God, the One Life & the
Absolute
Spirit & Matter
Parabrahman, Isvara & Atman
Planetary Spirits & Dhyan Chohans
Primordial Cosmic Atom & Monads
compiled from the Mahatma Letters
The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets -- the term "highest" meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evoluting from cosmic matter -- which is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest -- man first evolutes from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial -- not Spiritual Entity, say -- a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and Spiritual World Essence -- the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit -- man is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the speck of the material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion of the increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity.
Now, the congeries of the star-worlds (including our own planet) inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened to an orb or rather an epicycloid formed of rings like a chain -- worlds inter-linked together, the totality representing an imaginary endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the whole -- from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highest point of its circumference -- is what we call the Maha Yug or Great Cycle, the Kuklos, whose head is lost in a crown of absolute Spirit, and its lowest point of circumference in absolute matter -- to viz. the point of cessation of action of the active principle. If using a more familiar term we call the Great Cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the inter-linked star worlds Microkosms, the occultists' meaning in representing each of the latter as perfect copies of the former will become evident. The Great is the Prototype of the smaller cycles: and as such, each star world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution which starts with a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature.
As they descend, each world presents itself naturally more and more shadowy, becoming at the "antipodes" absolute matter. Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the Planetary Spirit has to descend before he can reascend. On his way he has to pass through the whole ladder of Evolution, missing no rung, to halt at every star world as he would at a station; and, besides the unavoidable cycle of that particular and every respective star world to perform in it his own "life-cycle" to, viz.: returning and reincarnating as many times as he fails to complete his round of life in it, as he dies on it before reaching the age of reason as correctly stated in Isis....After circling, so to say, along the arc of the cycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly rotation of the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-man reaches our planet, which is one of the lowest, having lost at every station some of the etherial and acquired an increase of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much equilibrized in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as in the process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle spirit, when arrived to the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to -- what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man -- amidst a nature as primordial -- speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological as well as the spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit is thrown over into the still lower worlds -- into the sixth "GATE" or "way of rebirth" of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground over in the workshop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother Fount; while the Egos purified of their dross are enabled to resume their progress once more onward. It is here, then, that the laggard Egos perish by the millions.
It is the solemn moment of the "survival of the fittest," the annihilation of those unfit. It is but matter (or material man) which is compelled by its own weight to descend to the very bottom of the "circle of necessity" to there assume animal form; as to the winner of that race throughout the worlds -- the Spiritual Ego, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit, then higher still, to finally reach its first starting point, and from thence -- to merge into MYSTERY. No adept has ever penetrated beyond the veil of primitive Kosmic matter. The highest, the most perfect vision is limited to the universe of Form and Matter.....
....there comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through are a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first truth....the adept sees and feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths -- the Universal Spiritual Essence of Nature, SHIVA the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator....
...total emancipation from authority of the one all pervading power or law called God by the Theists -- Buddha, Divine Wisdom and Enlightenment or Theosophy by the philosophers of all ages -- means also the emancipation from that of human law. Once unfettered [and] delivered from their dead weight of dogmatic interpretations, personal names, anthropomorphic conceptions and salaried priests, the fundamental doctrines of all religions will be proved identical in their esoteric meaning. Osiris, Chrishna, Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and [the] same royal highway to final bliss Nirvana. Mystical christianity, that is to say that christianity which teaches self redemption through one's own seventh principle -- the liberated Para-atma (Augoeides) called by the one Christ, by others Buddha, and equivalent to regeneration or rebirth in spirit -- will be found just the same truth as the Nirvana of mystical Buddhism. All of us have to get rid of our own Ego, the illusory apparent self, to recognise our true self in a transcendental divine life. But if we would not be selfish we must strive to make other people see that truth, to recognise the reality of that transcendental self, the Buddh, the Christ or God of every preacher....
...The Lhas or adept alone possesses the real, his mind being en rapport with the Universal Mind. The Lhas has made the perfect junction of his soul with the Universal Mind in its fulness, which makes him for the time a divine being existing in the region of absolute intelligence, knowledge of natural laws or Dgyu. The profane cannot become a Dang-ma (purified soul), for he lacks means of perceiving Chhag, Genesis or the beginning of things....Everything in the occult universe, which embraces all the primal causes, is based upon two principles -- Kosmic energy (Fohat or breath of wisdom), and Kosmic ideation...
