Theos-Talk Archives (February 1996 Message tl00004)

STANZA II. - The Idea of Differentiation

COMMENTARY.

1.  - WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC
DAWN (a)?  - IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI (_Chohanic,
Dhyani-Buddhic_) PARNISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM (_rupa_)
FROM NO-FORM (_arupa_), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD - THE DEVAMATRI -
{"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_.} - 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-analysing
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 personali- ty, 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, - {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.} - and continuing in full possession of Paramartha.

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 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_,
primordi- al (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 Uni-
verse). 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 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 Con-
sciousness, 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
differenc- es. 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 conscious- ness, 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.

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). - {An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic. (See
[foot]note to Stanza III.)}

(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,
- {Even in Christianity. (See Part II., "Primor- dial Substance
and Divine Thought.")} - 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. - {Gross, "The Heathen Religion," p.
195.} - (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
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 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. -
{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.}

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 crystal-
lized 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. i,

"It is called the `Man even Jehovah' 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 ALONG 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.")

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," "hand-
some," "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 untranslatable 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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