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PREFACE.
THE Author -- the writer, rather --
feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay which has occurred in the
appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude
of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme,
and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large
quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of
occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and
showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and
as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favourable reception,
no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety.
The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so.
This scheme, it must be added, was
not in contemplation when the preparation of the work was first announced. As
originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret Doctrine"
should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled." It was,
however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already
put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric
science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and consequently
the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from
"Isis Unveiled."
The author does not feel it necessary
to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for the many defects of
literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in these pages.
She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired late in
life. The English tongue is employed because it offers the most widely-diffused
medium for conveying the truths which it had become her duty to place before the
world.
These truths are in no sense put
forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the position of a revealer
of mystic lore, now made public for the first time in the world's history. For
what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of
volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European
religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because
of this veil. What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and
to make of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the
writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal
speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what she
herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a few
details only, by the results of her
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own study and observation. The
publication of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary by
the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and students of
mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their endeavour to, as
they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the few facts
previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this
book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a select number of
fragments of its fundamental tenets, special attention being paid to some facts
which have been seized upon by various writers, and distorted out of all
resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state
unequivocally that the teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, contained
in these volumes, belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean,
nor the Egyptian religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity
exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in
their origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into
their original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown,
developed, and become materialised.
It is more than probable that the
book will be regarded by a large section of the public as a romance of the
wildest kind; for who has ever even heard of the book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully
prepared to take all the responsibility for what is contained in this work, and
even to face the charge of having invented the whole of it. That it has many
shortcomings she is fully aware; all that she claims for it is that, romantic
as it may seem to many, its logical coherence and consistency entitle this new
Genesis to rank, at any rate, on a level with the "working
hypotheses" so freely accepted by modern science. Further, it claims
consideration, not by reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but because
it closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and analogy.
The aim of this work may be thus
stated: to show that Nature is not "a fortuitous concurrence of
atoms," and to assign to man his rightful place in the scheme of the
Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of
all religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which
they all spring; finally, to show that the occult side of Nature has never been
approached by the Science of modern civilization.
If this is in any degree
accomplished, the writer is content. It is written in the service of humanity,
and by humanity and the future generations it must be judged. Its author
recognises no inferior court of appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she
is daily acquainted with; at slander she smiles in silent contempt.
De minimis non curat lex.
H.P.B.
London, October, 1888.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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PAGE.
INTRODUCTION ... xvii.
The Need of such a Book ... xix.
The Antiquity of Documents and MSS.
... xxiii.
What the Book is intended to do ...
xxviii.
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VOLUME FIRST.
COSMOGENESIS.
PROEM ... 1
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its
Symbolism ... 2
The One Life, Active and Passive ...
4
The Secret Doctrine -- Pantheism --
Atheism ... 6
"Space" in all Religions
and in Occultism ... 9
Seven Cosmic Elements -- Seven Races
of Mankind ... 12
The Three Postulates of the Secret
Doctrine ... 14
Description of the Stanzas from the
Book of Dzyan ... 20
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BOOK I. -- PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
SEVEN STANZAS FROM THE BOOK OF DZYAN
... 27
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STANZA I. -- THE NIGHT OF THE
UNIVERSE... 35
The Seven Eternities ... 36
"Time" ... 37
The Universal Mind and the Dhyan
Chohans ... 38
Nidana and Maya: The Causes of Misery
... 39
The Great Breath ... 43
Being and Non-Being ... 45
The Eye of Dangma ... 47
Alaya, the Universal Soul ... 49
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STANZA II. -- THE IDEA OF
DIFFERENTIATION ... 53
The Absolute knows Itself not ... 55
The Germ of Life was not yet ... 57
The Universe was still concealed in
the Divine Thought ... 61
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STANZA III. -- THE AWAKENING OF
KOSMOS ... 62
The Great Vibration ... 63
Nature's Symbols ... 65
The Power of Numbers ... 67
The Logoi and the Dragon ... 73
The Astral Light ... 75
Primeval Radiations from Unity ... 79
The Web of Being ... 83
Conscious Electricity: Fohat ... 85
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STANZA IV. -- THE SEPTENARY
HIERARCHIES ... 86
The Sons of the Fire ... 86
The Vehicle of the Universe -- the
Dhyan Chohans ... 89
The Army of the Voice ... 93
Speech and Mind ... 95
The Ogdoad and the Heptad ... 99
The Stellar "Sons of Light"
... 103
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STANZA V. -- FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE
SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES ... 106
The Fiery Whirlwind and the
Primordial Seven ... 106
They Produce Fohat ... 108
The Correlation of the
"Gods" ... 113
Evolution of the
"Principles" of Nature ... 119
The Mystery of the Fire ... 121
The Secret of the Elements ... 123
The Square of the Tabernacle ... 125
The Planetary Spirits and the Lipika
... 129
The Ring "Pass Not" ... 130
The Sidereal Book of Life ... 131
The Soul's Pilgrimage and its
"Rest" ... 134
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STANZA VI. -- OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH
AND DEVELOPMENT ... 136
The Logos ... 136
Mystery of the Female Logos ... 137
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The Seven Layu Centres ... 138
The "Elementary Germs" ...
139
The Evolution of the Elements ... 140
The Building of the Worlds ... 145
A Neutral Centre ... 147
"Dead" Planets -- The Moon
... 149
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THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS ... 152
The Planetary Divisions and the Human
Principles ... 153
The Moon ... 155
Transmigrations of the Ego ... 159
The Septenary Chain ... 161
Relation of the other Planets to the
Earth ... 163
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EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES
AND THE MONADS ... 170
The Lunar Chain and the Earth Chain
... 172
The Earth, the Child of the Moon ...
173
Classification of the Monads ... 175
The Monad Defined ... 177
The Lunar Monads -- the Pitris ...
179
A Triple Evolution in Nature ... 181
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STANZA VI. -- CONTINUED ... 191
"Creation" in the Fourth
Round ... 191
The "Curse,"
"Sin," and "War" ... 193
The Struggle for Life and the Birth
of the Worlds ... 202
The Adepts and the Sacred Island ...
207
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STANZA VII. -- THE PARENTS OF MAN ON
EARTH ... 213
Divisions of the Hierarchies ... 214
Correlations of Beings ... 223
What incarnates in Animal Man ... 233
Formation of Man: the Thinker ... 238
Occult and Kabalistic Pneumatics ...
243
Akasa and Ether ... 257
The Invisible "Lives" ...
259
Occult Vital Chemistry and
Bacteriology ... 261
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PAGE.
The Watcher and his Shadow ... 265
Earth peopled by the Shadows of the
Gods ... 267
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SUMMING UP ... 269
The pith and marrow of the Secret
Doctrine ... 273
Hermes in Christian Garb ... 285
Some Occult Aphorisms ... 289
The Seven Powers of Nature ... 293
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BOOK I. -- PART II.
THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS
APPROXIMATE ORDER.
§§
I. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
Emblem and Symbol differ ... 305
Magic Potency of Sound ... 307
Mystery Language ... 309
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II. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS
... 310
Egypt's many Religions ... 311
The Jews and their System ... 313
Moses copied from Sargon ... 319
Identity of Ancient Symbols ... 323
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III. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE
THOUGHT ... 325
Divine Thought, or Cineritious
Matter? ... 327
Ether and Intelligence ... 330
The Seven Prakritis ... 335
The Mystic Fire ... 339
One Tree of Knowledge ... 341
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IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342
The Union of Chaos and Spirit ... 343
The Birth of Mind ... 345
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V. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND
GLYPHS ... 349
The Gnostic Idea ... 351
International Correlation of Gods ...
355
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§§ PAGE.
VI. THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
Egg-born Logoi ... 363
The Winged Globe ... 365
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VII. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA
... 368
Human Gods and Divine Men ... 369
The Rebirth of Gods ... 371
The Puranic Prophecy ... 377
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VIII. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL
... 379
Exoteric and Esoteric ... 381
The Purity of early Phallicism ...
383
The Egyptian Lotus ... 385
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IX. DEUS LUNUS ... 386
A Glance at the Lunar Myth ... 387
A Key-note to the Moon ... 389
Copies and Originals... 393
The Moon Bi-sexual ... 397
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X. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE
WORSHIP ... 403
Degeneration of the Symbol ... 405
The Seven-headed Dragons ... 407
Dragon and Crocodile ... 409
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XI. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
Death is Life ... 413
The Fall of the Angels ... 418
Transformation of the Legend ... 421
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XII. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE
GODS ... 424
The Point within the Circle ... 426
The Logos or Verbum ... 429
The Factors of Creation ... 432
Identity of the Hierarchies in all
Religions ... 438
Difference between the Aryan and
Semitic Systems ... 444
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§§ PAGE.
XIII. THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
The Gnostic and the Hindu Versions
... 449
The Seven Puranic
"Creations" ... 450
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XIV. THE FOUR ELEMENTS. ... 460
The "Gods" and the
"Elements" ... 463
The Language of the Elements ... 464
Pagan and Christian Worship of the
Elements ... 467
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XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ...
470
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Phallicism ... 471
The Real Meaning ... 472
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BOOK I. -- PART III.
SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE
CONTRASTED.
§§
I. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA ... 477
Occultism versus Materialism ... 479
The Sabbath of the Mystic ... 481
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II. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT
BLIND MAN'S BUFF ... 482
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III. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? ...
483
The Hypothetical Ether ... 485
Scientific Theories of its
Constitution ... 489
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IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? ... 490
Intelligences or Blind Forces? ...
493
The Cause of Attraction ... 498
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§§ PAGE.
V. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION SCIENCE
... 500
Conflicting Hypotheses ... 502
More Hypotheses ... 505
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VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE ... 506
What are the "Forces?" ...
508
The View of the Occultists ... 510
Scientific and Occult Theories on
Heat ... 515
The Atoms of Science ... 519
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VII. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC
THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE ... 523
Ether and Atoms ... 527
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VIII. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? ...
529
Dr. Richardson on Nervous Ether ...
531
The Senses and their Action ... 535
Too much "Life" may Kill
... 539
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IX. THE SOLAR THEORY ... 540
The Primordial Element ... 542
Elements and Meta-Elements ... 546
The Tree of Life and Being ... 549
Prof. Crookes on the Elements ... 552
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X. THE COMING FORCE ... 554
Mr. Keeley, an Unconscious Occultist
... 557
Inter-Etheric Waves ... 561
The Secrets of Sound and Odour ...
565
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Xl. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS ... 566
Metaphysical Chemistry ... 569
What are the Seven Planets? ... 575
The Cyclic Fall of the Gods ... 577
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§§ PAGE.
XII. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS
... 579
All-Potential Unity ... 583
The "Seventh" in Chemistry
... 585
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XIII. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY ...
588
Forces are Emanations ... 591
What is the Nebula? ... 595
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XIV. FORCES -- MODES OF MOTION OR
INTELLIGENCES? ... 601
The Vital Principle ... 603
Occult and Physical Science ... 605
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XV. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS ... 610
The Gods of the Ancients -- the
Monads ... 613
The Monad and the Duad ... 617
The Genesis of the Elements ... 621
Hermes and Huxley ... 625
The Teaching of Leibnitz ... 627
The Monads according to Occultism ...
632
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XVI. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA ...
634
Karmic Cycles and Universal Ethics
... 637
Destiny and Karma ... 639
Karma-Nemesis ... 643
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XVII. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY
... 647
The Jewish Patriarchs and the Signs
of the Zodiac ... 651
Zodiacal Cycles ... 656
Hindu Astronomy ... 661
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XVIII. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION
... 668
Science Confesses her Ignorance ...
669
Materialism is leading Europe towards
a catastrophe ... 675
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N.B. -- The Index and Glossary will
be found at the close of Volume II.
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INTRODUCTORY.
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"Gently to hear, kindly to
judge."
-- SHAKESPEARE.
SINCE the appearance of Theosophical
literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings
"Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit -- as an old proverb
based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down an inclined plane,
while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill."
Old truisms are often the wisest. The
human mind can hardly remain entirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are
often formed before a thorough examination of a subject from all its aspects
has been made. This is said with reference to the prevailing double mistake (a)
of limiting Theosophy to Buddhism: and (b) of confounding the tenets of the
religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines
broadly outlined in "Esoteric Buddhism." Any thing more erroneous
than this could be hardly imagined. It has enabled our enemies to find an
effective weapon against theosophy; because, as an eminent Pali scholar very
pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named "neither esotericism
nor Buddhism." The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett's work, had
ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did it contain
the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a hitherto hidden teaching
which are now supplemented by many more, enlarged and explained in the present
volumes. But even the latter, though giving out many fundamental tenets from the
SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small corner of the dark veil. For no
one, not even the greatest living adept, would be permitted to, or could --
even if he would -- give out promiscuously, to a mocking, unbelieving world,
that which has been so effectually concealed from it for long aeons and ages.
"Esoteric Buddhism" was an
excellent work with a very unfortunate
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title, though it meant no more than
does the title of this work, the "SECRET DOCTRINE." It proved
unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging things by their
appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now become so
universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have
fallen victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests
were raised by Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to
myself, I must add that "Esoteric Buddhism" was presented to me as a
completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware of the manner in which the
author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism."
This has to be laid directly at the
door of those who, having been the first to bring the subject under public
notice, neglected to point out the difference between "Buddhism" --
the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord Gautama, and named after
his title of Buddha, "the Enlightened" -- and Budha, "Wisdom,"
or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root
"Budh," to know. We theosophists of India are ourselves the real
culprits, although, at the time, we did our best to correct the mistake. (See
Theosophist, June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the
spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both
pronounced and written "Budhism," instead of "Buddhism."
Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it ought to be
called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries "Buddhaists."
This explanation is absolutely
necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The "Wisdom
Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over, though
the statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface to the
original Edition) that "two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other
European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put
into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept in through
inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is
"divulged" in "Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many
years before it became her duty (in 1880) to impart a small portion of the
Secret Doctrine to two European gentlemen, one of whom was the author of
"Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the present writer has the undoubted,
though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and
education. Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy
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expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught
in America, even before Isis Unveiled was published, to two Europeans and to my
colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three teachers the latter gentleman has
had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an Egyptian, the third a
Hindu. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out some of this teaching in
various ways; if the other two have not, it has been simply because they were
not allowed: their time for public work having not yet come. But for others it
has, and the appearance of Mr. Sinnett's several interesting books is a visible
proof of the fact. It is above everything important to keep in mind that no
theosophical book acquires the least additional value from pretended authority.
In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the
one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is a term used by Aryasanga
in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic Northern Buddhists. It is a
Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the earliest Aryans to the Unknown
deity; the word "Brahma" not being found in the Vedas and the early
works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and "Adi-bhuta" is translated "the
primeval uncreated cause of all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of untold
duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so
to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to mortals and finally
appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him to
receive the title of the "Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the
innate possession of divine intellect or "understanding";
"Buddha," the acquirement of it by personal efforts and merit; while
Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the channel through which divine knowledge
reaches the "Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine
conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of
Atma. "When Buddhi absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras,
Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is
reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from
the trammels of "Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the
name of a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which
the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those who, in their blind
and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, by re-action, of
"Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which are those also of the
Brahmins), simply because the name
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suggests what to them, as
Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use in their
case. For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in this age
of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and everything
man holds most dear and sacred, in his inner spiritual life. The true
philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of
personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions. Moreover, Esoteric
philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward, human
garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of every other
great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine Principle in
nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun. Esoteric philosophy has never
rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only
refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods
created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry
caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place
before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the
beginning of our humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies therein only its
legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the
"Dan" or Jan-na"* ("Dhyan") of Gautama's metaphysics
-- grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom
Religion of antiquity -- are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu
Reformer limited his public teachings to the purely moral and physiological
aspect of the Wisdom Religion, to Ethics and MAN alone. Things "unseen and
incorporeal," the mystery of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the
great Teacher left entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the
hidden Truths for a select circle of his Arhats. The latter received their
Initiation at the famous Saptaparna cave (the Sattapanni of Mahavansa) near
Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali MSS.). This cave was in Rajagriha, the
ancient capital of Mogadha, and was the Cheta cave of Fa-hian, as rightly
suspected by some archaeologists.**
Time and human imagination made short
work of the purity and philo-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Dan, now become in modern Chinese
and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and
their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as "to
reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second inner birth.
Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan."
** Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at
Buddhagaya, and a distinguished archaeologist, was the first, we believe, to
discover it.
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sophy of these teachings, once that
they were transplanted from the secret and sacred circle of the Arhats, during
the course of their work of proselytism, into a soil less prepared for
metaphysical conceptions than India; i.e., once they were transferred into
China, Japan, Siam, and Burmah. How the pristine purity of these grand
revelations was dealt with may be seen in studying some of the so-called
"esoteric" Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb, not
only in China and other Buddhist countries in general, but even in not a few
schools in Thibet, left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian
innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in
mind the very important difference between orthodox Buddhism -- i.e., the
public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret
Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of the initiated Brahmins of
his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and
a disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated Brahmins) or Dwijas.
His teachings, therefore, could not be different from their doctrines, for the
whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a portion of that which
had been kept secret from every man outside of the "enchanted" circle
of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that had been imparted to
him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a philosophy built upon the
ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to the world only
its outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See also Volume
II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the "Soul
Doctrine." None seem to have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly
-- too secretly, perhaps -- within the sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its
chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana -- has so tried and irritated the
curiosity of those scholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it
logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian knot, they cut it through,
by declaring that Nirvana meant absolute annihilation.
Toward the end of the first quarter
of this century, a distinct class of literature appeared in the world, which
became with every year more defined in its tendency. Being based, soi-disant,
on the scholarly researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was
held scientific. Hindu, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and
emblems were made to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to
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yield, thus often giving out the rude
outward form in place of the inner meaning. Works, most remarkable for their
ingenious deductions and speculations, in circulo vicioso, foregone conclusions
generally changing places with premisses as in the syllogisms of more than one
Sanskrit and Pali scholar, appeared rapidly in succession, over-flooding the
libraries with dissertations rather on phallic and sexual worship than on real
symbology, and each contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why
the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic
ages is now permitted to see the light, after long millenniums of the most
profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few truths," advisedly, because
that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes,
nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the
little that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital
truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown -- which it
is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the
grasp of the physicist -- is rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane
of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena -- a true valley of discord and
of eternal strife -- a necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most
holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new
generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The "amiable infidels and accomplished
profligates" of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival
of the dead sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest
students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to them
now; and now much more than ten years ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or
even the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were
published.