What is the one eternal thing in the universe independent of every other thing?
Space.What things are co-existent with space?
(i) Duration. (ii) Matter. (iii) Motion, for this is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter, even during the pralaya, or night of mind. When Chyang or omniscience, and Chyang-mi-shi-khon -- ignorance, both sleep, this latent unconscious life still maintains the matter it animates in sleepless unceasing motion. (iv) The Akasa (Bar-nang) or Kosmic atmosphere, or Astral light, or celestial ether, which whether in its latent or active condition, surrounds and interpenetrates all matter in motion of which it is at once a result and the medium by which the Kosmic energy acts on its source. (v) The Purush or 7th principle of the universe.......Swayambu occupies every part of space which itself is boundless and eternal, hence must be space in one sense. Swayambu becomes Purush when coming in contact with matter....
...Zhi gyu (cosmic matter), Thog (space), Nyng (duration), Khor wa (motion), all one....
We say that Zhima being positive, and Zhi-gyu [gyu (material) earth in this sense] negative, it is only when the two come in contact as the former is brought to act upon the latter, that organised, living, self-acting matter is produced. Everything invisible, imponderable (the spirit of a thing) is positive, for it belongs to the world of reality; as everything solid, visible, is negative. Primate and ultimate, positive and negative. So much in our manifested world. As the forces move on and the distance between organised and unorganised matter becomes greater, a tendency towards the reverse begins to take place. The powers of attraction and repulsion become gradually weaker. Then a complete exchange of properties takes place, and for a time equilibrium is restored in an opposite order. At every grade further onward, or away toward their primary chaotic state, shifts no more mutually its property, but weakens gradually until it reaches the world of non-being, where exists the eternal mechanical motion, the uncreated cause from whence proceeds in a kind of incessant downward and upward rotation, the founts of being from non-being, the latter, the reality, the former maya, the temporary from the everlasting, the effect from its cause, the effect becoming in its turn cause ad infinitum. During the pralaya, that upward and downward motion ceases, inherent unconscious life alone remaining -- all creative forces paralysed, and everything resting in the night of mind....In the night of mind, all is equilibrised in the boundless cosmos in a state of non-action or non-being....
....motion, cosmic matter, duration, space, are everywhere and for perspicuity's sake, let us place or fancy this multiplicity in or at the top of a circle, ("boundless"). They are passive, negative, unconscious, yet ever propelled by their inherent latent life or force. During the day of activity, that cyclic force ejecting from the causative latent principle cosmic matter, like the wheel of a water mill ejects showers of water -- dust around its rotating circle, put it in contact with the same principles, but whose condition owing to their finding themselves outside the state of primitive passivity of the eternal immutability has already changed. Thus the same principles begin to acquire so to speak the germs of polarity. Then coming within the Universal mind Dyan Kam develops these germs, conceives, and giving the impulse communicates it to Fohat, who, vibrating along Akasa, Od (a state of cosmic matter, motion, force, etc.) runs along the lines of cosmic manifestations and frames all and everything; blindly -- agreed, yet as faithfully in accordance with the prototypes as conceived in the eternal mind as a good mirror reflects your face....
...The absolute and infinite is composed of the conditioned and finite. Causes are conditioned in their modes of existence and attributes, and as individual aggregates -- unconditioned and eternal in their sum or as a collective aggregation....
If the Absolute is a blind law, how can it give birth to intelligence?
But passive latent intelligence, or that principle diffused throughout the universe which in its pure immateriality is non-intelligence and non-consciousness, and which as soon as it becomes imprisoned in matter is transformed into both -- can....In the East the Absolute, itself non-conscious, is linked to intelligence by emanations, supposed to be conditioned.......Your all-pervading supreme power exists, but it is exactly matter, whose life is motion, will, and nerve power, electricity. Purush can think but through Prakriti....
...The highest state of Nirvana is the highest state of non-being. There comes a time when the whole infinitude sleeps or rests, when All is reimmersed in the one eternal and uncreated sum of all. The sum of the latent unconscious potentiality....
