Note:[1]
[Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. Von H. P. Blavatsky.]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl
Τhe Secret Doctrine of the East is the unified basis of all science, religion and philosophy. Like all deeper religious mysteries, it is called “secret”; not because it should not be published, but because a deeper intellectual power of comprehension is required to understand the mysteries, and they are therefore hidden from everyone who is only used to thinking superficially. The present work consists of two volumes, in which are contained a number of verses from the Book of Dzyan, one of the oldest manuscripts in existence in the world, and their explanations. Since it is not possible to reproduce the entire text of these books and all these explanations in these notebooks, we have contented ourselves with translating the verses themselves into German and adding a few indispensable notes, which have less the purpose of explaining that which cannot be explained or described in words, but rather to give the reader a key by means of which he may himself be able to unlock the mystery. One of the most respected scholars, Professor Cowes, recently claimed that after devoting himself to years of theosophical study, it seemed to him that he was chasing a will-o’-the-wisp which he could never catch. This is indeed the case. He who seeks the light of wisdom with the lantern of material scientific speculation will never catch it. Goethe says:
“If you don’t feel it, you won’t understand it.”[ii]
He who seeks divine wisdom in the light of his own human wisdom is blinded by his own light and cannot find it. But whoever allows his own will and thinking to rise up towards the spirit of divine wisdom, will also be enlightened and will be taught by this wisdom through its light, “not through transitory pictures and words, but as it is in its essence.”
The Bible says that man cannot come to true knowledge by running and chasing himself,[iii] and that it is God who awakens in us to will and to do of His good pleasure,[iv] and the Bhagavad Gītā says: “This teaching is not for them who do not exercise self-control and do not want to hear my voice. Take refuge in Brahma; then by his grace you will attain the highest peace, the highest existence. Through this entering into me, man attains my self-knowledge, my being, my truth, my being, my greatness, and when he completely recognizes me in truth, then he is completely in me.”[v]
It may seem strange to some readers that in the following considerations about the nature of the universe we repeatedly take into account the processes that take place within man himself; but the reason for this is that God and man are one, and the duality is only an illusion brought about by the singularity of appearance. The laws of the macrocosm and the microcosm are the same, and whoever really knows himself also knows God and all of nature.
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Stanza I.
The Evolution of the Universe.[vi] [vii]
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[Śloka] 1. Eternal nature[viii] in her ever-invisible robes was again cloaked in slumber for seven eternities.
Eternal nature or “mother” might be termed what we call “space” (Mulaprakriti) [mūlaprakṛti]; The “Father” in it is the Absolute Self-Consciousness, which is contained in everything but only manifested during the Evolutionary Period (Manvantara). The invisible garment is the world of ideas and forms contained in the universe during the period of rest (pralaya), comparable to a state of torpor until nature awakens from slumber and the day of creation begins. This verse and the following verses describe the state of the world when, after the cessation of the previous period of creation, it was once again “barren and empty” and “the Spirit of God hovered over “the waters.”” The seven eternities, however, refer to the seven periods of a Manvantara, which extend through a Maha Kalpa [mahā kalpa], a period of 311,040,000,000,000 of our years. It should be noted that these verses only refer to one universe or solar system; for while a certain solar system is in pralaya,[ix] evolution may be in full swing in other solar systems.
[Śloka] 2. There was no time; for she was hidden in the womb of eternity.
Since the concept of “time” is only a concept or an “idea” (see Schopenhauer), there is no time for anyone who has no idea of it. The term “time” arises from the change in the forms of consciousness that occur in us; in the pure, changeless state of divine self-consciousness there is no concept of change.
[Śloka] 3. Thinking, feeling and wanting were absent; for there were no Ah-hi (heavenly beings) containing these faculties.
Just as a person does not think, want or feel during a deep sleep, but does not stop being because of that, and after waking up is the same person as before, so it is on the whole. Self-awareness in the absolute sense is immortal, but it manifests itself as relative consciousness only periodically, becoming relative through intervening relationships with what it is not itself. The Ah-hi[x] are the epitome of the spiritual forces and beings of the universe (the Elohim), whose activity in nature sets the wheel of evolution in motion and keeps it in motion. They are the forces by which the law of spirit is manifest in nature. But these spiritual powers or “angels” did not exist before the “beginning.” God “in the beginning created his holy angels,” i.e., through the awakening of his will he puts these forces into action before he calls the world of forms into existence anew through them.
[Śloka] 4. The seven paths to bliss (nirvāna) [nirvāṇa] did not exist. The general causes of suffering (nidana [nidāṇa] and maya [māyā]) were not there, for there was no one to produce them or be subject to them.
There was nothing different from the general unity, because everything had itself merged into the unity of the whole and great, while the multiplicity of forms through which that unity tends to manifest itself during the period of evolution were in a latent (non-existent) state. Since the whole unit rested in its own absolute self-awareness, there was nothing that did not have this self-awareness or this self-knowledge and could have been brought to this self-awareness through suffering and experience and thereby redeemed. In truth there is nothing but God; all forms, including human beings, are only appearances in which the eternal unity is revealed as multiplicity. All living beings are, so to speak, only the shadows of the one eternal light, which in itself never ceases to be, even if the forms in which it periodically reveals itself disappear from existence.
[Śloka] 5. The infinite universe was filled with darkness because the father, the mother and the son were one again and the son had not yet awakened to begin his activity in the new cycle.
“The light dwells in the dark and shines into the dark, and the dark cannot comprehend the light.” The dark is the “ground” (father and mother in one) from which the light (the son, the life) is born. Just as darkness is an absence of light, so too is light an absence of darkness. Both are two kinds of appearances of one, which in itself is neither light nor darkness. Both are only relative terms. What is darkness to the material eye may be an abundance of light to the spiritual eye. When in man the divine spark that dwells in darkness comes to the light of self-knowledge, then the “Son,” the Redeemer, is born in him. The recognized teachers of the Church understood it in this way and no other way, and Angelus Silesius therefore says:
“If Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem, and not in you, you would still be lost.”
But what takes place in the individual person also takes place in the greater whole; the whole world is an organism in which the spiritual light strives to rise through the various forms of consciousness of the creatures to divine self-knowledge, and this growth of the forms cannot come from the forces created by these forms themselves, but only through the power of what is contained in them and of revealed light happen. In the same way, no tree or plant creates life itself in external nature, but life in general is revealed in the individual organisms and the power of the sun works in all, while the sun itself does not descend from the firmament and the light of the same exists, even if the forms pass away.
Brahmā is father, mother and son in one, or in other words: spirit, soul and body, but only by that the Son is born, the “Father” becomes the Father and can know himself as the Father through his Son (his knowledge). In the same way man must first become before he can recognize himself as what has become, and he becomes by recognizing himself as what he really is from eternity.
[Śloka] 6. The seven supreme rulers and the seven manifestations of truth had ceased to be, and the universe, the birth of the law of necessity, was clothed in Paranirwana [paranirvāṇa] to be breathed out again by that which is and yet is not was nothing.
The seven rulers are the seven spirits of creation or properties of nature, called “source spirits” by Jakob Boehme and referred to as “archangels” in church language. Of the seven truths, only four have been revealed so far, since we are only on the fourth stage of evolution and only four Buddhas have appeared.[xi] Paranirvāna is a state of perfection which only the perfect can comprehend, and to argue about the concept of which is a philological thrashing of an empty straw. It is the highest ideal that must be realized before it can be understood. By “breathing out” is meant the outflow and inflow of spirit into the inanimate (ideal) forms, thereby revealing life in creatures. But God is and is not, i.e., he is in himself; the eternal being of all being, nothing for us as long as we ourselves have not attained true being and therefore only exist as illusory beings. It was nothing but unity, and unity has no existence unless it is related to number concepts as one. A movement only exists when something moves.
[Śloka] 7. The causes of existence have ceased to function; what was seen before, and the unseen, were in the stillness of eternal nonbeing, which is the one being.
The cause of (individual) existence is above all the urge for individual life and individuality, a surrender of universal self-awareness for an individual form of consciousness. But true being only begins when the true one essence of all things, apart from the ways in which it appears, is recognized. In this recognition of unity, however, all deception that is the product of the multiplicity of phenomena also ceases. Anyone who considers this self-knowledge of the truth to be “pessimism” is still very biased by the deception of appearances.[xii]
[Śloka] 8. Only the One Being extended indefinitely, infinitely, independent of other causes, in dreamless sleep, and life pulsed unconsciously in cosmic space by that omnipresence which is manifest only to the inner opened eye of Dangma.
Material science is concerned with the phenomena of life, occult science with life itself. The former requires the senses to perceive phenomena, the latter the opened inner sense, which no one knows but the one who possesses it. This inner sense, the eye of dangma,[xiii] is the perceptive faculty of man’s organized mental body, which can only be attained through man’s actual spiritual rebirth, and which opens up to him the heaven of his divine self-consciousness. That is why it is said, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”[xiv] Also, the talk is not of “clairvoyance” (which belongs to the astral body), but of true spiritual knowledge.
The “unconscious” in the above refers to relative consciousness. One can be unaware of everything and yet be supremely self-conscious. Just becoming aware of things that are not ourselves interferes with the manifestation of complete self-awareness. Real death occurs when man loses the self-awareness of his own higher nature in the frenzy of appearances and passions.
[Śloka] 9. But where was Dangma when the world soul (Alaya) [ālaya] of the universe was in Paramartha [paramārtha] (the absolute being [or truth]) and the wheel of evolution stood still (was abandoned)?
All external appearances in nature are only the external images and symbols of what is going on in the soul of the world, or in the souls of the separate individual appearances. Man in the innermost part of his soul is, as Master Eckhart also teaches us, still in God and in Paradise (the inner divine nature); only he does not recognize his heavenly origin and eternal dwelling place, because, deceived by the particularity of his bodily appearance, he identifies himself with this appearance. Only when he has overcome this deception can he recognize himself again as to what he really is in God, and when he has attained this knowledge during his life on earth, thus, even after death, he re-enters this higher existence with self-consciousness. But if he dies without having attained his true self-awareness in God, his spirit is still in God, but his individuality is unaware of its divinity and is drawn back to the earthly to go anew into the school of life and through it to be guided by experiences and disappointments to strive for true self-knowledge. Of course, every human spirit is immortal, but the individual human being must have come to practical knowledge of his immortality, otherwise all his immortality theories are of no use to him in order to realize his immortality. Only the man who has become free from the deception of appearances can recognize the true being in the unity in himself and in all things. But absolute self-awareness, like what is identical with it, absolute being, can never end, because with the annihilation of the eternal it could never reveal itself and any further evolution of worlds would come to an end. Therefore, in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna (the Deity) says to Arjuna (the spiritual man):
“There was never a time when I was not, nor you, nor these rulers of men, nor shall any of us ever cease to be. What is inessential has no true being, and what is true never ceases to be, but only those who know the truth can distinguish between the two. Know that He who spread the universe can never perish. None can bring about the annihilation of the Eternal. It is never born and never dies.”[xv]
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Stanza II.
