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.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
---------------------
STANZA II.
1. . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS
OF MANVANTARIC DAWN? . . . IN THE
UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH-HI PARANISHPANNA.
THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM -- THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE
DEVAMATRI AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE
BLISS OF NON-BEING.
2. . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE
THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR
SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET
FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRIPADMA
HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO
ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MAYA.
5. THE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF
LIGHT. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHAVAT;
AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE
GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE
WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE
DIVINE BOSOM. . . .
STANZA II.
COMMENTARY.
1. . . . . WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS
SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN (a)? . . . . IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS
IN THEIR AH-HI (Chohanic, Dhyani-Buddhic)
PARANISHPANNA, THE PRODUCERS OF FORM (rupa)
FROM NO-FORM (arupa), THE ROOT OF THE WORLD --
THE DEVAMATRI* AND SVABHAVAT, RESTED
IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING (b).
(a) The "Builders," the "Sons of Manvantaric Dawn," are the
real creators of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only
with our Planetary System, they, as the architects of the latter, are
also called the "Watchers" of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are
the Seven planets, and esoterically the seven earths or spheres
(planets) of our chain also. The opening sentence of Stanza I., when
mentioning "Seven Eternities," is made to apply both to the
Maha-Kalpa or "the (great) Age of Brahma," as well as to the Solar
pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on
a higher plane. There are many kinds of pralaya (dissolution of
a thing visible), as will be shown elsewhere.
(b) Paranishpanna, remember, is the summum bonum,
the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvana. Besides being the
final state it is that condition of subjectivity which has no relation
to anything but the one absolute truth (Para-marthasatya) on its plane.
It is that state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full
meaning of Non-Being, which, as explained, is absolute Being.
Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists, will be in
reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But there is a great
difference between conscious and unconscious "being."
The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramartha, the
Self-analys-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
"Mother of the Gods," Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the Zohar, she is
called Sephira the Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her
primordial form, in abscondito.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 54 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction
(for Seven Eternities). Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching
rays of the sun will get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate
the warmth, while a man will. It is only "with a mind clear and
undarkened by 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 Paramartha.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
2. . . . . WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE
WERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO! THERE
WAS NEITHER SILENCE, NOR SOUND (a). NAUGHT
SAVE CEASELESS, ETERNAL BREATH (Motion) WHICH KNOWS
ITSELF NOT (b).
(a) The idea that things can cease to exist and still BE, is
a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent
contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to realise which in
the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A
familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical
combination. The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist,
when they combine to form water, is still a moot one, some arguing that
since they are found again when the water is decomposed they must be
there all the while; others contending that as they actually turn into
something totally different they must cease to exist as themselves for
the time being; but neither side is able to form the faintest conception
of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else and
yet has not ceased to be itself. Existence as water may be said to be,
for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is "more real being"
than their existence as gases; and it may faintly symbolise the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Hence Non-being is "ABSOLUTE Being," in
esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Adi-Budha (first
or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an illusion,
Maya, since all the gods, including Brahma, have to die at the end of
the "Age of Brahma"; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone -- whether
we call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer's Unknowable -- being "the One
Absolute" Reality. The One secondless Existence is ADWAITA, "Without a
Second," and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Adwaita
philosophy.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 55 THE ABSOLUTE KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be,
during the "Nights of Brahma" -- to awaken or reappear again, when the
dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to what we call existence.
(b) The "Breath" of the One Existence is used in
its application only to the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic
esotericism; otherwise, it is replaced by its equivalent in the material
plane -- Motion. The One Eternal Element, or element-containing Vehicle,
is Space, dimensionless in every sense; co-existent with which
are -- endless duration, primordial (hence indestructible)
matter, and motion -- absolute "perpetual motion"
which is the "breath" of the "One" Element. This breath, as seen, can
never cease, not even during the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos,
Theos, Kosmos," in Part II.)
But the "Breath of the One Existence" does not, all the same, apply
to the One Causeless Cause or the "All Be-ness" (in
contradistinction to All-Being, which is Brahma, or the Universe).
Brahma (or Hari) the four-faced god who, after lifting the Earth out of
the waters, "accomplished the Creation," is held to be only the
instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the ideal Cause. No
Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real
sense of the verses in the Purana, that treat of "creation."