...There is no finite or primordial design but in conjunction with organised matter. Design is Kyen, a cause arising from a primary one. The latent design exists from the eternity in the one unborn eternal atom or the central point which is everywhere and nowhere, called ----- (our most secret incommunicable name given at the initiation to the highest adepts). ...
Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital G. . . . we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. . .
. . . while we assign to all the phenomena that proceed from the infinite and limitless space, duration and motion, material, natural, sensible and known (to us at least) cause, the theists assign them spiritual, super-natural and unintelligible an un-known causes. . . .
. . . Pantheistic we may be called -- agnostic NEVER. If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other substance than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his fourteenth proposition, "practer Deum neque dari neque concepi potest substantia" -- and thus become Pantheists . . . .. . .When we speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. -- hence is material, is matter itself. . . .
. . . We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life is identical with that of the Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm. And no true philosophically trained Adwaitee will ever call himself an agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical in every respect with the universal life and soul -- the macrocosm is the microcosm and he knows that there is no God apart from himself, no creator as no being. Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on it and become agnostics. . . .We deny the existence of a thinking conscious God, on the grounds that such a God must either be conditioned, limited and subject to change, therefore not infinite, or (2) if he is represented to us as an eternal unchangeable and independent being, with not a particle of matter in him, then we answer that it is no being but an immutable blind principle, a law. And yet, they will say, we believe in Dyans, or Planetaries ("spirits" also), and endow them with a universal mind, and this must be explained...
(1) We deny the absurd proposition that there can be, even in a boundless and eternal universe -- two infinite eternal and omni-present existences.
(2) Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily -- and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us matter (or nature) acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials ever changing form, combinations and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible.
(3) As to God -- since no one has ever or at any time seen him or it -- unless he or it is the very essence and nature of this boundless eternal matter, its energy and motion, we cannot regard him as either eternal or infinite or yet self existing. We refuse to admit a being or an existence of which we know absolutely nothing; because (a) there is no room for him in the presence of that matter whose undeniable properties and qualities we know thoroughly well (b) because if he or it is but a part of that matter it is ridiculous to maintain that he is the mover and ruler of that of which he is but a dependent part and (c) because if they tell us that God is a self existent pure spirit independent of matter -- an extra-cosmic deity, we answer that admitting even the possibility of such an impossibility, i.e., his existence, we yet hold that a purely immaterial spirit cannot be an intelligent conscious ruler nor can he have any of the attributes bestowed upon him by theology and thus such a God becomes again but a blind force. Intelligence as found in our Dyan Chohans, is a faculty that can appertain but to organized or animated being -- however imponderable or rather invisible the materials of their organizations. Intelligence requires the necessity of thinking; to think one must have ideas; ideas suppose senses which are physical material, and how can anything material belong to pure spirit? If it be objected that thought cannot be a property of matter, we will ask the reason why? We must have an unanswerable proof of this assumption, before we can accept it. Of the theologian we would enquire what was there to prevent his God, since he is the alleged creator of all -- to endow matter with the faculty of thought; and when answered that evidently it has not pleased Him to do so, that it is a mystery as well as an impossibility, we would insist upon being told why it is more impossible that matter should produce spirit and thought, than spirit or the thought of God should produce and create matter.
. . . we believe in MATTER alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature draws from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can exist. . . .
. . . The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence -- give it whatever name you will -- is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity. . . ....Contrary in that to the finite, the "infinite mind," which we name so but for argument's sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE -- exhibits but the functions of its cerebellum, the existence of its supposed cerebrum being admitted as above stated, but on the inferential hypothesis deduced from the Kabalistic theory (correct in every other relation) of the Macrocosm being the prototype of the Microcosm. So far as we know the corroboration of it by modern science receiving but little consideration -- so far as the highest Planetary Spirits have ascertained (who remember well have the same relations with the trans-cosmical world, penetrating behind the primitive veil of cosmic matter as we have to go behind the veil of this, our gross physical world --) the infinite mind displays to them as to us no more than the regular unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature, throughout the myriads of worlds within as without the primitive veil of our solar system.