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[Śloka] 1. Where were the builders, the shining sons of the rising sun of wisdom? In the mysterious darkness, in her Ah-hi Paranishpanna [pariniṣpanna]; those which bring forth forms from the formless, the root of the world tree, the Devamatri [devamātṛ[xvi]] and Svābhāvat [svabhāvat] rested in the bliss of non-manifestation.
The “builders” are the creative life forces in the universe, symbolically represented as the “seven planets,” in the esoteric sense the seven principles of the universe. Paranishpanna is absolute being and bliss, synonymous with paranirvana [paranirvāṇa]. That which now only seems to be will sooner or later attain real existence in Paranishpanna by attaining Svasamvedana [svasaṃvedanā], Self-knowledge. Meister Eckhart says: “God is in everything and also in a piece of wood; but the wood has no ability to recognize that God is in it, and therefore cannot enjoy its presence. Only man has the ability to become aware of the presence of God and thereby of his own divine nature.”
[Śloka] 2. Where was the silence? Where were the senses to perceive the same? No! There was neither silence nor sound. Nothing but uninterrupted, eternal breath (movement) that does not know itself.
What is called in the spirit breath is, taken in the material sense, movement. Space, substance and motion are the basic elements of nature, a trinity in one, since none of these three can exist without the other two. Where there is space, there is also extension (movement) and the world-substance which fills it; where there is matter there is movement and space, etc. But nature creates nothing without the breath of life, of which the eternal cause is the Spirit of God in the universe. This spirit only appears when the eternal unity in its trinity, as the knower, the known and the knowledge, is revealed. Without this trinity there is no consciousness, but only an absolute self-consciousness that is above all finite concepts and is therefore an unconsciousness for us, just as movement in the absolute sense is no movement for us.
[Śloka] 3. The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ; Matri-Padma [mātṛ-padma] (Mother-Lotus) had not yet become fertile.
The divine ray of light had not yet penetrated into the center of nature to awaken life there and turn the wheel of evolution anew; nature had not yet received the fertilizing spirit, and therefore “the earth was formless and empty.” The lotus is the symbol of both the universe and man. Its seed contains in miniature the perfect image of the plant Earth, its stem penetrates the water, its flower spreads out in air and sunshine. Likewise also man’s earthly life is rooted in matter; his inner organization permeates the world of desires and passions, but his spirit-enlivened soul aspires to the spiritual Freedom, up to the divine light of wisdom.
[Śloka] 4. Her heart had not yet opened to the one ray to let it fall as trinity into quaternity in the bosom of Maya [māyā].
When the Trinity (Father, Mother and Son) brings into existence the (individual consciousness) in matter, the three arises through the addition of form into a four. Herein lies the double mystery of the Trinity and the Immaculate Conception. The arising of form is an absolute necessity for the development of organic activity, the goal of which is the attainment of individual self-knowledge. Without a spiritual organization, man would certainly be a spiritual entity, but would have no individual existence, no self-awareness of his own, no personal knowledge based on experience. But at the same time it is appearance of form is the cause of illusion (maya); for the soul, seeing itself enclosed by a finite body, falls into the delusion that it is itself a separate whole separate from the whole. It is the reason that man forgets his divine general existence and that, to quote Goethe, “the little world of fools thinks of itself as a whole.”
The spirit-man crucified there must rise again from this world of fools and he is liberated by the fact that through suffering and experience he comes to the conviction of the transitoriness of everything transitory and to self-knowledge of his divine existence. A single existence on earth is far too short to collect the necessary experience; The individual human spirit therefore appears again and again in a new personal appearance on this earth or on another planet, whereby the sum of experiences impressed on its character in previous lives forms the basis of its spiritual knowledge. Only when he no longer has any personal desires does he no longer have anything to do with the earthly. But this only happens when he opens his heart to the light of divine wisdom, like the lotus flower opens its chalice to the light of the sun.
Thus the great mystery is dramatically carried out on earth, which presents itself to the eye of the seer as a living spectacle in the divine existence as a whole. The “son” of the immaculate virgin, who is the one, undivided world soul as primordial matter, becomes again the earthly Eve, our mother earth, in every morning of creation and represents humanity as a whole, from which the divinity is born, in that it is power of the divine word in which people achieve individual self-knowledge. But this teaching is “secret” because it can only be completely clear to the one in whom the “son,” himself, was born. A theory that merely serves to satisfy scientific curiosity has no practical value; all knowing without becoming is an illusion. “High words alone do not make holy and righteous.”[xvii]
[Śloka] 5. The seven sons of light were not yet born of the web of light. Darkness alone was father and mother, Svābhāvat [svabhāvat], and in Svābhāvat was night.
Svābhāvat [svabhāvat] is “space,” or rather the spiritual basis of the material that is revealed to us as “matter.” The seven “sons of light” are the seven classes of heavenly forces or beings through which “creation” occurs, and will be discussed later.
[Śloka] 6. These two (father and mother) were the germ, and the germ is one. The universe was still hidden in the mind of God and in the divine heart.
Various poets have said that the world is an embodied thought of God; though few may have had a clear idea of how this “thinking” occurs. God is the unity of the whole, in which thought, will and word are one and not divided. What God wills, He thinks, and what He thinks, He speaks through deeds. By thinking, he creates a world in his material nature, which is his own “body.” Brahma is not a being standing outside his world, even if he is in himself superior to all nature and incomprehensible and unattainable for all human concepts. “God,” says Jakob Böhme, “is the will of eternal wisdom,” which we only recognize when it is revealed in us, and Master Eckhart says: “In the clear mirror of eternity, the Father’s eternal self-knowledge, there he creates an image of himself, his son. All things are reflected in this mirror and one recognizes them in it, not as creatures, of course, but as God in God. The Father created all things out of nothing; the son is the archetype of all becoming, the spirit is the master worker and organizer of becoming in eternity and in time. The Son involves the ideas of all things, the Spirit encompasses the eternal world order.”
Therefore, as Boehme says, God does not have many thoughts, but only one thought and will, namely to give birth to his Son, and this thought, moved by the will, is expressed through the reawakening of nature (creation) and the beginning evolution of forms far.
The “mind of God,” therefore, does not presuppose, as certain short-sighted philosophers believe, a “thinker” apart from the world, but the universe itself is an outward expression of the omnipresent eternal entity which is Sat, the absolute being, the supreme ideal and at the same time is called the only real; and the Bhagavad Gita says of him: “Exalted above all beings, yet he dwells in all, unmoved in himself, he moves in his nature. He is distant and yet near. He is not in the Distributed in beings and yet he works in all.”[xviii] And Meister Eckhart says: “What all creatures have in them, God has everything in them.”
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Stanza III.
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[Śloka] 1. The last vibration of the seventh eternity penetrates infinity. The Mother swells and spreads from within outward like the lotus flower.
The word “eternity” does not mean a time without end, but a period during which no conception of time exists, or, perhaps to put it better, a state transcended even by conception of time and bliss. Jakob Böhme says: “Whoever lives in eternity as in time, and in time as in eternity, is free from all strife,” and Joh. Scheffler says: “I myself am eternity when I leave time and gather myself in God and God in me.”
[Śloka] 2. The vibration spreads; the breath flies through the universe and also fills the germ that is in the darkness, the darkness that moves over the slumbering waters of life.
The “seed” is everywhere, and the phrase “above the waters” is to be taken in a spiritual sense. (Compare, Genesis I, 1 and 2.)
[Śloka] 3. Out of the darkness shines a light, and the light sends a ray into the waters, into the maternal depths. The ray penetrates the virgin egg and makes it tremble. The immortal germ falls away from it, through the condensation of which the world-egg arises.
The ray of light that pierces the waters is the Divine-thought that fills chaos. The “virgin egg” represents fertility in its fullness, and in the “non-eternal germ” is contained the potentiality of the evolution of the beginning world period. The “universal egg” is the symbol of existence and development in external, internal and spiritual relation, the nature, which underlies every existence, the smallest as well as the big whole.
[Śloka] 4. The Trinity falls into the Fourth, the Radiant Being becoming the Seventh inward and outward. The Luminous Egg (Hiranyagarbha) [hiraṇya-garbha], which in itself represents the Trinity, coagulates and spreads its milky-white flakes through the depths of the Mother, the Root from which the Ocean of Life springs.
Everything in the world is based on a certain number, the determination of a thought, a divine breath or word; nothing is without a number. God is the unity which only becomes self-conscious when it reveals itself in its trinity as the knower, the known and the spirit of knowledge, and as this occurs in a form, the form joins fourth, i.e., the trinity falls into the quaternity. But this does not make the infinite threeness into a finite four, but the three exists in and with and alongside the four, as a sevenness inwards and outwards. But the term “milk-white flakes” means many things. The matter of the world and the host of the stars as well as all that is contained in space and destined to appear in it.
[Śloka] 5. The root is there, the light is there, the flakes are there, and yet Oeaohoo is One.
The “root” is Sat, the absolute being [or truth], the light of the Logos; the “flakes” or the “coagulated” the revelation. In spite of all the multiplicity of appearances, the eternal essence does not step out of its unity. The worlds arise from the “congealed,” the primordial matter, but not from Parabrahm itself. That is why the Bible also speaks of Him who has spread out the universe and is in everything, and the Bhagavad Gita says: “I am the (one) source, from which the whole universe springs and to which it returns. Deceived by the changes of Prakriti (the essence of nature), the world does not recognize me, who am above all changeable and eternal.” (Chap. VII, 6 and 13.)
[Śloka] 6. The root of life was contained in every drop of the ocean of immortality, and that ocean was radiant light, viz., fire, heat, and motion. The darkness disappeared and was no more. It disappeared into its own being, the body of fire and water, father and mother.
It is probably superfluous to say that we are not talking about external things here, but about mental things or states from which external phenomena arise. Underlying the whole universe is Absolute All-Self-Consciousness (Amrita, the Sea of Immortality), and immortality is therefore contained in every thing, although not every thing is conscious of the immortality it contains. Eckhart says: “God is as much in a piece of wood as in a man; but the wood knows nothing of it, while man can become aware of the presence of his immortal divine being.”
“Light” and “dark” are two states of one and the same entity. Where there is light, the state of darkness ceases to exist, and therefore darkness cannot comprehend light either. (John I.)
[Śloka] 7. Behold, O Lanoo! the radiant child of the two, the incomparable fullness of glory; the world of light, which is the son of dark space, which has risen from the depths of the great dark waters. It’s Oeaohoo, the newborn who . . . (whom you now know as Kwan-Shai-Yin) [Kuan-shih-yin]. He shines like the sun. He is the fiery divine Dragon of Wisdom. The Eka (One) is Chatur (Four) and Chatur takes three in itself, and their union forms Sapta (Seven), and therein are the Seven, which becomes the Tridasa [tridaśa] (3×10 + 3 = 33), the hosts and legions. See how he lifts the veil and unfolds it from east to west. He hides the upper from view and the lower presents itself as the great illusion (the world of appearances). He gives the radiant (stars) their appointed places, makes of the upper a boundless sea of fire and of the one manifested (element) the Great Waters.
