STUDY
COURSE
ON
[H.P. Blavatsky's magnum opus]
CONTENTS
Section I:
The Secret Doctrine and its Study
The
Nature and Method of Occult Teachings
The
Effects of Studying the SD
Section II:
The Absolute RealityThe First Fundamental Proposition
Cosmic
Manifestation The Duality
Cosmic
Manifestation The Triad
Section
III: Cyclic Manifested UniverseThe Second Fundamental Proposition
ManifestationA
Cosmic Illusion
Section IV:
Seven Planes of Consciousness
The Inner
Rulers of the Universe
Their
Consciousness and Intelligence
Section VI:
Septenary Constitution of the Human Being
Section VII:
The Evolutionary ProcessThe Third Fundamental Proposition
Section
VIII: ManThe Triple Evolutionary Scheme
Root-Races
and Physical Evolution
-
All
the additions in square brackets are ours.
-
Some
portions of the quotations have been carefully removed in order to simplify the
understanding of the text. These omissions are not indicated in the extracts with three
dots to make the reading smoother. We recommend the student to refer to the original text
for further reference.
Abbreviations:
SD:
The Secret Doctrine. 3 Vol Ed.
KT:
Key to Theosophy
TG:
Theosophical Glossary
IGT: The
Inner Group Teachings of HPB
AT:
The Aquarian Theosophist, Vol. II, Supplement No. 9 September 17, 2002
(Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge)
HST: How to Study Theosophy.
ML: The Mahatma Letters. Chronological Edition
LMW: Letters from the Masters of
the Wisdom
i.1 The
skeleton of Book I is formed by Seven Stanzas translated from the secret Book of Dzyan,
the original of which is written in the sacred language of the Initiatesthe Senzar.
The stanzas and their commentaries and explanations form Part I of this First Book. Part
II is devoted to the elucidation of the fundamental symbols contained in the great
religions of the world, and the occult meaning of the hidden ideographs and glyphs.
The
general arrangement of Volume II is similar to that of Volume I. It deals primarily with
the Evolution of Man on this Planet. Part I is based on Twelve Stanzas from the Book of
Dzyan describing the gradual evolution of humanity through many occult stages, the origin
of the lower kingdoms of nature, the submergence of ancient continents, and presents a
panoramic view of bygone civilizations. Part II deals with the Archaic Symbolism of the
World-Religions, with special emphasis on the Sevenfold and Quaternary classifications of
elements and forces. Part III contrasts again the teachings of the Wisdom-Religion with
those of the then current Science, mainly in the domain of Anthropology and Geology.
(Boris de Zirkoff What is The Secret Doctrine, Theosophia Vol. XXV, No.
1)
General Table of Contents of the Two Volumes
Volume I: Cosmogenesis
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its Symbolism
The One Life, Active and Passive
The Secret DoctrinePantheismAtheism
Space in all Religions and in Occultism
Seven Cosmic ElementsSeven Races of Mankind
The Three Postulates of the Secret Doctrine
Description of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan
Seven Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan
Stanza I
The Night of the Universe
Stanza II
The Idea of Differentiation
Stanza III
The Awakening of Kosmos
Stanza IV
The Septenary Hierarchies
Stanza VI
Our World, its Growth and Development
Stanza VII
The Parents of Man on Earth
Summing Up
Part II. The Evolution of
Symbolism in its Approximate Order
I
Symbolism and Ideographs
II
The Mystery Language and its Keys
III
Primordial Substance and Divine Thought
IV
ChaosTheosKosmos
V
The Hidden Deity, its Symbols and Glyphs
VI
The Mundane Egg
VII
The Days and Nights of Brahma
VIII
The Lotus as a Universal Symbol
IX
Deus Lunus
X
Tree and Serpent and Crocodile Worship
XI
Demon Est Deus Inversus
XII
The Theogony of the Creative Gods
XIII
The Seven Creations
XIV The
Four Elements
XV
On Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin
Part III. Science and The
Secret Doctrine Contrasted
I
Reasons for these Addenda
II
Modern Physicists are Playing at Blind Mans Buff
III
An Lumen Sit Corpus Nec Non?
IV
Is Gravitation a Law?
V
The Theories of Rotation in Science
VI
The Masks of Science
VII
An Attack on the Scientific Theory of Force by a Man of Science
VIII
Life, Force, or Gravity?
IX
The Solar Theory
X
The Coming Force
XI
On the Elements and Atoms
XII
Ancient Thought in Modern Dress
XIII
The Modern Nebular Theory
XIV ForcesModes
of Motion or Intelligences?
XV
Gods, Monads, and Atoms
XVI Cyclic
Evolution and Karma
XVII The
Zodiac and its Antiquity
XVIII Summary
of the Mutual Position
Volume
II: ANTHROPOGENESIS
On the Archaic Stanzas, and the Four Prehistoric
Continents
The Imperishable Sacred Land
The Hyperborean
Lemuria
Atlantis
The Tropics at the Pole
Part
Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan
Stanza I
Beginnings of Sentient Life
Stanza II
Nature Unaided Fails
Stanza III
Attempts to Create Man
Stanza IV
Creation of the First Races
Stanza V
The Evolution of the Second Race
Stanza VI
The Evolution of the Sweat-Born
Stanza VII
From the Semi-Divine Down to the First Human Races
Stanza VIII
Evolution of the Animal Mammaliansthe First Fall
Stanza IX
The Final Evolution of Man
Stanza X
The History of the Fourth Race
Stanza XI
The Civilization and Destruction of the Fourth and Fifth Races
Stanza XII
The Fifth Race and its Divine Instructors
Additional Fragments from a Commentary on the Verses of
Stanza XII
Conclusion
Part II. The Archaic Symbolism
of the World-Religions
Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in every Scripture
XVI
Adam-Adami
XVII The
Holy of Holies: Its Degradation
XVIII On the
Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its Various Aspects
XIX Is
Pleroma Satans Lair?
XX
Prometheus the Titan
XXI Enoïchion-Henoch
XXII The
Symbolism of the Mystery Names Iao, and Jehovah
XXIII The
Upanishads in Gnostic Literature
XXIV The
Cross and the Pythagorean Decade
XXV The
Mysteries of the Hebdomad
I
Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
II
The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science
III
The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape
IV
Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the Antiquity of Man
V
Organic Evolution and Creative Centres
VI
Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in History
VII
Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of Several Submerged Continents
b) About the Secret Doctrine
i.2 The
Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various
climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings
assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and
evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of Time. (SD II, p.
794)
i.3
The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone
is the most stupendous and elaborate system. But such is the mysterious power of Occult
symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated
seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the bewildering series of
evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs
[See Section 2]. It is useless to say that this system is no fancy of one or several
isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of
generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the
traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and
exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the
Wise Men [Adept] of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the
last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning,
not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying
in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great
adepts; i.e., men who have developed and
perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost
possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by
the visionsso obtained as to stand as independent evidenceof other adepts, and
by centuries of experiences. (SD I, 272-3)
i.4 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 worlds history. 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 own study and observation. 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. (SD I, Preface)
i.5 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 sprang; finally, to show that the occult side of Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization. (SD I, Preface)
i.6
And here, we must be allowed a
remark. No true theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim
infallibility for anything he may say or write upon occult matters. The chief point is to
admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in
addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions,
those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselvesare all liable
to err. Thus mistakes have been made in Isis Unveiled, in Esoteric
Buddhism, in Man, in Magic: White and Black, etc., etc.; and
more than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped.
For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from
error and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great
adept, if not by an Avatar. Then only should we say, This is verily a work without
sin or blemish in it! But, so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be
perfect? Endless is the search for truth! Let us love it and aspire to it for
its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may
confer on us. For who of us can presume to have the whole truth at his
fingers ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism? (SD II, p. 640)
i.7 The SD must contain all that HPB knows herself, and a great deal more than that, seeing that much of it comes from men whose knowledge is immensely wider than hers. Furthermore, she implies unmistakably that another may well find knowledge in it which she does not possess herself. (R. Bowen, HST, p. 5)
i.8 The truths revealed to man by
the Planetary Spirits (the highest Kumaras, those who incarnate no longer in
the universe during this Mahamanvantara), who appear on earth as Avataras
only at the beginning of every new human race, and at the junction or close of the two
ends of the small and great cycle, were made in time to fade away from the memory of man
as he became more animalized. Yet, though these Teachers remain with man no longer than
the time required to impress upon the plastic minds of child-humanity the eternal verities
they teach, the spirit of the teachings remains vivid though latent in mankind. As the
Teachers say in the Occult Primer: This is done so as to ensure them (the
eternal truths) from being utterly lost or forgotten in ages hereafter by the forthcoming
generations. . . The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the keynote
of Truth. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course
uninterruptedly along the concatenation of the race to the end of the cyclehe
disappears from our earth until the following Planetary Manvantara.[1]
(CW 12, p. 600-1)
i.9
Knowledge comes in visions, first in dreams and then in pictures presented to the
inner eye during meditation. Thus have I been taught the whole system of evolution, the
laws of being and all else that I knowthe mysteries of life and death, the workings
of karma. Not a word was spoken to me of all this in the ordinary way, except, perhaps, by
way of confirmation of what was thus given menothing taught me in writing. And
knowledge so obtained is so clear, so convincing, so indelible in the impression it makes
upon the mind, that all other sources of information, all other methods of teaching with
which we are familiar dwindle into insignificance in comparison with this. One of the
reasons why I hesitate to answer offhand some questions put to me is the difficulty of
expressing in sufficiently accurate language things given to me in pictures, and
comprehended by me by the pure Reason, as Kant would call it. (CW 13, p. 285)
i.10 The Book of Dzyan [is about] Knowledge through meditation. (SD I, p. 434)
i.11 The True Student of The Secret Doctrine is a Jnana Yogi, and this Path of Yoga is the True Path for the Western student. It is to provide him with sign posts on that Path that the Secret Doctrine has been written. (HST, p. 14)
i.12 These two
volumes had to serve as a PROLOGUE, and prepare the readers mind for those which
shall now follow. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they pretend to
give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys
out of the sevenfold bunch of esoteric interpretation, and even this has only been
partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more
to accomplish. Our main concern was simply to prepare the soil. This, we trust we have
done. These two volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has forced his way into
the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A
commencement has been made to fell and uproot the deadly up as trees of superstition,
prejudice, and conceited ignorance, so that these two volumes should form for the student
a fitting prelude for Volumes III and IV. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away
from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these volumes are dedicated, it is impossible
that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood.
Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception with which Volumes I and II will meet
at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether these last two volumes will ever be
published, though they are almost completed. (SD II, pp. 797-8)
i.13 Since, as confessed before, this work withholds far more than it gives out, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. (SD I, p. 278)
Section I
The Secret Doctrine and its study
I.1 A
work which compares several dozens of philosophies and over half-a-dozen of
world-religions, a work which has to unveil the roots with the greatest precautions, as it
can only hint at the secret blossoms here and therecannot be comprehended at
a first reading, nor even after several, unless the reader elaborates for himself a system
for it. (CW 12, p. 235)
I.2 Reading the SD page by page as one reads any other book will only end in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the Three Fundamental Principles [Propositions] given in Proem. Follow that up by study of the Recapitulationthe numbered items in the Summing Up to Vol. I (Part I). Then take the Preliminary Notes (Vol. II) and the Conclusion (Vol. II). (HST, p. 6)
I.3 If one imagines that one is going to get a satisfactory picture of the constitution of the Universe from the SD one will get only confusion from its study. It is not meant to give any such final verdict on existence, but to Lead Towards The Truth. (HST, p. 8)
I.4 It is worse than useless going to those whom we imagine to be advanced students (HPB said) and asking them to give us an interpretation of the SD. They cannot do it. If they try, all they give are cut and dried exoteric renderings which do not remotely resemble the Truth. To accept such interpretation means anchoring ourselves to fixed ideas, whereas Truth lies beyond any ideas we can formulate or express. Exoteric interpretations are all very well, and she does not condemn them so long as they are taken as pointers for beginners, and are not accepted by them as anything more. (R. Bowen, HST, p. 8)
I.5
The Diagrams and Plates are intended
to familiarize students with the leading ideas of occult correspondences only, the very
genius of metaphysical, or macrocosmic and spiritual Occultism forbidding the use of
figures or even symbols further than as temporary aids. Once define an idea in words, and
it loses its reality; once figure a metaphysical idea, and you materialize its spirit.
Figures must be used only as ladders to scale the battlements, ladders to be disregarded
once the foot is set upon the rampart. Let the Esotericists, therefore, be very careful to
spiritualize the Instructions and avoid
materializing them; let them always try to find the highest meaning possible, confident
that in proportion as they approach the material and visible in their speculations on the Instructions, so far are they from the right
understanding of them. As in all true arts, so in Occultism, we must learn the theory
before we are taught the practice. (CW 12, p. 600)
I.6 No matter what one may study in the SD let the mind hold fast, as the basis of its ideation to the following ideas:
(a) The Fundamental Unity of All Existence. Fundamentally there is One Being. Being absolute there is nothing outside it. It is indivisible, else it would not be absolute. The Atom, the Man, the God are each separately, as well as all collectively, Absolute Being in their last analysis, that is their Real Individuality. It is this idea which must be held always in the background of the mind to form the basis for every conception that arises from study of the SD. The moment one lets it go (and it is most easy to do so when engaged in any of the many intricate aspects of the Esoteric Philosophy) the idea of Separation supervenes, and the study loses its value.
(b) The second idea to hold fast to is that There Is No Dead Matter. Every last atom is alive. It cannot be otherwise since every atom is itself fundamentally Absolute Being. Therefore there is no such thing as spaces of Ether, or Akasha[2], or call it what you like, in which angels and elementals disport themselves like trout in water. That's the common idea. The true idea shows every atom of substance no matter of what plane to be in itself a Life.
(c) The third basic idea to be held is that Man is the Microcosm. As he is so, then all the Hierarchies of the Heavens exist within him. But in truth there is neither Macrocosm nor Microcosm but One Existence. Great and small are such only as viewed by a limited consciousness.
(d) Fourth and last basic idea to be held is that expressed in the Great Hermetic Axiom. It really sums up and synthesises all the others. As is the Inner, so is the Outer; as is the Great so is the Small; as it is above, so it is below; there is but One Life and Law; and he that worketh it is One. Nothing is Inner, nothing is Outer; nothing is Great, nothing is Small; nothing is High, nothing is Low, in the Divine Economy. (HST, pp. 9-12)
I.7
Your axioms of logic can be applied to the lower
Manas [mind] only and it is from the perceptions of Kama-Manas [material mind] alone that you argue.
But Occultism teaches only that which it derives from the cognition of the Higher Ego or
the Buddhi-Manas [spiritual mind]. (CW 10, pp.
384-5)
I.8
[The Mahatma K.H. wrote to Sinnett:] Especially is the case with occult
study, in connection with which the traditional
methods of teaching, generally followed, aim at impressing every fresh idea on the memory by
provoking the perplexity it at last relieves. (SD I, p. 164)
I.9 First
let the student clearly realize that he cannot see things spiritual with the eyes of the
flesh, and that in studying, he must use the eyes of the Spiritual Intelligence, else will
he fail and his study will be fruitless. (CW12, p. 691)
I.10 Indeed, it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain. (SD I, p. 21)
I.11
The Infinite cannot be known to our
reason, which can only distinguish and define; but we can always conceive the abstract
idea thereof, thanks to that faculty higher than our reasonintuition, or the spiritual instinct. (CW 11, p. 258)
I.12
You cannot expect me to give everything; something must be left to the intuition
and to human intelligence. If I had written everything I would have had to make 25 volumes
and it would not have been enough. (AT, p. 17)
I.13 The
foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student
for solution, rather than described. (SD II, p. 106)
I.14 To some extent, it is admitted that even the esoteric teaching is allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average intelligence, requires the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form. Hence the allegorical and semi-mythical narratives in the exoteric, and the (only) semi-metaphysical and objective representations in the esoteric teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are adapted only to the perceptions of those who see without eyes, hear without ears, and sense without organs, according to the graphic expression of the Commentary. (SD II, p.81)
I.15 The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear. Nor can any pen describe it, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuitions. (SD II, p. 516)
I.16
Thus the mystical side of the interpretation must be left to the intuition of the
student. (SD II, p.
579)
I.17
In using figurative language, as has been done in The Secret Doctrine, analogies and comparisons are
very frequent. Darkness for instance, as a rule, applies only to the unknown totality, or
Absoluteness. Contrasted with eternal darkness, the first Logos is certainly Light;
contrasted with the second [Logos] or third, the manifested Logos, the first is Darkness,
and the others are Light (CW 10, p. 368)
I.18
It may be a parable and an allegory within
an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads
that which follows with his spiritual eye. (SD II, p. 94)
I.19 The key
of the riddle is left to the intuition of the disciple (CW 14, p. 405)
I.20 For a
clearer comprehension of the extremely abstruse and at first incomprehensible theories of
our occult doctrine, never allow the serenity of your mind to be disturbed during your
hours of literary labour, nor before you set to work. It is upon the serene and placid
surface of the unruffled mind that the visions gathered from the invisible find a
representation in the visible world. Otherwise you would vainly seek those visions, those
flashes of sudden light which have already helped to solve so many of the minor problems
and which alone can bring the truth before the eye of the soul. It is with jealous care
that we have to guard our mind-plane from all the adverse influences which daily arise in
our passage through earth-life. (ML, No. 65)
I.21 The mind
can be made to work with electric swiftness in a high excitement; but the
Buddhinever. To its clear region, calm must ever reign. (LMW 1, No. 30)
I.22 Experience must be gained of every evil as good passion mentally, and overcome in thought, by reflection. Love and longing for higher things on a Spiritual plane will thus leave no room for the lower animal longings. (CW12, p.32)
I.23 The
contemplation of celestial things will make man both speak and think more sublimely and
magnificently when he descends to human affairssays
I.24 Come to the SD without any hope of getting the final Truth of existence from it, or with any idea other than seeing how far it may lead Towards the Truth. See in study a means of exercising and developing the mind never touched by other studies. (HST, p. 9)
I.25 The brain is the instrument of waking consciousness, and every conscious mental picture formed means change and destruction of the atoms of the brain. Ordinary intellectual activity moves on well beaten paths in the brain, and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance. But this new kind of mental effort calls for something very differentthe carving out of new brain paths, the ranking in different order of the little brain lives. If forced injudiciously it may do serious physical harm to the brain. This mode of thinking is what the Indians call Jnana Yoga. As one progresses in Jnana Yoga one finds conceptions arising which though one is conscious of them, one cannot express nor yet formulate into any sort of mental picture. As time goes on these conceptions will form into mental pictures. This is a time to be on guard and refuse to be deluded with the idea that the new found and wonderful picture must represent reality. It does not. As one works on one finds the once admired picture growing dull and unsatisfying, and finally fading out or being thrown away. This is another danger point, because for the moment one is left in a void without any conception to support one, and one may be tempted to revive the cast-off picture for want of a better to cling to. The true student will, however, work on unconcerned, and presently further formless gleams come, which again in time give rise to a larger and more beautiful picture than the last. But the learner will now know that no picture will ever represent the Truth. This last splendid picture will grow dull and fade like the others. And so the process goes on, until at last the mind and its pictures are transcended and the learner enters and dwells in the World of No Form, but of which all forms are narrowed reflections. (HST, pp. 12-4)
I.26
Try to see it with your third eye, and dont look only with you two eyes, and
try also to think with your spiritual brain. (AT, p. 21)
I.27 For growth is from within outwards, and always the inner remains the more perfect. Even the development of a physical sense is always preceded by a mental feeling, which proceeds to evolve a physical sense. (CW12, p. 691)
I.28
She [HPB] withheld the explanation because to know about it now, before being
guarded by more advanced knowledge, would be dangerous. If instruction were given
hereupon, that moment the mental force of students who worked upon the teaching would
project their consciousness into that realm. For the mind and consciousness acting
together have the power to separate or segregate the different planes one from the other;
and this too in the case of the merest beginner. The danger lies in the possibility of
evoking entities far too powerful and unspiritual for ordinary men and women to have any
dealings with. (Note by AB and WQJ, CW 12, pp. 678-9)
I.29 While
theoretical Occultism is harmless, and may do good, practical Magic is fraught with
dangers and perils. If the student is unfit let him take our advice and leave this study
alone; he will only bring on himself and on his family unexpected woes and sorrows, never
suspecting whence they come, nor what are the powers awakened by his mind being bent on
them. The mystic characters, alphabets and numerals found in the Kabalah, are, perhaps, the most dangerous portions
in it, and especially the numerals. We say dangerous, because they are the most prompt to
produce effects and results, and this with or without the experimenters will, even
without his knowledge. (CW 14, pp. 59-60)
I.30
No figures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and numbers are
the key to the esoteric system. (SD I, p. 164)
Section II
The
Absolute RealityThe First Fundamental Proposition
II.1
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. (SD I, p. 13)
II.2
The Secret Doctrine establishes 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 thoughtin the words of
Mandukya, unthinkable and unspeakable. (SD I, p. 14)
II.3
Hermes Trismegistos is made to say: To speak of God is
impossible. For corporeal cannot express the incorporeal . . . That which has not any body
nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, cannot be apprehended by sense. I understand,
Tatios, I understand, that which it is impossible to definethat is God. (SD I,
p. 286)
II.4
It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it contains all and everything.