It is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind -- which no one could ever think of calling God, -- to be eternally evolving subjective matter into objective atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a relative sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise that same involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed laws of nature -- which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos. There are some modern philosophers who would prove the existence of a Creator from motion. We say and affirm that that motion -- the universal perpetual motion which never ceases never slackens nor increases its speed not even during the interludes between the pralayas, or "nights of Brahma" but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by no means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) -- we say this perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise. To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his intelligence under a bushel for some mysterious reasons -- is a most consummate nonsense; to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a fiend -- a most rascally God. A Being however gigantic, occupying space and having length breadth and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity; "No-being" and a mere principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the Vedantic primitive Acosmism. What lies beyond and outside the worlds of form, and being, in worlds and spheres in their most spiritualized state -- (and you will perhaps oblige us by telling us where that beyond can be, since the Universe is infinite and limitless) is useless for anyone to search after since even Planetary Spirits have no knowledge or perception of it. If our greatest adepts and Bodhisatvas have never penetrated themselves beyond our solar system, -- and the idea seems to suit your preconceived theistic theory wonderfully, my respected Brother -- they still know of the existence of other such solar systems, with as mathematical a certainty as any western astronomer knows of the existence of invisible stars which he can never approach or explore. But of that which lies within the worlds and systems, not in the trans-infinitude -- (a queer expression to use) -- but in the cis-infinitude rather, in the state of the purest and inconceivable immateriality, no one ever knew or will ever tell, hence it is something non-existent for the universe. You are at liberty to place in this eternal vacuum the intellectual or voluntary powers of your deity -- if you can conceive of such a thing. . . .
. . . And we maintain that wherever there is life and being, and in however much spiritualized a form, there is no room for moral government, much less for a moral Governor -- a Being which at the same time has no form nor occupies space! Verily if light shineth in darkness, and darkness comprehends it not, it is because such is the natural law, but how more suggestive and pregnant with meaning for one who knows, to say that light can still less comprehend darkness, nor ever know it since it kills wherever it penetrates and annihilates it instantly. Pure yet a volitional Spirit is an absurdity for volitional mind. The result of organism cannot exist independently of an organized brain, and an organized brain made out of nihil is a still greater fallacy. If you ask me "Whence then the immutable laws? -- laws cannot make themselves" -- then in my turn I will ask you -- and whence their supposed Creator? -- a creator cannot create or make himself. If the brain did not make itself, for this would be affirming that brain acted before it existed, how could intelligence, the result of an organized brain, act before its creator was made. . . .
Yes: there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as subtile as the essence of life so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe to its centre would it but be used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since there are men who have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man. Why should this plant in your garden to the right, have been produced with such a shape and that other one to the left with one totally dissimilar? Are these not the result of varying action of Force -- unlike correlations? Given a perfect monotony of activities throughout the world, and we would have a complete identity of forms, colours, shapes and properties throughout all the kingdoms of nature. It is the motion with its resulting conflict, neutralization, equilibration, correlation, to which is due the infinite variety which prevails. You speak of an intelligent and good -- (the attribute is rather unfortunately chosen) -- Father, a moral guide and governor of the universe and man. A certain condition of things exists around us which we call normal. Under this nothing can occur which transcends our every-day experience "God's immutable laws." But suppose we change this condition and have the best of him without whom even a hair of your head will not fall, as they tell you in the West. A current of air brings to me from the lake near which, with my fingers half frozen I now write to you this letter -- I change by a certain combination of electrical magnetic odyllic or other influences the current of air which benumbs my fingers into a warmer breeze; I have thwarted the intention of the Almighty, and dethroned him at my will! I can do that, or when I do not want Nature to produce strange and too visible phenomena, I force my nature-seeing, nature-influencing self within me, to suddenly awake to new perceptions and feelings and thus am my own Creator and ruler.
But do you think that you are right when saying that "the laws arise." Immutable laws cannot arise, since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that God himself if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them. And when did I say that these laws were fortuitous per se. I meant their blind correlations, never the laws, or rather the law -- since we recognise but one law in the Universe, the law of harmony, of perfect EQUILIBRIUM. Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic, and such a fine comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words especially -- for a man so accurate as you generally are to make tirades upon an "all wise, powerful and love-ful God" seems to say at least strange. I do not protest at all as you seem to think against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking you, how do you or how can you know that your God is all wise, omnipotent and love-ful, when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does exist to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one which seems to overpower your very intellect. . . .
