THE SECRET DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
by H. P. BLAVATSKY
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
---------------------
SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES
FROM THE
SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page 26]]
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death -- yet there was nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound -- an ocean without light --
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
. . . . . . . .
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being --
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation came,
Whether Its will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it -- or perchance even He knows not."
"Gazing into eternity . . .
Ere the foundations of the earth were laid,
. . . . .
Thou wert. And when the subterranean flame
Shall burst its prison and devour the frame . . .
Thou shalt be still as Thou wert before
And knew no change, when time shall be no more.
Oh! endless thought, divine ETERNITY."
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 27 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
STANZA I.
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE
ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE
BOSOM OF DURATION.
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO
AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE
GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR
FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED
YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD
CEASED TO BE, AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY,
WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY
THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH;
THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL
NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED
BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED
UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS
SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN
THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA
AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA?
Commentary:
STANZA I.
1. "THE ETERNAL PARENT
(Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN
FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent Space" is the eternal, ever present cause of all -- the
incomprehensible DEITY, whose "invisible robes" are the mystic root of
all matter, and of the Universe. Space is the one eternal thing
that we can most easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and
uninfluenced by either the presence or absence in it of an objective
Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and self-existent.
Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT, the
causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the
esoteric catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but
both. It was and ever will be. (See Proem pp. 2 et seq.)
Thus, the "Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic
Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of
matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense.
Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in
visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit.
The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial
substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every
phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from
which Akasa radiates.
(a) By the Seven "Eternities," aeons or periods are
meant. The word "Eternity," as understood in Christian theology, has no
meaning to the Asiatic ear, except in its application to the ONE
existence; nor is
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 36 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the term sempiternity, the eternal only in futurity, anything better
than a misnomer.* Such words do not and cannot exist in philosophical
metaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of ecclesiastical
Christianity. The Seven Eternities meant are the seven periods, or a
period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara,
and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or the "Great Age" -- 100 years of
Brahma -- making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each year of
Brahma being composed of 360 "days," and of the same number of "nights"
of Brahma (reckoning by the Chandrayana or lunar year); and a "Day of
Brahma" consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These "Eternities"
belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in order to arrive at
the true total, every figure must be 7x (7 to the power of
x); x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the
subjective or real world; and every figure or number relating to, or
representing all the different cycles from the greatest to the smallest
-- in the objective or unreal world -- must necessarily be multiples of
seven. The key to this cannot be given, for herein lies the mystery of
esoteric calculations, and for the purposes of ordinary calculation it
has no sense. "The number seven," says the Kabala, "is the great number
of the Divine Mysteries;" number ten is that of all human knowledge
(Pythagorean decade); 1,000 is the number ten to the third power, and
therefore the number 7,000 is also symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine
the figure and number 4 are the male symbol only on the highest plane of
abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the masculine and the 4 the
female: the upright and the horizontal in the fourth stage of symbolism,
when the symbols became the glyphs of the generative powers on the
physical plane.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE
BOSOM OF DURATION (a).
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is stated in Book II., ch. viii., of Vishnu Purana: "By
immortality is meant existence to the end of the Kalpa;" and Wilson, the
translator, remarks in a footnote: "This, according to the Vedas, is all
that is to be understood of the immortality (or eternity) of the gods;
they perish at the end of universal dissolution (or Pralaya)." And
Esoteric philosophy says: They "perish" not, but are re-absorbed.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 37 TIME AND UNIVERSAL MIND.
(a) Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of
our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and
it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion
can be produced; but "lies asleep." The present is only a mathematical
line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the
future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real
duration, for nothing remains without change -- or the same -- for the
billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality
of the division of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring
of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our
senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we
call the future, to the region of memories that we name the past. In the
same way we experience a sensation of duration in the case of the
instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing
impression on the retina. The real person or thing does not consist
solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is composed of the
sum of all its various and changing conditions from its appearance in
the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It is these
"sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the "future," and pass by
degrees through matter, to exist for eternity in the "past." No one
could say that a bar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence
as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered the water, and
that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof which
at any given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that
separates, and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean.