Its impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every atom
in the Universe, and is the Universe itself. (SD
I, p. 273)
II.5
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 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. (SD I, p. 14)
II.6
This Be-ness is symbolised in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects:
a) 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. (SD I,
p. 14)
II.7
The One All is like Spacewhich is its only mental and physical representation
on this Earth, or our plane of existenceneither an object of, nor a subject to,
perception. 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. (SD I, p. 8)
II.8
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 isSpace. (SD I, p. 9)
II.9
b) On the other hand [its second aspect, is] absolute Abstract Motion[3]
representing Unconditioned Consciousness. 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. (SD I, p. 14)
II.10
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 AbsoluteAbstract Space and Duration being
the other two. When the Great Breath is projected, it becomes the Kosmos. When
the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of the
Great Mother. (SD I, p. 43)
II.11
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. (SD I, p. 15)
II.12
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. (SD I, p. 8)
II.13
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.
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. (SD I,
p. 15)
II.14
At the commencement of a great
Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the [First] Logos. This Logos
is equivalent to the Unconscious Universal Mind, etc., of Western Pantheists.
It constitutes the Basis of the Subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all
manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance,
is the foundation of the Object-side of thingsthe basis of all objective evolution
and Cosmogenesis. Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmic
Latency. It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of the
Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of potential
latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of matter. Force thus is not
synchronous with the first objectivation of Mulaprakriti. But as, apart from it, the
latter is absolutely and necessarily inerta mere abstractionit is
unnecessary to weave too fine a cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of the
Cosmic Ultimates. Force succeeds Mulaprakriti; but, minus Force,
Mulaprakriti is for all practical intents and purposes non-existent. (SD II, pp. 24-5)
II.15 The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. Yet IT cannot be identified with a being of any kind that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both. Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti are One, in reality, yet two in the Universal conception of the manifested, even in the conception of the One Logos [the Manifested Deity], its first manifestation, to which, IT appears from the objective standpoint of the One Logos as Mulaprakriti and not as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not the one Reality hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute. (SD I, pp. 273-4)
II.16
Cosmic Ideation is said to be non-existent during Pralayic periods, for the simple
reason that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no
manifestation of Consciousness except through the vehicle of matter. It is only through
some molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or
sub-conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is a mere
abstraction, both of these aspects of the AbsoluteCosmic
Substance and Cosmic Ideationare mutually inter-dependent. (SD I, pp. 328-9)
II.17
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. (SD I,
p. 15)
II.18
It is on the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter and its
real essence that the student has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind of the
Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies. (SD
I, p. 277)
II.19
Though one and the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they
are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in
contrary directionsSpirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter ascending to
its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever
separated. (SD I, p. 247)
II.20
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 selfor reflectiveconsciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life. (SD I, p. 16)
II.21 Manvantaric impulse commences with the re-awakening of Cosmic Ideation (the Universal Mind) concurrently with, and parallel to the primary emergence of Cosmic Substancethe latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the formerfrom its undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy (Fohat). Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. (SD I, p. 328)
II.22
Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric
Cosmogony, should be minutely described. In the phenomenal and Cosmic World, he is
that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, brings
together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine. Fohat, running along
the seven principles of Akasa, acts upon manifested substance or the One Element and
by differentiating it into various centres of Energy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic
Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into
existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar System. Fohat, then, is
the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic
Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes. In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the
Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the Electricity[4].
(SD I, pp. 109-112)
II.23
He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as
light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the spirit of Electricity, which is the Life
of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the One
Life; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of
manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life
immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through
brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent
Law and sentient Life, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of
all this. Yet he is no personal god at all. (SD I, p. 139)
II.24
Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and
sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable
from the One absolute, into union with the
Soul, the two constituting in Man the Monad,
and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the manifested. (SD I, p.
119)
II.25
The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism,
except in the Hindu sense of the word nastika,
or the rejection of idols, including every
anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a Nastika. (SD I, p. 279)
II.26 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. (SD I, p. 2)
II.27 When the Pantheists echo the Upanishads, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine that this [Parabrahm] 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. 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. (SD I, p. 7)
II.28 It is not this immutable and absolute Principle, which is only the potentiality of being, from which the gods, or active principles of the manifested world, emanate. As the absolute has no relation to the conditioned and the limited, and could not possibly have any, that from which the emanations proceed is the logos which Philo calls the second God and the Creator of forms. But this logos, is an emanation nevertheless? will be the objection. Not at all. First, this nothing is so because it is the absolute, consequently the ALL. The God is not the effect of a cause or of a premeditated act, of a deliberate and conscious will. It is merely the periodical effect[5] of an immutable and eternal law, beyond time and space, of which the logos or creative intelligence is the shadow or reflection. (CW 11, pp. 277-8)
II.29
[The Secret Doctrine] admits a [manifested] Logos or a collective
Creator of the Universe; a Demi-urgosin
the sense implied when one speaks of an Architect as the Creator
of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while
furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was
furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the
Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demiurgos
is no personal deity,i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god,but only the aggregate of
the Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces. (SD I, pp. 279-80)
II.30
For MAHAT is the first product of Pradhâna[6],
or Akâsa, and MahatUniversal intelligence whose characteristic property
is Buddhiis no other than the Logos.
He is, in short, the Creator or the divine mind in creative operation,
the cause of all things.
II.31
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 both Absolute Being and Non-Being. [Symbol: ]
2. The first manifestation, the impersonal, and, in
philosophy, unmanifested [first] Logos, the
precursor of the manifested. This is the First Cause, the
Unconscious of European Pantheists. [Symbol: ]
3. Spirit-matter, Life;
the Spirit of the Universe, the Purusha and Prakriti, or the [semi-manifested]
second Logos. [Symbol: y]
4. Cosmic Ideation, Mahat or Intelligence [the manifested, third
Logos], the Universal World-Soul. The basis of the intelligent operations in and of
Nature. [Symbol: Ċ] (SD I, p. 16)
II.32
AN Archaic Manuscripta collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water,
fire, and air, by some specific unknown processis before the writers 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 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. 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[7],
wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and Theogony.
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[8];
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.
Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic motion (the visible, or that which is
subject to perception) is finite and periodical. 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. The esoteric
doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, 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 Brahmâ. The latter is either
awake or asleep.
Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret
Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence occurs. 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.
The first illustration being a plain disc , the second one in the Archaic symbol shows a disc with
a point in it the first differentiation in the periodical
manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite. In its third stage the
point is transformed into a diameter y. It now symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature
within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude.
When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one Ċ, it becomes the mundane crossthe first manifestation of creative (still passive, because feminine) Nature. 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. Then comes the Svastica. (SD I, pp. 1-5)
II.33
The Svastica is the most philosophically
scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few
lines of the whole work of creation, or
evolution, as one should rather say, from Cosmo-theogony down to Anthropogony, from the
indivisible unknown Parabrahm to the humble moneron.
The two lines forming the Svastica meaning
Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied
to the Microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a
link between heaven and Earth: the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm,
the left pointing to the Earth. (SD II, pp. 98-99)
II.34
Few world-symbols are more pregnant with real occult meaning than the Swastica. It
is the emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the
wheels, and of the Four Elements, the Sacred Four. One initiated
into the mysteries of the meaning of the Swastica, say the Commentaries, can trace
on it, with mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhya. Also the relation of the Seen
to the Unseen, and the first procreation of man and species. (SD II, p.
587)
Section III
Cyclic
Manifested UniverseThe Second Fundamental Proposition
III.1
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms: 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[9]
is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence. The appearance and disappearance of
Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux. 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.
(SD I, pp. 16-17)
III.2
The ancients divided time into
endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and
each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or
metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration. (TG, Cycle,
p. 91)
III.3 Even exoteric
philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves,
periodically, and intelligently in Space and Eternity. There are Cycles of
matter and there are Cycles of Spiritual evolution. Racial, national,
and individual cycles. (SD I, pp. 637-8)
III.4 As our planet
revolves once every year around the sun, and at the same time turns once in every
twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor circles within a larger one, so
is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within the Great
Saros. The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine, is
attended by a like revolution in the world of intellectthe spiritual evolution of
the world proceeding in cycles, like the physical one.
Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and
flow in the tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after
reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same
law by which they ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts
itself and mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of
ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had before
descended. They are called in the Eastern esotericism the Karmic cycles. (SD I, pp.
641-2)
III.5
Three distinct representations of the Universe in its three distinct aspects are
impressed upon our thought by the esoteric philosophy: the Pre-Existing (evolved from) the Ever-Existing; and the Phenomenal. (SD I, p. 278)
III.6 The active Power, the Perpetual motion of the great Breath only awakens Kosmos at the dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces[10], and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that dual motion transfers Kosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of finite manifestation, or from the Noumenal to the phenomenal plane. Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally Is, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity[11]. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced becoming, i.e., objectivising into its present materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. (SD I, pp. 281-2)
III.7
Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one
and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalitiesthe illusive envelopes
of the immortal Monad-Egotwinkle and dance on the waves of Maya.
They last and appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long
as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the period of
a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beamssymbols of our eternal Spiritual
Egosalone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the
Mother-Source. (SD I, p. 237)
III.8
The Universe is called, with everything in it, Maya, because all is temporary therein, from the
ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of
the One, and the changelessness of that
Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in
the mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is
real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself. (SD I, p.
274)
III.9 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 colour,
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 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. (SD I, pp. 39-40)
III.10 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 subjectivitythe 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 Hindoos call such
alternations the "Days and Nights of Brahma," or the time of Manvantara and
that of Pralaya (dissolution)[12].
The Westerns may call them Universal Days and Nights if they prefer. (KT, Section 6, The Unity Of All In All)
III.11 The [terrestrial] periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the infinitesimally smallsay of ten yearsrotation and reach to cycles which require 250, 500 700, and 1000 years, to effect their revolution around themselves, and within one another. All are contained within the Mahâ-Yuga, the Great Age, which itself revolves between two eternitiesthe Pralayas or Nights of Brahmâ. (CW 2, p. 420)
III.12
Cycle |
Duration
(years) |
Krita Yuga |
1,728,000 |
Treta Yuga |
1,296,000 |
Dwapara Yuga |
864,000 |
Kali Yuga |
432,000 |
Maha-Yuga (the total of the said four Yugas) |
4,320,000 |
One Day of Brahmâ, a Kalpa (1,000 Maha-Yugas) |
4,320,000,000 |
One Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain |
8,640,000,000 |
One Year of Brahmâ (360 of such days and nights) |
3,110,400,000,000 |
One Age of Brahmâ, a Mahâ-Kalpa (100 such years) |
311,040,000,000,000 |
These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout
III.13
At the end of a thousand periods of four ages, which complete a Day of Brahmâ, the
earth is almost exhausted. The eternal Avyaya
(Vishnu) assumes then the character of Rudra (the destroyer, Siva) and re-unites all his
creatures to himself. He enters the Seven rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of
the globe; he causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth. Oceans and
rivers, torrents and small streams, are all exhaled. (SD I, p. 370)
III.14
There are many kinds of Pralaya, but
three chief ones are specially mentioned in old Hindu books. The first is called Naimittika [Planetary Pralaya]
occasional or incidental, caused by the intervals of
Brahmâs Days; it is the destruction of creatures, of all that lives and
has a form, but not of the substance which remains in statu quo till the new Dawn in that Night. The other is
called Prakritika [Solar Pralaya]and
occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahma,
when everything that exists is resolved into the primal element, to be remodelled at the
end of that longer night. But the third, Atyantika,
does not concern the Worlds or the Universe, but only the individualities of some people;
it is thus individual pralaya or Nirvana[13];
after having reached which, there is no more future existence possible, no rebirth till
after the Maha Pralaya. (SD I, pp. 370-1)
III.15 Occultism divides the periods
of Rest (Pralaya) into several kinds; there is the individual pralaya of each
Globe, as humanity and life pass on to the next; seven minor Pralayas in each Round; the planetary
Pralaya, when seven Rounds are completed [See Section VII]; the Solar
Pralaya, when the whole system is at an end; and finally the Universal Mahaor
BrahmâPralaya at the close of the Age of Brahmâ. These are the three
chief pralayas or destruction periods. There are many other minor ones,
but with these we are not concerned at present. . (SD I, fn., p. 172)
III.16 Not even Esoteric philosophy can claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took place before the reappearance of our Solar System and previous to the last Maha Pralaya. (SD I, p. 369)
Section IV
Seven
Planes of Consciousness
IV.1
Plane. An extension of space or of
something in it, whether physical or metaphysical, e.g.,
a plane of consciousness. As used in Occultism, the term denotes the range
or extent of some state of consciousness, or of the perceptive power of a particular set
of senses, or the action of a particular force, or the state of matter corresponding to
any of the above. (TG, p. 255)
IV.2
Matter is Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite
Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that
there is no inorganic or dead matter in nature.
[As Paracelsus said] Everything is the product of one universal creative effort ...
There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore
the whole world appears to be a living organism. (SD I, pp. 280-1)
IV.3
Matter is eternal, for it is PRADHÂNA, yet atoms are born at every new manvantara, or
reconstruction of the universe. It is not a contradiction as a materialist, who believes
in nothing beyond the atom, might think. There is a difference between manifested
and unmanifested matter, between pradhâna, the beginningless and endless
cause, and prakriti, or the manifested effect. (SD I, p. 545)
IV.4
Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is Conscious: i.e.,
endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men
must remember that because we do not perceive any signswhich we can
recogniseof consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no
consciousness exists there[14].
There is no such thing as either dead or blind matter, as there is
no Blind or Unconscious Law. These find no place among the
conceptions of Occult philosophy. The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for
it the noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts; it resembles
therein the mediĉval Nominalists, for whom it was the Universals that were the realities
and the particulars which existed only in name and human fancy. (SD I, p. 274)
IV.5
During the period of Universal Pralaya, Cosmic Ideation is non-existent; and the
variously differentiated states of Cosmic Substance are resolved back again into the
primary state of abstract potential objectivity. (SD I, p. 328)
IV.6
[When a Manvantara begins] the universe passes out of its homogeneous subjectivity
on to the first plane of manifestation, of which planes there are seven. With each plane
it becomes more dense and material until it reaches this, our plane. (KT, Section 6, Evolution and Illusion)
IV.7
Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its
primary differentiations on all the Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles (as they are now called), while
Aryan antiquity called them the Seven Prakriti, or Natures, serving, severally, as the relatively homogeneous basis[15],
which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity (in the evolution of the Universe)
differentiate into the marvellous complexity presented by phenomena on the planes of
perception. (SD I, p. 328)
IV.8
Imagine, for illustrations sake, the one homogeneous, absolute and
omnipresent Essence, above the upper step of the stair of the seven planes of
worlds, ready to start on its evolutionary journey. As its correlating reflection
gradually descends, it differentiates and transforms into subjective, and finally into
objective matter. Let us call it at its north pole Absolute Light; at its south pole
(which to us would be the fourth or middle step, or plane) we know it esoterically as the
One and Universal Life. Now mark the difference. Above, Light; below, Life. The former is ever immutable; the latter
manifests under the aspects of countless differentiations. According to the occult law,
all potentialities included in the higher become differentiated reflections in the lower.
(CW 12, p. 629)
IV.9 Our philosophy teaches us that, as there are seven fundamental forces in nature, and seven planes of being, so there are seven states of consciousness in which man can live, think, remember and have his being. Believing in seven planes of Kosmic being and states of Consciousness, with regard to the Universe or the Macrocosm, we stop at the fourth plane, finding it impossible to go with any degree of certainty beyond. But with respect to the Microcosm, or man, we speculate freely on his seven states and principles. (KT, Section 6, On the Septenary Constitution of our Planet).
IV.10 Every plane being [in its turn] septenary, there are thus forty-nine mystical and physical forces. (CW 10, p. 376)
IV.11
(IGT, pp. 103-104)
I
IV Fohat
Cosmic Kama-Manas
III Jiva-Fohat
Cosmic Life Kama-Pranic
Prakritic Planes
II Cosmic Astral
7th Prakritic
I Prakritic
Cosmic Body
6th Alaya
5th Mahat
4th Fohat
3rd Jiva
2nd Astral
1st Physical
Auric Egg
Manasic
Kama-Manasic
Kama-Pranic
Astral
Objective
IV.12
The
student will observe that the study of the States of Consciousness is confined to
Consciousness as manifesting in the solar system. Any attempt to figure Consciousness in KOSMOS would have deceived the
student by inducing him to believe that such Kosmic Consciousness could be explained,
whereas the whole of even the lowest plane of Kosmos transcends the highest Adept on
earth. One thing alone we know of Kosmic Consciousness, viz. that it is absolutely
outside all terms of earth consciousness. (CW
12, p. 657)
IV.13 Now it must always be borne in mind that diagrams can only show one aspect of a truth, and that they are only meant to help the student to an apprehension of the aspect symbolized. Let us remember we are dealing with Forces and States of Consciousness, and not with water-tight compartments. Thus Fohat, placed on the fourth plane, is, in reality, everywhere; it runs like a thread through all, and has its own seven divisions, each with its seven subdivisions. (CW 12, p. 657)
IV.14
The first
of the seven sub-planes of the First, or Lowest, Prakritic plane.
1. Objective Sensuous
Consciousness.The consciousness that pertains to the five physical senses
in man and rules in animals, birds, fishes, some insects, etc.
2. Astral Instinctual
Consciousness.On this plane is the consciousness of idiots. The common
phrase, he has lost his mind, is an occult truth; for when the lower mind
becomes paralyzed, then the consciousness acts on the astral plane. This may well be
called the nerve plane. It is cognized by our nervous senses.
Hence it is that a clairvoyant can read with the eyes bandaged, with the tips of the
fingers, the pit of the stomach, etc. This consciousness is greatly developed in the deaf
and dumb. On this plane everything is reversed, reflected upside down.
3. Kama-Pranic, or
Physiological-Emotional Consciousness.This is the general
life-consciousness which belongs to the objective world, even to the stone. Affinity
between chemical elements is a manifestation of this, Kama-Pranic consciousness. To this
plane, also, belong the life-preservative instincts, as for instance that which prevents a
kitten going into the water and getting drowned.
4. Kama-Manasic, or
Psychic, or Passional-Emotional Consciousness. In animals and idiots the
instinctual consciousness on the lower planes of sensation is in this state; in man these
are rationalized. For instance, if a dog is shut up in a room, it has the instinct to get
out, but is unable to do so because this instinct is not sufficiently rationalized to take
the means necessary for its liberation. A man at once takes in the situation, and lets
himself out.
5. Manasic or
Mental-Emotional Consciousness.From this plane Manas stretches up to
Mahat.
6. Buddhic, or Spiritual
Emotional Consciousness.The plane of Buddhi or of the Auric Envelope. From
this plane consciousness goes to the Father in Heaven, Atman, reflecting all
that is in the Auric Envelope. The Manasic and Buddhic states cover the planes from the
Noëtic to the Divine, but it is impossible at this stage to define them intelligibly.
Call the highest plane x if you will. You cant understand it. (CW 12, pp. 661-2)
IV.15 The three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, revealed and explained only to the Initiates,[16] the lower represent the four lower planesthe lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe. These seven planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three seats to life and activity. (SD I, p. 199)
Section V
The
Hierarchies
V.1
The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in
heaven so on earth; and manthe microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosmis
the living witness to this Universal Law and to the mode of its action. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary
or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and
thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in mans external body
can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three
functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. (SD I, p. 274)
V.2
During the great mystery and drama of life known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is
like the object placed behind the white screen upon which are thrown the Chinese shadows,
called forth by the magic lantern. The actual figures and things remain invisible, while
the wires of evolution are pulled by the unseen hands; and men and things are thus but the
reflections, on the white field, of the
realities behind the snares of Mahamaya, or the great Illusion. This was taught
in every philosophy, in every religion. (SD I, p. 278)
V.3
The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of
Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and whowhether we
give to them one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angelsare
messengers in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic
Laws. (SD I, p. 274)
V.4
In Esoteric philosophy the Demiurge or Logos,
regarded as the Creator, is simply an
abstract term, an idea, like army. As the latter is the all-embracing term for
a body of active forces or working unitssoldiersso is the Demiurge the
qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders. (SD I, p. 380)
V.5
The Secret Doctrine teaches that the whole universe is ruled by intelligent and
semi-intelligent Forces and Powers. (SD I, p. 287)
V.6 The Germ of the Universe [differentiates] 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. (SD I, pp. 21-22)
V.7
The Ah-Hi (Dhyan-Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual beingsthe Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the Elohim
and Messengers of the Jewswho 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
armya Host, trulyby 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. (SD I, p.
38)
V.8
There is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the
Universe. But the first differentiation of its reflection
in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not
endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of. They can
have no human consciousness or Intelligence before they have acquired such, personally and
individually. This may be a mystery, yet it is a fact, in Esoteric philosophy, and a very
apparent one too. (SD I, p. 277)
V.9
In sober truth, every Spirit so-called is either a disembodied or a future man. As from the highest
V.10
They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence;
and to call them all pure Spirits without any of the earthly alloy which time is
wont to prey upon is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings
either was, or prepares to become, a man, if
not in the present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ morally from the
terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only in that they are
devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human
emotional naturetwo purely earthly characteristics. The former, or the
perfected, have become free from those feelings, because (a) they have no longer fleshly bodiesan
ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and (b) the
pure spiritual element being left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by maya than man can ever be, unless he is an adept
who keeps his two personalitiesthe spiritual and the physicalentirely
separated. (SD I, p. 275)
V.11
The incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies yet, can have no sense of
personality or Ego-ism. That term cannot of
course be applied to non-human entities; but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of
Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have either individuality or personality as
separate Entities, i.e., they have no
individuality in the sense in which a man says, I am myself and no one else; in other words,
they are conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on earth.
Individuality is the characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not of their units;
and these characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which those
hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer
and the less accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. They are finite, in all
respects, with the exception of their higher principlesthe immortal sparks
reflecting the universal divine flameindividualized and separated only on the
spheres of Illusion by a differentiation as illusive as the rest. It is the inner
principle in them which belongs to the waters of immortality, while its differentiated
clothing is as perishable as mans body. Therefore Young was right in saying that
Angels are men of a superior kind and no more. (SD I, p. 275)
V.12
They are neither ministering nor protecting angels; nor are
they Harbingers of the Most High still less the Messengers of
wrath of any God such as mans fancy has created. To appeal to their protection
is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may be secured by any kind of
propitiation; for they are, as much as man himself is, the slaves and creatures of
immutable Karmic and Kosmic law. The reason for it is evident. Having no elements of
personality in their essence they can have no personal qualities, such as attributed by
men, in their exoteric religions, to their anthropomorphic Goda jealous and
exclusive God who rejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more
despotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. (SD I, p. 276)
V.13
The collective Mindthe Universalcomposed of various and numberless
Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when
contrasted with the unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. That
which is finite cannot be perfect. Therefore there are inferior Beings among those Hosts,
but there never were any devils or
disobedient Angels, for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. (SD II, p. 487)
V.14
[The universal forces] are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness
which directs and guides that energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the
Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric
periods, the whole being subservient to Karma. That process is not always perfect; and,
however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still
shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in evident failures. (SD I, p. 280)
V.15
Every form, we are told, is built in accordance with the model traced for it in the
Eternity and reflected in the Divine Mind.
There are hierarchies of Builders of form, and series of forms and degrees,
from the highest to the lowest. While the former are shaped under the guidance of the
Builders, the gods Cosmocratores, the latter are fashioned by the
Elementals or Nature Spirits. (CW 10, p. 387)
V.16 For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated Nature; which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone conditioned and imperfect. (SD II, pp. 732-3)
V.17
Therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers
individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the
grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever striving to help the
divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the
best of his ability a co-worker with nature in
the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its
shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heartinvisible,
intangible, unmentioned, save through the still small voice of our spiritual
consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the
sanctified solitude of their Souls[17];
making their spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only
priests, and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to
the Presence. (SD I, p. 280)
V.18
The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in
Naturefrom Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the smallest
infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual,
intellectual, or physical worldsthis is the one fundamental law in Occult Science.
(SD I, p. 120)
Section VI
Septenary
Constitution of the Human Being
VI.1 Study well and
know the principles of both the Kosmos and ourselves, dividing the group into the
permanent and impermanent, the higher and immortal, and the lower and mortal; for thus
only can we master and guide the lower cosmic and personal, then the higher cosmic and
impersonal. (CW 12, p. 625)
VI.2
The Logos is the mirror reflecting Divine Mind, and the Universe is the mirror of
the Logos, though the latter is the esse of
that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in
himself all that he sees and finds in his
Universe, the Earth. (SD II, p. 25)
VI.3
We divide man into seven principles, but this does not mean that he has, as it
were, seven skins, or entities, or souls. These principles are all aspects of one
principle, and even this principle is but a temporary and periodical ray of the One
eternal and infinite Flame or Fire. (CW 10, p. 335)
Sanskrit
Terms |
Exoteric
Meaning |
Explanatory |
|
LOWER QUATERNARY |
|||
(a) Rupa, or Sthula-Sarira |
Physical body |
Is the vehicle of all the other principles during life. |
|
(b) Prana |
Life, or Vital principle |
Necessary only to a, c, d, and the functions of the lower Manas, which embrace all those limited to the (physical) brain. |
|
(c) Linga Sharira |
Astral body[18] |
The Double, the phantom body. |
|
(d) |
The seat of animal desires and passions[19] |
This is the centre of the animal man, where lies the line of demarcation which separates the mortal man from the immortal entity. |
|
THE UPPER IMPERISHABLE TRIAD |
|||
(e) Manas -- a dual principle in its functions |
Mind, Intelligence: which is the higher human mind, whose light, or radiation links the Monad, for the lifetime, to the mortal man |
The future state and the Karmic destiny of man depend on
whether Manas gravitates more downward to |
|
(f) Buddhi |
The Spiritual Soul |
The vehicle of pure universal spirit. |
|
(g) Atma |
Spirit |
One with the Absolute, as its radiation. |
|
(KT, Section 6, The
Septenary Nature of Man)
VI.4 The whole
trouble is to understand correctly that other mystery: that of the real fact, so abstruse
and transcendental at first sight, about the Seven Principles in man, the
reflections in man of the seven powers in Nature, physically, and of the seven Hierarchies
of Being, intellectually and spiritually. (CW 14, p. 386)
VI.5
The Monad is the combination of the last two principles in
man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term
human monad applies only to the dual soul (Atma-Buddhi), not to its highest
spiritual vivifying Principle, Atma, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from
the latter (Atma) could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. (SD I, p.
178)
VI.6
The Monad of every living being is an individual Dhyan Chohan, distinct from others, a kind of spiritual individuality of its own,
during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the
Spirit (Atman) is one, of course, with Paramâtma
(the one Universal Spirit), but the vehicle (Vahan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyan-Chohanic
Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of its ubiquity. My Father, that is in Heaven, and
Iare one,says the Christian Scripture; in this, at any rate, it is the
faithful echo of the esoteric tenet. (SD I, p. 265)
VI.7
Atma, the Higher Self, is neither your Spirit nor mine, but like
sunlight shines on all. It is the universally diffused divine principle, and is inseparable from its one and absolute Meta-Spirit, as the sunbeam is inseparable from
sunlight. Buddhi (the spiritual soul) is only
its vehicle. Neither each separately, nor the two collectively, are of any more use to the
body of man, than sunlight and its beams are for a mass of granite buried in the earth, unless the divine Duad is assimilated by, and
reflected in, some consciousness. This
consciousness or mind is, Manas. (KT, Section
8, On Individuality And Personality)
VI.8 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. (SD I, p. xix)
VI.9
The human Ego is neither Atman nor
Buddhi, but the higher Manas: the intellectual
fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-conscious Egotismin the higher spiritual sense. The
ancient works refer to it as Karana Sarira on
the plane of Sutratma, which is the golden
thread on which, like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego are strung. (SD II, p. 79)
VI.10
[There are] two principles or aspects of Manas,
the higher and the lower; the former, the higher Manas, or the thinking, conscious EGO
gravitating toward the spiritual Soul (Buddhi); and the latter, or its instinctual
principle, attracted to Kama, the seat of
animal desires and passions in man. (KT, Section 7, On
the various "Principles" in Man)
VI.11
It is the Fifth and the Fourth principles Manas and
VI.12
Some of our Theosophists have got into the habit of using the words
Self and Ego as synonymous, of associating the term
Self with only man's higher individual or even personal Self or Ego, whereas this term ought never to be applied
except to the One universal Self. For even
Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is not the Self,
but the vehicle of Self.
To avoid henceforth such misapprehensions, I propose to
translate literally from the Occult Eastern terms their equivalents in English, and offer
these for future use.
The Higher Self is Atma the inseparable ray of the Universal and One Self. It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who
succeeds in saturating his inner Ego with it!
The Spiritual divine Ego is the Spiritual soul or Buddhi, in close union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no
EGO at all, but only the Atmic Vehicle.
The Inner, or Higher
Ego; is Manas, the
Fifth Principle, so called, independently of Buddhi. The Mind-Principle is
only the Spiritual Ego when merged into one with
Buddhi, no materialist being supposed to have in him such an Ego, however great his intellectual
capacities. It is the permanent Individuality
or the Re-incarnating Ego.
The Lower, or Personal Ego is the physical man in conjunction with his lower Self, i.e., animal instincts, passions, desires, etc. It is called the false personality, and consists of the lower Manas combined with Kama-rupa, and operating through the Physical body and its phantom or double.
The remaining Principle, Prana, or Life, is, strictly
speaking, the radiating force or Energy of Atma as the Universal Life and the One Self Its lower or rather (in its
effects) more physical, because manifesting, aspect. Prana or Life permeates the whole
being of the objective Universe; and is called a principle only because it is
an indispensable factor and the deus ex machina of
the living man. (KT, Section 9, Definite Words For
Definite Things)
VI.13 It is not the human body (sthulasarira) that is the grossest of all our principles, but verily the middle principle [kama], the real animal centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual theosophist will understand my real meaning. (SD I, p. 260)
VI.14
Kama depends on Prana, without which there would be no
VI.15 The Linga-Sarira, as often
said before, is the vehicle of Prana, and supports life in the Body. It is the reservoir
or sponge of life, gathering it up from all the natural kingdoms around, and it is the
intermediary between the kingdoms of Pranic and physical life. Life cannot pass
immediately and directly from the subjective to the objective, for nature passes gradually
from sphere to sphere, overleaping none. The Linga-Sarira serves as the intermediary
between Prana and Sthula-Sarira, drawing life from the
VI.16
Linga-Sarira is united to the physical Body by an umbilical cord, a material cord,
and cannot therefore travel very far from it. (CW 12, p. 705)
VI.17
Man has his double or shadow, properly
so called, around which the physical body of the foetusthe
future manis built. The imagination of the mother, or an accident which affects the
child, will affect also the astral body. (CW 10, p. 218)
VI.18 It is first in the womb, and then comes the germ that fructifies it, from the male parent. It is the subjective image of the man that is to be, the model of the physical body in which the child is to be formed and developed. It is then clothed with matter. Up to the age of seven, it forms and moulds the Body; after that age, the Body forms the Linga-Sarira. The Mind and the Linga-Sarira mutually act and react on each other, and so is prepared a mould for the next incarnation. It is the perfect picture of the man, good or bad, according to his own nature. (CW 12, pp. 704-5)
Section VII
The
Evolutionary ProcessThe Third Fundamental Proposition
VII.1
The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognizable Cause does
not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only exhibits
periodically different aspects of itself to the
perception of finite Minds. (SD II, p. 487)
a) The Cycle of Necessity
VII.2
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. (SD I, p. 43)
VII.3
Moreover, The Secret Doctrine teaches:
The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal
Over-Soul [Alaya], the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the
obligatory pilgrimage for every Soula spark of the formerthrough the Cycle of
Incarnation (or Necessity) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during
the whole term. (SD I, p.17)
VII.4
To accomplish the cycle of necessity, rather, explains the doctrine; to progress on
their task of evolution, from which task none of us can be freed, neither by death nor
suicide, for each of us have to pass through the
VII.5
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 [Alaya],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. (SD I, p. 17)
VII.6
[a] The Whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of
the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with its endless adaptations
is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to make
room for the strong, and which ensure the survival of the fittest, though so
cruel in their immediate actionall are working toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows
that what is called unconscious Nature is in reality an aggregate of forces
manipulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits,
(Dhyan Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the unmanifested Logos, and constitutes at one and the same time
the Mind of the Universe and its immutable Law. (SD I, pp. 277-8)
VII.7
Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what
he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness
gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms, before
the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man. Therefore, till then, the latter
cannot be referred to as Man,
but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever changing forms. (SD II, p. 42)
VII.8
[b] The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious
god,aye, even the highestthe Spiritual primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage.
And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the
mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those
Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth
Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed [see below]. Each Entity must have won for itself
the right of becoming divine, through self-experience. Hegel, the great German thinker,
must have known or sensed intuitionally this truth when saying, as he did, that the
Unconscious evolved the Universe only in the hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness, of becoming, in other words, Man. This explains also the hidden Kabalistic
meaning of the saying: The Breath becomes
a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit;
and the spirit, a god. (SD I, pp. 106-7)
VII.9
Every form on earth, and every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards
self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the Heavenly Man . . . Its (the atoms)
involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one
and the same objectman; man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this
earth; the Monad, in its absolute totality
and awakened conditionas the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth. (SD I,
p. 183)
VII.10
Eastern wisdom teaches that spirit has to pass through the ordeal of incarnation
and life, and be baptised with matter before it can reach experience and knowledge. After
which only it receives the baptism of soul, or self-consciousness, and may return to its
original condition of a god, plus experience,
ending with omniscience. In other words, it can return to the original state of
homogeneity of primordial essence only through the addition of the fruitage of Karma,
which alone is able to create an absolute conscious
deity, removed but one degree from the absolute All. (CW 8, p. 117)
VII.11
A Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane
of life as a full-blown angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find
itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make
room for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. (SD I, p. 221)
b) Rounds and Chains
VII.12
The one eternal Law unfolds
everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold principle; among the rest, the
countless circular chains of worlds, composed of seven globes, graduated on the four lower
planes of the world of formation (the three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe).
Out of these seven only one, the lowest and the most material of those globes,
is within our plane or means of perception, the six others lying outside of it and being
therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and
creation of another, lower, and dead chainits reincarnation, so to say. (SD I, p. 152)
Diagram II
The Earth Chain
Prakritic Planes
I The Divine and
II
Formless (Arupa)
IV Fohatic
V Jaivic
VI Astral
VII The Earth Physical
VII.13
[About] the doctrine of the septenary chains of worlds in the Solar Kosmos, the
teaching is briefly thus:
1. Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical
Universe is septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet, whether visible or
invisible, is credited with six companion globes (see diagram). The evolution of life
proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the A to the G in Seven Rounds or Seven Cycles.
2. These globes are formed by a process which the
Occultists call the rebirth of planetary chains (or rings). When the seventh
and last of one of such rings has been entered upon, the highest or first globe
A, followed by all the others down to the last, instead of entering upon a
certain time of restor obscuration, as in their previous
Roundsbegins to die out. The planetary dissolution (pralaya) is at hand, and its hour has struck; each
globe has to transfer its life and energy to another planet.
3. Our Earth, as the visible representative of its
invisible superior fellow globes, its lords or principles, has to
live, as have the others, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and
consolidates; during the fourth it settles and hardens during the last three it gradually
returns to its first ethereal form: it is spiritualised, so to say.
4. Its Humanity develops fully only in the
Fourthour present Round. Up to this fourth Life-Cycle, it is referred to as
humanity only for lack of a more appropriate term. Like the grub which become
chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes man, passes through all the
forms and kingdoms during the first Round and through all the human shapes during the two
following Rounds. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe on which it
lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of a Dhyan Chohanic Host.
(SD I, pp. 158-9)
VII.14
The student hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by the fourth
Globe and the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution. From the preceding diagrams, which
are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that
the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the Fourth
has no sister Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum
of the balance represented by the whole chain. It is the sphere of final
evolutionary adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the
balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of
its incarnations in the cycle. (SD I, p. 182)
VII.15
Thus, in the first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives,
i.e., formed into a spherehad no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold
brightness, nor form nor colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it
developed one Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became now in
our Round the fire we know throughout the system. The Earth was in her first rupa, the
essence of which is the Akâsic principle, that which is now known as, and very
erroneously termed, Astral Light.
The Second Round brings into manifestation the second
elementAIR, that element, the purity of which would ensure
continuous life to him who would use it. From the second Round,
Earthhitherto a ftus in the matrix of Spacebegan its real existence: it
had developed individual sentient life, its second principle. The second
corresponds to the sixth (principle); the second is life continuous,
the other, temporary.
The Third Round developed the third PrincipleWATER; while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhumi [the Earth] has reached her fourth principle. Earth will reach her true ultimate form(inversely in this to man)her body shellonly toward the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round. Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic statethe astral body of desires of Ahamkara, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane. . . . (SD I, pp. 259-60)
VII.16
Our Fourth Round is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, having
reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with every new
Race and with every fresh cycle. Then [in the earlier Rounds] it was the work of
formation; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection. (SD I, pp. 185-6)
VII.17
Every Round brings about a new development and even an entire change in
the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these principles
evoluting on an ever ascending scale. (SD I, p. 162)
VII.18
In each of the rounds he [man] makes one of the principles develop fully. In the
first round his consciousness on our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something
like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become
responsible in a degree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every
round his development keeps pace with the globe on which he is. (ML, No. 67)
VII.19
At the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself
as free from matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in
addition the experience and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their
evil and temptations. (SD II, pp. 180-1)
VII.20
The exoteric Brahmanical works give 4,320,000,000 years as the duration of a great
Kalpa, a Day of Brahma. This includes all the seven Rounds of our
Planetary Chain, i.e., the
period of human existence on different planets in different Rounds together, with what are
called Obscurations or the period of rest for humanity between two planets, in
its passage from the one to the other, after its seven Races are evolved on that planet
[see next Section]. It also includes the period of Sandhi
(twilight) which is equal to one Satya Yuga. If we take the above figure, as our basis,
according to certain mathematical series, explained further on, we obtain the following
results:
Years |
|
First Round |
154,285,714 |
Second Round |
308,571,428 |
Third Round |
462,857,142 |
Fourth Round |
617,142,856 |
Fifth Round |
771,428,570 |
Sixth Round |
925,714,284 |
Seventh Round |
1,079,999,998 |
Total |
4,319,999,992 |
We have thus 617,142,856 years as the period of our
Fourth Round. And as the Night of Brahma or period of Rest, is always equal to
the Day of Brahma or the period of activity on each planet, the period of
activity in this 4th Round equals308,571,428 years.
The following is the duration of humanity on each Planet
in our fourth Round, during the period of its
activity:
Years |
|
Planet A |
11,020,408 |
Planet B |
22,040,816 |
Planet C |
33,061,224 |
Planet D |
44,081,632 |
Planet E |
55,102,040 |
Planet F |
66,122,448 |
Planet G |
77,142,856 |
Total |
308,571,414 |
The reader will observe that in the above calculations we
have given the key to the understanding of these different periods. (CW 13, pp. 302-4)
c) Nirvana
VII.21
Ordinarily, a man is said to reach Nirvana when he evolutes into a Dhyan Chohan.
The condition of a Dhyan Chohan is attained in the ordinary course of Nature, after the
completion of the 7th Round in the present planetary chain. (CW 6, p. 248)
VII.22
The full remembrance of our lives (collective lives) will return back at the end of all the seven Rounds, at the threshold of the
long, long Nirvana that awaits us after we leave [the last] Globe. (ML, No. 93b)
VII.23
The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvana,
re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back
into action. (SD II, p. 80)
VII.24
Is this annihilation, as some think? To see in Nirvana annihilation amounts to
saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless
sleepone that leaves no impression on the
physical memory and brain, because the sleepers Higher Self is in its original state of absolute
consciousness during those hoursthat he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile
answers only to one side of the questionthe most material; since re-absorption is by no means such a
dreamless sleep, but, on the contrary, absolute
existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is
absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive
conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the soul, through
spiritual ideations of the divine monad. Nor is the individualitynor even the essence of the personality, if any be
left behindlost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitlessfrom a human
standpointthe paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the
same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still
higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The
human mind cannot in its present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach this plane
of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.
(SD I, p. 266)
VII.25
Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum,
the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvana[20].
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 Paramârtha, the Self-analysing consciousness (Svasamvedana)[21],
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 Paramârtha. (SD I, pp. 53-4)
VII.26
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. Up to the day of the Yogâchârya
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 sense, for it must give room to still further absolute perfection, according to a
higher standard of excellence in the following period of activity. (SD I, pp. 42-3)
Section VIII
Evolution
of Man The Triple Evolutionary Scheme
VIII.1
There exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme, for the formation of the three
periodical Upadhis [vehicles of consciousness];
or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably
interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the
intellectual, and the physical evolutions. These three are the finite aspects or the
reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of Atma,
the seventh, the One Reality.
1. The Monadic is, as the name implies, concerned with
the growth and development into still higher phases of activity of the Monad in
conjunction with:
2. The Intellectual, represented by the Manasa-Dhyanis
(the Solar Devas, or the Agnishwatta Pitris) the givers of intelligence and
consciousness to man, and:
3. The Physical, represented by the Chhayas of the lunar
Pitris, round which Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as
the vehicle for the growth (to use a misleading word) and the transformations
through Manas andowing to the accumulation of experiencesof the finite into
the Infinite, of the transient into the
Eternal and Absolute.
Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is
ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis or Logoi. Each is
represented in the constitution of man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is
the union of these three streams in him which makes him the complex being he now is. (SD
I, p. 181)
a) Evolution
of Monads
VIII.2 The Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being. The atom is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean (of matter) does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Monadic Essence begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the Vegetable Kingdom. (SD I, pp. 178-9)
VIII.3
The Monad or Jiva is, first of all, shot down by the law of Evolution into the
lowest form of matterthe mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased in the stone
(or that which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round), it creeps out of it,
say, as a lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is
termed animal matter, it has now reached the point in which it has become the germ, so to
speak, of the animal, that will become the physical man. All this, up to the Third Round,
is formless, as matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the Monad or Jiva per se cannot be even called spirit: it is a ray,
a breath of the Absolute, or the
Absoluteness rather, and the Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the
conditioned and relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the
material which will be needed for its future human form, the monad requires (a) a
spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and (b) an
intelligent consciousness to guide its evolution and progress, neither of which is
possessed by the homogeneous monad, or by senseless though living matter. (SD I, pp.
246-7)
VIII.4
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] (ML No. 68)
VIII.5
Buddhi becomes conscious by the
accretions it gets from Manas after every new incarnation and the death of man. (SD I, p.
244)
VIII.6
Unless the fruition, the spiritual aroma of the Manasor all these highest
aspirations and spiritual qualities and attributes that constitute the higher SELF of man,
become united to its monad, the latter becomes as Non-existent;
since it is in esse impersonal and per se Ego-less,
so to say, and gets its spiritual colouring or flavour of Ego-tism only from each Manas during incarnation and after it is
disembodied, and separated from all its lower principles. (CW 7, p. 180)
VIII.7
The human Monads are gradually formed and strengthened during their
incarnation-cycle by constant additions of individuality from the personalities in which
incarnates that androgynous, half-spiritual, half-terrestrial principle, called by the
Occultists the Manas (mind); that, in short, which uniting itself partially with the
Monad, incarnates in each new birth. In perfect unity with its (seventh) Principle, the
Spirit unalloyed, it is the divine Higher Self, as every student of Theosophy knows. After
every new incarnation Buddhi-Manas culls, so to say, the aroma of the flower called
personality, the purely earthly residue of whichits dregsis left to fade out
as a shadow. This is the most difficultbecause so transcendentally
metaphysicalportion of the doctrine. (CW 14, p. 49)
VIII.8
The difference between personality and individuality. The latter, to run
successfully its seven-fold downward and upward course, has to assimilate to itself the
eternal life-power residing but in the seventh and then blend the three (fourth, fifth and
seventh) [principles] into onethe sixth. Those who succeed in doing so become
Buddhas, Dhyan Chohans, etc. The chief object of our struggles and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on
this earth. (ML, No. 44)
VIII.9 When Buddhi absorbs our Ego-tism (destroys it) Nirvana, or Mukti, is reached, Mukti being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from the trammels of Maya or illusion. (SD I, p. xix)
b) Root-Races and Physical Evolution
VIII.10 Every
life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth) is composed of seven root-races [of Human Beings]. They
commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and
moral evolutionfrom the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a
planetary round from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh; the other, the
globe round, or the terrestrial).
(SD I, p. 160)
VIII.11 Neither
the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that
it commenced becoming, i.e.,
objectivising into its present materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and
supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in the Eternity as
astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the Spiritual Beings (or Gods)
whose duty it was to bring them into objective being and terrestrial Life, evolved the
protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from their own essence. After which, when this human Upadhi, or basic mould was ready, the natural
terrestrial Forces began to work on those supersensuous moulds. (SD I, p. 282)
VIII.12 The first root-race, i.e., the first men on earth (irrespective of form) were the progeny of the celestial men, called rightly in Indian philosophy the Lunar Ancestors or the Pitris, of which there are seven classes or Hierarchies. (SD I, p. 160)
VIII.13 Seven
Lords created Seven [kind of] men [during the First Race]; three Lords (Dhyan Chohans or
Pitris) were holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion . . . The chhayas
(phantoms) of the Fathers were as they.
This accounts for the differences in human nature, which
is divided into seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to
be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain
on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. (SD
II, p. 212)
VIII.14 The group of the hierarchy which is commissioned to create
[physical] men is a special group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle. But as
it is the Sixth [Hierarchy] on the downward scale of Spiritualitythe last and
seventh being the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and
condense his physical bodythis Sixth group evolves no more than the future
mans shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. (SD I, p. 233)
VIII.15 The
first Dhyanis, commissioned to create man in their image, could only throw off
their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (SD I,
p. 225)
VIII.16 [This
birth was called] Chhaya-birth, that primeval
mode of sexless procreation, the first Race
having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of
the Pitris. (SD I, p. 174)
VIII.17 The
First Race are the (astral) shadows of their Progenitors [Pitris Barishads]. The body was
devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). (SD II, p. 164)
VIII.18 Mankind
in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris);
in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the
Ancestors, the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral,
psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings [See
Evolution of Manas]. (SD I, p. 224)
VIII.19 It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The Lunar Monads or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the Monads who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the chain of planets, evolve the human form as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they ooze out their astral doubles from the ape-like forms which they had evolved in Round III. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These Monads or divine sparks are thus the Lunar ancestors, the Pitris themselves.
VIII.20 Man
in the First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being, non-intelligent but
super-spiritual. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races . . . he grows more and
more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal. He is
sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential
with his coarser surroundings.
[Second Race]. He (Man) is still gigantic and ethereal
but growing firmer and more condensed in body, a more physical man. Yet still less
intelligent than spiritual, for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the
physical frame.
[Third Race]. He has now a perfectly concrete or
compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather
cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his
primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality. In the last
half of the Third [Race] his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture,
and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva. (SD I, p. 188)
VIII.21 It
is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity
became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs began to
give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first,
to Beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and
women. (SD II, p. 132)
VIII.22 After
the Third Race (the Lemurians) Men decreased considerably in stature, and
the duration of their lives was diminished. (SD II, p. 331)
VIII.23 [Fourth
Race]. Intellect has an enormous development. The (hitherto) dumb races acquire our
(present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is
perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth Round (as of the
Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes the axial point of the minor Manvantara
cycle . . . the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual
decrease. (SD I, p. 189)
VIII.24 After
this central turning-point has been passed in the Great Cycle,i.e., after the
middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globeno more Monads can
enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle and the balance struck. (SD I,
p. 182)
VIII.25 Now,
we at present living on this earththe great bulk of humanity, that is to say, for
there are exceptional cases to be considered laterare now going through the fifth
race of our present fourth round. And yet the evolution of that fifth race began about a
million of years ago. (EB, p. 58)
VIII.26 There
are seven Rounds in every manvantara; this one is the Fourth, and we are
in the Fifth Root-Race, at present. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races. Our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existenceas
a race sui generis and quite free from its parent stemabout 1,000,000 years. (SD II, pp. 434-5)
VIII.27 The
Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it
slower than its new successor, still changing in stature, general physique, and mentality,
just as the Fourth overlapped our Aryan race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth
and seventh sub-races [of the Fifth].
VIII.28 Duration
of each Race in our Round on our Planet.
Years |
|
First Race |
1,574,344 |
Second Race |
3,148,688 |
Third Race |
4,723,032 |
Fourth Race |
6,297,376 |
Fifth Race |
7,871,720 |
Sixth Race |
9,446,064 |
Seventh Race |
11,020,408 |
Total |
44,081,632 |
(CW 13, pp. 304)
VIII.29 In
our present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the Fourth is still strong in
us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing
decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive third
Root-Race in Spirituality. The tabernacles have improved in texture and
symmetry of form, growing and developing with the globe that bore them; but the physical
improvement took place at the expense of the spiritual inner man and nature. The three
middle principles in earth and man became with every race more material; the Soul stepping
back to make room for the physical intellect; the essence of elements becoming the
material and composite elements now known. (SD I, pp. 224-5)
VIII.30 As
we are in the manasa period of our cycle of
races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore, crossed the meridian point of the perfect
adjustment of Spirit and Matteror that equilibrium between brain intellect and
Spiritual perception. Our race then has, as a Root-race, crossed the equatorial line and
is cycling onward on the Spiritual side; but some of our sub-races still find themselves
on the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles; while others
againthe oldesthaving crossed their crucial point, which alone decides whether
a race, a nation, or a tribe will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development
as sub-races. (SD II, pp. 300-1)
VIII.31 One
important point has, however, to be borne in mind. We are only in the Fourth Round, and it
is in the Fifth [Round] that the full development of Manas, as
a direct ray from the Universal Mahata
ray unimpeded by matterwill be finally reached. (SD II, pp. 300-1)
VIII.32 There
was a day when all that which in our modern times is regarded as phenomenasuch as
thought transference, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; in short, all that which is
called now wonderful and abnormalall that and much more belonged to the
senses and faculties common to all humanity. We are, however, cycling back and cycling
forward; i.e., having lost in spirituality that
which we acquired in physical development until almost the end of the Fourth Race, we
(mankind) are as gradually and imperceptibly losing now in the physical all that we regain
once more in the spiritual re-evolution. This
process must go on until the period which will bring the Sixth Root-Race on a parallel
line with the spirituality of the Second, long extinct mankind. (SD I, pp. 536-7)
VIII.33 Those
persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to
the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the average man will be in the
Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find itself, on this scale of Evolution,
immensely higher than is our present humanity. Similarly Gautama BuddhaWisdom
incarnatewas still higher and greater than all the men we have mentioned, who are
called Fifth Rounders, while Buddha and Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders,
allegorically. (SD I, p. 162)
VIII.34 After
all that is understandable. Disciples and Brothers and Adepts cannot be people of the
every day Fifth Sub-Race, for the race is a state of evolution. (R. Bowen, HST, p. 7)
VIII.35 We
men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our
fourth round humanity, while the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round, though
only in their first race (or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are
spiritually if not intellectually; since with the completion or full development of this
fifth principle (intellectual soul) they have come nearer than we have, are closer in
contact with their sixth principle Buddhi. (ML, No. 67)
VIII.36 The
mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second,
third, fourth, fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and
constant reincarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyan Chohans of our Planetary
chain. (SD II, fn., p. 146)
c) Evolution of Manas
VIII.37 Into
the forms projected by the Lha (Pitris) the two letters (the Monad, called also the
Double Dragon) descend from the spheres of expectation. But they are like a
roof with no walls, nor pillars to rest upon. For the Double Dragon has no
hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive
and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is no agent of transmission (Manas,
Mind) and the form knows it not. (SD II, p. 57)
VIII.38 The
body [of the First Race] was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will).
The inner being (the higher self or Monad), though within the earthly frame, was
unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet. (SD II, p. 164)
VIII.39 Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaidedshe can only create senseless forms (SD I, p. 181)
VIII.40 To
complete the septenary man, to add to his three
lower principles and cement them with the spiritual Monadwhich could never dwell in
such a form otherwise than in an absolutely latent
statetwo connecting principles are needed: Manas and
VIII.41 Up
to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It
is only in the actual midway Round that he
develops in himself entirely the fourth principle [
VIII.42 The
two higher principles can have no individuality on
Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false personality, or the body of egotistical
desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a pivot (which it is, truly),
to the physical form of man. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a Newton grafted on that of
the greatest saint on earthin a physical body the most perfect you can think
ofi.e., in a two or even a three-principled body
composed of its Sthula Sarira, prana (life principle), and linga sariraand, if it lacks its middle and
fifth principles [kama and manas], you will have created an idiotat best a beautiful, soul-less,
empty and unconscious appearance. (SD II, pp. 241-2)
VIII.43 That
divine man [the Monad] dwelt in his
animalthough externally humanform; and, if there was instinct in him, no
self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent fifth principle [until]
when, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him the spark of
consciousness. (SD I, p. 210)
VIII.44 It
becomes the task of the fifth Hierarchy to inform the empty and ethereal animal form and
make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be
said to the general public. (SD I, p. 233)
VIII.45 The
Adam of dust [the physical man] requires the Soul
of Life to be breathed into him: the two middle principles, which are the sentient life of the irrational animal [
VIII.46 The
Third Racethe Root-Race which separated into sexes, and which was the first to be
endowed with reason. (SD II, p. 248)
VIII.47 The
Sons of Wisdom [Dhyanis], ready for re-birth, came down. They saw the (intellectually) vile forms of the first Third
[Race, still under-undeveloped human forms]. We can choose, said the Lords,
We have Wisdom. [i] Some entered the Chhayas [the empty human
forms]. Those who entered became Arhats. [ii] Some projected a spark. From their own rupa
they filled the
VIII.48 The
Sons of Wisdom, or the spiritual Dhyanis had
already reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect which
enabled them to become independent and self-conscious entities, on this plane of matter. They were
Essences, Intelligences, and conscious spirits; entities seeking to become
still more conscious by uniting with more developed matter. Their Egos, or Manas (since they are called Manasaputra, born of Mahat, or
Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning
ascending cycle.
Thus, those [human forms] who were half
ready, who received but a spark, constitute the average humanity which
has to acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution. While those
which were not ready at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from
their last transitional and lower animal forms, remained the narrow-brained of
the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the
various races of menthe savage Bushman and the Europeaneven now. Those tribes
of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not
the unjustly disinherited, or the unfavoured,
as some may thinknothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which were not ready: which have to evolve during the
present Round. (SD II, pp. 167-8)
VIII.49 The
Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the
human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark
that vivifies the human animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life eternal. (SD II, p.
103)
VIII.50 That
which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man
towards perfection, is (a) the Monad, or
that which acts in it unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower
astral body or the personal Self. The Monad is all-potent on the Arupa, or formless plane. On our plane, its
essence being too pure, it remains all-potential. Unless the higher Self or Ego gravitates towards its Sunthe
Monadthe lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every
case. (SD II, pp. 109-110)
VIII.51 The
body follows the whims, good or bad, of Manas;
Manas tries to follow the light of Buddhi, but often fails. (SD I, p. 245)
VIII.52 The
Astral through
VIII.53 The
Spiritual Ego [Buddhi-Manas], is eternally reincarnating under the influence of its lower
personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. Unless the Ego takes
refuge in the Atman, the All-Spirit, and
merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end.
This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the
mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple linesspiritual, psychic and physical.
(SD II, p. 109)
VIII.54 The
Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e.,
it enlightens it with the ray of divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man,
or the reincarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and
a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the
progenitors, the lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races,
and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards
perfectionthis, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality. Then, from the
turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating principle, the nous or Mind,
which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the
latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes
it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the
personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its
power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal,
unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolutionat least they
ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now,
civilized nations having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of
the second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon. (SD
II, p. 110)
VIII.55 Man,
being a compound of the essences of all those celestial Hierarchies may succeed in making
himself, as such, superior, in one sense, to any hierarchy or class, or even combination
of them. By paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the full knowledge
of the non-separateness of his higher Self from the One absolute Self, man can, even during his terrestrial life,
become as One of Us. Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge which
dispels ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim or the Dhyanis; and once on their plane the Spirit of Solidarity and perfect
Harmony, which reigns in every Hierarchy, must extend over him and protect him in every
particular. (SD I, p. 276)
d) An Endless Evolution
VIII.56 The Lunar Spirits have to
become Men in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of
activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Manasa-Putras, those who
endow the senseless shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with
mind in the latter part of the Third Root-Race.
In the same
way the Monads or Egos of the men of the seventh Round of our Earth, after our
own Globes A, B, C, D, et seq., parting with their life-energy, will have
informed and thereby called to life other laya-centres destined to live and act on a still
higher plane of beingin the same way will the Terrene Ancestors create
those who will become their superiors. (SD I, pp. 180-1)
VIII.57 Ordinarily, a man is said to reach
Nirvana when he evolutes into a Dhyan Chohan. The condition of a Dhyan Chohan is attained
in the ordinary course of Nature, after the completion of the 7th Round in the
present planetary chain. After becoming a Dhyan Chohan, a man does not, according to the
Law of Nature, incarnate in any of the other planetary chains of this Solar system. The
whole Solar system is his home. He continues to discharge his duties in the Government of
this Solar system until the time of Solar Pralaya, when his monad, after a period of rest,
will have to overshadow in another Solar system a particular human being during his
successive incarnations, and attach itself to his higher principles when he becomes a
Dhyan Chohan in his turn. There is progressive spiritual development in the innumerable
Solar systems of the infinite cosmos. Until the time of Cosmic Pralaya, the Monad will
continue to act in the manner above indicated, and it is only during the inconceivable
period of cosmic sleep which follows the present period of activity, that the highest
condition of Nirvana is realized. (CW 6, pp. 248-9)
VIII.58 The Secret Doctrine says that the
Dhyani-Buddhas of the two higher groups, namely, the Watchers or the
Architects, furnished the many and various races with divine kings and
leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who
revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their vehicles of the lower
Kingdomsand who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine
originthe great spiritual truths of the transcendental worlds.
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended
on Earth and reigned over menwho are
themselves. The reigning kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other
worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future manvantaras they will have risen to higher
systems than our planetary world; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the
hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The
next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors
and guides of a mankind whose Monads may now yet be imprisonedsemi-consciousin
the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be
animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world. (SD I, p. 267)
[1] The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your philosophers name innate ideas. (ML, No. 18)
[2] The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space; the primordial substance erroneously identified with Ether. But it is to Ether what Spirit is to Matter (TG, p. 13)
[3] The motion here spoken of, is, of course, not the motion of physical science, but the underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of this material manifestationthe things in themselves, which the mind cannot grasp. (SD I, pp. 69-70)
[4]
In
reality there is only one force, which on the manifested plane appears to us in millions
and millions of forms. As said, all proceeds from the one universal primordial fire, and
electricity is on our plane one of the most comprehensive aspects of this fire. All
contains, and is, electricity, from the nettle which stings to the lightning which kills,
from the spark in the pebble to the blood in the body. But the electricity which is seen,
for instance, in an electric lamp is quite another thing from Fohat. (CW 10, p. 379)
[5]
At
least for him who believes in an uninterrupted succession of creations, which
we call the days and nights of Brahmâ, or the manvantaras and the pralayas
(dissolutions)
[6]
Pradhâna
(
[7]
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. Only those who realise how far Intuition soars
above the tardy processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of
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.
[8]
It is unconsciousness
only to our finite consciousness. Verily may we paraphrase verse V, in the 1st chapter of
[9]
Pilgrim
is the appellation given to our Monad during
its cycle of incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal principle in us, being an
indivisible part of the integral wholethe Universal spirit, from which it emanates,
and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle.
[10]
The
centripetal and the centrifugal forces, which are male and female, positive and negative,
physical and spiritual, the two being the one Primordial
Force.
[11] Occultism teaches that no form can be given to anything, either by nature or by man, whose ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane. More than this; that no such form or shape can possibly enter mans consciousness, or evolve in his imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation.
[12] One referring to the active periods of the Universe, the other to its times of relative and complete restaccording to whether they occur at the end of a Day, or an Age (a life) of Brahmâ [see below]. (SD I, p. 368)
[13] When man has identified himself with the One Absolutea synonym of Nirvâna (TG, Nitya Pralaya, p. 233). It is the identification of the embodied with the incorporeal Supreme spiritMahatmic state, whether temporary or until the following Maha Kalpa. (SD II, fn., p. 309)
[14] Where is that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a consiousness of their own. All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension. (SD I, p. 277)
[15]
Such
matter is homogeneous only for those who are on the same plane of perception; so that if
the Protyle of modern science is ever discovered, it will be homogeneous only to us. (CW
10, p. 306)
[16]
The
three higher planes being inaccessible to human intellect as developed at present.
[17] When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are. . . but enter into thine inner chamber and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. Matt. vi.), Our Father is within us in Secret, our 7th principle, in the inner chamber of our Soul perception. The Kingdom of Heaven and of God is within us says Jesus, not outside.
[18] [In later theosophical literature this is usually named Etheric double]
[19] [In later theosophical literature this is usually named Astral Body or Emotional Body]
[20] Absolute Non-Being, which is equivalent to absolute Being or Be-ness, the state reached by the human Monad at end of the great cycle. (TG, pp. 249-50)
[21] Paramârtha is self-consciousness in Sanskrit; Svasamvedana, or the self-analysing reflection. (SD I, p. 48)