The conception of matter and spirit as entirely distinct, and both eternal could certainly never have entered my head, however little I may know of them, for it is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of Occultism that the two are one, and are distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses. Far from "lacking philosophical breadth" then, our doctrines show, but one principle in nature, -- spirit-matter or matter-spirit, the third the ultimate Absolute or the quintessence of the two, -- if I may be allowed to use an erroneous term in the present application -- losing itself beyond the view and spiritual perceptions of even the "Gods" or Planetary Spirits. This third principle say the Vedantic Philosophers -- is the only reality, everything else being Maya, as none of the Protean manifestations of spirit-matter or Purusha and Prakriti have ever been regarded in any other light than that of temporary delusions of the senses. Even in the hardly outlined philosophy of Isis this idea is clearly carried out. In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded than in the very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final dispersion of the latter, the phenomenon being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit failing into generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity, -- a doctrine as old as the world of thought -- was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the schools of Alexandria, and made up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or matter, -- man; and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral triangle, an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt. Thus once more it is proved that you misunderstand my meaning entirely, whenever for the sake of brevity I use a phraseology habitual with the Western people. But in my turn I have to remark that your idea that matter is but the temporary allotropic form of spirit differing from it as charcoal does from diamond is as unphilosophical as it is unscientific from both the Eastern and the Western points of view, charcoal being but a form of residue of matter, while matter per se is indestructible, and as I maintain coeval with spirit -- that spirit which we know and can conceive of. Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable to manifest itself, hence ceases to exist -- becomes nihil. Without spirit or Force, even that which Science styles as "not living" matter, the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could never have been called into form. There is a moment in the existence of every molecule and atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or motion or life (call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant with the swiftness which surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought the atom or molecule or an aggregation of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intra-cosmic matter. It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver to the central mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature, as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter. . . .
...view the eternal Essence, the Swabavat not as a compound element you call spirit-matter, but as the one element for which the English has no name. It is both passive and active, pure Spirit Essence in its absoluteness, and repose, pure matter in its finite and conditioned state, -- even as an unponderable gas or that great unknown which science has pleased to call Force. When poets talk of the "shoreless ocean of immutability" we must regard the term but as a jocular parodox, since we maintain that there is no such thing as immutability -- not in our Solar system at least. Immutability say the theists and Christians "is an attribute of God" and forthwith they endow that God with every mutable and variable quality and attribute, knowable as unknowable, and believe that they have solved the unsolvable and squared the circle. To this we reply if that which the theists call God, and science "Force" and "Potential Energy," were to become immutable but for one instant even during the Maha-Pralaya a period when even Brahm the creative architect of the world is said to have merged into non-being, then there could be no manwantara, and space alone would reign unconscious and supreme in the eternity of time....
...bear in mind (a) that we recognise but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself, [Not in the sense of Natus "born" but Nature as the sum total of everything visible and invisible, of forms and minds, the aggregate of the known (and unknown), causes and effects, the universe in short infinite and uncreated and endless, as it is without a beginning.] and which as the Akasa pervades our solar system every atom being part of itself pervades throughout space and is space in fact, which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas and the universal Proteus, the ever active Nature during the Manwantaras; (b) that consequently spirit and matter are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences, and that the Greek philosopher who maintained that the Universe was a huge animal penetrated the symbolical significance of the Pythagorean monad (which becomes two, then three and finally having become the tetracktis or the perfect square (thus evolving out of itself four and involuting three forms the sacred seven) -- and thus was far in advance of all the scientific men of the present time; (c) that our notions of "cosmic matter" are diametrically opposed to those of western science. Perchance if you remember all this we will succeed in imparting to you at least the elementary axioms of our esoteric philosophy more correctly than heretofore....