One of the greatest, and, withal, the
most serious objection to the correctness and reliability of the whole work
will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can the statements contained in them
be verified?" True, if a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and
Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are known to some Orientalists,
the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas are given -- is not in the
possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or "Dzan") is
utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them
under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback
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to those who follow the methods of
research prescribed by official Science; but to the students of Occultism, and
to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main body of the
Doctrines given is found scattered throughout hundreds and thousands of
Sanskrit MSS., some already translated -- disfigured in their interpretations,
as usual, -- others still awaiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an
opportunity of verifying the statements herein made, and of checking most of
the quotations. A few new facts (new to the profane Orientalist, only) and
passages quoted from the Commentaries will be found difficult to trace. Several
of the teachings, also, have hitherto been transmitted orally: yet even those
are in every instance hinted at in the almost countless volumes of Brahminical,
Chinese and Tibetan temple-literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is
in store for the writer through malevolent criticism, one fact is quite
certain. The members of several esoteric schools -- the seat of which is beyond
the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet,
and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim to have in their possession
the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the
works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or
characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs
down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.
It has been claimed in all ages that
ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library (see Isis Unveiled, Vol.
II., p. 27), every work of a character that might have led the profane to the
ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret
Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods,
diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once
found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all
destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were secured and
hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.*
It is maintained, furthermore, that
every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not sufficiently veiled in
symbolism, or which had any
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Prof. Max Muller shows that no
bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the Brahmans the original text of
the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the
"Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether Europe has the complete text
is very doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises in store
for the Orientalists.
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direct references to the ancient
mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such
as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed
to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at
the Emperor's sinful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves
helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badaoni, who had an
undisguised horror for Akbar's mania for idolatrous religions.*
Moreover in all the large and wealthy
lamasaries, there are subterranean crypts and cave-libraries, cut in the rock,
whenever the gonpa and the lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the
Western Tsay-dam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun** there are several such
hiding places. Along the ridge of Altyn-Toga, whose soil no European foot has
ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is
a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a
poor-looking temple in it, with one old lama, a hermit, living near by to watch
it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a
collection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given, is
too large to find room even in the British Museum.***
All this is very likely to provoke a
smile of doubt. But then, before
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Badaoni wrote in his Muntakhab at
Tawarikh: "His Majesty relished inquiries into the sects of these infidels
(who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and who have no end of revealed
books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned men in
their treatises on morals, on physical and religious sciences, and reach a high
degree in their knowledge of the future, in spiritual power, and human
perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and testimony, and inculcated
their doctrines so firmly that no man could now raise a doubt in his Majesty
even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the heavens were to tear
asunder." This work "was kept secret, and was not published till the
reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104,
note.)
** Karakorum mountains, Western
Tibet.
*** According to the same tradition
the now desolate regions of the waterless land of Tarim -- a true wilderness in
the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days of old covered with flourishing and
wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few verdant oases relieve its dead
solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a vast city swallowed by and
buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to no one, but is often
visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition speaks of immense
subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and cylinders. It may
be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.
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the reader rejects the truthfulness
of the reports, let him pause and reflect over the following well known facts.
The collective researches of the Orientalists, and especially the labours of
late years of the students of comparative Philology and the Science of
Religions have led them to ascertain as follows: An immense, incalculable
number of MSS., and even printed works known to have existed, are now to be
found no more. They have disappeared without leaving the slightest trace behind
them. Were they works of no importance they might, in the natural course of
time, have been left to perish, and their very names would have been
obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as now ascertained, most
of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and entirely
incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without those
additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations. Such are, for instance,
the works of Lao-tse, the predecessor of Confucius.*
He is said to have written 930 books
on Ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, one thousand in all. His great
work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the "Tao-te-King," or the
sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only
"about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.), hardly a dozen of
pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that "the text is unintelligible
without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than sixty
commentators for the purpose of his translation," the earliest going back
as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries
and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time
to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The
Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and
followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of the
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which
our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but
intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the
texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "If we turn to China, we find
that the religion of Confucius is founded on the Five King and the Four
Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and surrounded by voluminous
Commentaries, without which even the most learned scholars would not venture to
fathom the depth of their sacred canon." (Lectures on the "Science of
Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they have not fathomed it -- and this
is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body,
in Paris, complained in 1881.
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If one turns to the ancient
literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean Scriptures, the elder
sister and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the Mosaic Bible, the
basis and starting-point of Christianity, what do the scholars find? To
perpetuate the memory of the ancient religions of Babylon; to record the vast
cycle of astronomical observations of the Chaldean Magi; to justify the
tradition of their splendid and eminently occult literature, what now remains?
-- only a few fragments, said to be by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless,
even as a clue to the character of what has disappeared. For they passed
through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop of Caesarea -- that
self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of other men's
religions -- and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his eminently
veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of this treatise on the
once grand religion of Babylon?
Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest
of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, from the astronomical and
chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple, and covering a
period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander
Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it -- also lost. Eusebius used these
extracts in writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.). The points of resemblance --
almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the
latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of defender and champion of the
new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd
chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian
Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen** charges him with
mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the fifth
century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both
denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.
Is it likely, then, that he dealt
more tenderly with the Chaldean records, which were already menacing the new
religion, so rashly accepted?
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Found out and proven only now,
through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide his "Chaldean account
of Genesis"), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have misled all
the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations
for direct Divine Revelation!
** Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in History,"
vol. i. p. 200
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So that, with the exception of these
more than doubtful fragments, the entire Chaldean sacred literature has
disappeared from the eyes of the profane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A
few facts that were contained in the Berosian History are given in Part II. of
Vol. II., and may throw a great light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels,
personified by Bel and the Dragon.
Turning now to the oldest Aryan
literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find, following strictly in this the
data furnished by the said Orientalists themselves, that, although the Rig-Veda
contains only "about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns," in spite of the
Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood
correctly to this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the Brahmanas,
"the scholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive hymns,"
themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed to secure.
What do the scholars say of Buddhist
literature? Have they got it in its completeness? Assuredly not.
Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and the Tanjur of the Northern
Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from four to five
pounds," nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred canon of
the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the Saddharma
alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or six times
the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the latter, in the words
of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters. Notwithstanding,
then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333, Kanjur
comprising 108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead of
supplying us with correct versions, have interwoven them with their own
commentaries, for the purpose of justifying the dogmas of their several
schools."** Moreover, "according to a tradition preserved by the
Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist Canon
comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so
that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences. "Lost"
as usual for Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they are likewise lost
for Buddhists and Brahmins?
Considering the sacredness for the
Buddhists of every line written
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Spence Hardy, "The Legends and
Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66.
** "Buddhism in Tibet," p.
78.
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upon Buddha or his "Good
Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem miraculous. Had it been
vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course of events would
subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six thousand
treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions in, and emigrations
from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist Arhats began their
religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir
and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,* and reached China
in the year 61 A.D.** when Kashyapa, at the invitation of the Emperor Ming-ti,
went there to acquaint the "Son of Heaven" with the tenets of
Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss
as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the
possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for themselves; or,
that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to keep their
most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to deliver
them to the profanation and misuse of races even so "vastly superior"
to themselves.
Owing to the expressed regrets and
numerous confessions of almost every one of the Orientalists (See Max Muller's
Lectures for example) the public may feel sufficiently sure (a) that the
students of ancient religions have indeed very few data upon which to build
such final conclusions as they generally do about the old religions, and (b)
that such lack of data does not prevent them in the least from dogmatising. One
would imagine that, thanks to the numerous records of the Egyptian theogony and
mysteries preserved in the classics, and in a number of ancient writers, the
rites and dogmas of Pharaonic Egypt ought to be well understood at least;
better, at any rate, than the too abstruse philosophies and Pantheism of India,
of whose religion and language Europe had hardly any idea before the beginning
of the present century. Along the Nile and on the face of the whole country,
there stand to this hour, exhumed yearly and daily, fresh relics which
eloquently tell their own history. Still it is not so. The learned Oxford
philologist himself confesses the truth by saying that "Though . . . we
see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and labyrinths, their
walls
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lassen, ("Ind.
Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected in
the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than that.
** Reverend T. Edkins, "Chinese
Buddhism."
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covered with hieroglyphic
inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods and goddesses. . . . . On
rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have even
fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet, though
much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race, the
mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its
ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us."* Here again
the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they
become intelligible have disappeared.
Nevertheless, having found that
"there is a natural connection between language and religion"; and,
secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before the separation of the
Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of the Semitic
race; and a common Turanian religion before the separation of the Chinese and
the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class; having, in fact, only discovered
"three ancient centres of religion" and "three centres of
language," and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive religions
and languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to declare
"that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those
principal religions of the world has been gained!"
A "scientific treatment" of
a subject is no guarantee for its "historical basis"; and with such
scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the most eminent, is
justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the
eminent Orientalist has proved thoroughly to the world's satisfaction, that
according to Grimm's law of phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha are two different
personages, quite distinct from each other, and he has shown it scientifically.
When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin
"was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the
age of the Veda and of Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the
slightest "historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact
subservient to his
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* So little acquainted are our
greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward
marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies, that it has led to the
most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one of that kind was
discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had been considered the wife of
an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an inscription found on an
amulet hung on his neck, to be that of Sesostris -- the greatest King of Egypt!
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own conclusions, which may be very
"scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of
the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the subject of chronology,
in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent philologists and Orientalists,
from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself, are an evident proof that the
statement has no historical basis to stand upon, "internal evidence"
being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has
the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better proof to show, that
those learned writers, who have insisted for the last century or so that there
must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the
ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of
Greece and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern
Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time.
While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the writer that it was well known
that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were
stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits, the
late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India,
assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard
to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared
to the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that
there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the
human race, finds but few supporters at present," -- the holy and learned
man laughed. His answer was suggestive. "If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he
pronounced the name, were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a
gupta cave (a secret crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would
soon find out that what crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean)
from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages
from our sacred books. There was a "primeval revelation," and it
still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reappear; though
the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait."
Questioned further on this point, he
would say no more. This was at Meerut, in 1880.
No doubt the mystification played, in
the last century at Calcutta, by the Brahmins upon Colonel Wilford and Sir
William Jones was a cruel one. But it had been well deserved, and no one was
more to be blamed
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in that affair than the Missionaries
and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former, on the testimony of Sir William
Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly enough to maintain
that "the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma,
Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the Christian trinity."* It was a
good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it
has also made some of them too shy, and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum
of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For "that first
supply on the Brahmanical market," made for Colonel Wilford, has now
created an evident necessity and desire in the Orientalists to declare nearly
every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give to the missionaries full
justification for availing themselves of the opportunity. That they do so and
to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of
late to prove that the whole Puranic story about Chrishna was plagiarized by
the Brahmins from the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his
Lectures on the "Science of Religion," concerning the now famous
interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of Col. Wilford,
do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who studies the Secret
Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither the New
nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of
the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed
all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by
Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from
the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early
mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly declared that
Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning. But
all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the latest theory
worked out by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic
laws has now become a universal solvent for every identification and
"connection" between
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Introduction
to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False Analogies in comparative
Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever forgery (on leaves
inserted in old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the
Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his
three sons, etc., etc
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the gods of many nations. Thus,
though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maia, the mother
of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the mother of Jesus, likewise Maya
(illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great illusion symbolically) -- yet
these three characters have no connection, nor can they have any, since Bopp,
has "laid down his code of phonetic laws."
In their efforts to collect together
the many skeins of unwritten history, it is a bold step for our Orientalists to
take, to deny, a priori, everything that does not dovetail with their special
conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and
sciences having existed far back in the night of time, even the knowledge of
writing is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited
with barbarism instead of culture. Yet the traces of an immense civilization,
even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This civilization is undeniably
prehistoric. And how can there be civilization without a literature, in some
form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the
broken links in the history of departed nations. The gigantic, unbroken wall of
the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper course
of the river Khuan-Khe down to the Kara-Korum hills, witnessed a civilization
during millenniums of years, and would have strange secrets to tell mankind.
The Eastern and Central portions of those regions -- the Nan-Schayn and the
Altyne-taga -- were once upon a time covered with cities that could well vie
with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the land, since those
cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting sand, and the sterile and
now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin of Tarim testify. The
borderlands alone are superficially known to the traveller. Within those
table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases are found blooming there,
wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous
soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible
even to the native profane traveller. Hurricanes may "tear up the sands
and sweep whole plains away," they are powerless to destroy that which is
beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean
stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such oases, there is
little fear that any one should discover them, even should several armies
invade the sandy wastes where --
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"Not a pool, not a bush, not a
house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged
screen
Round the parch'd flats of the dry,
dry desert. . . . ."
But there is no need to send the
reader across the desert, when the same proofs of ancient civilization are
found even in comparatively populated regions of the same country. The oasis of
Tchertchen, for instance, situated about 4,000 feet above the level of the
river Tchertchen-D'arya, is surrounded with the ruins of archaic towns and
cities in every direction. There, some 3,000 human beings represent the relics
of about a hundred extinct nations and races -- the very names of which are now
unknown to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would feel more than embarrassed
to class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as the respective descendants
of all these antediluvian races and tribes know as little of their own
forefathers themselves, as if they had fallen from the moon. When questioned
about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their fathers had
come, but had heard that their first (or earliest) men were ruled by the great
genii of these deserts. This may be put down to ignorance and superstition, yet
in view of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, the answer may be based upon
primeval tradition. Alone, the tribe of Khoorassan claims to have come from
what is now known as Afghanistan, long before the days of Alexander, and brings
legendary lore to that effect as corroboration. The Russian traveller, Colonel
(now General) Prjevalsky, found quite close to the oasis of Tchertchen, the
ruins of two enormous cities, the oldest of which was, according to local
tradition, ruined 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant; and the other by the
Mongolians in the tenth century of our era. "The emplacement of the two
cities is now covered, owing to shifting sands and the desert wind, with
strange and heterogeneous relics; with broken china and kitchen utensils and
human bones. The natives often find copper and gold coins, melted silver,
ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most remarkable -- broken
glass. . . . ." "Coffins of some undecaying wood, or material, also,
within which beautifully preserved embalmed bodies are found. . . . . The male
mummies are all extremely tall powerfully built men with long waving hair. . .
. . A vault was found with twelve dead men sitting in it. Another time, in a
separate coffin, a young girl was discovered by us. Her eyes were closed with
golden discs, and the jaws held firm by a golden circlet running from under the
chin across the top of the head. Clad in a narrow
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woollen garment, her bosom was
covered with golden stars, the feet being left naked." (From a lecture by
N. M. Prjevalsky.) To this, the famous traveller adds that all along their way
on the river Tchertchen they heard legends about twenty-three towns buried ages
ago by the shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition exists on the
Lob-nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and
these and like traditions, give us the right to credit other legendary lore
warranted by well educated and learned natives of India and Mongolia, when they
speak of immense libraries reclaimed from the sand, together with various
reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have all been safely stowed away.
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine
was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world.
Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of
documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the
teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of
libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more
credible by a consideration of the following facts: the tradition of the
thousands of ancient parchments saved when the Alexandrian library was
destroyed; the thousands of Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the
reign of Akbar; the universal tradition in China and Japan that the true old
texts with the commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible -- amounting
to many thousands of volumes -- have long passed out of the reach of profane
hands; the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon;
the loss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of the
Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret
commentaries which alone make the Veda intelligible, though no longer visible
to profane eyes, still remain for the initiate, hidden in secret caves and crypts;
and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard to their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these
exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear in some more
enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati,
"the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of Aryan
civilization) will have to wait."
For it is not the fault of the
initiates that these documents are now "lost" to the profane; nor was
their policy dictated by selfishness, or
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any desire to monopolise the
life-giving sacred lore. There were portions of the Secret Science that for
incalculable ages had to remain concealed from the profane gaze. But this was
because to impart to the unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous
importance, was equivalent to giving a child a lighted candle in a powder
magazine.
The answer to a question which has
frequently arisen in the minds of students, when meeting with statements such
as this, may be outlined here.
"We can understand," they
say, "the necessity for concealing from the herd such secrets as the Vril,
or the rock-destroying force, discovered by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but
we cannot understand how any danger could arise from the revelation of such a
purely philosophic doctrine, as, e.g., the evolution of the planetary
chains."
The danger was this: Doctrines such
as the planetary chain, or the seven races, at once give a clue to the
seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a plane, a
planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane, correlated to
seven-fold occult forces -- those of the higher planes being of tremendous
power. So that any septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult
powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity. A clue,
which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation -- especially the Westerns
-- protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic
disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would, nevertheless, have been very
real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to people fully convinced of
the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation, which made them
rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description.
The documents were concealed, it is
true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence had never been made a
secret of by the Hierophants of the Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever been
made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was
repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to
the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a
change for the worse -- in the policy of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well-known fact,
a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a reverend gentleman attached
for years to a Russian Embassy -- namely, that there are several documents in
the St. Peters-
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burg Imperial Libraries to show that,
even so late as during the days when Freemasonry, and Secret Societies of
Mystics flourished unimpeded in Russia, i.e., at the end of the last and the
beginning of the present century, more than one Russian Mystic travelled to
Tibet via the Ural mountains in search of knowledge and initiation in the
unknown crypts of Central Asia. And more than one returned years later, with a
rich store of such information as could never have been given him anywhere in
Europe. Several cases could be cited, and well-known names brought forward, but
for the fact that such publicity might annoy the surviving relatives of the
said late Initiates. Let any one look over the Annals and History of
Freemasonry in the archives of the Russian metropolis, and he will assure
himself of the fact stated.
This is a corroboration of that which
has been stated many times before, and, unfortunately, too indiscreetly.
Instead of benefiting humanity, the virulent charges of deliberate invention
and imposture with a purpose thrown at those who asserted but a truthful, if
even a little known fact, have only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But
now the mischief is done, and truth should no longer be denied, whatever the
consequences. Is it a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a
religion, nor is its philosophy new; for, as already stated, it is as old as
thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time, but have
been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one European Initiate --
especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has
stated that there never was a religious founder, whether Aryan, Semitic or
Turanian, who had invented a new religion, or revealed a new truth. These
founders were all transmitters, not original teachers. They were the authors of
new forms and interpretations, while the truths upon which the latter were
based were as old as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand verities --
actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer -- out of the
many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the
adyta of the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES and by personal
transmission -- they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus every nation
received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its own local
and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed into a more or less
philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise. Therefore is Confucius,
a very ancient
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legislator in historical chronology,
though a very modern Sage in the World's History, shown by Dr. Legge* -- who
calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a maker" -- as saying:
"I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and
therefore I love them."** (Quoted in "Science of Religions" by
Max Muller.)
The writer loves them too, and
therefore believes in the ancients, and the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And
believing in both, she now transmits that which she has received and learnt
herself to all those who will accept it. As to those who may reject her
testimony, -- i.e., the great majority -- she will bear them no malice, for
they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is right in hers in
affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two entirely different stand-points.
Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject
a priori whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a
Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed,
that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from
written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based
upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is
claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said to
emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are
offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all
those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of their own to
defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must
be accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever
department of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings
seriously. They will be derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only
in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to
recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated,
but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate
the Vedas.*** Have not the latter been derided, rejected, and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Lun Yu (§ I a) Schott.
"Chinesische Literatur," p. 7.
** "Life of Confucius," p.
96.
*** This is no pretension to
prophecy, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of facts. Every century
an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism [[Footnote continued
on next page]]
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called "a modern forgery" even
so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit proclaimed at one time the
progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek, according to Lempriere and
other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells us, the sacred books of the
Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists, "were all but unknown,
their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single scholar who could
have translated a line of the Veda . . . of the Zend Avesta, or . . . of the
Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be the work of the highest
antiquity whose 'preservation amounts almost to a marvel' (Lecture on the
Vedas).
The same will be said of the Secret
Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of its undeniable existence and
records. But it will take centuries before much more is given from it. Speaking
of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was
remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten years ago that:
"The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is
divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one
glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!"
The same may be said of the whole
Esoteric system. One turn of the key, and no more, was given in
"Isis." Much more is explained in these volumes. In those days the
writer hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the
disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. 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.
Such a work as this has to be
introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume rather; one that would
give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise,
or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the
world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to
publish in these pages even those
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted to be kept a little
ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times are ripe for a
more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very limited, so far.
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portions of the esoteric teachings
that have now escaped from confinement, unless the genuineness and authenticity
-- at any rate, the probability -- of the existence of such teachings was first
established. Such statements as will now be made, have to be shown warranted by
various authorities: those of ancient philosophers, classics and even certain
learned Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had
studied them, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had
even been personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the
performance of which the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The
writer will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to cite
well-known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good judgment,
and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients in the secret
arts and science, along with the mysteries of the latter, as they are divulged,
or, rather, partially presented before the public in their strange archaic
form.
How is this to be done? What is the
best way for achieving such an object? was the ever-recurring question. To make
our plan clearer, an illustration may be attempted. When a tourist coming from
a well-explored country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a terra incognita,
hedged in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks,
he may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans.
Ingress beyond is forbidden. But, if he cannot visit the mysterious region
personally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a distance
as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of landscapes left behind him, he
can get a general and pretty correct idea of the transmural view, if he will
only climb to the loftiest summit of the altitudes in front of him. Once there,
he can gaze at it, at his leisure, comparing that which he dimly perceives with
that which he has just left below, now that he is, thanks to his efforts,
beyond the line of the mists and the cloud-capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary
observation, for those who would like to get a more correct understanding of
the mysteries of the pre-archaic periods given in the texts, cannot be offered
to them in these two volumes. But if the reader has patience, and would glance
at the present state of beliefs and creeds in Europe, compare and check it with
what is known to history of the ages directly preceding and
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following the Christian era, then he
will find all this in Volume III. of this work.
In that volume a brief recapitulation
will be made of all the principal adepts known to history, and the downfall of
the mysteries will be described; after which began the disappearance and final
and systematic elimination from the memory of men of the real nature of
initiation and the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became Occult,
and Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading
name of Hermetic philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among the
Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or rather
Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of Christianity.
However great and zealous the
fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate every trace of
the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, it was a failure; but the
same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has perverted
systematically and ever since, every bright page written in the pre-Christian
periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has preserved enough of that
which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the
reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot of observation
selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium which
divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by the year ONE of
the Nativity. This event -- whether historically correct or not -- has
nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold
bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated
religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing such a vivid light
on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the
"New Dispensation."
However superhuman the efforts of the
early Christian fathers to obliterate the Secret Doctrine from the very memory
of man, they all failed. Truth can never be killed; hence the failure to sweep
away entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom,
and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only think of
the thousands, and perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments, with their
too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverised to dust; of the
bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming about among the ruined cities of
Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and
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mountain, valleys and highlands,
seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, scroll or parchment
they could lay their hands on, if it only bore the symbol of the tau, or any
other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new faith; and he will then see
plainly how it is that so little has remained of the records of the Past.
Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediaeval Christianity
and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and
both have made
"-------------- the sun like
blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a
murkier gloom!"
Both creeds have won their proselytes
at the point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven-kissing
hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. of our era, the
ominous words "the KARMA OF ISRAEL," fatally glowed. Over the portals
of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will point to the
Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY, for events purposely perverted, and for
great characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between
the two cars of Jagannatha -- Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much,
the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid-point, who
believes in the eternal justice of things. Says Faigi Diwan, the "witness
to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who belongs to a thousand
sects": "In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past things
shall be forgiven, the sins of the Ka'bah will be forgiven for the sake of the
dust of Christian churches." To this, Professor Max Muller replies:
"The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the
day of resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of
their religious doctrines. Men fight about religion on earth -- in heaven they
shall find out that there is only one true religion -- the worship of God's
SPIRIT."*
In other words -- "THERE IS NO
RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- "SATYAT NASTI PARO
DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah of Benares, adopted by the
Theosophical Society.
As already said in the Preface, the
Secret Doctrine is not a version of "Isis Unveiled" -- as originally
intended. It is a volume explanatory of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Lectures on the Science of
Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257.
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it rather, and, though entirely
independent of the earlier work, an indispensable corollary to it. Much of what
was in Isis could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. The
Secret Doctrine will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the
first work, especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.
Concerned simply with the
philosophies within our historical times and the respective symbolism of the
fallen nations, only a hurried glance could be thrown at the panorama of
Occultism in the two volumes of Isis. In the present work, detailed Cosmogony
and the evolution of the four races that preceded our Fifth race Humanity are
given, and now two large volumes explain that which was stated on the first
page of ISIS UNVEILED alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and
thither throughout that work. Nor could the vast catalogue of the Archaic
Sciences be attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such
tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, and the gradual
development of the mysterious Humanities and races that preceded our
"Adamic" Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some
mysteries of the Esoteric philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the
earlier work. As an instance, the writer must be allowed to illustrate what is
said.
Volume I. of "Isis" begins
with a reference to "an old book" --
"So very old that our modern
antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not
quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the
only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult
learning -- the Siphrah Dzeniouta -- was compiled from it, and that at a time
when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic. One of
its illustrations represents the Divine Essence emanating from ADAM* like a
luminous arc proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest
point of its circumference, the ineffable glory bends back again, and returns
to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its vortex. As it approaches
nearer and nearer to our planet, the Emanation becomes more and more shadowy,
until upon touching the ground it is as black as night."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The name is used in the sense of
the Greek word [[anthropos]].
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The "very old Book" is the
original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only
this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah,* the work
attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of
Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian
Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the
Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition
says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the
words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central
Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when
its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the
forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the
lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race,
the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. The
"illustration" spoken of in "Isis" relates to the evolution
of these Races and of our 4th and 5th Race Humanity in the Vaivasvata
Manvantara or "Round"; each Round being composed of the Yugas of the
seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the
middle point of the 5th being nearly reached. The illustration is symbolical,
as every one can well understand, and covers the ground from the beginning. The
old book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of
everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of
the races from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further. It
stops short at the beginning of the Kali Yuga just 4989 years ago at the death
of Krishna, the bright "Sun-god," the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None
of its possessors regard it as very ancient, as it was born with, and is only
as old as the Black Age,
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who
died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed "miracles"
by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged every sceptic. Franck,
quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis
Chanina and Oshoi. (See "Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin," c. 7, etc.;
and "Franck," pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval Occultists,
Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late modern Magus,
Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic.
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namely, about 5,000 years. In about
nine years hence, the first cycle of the first five millenniums, that began
with the great cycle of the Kali-Yuga, will end. And then the last prophecy
contained in that book (the first volume of the prophetic record for the Black
Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to wait, and many of us will
witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will
be settled and squared between the races. Volume II. of the Prophecies is
nearly ready, having been in preparation since the time of Buddha's grand
successor, Sankaracharya.
One more important point must be
noticed, one that stands foremost in the series of proofs given of the
existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom -- at any rate for the Christian
Kabalists and students. The teachings were, at least, partially known to
several of the Fathers of the Church. It is maintained, on purely historical
grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and even Clemens Alexandrinus, had been
themselves initiated into the mysteries before adding to the Neo-Platonism of
the Alexandrian school, that of the Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More
than this, some of the doctrines of the Secret schools -- though by no means
all -- were preserved in the Vatican, and have since become part and parcel of
the mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to the original
Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now materialised dogma of
the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great persecutions set on foot
by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism, Masonry, and heterodox
mysticism generally.
The days of Constantine were the last
turning-point in history, the period of the Supreme struggle that ended in the
Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new one, built on
their bodies. From thence the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the
"Deluge" and the Garden of Eden, began to be forcibly and
relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze
of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that hands could be laid
upon, destroyed. Yet there remains enough, even among such mutilated records,
to warrant us in saying that there is in them every possible evidence of the
actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and
political cataclysms to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence that
the now Secret Wisdom was once the
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one fountain head, the ever-flowing
perennial source, at which were fed all its streamlets -- the later religions
of all nations -- from the first down to the last. This period, beginning with
Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and the Neo-Platonists and Gnostics at the
other, is the only focus left in History wherein converge for the last time the
bright rays of light streaming from the aeons of time gone by, unobscured by
the hand of bigotry and fanaticism.
This accounts for the necessity under
which the writer has laboured to be ever explaining the facts given from the
hoariest Past by evidence gathered from the historical period. No other means
was at hand, at the risk even of being once more charged with a lack of method
and system. The public must be made acquainted with the efforts of many
World-adepts, of initiated poets, writers, and classics of every age, to
preserve in the records of Humanity the Knowledge of the existence, at least,
of such a philosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would
indeed remain incomprehensible and ever a seemingly impossible myth, were not
like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age of history. This could be
done only by naming Chapter and Verse where may be found mention of these great
characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and interminable line of
other famous Antediluvian and Post-diluvian Masters in the arts. Thus only
could be shown, on semi-traditional and semi-historical authority, that
knowledge of the Occult and the powers it confers on man, are not altogether
fictions, but that they are as old as the world itself.
To my judges, past and future,
therefore -- whether they are serious literary critics, or those howling
dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity or
unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten
like lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing to say.
Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained slanderers -- fortunately
very few in number -- who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing
discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and
bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the
doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in "Esoteric
Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer, have finally
turned round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest as a
plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile
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dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!)
As well charge Renan with having stolen his Vie de Jesus from the Gospels, and
Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or his "Chips"
from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But to the
public in general and the readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may
repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in the words of
Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS,
AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."
Pull the "string" to pieces
and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of FACTS -- you will
never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, and no more.
We may close with a parting word
concerning this Volume I. In an INTRODUCTION prefacing a Part dealing chiefly
with Cosmogony, certain subjects brought forward might be deemed out of place,
but one more consideration added to those already given have led me to touch
upon them. Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the
stand-point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, based on what
he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly obliged to bear in
mind: hence, also the frequent references in this first Book to matters which,
properly speaking, belong to a later part of the work, but which could not be
passed by in silence, lest the reader should look down on this work as a fairy
tale indeed -- a fiction of some modern brain.
Thus, the Past shall help to realise
the PRESENT, and the latter to better appreciate the PAST. The errors of the
day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more than probable -- and in
the present case it amounts to certitude -- that once more the testimony of
long ages and of history will fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional
-- which is equal to saying the very few. But in this as in all like cases, the
true and the faithful may console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern
Sadducee with the mathematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and
bigotry. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy,
the famous law of probabilities worked out by an algebraical process for the
benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians. It runs thus: If two persons
give their evidence to
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a fact, and thus impart to it each of
them 5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; i.e., its
probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three such
evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The agreement
of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce 1023/1024, etc., etc.
The Occultist may remain satisfied, and care for no more.
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PROEM.
-------
PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.
AN Archaic Manuscript -- a collection
of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific
unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page is an
immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the
same disk, but with a central point. The first, the student knows to represent
Kosmos in Eternity, before the re-awakening of still slumbering Energy, the
emanation of the Word in later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate
Disk, Space and Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is
the Point in the Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The Mundane Egg"), the
germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless,
periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by
turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all
returns. Its circumference -- a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the
limitation of the human mind -- indicates the abstract, ever incognisable
PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the
face of the Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly
that its plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is
attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations
begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine
Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and
Theogony.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is hardly necessary to remind
the reader once more that the term "Divine Thought," like that of
"Universal Mind," must not be regarded as even vaguely shadowing
forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. The
"Unconscious," according to von Hartmann, arrived at the vast
creative, or rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant wisdom superior
to all consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean absolute
Wisdom. Only those who realise how far Intuition soars above the tardy
processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of
[[Footnote continued on next page]]
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It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible,
yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet periodical in its regular
manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being;
unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one
self-existing reality; truly, "a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the
reason." Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless
Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the "Great Breath,"* which is
the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE.
That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact
and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus,
the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space was filled eternally with
atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter generating in due course of
time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual collisions
producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only
adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity -- an occult
teaching.
From the beginning of man's
inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives
in, the unrevealed Deity was recognised and considered under its only
philosophical aspect -- universal motion, the thrill of the creative Breath in
Nature. Occultism sums up the "One Existence" thus: "Deity is an
arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen
Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," -- this trinity including, and being
the cause of, every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] that absolute Wisdom which transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind,
as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration,
intensity, complexity, etc. -- all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation,
which is again Maya. Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation. The
personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion;
he repents and feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental
states clearly involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the
exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing
changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds he
presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are
thus unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical.
* Plato proves himself an Initiate,
when saying in Cratylus that [[theos]] is derived from the verb [[theein]],
"to move," "to run," as the first astronomers who observed
the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets [[theoi]], the gods. (See
Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the word
produced another term, [[aletheia]] -- "the breath of God."
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phenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic
motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or that which is
subject to perception) is finite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it
is the EVER-PRESENT; as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction
and the opposite, the two being the alpha and omega of successive
reconstructions. Kosmos -- the NOUMENON -- has nought to do with the causal
relations of the phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the
intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we
may say: "It never had a beginning nor will it have an end." With
regard to its body or Cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had
a first, or will ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its
organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it
evolutes every time on a higher plane . . . .
A few years ago only, it was stated
that:--
"The esoteric doctrine teaches,
like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the Kabala, that the one infinite and
unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious
successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu
these conditions are called the "Days" and the "Nights" of
Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or "asleep." The
Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still
exists in Nepaul), speculate only upon the active condition of this
"Essence," which they call Svabhavat, and deem it foolish to theorise
upon the abstract and "unknowable" power in its passive condition.
Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theologians and modern
scientists, for neither of the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley
that "it is impossible . . . to form the abstract idea of motion distinct
from the body moving" ("Prin. of Human Knowledge," Introd., par.
10), may put the question, "What is that body, the producer of that
motion? Is it a substance? Then you are believers in a Personal God?"
etc., etc. This will be answered farther on, in the Addendum to this Book;
meanwhile, we claim our rights of Conceptionalists as against Roscelini's
materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. "Has science," says
one of its ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, "revealed anything that weakens
or opposes itself to the ancient words in which the Essence of all religion,
past, present, and to come, is given; to do justly, to love mercy, to walk
humbly before thy God?" Provided we connote by the word God, not the crude
anthropomorphism which is still the backbone of our current theology, but the
symbolic conception of that which is Life and Motion of the Universe, to know
which in physical order is to know time past, present, and to come, in the
existence of successions of phenomena; to know which, in the moral, is to know
what has been, is, and will be, within human consciousness. (See "Science
and the Emotions." A Discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury,
London, Dec. 27th, 1885.)
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two are able to understand the
profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow of no other God than
the personified secondary powers which have worked out the visible universe,
and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians -- the
male Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic
science greets the Buddhists and the Svabhavikas as the "positivists"
of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the philosophy of the
latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The Buddhists
maintained that there is no Creator, but an infinitude of creative powers,
which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is
inscrutable -- hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.
Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet
no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who
were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the
Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence from without inwardly and
from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and
the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of
cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the
passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place,
and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The
visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and 'darkness'
solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the 'deep.' To use a
Metaphor from the Secret Books, which will convey the idea still more clearly,
an out-breathing of the 'unknown essence' produces the world; and an inhalation
causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and
our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning
and will have no end." -- (See "Isis Unveiled"; also "The
Days and Nights of Brahma" in Part II.)
This passage will be explained, as
far as it is possible, in the present work. Though, as it now stands, it
contains nothing new to the Orientalist, its esoteric interpretation may
contain a good deal which has hitherto remained entirely unknown to the Western
student.
The first illustration being a plain
disc [[diagram]] the second one in the Archaic symbol shows [[diagram]], a disc
with a point in it -- the first differentiation in the periodical
manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite "Aditi in
THAT" (Rig Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within
abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter,
thus [[diagram]] It now symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the
all-embracing absolute Infinitude.
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When the diameter line is crossed by
a vertical one [[diagram]], it becomes the mundane cross. Humanity has reached
its third root-race; it is the sign for the origin of human life to begin. When
the circumference disappears and leaves only the [[diagram]] it is a sign that
the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH race begins. The
Cross within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism; when the Cross was left
uninscribed, it became phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a TAU
inscribed within a circle [[diagram]] or as a "Thor's hammer," the
Jaina cross, so-called, or simply Svastica within a circle [[diagram]]
By the third symbol -- the circle
divided in two by the horizontal line of the diameter -- the first
manifestation of creative (still passive, because feminine) Nature was meant.
The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation is feminine,
because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence female deities were
more sacred than the male. Nature is therefore feminine, and, to a degree,
objective and tangible, and the spirit Principle which fructifies it is concealed.
By adding to the circle with the horizontal line in it, a perpendicular line,
the tau was formed -- [[diagram]] -- the oldest form of the letter. It was the
glyph of the third root-race to the day of its symbolical Fall -- i.e., when
the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place -- when the figure
became [[diagram]], the circle, or sexless life modified or separated -- a
double glyph or symbol. With the races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology
the sacr', and in Hebrew n'cabvah, of the first-formed races;* then it changed
into the Egyptian [[diagram]] (emblem of life), and still later into the sign
of Venus, [[diagram]] Then comes the Svastica (Thor's hammer, or the
"Hermetic Cross" now), entirely separated from its Circle, thus becoming
purely phallic. The esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five-pointed star
reversed, thus [[diagram]] -- the sign of human sorcery, with its two points
(horns) turned heavenward, a position every
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See that suggestive work, "The
Source of Measures," where the author explains the real meaning of the
word "sacr'," from which "sacred," "sacrament,"
are derived, which have now become synonyms of "holiness," though
purely phallic!