Therein Brahma is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated
subsequently for the work of "creation." When a translator says, "And
from him proceed the potencies to be created, after they had become the
real cause": "and from IT proceed the potencies that will
create as they become the real cause" (on the material
plane) would perhaps be more correct? Save that one (causeless) ideal
cause there is no other to which the universe can be referred.
"Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency -- i.e., through
the potency of that cause -- every created thing comes by its inherent
or proper nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the
efficient cause, as contrasted with upadana, the material
cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhana implies the functions of
both); in the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles all these systems,
and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as expounded by the
Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be speculated
upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita)
as the ideal in contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara
-- can find no room in published speculations, since
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 56 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human
reason, even that of an adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception
(both limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to
be cognized. Hence the "Eternal Breath which knows itself not." Infinity
cannot comprehend Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the
bounded and the conditioned. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and
the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine
Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and
Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who describe this
indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness. Concrete
consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more
than the quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own
attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things.
Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications; something to be
conscious of, and someone to be conscious of it. But Absolute
Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the
cognition, all three in itself and all three one. No man is
conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to
have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the
poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge
not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to
memory. To forget is synonymous with not to remember. How much greater
must be the difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish
between, abstract metaphysical facts or differences. It must not be
forgotten, also, that we give names to things according to the
appearances they assume for ourselves. We call absolute consciousness
"unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must necessarily be
so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because to our finite
understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that
our perception of such things does not do them justice. We involuntarily
distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious absolute
consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with
some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our
thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But
this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish
from what appears to us as unconsciousness.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 57 THE GERM OF LIFE.
STANZA II. -- Continued.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET
FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a); THE MATRI-PADMA (mother lotus)
HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN (b).*
(a) The ray of the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is
emitted, a ray of effulgent light or life, and flashes into the "Germ"
-- the point in the Mundane Egg, represented by matter in its abstract
sense. But the term "Point" must not be understood as applying to any
particular point in Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every
atom, and these collectively form "the Germ;" or rather, as no atom can
be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the
term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms
the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.
(b) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual
creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is
Padma, the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat
(fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical
and religious system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,** the
active, male, generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter,
the light of the fire, for the passive female principle from which
everything in this Universe emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the
Mother, and Fire is the Father. Sir W. Jones (and before him archaic
botany) showed that the seeds of the Lotus contain -- even before they
germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the miniature shape of what one
day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving us a
specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seed of all
phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo
plantlet ready formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus Flower as an
Universal Symbol.") This explains the sentence "The Mother had not yet
swollen" -- the form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea
in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic. (See foot-note to
Stanza III.)
** Even in Christianity. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and
Divine Thought.")
*** Gross, "The Heathen Religion," p. 195.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons
given are, firstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed
contains within itself a perfect miniature of the future plant, which
typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in
the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.
Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant grows up through the water,
having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air
above. The Lotus thus typifies the life of man and also that of the
Kosmos; for the Secret Doctrine teaches that the elements of both are
the same, and that both are developing in the same direction. The root
of the Lotus sunk in the mud represents material life, the stalk passing
up through the water typifies existence in the astral world, and the
flower floating on the water and opening to the sky is emblematical of
spiritual being.
STANZA II. -- Continued.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO
ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA
(a).
(a) The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its
precosmic latency into differentiated objectivity, or even become the
(to man, so far,) invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the hour strikes
and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought
(the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya) -- its heart
opens. It differentiates, and the THREE (Father, Mother, Son) are
transformed into four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of
the Trinity and the immaculate Conception. The first and Fundamental
dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three
aspects. This led to a possible conception of Deity, which as an
absolute unity must remain forever incomprehensible to finite
intellects. "If thou wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the
root of a plant, or imagine the root concealed under the soil, thou hast
to think of its stalk or trunk and of its leaves and flowers. Thou canst
not imagine that Power independently of these objects. Life can be known
only by the Tree of Life. . . ." (Precepts for Yoga). The idea of
Absolute Unity
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 59 ASTRAL LIGHT IS NOT THE ANIMA MUNDI.
would be broken entirely in our conception, had we not something
concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the deity being
absolute, must be omnipresent, hence not an atom but contains IT within
itself. The roots, the trunk and its many branches are three distinct
objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is one,
because It is infinite. It is triple, because it is ever manifesting."