Even so of persons and things, which, dropping out of the to-be into the
has-been, out of the future into the past -- present momentarily to our
senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass
through time and space (as matter) on their way from one eternity to
another: and these two constitute that "duration" in which alone
anything has true existence, were our senses but able to cognize it
there.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
3. . . . UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE
WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN (hence to
manifest) IT (a).
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 38 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of
Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will, and Feeling. During deep
sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance;
thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through which
the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has
temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on
any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an
appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the long night of rest called
Pralaya, when all the existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL
MIND" remains as a permanent possibility of mental
action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which mind is the
concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI
(Dhyan-Chohans) are the collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the
Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews
-- who are the vehicle for the manifestation of the divine or universal
thought and will. They are the Intelligent Forces that give to and enact
in Nature her "laws," while themselves acting according to laws imposed
upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they are not
"the personifications" of the powers of Nature, as erroneously thought.
This hierarchy of spiritual Beings, through which the Universal Mind
comes into action, is like an army -- a "Host," truly -- by means of
which the fighting power of a nation manifests itself, and which is
composed of army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and so forth,
each with its separate individuality or life, and its limited freedom of
action and limited responsibilities; each contained in a larger
individuality, to which its own interests are subservient, and each
containing lesser individualities in itself.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha* or Nirvana) WERE
NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY
(Nidana** and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
ENSNARED BY THEM (b).
(a) There are seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of
Non-Exist-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*Nippang in China; Neibban in Burmah; or Moksha in India.
** The "12" Nidanas (in Tibetan Ten-brel chug-nyi) the chief causes
of existence, effects generated by a concatenation of causes produced
(see Comment. II).
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 39 THE CAUSES OF BEING.
ence, which is absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They
were not, because the Universe was, so far, empty, and existed only in
the Divine Thought. For it is . . .
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of being. Each is the
effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its
successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based on the four truths,
a doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana System.* They
belong to the theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit
and demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is based upon
the great truth that re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in
this world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain; Death
itself being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the
door through which he passes to another life on earth after a little
rest on its threshold -- Devachan. The Hinayana System, or School of the
"Little Vehicle," is of very ancient growth; while the Mahayana is of a
later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet the
tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such
schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the
latter, that of the "Great Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in
reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic
expression, both "vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the
sufferings of rebirths and even the false bliss of Devachan, by
obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can dispel the Fruits of
Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things,
for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute,
reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any
observer depends upon his power of cognition. To the untrained eye of
the savage, a painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and
daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a
landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence
which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences
belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are,
in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a
colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser
is also a reflection, and the things cognised are therefore as real to
him as himself. Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in
them
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Wassilief on Buddhism, pp. 97-950.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 40 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (a),
FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT
AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL* AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON (b).
(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son," says an
old Eastern proverb. Light is inconceivable except as coming from some
source which is the cause of it; and as, in the instance of primordial
light, that source is unknown, though as strongly demanded by reason and
logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by us, from an intellectual
point of view. As to borrowed or secondary light, whatever its source,
it can be but of a temporary mayavic character. Darkness, then, is the
eternal
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* That which is called "wheel" is the symbolical expression for a
world or globe, which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth
was a revolving globe, not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers
taught. The "Great Wheel" is the whole duration of our Cycle of being,
or Maha Kalpa, i.e., the whole revolution of our special chain
of seven planets or Spheres from beginning to end; the "Small Wheels"
meaning the Rounds, of which there are also Seven.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 41 WHAT IS DARKNESS IN PHILOSOPHY?
matrix in which the sources of light appear and disappear. Nothing is
added to darkness to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness,
on this our plane. They are interchangeable, and scientifically light is
but a mode of darkness and vice versa. Yet both are phenomena
of the same noumenon -- which is absolute darkness to the scientific
mind, and but a gray twilight to the perception of the average mystic,
though to that of the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute
light. How far we discern the light that shines in darkness depends upon
our powers of vision. What is light to us is darkness to certain
insects, and the eye of the clairvoyant sees illumination where the
normal eye perceives only blackness. When the whole universe was plunged
in sleep -- had returned to its one primordial element -- there was
neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light, and darkness
necessarily filled the boundless all.