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Occultist will recognise as one of
the "left-hand," and used in ceremonial magic.*
It is hoped that during the perusal
of this work the erroneous ideas of the public in general with regard to
Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and unjust to regard the Buddhists and
Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at
any rate, all logicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict
reasoning. Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the Hindus may be taken as a
representative of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this
absolute Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others
were copied. Parabrahm is not "God," because It is not a God.
"It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains
Mandukya Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as
effect. Parabrahm is simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the
all-inclusive Kosmos -- or, rather, the infinite Cosmic Space -- in the highest
spiritual sense, of course. Brahma (neuter) being the unchanging, pure, free,
undecaying supreme Root, "the ONE true Existence, Paramarthika," and
the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (intelligence, consciousness) cannot be a
cogniser, "for THAT can have no subject of cognition." Can the flame
be called the essence of Fire? This Essence is "the LIFE and LIGHT of the
Universe, the visible fire and flame are destruction, death, and evil."
"Fire and Flame destroy the body of an Arhat, their essence makes him
immortal." (Bodhi-mur, Book II.) "The knowledge of the absolute
Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is naught else
than the absolute Essence itself," says Sankaracharya. IT -- is "the
Spirit of the Fire," not fire itself; therefore, "the attributes of
the latter, heat or flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of
which that Spirit is the unconscious cause." Is not the above sentence the
true key-note of later Rosicrucian
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* We are told by the Western
mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in the Kabala also "the
value of the Jehovah name is that of the diameter of a circle." Add to
this the fact that Jehovah is the third Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and
you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic transformations this
name, androgynous in the first chapters of Genesis, becomes in its
transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and phallic. The fact of choosing a
deity among the pagan gods and making of it a special national God, to call
upon it as the "One living God," the "God of Gods," and
then proclaim this worship Monotheistic, does not change it into the ONE
Principle whose "Unity admits not of multiplication, change, or
form," especially in the case of a priapic deity, as Jehovah now
demonstrated to be.
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philosophy? Parabrahm is, in short,
the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and eternity, the
"THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive aggregates can not
be applied.* "In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only" (Aitareya
Upanishad); the great Sankaracharya, explains that "THIS" referred to
the Universe (Jagat); the sense of the words, "In the beginning,"
meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal Universe.
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo
the Upanishads, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine, that "this"
cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of
creators, but only refuse, very logically, to attribute "creation"
and especially formation, something finite to an Infinite Principle. With them,
Parabrahmam is a passive because an Absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It
is only limited Omniscience and Omnipotence that are refused to the latter,
because these are still attributes (as reflected in man's perceptions); and
because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL," the ever invisible spirit
and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes; absoluteness
very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned from being
connected with it. And if the Vedantin postulates attributes as belonging
simply to its emanation, calling it "Iswara plus Maya," and Avidya
(Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it is difficult to find any
Atheism in this conception.** Since there can be neither two INFINITES nor two
ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless, this Self-Existence can
hardly be conceived of as creating personally. In the sense and perceptions of
finite "Beings," THAT is Non-"being," in the sense that it
is the one BE-NESS; for, in this ALL lies concealed its coeternal and coeval
emanation or inherent radiation, which, upon becoming periodically Brahma (the
male-female Potency) becomes or expands itself into the manifested Universe.
Narayana moving on the (abstract) waters of Space, is transformed into the
Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes the manifested WORD
or Logos.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Vedanta Sara," by
Major G. A. Jacob; as also "The Aphorisms of S'andilya," translated
by Cowell, p. 42.
** Nevertheless, prejudiced and
rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would like to prove this pure Atheism.
For proof of this, see about Major Jacob's "Vedanta Sara." Yet, the
whole Antiquity echoes this Vedantic thought:--
"Omnis enim per se divom natura
necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace
fruatur."
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The orthodox Brahmins, those who rise
the most against the Pantheists and Adwaitees, calling them Atheists, are
forced, if Manu has any authority in this matter, to accept the death of
Brahma, the creator, at the expiration of every "Age" of this
(creative) deity (100 Divine years -- a period which in our years requires
fifteen figures to express it). Yet, no philosopher among them will view this
"death" in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the
manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists are, therefore, at one
with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers as to the above tenet. They show the
impossibility of accepting on philosophical grounds the idea of the absolute
ALL creating or even evolving the "Golden Egg," into which it is said
to enter in order to transform itself into Brahma -- the Creator, who expands
himself later into gods and all the visible Universe. They say that Absolute
Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the limitless extension
of something, and the duration of that "something"; and the One All
is like Space -- which is its only mental and physical representation on this Earth,
or our plane of existence -- neither an object of, nor a subject to,
perception. If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent
Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation
a manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be
one. Locke's idea that "pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor
Motion" -- is incorrect. Space is neither a "limitless void,"
nor a "conditioned fulness," but both: being, on the plane of
absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity, which is void only to finite
minds,* and on that of mayavic perception, the Plenum, the absolute Container
of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested: it is, therefore, that
ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference between the Christian Apostle's "In
Him we live and move and have our being," and the Hindu Rishi's "The
Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The very names of the two chief deities,
Brahma and Vishnu, ought to have long ago suggested their esoteric meanings.
For the root of one, Brahmam, or Brahm, is derived by some from the word Brih,
"to grow" or "to expand" (see Calcutta Review, vol. lxvi.,
p. 14); and of the other, Vishnu, from the root Vis, "to pervade," to
enter in the nature of the essence; Brahma-Vishnu being this infinite SPACE, of
which the gods, the Rishis, the Manus, and all in this universe are simply the
potencies, Vibhutayah.
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return to, Brahma (Brahma)": for
Brahma (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe in abscondito, and Brahma,
the manifested, is the Logos, made male-female* in the symbolical orthodox
dogmas. The God of the Apostle-Initiate and of the Rishi being both the Unseen
and the Visible SPACE. Space is called in the esoteric symbolism "the
Seven-Skinned Eternal Mother-Father." It is composed from its
undifferentiated to its differentiated surface of seven layers.
"What is that which was, is, and
will be, whether there is a Universe or not; whether there be gods or
none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And the answer made is --
SPACE.
It is not the One Unknown
ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito, that is rejected, but the
God of human dogma and his humanized "Word." In his infinite conceit
and inherent pride and vanity, man shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand
out of the material he found in his own small brain-fabric, and forced it upon
mankind as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.** The Occultist
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Manu's account of Brahma separating
his body into male and female, the latter the female Vach, in whom he creates
Viraj, and compare this with the esotericism of Chapters II., III., and IV. of
Genesis.
** Occultism is indeed in the air at
the close of this our century. Among many other works recently published, we
would recommend one especially to students of theoretical Occultism who would
not venture beyond the realm of our special human plane. It is called "New
Aspects of Life and Religion," by Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric
dogmas and philosophy, the latter rather limited, in the concluding chapters,
by what seems to be a spirit of conditioned positivism. Nevertheless, what is
said of Space as "the Unknown First Cause," merits quotation.
"This unknown something, thus recognised as, and identified with, the
primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and impalpable" --
(abstract space, granted); "and because invisible and impalpable,
therefore incognisable. And this incognisability has led to the error of
supposing it to be a simple void, a mere receptive capacity. But, even viewed
as an absolute void, space must be admitted to be either Self-existent,
infinite, and eternal, or to have had a first cause outside, behind, and beyond
itself.
"And yet could such a cause be
found and defined, this would only lead to the transferring thereto of the
attributes otherwise accruing to space, and thus merely throw the difficulty of
origination a step farther back, without gaining additional light as to primary
causation." (p. 5.)
This is precisely what has been done
by the believers in an anthropomorphic Creator, an extracosmic, instead of an
intracosmic God. Many -- most of Mr. Pratt's subjects, we may say -- are old
Kabalistic ideas and theories which he presents in quite a new garb: "New
Aspects" of the Occult in Nature, indeed. Space, however, viewed as a
"Substantial Unity" -- the "living Source of Life" -- is as
the "Un- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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accepts revelation as coming from
divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested lives, never from the
Unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those entities, called Primordial Man,
Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans, the "Rishi-Prajapati" of the
Hindus, the Elohim or "Sons of God," the Planetary Spirits of all
nations, who have become Gods for men. He also regards the Adi-Sakti -- the
direct emanation of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female
aspect of the Creative Cause Brahma, in her A'kasic form of the Universal Soul
-- as philosophically a Maya, and cause of human Maya. But this view does not
prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for
one Mahamanvantara; nor from applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti,* to
practical purposes, connected as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena,
known or unknown to science.
The oldest religions of the world --
exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one -- are the Indian, the
Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these --
entirely lost to the world now, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at
present rendered by the archaeologists; then, passing over a number of
religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically, as in
the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism; exoterically, as in
Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends. Read by the
light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the fragment
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] known Causeless Cause," is the oldest dogma in Occultism,
millenniums earlier than the Pater-AEther of the Greeks and Latins. So are the
"Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and the Unknown
revealers of the Unknown." They are all found in Aryan philosophy
personified by Visvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are expressed
very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects, in the work referred to.
* In contradistinction to the
manifested universe of matter, the term Mulaprakriti (from Mula, "the
root," and prakriti, "nature"), or the unmanifested primordial
matter -- called by Western alchemists Adam's Earth -- is applied by the
Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious metaphysics, and
septenary in esoteric teachings, like everything else in the universe. As
Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as Vyakta, it becomes
differentiated and conditioned, according to Svetasvatara Upanishad, I. 8, and
Devi Bhagavata Purana. The author of the Four Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita,
says, in speaking of Mulaprakriti: "From its (the Logos') objective
standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . . Of course this
Mulaprakriti is material to it, as any material object is material to us. . . .
Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a
sort of veil thrown over it." (Theosophist, Vol. VIII., p. 304.)
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of a highly philosophical page in the
World's Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta Vidya and the Zohar.) Left in their
symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of
science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue
to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better
what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation,
and the Jews have certainly now the better of their traditional persecutors.
The above-named exoteric creeds will be explained in the light of the Universal
doctrine as we proceed with it.
The Occult Catechism contains the
following questions and answers:
"What is it that ever is?"
"Space, the eternal Anupadaka."* "What is it that ever
was?" "The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is ever
coming and going?" "The Great Breath." "Then, there are
three Eternals?" "No, the three are one. That which ever is is one,
that which ever was is one, that which is ever being and becoming is also one:
and this is Space."
"Explain, oh Lanoo
(disciple)." -- "The One is an unbroken Circle (ring) with no
circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless plane
of the Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric periods; the
One is the indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those
periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, the
summit and base of the Father, the two extremities of the Mother, reaching in
reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the rings that are within that
Ring. Light in darkness and darkness in light: the 'Breath which is eternal.'
It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within
outwardly, when it is nowhere -- (i.e., maya,** one of the centres***). It
expands and
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Meaning "parentless" --
see farther on.
** Esoteric philosophy, regarding as
Maya (or the illusion of ignorance) every finite thing, must necessarily view
in the same light every intra-Cosmic planet and body, as being something
organised, hence finite. The expression, therefore, "it proceeds from
without inwardly, etc." refers in the first portion of the sentence to the
dawn of the Mahamanvantaric period, or the great re-evolution after one of the
complete periodical dissolutions of every compound form in Nature (from planet
to molecule) into its ultimate essence or element; and in its second portion,
to the partial or local manvantara, which may be a solar or even a planetary
one.
*** By "centre," a centre
of energy or a Cosmic focus is meant; when the so-called "Creation,"
or formation of a planet, is accomplished by that force which is designated by
the Occultists LIFE and by Science "energy," then the process takes
place [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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contracts (exhalation and
inhalation). When it expands the mother diffuses and scatters; when it
contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the periods of
Evolution and Dissolution, Manwantara and Pralaya. The Germ is invisible and
fiery; the Root (the plane of the circle) is cool; but during Evolution and
Manwantara her garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who
devours the progeny of the many-faced Element (heterogeneous); and leaves the
single-faced ones (homogeneous). Cool Breath is the Mother, who conceives,
forms, brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to reform them at
the Dawn (of the Day of Brahma, or Manvantara). . . . ."
For clearer understanding on the part
of the general reader, it must be stated that Occult Science recognises Seven
Cosmical Elements -- four entirely physical, and the fifth (Ether)
semi-material, as it will become visible in the air towards the end of our
Fourth Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of the Fifth.
The remaining two are as yet absolutely beyond the range of human perception.
These latter will, however, appear as presentments during the 6th and 7th Races
of this Round, and will become known in the 6th and 7th Rounds respectively.*
These seven elements with their numberless Sub-Elements
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] from within outwardly, every atom being said to contain in itself
creative energy of the divine breath. Hence, whereas after an absolute pralaya,
or when the pre-existing material consists but of ONE Element, and BREATH
"is everywhere," the latter acts from without inwardly: after a minor
pralaya, everything having remained in statu quo -- in a refrigerated state, so
to say, like the moon -- at the first flutter of manvantara, the planet or
planets begin their resurrection to life from within outwardly.
* It is curious to notice how, in the
evolutionary cycles of ideas, ancient thought seems to be reflected in modern
speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer read and studied ancient Hindu
philosophers when he wrote a certain passage in his "First
Principles" (p. 482), or is it an independent flash of inner perception
that made him say half correctly, half incorrectly, "motion as well as
matter, being fixed in quantity (?), it would seem that the change in the
distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever
direction it is carried (?), the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a
reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally co-existent forces of
attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all
minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality
of its changes -- produce now an immeasurable period during which the
attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an
immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause
universal diffusion -- alternate eras of Evolution and dissolution."
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far more numerous than those known to
Science) are simply conditional modifications and aspects of the ONE and only
Element. This latter is not Ether,* not even A'kasa but the Source of these.
The Fifth Element, now advocated quite freely by Science, is not the Ether
hypothesised by Sir Isaac Newton -- although he calls it by that name, having
associated it in his mind probably with the AEther, "Father-Mother"
of Antiquity. As Newton intuitionally says, "Nature is a perpetual
circulatory worker, generating fluids out of solids, fixed things out of
volatile, and volatile out of fixed, subtile out of gross, and gross out of
subtile. . . . . Thus, perhaps, may all things be originated from Ether,"
(Hypoth, 1675).
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
Dhyani-Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that
separate the milliards of Solar systems from the "Central Sun," as it
is called. Therefore, that which is given, relates only to our visible Kosmos,
after a "Night of Brahma."
Before the reader proceeds to the
consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the
present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with
the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of
thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number,
and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows;
therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar
with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Whatever the views of physical
Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching for ages that A'kasa
-- of which Ether is the grossest form -- the fifth universal Cosmic Principle
(to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas) is, cosmically, a
radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature,
correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher
principles. In the former condition it is called the Sub-Root; and in
conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls "dead worlds to life." In
its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower -- the DESTROYER.
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The Secret Doctrine establishes three
fundamental propositions:--
(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal,
Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since
it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any
human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought --
in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."
To render these ideas clearer to the
general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute
Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and
Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and
"Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the rootless root
of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of
all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite
Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is
beyond all thought or speculation.
This "Be-ness" is
symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute
abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human
mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the
other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even
our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart
from change, and motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic. This
latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolised by the term "The
Great Breath," a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further
elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is
this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE -- BE-NESS -- symbolised by finite intelligence
as the theological Trinity.
It may, however, assist the student
if a few further explanations are given here.
Herbert Spencer has of late so far
modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of the "First
Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives from the
"Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the
"Unknowable," may be essentially the same as that of the
Consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal reality
pervading
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The "first" presupposes
necessarily something which is the "first brought forth, the first in
time, space, and rank" -- and therefore finite and conditioned. The
"first" [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of
thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to the esoteric and
Vedantin tenet.*
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the
Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, 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.
Considering this metaphysical triad
as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, the great Breath assumes the
character of precosmic Ideation. It is the fons et origo of force and of all
individual consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast
scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, precosmic root-substance (Mulaprakriti)
is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of
Nature.
Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the
root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum
of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.
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 consciousness, 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."
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] cannot be the absolute, for it is a manifestation. Therefore, Eastern
Occultism calls the Abstract All the "Causeless One Cause," the
"Rootless Root," and limits the "First Cause" to the Logos,
in the sense that Plato gives to this term.
* See Mr. Subba Row's four able
lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, "Theosophist," February, 1887.
** Called in Sanskrit:
"Upadhi."
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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." Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded
from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all
manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made manifest
through the Dhyan Chohans,* the Architects of the visible World. Thus from
Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the
several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self
-- or reflective -- consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations,
is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle
electrifying every atom into life.
The following summary will afford a
clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of
the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, as Hegel says, both Absolute
Being and Non-Being.
(2.) The first manifestation, the
impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the precursor of the
"manifested." This is the "First Cause," the
"Unconscious" of European Pantheists.
(3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the
"Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and Prakriti, or the second
Logos.
(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or
Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the
basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called MAHA-BUDDHI.
The ONE REALITY; its dual aspects in
the conditioned Universe.
Further, the Secret Doctrine
affirms:--
(b.) The Eternity of the Universe in
toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the playground of numberless
Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing," called "the
manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity." "The
Eternity of the Pilgrim"** is like a wink
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Called by Christian theology:
Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
** "Pilgrim" is the
appellation given to our Monad (the two in one) during its cycle of
incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal principle in us, being an
indivisible part of the integral whole -- the Universal Spirit, from which it
emanates, and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle. When it is
said to emanate from the one [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of
Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular
tidal ebb of flux and reflux." (See Part II., "Days and Nights of
Brahma.")
This second assertion of the Secret
Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and
reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all
departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and
Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and
without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the
absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine
teaches:--
(c) The fundamental identity of all
Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the
Unknown Root; and the obligatory 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 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). The pivotal doctrine of the
Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those
won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series
of metempsychoses and reincarnations. This is why the Hindus say that the
Universe is Brahma and Brahmâ, for Brahma is in every atom of the universe, the
six principles in Nature being all the outcome -- the variously differentiated
aspects -- of the SEVENTH and ONE, the only reality in the Universe whether
Cosmical or micro-cosmical; and also why the permutations (psychic, spiritual
and physical), on the plane of manifestation and form, of the sixth (Brahmâ the
vehicle of Brahma) are viewed by metaphysical
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has to be used, for lack of
appropriate words in English. The Vedantins call it Sutratma (Thread-Soul), but
their explanation, too, differs somewhat from that of the occultists; to
explain which difference, however, is left to the Vedantins themselves.
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antiphrasis as illusive and Mayavic.
For although the root of every atom individually and of every form
collectively, is that seventh principle or the one Reality, still, in its
manifested phenomenal and temporary appearance, it is no better than an
evanescent illusion of our senses. (See, for clearer definition, Addendum
"Gods, Monads and Atoms," and also "Theophania,"
"Bodhisatvas and Reincarnation," etc., etc.)