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You must take each entity at its starting point in the manvantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath. For the potentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its "chemical affinity" (?) to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sum of such united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet have been successively passed through....The great difficulty in grasping the idea in the above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the one element, of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow, throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but the initial point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution, gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of evolution and involution in time develops into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms, nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost one tittle of their original force or life-essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there, is not transformed into something else ..., but with each development of a new centre of activity from within itself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progresses something plus in its differentiation. This "force" so-called, shows itself truly indestructible...[and]...may be said to grow and expand into "something else" while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one "Form of existence" also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses namely only your old acquaintance Fohat ...The initiated Brahmin calls it (Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world or rather the visible universe hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle -- a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity -- "Avalokiteshvara" (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) -- the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the Dyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were are or ever will be whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dyan Chohans even of the highest order..... . . according to Mr. Massey's philosophical conclusion we have no God....He is right -- since he applies the name to an extra- cosmic anomaly, and that we, knowing nothing of the latter, find -- each man his God -- within himself in his own personal, and at the same time, -- impersonal Avalokiteswara. . . .. . .
Avalokita Isvar literally interpreted means "the Lord that is seen." "Iswara" implying moreover, rather the adjective than the noun, lordly, self-existent lordliness, not Lord. It is, when correctly interpreted, in one sense "the divine Self perceived or seen by Self," the Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic distinction from its Universal Source -- which becomes the object of perception for, and by the individuality centred in Buddhi, the sixth principle, -- something that happens only in the highest state of Samadhi. This is applying it to the microcosm. In the other sense Avalokitesvara implies the seventh Universal Principle, as the object perceived by the Universal Buddhi "Mind" or Intelligence which is the synthetic aggregation of all the Dhyan Chohans, as of all other intelligences whether great or small, that ever were, are, or will be. Nor is it the "Spirit of Buddhas present in the Church," but
the Omnipresent Universal Spirit in the temple of nature -- in one case; and the seventh Principle -- the Atman in the temple -- man -- in the other. Mr. Rhys Davids might have, at least remembered, the (to him) familiar simile made by the Christian Adept, the Kabalistic Paul: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" -- and thus avoided to have made a mess of the name. Though as a grammarian he detected the use of the "past particle passive" yet he shows himself far from an inspired "Panini" in overlooking the true cause and saving his grammar by raising the hue and cry against metaphysics. And yet, he quotes Beale's [Beal] Catena as his authority, for the invention, when, in truth, this work is perhaps the only one in English that gives an approximately correct explanation of the word, at any rate, on page 374. "Self- manifested" -- How? it is asked. "Speech or Vach was regarded as the Son or the manifestation of the Eternal Self, and was adored under the name of Avalokitesvara, the manifested God." This shows as clearly as can be -- that Avalokitesvara is both the unmanifested Father and the manifested Son, the latter proceeding from, and identical with, the other; -- namely, the Parabrahm and Jivatman, the Universal and the individualized seventh Principle, -- the Passive and the Active, the latter the Word, Logos, the Verb. Call it by whatever name, only let these unfortunate, deluded Christians know that the real Christ of every Christian is the Vach, the "mystical Voice," . . .. . . [Do you] know the meaning of the white and black interlaced triangles, of the Parent [Theosophical] Society's seal . . . ? Shall I explain? -- the double triangle viewed by the Jewish Kabalists as Solomon's Seal, is, as many of you doubtless know the Sri-antara of the archaic Aryan Temple, the "mystery of Mysteries," a geometrical synthesis of the whole occult doctrine. The two interlaced triangles are the Buddhangums of Creation. They contain the "squaring of the circle," the "philosophical stone," the great problems of Life and Death, and -- the Mystery of Evil. . . .Of course you know that the double-triangle -- the Satkiri Chakram of Vishnu -- or the six-pointed star, is the perfect seven. In all the old Sanskrit works -- Vedic and Tantrik -- you find the number 6 mentioned more often than the 7 -- this last figure, the central point being implied, for it is the germ of the six and their matrix . . . the central point standing for seventh, and the circle, the Mahakasha -- endless space -- for the seventh Universal Principle. In one sense, both are viewed as Avalokitesvara, for they are respectively the Macrocosm and the microcosm. The interlaced triangles -- the upper pointing one -- is Wisdom concealed, and the downward pointing one -- Wisdom revealed (in the phenomenal world). The circle indicates the bounding, circumscribing quality of the All, the Universal Principle which, from any given point expands so as to embrace all things, while embodying the potentiality of every action in the Cosmos. As the point then is the centre round which the circle is traced -- they are identical and one, and though from the standpoint of Maya and Avidya -- (illusion and ignorance) -- one is separated from the other by the manifested triangle, the 3 sides of which represent the three gunas -- finite attributes. In symbology the central point is Jivatma (the 7th principle), and hence Avalokitesvara, the Kwan-Shai-yin, the manifested "Voice" (or Logos), the germ point of manifested activity; -- hence -- in the phraseology of the Christian Kabalists "the Son of the Father and Mother," and agreeably to ours -- "the Self manifested in Self -- Yih-sin, the "one form of existence," the child of Dharmakaya (the universally diffused Essence), both male and female. Parabrahm or "Adi-Buddha" while acting through that germ point outwardly as an active force, reacts from the circumference inwardly as the Supreme but latent Potency. The double triangles symbolize the Great Passive and the Great Active; the male and female; Purusha and Prakriti. Each triangle is a Trinity because presenting a triple aspect. The white represents in its straight lines: Gnanam -- (Knowledge); Gnata -- (the Knower); and Gnayam -- (that which is known). The black-form, colour, and substance, also the creative, preservative, and destructive forces and are mutually correlating, etc., etc. .