This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it requires, as
Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to become
objective: privation, form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of
the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes
impressed in the Astral Light -- the lowest plane and world of Anima
Mundi. The union of these three principles depends upon a fourth -- the
LIFE which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable, to become an
universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And
this QUATERNARY (Father, Mother, Son, as a UNITY, and a quaternary, as a
living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic
Idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of
the Christian Church, which carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond any
common sense. For one has but to read the Kabala and study its numerical
methods of interpretation to find the origin of that dogma. It is purely
astronomical, mathematical, and pre-eminently metaphysical: the Male
element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi -- Viraj,
or Brahma; Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an
immaculate source, personified by the "Mother"; because that Male having
a Mother cannot have a "Father" -- the abstract Deity being sexless, and
not even a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself. Let us render this in the
mathematical language of the author of "The Source of Measures."
Speaking of the "Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value,
he writes that in Genesis, ch. iv., v. 1, "It is called the 'Man even
Jehovah'
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A Vedantin of the Visishtadwaita philosophy would say that, though
the only independent Reality, Parabrahmam is inseparable from his
trinity. That He is three, "Parabrahmam, Chit, and Achit," the last two
being dependent realities unable to exist separately; or, to make it
clearer, Parabrahmam is the SUBSTANCE -- changeless, eternal, and
incognizable -- and Chit (Atma), and Achit (Anatma) are its qualities,
as form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the
garment, or body, or rather attribute (Sarira) of Parabrahmam. But an
Occultist would find much to say against this claim, and so would the
Adwaitee Vedantin.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page 60]] THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Measure, and this is obtained in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and
the value 565 can be placed under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 =
565. Here the Man-number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the
(Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau,
He, or Jehovah. . . . The expansion of 565 into 56.5 x 10 is purposed to
show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle;
or, so to speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate source,
in other words, an immaculate conception."
Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery enacted, according to the
Seers, on the divine plane. The "Son" of the immaculate Celestial Virgin
(or the undifferentiated cosmic protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is
born again on Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve -- our mother
Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total -- past, present, and future --
for Jehovah or Jod-he-vau-he is androgyne, or both male and female.
Above, the Son is the whole KOSMOS; below, he is
MANKIND. The triad or triangle becomes Tetraktis, the
Sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a 6-faced cube on
Earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the
lesser face); or, as the Kabalists have it, the "Ancient of Days,"
descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest
through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the "Lap of
Maya," the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the
Astral Light, the great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless
Knowledge through Paramarthasatya comes to the rescue.
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
5. THE SEVEN (Sons)
WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT.
DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER,
SVABHAVAT, AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN
DARKNESS (a).
(a) The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas given here, occupies
itself chiefly, if not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially
with our planetary chain. The "Seven Sons," therefore, are the creators
of the latter. This teaching will be explained more fully hereafter.
(See Part II., "Theogony of the Creative Gods.")
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 61 DIVINE THOUGHT, DIVINE THINKERS.
Svabhavat, the "Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root
of all things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect
of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It
is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the
latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have
made of it the synonym of "being." In the Ekasloka-Shastra of
Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese
the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original
word of Yeu is "Being" or "Subhava," "the Substance giving substance to
itself," also explained by him as meaning " without action and with
action," "the nature which has no nature of its own." Subhava,
from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words:
Su "fair," "handsome," "good"; Sva, "self"; and bhava, "being" or
"states of being."
-------
STANZA II. -- Continued.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE
GERM IS -- ONE. THE UNIVERSE
WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT
AND THE DIVINE BOSOM.
The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a
Divine thinker. The Universe, not only past, present, and future --
which is a human and finite idea expressed by finite thought -- but in
its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), the absolute
being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is
that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. Brahma
(neuter) as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus is an absolute mystery to
the human mind. Brahma, the male-female, its aspect and anthropomorphic
reflection, is conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though
rejected by human intellect when it attains its majority. (See Part II.,
"Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.")
Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama
of Creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe or the
"Son" lies still concealed "in the Divine Thought," which had not yet
penetrated "into the Divine Bosom." This idea, note well, is at the
root, and forms the origin of all the allegories about the "Sons of God"
born of immaculate virgins.
[[The Secret Doctrine, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 62 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
from
The Secret Doctrine,
by H. P. Blavatsky
**
**
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