In its absoluteness, the One
Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti) is sexless,
unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical (manvantaric) emanation -- or primal
radiation -- is also One, androgynous and phenomenally finite. When the
radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations are also androgynous, to
become male and female principles in their lower aspects. After Pralaya,
whether the great or the minor Pralaya (the latter leaving the worlds in statu
quo*), the first that re-awakes to active life is the plastic A'kasa,
Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the plane on the surface of the
Circle. Space is called the "Mother" before its Cosmic activity, and
Father-Mother at the first stage of re-awakening. (See Comments, Stanza II.) In
the Kabala it is also Father-Mother-Son. But whereas in the Eastern doctrine,
these are the Seventh Principle of the manifested Universe, or its
"Atma-Buddhi-Manas" (Spirit, Soul, Intelligence), the triad branching
off and dividing into the seven cosmical and seven human principles, in the
Western Kabala of the Christian mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and with their
occultists, the male-female Jehovah, Jah-Havah. In this lies the whole
difference between the esoteric and the Christian trinities. The Mystics and
the Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists, synthesize their
pregenetic triad in the pure divine abstraction. The orthodox, anthropomorphize
it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Sankara -- the three hypostases of the manifesting
"Spirit of the Supreme Spirit" (by which title Prithivi -- the Earth
-- greets Vishnu in his first Avatar) -- are the purely metaphysical abstract
qualities of formation, preservation, and destruction, and are the three divine
Avasthas (lit. hypostases) of that which "does
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is not the physical organisms
that remain in statu quo, least of all their psychical principles, during the
great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only their Akasic or astral
"photographs." But during the minor pralayas, once over-taken by the "Night,"
the planets remain intact, though dead, as a huge animal, caught and embedded
in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.
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not perish with created things"
(or Achyuta, a name of Vishnu); whereas the orthodox Christian separates his
personal creative Deity into the three personages of the Trinity, and admits of
no higher Deity. The latter, in Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the
orthodox, the perfect Cube. The creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded
by the Eastern philosopher as Bhrantidarsanatah -- "false
apprehension," something "conceived of, by reason of erroneous appearances,
as a material form," and explained as arising from the illusive conception
of the Egotistic personal and human Soul (lower fifth principle). It is
beautifully expressed in a new translation of Vishnu Purana. "That Brahma
in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and
unevolved (Mulaprakriti), and also the aspect of Spirit and the aspect of Time.
Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the Supreme Brahma.* The next is
a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved, and is the time
last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic theogony as being also a generated
god or agent.
At this stage of the re-awakening of
the Universe, the sacred symbolism represents it as a perfect Circle with the
(root) point in the Centre. This sign was universal, therefore we find it in
the Kabala also. The Western Kabala, however, now in the hands of Christian
mystics, ignores it altogether, though it is plainly shown in the Zohar. These
sectarians begin at the end, and show as the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos this
sign [[diagram]], calling it "the Union of the Rose and Cross," the
great mystery of occult generation, from whence the name -- Rosicrucians (Rose
Cross)!
As may be judged, however, from the
most important, as the best known of the Rosicrucians' symbols, there is one
which has never been hitherto understood even by modern mystics. It is that of
the "Pelican" tearing open its breast to feed its seven little ones
-- the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross and a direct outcome from
the Eastern
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Thus Spencer, who, nevertheless,
like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, only reflects an aspect of the old esoteric
philosophers, and hence lands his readers on the bleak shore of Agnostic
despair -- reverently formulates the grand mystery; "that which persists
unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible
appearances which the Universe presents to us, is an unknown and unknowable
power, which we are obliged to recognise as without limit in Space and without
beginning or end in time." It is only daring Theology -- never Science or
philosophy -- which seeks to gauge the Infinite and unveil the Fathomless and
Unknowable.
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Secret Doctrine. Brahma (neuter) is
called Kalahansa, meaning, as explained by Western Orientalists, the Eternal
Swan or goose (see Stanza III., Comment. 8), and so is Brahma, the Creator. A
great mistake is thus brought under notice; it is Brahma (neuter) who ought to
be referred to as Hansa-vahana (He who uses the swan as his Vehicle) and not
Brahma the Creator, who is the real Kalahansa, while Brahma (neuter) is hamsa,
and "A-hamsa," as will be explained in the Commentary. Let it be
understood that the terms Brahma and Parabrahmam are not used here because they
belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but simply because they are more familiar
to the students in the West. Both are the perfect equivalents of our one,
three, and seven vowelled terms, which stand for the ONE ALL, and the One
"All in all."
Such are the basic conceptions on
which the Secret Doctrine rests.
It would not be in place here to
enter upon any defence or proof of their inherent reasonableness; nor can I
pause to show how they are, in fact, contained -- though too often under a
misleading guise -- in every system of thought or philosophy worthy of the
name.
Once that the reader has gained a
clear comprehension of them and realised the light which they throw on every
problem of life, they will need no further justification in his eyes, because
their truth will be to him as evident as the sun in heaven. I pass on,
therefore, to the subject matter of the Stanzas as given in this volume, adding
a skeleton outline of them, in the hope of thereby rendering the task of the
student more easy, by placing before him in a few words the general conception
therein explained.
Stanza I. The history of cosmic
evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, the abstract algebraical
formula of that Evolution. Hence the student must not expect to find there an
account of all the stages and transformations which intervene between the first
beginnings of "Universal" evolution and our present state. To give
such an account would be as impossible as it would be incomprehensible to men
who cannot even grasp the nature of the plane of existence next to that to
which, for the moment, their consciousness is limited.
The Stanzas, therefore, give an
abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to all evolution: to
that of our tiny earth, to
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that of the chain of planets of which
that earth forms one, to the solar Universe to which that chain belongs, and so
on, in an ascending scale, till the mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The seven Stanzas given in this
volume represent the seven terms of this abstract formula. They refer to, and
describe the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, which are spoken
of in the Puranas as the "Seven Creations," and in the Bible as the
"Days" of Creation.
---------------------
The First Stanza describes the state
of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first flutter of re-awakening
manifestation.
A moment's thought shows that such a
state can only be symbolised; to describe it is impossible. Nor can it be
symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the state of Absoluteness per
se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to describe
objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the
negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than
conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.
The stage described in Stanza II. is,
to a western mind, so nearly identical with that mentioned in the first Stanza,
that to express the idea of its difference would require a treatise in itself.
Hence it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader
to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed
it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties
rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain.
Stanza III. describes the
Re-awakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts the emergence of
the "Monads" from their state of absorption within the ONE; the
earliest and highest stage in the formation of "Worlds," the term
Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the
tiniest atom.
Stanza IV. shows the differentiation
of the "Germ" of the Universe
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into the septenary hierarchy of conscious
Divine Powers, who are the active manifestations of the One Supreme Energy.
They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the
manifested Universe, in the only sense in which the name "Creator" is
intelligible; they inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who
adjust and control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of
the ONE LAW, which we know as "The Laws of Nature."
Generically, they are known as the
Dhyan Chohans, though each of the various groups has its own designation in the
Secret Doctrine.
This stage of evolution is spoken of
in Hindu mythology as the "Creation" of the Gods.
In Stanza V. the process of
world-formation is described:--- First, diffused Cosmic Matter, then the fiery
"whirlwind," the first stage in the formation of a nebula. That
nebula condenses, and after passing through various transformations, forms a
Solar Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet, as the case may be.
The subsequent stages in the
formation of a "World" are indicated in Stanza VI., which brings the
evolution of such a world down to its fourth great period, corresponding to the
period in which we are now living.
Stanza VII. continues the history,
tracing the descent of life down to the appearance of Man; and thus closes the
first Book of the Secret Doctrine.
The development of "Man"
from his first appearance on this earth in this Round to the state in which we
now find him will form the subject of Book II.
---------------------
NOTE.
The Stanzas which form the thesis of
every section are given throughout in their modern translated version, as it
would be worse
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than useless to make the subject
still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of the original,
with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from the Chinese Thibetan
and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar Commentaries and Glosses on
the Book of DZYAN -- these being now rendered for the first time into a
European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only portions of the
seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete they would remain
incomprehensible to all save the few higher occultists. Nor is there any need
to assure the reader that, no more than most of the profane, does the writer,
or rather the humble recorder, understand those forbidden passages. To
facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too frequent reference to foot-notes,
it was thought best to blend together texts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and
Tibetan proper names whenever those cannot be avoided, in preference to giving
the originals. The more so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, the
former only being used between a Master and his chelas (or disciples).
Thus, were one to translate into
English, using only the substantives and technical terms as employed in one of
the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Verse I would read as follows:--- "Tho-ag
in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not;
Thyan-Kam not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not; Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang
not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of
Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna), &c., &c.," which would
sound like pure Abracadabra.
As this work is written for the
instruction of students of Occultism, and not for the benefit of philologists,
we may well avoid such foreign terms wherever it is possible to do so. The
untranslateable terms alone, incomprehensible unless explained in their
meanings, are left, but all such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form. Needless
to remind the reader that these are, in almost every case, the late
developments of the later language, and pertain to the Fifth Root-Race.
Sanskrit, as now known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the
philosophical terms used in the systems of the India of the post-Mahabharatan
period are not found in the Vedas, nor are they to be met with in the original
Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not a Theosophist, is
once more invited to regard all that which follows as a fairy tale, if he
likes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of
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dreamers; and, at the worst, as an
additional hypothesis to the many Scientific hypotheses past, present and
future, some exploded, others still lingering. It is not in any sense worse
than are many of the so called Scientific theories; and it is in every case
more philosophical and probable.
In view of the abundant comments and
explanations required, the references to the footnotes are given in the usual
way, while the sentences to be commented upon are marked with figures.
Additional matter will be found in the Chapters on Symbolism forming Part II.,
as well as in Part III., these being often more full of information than the
text.
---------------------
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PART I.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH
COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
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Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon
bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof
outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered?
what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death -- yet there was
nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and
night;
The only One breathed breathless by
itself,
Other than It there nothing since has
been.
Darkness there was, and all at first
was veiled
In gloom profound -- an ocean without
light --
The germ that still lay covered in
the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the
fervent heat.
. . . . . . . .
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed
it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation
sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into
being --
Who knows from whence this great
creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation
came,
Whether Its will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest
heaven,
He knows it -- or perchance even He
knows not."
"Gazing into eternity . . .
Ere the foundations of the earth were
laid,
. . . . .
Thou wert. And when the subterranean
flame
Shall burst its prison and devour the
frame . . .
Thou shalt be still as Thou wert
before
And knew no change, when time shall
be no more.
Oh! endless thought, divine
ETERNITY."
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COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the
Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
STANZA I.
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER
EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN
THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE
WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT.
THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS
ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT
AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE
SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS
IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT.
NAUGHT WAS.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN
DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN
ETERNAL NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE
STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED
UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY
THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE
ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?
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STANZA II.
1. . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE
LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI
PARANISHPANNA. THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM -- THE ROOT OF THE WORLD --
THE DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING.
2. . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE
EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE
CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE
RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR
THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.
5. THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN
FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT; AND
SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE
GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE
DIVINE BOSOM. . . .
-------
STANZA III.
1. . . . THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE
SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE. THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM
WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG,
TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN
DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE. . .
3. DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT
DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN
EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM,
WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG.
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4. THEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR.
THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE. THE LUMINOUS EGG,
WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT
THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT
REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP
OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY, AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE,
AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS
OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OR FATHER AND MOTHER.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO! THE RADIANT
CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY: BRIGHT SPACE SON OF DARK
SPACE, WHICH EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO
THE YOUNGER, THE * * * HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SON; HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE
DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE ONE IS FOUR, AND FOUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE,** AND THE
UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA (OR
THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL AND UNFURLING IT FROM
EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE
GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES, AND TURNS THE UPPER
INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE MANIFESTED INTO THE GREAT WATERS.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM AND WHERE WAS
NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH
LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK
HIDDEN FATHER.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS
FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER: THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE
GREAT MOTHER.
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE
UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT -- THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS -- AND THE
LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF
THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHAVAT.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** In the English translation from
the Sanskrit the numbers are given in that language, Eka, Chatur, etc., etc. It
was thought best to give them in English.
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11. IT EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF
FIRE IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER TOUCHES IT. THEN
THE SONS DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER'S BOSOM AT THE END
OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE-BECOME ONE WITH HER; WHEN IT IS COOLING IT BECOMES
RADIANT, AND THE SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS;
THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.
12. THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO
HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH IS A PART OF THE WEB. REFLECTING THE "SELF-EXISTENT
LORD" LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.
-------
STANZA IV.
1. . . . LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE
EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS -- THE SONS OF THE FIRE. LEARN, THERE IS NEITHER
FIRST NOR LAST, FOR ALL IS ONE: NUMBER ISSUED FROM NO NUMBER.
2. LEARN WHAT WE WHO DESCEND FROM THE
PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM
OUR FATHERS. . . .
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT --
THE RAY OF THE EVER-DARKNESS -- SPRUNG IN SPACE THE RE-AWAKENED ENERGIES; THE
ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX, AND THE FIVE. THEN THE THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE
ONE, THE FIVE -- THE TWICE SEVEN THE SUM TOTAL. AND THESE ARE THE ESSENCES, THE
FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS, THE ARUPA, THE RUPA, AND THE
FORCE OF DIVINE MAN -- THE SUM TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE
FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS, AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS
WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE --
THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE
SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE
SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN. THESE "SPARKS" ARE CALLED
SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL
NIDANA -- THE OEAOHOO, WHICH IS:
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5. "DARKNESS" THE
BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO-NUMBER, ADI-NIDANA SVABHAVAT:--
I. THE ADI-SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE
IS ONE.
II. THE VOICE OF THE LORD SVABHAVAT,
THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.
III. THE "FORMLESS SQUARE."
AND THESE THREE ENCLOSED WITHIN THE
[[diagram]] ARE THE SACRED FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE ARUPA UNIVERSE. THEN COME
THE "SONS," THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS
BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT-MAKER.
6. THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE
LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE. THE REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE
"SON-SUNS" ARE COUNTLESS.
-------
STANZA V.
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST
SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY
CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND.
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF
THEIR WILL. THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT, THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS WHOSE SONS
ARE THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE STEED AND THE THOUGHT IS
THE RIDER. HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS; TAKES THREE, AND
FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW.
HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS, AND JOINS THEM.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND
LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM
THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS, AND FORMS THEREWITH
THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN
THE MIDDLE -- THE CENTRAL WHEEL.
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE
THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH -- THE CROWN; AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT
EACH ANGLE, AND THE LIPIKA IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL, THEY SAY: THIS IS GOOD, THE
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FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE
FIRST IS NOW THE SECOND. THEN THE "DIVINE ARUPA" REFLECTS ITSELF IN
CHHAYA LOKA, THE FIRST GARMENT OF THE ANUPADAKA.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES AND
BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE, FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES AND
THEIR ARMIES.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE
TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE, THE CUBE, THE SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE
EGG. IT IS THE RING CALLED "PASS NOT" FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND
ASCEND. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING TOWARDS THE GREAT
DAY "BE WITH US." THUS WERE FORMED THE RUPA AND THE ARUPA: FROM ONE
LIGHT SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE
WHEELS WATCH THE RING. . . . .
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STANZA VI.
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF
MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE -- KWAN-YIN -- THE "TRIPLE" OF KWAN-SHAI-YIN,
RESIDING IN KWAN-YIN-TIEN, FOHAT, THE BREATH OF THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE
SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER ABYSS, THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF
SIEN-TCHANG AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS:*
2. THE SWIFT AND RADIANT ONE PRODUCES
THE SEVEN LAYA CENTRES, AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY
"BE-WITH-US," AND SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS
SURROUNDING TSIEN-TCHAN WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS.
3. OF THE SEVEN -- FIRST ONE
MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED, TWO MANIFESTED, FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED,
FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED, THREE HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN REVEALED, TWO
AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE LAID ASIDE. LASTLY, SEVEN
SMALL WHEELS REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Verse 1 of Stanza VI. is of a far
later date than the other Stanzas, though still very ancient. The old text of
this verse, having names entirely unknown to the Orientalists would give no
clue to the student.
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4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF
OLDER WHEELS, PLACING THEM ON THE IMPERISHABLE CENTRES.
HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE
COLLECTS THE FIERY DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF FIRE, RUNS THROUGH THEM, AND ROUND
THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO THEN' SETS THEM INTO MOTION; SOME ONE WAY, SOME
THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD, HE MAKES THEM HOT. THEY ARE DRY, HE MAKES THEM
MOIST. THEY SHINE, HE FANS AND COOLS THEM. THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO
THE OTHER, DURING SEVEN ETERNITIES.
5. AT THE FOURTH, THE SONS ARE TOLD
TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES -- TWO OBEY.
THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED; THEY WILL BE
BORN ON THE FOURTH, SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING; THIS IS THE FIRST WAR.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARDS
AND UPWARDS. . . . THE MOTHER'S SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE. THERE WERE BATTLES
FOUGHT BETWEEN THE CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR SPACE;
THE SEED APPEARING AND RE-APPEARING CONTINUOUSLY.
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, LANOO, IF
THOU WOULDEST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE OF THY SMALL WHEEL. ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR
MOTHER. REACH THE FOURTH "FRUIT" OF THE FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT
LEADS TO NIRVANA, AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR THOU SHALT SEE . . . . .
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STANZA VII.
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT
FORMLESS LIFE.
FIRST THE DIVINE, THE ONE FROM THE
MOTHER-SPIRIT; THEN THE SPIRITUAL; THE THREE FROM THE ONE, THE FOUR FROM THE
ONE, AND THE FIVE FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE, AND THE SEVEN. THESE ARE THE
THREE-FOLD, THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE "MIND-BORN" SONS OF THE FIRST
LORD; THE SHINING SEVEN.
IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, OH
LANOO. THEY, WHO WATCH OVER THEE, AND THY MOTHER EARTH.
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2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER
RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM OF FORM. THROUGH THE
COUNTLESS RAYS PROCEEDS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY
JEWELS.
3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE
THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE THREE ARE ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, OH LANOO, THE
HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA.
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES;
THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS. THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW
FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN -- THEIR FLAME -- THE BEAMS
AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF
EARTH.
5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY
THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT
STOPS IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND AND
BEHOLD -- A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN CHANGES AND BECOMES A SACRED
ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO
FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE. WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD
LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA. . . . .
6. FROM THE FIRST-BORN THE THREAD
BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS SHADOW BECOMES MORE STRONG AND RADIANT WITH
EVERY CHANGE. THE MORNING SUN-LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON-DAY GLORY. . . . .
7. THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL, SAID
THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. THOU ART MYSELF, MY IMAGE, AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE
CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU ART MY VAHAN TO THE DAY, "BE WITH
US," WHEN THOU SHALT RE-BECOME MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND ME. THEN THE
BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON RADIANT EARTH AND REIGN
OVER MEN -- WHO ARE THEMSELVES. . . .