(b) The Father-Mother are the male and female
principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all
things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less
allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son.
They are "once more One" when in "The Night of Brahma," during Pralaya,
all in the objective Universe has returned to its one primal and eternal
cause, to reappear at the following Dawn -- as it does periodically.
"Karana" -- eternal cause -- was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana
is alone during the "Nights of Brahma." The previous objective Universe
has dissolved into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say,
held in solution in space, to differentiate again and crystallize out
anew at the following Manvantaric dawn, which is the commencement of a
new "Day" or new activity of Brahma -- the symbol of the Universe. In
esoteric parlance, Brahma is Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body
at once; each personage being symbolical of an attribute, and each
attribute or quality being a graduated efflux of Divine Breath in its
cyclic differentiation, involutionary and evolutionary. In the
cosmicophysical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary chain and the
earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary Spirit, and
Man -- the Son of the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a
manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth during the
"wheels," or the Manvantaras. -- (See Part II. §: "Days and
Nights of Brahma.")
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 42 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA I. -- Continued.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE
SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE (a),
AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN
PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute perfection,
Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grub) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND
YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c).
(a) The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits,
the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same
hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others
belong, in the Christian theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance,
is allowed in dogmatic Latin theology to watch over all the promontories
and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over
one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They
are, moreover, said to send their Bhodisatvas, the human correspondents
of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom vide infra) during
every Round and Race. Out of the Seven Truths and Revelations, or rather
revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are still in
the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas, so far.
This is a very complicated question, and will receive more ample
treatment later on.
So far "There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas" -- say the Hindus
and Buddhists. For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity
of Four Gospels. But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must
have its revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth,
the following the Sixth, and so on.
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the
absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of a
great period of activity, or Maha-Manvantara, and in which they rest
during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it is called
Yong-Grub. Up to the day of the Yogacharya school the true nature of
Paranirvana was taught publicly, but since then it has become entirely
esoteric; hence so many contradictory interpretations of it. It is only
a true Idealist who can understand it. Everything has to be viewed as
ideal, with the exception of Paranirvana, by him who would comprehend
that state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non Ego, Voidness, and
Darkness are Three in One and alone Self-existent and perfect. It is
absolute, however, only in a relative
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 43 MOTIONS, THE "GREAT BREATH."
sense, for it must give room to still further absolute perfection,
according to a higher standard of excellence in the following period of
activity -- just as a perfect flower must cease to be a perfect flower
and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, -- if a somewhat Irish
mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of
everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has
neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only
one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity,"
because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing
in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a
cause as regards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an
outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal,
and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute --
Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When the "Great Breath"
is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the
breathing of the Unknowable Deity -- the One Existence -- which breathes
out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. (See "Isis
Unveiled.") So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired again the
Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great Mother," who then
sleeps "wrapped in her invisible robes."
(c) By "that which is and yet is not" is meant the
Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as absolute existence,
but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of existence that we
can distinguish from Non-existence. The three periods -- the Present,
the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric philosophy a compound
time; for the three are a composite number only in relation to the
phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity.
As said in the Scriptures: "The Past time is the Present time, as also
the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is";
according to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika teaching, whose dogmas
have been known ever since it broke away from the purely esoteric
schools.* Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are all derived from
our
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Dzungarian "Mani Kumbum," the "Book of the 10,000 Precepts."
Also consult Wassilief's "Der Buddhismus," pp. 327 and 357, etc.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 44 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
sensations according to the laws of Association. Inextricably bound
up with the relativity of human knowledge, they nevertheless can have no
existence except in the experience of the individual ego, and perish
when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of phenomenal existence.