The world of light is the child of dark space. The ray of light that penetrates the depths of the universe at the dawn of the dawn of creation, and from which it rises as Oeaohoo “the Younger” (the new life), is destined to become the “seed” or “germ” of all things during the coming period of evolution. In it is contained the divine thought; it is the corporeal man, the begetter of light and life, and is called “the Dragon of Wisdom” or “the Logos.” It contains the seven creative powers (Sephiroth). “He who bathes in the light of Oeaohoo is no longer deceived by the veil of Maya [māyā] (the deception of appearances).” He is Kwan-Shai-Jin [Kuan-shih-yin], the Divine Word.
The “dragon” is the astral light; but the “Dragon of Wisdom” is higher than this, it is the Divine Light, the holy spirit, which is why the serpent is also the symbol of wisdom, while the astral light, the “ether,” is only “spiritual matter” that resides in represents the physical world in its final condensation. The “upper” that moves the world is its underlying intelligence, the “fire” or “spirit”; what is below is thought in its revelation.
[Śloka] 8. Where was the seed, and where was the darkness now? Where is the Spirit of Flame burning in your lamp, O disciple! The germ is deed (existence), and deed is the light, the white glorious child of the dark father who dwells in secret.
“That” (Tibetan)[xx] is anything that was, is, or will be. Everything is contained in the “light” and through the light it becomes apparent. But the dark is the essence or corporeality, without which the light could not be revealed either. Going deeper into an explanation of the above is useless, for he who can intellectually grasp its meaning needs no explanation; if you can’t grasp it, you can’t explain it either.
[Śloka] 9. Light is cold flame and flame is fire, and the flame gives the heat which forms the water, the water of life in the Great Mother (the chaos).
Light, flame, fire, heat, etc., are names for states of something for which we have no name, but which, for the sake of conception, we might perhaps call “electricity,” or the life force. “Fire” is the symbol of the one giving birth; “Light” the symbol of the born; the “flame” is the symbol of the soul in everything. Perhaps we can get an idea of the process described above if we think of the different elements as made up of different electrical tensions of an incomprehensible primordial substance.
[Śloka] 10. Father and mother spiders a web, the upper part of which is attached to the spirit (purusha) [puruṣa] the light that comes out of darkness, and the lower part to matter (prakriti) [prakṛti], the shadow of the spirit; and this was the universe spun out of two substances combined into one, which is Svābhāvat [svabhāvat].
Goethe expresses a similar thought in “Faust”: The earth spirit speaks:
“Thus I create at the whizzing loom of time,
And work the living garment of the deity.”
[Śloka] 11. The net spreads when the breath of fire (the Father) clings to it; it contracts when the breath of the mother (the “root” of matter) touches it. Then the sons (the elements with their powers and intelligences) separate and divide to return to the womb of the mother at the end of the great day and become one with her again. But when it (the net) cools down, it becomes radiant; the sons expand and contract by their own essence and heart; they embrace infinity.
The web or “mist of fire” expands as heat penetrates the cosmos. The heat breaks down the composite elements, returning the worlds to their base element, from which new planetary nebulae and worlds evolve under the action of Fohat. This periodic heating and cooling, expansion and contraction, constitutes the movement of life pulsating in infinite space (Svābhāvat) [svabhāvat]. The whole universe, therefore, represents an organism whose heart periodically contracts and expands and thereby causing an emanation and ebb of life in all parts of the great whole. But if one asks what it is that moves the heart of the universe, the Secret Doctrine answers: it is the all-creating Eternal Power, the revelation of the Absolute Intelligence, or in other words, the will of Eternal Wisdom, which is the spiritual sun of the universe. (Jacob Boehme.)
[Śloka] 12. Then Svābhāvat [svabhāvat] sends Fohat to harden the atoms. Each of them is part of the network. Each unfolds into a world in which the image of the self-existent (uncreated) master is reflected in it as in a glass.
Fohat is the generating force in nature (life electricity), that which imprints on matter the ideas contained in the universal mind.
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Stanza IV.
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[Śloka] 1. Hear, you children of the earth, what the sons of fire teach you. Know that there is neither first nor last; for everything is a single number that has emerged from that which is not a number.
A certain German occultist says: “You start counting at one and time goes by, but there is still time to realize that man is a thinker,” i.e., one can think. That which, although not thinking, is aware that it can think is not limited, it is not a number; but from the one basic thought which it creates in itself all other series of thoughts, numbers and creations proceed. The children of the earth are the earthly people; the earthly mind sprung from the goddess of the moon (of imagination and enthusiasm); the sons of fire are the heavenly children of the sun god, the god consciousness in man.
[Śloka] 2. Hear what we, the descendants of the original septenary, born of the primordial flame, learned from our fathers.
Those born of the primordial flame correspond to the highest beings in the universe, the archangels of the Christians and those born of the spirit of Brahma. But “learning” is not an external learning, but an inner perception. A spirit communicates itself to the other by letting its light stream towards it. Wisdom does not share itself through empty words, but through inner enlightenment people.
[Śloka] 3. Out of the splendor of the light that shone out of the eternal darkness sprang forth in cosmic space the reawakened intelligences (Dhyan-Chohans) [dhyāni-chohan-s]; the one from the egg, the six and the five, then the three, the one, the four, the five; the two times seven, the grand total; and these are: the essences, the flames, the elements, the builders, the numbers, the formless, the embodied, and the power of the God-man, which is the sum total. And from the God-man radiated out the forms, the sparks, the sacred animals and the messengers of the holy fathers (Patriarchs or Pitris [pitṛ-s]) within the sacred four.
As these leaves are only intended to give a brief overview of the ancient Secret Doctrine as communicated to us by H. P. Blavatsky, it is not possible to go into lengthy explanations here, and we must refer the inquisitive reader to the original work [in English]. The sacred theory of numbers by itself would require a lifetime to study, and knowledge of the deepest mysteries rests on its understanding. Hiranyagarbha [hiraṇyagarbha] is Brahma, “the luminous egg which shines like the sun.” The Kumaras [kumāra-s] are the seven that arose from the fourfold mystery. Four is the number of truth and its essence corresponds to Jane Leade’s “New Jerusalem.” The Prajapatis [prajāpati-s], like the Sephiroth, are seven. The same numbers are also found in the Kabala. The one sprung from the egg, the six, and the five together make 1065, the number of the “firstborn,” and this is also the number of Jehovah, viz., Yod 10, Vau 6, and twice He 5, which together adds up to 21=3×7. The three, the one, four, one and five (together 14 = 2×7) represent 31415, the number of the hierarchy of the dhyan-chohans [dhyāni-chohan-s] (heavenly hosts), i.e., the sphere of consciousness of immortality in the mystical sense; while externally the number 3,1415 [3.1415][xxi] (rediscovered by Ludolph, and therefore called the “Ludolphian number”) represents the ratio of the diameter of a circle to the periphery. Calculated cabalistically we get the sum of 311,040,000,000,000, which is the number of the individual world periods.
But all this should serve more to indicate the existence of certain mysteries than to explain them. The Devas, Pitris [pitṛ-s], Rishis [ṛṣi-s], Suras [sūra-s], Asuras [asūra-s], Daityas and Adityas [āditya-s], Danavas [dānava-s], Gandharvas, etc. have corresponding names in the Kabala of the Jews and are mentioned in the Christian doctrine referred to as thrones, dominions, virtues, cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, demons, etc. But the “sacred animals” refer to another mystery, namely that of the twelve signs of the zodiac, which we cannot go into here in detail.
[Śloka] 4. This was the host of the voice, the divine number seven. The Sparks of Fire of the Seven are subordinate to the One, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh of the Seven, and their servants. These (sparks) are called spheres, triangles, cubes, lines, and formers; for thus stands the eternal Nidana [nidāṇa], the Oi-ha-hou [Oeaohoo].
Again, unfortunately, space does not allow us to go into a detailed discussion of the above, which refers to the classification of the different intelligences in the universe, and according to which the different types of humanity on earth can also be divided, since after all everything that exists visibly in the world is only a symbol of what exists invisible to us. Everything came into being through the Word; the Word is the expression of thought. The thing that has come into being is only the expression of its inner sense; in the mind lies the hidden power. Whoever utters a word calls a thought into being. Things are for us what we imagine them to be; the names which we hear call into existence in us the corresponding ideas. What a man speaks can become a blessing or a curse without him knowing or wanting it, and ignorance of the occult forces in nature is often the misfortune of man. Words in themselves are mere sounds, which are neither harmful nor beneficial; they only gain strength through the meaning contained in them and the spirit in which they are spoken. The divine Word is the basis of everything. That is why J. Scheffler also says: “The meaning, the spirit, the word, they teach clearly and freely, if you can grasp it, how God is triune.” (Angelus Silesius: „Der cherubinische Wandersmann.“ [“The Cherubic Wanderer.”]) But the word arises through the breath, and the breath is a revelation of life, and in this sense also the whole universe is a breath of the Spirit of God, or His uttered Word, and He Himself is the meaning of the whole.
[Śloka] 5. . . . . . which is:
“darkness,” the limitless or that which is without number; Adi-Nidana [ādi-nidāṇa], Svābhāvat [svabhāvat], the Unknown.
- Adi-sanat [ādi-sanat], the number, for it is one.
- The Voice of the Word; Svābhāvat [svabhāvat], the numbers; for he is one and nine.
- The “formless square.”
And these three enclosed in the infinite circle are the sacred four, and the sacred ten corresponds to the formless (arupa) [arūpa] universe. Then come the “ sons,” the seven warriors, the one, the eighth, is omitted, and it is his breath that produces the light.
There are many expressions in Indian for which we have only the meaningless expression “God” in English, but which represent quite different concepts, each of which has certain special qualities of deity, spirit and nature, or ways of looking at the great whole. Adi-Sanat [ādi-sanat] denotes the “Ancient of Days,” Brahmā the Creator. Svābhāvat [svabhāvat] the mystical substance of space, the fountainhead of nature. The numbers arise from the number of the unit. One and nine is ten, which is the number of perfection, and this reminds us that zero (creature) has no value if placed before one (God). Placed behind the one, however, it becomes perfect through this and forms ten. The “formless square” means the Trinity manifest in the infinite universe (the squaring of the circle).
The one that is left out or expelled is the sun of our solar system. The Rig Veda says: “Eight sons were born of Aditi, the mother of the gods (the substance of space). She approached the gods at seven, but the eighth, Mārttanda [mārtaṇḍa] (our sun), was expelled.” The key to understanding this allegory may perhaps be found in our sun being but the reflection of another central sun in the universe, and that the seven planets, along with the sun, have a common origin. The space allotted to us prohibits a thorough attempt at further discussion.
[Śloka] 6. . . . . Then the second seven, which are the Lipika brought forth by the Three (Word, Voice and Spirit). The outcast son is one, the sons of the sun are innumerable.
Lipika means divine beings (divine thoughts) on which the order in the universe (the law of karma) rests; the ideas by which the “builders” rebuild the cosmos at the beginning of each day of creation, after the idea or picture of all that has ever been is preserved in the “astral light,” in the “memory of nature.”
So then the past and the future exist in the omnipresent Eternal. What happens is imprinted on the world-memory, and what is present in the memory gives cause for the repetition of what has already happened; the “Astral Light” is the book of life in which the Lipikas record the deeds of men, they are the forces that carry out the law of eternal justice, and from what is written in the book of life of every man determines his position and destiny in his next reappearance on earth. Man would have to be the fool of fate forever and move in circles if there were not something higher and eternal in him, which is above all laws, because it is the law itself, and the more man through his striving for spiritual knowledge approaches this eternal, the more its cycle becomes a spiral, the more its will becomes free.
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Stanza V.[xxii]
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[Śloka] 1. The primordial seven, the first seven breaths of the Dragon of Wisdom, produce the fiery whirlwind through their circling breath.
This verse is one of the most difficult in this book to explain to those who cannot spiritually grasp its meaning. The “Builders,” “Lipikas,” “Sons of Wisdom,” etc., are not fantastic allegories, but personified forces and entities, forms of consciousness underlying the very essence of the inner spiritual man. The Secret Doctrine says that in order to produce a godlike self-conscious human being, the original spiritual intelligences must incarnate and pass through the human stages of development; a development that is not only taking place on our earth, but also on other planets and in other solar systems. The present humanity on this earth, on the whole, is itself such an intelligence or entity, which in the course of its evolution has reached, but not yet passed, the balance of attraction between spirit and matter. Hegel says that the (relatively) unconscious created the universe in the hope of thereby attaining lucid self-awareness. Brahma has the desire to create from eternity, or as Jakob Boehme puts it: “God created the world for no other reason than out of love for himself.”
According to The Secret Doctrine, all creation is an outpouring of the breath of Deity, and even the Bible, if properly understood, agrees with this view. Thus says the Psalmist (Ps. 104): “When you breathe out your breath, they are created, and you renew the form of the earth. — He makes the winds for his angels, and flaming fire for his servants.” The “fiery whirlwind” is cosmic matter, and every atom of it contains the faculty of becoming self-conscious. Thus the world did not come into being by blind chance, but was constructed by inherent intelligent forces that are outflows of divine wisdom. But this divine wisdom is only a single one, and therefore we also find at the bottom of everything only one omnipresent law that determines the order of the whole.
[Śloka] 2. These make him the messenger of their will. The dzyu [dgyu] becomes Fohat; the fleet-footed son of the divine sons, whose sons are the Lipikas, moves in circles. He is the horse and thought is the rider. He goes like lightning through the fiery clouds; he takes three and five and seven steps through the seven upper and the seven lower regions. He raises his voice; he calls together the innumerable sparks of fire and unites them.
The original seven use “Fohat” (which might be translated as “life electricity”) as their body, making it the executor of their will. The Secret Doctrine recognizes seven Dhyani Buddhas [dhyāni buddhas] or “heavenly Buddhas” (enlightened spiritual intelligences) whose manifestations in the material world are the Buddhas who have appeared on earth, but of whom only five have so far revealed themselves in this way; while the sixth and seventh will appear in distant generations.[xxiii] They are, so to speak, the spiritual models of the Buddhas appearing on earth, born of the divine being and free from everything that is earthly.
Fohat is the life force of the creative word, the generator of forms in manifest nature. Considered in the abstract sense, it is what produces the multiplicity of appearances in the original appearance-less unity; the power by which the one reveals itself as two and three. The Trinity manifests itself as a multiplicity of forms, and Fohat is the binding force of unity that holds the atoms together, the attraction that binds them together. Communicating itself to the seven principles of Akasa [ākāśa], Fohat acts upon the manifested primordial matter (the one element), and, thereby dividing itself into various centers of energy, puts into action the law of evolution, which, obediently divine thought, gives birth to all the various states of existence in the manifest solar system.
But the solar system, which is revealed in this way, consists of seven principles, like everything else that arises from these centers, and therefore the constitution of man, like the world at large, consists of these seven principles, the divisions of which were known to the ancient Indians and Egyptians, as well as to the Cabalists, although modern philosophy has so lost sight of them that they longer even have names or designations for them. Fohat is the personified electrical life force, the transcendental energy that holds together and connects all cosmic forces. Looked at in another way, it is the energy of the sun, the electric fluid of life, and the fourth principle, the animal soul, so to speak, of nature.[xxiv]
The “three and seven steps” refer to the seven spheres inhabited by humans and also to the seven regions of the earth. The three steps relate to spirit, soul and body and denote the descent of a ray of light from the divine Logos into matter, i.e., into the spirit, then into the soul, then into the human body, of which it becomes life, and as this ray of light comes into action in man, the inner man is spiritually “born again,” i.e., he becomes a godlike being again through the “Word made flesh.” But as far as the seven worlds (Lokas) are concerned, they will be discussed below.
[Śloka] 3. He is their guide and guiding star. When he begins his work, he separates the fiery sparks of the lower kingdom (the mineral kingdom), which dwell trembling with joy in their radiant abodes (“nebulae”), and from these he forms the germs of that which moves in the cycle. He places them in the seven directions of space; but one, the main wheel, in the middle.
The “wheels which turn in circles” are the centers of force around which cosmic matter expands and which, passing through all six stages of condensation, becomes spheroidal and finally spherical. The motion which pulsates in each dormant atom during periods of rest has an ever increasing tendency to take a circular direction during the kalpas (eons) of life. “The deity becomes a whirlwind.” The cause of the movement is therefore not matter itself, but the animating principle of it, the opharim [alternatively: ophanim, auphanim or ofanim = wheels, whirlwinds] of the stars and planets, the “angels of the spheres,” the souls of the circling celestial bodies.
The “six directions of space” refer to the double triangle which is the symbol of the descent of spirit into matter and the ascent of matter into spirit.
[Śloka] 4. Fohat draws the spiral lines to unite the six with the seventh; a host of sons of light stands at every corner, the Lipika in the middle wheel. They say: “This is good!” The first divine world stands ready; the first (is now) the second; then appears in the divine formless (the world of divine thought) Chhayaloka [chāyaloka] (the shadow world of the primordial forms, i.e. the intellectual world), the first garment of Anapadaka [anupapādaka, aupapādaka].
The evolution of both the individual human being and of nature as a whole moves in spiral lines, i.e., material nature always moves in circles, according to the law of karma, whose representatives are the Lipikas, and if nothing higher existed, the whole world, just as the life of the individual is like a treadmill, in which what has always been there is repeated. However, the divine soul lies hidden in material nature, through whose power the turning wheel is lifted one step higher with each revolution. Fohat represents this force of divine love, or living attraction to the higher: the “elective affinity” between the divine principle in the small organism and the divine law in all nature.
The host of the Sons of Light consists of spiritual intelligences (angels or dhyan chohans, also called “planetary spirits”[xxv]). They are the mystical guardians by whose spirit,[xxvi] evolution is guided from the beginning of a manvantara to its end.
“The first is the second,” i.e., it is the first world to come into revelation; but it is the second, because it is preceded by the non-manifest (subjective) out of which it arose. The thought is there; but it only becomes reality when it is revealed through deeds.[xxvii] The underlying is Sat.[xxviii]
The formless world of God-thought might perhaps best be described as the soul’s divine self-awareness, exalted above all thought, the light of divine self-knowledge, as that “thought-light” whose existence makes thought-activity possible; the region of “spirit,” which illuminates the world of thought, and which is comparable to the light of a sun refracting into seven rays, each of which again appears divided into seven colors.[xxix]
[Śloka] 5. Fohat takes five more steps and sets up a winged wheel in each corner of the square for the four anointed and their hosts.
The “five steps” refer to the five higher spheres of consciousness. Altogether one counts seven such spheres, of which the lower two belong to the astral plane and the earthly world. But the four anointed are the four rulers or archangels who rule the four quarters of the heavens; they are (spiritual) forces, each of which has its own special qualities that make it different from the others.
The “winged wheel” is the symbol of the soul, which needs wings in order to be able to rise to spiritual heights. In the Catholic Church these four spiritual powers are represented under the symbols of a dragon (Raphael), a lion (Michael), an ox (Uriel) and an eagle (Gabriel), and one of these symbols is assigned to each of the four evangelists.
[Śloka] 6. The Lipikas circumscribe the triangle, the first, the cube, the second and the hexagonal star within the one (the circle). It is the Ring which is called “Exceed me not” [ring pass-not] for those who descend and ascend, and also for those who during the Kalpas advance toward the great day called “be with us.” Thus Arupa [arūpa] and Rupa [rūpa] (the formless and the form world) were formed from one light in seven; from each of the seven seven times seven lights. The wheels guard the circle.
This verse refers to the classification of “heavenly hosts” or spiritual beings in the universe. The Lipikas, the guardians of karma, draw an impassable boundary between the personal “I” and the impersonal (divine or spiritual) self.[xxx] The material world in its various forms is but a symbol or revelation of a One Nameless One manifesting itself to us as Those who descend and ascend are the spiritual individualities, the incarnating monads, which only complete the circle on the day called “be with us,” i.e., when they have conquered ignorance and delusion and come to true self-knowledge, they can transcend and know that they have no separate existence but are one with humanity, or rather with the divinity in humanity.
That the impassable circle does not refer to a specific locality hardly needs to be mentioned; for in the infinite, of which we are speaking here, there are no limits. The idea that Nirvana and such states should be regarded as localities is a delusion spawned from the error of certain scholars, and owes its origin to the material apprehension of spiritual truths by those who cannot rise to spiritual contemplation and only live within the realm of their own fantasies and illusions.
In the higher consciousness regions of the universe there are beings who are so immeasurably higher than the earthly human being that they can only be imagined as gods and in their entirety as God. The greatness of their existence in comparison with us could be likened to the difference between man and an ant. The fact that modern philosophy knows nothing of the existence of these higher beings does not change this fact. If the earthly human being in his self-conceit denies the existence of these higher intelligences, this is nothing more than proof of his short-sightedness.
Among the highest classes of these beings (passed through human evolution) are seven orders of divine intelligences; the lower six include those associated with humanity on this earth. They are like seven rays of light, each dividing into seven hues, and in every man either one hue or another is predominant, linking him to this spiritual world and especially to the class to which he belongs. Every human individuality therefore has its true origin in one of these spiritual beings.[xxxi]
“Material science” may struggle to speculate how feeling and consciousness, intellectual and spiritual activity, can be produced from dead matter by mechanical motion; she will never reach a goal. It may well analyze and dissect the shell that man inhabits on earth, but life itself, which is a function of the spirit, will always remain a mystery to those who cannot spiritually discern the spirit that is in everything.
Beyond all individual existence, however, lies paranirvana [para-nirvāṇa], absolute unity, which is only attained when the individuality has passed through all stages of development; and it is attainable by rooting this unity in the inmost part of the heart of each, so that the divine part of man rests continually in God while in appearance he inhabits lower worlds.
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Stanza VI.
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[Śloka] 1. By the power of the Mother of Grace and Knowledge, Kwan-Jin [Kuan-yin], the “Trinity” of Kwan-Shai-Jin, who dwells in Kwan-Jin-Tien [guān yīn tiān[xxxii]], Fohat, the breath of their descent, the son of sons, which from the abyss below (chaos) called forth the illusory form of Sien-Tchan (the universe) and the seven elements. —
Kwan-Jin [Kuan-yin][xxxiii] in Chinese corresponds to the Divine Logos, or rather the Eternal Feminine who is “Mother, Wife and Daughter” of the Divine Word, in other words, the Light of the Holy Spirit revealed through the Logos (Iswara) [īśvara].[xxxiv] Kwan-Jin-Tien [guān yīn tiān] corresponds to the notion of “heavenly harmony,” the abode of Kwan-Jin, the Verbum (Vach) [vāk] of the Heavenly Man, or Sephira of the Cabalists. This power is the magical (creative) element of sound (in the occult sense) in the ether and in nature, through which the world and the seven elements appear out of the Unmanifest.
[Śloka] 2. The swift-footed and radiant one brings forth the seven laya-centres, which are insurmountable until the great day “be with us,” he sets the universe upon these eternal foundations, and surrounds them with the seeds of life.
The seven “Laya Centers” are the seven centers of force from which begins the division of the elements that go into the constitution of our solar system. The whole cosmos originates in a single source of power; but this force occurs in nature in seven distinct forms. Just as the constitution of man consists of seven principles, so the matter that appears divided in our solar system exists under seven different conditions. Fohat considered by itself is the one life in the universe; but it manifests itself on seven different planes, from the one nameless primal source down to the life contained (albeit latent) in every atom in nature.
The “seeds of life” are the “atoms” of matter, or what Leibnitz calls monads.
[Śloka] 3. Of the seven elements, first one is revealed and six hidden, then two revealed and five hidden, three revealed and four hidden, four emerge and three are secret; then four and one partially revealed and two and a half hidden, six revealed and one removed. Finally seven little wheels turn, one giving birth to the other.
This verse not only refers to the renewal of the whole universe, but also specifically to the development and formation of the original seven elements of our earth. Of these seven elements, four are now revealed, the elements of earth, water, air and fire,[xxxv] while the fifth, namely the ether of space, is only partially revealed and will only be fully revealed in the fifth round.[xxxvi]
All worlds, including ours, originally came into being from the one element (Akasa [ākāśa], “invisible primeval matter, astral light, world soul,” or whatever you like to call it) and these worlds and their inhabitants were originally in a condition which, because of their physical delicacy, can be called “spiritual.” Only gradually did matter become denser and with it a change, and the above-mentioned elements developed and are still developing until at the end of the eons all seven elements will be revealed, i.e., they emerge from the subjective state into objective existence; just as a thought hidden in the heart only becomes apparent when it enters consciousness, i.e., if you think about it. There was a time, therefore, when even what is now solid matter to us existed in an unapparent state, which may perhaps be imagined as a cometary nebula. However, the fact that matter does not exist on all other celestial bodies in the same degree of concentration as on our earth is also confirmed by the spectroscope, among other things.
The little “seven wheels” refer to the seven planets of our solar system.[xxxvii]
[Śloka] 4. He builds them in images of older wheels (worlds) and fixes them on imperishable centers.
How are they built by Fohat? He collects the fiery dust, makes balls of fire, runs through and around them and gives them life, then sets them in motion, one in this direction, those in that direction. They are cold, but he makes them hot; they are dry, he moisturizes them, they shine, he fans and cools them.
Thus Fohat works from dawn to dawn through seven eternities.
The worlds are built after the model of previous worlds, i.e., based on the ideas of worlds that existed in previous manvantaras (days of creation).[xxxviii] One Fohat becomes male and female, i.e., he attains a positive and a negative polarity. Occult science knows no dead matter. Every atom is a form in which life expresses itself, every force is an activity of life. Everything springs from a living force, which in turn is the emanation of divine wisdom, but which is less able to express consciousness and intelligence the more it moves away from the throne of wisdom on the path of condensation. The mental intelligences are the root causes of phenomena; the elementals arise from their will and essence, i.e., the countless psychic germs contained in all forms, the “souls of things.” Fohat directs the transmission of the principles from one planet to another. When a planet dies, its “spiritual” principle enters a laya center, i.e., into the latent state, and when it awakens from this, it animates a new planetary body which it builds up.[xxxix]
Modern school wisdom sees only “forms of movement” in all natural forces; but it should be clear that “dead” matter cannot give rise to any form of movement. The breath of a person is also a form of movement, but there is a living being behind it that produces this breath. According to the Esoteric Doctrine (hence “secret,” because their understanding involves the faculty of higher spiritual perception), all natural forces are the ultimate manifestations of a force underlying intelligence, though no intelligence is evident in the forces themselves. Similarly, there is no intelligence in the human breath itself, but it arises from the organic activity of an intelligent being, whether this activity is consciously or unconsciously stimulated. So it is with the great organism of the world, in which the breath of the omnipresent spirit sets all nature in motion.
The laya centers are the points of transition from a lower to a higher level of existence, and as there are seven such levels, there are seven such “points” or boundaries.
Here ends that part of the book Dzyan which deals with the structure of the universe as a whole. The following part deals specifically with our solar system and its planets. As in the preceding, it is also not possible in the following to go into a detailed discussion of all the questions that may arise in these considerations; since we must give only a brief, cursory survey of the contents of this curious book. Nor will anyone imagine that we require the reader to blindly believe all the statements contained therein; because blind faith is no knowledge and therefore also not Theosophy. The purpose of a philosophical work is not to make one’s own thinking superfluous, but to provide material for one’s own thinking and to show the way to knowledge, a way that everyone has to walk themselves if they want to attain knowledge. But just as folly, which blindly believes everything and then pretends to know it, does not lead to knowledge, so also self-conceit, which rejects everything that does not agree with their opinions, does not lead to knowledge of the truth. True self-knowledge consists in being what you want to know and recognizing yourself as the same in all its parts. Anyone who wants to spiritually recognize the spiritual must be spiritual himself, be able to raise himself to the spirit as a whole and awaken to spiritual life in his consciousness.
Here some will now ask how it is possible that someone can come to this state of divine self-knowledge; since, as is evident from a preceding remark, this godlikeness is to come only after many millions of years in the seventh round, and the answer to it is: What nature can accomplish in millions of years, divine grace can do in a moment achieve, provided that man absorbs it and does not resist it. Eternity is not bound to any time, its gate is always open; every day is the Sabbath as soon as it is celebrated as such. But that man learns to free himself from the deception of sensory illusion and becomes receptive to the light of knowledge; the study of theosophy served him for this purpose.
[Śloka] 5. In the fourth planetary round [a], the sons are commanded to create their images. A third of them refuse, the other two [thirds] obey.[xl]
Aeons have now passed since the conditions given in the preceding verse took place. The earth was comparable to a ball of fire and “man” a sphere of light. Three times the life-wave went through the circuit of the planets on its round, wandering from one to the other[xli]; the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms arose, but the evolution of forms had not yet reached that degree of perfection to make them desirable to the divine beings for abode or incarnation.
“The holy gods refused to multiply and propagate their kind. (They said:) These organisms are not suitable for us; they have to develop first. They refused to enter the Chayas [chāya-s] (shadows, material appearances) of beings so far below them. So then, even at that time, selfishness reigned even among the gods, and they fell under the law of the Lipikas, who execute the karma of men.”
This refusal was avenged, as is described in the second part of the book; but a third of the heavenly intelligences obeyed the commands of wisdom and incarnated in the existing forms, although these were still imperfect and unsuitable for revealing the intelligence working in them.[xlii]
Every form on earth and every atom in space strives in its efforts to become the ideal, whose model is the heavenly man. Involution and evolution, the inner and outer growth and development of every thing all have one goal, the incarnation , i.e., Man, insofar as his form is the crown of creation on this earth, the realization of the ideal in a state of (divine) self-awareness, the culmination of divine incarnations on earth.
Those who incarnated and multiplied in the still imperfect human forms are the Pitris [pitṛ-s] (the “spiritual” ancestors of humanity).
The Dhyanis (Pitris) are those who have “born” their Bhuta [bhūta] (etheric image) out of themselves. This rupa (form) has become the receptacle of the monads, which in the previous three kalpas (rounds) have completed their cycle of migration. Then these (ethereal counterparts or “doubles”) became the people of the first race of this round. They were not perfect, however, but mindless.
The etheric image, the “double” or “astral body” is that “invisible” organism whose outward expression is the physical “visible” body. Up to our fifth race the physical bodies which these celestial astral bodies clothed were, and will continue to be, subject to constant material change, appropriate to the geological changes of the planet they inhabited, until finally in the seventh round every human form will be the true expression of the divine soul within.
The inner man, now hidden, was then the outer man, he was the descendant of the Dhyanis (Pitris) and like them, as the son is like his father. Like the lotus, whose outward form gradually assumes the form of the type contained within, so the form of man in the beginning unfolded from within outward. But when that time came when man began to multiply after the animal species that now exist, the opposite happened. The germ of the human body now goes through all the transformations which this form underwent in the three preceding kalpas (rounds), when ignorant because imperfect matter, in its blind wanderings, strained to condense around the monad. In the present age the embryo of the human shell resembles first a plant, then a reptile, then an animal, until at last it assumes human form, and develops therein a similar ethereal likeness. In the beginning this image (the astral man) was there first. Being ignorant, it was caught in the web of matter.
This is the story of the “fall of man” allegorically represented in all systems of religion. The “monad” which is to become man is not man. Animals also have souls, and the monads (souls) of men, as noted above, traversed the four kingdoms of nature (elemental, mineral, vegetable, and animal) before becoming human monads. This occurs sooner or later according to the conditions favorable or unfavorable, from the first and third rounds, since man was an ethereal being, to the fifth race of the fourth round. In this there is no transition from animal souls to human forms.[xliii] What is still living on earth in animal form can only rise to the human kingdom in the next Manvantara.[xliv]
The successive stages of human development are described as follows:
- Man of the first round and first race on our earth was an ethereal being, not intellectual but highly spiritual in nature. In each of the following races he becomes more and more condensed and embodied, but is still ethereal, gigantic, sexless (male and female in one).[xlv]
- The man of the second round is still ethereal and gigantic, but more condensed than before. He is less intelligent than spiritual, since his intellectual development is slower than the evolution of his physical organism.
- In the third round, the human body, which can be called “material,” is like a giant ape. He is less spiritual now, but possesses more shrewdness and perceptiveness. On the descending scale he has arrived where spiritual primal consciousness is overshadowed and obscured by the brooding (selfish) “reason.” In the second half of this round his body size decreases, his organism becomes tougher, he becomes more and more rational, but equals more a monkey than a god.
- In this round there is an extraordinary development of intellectual activity, but on the other hand his spiritual cognitive faculty decreases. In this (our) turn, he gains the ability of human speech. The earth, which has also reached the lowest level of material existence (densification) in this round, is filled with the results of thought and science, while most people lose the consciousness of their own higher nature.
These are the general outlines of human evolution from the beginning of our Manvantara to the present day. It is to be noted, however, that in every single round and race, in every age, every period, every nation, every system and in the life of every individual there is also an apparent regression alternating with progress. Everything in nature moves in a cycle, which is only spiraled in the course of millennia, and this uplift is not by the power inherent in the cycle of nature, but by the divine power coming “from above”; in other words, by the operation of the divine law in nature, the origin of which is divine wisdom itself.
So, the earth-spirit surges up and down and blows to and fro “in the tide of life, in the storm of action.” Empires, civilizations, continents, worlds pass away and emerge again into existence as day and night alternate with one another. Our short-sighted civilization imagines it stands at an unprecedented peak, and self-conceit puffs up at the lectern, “giving definitions with great force,” and dogmatizing things of which it does not even know the rudiments.
Perhaps the time is not far off when our historians, suffering from megalomania, will have to admit that the civilizations of Lemuria at the time of the third race and that of the Atlanteans perhaps 50,000 years ago were higher than ours, as was the architecture of the ancients Egyptians and the fine arts of the ancient Greeks still stands higher than our art.
But as for those who wish to lift the veil of the past and the future, the first thing they should remember is that mere knowledge does not bring happiness. Anyone who wants to recognize the truth must possess it himself; without this possession, all supposed knowledge is just an intellectual infatuation, a dream that, when gone, leaves nothing. Knowing consists in harboring the thoughts of other people; true knowledge consists in recognizing what one owns.
[Śloka] 6.[xlvi] [b] The curse is pronounced. They will be born in the fourth (race). They will suffer and cause suffering. This is the first war.
The angelic beings of that period of creation, destined to become human, refused to obey, reproduce, and propagate their kind. They said: There are no bodies fit for us. Their own well-being was more important to them than obedience to the law of evolution. Through this selfish refusal they fell under the action of the law of karma, and therein was the “curse” they brought upon themselves.
Their resistance did not prevent the operation of natural law, it only delayed it, and that made matters worse, for they were compelled by that law to assimilate to the Atlantean race at the time when the civilization of that continent had reached a high degree and a battle with magical powers that eventually led to the downfall of this breed.
The “fall of the angels” was thus, that instead of blindly obeying the will of nature, these angels began to judge independently and claim the right to rule over themselves. With that, of course, began their responsibility and a source of suffering, but at the same time the path to individualization of character and self-knowledge was paved.
“And it was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought and did not win, nor was there room for them in heaven. And the dragon was cast out, the old serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.”[xlvii]
Without this “fall” there would be no individual knowledge, no independence of one’s own will, but only a single universal will guiding everything, and man would be a blind tool of this universal will without the possibility of becoming a self-confident and self-aware participant in this power will. However, this birth of self-will also created the delusion of separateness and selfishness, which is the mother of the “devil” and of all enticements and evils, only the ability to sin is needed to overcome sin. Without darkness there would be no realization of the benefits of light, without struggle there would be no victory. Lucifer is therefore not only the symbol of the angel who has fallen out of unity into plurality, but he is also the “bringer of light”[xlviii] and has nothing to do with the “devil” of orthodox dogmatics.[xlix]
[Śloka] [6.[l]] 7. The older wheels rotated down and up. [a] The mother-spawn filled the whole (our solar system). There were struggles between the creating and the destructive (forces) and struggles for space. The germs (for the emergence of new celestial bodies) arose and reappeared again and again. [b]
Having looked at what is happening in our solar system above, let us return to the consideration of the universe as a whole. The “elder wheels” refer to the worlds of our chain as they existed in previous rounds. Each chain consists of seven worlds or planes of existence, and each of these corresponds in essence to one of the seven principles which govern the constitution of the universe as well as man.[li]
But the “germs” are “of a spiritual nature,” i.e., Matter in a transcendental state, “ethereal” organisms in which is latent everything necessary for their evolution.
“The Central Sun moved Fohat to form spheres from the cosmic dust, to set them in motion and to bring them closer together. As long as they are scattered in space without order and move in it without system, collisions take place until they finally gather in groups, whereupon they become wanderers (comets). Then the struggles for existence begin. The older (celestial bodies) attract the younger ones, others repel them. Many of the weak are devoured by the stronger. Those who escape become worlds.”[lii] [Page 222-223 of Third Edition.]
[Śloka] 8. Take up your abacus [Make your calculations], O Lanoo, if you wish to know the age of your little wheel (our planetary chain). The fourth spoke of the same is our mother (the earth). Attain the fourth fruit on the fourth path of knowledge that leads to nirvana, then you will understand, for you will see for yourself.
In this case, too, space does not allow us to enter into a study of occult mathematics, which, moreover, may well be terra incognita for the majority of readers. It should only be noted that the number seven plays an important role in all these calculations. Not only are there seven worlds in seven stages of existence, but each of these worlds has seven periods [rounds] in its existence, namely:
- The homogeneous state, during which the whole is a uniform mass;
- the gaseous or radiant state;
- the “congealed” or misty;
- the atomic or ethereal;
- the germinative or “fiery”;
- The elemental or vaporous, during which the elements separate;
- the cold one, during which the planet gets its light and heat from the sun.
There are four ways of knowledge (vidya) [vidyā], called in Indian Jajna-vidya [jñāna-vidyā], Maha-vidya [mahā-vidyā], Guhya-vidya [guhya-vidyā] and Atma-vidya [ātma-vidyā]; but only the fourth way, Atma-Vidya [ātma-vidyā], is the true way of spiritual knowledge, and without it no true knowledge can be attained on the other three ways either, namely intellectual speculation etc.[liii]
Only when man has attained this spiritual power of cognition can he know what he himself and what man in general is, according to his true nature; a knowledge which cannot be attained by way of external research, neither by the study of the anatomy of the body, nor by that of physiology, nor by any kind of external research, since all these researches are necessarily directed to one single principle of man, namely his physical body form, and completely disregarding the most important parts of his constitution.
The classification of the seven principles of man and the universe has already been referred to several times in these pages; for the sake of completeness we also want to mention them in this article.
- Sthula Sarira [sthūla śarīra], the material body.
- Prana [prāṇa], the life principle.
- Linga Sarira [liṅga śarīra], the astral body, the seat of life force [principle].
- Kama Rupa [kāma rūpa] (Anima), the “animal soul,” the seat of desires and passions.
- Manas (Mens), the seat of volition and intellectual activity. (Incorrectly referred to as “spirit” in German.)
- Buddhi, the spiritual soul.
- Atma [ātma] (spiritus), the spirit.
Of these seven principles, Buddhi is the seat of Atma [ātma], Kama Rupa [kāma rūpa] the basis of Manas, and the astral body the receptacle of Prana [prāṇa]. Also, not all beings in the universe are constituted the same; for in the one only one and in the other other principles are active. But man is the crown of creation, because all seven principles are contained in his physical body and can become active. That is why it says in the Bible: “Do you not know that you are temples of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. You are that.” Few know or believe it, but among the poets there were people who seem to have sensed the secret meaning of these words. B. Carlyle says, e.g.:
“There is but one true temple in the universe, and that is the human body. Nothing is more sacred than this sublime form. When we put our hands on a human body, we touch the sky.”
If everyone heeded this truth, apart from all occultism and secret teachings, morality would be better in the world.
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Stanza VII.[liv]
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[Śloka] 1. Behold the beginning of sentient formless life.
First the divine (vessel), the one from the mother spirit (Ātman), then the spiritual (Ātma-Buddhi, the spiritual world soul), the Three from the One, the Four from the One and the Five, from which the Three, the Five and the Seven (radiate or descend). These are the triple and the quadruple descending, the spirit (mens) born sons of the first Lord (Avaloketiswara) [avalokiteśvara], the luminous seven (Rishis) [ṛṣi-s]. It is they who are there: You, me, him, O Lanoo! they watch over you and your mother, Bhumi [bhūmi] (the earth).
This verse deals with the hierarchy of divine and spiritual intelligences or creative forces in the universe, represented in the twelve signs of the zodiac, of which the seven on the descending side are related to the seven “planets.” All these fall again into numberless groups of divine, spiritual and ethereal beings. As space does not allow us to treat this subject in detail, we must content ourselves with a brief survey.
The highest group consists of the so-called divine flames; they are the formless fire breaths, identical in some respects to the upper triad of the Sephiroth. The One ignites the three descending groups, and they thereby become distinct entities in their own right.
The First [Order] after the One is the Divine Fire; the second, Fire and Ether; the third consists of Fire, Ether and Water; the fourth of Fire, Ether, Water and Air (i.e., of the spiritual forces representing them). The One has nothing to do with the planets that produce men [i.e., Man-bearing Globes], but with the invisible inner Spheres. The firstborn is the Life, Heart and Pulse of the universe; the Second is its Manas (mens) or Consciousness.
The Second group [Order] of celestial beings of Fire and Ether, which correspond to Atma-buddhi [ātma-buddhi], the Spirit [and] Soul, and which are exceedingly numerous, still have no definite form, but are already more substantial. They form the transition from the unity of essence to the multiplicity of revelation. They are the models of the incarnating Jivas [jīva-s] or Monads and consist of the Fiery Spirit of Life. The pure divine ray flows through them and they provide it with its future body, the Divine Soul (Buddhi). They are in direct connection with the Hosts of the higher Worlds in our system. From these Two-fold units proceed the Three-fold Ones.[lv]
The Third Order [Order] corresponds to atma-buddhi-manas [ātmā-buddhi-manas] (Spirit, Soul and Intellect).
The Fourth [Order] consists of substantial Entities, the highest among the Forms (rupas) [rūpa-s].[lvi] This is the nursery of the human conscious spiritual Soul. They are called the “Imperishable Jivas [Jīva-s]” and in the Order that follows them they constitute the first group of the first Seven-fold Hierarchy, the great secret of Human self-conscious and intellectual existence; for here lie hidden the Germs which are born [i.e., fall into generation]. In the physical germ-cell these germs become the spiritual force which guides the development of the human embryo and is the cause of the hereditary transmission of man’s inherent qualities and talents. Here we find the evolution of the body consequently springing from a spiritual, intellectual, and physical cause, consequently just the reverse of the usual theory.
The Fifth Group [Order] is a very mysterious one, that of the Dhyānis, representing Manas (the mind, mens, the human soul), the fifth principle, which constitutes the very human being, which enables him to think and by the action of which he distinguishes himself from other beings in the universe.[lvii]
The Sixth and Seventh groups [Orders] partake in the attributes of the lower four principles [Quaternary]. It consists of conscious ethereal Beings, as invisible as the ether, and of many classes and orders; the lowest of these are the “Nature-Spirits” or “Elementals,” of which there are innumerable species, from formless creations of thought down to atomically constituted but invisible to human eyes creatures.
All these beings have their worlds, and therefore there are “higher” and “lower” worlds. This does not mean, however, that these worlds differ from each other in terms of location, or that “heaven” is above our heads, but the difference relates to the properties of the conditions and conditions of existence prevailing therein.
All these beings are symbols and representatives of forces, each of these beings has its karma and must rise on the path of evolution from the lower to the higher. The sole exception is only the divine ray of light that comes directly from above and dwells eternally and unchanging in the heart of all. It is the power from the highest, the star of hope, whose presence gives the creatures the impulse to always strive higher, to the highest. It causes the law of evolution to operate and is thus the Redeemer of the world.
[Śloka] 2. The One Ray multiplies the smaller rays. Life is there before bodily form, and outlasts the last atom of it. The One, the Ray of Life, runs through the innumerable rays like a Thread through many Pearls.
The Thread of Life (sutratma) [sūtrātma] runs through many generations. This Thread of Life is the “Spirit,” i.e., the spiritual individuality which, by virtue of repeated reincarnations, always creates a new personal being on which it imprints its individual spiritual character. However, the newborn man receives his lower basic parts, the elementary body, the astral body, the animal nature with its instincts and the lower intellectual powers from his parents; but without the fertilization of the higher light (sutratma) [sūtrātma], the man of the earth would be but an animal or an idiot. The earthly man inherits what he possesses from the earth, i.e., through his parents he receives it from earthly nature; but the spiritual individuality of man has a higher, spiritual origin; the divine man has his home in the kingdom of light. Therefore, even if the fundamental parts separate at death, what belongs to earth returns to earth, and what belongs to “heaven” returns to heaven. But what holds the two natures together during life is the “Thread of Life” (called “belief” by German mystics).[lviii]
Humanity in its original nebulous form has its origin in the Elohim (Pitris) [pitṛ-s]; as to its physical constitution, it has its origin from the earth spirits, while its psychic, moral, and spiritual powers emanate from a group of divine beings, of whom hereinafter will be spoken.[lix] In our present age (the fifth race) the earthly spirit of the previous one (the fourth race) is still vigorously active in us; but we are approaching an age when there will be a spiritual shift and progress.
The physical human being with all his lower forms of consciousness and powers is a tabernacle for a higher spiritual being (his immortal Self). To unite with this higher being and to know it as one’s own eternal Self is the purpose of its existence.[lx]
[Śloka] 3. When the One becomes Two, then the Trinity appears. The Three are One and this is our Thread, O Lanoo, the heart of the human plant called Saptaparna.
[a] When the One, eternal ray of life is reflected in the plane of appearance, this reflection divides “the waters of space,” or as the Egyptians say in the “Book of the Dead”: “Owing to the outpouring of the ray of eternal light, which is caused by magic power of the word of the (spiritual) sun dispels the darkness, chaos ceases and the triune being emerges from it as the firstborn.”
The heart of the human plant is the indwelling immortality, i.e., that invisible entity from which his higher self-consciousness springs. This being can be present in the earthly human being without therefore leaving the supernatural regions and living and working there; i.e., the consciousness, the will, the strength, which is also the substance of the spiritual guide, can work in the earthly pupil and develop in him without the spiritual person leaving his divine point of view.[lxi]
Viewed from the philosophical point of view, man is in his external appearance an animal-like thing, a living body, but not a living being, since a true and essential existence also includes the knowledge of it, true Self-consciousness, while the animal only has objective consciousness which is constantly changing and is the result of becoming aware of changing natural forces in the animal organism. That is why the soul (the true Self-consciousness), whose seat is in the astral body, can also separate from the body during life if, as a result of moral immersion, staying in it becomes too unclean for it, and a person who is so “forsaken by God” therefore listens does not cease to live and think, and is outwardly the same as before. This is the spiritual death which a man can die without losing any of his intellectual faculties, logic, scholarly stuff, and other things that may make him shine in the eyes of the world; even a certain degree of so-called morality need not be lost in the process, for ordinary morality does not rest on inner knowledge of the truth, but only on an inherited habit of going along with certain manners and customs that are fashionable in the surrounding area, even apparently wanting to be what you are not.
[Śloka] 4. It is the Root that never dies, the Three-tongued Flame of the Four Wicks. [(a) . . .] The Wicks are the Sparks which receive their Flame from the Three-tongued Flame which springs from the number Seven, the Rays and Sparks of One Moon, which are reflected in the Surging Waves of all the Rivers of the Earth. [(b)]
The “Trinity Flame,” which never dies, is the immortal Spiritual Trinity, Ātma-Buddhi-Manas; the Four Wicks which quench and disappear are the four lower principles including the body.
As thousands of shimmering sparks created by moonlight dance on the waves of the ocean, so our personal existences, the delusive sheaths of the immortal selves, move on the waves of Maya [māyā]. They endure, like the drops of water shimmering like pearls in the moonlight, only so long as the Queen of the Night sends her light upon the streams of life, and only the rays alone endure, returning to the source of light from which they spring, to return. These rays are the symbol of the immortal soul, while the personalities, the masks through which the soul revealed itself, perish.[lxii]
[Śloka] 5. The Spark is connected to the Flame by a fine thread of Fohat. It wanders through the seven worlds of Maya [māyā]. It stops in the first kingdom and becomes Stone and Metal; it wanders into the second, and behold, it has become a Plant. The Plant whirls through Seven Forms and becomes a Sacred Animal (the first shadow of the coming physical man).
From the combined qualities of these Manu, the Thinker, is formed.
Who makes him? — The Seven Lives and the One Life. — Who completes it? — Five times the Lha. — And who perfects the final Body? — The Fish, Sin, and Soma (the Moon) [d].
The “seven worlds of Maya” are the seven globes of the planetary chain and the “seven rounds,” namely the 49 stations through which the “spark” or “spiritual monad” on the plane of existence has to pass from the beginning of a Manvantara. The “thread of Fohat” is the spiritual thread of life, which was discussed above. The whole thing refers to the greatest of all philosophical riddles, namely the substantial essence of life, whose existence is denied by those who understand the revelation of life for life itself and are incapable of comprehending an incorporeal existence.This eternal life, from which the appearance of temporal vital activity arises, can also only be comprehended by that which is above all conceptions in time, i.e., by itself.[lxiii]
The “Spark which clings to the Flame” is jiva [jīva], the monad in conjunction with the spiritual elements of manas, i.e., those sacred thoughts and feelings which constitute the only thing that survives the personality of man and which is connected with Ātma Buddhi through the thread of life.
The Divine Immortal Spark, therefore, represents what the Cabalists consider to be
[The Upper Triad, the Immortal]
7. Neshamah ([Pure] Spirit) [Ātmā],
6. Ruach ([Spiritual] soul [Buddhi]) and 5. Nephesh (eternal life [Plastic Mediator. Manas])
[The Lower Quaternary or mortal parts] belongs to the personality of man.3. Michael ([The Sun principle, Life] Prāṇa), 4. Samael (Kāma),
2. The etheric image (astral body) [liṅga-śarīra] and
1. The material body [sthūla-śarīra].
When it was said above that the “Spark” first appears in the mineral kingdom, then in the vegetable kingdom, then in the animal kingdom, and produces forms before it produces and animates the human form, this refers to the evolution of nature, in which a development from lower to the higher is made possible only by the presence of this “Spark” sprung from the highest. To suppose that nature improves of itself, or, in other words, that something higher could develop from a thing without the necessary force being at work in it, is tantamount to the theory that something arises from nothing and is not based on it scientific knowledge, but on ignorance. Evolution is possible only through the spiritual power inherent and at work in nature, which enables it to produce first minerals and metals, then lower and higher plants, then inferior and superior animals, and finally the human form. However, this does not happen all at once on one planet, but as the life wave circulates through the planetary system.[lxiv] Neither matter nor spirit, but only forms, need evolution, and this takes place when spirit is active in matter.
A ray of the Absolute (Jiva) enters matter and unfolds the lowest forms, the mineral kingdom. After a sevenfold cycle he brings forth vegetable life, and after this cycle is also completed animal life. But in order to form a thinking person, the life of the soul is required, which matter cannot offer. The “Adam,” the son of the earth, requires a higher principle than the earth spirit is able to provide, and this thought principle, the rational soul, he receives through the godlike powers called “Elohims” (Pitris or Dhyan-Chohans). Only when the form has reached a certain degree of perfection can the spirit in it reveal itself in its greatness and enable people to think rationally.
“Adam” needs the “Eve,” the spirit of the rational soul, the man of the woman, the positive of the negative, the “daughters (forms) of the earth” of the “sons of the gods,” the bodies capable only of a low consciousness the influence of a higher life to enter a higher state of consciousness. Matter is raised through this joining, but the soul is lowered, insofar as it appears bound to matter with its lower powers.
Who forms Manu? — (Manu here represents the spiritual heavenly man — not the principle of thought [within the earthly man] — but the immortal man who can both think and refrain from thinking.) — Who forms his body? — Life and living beings; Sin (self-will) and moon (deception).[lxv]
According to The Secret Doctrine, the whole world is a revelation of life and there is nothing dead and nothing really unorganized in it. Each atom is a living being in itself, in which the One Life reveals itself; the whole macro-organism is composed of microorganisms, and each organism forms a world of its own, which has its inhabitants, even if they are not all perceptible through the microscope.
“The layman regards the worlds as composites of the known Elements. The initiate sees in the sum of these elements a divine life active in innumerable living beings, each according to its nature. Fire alone is One on the plane of One Real Being; but on the level of appearances (which are only appearances and therefore not reality) its parts are fiery life-appearances, which live at the expense of, and have their being through, every other life they consume. They are therefore called the Eaters. Every visible thing in the universe was built by such lives, from the conscious and divine primal man down to the unconscious builders of material forms. From the One Life in the formless and uncreated emerges the universe of living beings. First, from the depths (chaos), cold radiant fire (light) was revealed, which caused coagulation in space (nebulae?). The struggle (for existence) began and great heat developed as a result of the meeting and collision (of matter being formed). Then came the first manifest material fire, the hot flames traversing space (comets?); the heat produces moist vapors which form material water (?); then follow the dry, the moist, and the watery mists, which make the luminous clarity of the celestial wanderers vanish, and form matter, solid watery spheres (celestial bodies). Bhumi [bhūmi] (the earth) appears with six sisters.[lxvi] These, by their constant movement, produce the inner fire, heat, and a watery mist, from which the third world element, water, arises, and from the breath of the three elements air is born. These four are the four lives of the first four periods (rounds) of Manvantara. The fifth (the ether) will be revealed in what follows.” (Commentary on the Book of Dzyan.)