Thus ends this portion of the archaic
narrative, dark, confused, almost incomprehensible. An attempt will now be made
to throw light into this darkness, to make sense out of this apparent
NON-SENSE.
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COMMENTARIES
ON THE SEVEN STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS,
ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SLOKAS.
STANZA I.
1. "THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space),
WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN
ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent Space" is the
eternal, ever present cause of all -- the incomprehensible DEITY, whose
"invisible robes" are the mystic root of all matter, and of the
Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine,
immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence
in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and
self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT, the causeless
cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric catechism,
neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was and ever will
be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.)
Thus, the "Robes" stand for
the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it,
but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space
in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible
properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite
Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial
substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon,
whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from which Akasa
radiates.
(a) By the Seven
"Eternities," aeons or periods are meant. The word
"Eternity," as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to
the Asiatic ear, except in its application to the ONE existence; nor is
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the term sempiternity, the eternal
only in futurity, anything better than a misnomer.* Such words do not and
cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of
ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven Eternities meant are the seven periods,
or a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara,
and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the "Great Age" -- 100 years
of Brahma -- making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each year of
Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and of the same number of
"nights" of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year); and
a "Day of Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These
"Eternities" belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in
order to arrive at the true total, every figure must be 7x (7 to the power of
x); x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the subjective or real
world; and every figure or number relating to, or representing all the
different cycles from the greatest to the smallest -- in the objective or
unreal world -- must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this cannot
be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and for the
purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. "The number seven,"
says the Kabala, "is the great number of the Divine Mysteries;"
number ten is that of all human knowledge (Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is the
number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also
symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure and number 4 are the male symbol
only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the
masculine and the 4 the female: the upright and the horizontal in the fourth
stage of symbolism, when the symbols became the glyphs of the generative powers
on the physical plane.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN
THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION (a).
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* It is stated in Book II., ch.
viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is meant existence to the end of
the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the translator, remarks in a footnote: "This,
according to the Vedas, is all that is to be understood of the immortality (or
eternity) of the gods; they perish at the end of universal dissolution (or
Pralaya)." And Esoteric philosophy says: They "perish" not, but
are re-absorbed.
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(a) Time is only an illusion produced
by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal
duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the
illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The present is only a
mathematical line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the
future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real
duration, for nothing remains without change -- or the same -- for the
billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the
division of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring of
that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses
give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we call the future,
to the region of memories that we name the past. In the same way we experience
a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by
reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person
or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but
is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its
appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It is
these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the
"future," and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity
in the "past." No one could say that a bar of metal dropped into the
sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered
the water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof
which at any given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates,
and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons
and things, which, dropping out of the to-be into the has-been, out of the
future into the past -- present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as
it were, of their total selves, as they pass through time and space (as matter)
on their way from one eternity to another: and these two constitute that
"duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were our
senses but able to cognize it there.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
3. . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR
THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT (a).
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(a) Mind is a name given to the sum
of the states of Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will, and Feeling. During
deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance;
thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through
which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has
temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane
of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or
vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya, when all the
existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL MIND" remains as a permanent
possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which
mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the
Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the
manifestation of the divine or universal thought and will. They are the
Intelligent Forces that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while
themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by
still higher Powers; but they are not "the personifications" of the
powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This hierarchy of spiritual Beings,
through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an army -- a
"Host," truly -- by means of which the fighting power of a nation
manifests itself, and which is composed of army corps, divisions, brigades,
regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or life, and its
limited freedom of action and limited responsibilities; each contained in a
larger individuality, to which its own interests are subservient, and each
containing lesser individualities in itself.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha*
or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY (Nidana** and Maya) WERE
NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM (b).
(a) There are seven "Paths"
or "Ways" to the bliss of Non-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Nippang in China; Neibban in
Burmah; or Moksha in India.
** The "12" Nidanas (in
Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes of existence, effects generated by
a concatenation of causes produced (see Comment. II).
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ence, which is absolute Being,
Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the Universe was, so far,
empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought. For it is . . .
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of
being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to
its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based on the four truths, a
doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana System.* They belong to the
theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and demerit, and
finally brings Karma into full sway. It is based upon the great truth that
re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this world only entails upon
man suffering, misery and pain; Death itself being unable to deliver man from
it, since death is merely the door through which he passes to another life on
earth after a little rest on its threshold -- Devachan. The Hinayana System, or
School of the "Little Vehicle," is of very ancient growth; while the
Mahayana is of a later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet
the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such
schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the
latter, that of the "Great Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in
reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic expression, both
"vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of rebirths
and even the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which
alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya 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 unmeaning 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 colourless 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
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Wassilief on Buddhism, pp.
97-950.
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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.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE
BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON
HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON (b).
(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother:
light their son," says an old Eastern proverb. Light is inconceivable
except as coming from some source which is the cause of it; and as, in the
instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though as strongly
demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by
us, from an intellectual point of view. As to borrowed or secondary light,
whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary mayavic character. Darkness,
then, is the eternal
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* That which is called
"wheel" is the symbolical expression for a world or globe, which
shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving globe, not a
motionless square as some Christian Fathers taught. The "Great Wheel"
is the whole duration of our Cycle of being, or Maha Kalpa, i.e., the whole
revolution of our special chain of seven planets or Spheres from beginning to
end; the "Small Wheels" meaning the Rounds, of which there are also
Seven.
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matrix in which the sources of light
appear and disappear. Nothing is added to darkness to make of it light, or to
light to make it darkness, on this our plane. They are interchangeable, and
scientifically light is but a mode of darkness and vice versa. Yet both are
phenomena of the same noumenon -- which is absolute darkness to the scientific
mind, and but a gray twilight to the perception of the average mystic, though
to that of the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. How far we
discern the light that shines in darkness depends upon our powers of vision.
What is light to us is darkness to certain insects, and the eye of the
clairvoyant sees illumination where the normal eye perceives only blackness.
When the whole universe was plunged in sleep -- had returned to its one
primordial element -- there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to
perceive light, and darkness necessarily filled the boundless all.
(b) The Father-Mother are the male
and female principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all
things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical
aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. They are "once
more One" when in "The Night of Brahma," during Pralaya, all in
the objective Universe has returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to
reappear at the following Dawn -- as it does periodically. "Karana"
-- eternal cause -- was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana is alone during
the "Nights of Brahma." The previous objective Universe has dissolved
into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in
space, to differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvantaric
dawn, which is the commencement of a new "Day" or new activity of
Brahma -- the symbol of the Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is
Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being
symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated
efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and
evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary
chain and the earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary
Spirit, and Man -- the Son of the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a
manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth during the
"wheels," or the Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days and
Nights of Brahma.")
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE
SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE (a), AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS
IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is
Yong-Grub) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c).
(a) The seven sublime lords are the
Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim.
It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and
others belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance,
is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the promontories and
gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the
Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are, moreover,
said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of
whom vide infra) during every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and
Revelations, or rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as
we are still in the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas,
so far. This is a very complicated question, and will receive more ample
treatment later on.
So far "There are only Four
Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus and Buddhists. For a similar
reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four Gospels. But as every new
Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the
next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on.
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the
absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of a great
period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they rest during the
succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called Yong-Grub. Up to the day
of the Yogacharya school the true nature of Paranirvana was taught publicly,
but since then it has become entirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory
interpretations of it. It is only a true Idealist who can understand it.
Everything has to be viewed as ideal, with the exception of Paranirvana, by him
who would comprehend that state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non Ego,
Voidness, and Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent and perfect. It
is absolute, however, only in a relative
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sense, for it must give room to still
further absolute perfection, according to a higher standard of excellence in
the following period of activity -- just as a perfect flower must cease to be a
perfect flower and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat
Irish mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the
progressive development of everything, 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."
(c) By "that which is and yet is
not" is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as
absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of
existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence. The three periods -- the
Present, the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric philosophy a compound
time; for the three are a composite number only in relation to the phenomenal
plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity. As said in the
Scriptures: "The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which,
though it has not come into existence, still is"; according to a precept
in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas have been known ever since it
broke away from the purely esoteric schools.* Our ideas, in short, on duration
and time are all derived from our
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Dzungarian "Mani
Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts." Also consult
Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc.
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sensations according to the laws of
Association. Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they
nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the individual
ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of phenomenal
existence. What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our
states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, "I feel irritated at
having to use these three clumsy words -- Past, Present, and Future --
miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are
about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving." One has
to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a prey to Samvriti -- is
a philosophical axiom.*
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN
DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN
ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The Causes of
Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to science, but the
metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist, an outcome of
Nidana and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything,
from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into
objective existence, into a law that the Universe should exist. According to
esoteric teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of all
existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most
complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity
be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to
the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate
powers of Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and
gods by the common herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without
a cause; the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* In clearer words: "One has to
acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to understand Samvriti, or the 'origin
of delusion.'" Paramartha is the synonym of the Sanskrit term
Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses itself." There is a
difference in the interpretation of the meaning of "Paramartha"
between the Yogacharyas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain
the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See further, sloka No. 9.
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This is virtually the condition to
which the mind must come at last when we try to trace back the chain of causes
and effects, but both science and religion jump to this condition of blankness
much more quickly than is necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical
abstractions which are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions.
These abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of
existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the material
Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics, analogous to
that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being,
which is the One Being, will appear a paradox to anyone who does not remember
that we limit our ideas of being to our present consciousness of existence;
making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An unborn infant, could it
think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily limit its conception
of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life which alone it knows;
and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness the idea of life after
birth (death to it), it would, in the absence of data to go upon, and of
faculties to comprehend such data, probably express that life as
"Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the One Being is the
noumenon of all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give
them whatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses
or the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered
through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the
naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but
that they alone give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the
gold to the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the
phenomenon. But the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted
from the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality
of things separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are
hidden. Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless
generations of his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward
the essence of things in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that
the teachings of esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four
Truths become of the greatest importance; but they are secret.
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STANZA I. -- Continued.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE
STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (a); AND LIFE
PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS
SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"* OF THE DANGMA (b).**
(a) The tendency of modern thought is
to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for apparently widely
different things -- heterogeneity developed from homogeneity. Biologists are
now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for their protyle,
while science is looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat,
and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea
into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of
Existence" as the basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase,
the "One Form of Existence," is not altogether correct. The Sanskrit
word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather plane, whence emerges the
origination, and into which is the resolution of all things," says a
commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World," as translated by
Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as shown by FitzEdward Hall)
is scarcely so much "the Mother of the World" or "the Womb of
the World" as the "Material Cause of the Universe." The Puranic
Commentators explain it by Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric
philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause. It is, in its secondary stage,
the Svabhavat of the Buddhist philosopher, the eternal cause and effect,
omnipresent yet abstract, the self-existent plastic Essence and the root of all
things, viewed in the same dual light as the Vedantin views his Parabrahm and
Mulaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It seems indeed extraordinary to find
great scholars speculating on the possibility of the Vedanta, and the
Uttara-Mimansa especially, having been "evoked by the teachings of the
Buddhists,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In India it is called "The Eye
of Siva," but beyond the great range it is known as "Dangma's opened
eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means a purified soul, one
who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, or rather a Mahatma so-called.
His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the
faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily
understood, i.e., the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of
spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable.
This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye," which
mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller explanations
will be found in Book II.
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whereas, it is on the contrary
Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that was "evoked" and entirely
upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial sketch is
here attempted, and on which, also, the Upanishads are made to rest.* The
above, according to the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable.
(b) Dreamless sleep is one of the
seven states of consciousness known in Oriental esotericism. In each of these
states a different portion of the mind comes into action; or as a Vedantin
would express it, the individual is conscious in a different plane of his
being. The term "dreamless sleep," in this case is applied
allegorically to the Universe to express a condition somewhat analogous to that
state of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in a waking state,
seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject seems to him an unconscious
blank when he returns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and
acting as a conscious individual would.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE
ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA
(a) (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and
Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA (b)?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And yet, one, claiming authority,
namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just
denied this fact. This is what he taught his audience, on June the 4th, 1888,
in his annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain:
"Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism . . .
to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of
doctrine . . . withheld from ordinary men" (!!) And, again: " . . .
When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to
have been little known." And then, contradicting himself, the learned
lecturer forthwith informs his audience that "We learn from Lalita-Vistara
that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were
common in Gautama's time." (!!) But the lecturer seems quite unaware that
this kind of torture and self-maceration is precisely the lower form of Yoga,
Hatha Yoga, which was "little known" and yet so "common" in
Gautama's time.
** It is even argued that all the Six
Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show traces of Buddha's influence, being
either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See Weber, Max Muller,
etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke, "the highest
authority" in such matters, had long ago settled the question by showing,
that "the Hindus were in this instance the teachers, not the
learners."
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(a) Here we have before us the
subject of centuries of scholastic disputations. The two terms
"Alaya" and "Paramartha" have been the causes of dividing
schools and splitting the truth into more different aspects than any other
mystic terms. Alaya is literally the "Soul of the World" or Anima
Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, and according to esoteric teaching
it changes periodically its nature. Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its
inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods
(Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the active life-period with respect to the
lower planes, ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are
one with Alaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic
meditation) "is able to merge his soul with it" (Aryasanga, the
Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition next to it. Hence the
disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana school) say that
Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya (Nyingpo and Tsang
in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible thing, and that, though
it is eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object
of the Universe "like the moon in clear tranquil water"; other
schools dispute the statement. The same for Paramartha: the Yogacharyas
interpret the term as that which is also dependent upon other things
(paratantra); and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to
Paranishpanna or absolute perfection; i.e., in the exposition of these
"two truths" (out of four), the former believe and maintain that (on
this plane, at any rate) there exists only Samvritisatya or relative truth; and
the latter teach the existence of Paramarthasatya, the "absolute
truth."* "No Arhat, oh mendicants, can reach absolute knowledge
before he becomes one with Paranirvana. Parikalpita and Paratantra are his two
great enemies" (Aphorisms of the Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan
Kun-ttag) is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and
illusionary nature of all; who believe something to exist which does not --
e.g., the Non-Ego. And
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* "Paramartha" is
self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the "self-analysing
reflection" -- from two words, parama (above everything) and artha
(comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse. In Tibetan
Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality, or
actuality, is Samvritisatya -- the relative truth only -- "Samvriti"
meaning "false conception" and being the origin of illusion, Maya; in
Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating appearance."
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Paratantra is that, whatever it is,
which exists only through a dependent or causal connexion, and which has to
disappear as soon as the cause from which it proceeds is removed -- e.g., the
light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears.
Esoteric philosophy teaches that
everything lives and is conscious, but not that all life and consciousness are
similar to those of human or even animal beings. Life we look upon as "the
one form of existence," manifesting in what is called matter; or, as in
man, what, incorrectly separating them, we name Spirit, Soul and Matter. Matter
is the vehicle for the manifestation of soul on this plane of existence, and
soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of spirit, and
these three are a trinity synthesized by Life, which pervades them all. The
idea of universal life is one of those ancient conceptions which are returning
to the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation from
anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with tracing or
postulating the signs of universal life, and has not yet been bold enough even
to whisper "Anima Mundi!" The idea of "crystalline life,"
now familiar to science, would have been scouted half a century ago. Botanists
are now searching for the nerves of plants; not that they suppose that plants
can feel or think as animals do, but because they believe that some structure,
bearing the same relation functionally to plant life that nerves bear to animal
life, is necessary to explain vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems
possible that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of
terms such as "force" and "energy," the fact that things
that have life are living things, whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the belief of the inner
esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What are the doctrines taught on this
subject by the Esoteric "Buddhists"? With them "Alaya" has
a double and even a triple meaning. In the Yogacharya system of the contemplative
Mahayana school, Alaya is both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of
a progressed adept. "He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will
his Alaya by means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." The
"Alaya has an absolute eternal existence," says Aryasanga -- the
rival of Nagarjuna.* In one sense it is Pradhana; which
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept
and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though Csoma di Koros places him,
for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century [[Footnote continued on
next page]]
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is explained in Vishnu Purana as:
"that which is the unevolved cause, is emphatically called by the most
eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., that
which is eternal, and which at once is (or comprehends) what is and what is
not, or is mere process." "Prakriti," however, is an incorrect
word, and Alaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the
"uncognizable Brahma."* It is a mistake of those who know nothing of
the Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human
races, and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a
"primordial revelation," to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life
or "Universal Soul," was made known only by Anaxagoras, or during his
age. This philosopher brought the teaching forward simply to oppose the too
materialistic conceptions on Cosmogony of Democritus, based on his exoteric
theory of blindly driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomene was not its inventor
but only its propagator, as also was Plato. That which he called Mundane
Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the principle that according to his views is
absolutely separated and free from matter and acts on design,** was called
Motion, the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only
the Aryan philosophers never endowed the principle, which with them is
infinite, with the finite "attribute" of "thinking."
This leads the reader naturally to
the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and the German Transcendentalists as a
contrast that it may be useful to point out. The schools of Schelling and
Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive archaic conception of an
ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored only an aspect of the basic idea of the
Vedanta. Even the "Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth by von Hartman in
his pessimistic philosophy of the Unconscious, while it is, perhaps, the
closest approximation made by European speculation to the Hindu Adwaitee
Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality.
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] A.D. There was another Aryasanga, who lived during the first centuries
of our era and the Hungarian scholar most probably confuses the two.
* "The indiscreet cause which is
uniform, and both cause and effect, and which those who are acquainted with
first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was
before all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does not put forth evolution
itself or create, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is
Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
** Finite Self-consciousness, I mean.
For how can the absolute attain it otherwise than as simply an aspect, the
highest of which known to us is human consciousness?
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According to Hegel, the
"Unconscious" would never have undertaken the vast and laborious task
of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of attaining clear
Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in mind that in
designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as equivalent to
Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that expression of
"Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to symbolise a
profound mystery -- the connotation it usually bears.
The "Absolute
Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena, which is only
termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, transcends
human conception. Man, unable to form one concept except in terms of empirical
phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution of his being to raise the
veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is
able to faintly realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither
it must eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan Chohan, however, can but
bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in
that culmination of conscious existence -- "the merging of the individual
in the universal consciousness" -- to use a phrase of Fichte's -- the
Finite cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of
mental experiences, how can it be said that the "Unconscious" and the
Absolute can have even an instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the
Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the
Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal world as the first aspect
of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter,
or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless,"
we are taught.
The matter-moving Nous, the animating
Soul, immanent in every atom, manifested in man, latent in the stone, has
different degrees of power; and this pantheistic idea of a general Spirit-Soul
pervading all Nature is the oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was
the Archaeus a discovery of Paracelsus nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is
again the same Archaeus or "Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See Schwegler's "Handbook of
the History of Philosophy" in Sterling's translation, p. 28.
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and source of the innumerable
phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series of the numberless speculations
of this kind are but variations on this theme, the key-note of which was struck
in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
(b) The term Anupadaka,
"parentless," or without progenitors, is a mystical designation
having several meanings in the philosophy. By this name celestial beings, the
Dhyan-Chohans or Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these correspond mystically
to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the "Manushi (or human)
Buddhas," the latter are also designated "Anupadaka," once that
their whole personality is merged in their compound sixth and seventh
principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have become the
"diamond-souled" (Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The
"Concealed Lord" (Sangbai Dag-po), "the one merged with the
absolute," can have no parents since he is Self-existent, and one with the
Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),** the Svabhavat in the highest aspect. The
mystery in the hierarchy of the Anupadaka is great, its apex being the
universal Spirit-Soul, and the lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every
Soul-endowed man is an Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was
fashioned by the "Builders" -- the expression, "the Universe was
Anupadaka." (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Vajra -- diamond-holder. In Tibetan
Dorjesempa; sempa meaning the soul, its adamantine quality referring to its
indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation with regard to the
"Anupadaka" given in the Kala Chakra, the first in the Gyu(t) division
of the Kanjur, is half esoteric. It has misled the Orientalists into erroneous
speculations with respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and their earthly
correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at in a
subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), and will be more
fully explained in its proper place.
** To quote Hegel again, who with
Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic conception of periodical Avatars
(special incarnations of the World-Spirit in Man, as seen in the case of all
the great religious reformers) . . . . "the essence of man is spirit . . .
. only by stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering himself to pure
self-consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ-man, as man in whom the
Unity of God-man (identity of the individual with the Universal consciousness
as taught by the Vedantins and some Adwaitees) appeared, has, in his death and
history generally, himself presented the eternal history of Spirit -- a history
which every man has to accomplish in himself, in order to exist as
Spirit." -- Philosophy of History. Sibree's English translation, p. 340.
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STANZA II.
COMMENTARY.
1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS,
THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? . . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN
THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic) PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM
(rupa) FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE DEVAMATRI* AND
SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b).
(a) The "Builders," the
"Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the real creators of the Universe;
and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary System, they, as the
architects of the latter, are also called the "Watchers" of the Seven
Spheres, which exoterically are the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven
earths or spheres (planets) of our chain also. The opening sentence of Stanza
I., when mentioning "Seven Eternities," is made to apply both to the
Maha-Kalpa or "the (great) Age of Brahma," as well as to the Solar
pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane.
There are many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be
shown elsewhere.
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the
summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvana. Besides being the
final state it is that condition of subjectivity which has no relation to
anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya) on its plane. It is that
state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being,
which, as explained, is absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now seemingly
exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But
there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious
"being." The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the
Self-analys-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
"Mother of the Gods,"
Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is called Sephira the Mother of the
Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, in abscondito.
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ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is
no bliss, but simply extinction (for Seven Eternities). Thus, an iron ball
placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will
not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will. It is only "with a
mind clear and undarkened by personality, and an assimilation of the merit of
manifold existences devoted to being in its collectivity (the whole living and
sentient Universe)," that one gets rid of personal existence, merging
into, becoming one with, the Absolute,* and continuing in full possession of
Paramartha.
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STANZA II. -- Continued.
2. . . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE
WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE, NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT
SAVE CEASELESS, ETERNAL BREATH (Motion) WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT (b).
(a) The idea that things can cease to
exist and still BE, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this
apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to realise which
in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A
familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The
question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form
water, is still a moot one, some arguing that since they are found again when
the water is decomposed they must be there all the while; others contending
that as they actually turn into something totally different they must cease to
exist as themselves for the time being; but neither side is able to form the
faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become
something else and yet has not ceased to be itself. Existence as water may be
said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is "more
real being" than their existence as gases; and it may faintly symbolise
the
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence Non-being is "ABSOLUTE
Being," in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Adi-Budha
(first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an illusion,
Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die at the end of the
"Age of Brahma"; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone -- whether we
call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer's Unknowable -- being "the One
Absolute" Reality. The One secondless Existence is ADWAITA, "Without
a Second," and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Adwaita philosophy.
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condition of the Universe when it
goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the "Nights of Brahma" -- to
awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to
what we call existence.
(b) The "Breath" of the One
Existence is used in its application only to the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony
by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced by its equivalent in the
material plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or element-containing
Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent with which are --
endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible) matter, and motion --
absolute "perpetual motion" which is the "breath" of the
"One" Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease, not even during
the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," in Part II.)
But the "Breath of the One
Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the One Causeless Cause or the
"All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to All-Being, which is Brahma, or
the Universe). Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced god who, after lifting the Earth
out of the waters, "accomplished the Creation," is held to be only
the instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the ideal Cause. No Orientalist,
so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the verses in
the Purana, that treat of "creation."
Therein Brahma is the cause of the
potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the work of
"creation." When a translator says, "And from him proceed the
potencies to be created, after they had become the real cause": "and
from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become the real
cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more correct? Save that
one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can be
referred. "Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency -- i.e., through the
potency of that cause -- every created thing comes by its inherent or proper
nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as
contrasted with upadana, the material cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhana
implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles
all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as
expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be speculated
upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as the
ideal in contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can find
no room in published speculations, since
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that ideal even is a misnomer, when
applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself,
necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited faculties in relation
to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized. Hence the "Eternal
Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness. The
Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned. In the
occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing,
is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and
Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who describe this
indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness. Concrete
consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more than the
quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own attribute and
the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness implies limitations
and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious
of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and
the cognition, all three in itself and all three one. No man is conscious of
more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to
his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we
have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from
knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with not
to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms to
describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or
differences. It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things
according to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute
consciousness "unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must
necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because
to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully
that our perception of such things does not do them justice. We involuntarily
distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious absolute
consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some
indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can
reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any
kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us
as unconsciousness.
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STANZA II. -- Continued.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE
RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a); THE MATRI-PADMA (mother lotus) HAD
NOT YET SWOLLEN (b).*
(a) The ray of the "Ever
Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent light or life, and
flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the Mundane Egg, represented
by matter in its abstract sense. But the term "Point" must not be
understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in
the centre of every atom, and these collectively form "the Germ;" or
rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of
these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite)
forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.
(b) One of the symbolical figures for
the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is
Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and
water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious
system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,** the active, male,
generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the light of the fire,
for the passive female principle from which everything in this Universe
emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and Fire is the Father. Sir W.
Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that the seeds of the Lotus
contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the miniature
shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving
us a specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seed of all
phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready
formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus Flower as an Universal Symbol.")
This explains the sentence "The Mother had not yet swollen" -- the
form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a
very ancient and favourite
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* An unpoetical term, yet still very
graphic. (See foot-note to Stanza III.)
** Even in Christianity. (See Part
II., "Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.")
*** Gross, "The Heathen
Religion," p. 195.
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simile for the Kosmos itself, and
also for man. The popular reasons given are, firstly, the fact just mentioned,
that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect miniature of the future
plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things
exist in the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.
Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant grows up through the water, having its
root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus
typifies the life of man and also that of the Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine
teaches that the elements of both are the same, and that both are developing in
the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud represents material
life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies existence in the astral
world, and the flower floating on the water and opening to the sky is
emblematical of spiritual being.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR
THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA (a).
(a) The Primordial Substance had not
yet passed out of its precosmic latency into differentiated objectivity, or
even become the (to man, so far,) invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the
hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine
Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart
opens. It differentiates, and the THREE (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed
into four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the
immaculate Conception. The first and Fundamental dogma of Occultism is
Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects. This led to a possible
conception of Deity, which as an absolute unity must remain forever
incomprehensible to finite intellects. "If thou wouldest believe in the
Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root concealed
under the soil, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk and of its leaves and
flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these objects. Life
can be known only by the Tree of Life. . . ." (Precepts for Yoga). The
idea of Absolute Unity
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would be broken entirely in our
conception, had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that
Unity. And the deity being absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not an atom but
contains IT within itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three
distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is
one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because it is ever manifesting."
This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it requires, as Aristotle has
it, three principles for every natural body to become objective: privation,
form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of the great philosopher that
which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light -- the
lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles
depends upon a fourth -- the LIFE which radiates from the summits of the
Unreachable, to become an universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes
of Existence. And this QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son, as a UNITY, and a
quaternary, as a living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the
very archaic Idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a
dogma of the Christian Church, which carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond
any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabala and study its numerical
methods of interpretation to find the origin of that dogma. It is purely
astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical: the Male element in
Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj, or Brahma; Horus,
or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source,
personified by the "Mother"; because that Male having a Mother cannot
have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity being sexless, and not even a
Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this in the mathematical
language of the author of "The Source of Measures." Speaking of the
"Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes
that in Genesis, ch. iv., v. 1, "It is called the 'Man even Jehovah'
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* A Vedantin of the Visishtadwaita
philosophy would say that, though the only independent Reality, Parabrahmam is
inseparable from his trinity. That He is three, "Parabrahmam, Chit, and
Achit," the last two being dependent realities unable to exist separately;
or, to make it clearer, Parabrahmam is the SUBSTANCE -- changeless, eternal,
and incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and Achit (Anatma) are its qualities, as
form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the garment, or
body, or rather attribute (Sarira) of Parabrahmam. But an Occultist would find
much to say against this claim, and so would the Adwaitee Vedantin.
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Measure, and this is obtained in this
way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be placed under the form of
expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man-number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x
10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, He,
Vau, He, or Jehovah. . . . The expansion of 565 into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to
show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to
speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate source, in other words,
an immaculate conception."
Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery
enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The "Son" of
the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the undifferentiated cosmic protyle, Matter
in its infinitude) is born again on Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve --
our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total -- past, present, and future
-- for Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he is androgyne, or both male and female. Above,
the Son is the whole KOSMOS; below, he is MANKIND. The triad or triangle
becomes Tetraktis, the Sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a
6-faced cube on Earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus
(the lesser face); or, as the Kabalists have it, the "Ancient of
Days," descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest through,
gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the "Lap of Maya,"
the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light,
the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless Knowledge through
Paramarthasatya comes to the rescue.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
5. THE SEVEN (Sons) WERE NOT YET BORN
FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT, AND
SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS (a).
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the
Stanzas given here, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely, with our Solar
System, and especially with our planetary chain. The "Seven Sons,"
therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be explained more
fully hereafter. (See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.")
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Svabhavat, the "Plastic
Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is,
so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu
philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would
be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese
mystics have made of it the synonym of "being." In the
Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese the
Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is
"Being" or "Subhava," "the Substance giving substance to
itself," also explained by him as meaning " without action and with
action," "the nature which has no nature of its own." Subhava,
from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su "fair,"
"handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava,
"being" or "states of being."
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE
GERM IS -- ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE
DIVINE BOSOM.
The "Divine Thought" does
not imply the idea of a Divine thinker. The Universe, not only past, present,
and future -- which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite thought --
but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the absolute being,
with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought
itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma (neuter) as the
Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to the human mind.
Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic reflection, is
conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human
intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II., "Primordial
Substance and Divine Thought.")
Hence the statement that during the
prologue, so to say, of the drama of Creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution,
the Universe or the "Son" lies still concealed "in the Divine
Thought," which had not yet penetrated "into the Divine Bosom."
This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms the origin of all the
allegories about the "Sons of God" born of immaculate virgins.
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STANZA III.
COMMENTARY.
1. THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH
ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE (a). THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM
WITHIN WITHOUT LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS (b).
(a) The seemingly paradoxical use of
the sentence "Seventh Eternity," thus dividing the indivisible, is
sanctified in esoteric philosophy. The latter divides boundless duration into
unconditionally eternal and universal Time and a conditioned one (Khandakala).
One is the abstraction or noumenon of infinite time (Kala); the other its
phenomenon appearing periodically, as the effect of Mahat (the Universal
Intelligence limited by Manvantaric duration). With some schools, Mahat is
"the first-born" of Pradhana (undifferentiated substance, or the
periodical aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root of Nature), which (Pradhana) is
called Maya, the Illusion. In this respect, I believe, esoteric teaching
differs from the Vedantin doctrines of both the Adwaita and the Visishtadwaita
schools. For it says that, while Mulaprakriti, the noumenon, is self-existing
and without any origin -- is, in short, parentless, Anupadaka (as one with
Brahmam) -- Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a
phantasm of the former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born of Gnana
(or gnosis) knowledge, wisdom or the Logos -- is a phantasm reflected from the
Absolute NIRGUNA (Parabrahm, the one reality, "devoid of attributes and
qualities"; see Upanishads); while with some Vedantins Mahat is a
manifestation of Prakriti, or Matter.
(b) Therefore, the "last
vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was "fore-ordained" -- by no
God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal and changeless LAW
which causes the great periods of Activity and Rest, called so graphically, and
at the same time so poetically, the "Days and Nights of Brahma." The
expansion "from within without" of the Mother, called elsewhere the
"Waters of Space," "Universal Matrix," etc., does not
allude to an expansion from a small centre or focus, but, without reference to
size or limitation or area, means the development of limitless subjectivity
into as limitless objectivity. "The ever (to us) invisible and immaterial
Substance present in eternity, threw its periodical shadow from its own plane
into the lap
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of Maya." It implies that this
expansion, not being an increase in size -- for infinite extension admits of no
enlargement -- was a change of condition. It "expanded like the bud of the
Lotus"; for the Lotus plant exists not only as a miniature embryo in its
seed (a physical characteristic), but its prototype is present in an ideal form
in the Astral Light from "Dawn" to "Night" during the
Manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter of fact, in this
objective Universe; from man down to mite, from giant trees down to the tiniest
blades of grass.
All this, teaches the hidden Science,
is but the temporary reflection, the shadow of the eternal ideal prototype in
Divine Thought -- the word "Eternal," note well again, standing here
only in the sense of "AEon," as lasting throughout the seemingly
interminable, but still limited cycle of activity, called by us Manvantara. For
what is the real esoteric meaning of Manvantara, or rather a Manu-Antara? It
means, esoterically, "between two Manus," of whom there are fourteen
in every "Day of Brahma," such a "Day" consisting of 1,000
aggregates of four ages, or 1,000 "Great Ages," Mahayugas. Let us now
analyse the word or name Manu. Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that
the term "Manu" is from the root Man, "to think"; hence
"the thinking man." But, esoterically, every Manu, as an
anthropomorphized patron of his special cycle (or Round), is but the
personified idea of the "Thought Divine" (as the Hermetic
"Pymander"); each of the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the
creator and fashioner of all that appears during his own respective cycle of
being or Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus' (or Dhyan-Chohans') errands, and
causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within without -- viz., to cross
gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the
lowest phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity -- the
acme of illusion, or the grossest matter.
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STANZA III. -- continued.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG,
TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING (simultaneously) THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, AND THE GERM
THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: THE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES (moves) OVER THE
SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE (a).
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(a) The Pythagorean Monad is also
said to dwell in solitude and darkness like the "germ." The idea of
the "breath" of Darkness moving over "the slumbering Waters of
life," which is primordial matter with the latent Spirit in it, recalls
the first chapter of Genesis. Its original is the Brahminical Narayana (the
mover on the Waters), who is the personification of the eternal Breath of the
unconscious All (or Parabrahm) of the Eastern Occultists. The Waters of Life,
or Chaos -- the female principle in symbolism -- are the vacuum (to our mental
sight) in which lie the latent Spirit and Matter. This it was that made
Democritus assert, after his instructor Leucippus, that the primordial
principles of all were atoms and a vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of
empty space, as "Nature abhors a vacuum" according to the
Peripatetics, and every ancient philosopher.
In all Cosmogonies "Water"
plays the same important part. It is the base and source of material existence.
Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing, understood by water the definite
chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen, thus giving a specific meaning to
a term used by Occultists in a generic sense, and which is used in Cosmogony
with a metaphysical and mystical meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam,
although all three have precisely the same chemical composition.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
2. [[3.]] "DARKNESS"
RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE WATERS, INTO THE
MOTHER DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN-EGG; THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL
EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL (periodical) GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO
THE WORLD EGG (a).
(a) The solitary ray dropping into
the mother deep may be taken as meaning Divine Thought or Intelligence,
impregnating chaos. This, however, occurs on the plane of metaphysical
abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that which we call a metaphysical
abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg being in one sense abstract Egg-ness,
or the power of becoming developed through fecundation, is eternal and for ever
the same. And just as the fecundation of an egg takes place before it is
dropped; so the non-eternal periodical germ which becomes later in
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symbolism the mundane egg, contains
in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol, "the promise and
potency" of all the Universe. Though the idea per se is, of course, an
abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a symbol truly, as it
suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings before the mind's
eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in boundless space, a Universe as
shoreless in magnitude if not as endless in its objective manifestation. The
simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught in Occultism that the
primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from man to
angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of
eternity and infinity -- a serpent swallowing its tail. To realize the meaning,
however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre. The field of
vision or of thought is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one's self in
every direction, and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all
around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists, "whose
centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere," a conception which enters
into the compound idea of this emblem.
The "Mundane Egg" is, perhaps,
one of the most universally adopted symbols, highly suggestive as it is,
equally in the spiritual, physiological, and cosmological sense. Therefore, it
is found in every world-theogony, where it is largely associated with the
serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere, in philosophy as in religious
symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation,
as well as of wisdom. (See Part II. "Tree and Serpent and Crocodile
Worship.") The mystery of apparent self-generation and evolution through
its own creative power repeating in miniature the process of Cosmic evolution
in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the efflux of the unseen
creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this graphic symbol. The
"Virgin Egg" is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic prototype
-- the "Virgin Mother" -- Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male
Creator (under whatever name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the
immaculate root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and natural
sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive Nature is an
Egg fructified -- yet left immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could
have no other representation than a spheroid. The Golden Egg was surrounded by
seven natural elements (ether, fire, air, water), "four ready, three
secret." It may be found
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stated in Vishnu Purana, where
elements are translated "Envelopes" and a secret one is added:
"Aham-kara" (see Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Book I., p. 40). The
original text has no "Aham-kara;" it mentions seven Elements without
specifying the last three (see Part II. on "The Mundane Egg").
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STANZA III. -- Continued.
4. (Then) THE THREE (triangle) FALL
INTO THE FOUR (quaternary). THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN
OUTSIDE (a). THE LUMINOUS EGG (Hiranyagarbha), WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE (the
triple hypostases of Brahma, or Vishnu, the three "Avasthas"),
CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE
ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE (b).