What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our states
of consciousness? In the words of a Master, "I feel irritated at having
to use these three clumsy words -- Past, Present, and Future --
miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they
are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving."
One has to acquire Paramartha lest one should become too easy a
prey to Samvriti -- is a philosophical axiom.*
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH (a);
THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL
NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical
causes known to science, but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which
is the desire to exist, an outcome of Nidana and Maya. This desire for a
sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is
a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence,
into a law that the Universe should exist. According to esoteric
teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of all existence,
remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most complete
abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity be
postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself
to the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and
subordinate powers of Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been
worshipped as God and gods by the common herd of every age. It is
impossible to conceive anything without a cause; the attempt to do so
makes the mind a blank.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In clearer words: "One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in
order to understand Samvriti, or the 'origin of delusion.'"
Paramartha is the synonym of the Sanskrit term Svasam-vedana,
or "the reflection which analyses itself." There is a difference in
the interpretation of the meaning of "Paramartha"
between the Yogacharyas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however,
explain the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See further,
sloka No. 9.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 45 BEING AND NON-BEING.
This is virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last
when we try to trace back the chain of causes and effects, but both
science and religion jump to this condition of blankness much more
quickly than is necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical abstractions
which are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions. These
abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of
existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the material
Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics,
analogous to that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the
water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being, which is the One
Being, will appear a paradox to anyone who does not remember that we
limit our ideas of being to our present consciousness of existence;
making it a specific, instead of a generic term. An unborn infant, could
it think in our acceptation of that term, would necessarily limit its
conception of being, in a similar manner, to the intrauterine life which
alone it knows; and were it to endeavour to express to its consciousness
the idea of life after birth (death to it), it would, in the absence of
data to go upon, and of faculties to comprehend such data, probably
express that life as "Non-Being which is Real Being." In our case the
One Being is the noumenon of all the noumena which we know must underlie
phenomena, and give them whatever shadow of reality they possess, but
which we have not the senses or the intellect to cognize at present. The
impalpable atoms of gold scattered through the substance of a ton of
auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the naked eye of the miner,
yet he knows that they are not only present there but that they alone
give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the gold to
the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the
phenomenon. But the miner knows what the gold will look like when
extracted from the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form no
conception of the reality of things separated from the Maya which veils
them, and in which they are hidden. Alone the Initiate, rich with the
lore acquired by numberless generations of his predecessors, directs the
"Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of things in which no Maya can have
any influence. It is here that the teachings of esoteric philosophy in
relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of the greatest
importance; but they are secret.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 46 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA I. -- Continued.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED
BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (a); AND
LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE
WHICH IS SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE"*
OF THE DANGMA (b).**
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the
archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for apparently widely different
things -- heterogeneity developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now
searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for their
protyle, while science is looking for the force of which electricity,
magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret
Doctrine carries this idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates
a "One Form of Existence" as the basis and source of all things. But
perhaps the phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not altogether
correct. The Sanskrit word is Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather
plane, whence emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution
of all things," says a commentator. It is not the "Mother of the World,"
as translated by Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); for Jagad Yoni (as
shown by FitzEdward Hall) is scarcely so much "the Mother of the World"
or "the Womb of the World" as the "Material Cause of the Universe." The
Puranic Commentators explain it by Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric
philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause. It is, in its
secondary stage, the Svabhavat of the Buddhist philosopher, the eternal
cause and effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self-existent plastic
Essence and the root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the
Vedantin views his Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti, the one under two
aspects. It seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars
speculating on the possibility of the Vedanta, and the Uttara-Mimansa
especially, having been "evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists,"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In India it is called "The Eye of Siva," but beyond the great range
it is known as "Dangma's opened eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the
highest adept, or rather a Mahatma so-called. His "opened eye" is the
inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through
it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, i.e., the
power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual
intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable.
This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye," which
mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men. Fuller
explanations will be found in Book II.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 47 THE EYE OF DANGMA.
whereas, it is on the contrary Buddhism (of Gautama, the Buddha) that
was "evoked" and entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine,
of which a partial sketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the
Upanishads are made to rest.* The above, according to the teachings of
Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable.
(b) Dreamless sleep is one of the seven states of
consciousness known in Oriental esotericism. In each of these states a
different portion of the mind comes into action; or as a Vedantin would
express it, the individual is conscious in a different plane of his
being. The term "dreamless sleep," in this case is applied allegorically
to the Universe to express a condition somewhat analogous to that state
of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in a waking state,
seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerised subject seems to him
an unconscious blank when he returns to his normal condition, although
he has been talking and acting as a conscious individual would.
-------
STANZA I. -- Continued.
9. BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN
THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as
the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA
(a) (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute
Non-Being and Unconsciousness) AND THE GREAT
WHEEL WAS ANUPADAKA (b)?
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And yet, one, claiming authority, namely, Sir Monier
Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied this
fact. This is what he taught his audience, on June the 4th, 1888, in his
annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain:
"Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism .
. . to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult,
no esoteric system of doctrine . . . withheld from
ordinary men" (!!) And, again: " . . . When Gautama Buddha began his
career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been
little known." And then, contradicting himself, the learned lecturer
forthwith informs his audience that "We learn from Lalita-Vistara
that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and
austerity were common in Gautama's time." (!!) But the lecturer seems
quite unaware that this kind of torture and self-maceration is precisely
the lower form of Yoga, Hatha Yoga, which was "little
known" and yet so "common" in Gautama's time.
** It is even argued that all the Six Darsanas (Schools of
philosophy) show traces of Buddha's influence, being either taken from
Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See Weber, Max Muller, etc.) We
labour under the impression that Colebrooke, "the highest authority" in
such matters, had long ago settled the question by showing, that "the
Hindus were in this instance the teachers, not the learners."
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 48 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
(a) Here we have before us the subject of centuries of
scholastic disputations. The two terms "Alaya" and "Paramartha" have
been the causes of dividing schools and splitting the truth into more
different aspects than any other mystic terms. Alaya is literally the
"Soul of the World" or Anima Mundi, the "Over-Soul" of Emerson, and
according to esoteric teaching it changes periodically its nature.
Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its inner essence on the planes
which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods (Dhyani Buddhas),
alters during the active life-period with respect to the lower planes,
ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are one with
Alaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic
meditation) "is able to merge his soul with it" (Aryasanga, the
Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition next to it.
Hence the disagreement. Thus, while the Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana
school) say that Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet
Alaya (Nyingpo and Tsang in Tibetan) is the basis of
every visible and invisible thing, and that, though it is eternal and
immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object of the
Universe "like the moon in clear tranquil water"; other schools dispute
the statement. The same for Paramartha: the Yogacharyas interpret the
term as that which is also dependent upon other things (paratantra);
and the Madhyamikas say that Paramartha is limited to Paranishpanna
or absolute perfection; i.e., in the exposition of
these "two truths" (out of four), the former believe and maintain that
(on this plane, at any rate) there exists only Samvritisatya or relative
truth; and the latter teach the existence of Paramarthasatya, the
"absolute truth."* "No Arhat, oh mendicants, can reach absolute
knowledge before he becomes one with Paranirvana. Parikalpita
and Paratantra are his two great enemies" (Aphorisms of the
Bodhisattvas). Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun-ttag)
is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and
illusionary nature of all; who believe something to exist which does not
-- e.g., the Non-Ego. And
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
*"Paramartha" is self-consciousness in Sanskrit, Svasamvedana, or the
"self-analysing reflection" -- from two words, parama (above everything)
and artha (comprehension), Satya meaning absolute true being, or Esse.
In Tibetan Paramarthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this
absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya -- the relative truth
only -- "Samvriti" meaning "false conception" and being the origin of
illusion, Maya; in Tibetan Kundzabchi-denpa, "illusion-creating
appearance."
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 49 ALAYA, THE UNIVERSAL SOUL.
Paratantra is that, whatever it is, which exists only
through a dependent or causal connexion, and which has to disappear as
soon as the cause from which it proceeds is removed -- e.g.,
the light of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears.
Esoteric philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious,
but not that all life and consciousness are similar to those of human or
even animal beings. Life we look upon as "the one form of existence,"
manifesting in what is called matter; or, as in man, what, incorrectly
separating them, we name Spirit, Soul and Matter. Matter is the vehicle
for the manifestation of soul on this plane of existence, and soul is
the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of spirit, and these
three are a trinity synthesized by Life, which pervades them all. The
idea of universal life is one of those ancient conceptions which are
returning to the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its
liberation from anthropomorphic theology. Science, it is true, contents
itself with tracing or postulating the signs of universal life, and has
not yet been bold enough even to whisper "Anima Mundi!" The idea of
"crystalline life," now familiar to science, would have been scouted
half a century ago. Botanists are now searching for the nerves of
plants; not that they suppose that plants can feel or think as animals
do, but because they believe that some structure, bearing the same
relation functionally to plant life that nerves bear to animal life, is
necessary to explain vegetable growth and nutrition. It hardly seems
possible that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere
use of terms such as "force" and "energy," the fact that things that
have life are living things, whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the belief of the inner esoteric Schools? the reader may
ask. What are the doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric
"Buddhists"? With them "Alaya" has a double and even a triple meaning.
In the Yogacharya system of the contemplative Mahayana school, Alaya is
both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of a progressed
adept. "He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Alaya by
means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence." The "Alaya has
an absolute eternal existence," says Aryasanga -- the rival of
Nagarjuna.* In one sense it is Pradhana; which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Aryasanga was a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist
esoteric school, though Csoma di Koros places him, for some reasons of
his own, in the seventh century [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 50 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
is explained in Vishnu Purana as: "that which is the unevolved cause,
is emphatically called by the most eminent sages Pradhana, original
base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which
at once is (or comprehends) what is and what is not, or is mere
process." "Prakriti," however, is an incorrect word, and Alaya would
explain it better; for Prakriti is not the "uncognizable Brahma."* It is
a mistake of those who know nothing of the Universality of the Occult
doctrines from the very cradle of the human races, and especially so of
those scholars who reject the very idea of a "primordial revelation," to
teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life or "Universal Soul," was made
known only by Anaxagoras, or during his age. This philosopher brought
the teaching forward simply to oppose the too materialistic conceptions
on Cosmogony of Democritus, based on his exoteric theory of blindly
driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomene was not its inventor but only
its propagator, as also was Plato. That which he called Mundane
Intelligence, the nous ([[nous]]), the principle that according
to his views is absolutely separated and free from matter and acts on
design,** was called Motion, the ONE LIFE, or Jivatma, ages
before the year 500 B.C. in India. Only the Aryan philosophers
never endowed the principle, which with them is infinite, with the
finite "attribute" of "thinking."
This leads the reader naturally to the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel and
the German Transcendentalists as a contrast that it may be useful to
point out. The schools of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from
the primitive archaic conception of an ABSOLUTE principle, and have
mirrored only an aspect of the basic idea of the Vedanta. Even the
"Absoluter Geist" shadowed forth by von Hartman in his pessimistic
philosophy of the Unconscious, while it is, perhaps, the closest
approximation made by European speculation to the Hindu Adwaitee
Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the reality.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] A.D. There was another
Aryasanga, who lived during the first centuries of our era and the
Hungarian scholar most probably confuses the two.
* "The indiscreet cause which is uniform, and both cause and effect,
and which those who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhana
and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was before all" (Vayu
Purana); i.e., Brahma does not put forth evolution itself or
create, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is
Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
** Finite Self-consciousness, I mean. For how can the absolute
attain it otherwise than as simply an aspect, the
highest of which known to us is human consciousness?
