Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00000)

~The Key to Theosophy~

KEY22.TXT

Theosophical Teachings as to Nature and Man

The Unity of All in All

Q. Having told me what God, the Soul and Man are not, in your
views, can you inform me what they are, according to your
teachings?

A. In their origin and in eternity the three, like the universe
and all therein, are one with the absolute Unity, the unknowable
deific essence I spoke about some time back. We believe in no
creation, but in the periodical and consecutive appearances of
the universe from the subjective onto the objective plane of
being, at regular intervals of time, covering periods of immense
duration.

Q. Can you elaborate the subject?

A. Take as a first comparison and a help towards a more correct
conception, the solar year, and as a second, the two halves of
that year, producing each a day and a night of six months'
duration at the North Pole. Now imagine, if you can, instead of
a Solar year of 365 days, ETERNITY. Let the sun represent the
universe, and the polar days and nights of six months each,days
and nights lasting each 182 trillions and quadrillions of years,
instead of 182 days each. As the sun arises every morning on our
objective horizon out of its (to us) subjective and antipodal
space, so does the Universe emerge periodically on the plane of
objectivity, issuing from that of subjectivity,the antipodes of
the former. This is the "Cycle of Life." And as the sun
disappears from our horizon, so does the Universe disappear at
regular periods, when the "Universal night" sets in. The Hindus
call such alternations the "Days and Nights of Brahm@," or the
time of Manvantara and that of Pralaya (dissolution). The
Westerns may call them Universal Days and Nights if they prefer.
During the latter (the nights) All is in All; every atom is
resolved into one Homogeneity.  Evolution and Illusion

Q. But who is it that creates each time the Universe?

A. No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution;
the pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists called it
emanation: we, Occultists and Theosophists, see in it the only
universal and eternal reality casting a periodical reflection of
itself on the infinite Spatial depths. This reflection, which
you regard as the objective material universe, we consider as a
temporary illusion and nothing else. That alone which is eternal
is real.

Q. At that rate, you and I are also illusions.

A. As flitting personalities, today one person, tomorrow
another,we are. Would you call the sudden flashes of the aurora
borealis, the Northern lights, a "reality," though it is as real
as can be while you look at it? Certainly not; it is the cause
that produces it, if permanent and eternal, which is the only
reality, while the other is but a passing illusion.

Q. All this does not explain to me how this illusion called the
universe originates; how the conscious to be, proceeds to
manifest itself from the unconsciousness that is.

A. It is unconsciousness only to our finite consciousness.
Verily may we paraphrase St. John and say: B and (Absolute)
light (which is darkness) shineth in darkness (which is
illusionary material light); and the darkness comprehendeth it
not.  This absolute light is also absolute and immutable law.
Whether by radiation or emanation,we need not quarrel over
terms,the universe passes out of its homogeneous subjectivity
onto the first plane of manifestation, of which planes there are
seven, we are taught. With each plane it becomes more dense and
material until it reaches this, our plane, on which the only
world approximately known and understood in its physical
composition by Science, is the planetary or Solar system,one sui
generis, we are told.

Q. What do you mean by sui generis?

A. I mean that, though the fundamental law and the universal
working of laws of Nature are uniform, still our Solar system
(like every other such system in the millions of others in
Cosmos) and even our Earth, has its own program of
manifestations differing from the respective programs of all
others. We speak of the inhabitants of other planets and imagine
that if they are men, i.e., thinking entities, they must be as
we are. The fancy of poets and painters and sculptors never
fails to represent even the angels as a beautiful copy of
man,plus wings. We say that all this is an error and a delusion;
because, if on this little earth alone one finds such a
diversity in its flora, fauna, and mankind,from the seaweed to
the cedar of Lebanon, from the jellyfish to the elephant, from
the Bushman and negro to the Apollo Belvedere,alter the
conditions cosmic and planetary, and there must be as a result
quite a different flora, fauna, and mankind. The same laws will
fashion quite a different set of things and beings even on this
our plane, including in it all our planets. How much more
different then must be external nature in other Solar systems,
and how foolish is it to judge of other stars and worlds and
human beings by our own, as physical science does!

Q. But what are your data for this assertion?

A. What science in general will never accept as proof,the
cumulative testimony of an endless series of Seers who have
testified to this fact. Their spiritual visions, real
explorations by, and through, physical and spiritual senses
untrammeled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and
compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that
was not corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was
rejected, while that only was recorded as established truth
which, in various ages, under different climes, and throughout
an untold series of incessant observations, was found to agree
and receive constantly further corroboration. The methods used
by our scholars and students of the psycho-spiritual sciences do
not differ from those of students of the natural and physical
sciences, as you may see. Only our fields of research are on two
different planes, and our instruments are made by no human
hands, for which reason perchance they are only the more
reliable. The retorts, accumulators, and microscopes of the
chemist and naturalist may get out of order; the telescope and
the astronomer's horological instruments may get spoiled; our
recording instruments are beyond the influence of weather or the
elements.

Q. And therefore you have implicit faith in them?

A. Faith is a word not to be found in theosophical dictionaries:
we say knowledge based, on observation and experience. There is
this difference, however, that while the observation and
experience of physical science lead the Scientists to about as
many "working" hypotheses as there are minds to evolve them, our
knowledge consents to add to its lore only those facts which
have become undeniable, and which are fully and absolutely
demonstrated. We have no two beliefs or hypotheses on the same
subject.

Q. Is it on such data that you came to accept the strange
theories we find in Esoteric Buddhism?

A. Just so. These theories may be slightly incorrect in their
minor details, and even faulty in their exposition by lay
students; they are facts in nature, nevertheless, and come
nearer the truth than any scientific hypothesis.

[See Great Age, in the Glossary, page 306, for further
information.] John 1:5.

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