The use of geometrical figures and
the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient scriptures (see Puranas,
Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and even the Bible) must be
explained. In the "Book of Dzyan," as in the Kabala, there are two
kinds of numerals to be studied -- the figures, often simple blinds, and the
Sacred Numbers, the values of which are all known to the Occultists through
Initiation. The former is but a conventional glyph, the latter is the basic
symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely physical, the other purely
metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as matter stands to
spirit -- the extreme poles of the ONE Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist
of French literature, says somewhere, the Number is to Mind the same as it is
to matter: "an incomprehensible agent;" (perhaps so to the profane,
never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the great writer thought, an
Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from what he called God and
what we call the ALL; the breath which alone could organize the physical
Kosmos, "where naught obtains its form but through the Deity, which is an
effect of Number." It is instructive to quote Balzac's words upon this
subject:--
"The smallest as the most
immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from each other by their
quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all
begotten by the NUMBER? The infinitude of the Numbers is a fact proven to our
mind, but of which no proof can be physically
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given. The mathematician will tell us
that the infinitude of the numbers exists but is not to be demonstrated. God is
a Number endowed with motion, which is felt but not demonstrated. As Unity, it
begins the Numbers, with which it has nothing in common. . . . . The existence
of the Number depends on Unity, which, without a single Number, begets them
all. . . . . What! unable either to measure the first abstraction yielded to
you by the Deity, or to get hold of it, you still hope to subject to your
measurements the mystery of the Secret Sciences which emanate from that Deity?
. . . . And what would you feel, were I to plunge you into the abysses of
MOTION, the Force which organizes the Number? What would you think, were I to
add that Motion and Number* are begotten by the WORD, the Supreme Reason of the
Seers and Prophets, who, in days of old, sensed the mighty Breath of God, a
witness to which is the Apocalypse?"
(b) "The radiant essence curdled
and spread throughout the depths" of Space. From an astronomical point of
view this is easy of explanation: it is the "milky way," the
world-stuff, or primordial matter in its first form. It is more difficult,
however, to explain it in a few words or even lines, from the standpoint of
Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the most complicated of glyphs. Herein
are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To begin with, the whole pantheon of
mysterious objects,** every one of them having some definite Occult meaning,
extracted from the allegorical "churning of the ocean" by the Hindu
gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, "Surabhi" the
"cow of plenty," called "the fountain of milk and curds,"
was extracted from this "Sea of Milk." Hence the universal adoration
of the cow and bull, one the productive, the other the generative power in
Nature: symbols connected with both the Solar and the Cosmic deities. The
specific properties, for occult purposes, of the "fourteen precious
things," being explained only at the fourth Initiation, cannot be given
here; but the following may be remarked. In the "Satapatha Brahmana"
it is stated that the churning of the "Ocean of Milk" took place in
the Satya Yug, the first age which immediately followed the "Deluge."
As, however, neither the Rig-Veda nor
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Number, truly; but never MOTION. It
is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in occultism.
** The "Fourteen precious
things." The narrative or allegory is found in the Satapatha Brahmana and
others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist Mystics, the Yamabooshi,
has "seven precious things." We will speak of them, hereafter.
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Manu -- both preceding Vaivasvata's
"deluge," that of the bulk of the Fourth Race -- mention this deluge,
it is evident that it is not the "great" deluge, nor that which
carried away Atlantis, nor even the deluge of Noah, which is meant here. This
"churning" relates to a period before the earth's formation, and is
in direct connection with that other universal legend, the various and
contradictory versions of which culminated in the Christian dogma of the
"War in Heaven," and the fall of the Angels (see Book II., also
Revelations chap. xii.). The Brahmanas, reproached by the Orientalists with
their versions on the same subjects, often clashing with each other, are
pre-eminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed
to survive for public use and property only because they were and are
absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared
from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar.
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT
REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO (a) IS ONE (b).
(a) OEAOHOO is rendered
"Father-Mother of the Gods" in the Commentaries, or the SIX IN ONE,
or the septenary root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the accent
given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or even seven
syllables by adding an e after the letter "o." This mystic name is
given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it
remains for ever ineffectual.
(b) This refers to the
Non-Separateness of all that lives and has its being, whether in active or
passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the "Rootless Root of All";
hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the manifested
ONE LIFE, the Eternal living Unity. The "Root" means, as already explained,
pure knowledge (Sattva),*
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The original for Understanding is
Sattva, which Sankara (acharya) renders antahkarana. "Refined," he
says, "by sacrifices and other sanctifying operations." In the Katha,
at p. 148, Sattva is said by Sankara to mean buddhi -- a common use of the
word. ("The BHAGAVATGITA with The Sanatsugatiya and The Anugita,"
trans- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
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eternal (Nitya) unconditioned reality
or SAT (Satya), whether we call it Parabrahmam or Mulaprakriti, for these are
the two aspects of the ONE. The "Light" is the same Omnipresent
Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls
cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations. The curds are the
first differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic matter which is
supposed to be the origin of the "Milky Way" -- the matter we know.
This "matter," which, according to the revelation received from the
primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of the Universe, of
the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisatva -- this
matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion,
scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and
lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the
"Star-stuff."
-------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP
OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY (Amrita)* AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH
WAS FIRE AND HEAT AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE.** IT
DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OF FATHER AND
MOTHER (a).
(a) The essence of darkness being
absolute light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate allegorical representation
of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or the term of absolute rest,
or non-being, as it appears to our finite minds. The "fire,"
"heat," and "motion" here spoken of, are, of course, not the
fire, heat, and motion of physical science, but the underlying abstractions,
the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material manifestations --
the "things in themselves," which, as modern science confesses,
entirely elude the instru-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous
page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.; edited by Max Muller.) Whatever
meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is the name given among
Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the dual Monad or Atma-buddhi, and
Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti on the
higher plane.
* Amrita is "immortality."
** See Commentary No. 1 to this
Stanza.
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ments of the laboratory, and which
even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally little avoid the conclusion
that these underlying essences of things must exist. Fire and Water, or Father*
and Mother, may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and Chaos. "Chaos,
from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was
produced the Protogonos (the first-born light)," says a fragment of
Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis in "Theogony" -- "The disposer of
all things." (See Cory's "Ancient Fragments," p. 314.)
According to the Rosicrucian tenets,
as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly, if only partially,
so "Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible
in the human mind"; and according to Robert Fludd, "Darkness adopted
illumination in order to make itself visible" (On Rosenkranz). According
to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the
basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest
itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in
its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the
latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as
it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.
Even in the mind-baffling and
science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of darkness "and darkness
was upon the face of the deep" (ch. i. v. 2.) -- and not vice versa.
"In him (in darkness) was life; and the life was the light of men"
(John i. 4). A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they
may comprehend better than they do now, that verse in the Gospel of John that
says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it
not." They will see then that the word "darkness" does not apply
to man's spiritual eyesight, but indeed to "Darkness," the absolute,
that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient light, however transcendent
to human eyes. Demon est Deus inversus. The devil is now called Darkness by the
Church, whereas, in the Bible he is called the "Son of God" (see
Job), the bright star of the early morning, Lucifer (see Isaiah). There is a
whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the reason why the first Archangel, who
sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called Lux (Lucifer), the "Luminous
Son of the Morning," or man-
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* See "Kwan-Shai-Yin." The
real name from the text cannot be given.
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vantaric Dawn. He was transformed by
the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is higher and older than Jehovah,
and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma. (See Book II.)
---------
STANZA III. -- Continued.
7. BEHOLD, OH LANOO!** THE RADIANT
CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY, BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK
SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO, THE
YOUNGER, THE * * * (whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin. -- Comment) (a). HE
SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN. HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM. THE EKA IS
CHATUR (four), AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE
SAPTA (seven) IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASA*** (the thrice
ten) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES (b). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL, AND
UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO
BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES (stars)
AND TURNS THE UPPER (space) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE, AND THE ONE
MANIFESTED (element) INTO THE GREAT WATERS (c).
"Bright Space, son of dark
Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the new
"Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges
differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the "new LIFE"), to become,
to the end of the life-cycle, the germ of all things. He is "the
Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea," -- the generator
of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judaeus. He is called the
"Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,"
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
** Lanoo is a student, a chela who
studies practical Esotericism.
*** "Tri-dasa," or three
times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round numbers, or more
accurately 33 -- a sacred number. They are the 12 Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11
Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky. This is the
root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or over three
hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
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because, firstly, he is that which
the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine; and
secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this first manifestation, being the
synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, "the Son of the
Son," contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (The Sephiroth), and is
thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. "He who bathes in the light of
Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the veil of Maya."
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and
an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokiteshwara, and as such he is an androgynous
deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi* of antiquity. It is only by
some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and represented with female
attributes,** when, under his female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the goddess
of mercy, called the "Divine Voice."*** The latter is the patron
deity of Thibet and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a
number of monasteries.**** (See Part II. Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-yin.)
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Hence all the higher gods of
antiquity are all "Sons of the Mother" before they become those of
the "Father." The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of Kronos-Saturn,
"Infinite Time" (or Kala), in their origin were represented as
male-female. Zeus is said to be the "beautiful Virgin," and Venus is
made bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is Brahma-Vach in Manu and the
Puranas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both sexes.
Finally St. John's vision in Revelation, that of the Logos, who is now
connected with Jesus -- is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female
breasts. So is the Tetragrammaton = Jehovah. But there are two Avalokiteshwaras
in Esotericism; the first and the second Logos.
** No religious symbol can escape
profanation and even derision in our days of politics and Science. In Southern
India the writer has seen a converted native making pujah with offerings before
a statue of Jesus clad in woman's clothes and with a ring in his nose. When
asking the meaning of the masquerade we were answered that it was Jesu-Maria
blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the Padri, as the
zealous convert had no money to purchase two statues or "idols" as
they, very properly, were called by a witness -- another but a non-converted
Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the
Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted
Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but in
exoteric theology he is male and female.
*** The Gnostic Sophia,
"Wisdom" who is "the Mother" of the Ogdoad (Aditi, in a
certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all,
as in the ancient systems. The "father" is a far later invention. The
earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere -- the mother of the seven
planetary powers.
**** See "Chinese
Buddhism," by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives correct facts,
although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.
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(b) "The "Dragon of
Wisdom" is the One, the "Eka" (Sanskrit) or Saka. It is curious
that Jehovah's name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod. "His name is
Echod": say the Rabbins. The philologists ought to decide which of the two
is derived from the other -- linguistically and symbolically: surely, not the
Sanskrit? The "One" and the Dragon are expressions used by the
ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah -- esoterically (as
Elohim) -- is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve, and the
"Dragon" is an old glyph for "Astral Light" (Primordial
Principle), "which is the Wisdom of Chaos." Archaic philosophy,
recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or independent power, but
starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection eternally), traced both
through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into
form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant
Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of
this emblem (the Dragon) into the absurd superstition called the "Devil."
They took it from the later Zoroastrians, who saw devils or the Evil in the
Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus became by a double transmutation D'Evil in
every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always
shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of
the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always stood for
psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence -- Hermes, calling the serpent
the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of Hermes,
following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic's Serpent with the seven vowels over its
head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary
Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, "the Infinite,"
a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this
serpent.* Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent
(the Astral Light of
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* Like the logoi and the Hierarchies
of Powers, however, the "Serpents" have to be distinguished one from
the other. Sesha or Ananta, "the couch of Vishnu," is an allegorical
abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the germ and
throws off periodically the efflorescence of this germ, the manifested
Universe; whereas, the gnostic Ophis contained the same triple symbolism in its
seven vowels as the One, Three and Seven-syllabled Oeaohoo of the Archaic
doctrine; i.e., the One Unmanifested Logos, the Second manifested, the triangle
concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the rays of the latter on
the material plane.
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the Kabalists) -- between the former,
the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter,
Evil, on the plane of matter.* Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom,
and this formed part of his teaching: "Be ye wise as serpents," he
says. "In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery
Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone" (Book of Sarparajni.) The Aitareya
Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni, "the Serpent Queen," and
"the Mother of all that moves." Before our globe became egg-shaped
(and the Universe also) "a long trail of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) moved
and writhed like a serpent in Space." The "Spirit of God moving on
Chaos" was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent
breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated
cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail
in its mouth -- which symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the
globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery
mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically,
serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The
serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the
caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of
Psyche, the human soul. The "Dragon" was also the symbol of the Logos
with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In the "Book of Hermes,"
Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western
Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of "Light,
Fire, and Flame." Pymander, the "Thought Divine" personified,
says: The Light is me, I am the Nous (the mind or Manu), I am thy God, and I am
far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow
("Darkness," or the concealed Deity). I am the germ of thought, the
resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees and hears in thee is the
Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father.**
[[Footnote(s)]]
-------------------------------------------------
* The Astral Light, or the AEther, of
the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is quite modern) is
Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as
it descends until it becomes the Maya or the tempting and deceitful serpent on
our plane.
** By "God, the Father,"
the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here unmistakeably meant, this
principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature from the seventh Cosmic
principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks and the Avalokiteswara of
the esoteric Buddhists.
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The celestial Ocean, the 'Ether . . .
. is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving principle, the Mother, the Holy
Spirit, . . . . for these are not separated, and their union is LIFE."
Here we find the unmistakeable echo
of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. Only the latter does not
place at the head and Evolution of Life "the Father," who comes third
and is the "Son of the Mother," but the "Eternal and Ceaseless
Breath of the ALL." The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought,
etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahma or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says
Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has.
Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense,
Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, "That Mahat which was first
produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as "I," that
is said to be the second Creation" (Anugita, ch. xxvi.). And the
translator (an able and learned Brahmin, not a European Orientalist) explains
in a foot-note (6), "i.e., when Mahat develops into the feeling of
Self-Consciousness -- I -- then it assumes the name of Egoism," which,
translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when Mahat is transformed into
the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and becomes Aham-ship. Why
it is called the Mahat of the Second creation (or the ninth, that of the Kumara
in Vishnu Purana) will be explained in Book II. The "Sea of Fire" is
then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the first radiation from the
Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which becomes
Astral Matter. It is also called the "Fiery Serpent," as above
described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal
Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest -- as in
the world of phenomena -- are but so many various differentiated aspects and
transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from Cosmical
down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and sub-human
beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence -- then the first and
chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered.* All the
Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a)
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* In the Egyptian as in the Indian
theogony there was a concealed deity, the ONE, and the creative, androgynous
god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and Osiris is, in his original primary
form, the "god whose name is unknown." (See Mariette's Abydos II., p.
63, and Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.)
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the identity of
"Father-Mother" with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and
(b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the "Son," cosmically
Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. "Fohat hardens and scatters the seven
brothers" (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric
Entity -- for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity --
electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into
atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. "There exists
an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,** Ob,
and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is
the first light in Creation" (Eliphas Levi's Kabala):--- the first Light
of the primordial Elohim -- the Adam, "male and female" -- or
(scientifically) ELECTRICITY AND LIFE.
(c) The ancients represented it by a
serpent, for "Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither" (in
zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth [[hebrew]], whose
symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the Mysteries. Its
universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the alphabet and the
ninth door of the fifty portals or gateways that lead to the concealed
mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and designates in
Hermetic philosophy "Life infused into primordial matter," the
essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form.
But there are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other
material-correlative, and for ever united. "Thou shalt separate the earth
from the fire, the subtile from the solid . . . that which ascends from earth
to heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It (the subtile light), is
the strong force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and
penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed" (Hermes).
It was not Zeno alone, the founder of
the Stoics, who taught that the
[[Footnote(s)]]
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* See next note.
** Od is the pure life-giving Light,
or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of death used by the sorcerers, the
nefarious evil fluid; Aour is the synthesis of the two, Astral Light proper.
Can the Philologists tell why Od -- a term used by Reichenbach to denominate
the vital fluid -- is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness, radiancy?
It equally means "Sky" in an occult sense. Whence the root of the
word? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as will be shown.
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Universe evolves, when its primary
substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into
water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that
underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the
Universe is fire, and fires is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same
of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine
reconciles all those philosophers by showing that though each was right the
system of none was complete.
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STANZA III. -- Continued.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS
NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, OH
LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT; THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK
HIDDEN FATHER (a).
(a) The answer to the first question,
suggested by the second, which is the reply of the teacher to the pupil,
contains in a single phrase one of the most essential truths of occult
philosophy. It indicates the existence of things imperceptible to our physical
senses which are of far greater importance, more real and more permanent, than
those that appeal to these senses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to
understand the transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first
question he must be able to answer the second, while the very answer he gives
to the second will furnish him with the clue to the correct reply to the first.
In the Sanscrit Commentary on this
Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and the unrevealed Principle are many.
In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed, Abstract Deity has
no name. It is called generally "That" (Tad in Sanskrit), and means
all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind.
Among such appellations, given, of
course, only in esoteric philosophy, as the "Unfathomable Darkness,"
the "Whirlwind," etc. -- it is also called the "It of the
Kalahansa, the Kala-ham-sa," and even the "Kali Hamsa," (Black
swan). Here the m and the n are convertible, and
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both sound like the nasal French an
or am, or, again, en or em (Ennui, Embarras, etc.) As in the Hebrew Bible, many
a mysterious sacred name in Sanscrit conveys to the profane ear no more than
some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed anagrammatically
or otherwise. This word of Hansa or esoterically "hamsa" is just such
a case. Hamsa is equal to a-ham-sa, three words meaning "I am he" (in
English), while divided in still another way it will read "So-ham,"
"he (is) I" -- Soham being equal to Sah, "he," and aham,
"I," or "I am he." In this alone is contained the universal
mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man's essence with god-essence, for
him who understands the language of wisdom. Hence the glyph of, and the
allegory about, Kalahansa (or hamsa), and the name given to Brahma neuter
(later on, to the male Brahma) of "Hansa-Vahana," he who uses the
Hansa as his vehicle." The same word may be read "Kalaham-sa" or
"I am I" in the eternity of Time, answering to the Biblical, or
rather Zoroastrian "I am that I am." The same doctrine is found in
the Kabala, as witness the following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S.
Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist: "The three pronouns
[[hebrew]], Hoa, Atah, Ani; He, Thou, I; are used to symbolize the ideas of
Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah. Hoa, "He," is
applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Atah, "Thou," to
Microprosopus; and Ani, "I," to the latter when He is represented as speaking.
(See Lesser Holy Assembly, 204 et seq.) It is to be noted that each of these
names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph [[hebrew]], A, forms
the conclusion of the first word Hoa, and the commencement of Atah and Ani, as
if it were the connecting link between them. But [[hebrew]] is the symbol of
the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating
through all these. But behind the [[hebrew]] in the name Hoa are the letters
[[hebrew]] and [[hebrew]], the symbols of the numbers Six and Five, the Male
and the Female, the Hexagram and the Pentagram. And the numbers of these three
words, Hoa Atah Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key numbers
of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers, which is a form of the
exegetical rule of Temura."
It is useless to attempt to explain
the mystery in full. Materialists and the men of modern Science will never
understand it, since, in order