... How, think you, did the "Writers of the Perfect Way" come to know that Adonai was the Son and not the Father; or that the third Person of the Christian Trinity is -- female? Verily, they lay in that work several times their hands upon the keystone of Occultism. Only does the lady -- who persists using without an explanation the misleading term "God" in her writings -- know how nearly she comes up to our doctrine when saying: -- "Having for Father, Spirit which is Life (the endless Circle or Parabrahm) and for Mother the Great Deep, which is Substance (Prakriti in its undifferentiated condition) -- Adonai possesses the potency of both and wields the dual powers of all things." We would say triple, but in the sense as given this will do. Pythagoras had a reason for never using the finite, useless figure -- 2, and for altogether discarding it. The ONE, can, when manifesting, become only 3. The unmanifested when a simple duality remains passive and concealed. The dual monad (the 7th and 6th principles) has, in order to manifest itself as a Logos, the "Kwan-shai-yin" to first become a triad (7th, 6th and half of the 5th); then, on the bosom of the "Great Deep" attracting within itself the One Circle -- form out of it the perfect Square, thus "squaring the circle" -- the greatest of all the mysteries, friend -- and inscribing within the latter the -- WORD (the Ineffable name) -- otherwise the duality could never tarry as such, and would have to be reabsorbed into the ONE. The "Deep" is Space -- both male and female. "Purush (as Brahma) breathes in the Eternity: when 'he' in-breathes -- Prakriti (as manifested Substance) disappears in his bosom; when 'he' out-breathes she reappears as Maya," says the Sloka. The One reality is Mulaprakriti (undifferentiated Substance) -- the "Rootless root," the. . . But we have to stop, lest there should remain but little to tell for your own intuitions.
...the Unmanifested Circle -- the Father, or Absolute Life -- is non-existent outside the Triangle and Perfect Square, and -- is only manifested in the Son; and that it is when, reversing the action and returning to its absolute state of Unity, and the square expands once more into the Circle -- that "the Son returns to the bosom of the Father." There it remains until called back by his Mother -- the "Great Deep," to remanifest as a triad -- the Son partaking at once, of the Essence of the Father, and of that of the Mother -- the active Substance, Prakriti in its differentiated condition. "My Mother -- (Sophia -- the manifested Wisdom) took me" -- says Jesus in a Gnostic treatise; and he asks his disciples to tarry till he comes. . . . The true "Word" may only be found by tracing the mystery of the passage inward and outward of the Eternal Life, through the states typified in these three geometric figures....
...the sixth and seventh principles apart from the rest constitute the eternal imperishable, but also unconscious "Monad." To awaken in it to life the latent consciousness, especially that of personal individuality, requires the monad plus the highest attributes of the fifth [Manas]....Spirit, or the unalloyed emanations of the ONE -- the latter forming with the seventh and sixth principles the highest triad -- neither of the two emanations are capable of assimilating but that which is good, pure and holy....
What emerges at the end of all things is not only "pure and impersonal spirit," but the collective "personal" remembrances skimmed off every new fifth principle in the long series of being. And, if at the end of all things -- say in some million of millions years hence, Spirit will have to rest in its pure, impersonal non-existence, as the ONE or the absolute, still there must be "some good" in the cyclic process, since every purified Ego has the chance in the long interims between objective being upon the planets to exist as a Dhyan Chohan -- from the lowest "Deva-Chanee" to the highest Planetary, enjoying the fruits of its collective lives.
