Six Items of Cosmogony
BY H.P. BLAVATSKY- The Secret
Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages,
and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous
and elaborate system: e.g., even in the
exotericism of the Puranas. 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. The flashing gaze of those seers has
penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and
recorded the soul of things there, where an
ordinary profane, however learned, would have
perceived but the external work of form. But
modern science believes not in the 'soul of
things,' and hence will reject the whole system
of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that
the system in question 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' 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 organizations 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.
- The
fundamental Law in that system, the central
point from which all emerged, around and toward
which all gravitates, and upon which is hung the
philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous
divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical
cause.
Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led
It is called 'Substance-Principle,' for it becomes 'substance' on the plane of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a 'principle' in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. 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. (See in chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial Substance, and Divine Thought.")
From cause to cause to nature's secret head,
And found that one first Principle must be....
- The Universe
is the periodical manifestation of this unknown
Absolute Essence. To call it 'essence,' however,
is to sin against the very spirit of the
philosophy. For though the noun may be derived
in this case from the verb esse, 'to be,'
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, its first
manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in
the "Notes on the Bhagavadgita" shows, 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.
- 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.
- 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 recognize
-- of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no
right to say that no consciousness exists
there. 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 medieval Nominalists, for
whom it was the Universals that were the
realities and the particulars which existed only
in name and human fancy.
- 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. 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. They vary
infinitely in their respective degrees of
consciousness and intelligence . . .
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. "Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas", it is said. But, 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.
The Secret Doctrine, i 272-276 H.P. BLAVATSKY