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 51 CAN THE FINITE CONCEIVE THE INFINITE?
According to Hegel, the "Unconscious" would never have undertaken the
vast and laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of
attaining clear Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne
in mind that in designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as
equivalent to Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that
expression of "Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to
symbolise a profound mystery -- the connotation it usually bears.
The "Absolute Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena, which
is only termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of
personality, transcends human conception. Man, unable to form one
concept except in terms of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the
very constitution of his being to raise the veil that shrouds the
majesty of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is able to faintly
realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither it must
eventually return. . . . As the highest Dhyan Chohan, however, can but
bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; and since,
even in that culmination of conscious existence -- "the merging of the
individual in the universal consciousness" -- to use a phrase of
Fichte's -- the Finite cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to
it its own standard of mental experiences, how can it be said that the
"Unconscious" and the Absolute can have even an instinctive impulse or
hope of attaining clear self-consciousness?* A Vedantin would never
admit this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would say that it applies
perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected
into the phenomenal world as the first aspect of the changeless
ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter, or Purusha and
Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless," we
are taught.
The matter-moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every atom,
manifested in man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power;
and this pantheistic idea of a general Spirit-Soul pervading all Nature
is the oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was the Archaeus a
discovery of Paracelsus nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is again
the same Archaeus or "Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Schwegler's "Handbook of the History of Philosophy" in
Sterling's translation, p. 28.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 52 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and source of the innumerable phenomena of life -- localised. The
whole series of the numberless speculations of this kind are but
variations on this theme, the key-note of which was struck in this
primeval Revelation. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance.")
(b) The term Anupadaka, "parentless," or without
progenitors, is a mystical designation having several meanings in the
philosophy. By this name celestial beings, the Dhyan-Chohans or
Dhyani-Buddhas, are generally meant. But as these correspond mystically
to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, known as the "Manushi (or human)
Buddhas," the latter are also designated "Anupadaka," once that their
whole personality is merged in their compound sixth and seventh
principles -- or Atma-Buddhi, and that they have become the "diamond-souled"
(Vajra-sattvas),* the full Mahatmas. The "Concealed Lord" (Sangbai
Dag-po), "the one merged with the absolute," can have no parents since
he is Self-existent, and one with the Universal Spirit (Svayambhu),**
the Svabhavat in the highest aspect. The mystery in the hierarchy of the
Anupadaka is great, its apex being the universal Spirit-Soul, and the
lower rung the Manushi-Buddha; and even every Soul-endowed man is an
Anupadaka in a latent state. Hence, when speaking of the Universe in its
formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was fashioned by the
"Builders" -- the expression, "the Universe was Anupadaka." (See Part
II., "Primordial Substance.")
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Vajra -- diamond-holder. In Tibetan Dorjesempa; sempa
meaning the soul, its adamantine quality referring to its
indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation with regard to the "Anupadaka"
given in the Kala Chakra, the first in the Gyu(t) division of the Kanjur,
is half esoteric. It has misled the Orientalists into erroneous
speculations with respect to the Dhyani-Buddhas and their earthly
correspondencies, the Manushi-Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at in a
subsequent Volume, (see "The Mystery about Buddha"), and will be more
fully explained in its proper place.
** To quote Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the
Pantheistic conception of periodical Avatars (special incarnations of
the World-Spirit in Man, as seen in the case of all the great religious
reformers) . . . . "the essence of man is spirit . . . . only by
stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering himself to pure
self-consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ-man, as man in whom
the Unity of God-man (identity of the individual with the Universal
consciousness as taught by the Vedantins and some Adwaitees) appeared,
has, in his death and history generally, himself presented the eternal
history of Spirit -- a history which every man has to accomplish in
himself, in order to exist as Spirit." -- Philosophy of History.
Sibree's English translation, p. 340.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 53 THE STATE OF PARANIRVANA.
from
The Secret Doctrine,
by H. P. Blavatsky
**
**
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