But what is "Spirit" pure and impersonal per se? Is it possible that you should not have realized yet our meaning? why, such a Spirit is a nonentity, a pure abstraction, an absolute blank to our senses -- even to the most spiritual. It becomes something only in union with matter -- hence it is always something since matter is infinite and indestructible and non-existent without Spirit which, in matter is Life. Separated from matter it becomes the absolute negation of life and being, whereas matter is inseparable from it. Ask those who offer the objection, whether they know anything of "life" and "consciousness" beyond what they now feel on earth. What conception can they have -- unless natural born seers -- of the state and consciousness of one's individuality after it has separated itself from gross earthly body? What is the good of the whole process of life on earth -- you may ask them, in your turn -- if, we are as good as "pure" unconscious entities before birth, during sleep, and, at the end of our career? Is not death, according to the teachings of Science, followed by the same state of unconsciousness as the one before birth? Does not life when it quits our body become as impersonal as it was before it animated the foetus? Life, after all, -- the greatest problem within the ken of human conception is a mystery that the greatest of your men of Science will never solve. In order to be correctly comprehended, it has to be studied in the entire series of its manifestations, otherwise it can never be, not only fathomed, but even comprehended in its easiest form -- life, as a state of being on this earth. It can never be grasped so long as it is studied separately and apart from universal life. To solve the great problem one has to become an occultist; to analyze and experience with it personally, in all its phases, as life on earth, life beyond the limit of physical death, mineral, vegetable, animal and spiritual life; life in conjunction with concrete matter as well as life present in the imponderable atom. Let them try and examine, or analyze life apart from organism, and what remains of it? Simply a mode of motion; which, unless our doctrine of the all-Pervading, infinite, omnipresent Life is accepted -- though it be accepted on no better terms than a hypothesis only a little more reasonable than their scientific hypotheses which are all absurd -- has to remain unsolved....
...You will be right in referring the "Real Knowledge" and "True Cause" of the verses quoted to the highest plane of spiritual enlightenment; the "greater darkness" into which the perfected "Siddha" is finally merged thereby, is that Absolute Darkness, which is Absolute Light. The Real Knowledge here spoken of is not a mental but a spiritual state, implying full union between the Knower and the Known....
What have we, the disciples of the true Arhats, of esoteric Buddhism and of Sang-gyas to do with the Shasters and Orthodox Brahmanism? There are 100 of thousands of Fakirs, Sannyasis and Saddhus leading the most pure lives, and yet being as they are, on the path of error, never having had an opportunity to meet, see or even hear of us. Their forefathers have driven away the followers of the only true philosophy upon earth away from India and now, it is not for the latter to come to them but to them to come to us if they want us. Which of them is ready to become a Buddhist, a Nastika as they call us? . . . Faith in the Gods and God, and other superstitions attracts millions of foreign influences, living entities and powerful agents around them, with which we would have to use more than ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do not choose to do so. We do not find it either necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war to the unprogressed Planetaries who delight in personating gods and sometimes well known characters who have lived on earth. There are Dhyan-Chohans and "Chohans of Darkness," not what they term devils but imperfect "Intelligences" who have never been born on this or any other earth or sphere no more than the "Dhyan Chohans" have and who will never belong to the "builders of the Universe," the pure Planetary Intelligences, who preside at every Manvantara while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralayas. . . . as all in this universe is contrast . . . so the light of the Dhyan Chohans and their pure intelligence is contrasted by the "Ma-Mo Chohans" -- and their destructive intelligence. These are the gods the Hindus and Christians and Mahomed and all others of bigoted religions and sects worship; and so long as their influence is upon their devotees we would no more think of associating with or counteracting them in their work. . . . . .
....every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world and becomes an active entity by associating itself -- coalescing, we might term it -- with an elemental; that is to say with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence, a creature of the mind's begetting, for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offsprings of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions, a current which reacts upon any sensitive or and nervous organisation which comes in contact with it in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his "Skandha," the Hindu gives it the name of "Karma"; the Adept evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously....