STUDY COURSE
ON
“
THE SECRET DOCTRINE ”
Conducted by
Pablo Sender & Juliana Cesano
Adyar 2006
CONTENTS
Introduction
Contents of
the SD
About the
SD
Section
I: The Secret Doctrine and its Study
How to
study the SD
The Nature
and Method of Occult Teachings
The Effects
of Studying the SD
Section
II: The Absolute Reality—The First Fundamental Proposition
The
Absolute Reality
Its two
(Absolute) Aspects
Pre-cosmic
Differentiation
Cosmic
Manifestation – The Duality
Cosmic
Manifestation – The Triad
Manifested
“Deity”
Summary
Section III: Cyclic Manifested Universe—The Second
Fundamental Proposition
Manifestation—A
Cosmic Illusion
Cyclic
Manifestation
Section
IV: Seven Planes of Consciousness
Section
V: The Hierarchies
The Inner
Rulers of the Universe
Their
Consciousness and Intelligence
No
Omniscient Powers
Section
VI: Septenary Constitution of the Human Being
Section
VII: The Evolutionary Process—The Third Fundamental Proposition
The Cycle
of Necessity
Rounds and
Chains
Nirvana
Section
VIII: Man—The Triple Evolutionary Scheme
Evolution
of Monads
Root-Races
and Physical Evolution
Evolution
of Manas
An Endless
Evolution
Notes:
-
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
INTRODUCTION
a) Contents of The Secret
Doctrine
Volume I: Cosmogenesis
Proem
The Oldest MSS. in the world and its Symbolism
The One Life, Active and Passive
The Secret Doctrine—Pantheism—Atheism
Space in all Religions and in Occultism
Seven Cosmic Elements—Seven 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 Chaos—Theos—Kosmos
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 Man’s 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 Forces—Modes
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
Preliminary Notes
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 Mammalians—the
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 Satan’s Lair?
XX Prometheus the Titan
XXI Enoďchion-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
Part III. Addenda. Science and The Secret Doctrine
Contrasted
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
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 Initiates—the
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.
Part III outlines the contrasting views of Science and the Secret
Doctrine and meets probable scientific objections by anticipation. This Part
serves as a connecting link between the two volumes.
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)
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 visions—so obtained as to stand as independent
evidence—of 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 world’s 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 ourselves—are 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 Kumāras, those who
incarnate no longer in the universe during this Mahāmanvantara),
who appear on earth as Avatāras 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 cycle––he 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 know—the 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 me—nothing
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
reader’s 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
a) How to Study the SD
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 there—cannot 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 Recapitulation—the 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)
b) The Nature and Method of Occult Teachings
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 reason—intuition, 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 Buddhi—never. To
its clear region, calm must ever reign. (LMW 1, No. 30)
c) The Effects of Studying the SD
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 affairs”—says
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 different—the 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
don’t 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 experimenter’s 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
Reality—The 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)
a) The Absolute Reality
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 thought—in 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 define—that 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)
b)
Its two (Absolute) Aspects
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
Space—which is its only mental and physical representation on this Earth, or
our plane of existence—neither 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 is—Space. (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 Absolute—Abstract 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)
c)
Pre-cosmic Differentiation
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 things—the
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 inert—a mere abstraction—it
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)
d)
Cosmic Manifestation – The Duality
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 Absolute—Cosmic Substance and Cosmic
Ideation—are 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 directions—Spirit
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)
e)
Cosmic Manifestation – The Triad
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 self—or reflective—consciousness; 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 Substance—the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former—from 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)
f)
Manifested Deity
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-urgos—in 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 Mahat—Universal intelligence “whose characteristic property
is Buddhi”—is no other than the Logos.
He is, in short, the “Creator” or the divine mind in creative operation,
“the cause of all things.”
g)
Summary
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: ť]
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: Ĺ] (SD I, p. 16)
II.32 AN Archaic
Manuscript—a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and
air, by some specific unknown process—is before the writer’s 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 ť. 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 ť—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 Ĺ, it becomes the mundane cross—the 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
Universe—The 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 intellect—the 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)
a)
Manifestation—A Cosmic Illusion
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 personalities—the illusive envelopes of the
immortal Monad-Ego—twinkle 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 beams—symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos—alone 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)
b)
Cyclic Manifestation
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 subjectivity—the antipodes of the former.
This is the "Cycle of Life." And as the sun disappears from our
horizon, so does the Universe disappear at regular periods, when the
"Universal night" sets in. The 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 small—say of ten years—rotation 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 eternities—the “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 “Brahmâ’s 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 Maha—or
Brahmâ—Pralaya 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 signs—which we can recognise—of 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 medićval 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
illustration’s 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
II The Unknown Diagram
I
III
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
Buddhic
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, Prākritic 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. Kāma-Prānic, 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, Kāma-Prānic 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. Kāma-Mānasic, 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. Mānasic 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,” Ātman, reflecting all that is in the Auric Envelope.
The Mānasic 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 can’t 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 planes—the 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
a) The Inner Rulers of the Universe
V.1 The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth;
and man—the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm—is 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
man’s 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 who—whether we give to them one name or
another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels—are “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 units—soldiers—so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of
a multitude of Creators or Builders. (SD I, p. 380)
b) Their
Consciousness and Intelligence
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 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. (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 nature—two
purely earthly characteristics. The former, or the “perfected”, have become
free from those feelings, because (a)
they have no longer fleshly bodies—an 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
personalities—the spiritual and the physical—entirely 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 principles—the immortal sparks reflecting the
universal divine flame—individualized 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 man’s 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 man’s 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 God—a 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)
c) Not Omniscient
Powers
V.13 The collective Mind—the
Universal—composed 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 heart—invisible, 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 Nature—from 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
worlds—this 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 I—are 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 Egotism—in 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 [kāma], 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 Kāma depends on
Prāna, without which there would be no
VI.15 The
Linga-Śarīra, as often said before, is the vehicle of Prāna, 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 Prānic 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-Śarīra serves as the
intermediary between Prāna and Sthūla-Śarīra, drawing life
from the
VI.16 Linga-Śarīra 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 foetus—the
future man—is 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-Śarīra. The Mind and the Linga-Śarīra 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
Process—The 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 Soul—a spark of the former—through 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 action—all 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
highest—the 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 atom’s) involution and evolution, its external and
internal growth and development, have all one and the same object—man; man, as
the highest physical and ultimate form on this earth; the Monad, in its absolute totality and
awakened condition—as 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 chain—its reincarnation, so to say. (SD I, p. 152)
Diagram
II
The Earth Chain Prakritic
Planes
I The Divine and
II Formless (Arupa)
III World of Spirit
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 rest—or “obscuration”,
as in their previous Rounds—begins 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 Fourth—our 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 sphere—had
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 element—AIR, that element, the purity of which would
ensure continuous life to him who would use it. “From the second Round,
Earth—hitherto a fśtus in the matrix of Space—began 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 Principle—WATER; 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 shell—only toward the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round. Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic state—the 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
equals—308,571,428 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 sleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper’s Higher Self is in its original state of
absolute consciousness during those hours—that he, too, is annihilated. The
latter simile answers only to one side of the question—the 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 individuality—nor even the essence of the personality,
if any be left behind—lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless—from a
human standpoint—the 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 and—owing to the accumulation of experiences—of 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
matter—the 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 Manas—or 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 which–its
dregs–is left to fade out as a shadow. This is the most difficult–because so
transcendentally metaphysical–portion 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 one—the 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
evolution—from 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 Spirituality—the last and seventh being
the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense
his physical body—this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man’s
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 Globe—no 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 earth—the
great bulk of humanity, that is to say, for there are exceptional cases to be
considered later—are 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 existence—as a race sui generis and quite free from its parent
stem—about 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
Matter—or 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
again—the oldest—having 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 Mahat—a ray unimpeded by matter—will 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 phenomena—such as thought transference,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; in short, all that which is called now
“wonderful and abnormal”—all 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 Buddha—Wisdom
incarnate—was 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 unaided—she 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 Monad—which could
never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an absolutely latent state—two 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 earth—in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—i.e.,
in a two or even a three-principled body composed of its Sthula Sarira, prana (life
principle), and linga sarira—and, if
it lacks its middle and fifth principles [kama and manas], you will have
created an idiot—at best a beautiful,
soul-less, empty and unconscious appearance. (SD II, pp. 241-2)
VIII.43 That
divine man [the Monad] dwelt in his
animal—though externally human—form; 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 Race—the 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 men—the savage Bushman
and the European—even 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
think—nothing 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
Sun—the Monad—the 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 lines—spiritual, 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
perfection—this, 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 evolution—at 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 being—in 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 Kingdoms—and who had, therefore, lost every recollection
of their divine origin—the great spiritual truths of the transcendental worlds.
Thus, as
expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended on Earth and reigned over men—“who 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
imprisoned—semi-conscious—in 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)