In each new “round” a new one of the composite elements accessible to physical science is revealed. It goes without saying that physical science, based only on the observation of merely external phenomena, does not and cannot know anything about the original elements, and anyone who deals with occult science need not concern himself further with it.
In the first round there was only one element, one nature, one “humanity,” called “fire”[lxvii] or “light” (radiant matter). In the second round “fire and earth”[lxviii] appeared and consequently two different kinds of life, in the third “water,”[lxix] in the fourth “air,”[lxx] and in the next round ether (astral light?)[lxxi] will be revealed or with, in other words, the human organization has attained a higher degree of development and perception to comprehend this fifth element.[lxxii] It should be noted that what we know as our (visible) “Earth” on which we live, although it has existed for many millions of years, nevertheless has only a short existence in relation to the length of time of the evolution of the whole.
All is life, whether active or bound. Had there ever been a time when there was no life, then no existence would have been possible either.
“Everything that leaves the state of laya (latency) becomes active life. It is drawn into the vortex of movement. Mind and matter are two states of the One that is neither mind nor matter; both are absolute, bound life. Spirit is the first revelation of the divisible in space, matter is the first revelation of spirit. That which is neither spirit nor matter is Being, the self-existing eternal cause from which spring spirit and matter, from which the cosmos arises. And this (THAT) we call the One Life or Breath (of God) in the Universe.” (Commentary.)[lxxiii]
Like breeds like. Consciousness cannot create matter, matter cannot create consciousness. When matter becomes conscious, it is because the latent consciousness within it becomes active and manifest.
“By the emanations of the seven bodies of the seven orders of the Dhyan-Chohans, and from these arose the seven qualities (magnitudes or elements), from the motion and harmonious union of which the manifest material universe is born. In the second round the earth, which hitherto existed only as a germ in the matter of space, began its existence; she had attained the development of her second principle (Prana) [prāṇa], individual sentient existence. The second corresponds to the sixth (principle), one is eternal life, the other temporal life” (Commentary.)
The second principle is spiritual air, which brings eternal life to those who breathe it. The third is spiritual water. In our fourth age the fourth element, the animal element of the earth spirit, is most highly developed. The earth will only reach its highest state, its true form and perfection, in the seventh round.[lxxiv]
Now it remains from the above verse of the Book of Dzyan to explain the meaning of the words “fish, sin and moon.” However, H. P. Blavatsky does not elaborate here on these mystical mysteries other than that “sin” refers to the “fall,” the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the “fish” refers to the Matsya avatar of Vishnu, the Chaldean Oannes (John), and the “moon” refers to the Pitris. More about this is in the second book under the title “The Holy of Holies.”
[Śloka] 6. From the first-born (the original human [Primitive, or First Man]), the connection between the Silent Guardian and his Shadow becomes stronger and more luminous with each change (reincarnation). The dawn turns into the bright light of the midday sun.
The “silent guardian” is the spiritual individuality, man’s personal God, his own divine self or “the Father in heaven,” with whom the Son is to become one on earth, a self-existent divine being whose spirit (ātma) One is with God (Paramātma), whose “garment” is the transfigured body, the spiritual soul (Buddhi), and whose “shadow” is the personality walking on earth, as long as this shadow does not leave this source of his divine light and life turned away and tore the “thread” through which the spiritual knowledge dawning in him can become the full consciousness of inner enlightenment. More about this can be found in the second section of the book Dzyan [The Secret Doctrine, volume II].
[Śloka] 7. “This is your present sphere of activity,” [“This is thy present Wheel.”] says the Flame to the Spark. “You are my own self, my image and shadow. I have clothed myself in your form and you are my vessel until the day “Be with us,” when you will again become me and others, myself and I; then the builders, who have put on their first robes, descend to the radiant earth and rule over the people who are themselves.
(a) The Day when “the Spark becomes Flame again,” that is, when man is reunited with his Son of God (Dhyān-Chohan or “Angel”), and “I, you and others” will be and encompass all, is Paranirvāna, namely when all that belongs to time, physical, mental and spiritual Forms at the entrance of pralaya disappear and only pure divine self-consciousness remains; or in other words, when all that is of a divine nature has entered into Brahma [brahman], the Divine Unity.
The misunderstanding of this teaching has led many to misunderstand that nirvana [nirvāṇa] means “annihilation,” and this is no more correct than saying that during a deep sleep of his body, during which his divine self is in its pristine state of absolute consciousness (universal self-consciousness) is therefore destroyed. Of course, during this state that which is not man himself, but only the instrument of his revelation, is in a state of rest; but the human being who has entered into true being has no need to play a role as an appearance in the world of appearances. However, for those who identify only with their personal appearance, absorbed in themselves and their deceptive “selfness,” and full of selfish delusions and desires, their person is everything and the annihilation of their appearance is the downfall of their world. But whoever lives in the infinite above the limited is also above his nature and its appearance and is able to grasp that Nirvana is the highest self-confident rest, the “eternal bliss.” Such people will themselves be “sun” in the next Manvantara, while in this one they were illuminated by their “suns”; i.e., they will then need not be guided by angels, but will themselves be the angels, teachers, guides, and gods of the humanity that succeeds our humanity, and whose monads may now be trapped in those forms which in the animal kingdom have a higher degree of intelligence.
All of this is based on the law of evolution, which does not arise from mechanical movements and does not owe its existence to the “struggle for existence,” but is the result of the influence of divine power (grace) that comes from above. This brings us back to the seven periods of evolution, which correspond to the seven principles of the macrocosm and microcosm, namely, to begin with the highest;
- The divine nature,
- The spiritual,
- The intellectual,
- The passionate,
- The instinctive or perceptual,
- The semi-corporeal (astral [etheric body]) and
- The material or physical (sensual) nature.
This is the “heavenly ladder,” on which the creative angels descend and ascend; the forms come and go, the spirit disappears and reappears at a higher and nobler form, and as every human body has its season of activity and its period of rest, as day and night alternate and the manifestations of life come periodically, so it is as in the small also in the large, in the individual nature as in the universe. As a will-less and therefore pure being, man leaves his heavenly home to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and to return as a self-confident, self-aware being — not as a will-less tool of God, but as a self-acting force, which through self-conquest in obedience has become identical with the will of God. This is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega; but in between lies a thorny path. Deeper and deeper the Monad descends into matter where sin and suffering reign, to arrive at knowledge through experience. Arrived at the lowest level, it ascends up again. Self-sacrifice is man’s path to God, only by renouncing multiplicity can he return to Unity.
But this is the most difficult thing of all; for man’s nature is a composite thing, and the multiplicity of the surroundings affects the multiplicity within. The fullness of the phenomenal world penetrates through the senses into his mind with innumerable stimuli, imprisons his thoughts and prevents man from directing his whole mind to attaining the eternal truth, which is only one even of those who know want to learn the truth, most seek it merely through contemplation, but not through entering into it. They seek the truth for some selfish purpose, but not for its own sake; they would like to know, but do not strive for being, and that is why there are so many “who always learn and never come to the knowledge of the truth,” for mere contemplation is not possession, and the satisfaction of curiosity is no knowledge. Whoever wants to attain true self-knowledge must seek it in the unity of the big whole and find his true Self in the heart of everyone, for the true human being lives in the whole. That which makes us appear separate from the whole is only an illusion; “what lives in the hearts of others of us is our truest and deepest selves.” (Herder.)
With the above we close our excerpts and reflections from H. P. Blavatsky’s translation of the first of the seven chapters of the Book Dzyān. If it is extremely difficult to find words to designate things which must be spiritually conceived before they can be intellectually understood, this difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that in an age when naturalism and material direction prevail, not only are the terms for spiritual forces and entities lost, but the words which formerly denoted these things are now commonly misunderstood and misconstrued. Everyone just understands a thing as he understands it, and whoever misunderstands the mysteries of religion and occult science will also judge them incorrectly, i.e., he forms a wrong view and then criticizes his own product as if it were someone else’s.
In order to meet in advance all erudite and erroneous objections which might possibly be made from the “scientific” point of view, H. P. Blavatsky has provided the text with numerous and detailed comments which, for those who wish to try to combine the modern views with the higher, to reconcile wisdom is of great interest, but is not necessary for less learned but clear-thinking minds, insofar as they do not have to reply to objections which they do not intend to make, nor do they need to doubt to eliminate what they do not possess.
Anyone who wants to know the truth can only find it through his own observation and therefore needs no arguments; anyone who cannot or does not want to recognize it cannot be taught it by any arguments. Truth is not a product of logic; logic can only serve to dispel the errors that stand in the way of knowing the truth. The truth is eternal and its own knowledge is completely self-sufficient. What prevents man from recognizing this eternal truth for himself are the false ideas which he has about God, nature and his own being, and which are all the more difficult to eliminate the more they have become generally accepted.
The purpose of our translation of these excerpts from The Secret Doctrine, which forms the basis of all religions and true science throughout the world, is therefore not to present news to the readers, but to those who care more about the knowledge of the truth than the confirmation of the truth. What they have to do with the opinions they have grown fond of is to supply material for their own reflection, originating from a higher world view, the use of which can enable them to arrive at this view themselves.
Notes
[i] Five parts combined into one document:
Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. Von H. P. Blavatsky. Vorbemerkungen des Übersetzers.] Lotusblüten 1, no. 6 (March 1893), 165-168]
Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. The Evolution of the Universe. I. II. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Die Evolution des Weltalls. I. II. Lotusblüten 1, no. 6 (March 1893), 169-190]
Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. III. IV. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. III. IV. Lotusblüten 1, no. 7 (April 1893), 283-304]
Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. V. VI. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. V. VI. Lotusblüten 1, no. 8 (May 1893), 356-404]
Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. VII. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. VII. Lotusblüten 1, no. 9 (June 1893), 448-483]
{Preliminary notes from Robert Hutwohl. This was introduced by Dr. Franz Hartmann, being the earliest material to the German-speaking public, of H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. Throughout the articles, for the most part, it is only the larger type text, most of which are the numbered from The Secret Doctrine which are from The Secret Doctrine and not by Dr. Hartmann. Otherwise, all additional text has been provided by Dr. Hartmann or an occasional comment from me or where the correct Sanskrit word in scholarly format has been inserted in italics. However, there are many cases where Dr. Hartmann’s comments are actually a paraphrase from The Secret Doctrine comments which follow the Stanza in the form of śloka comments.
When translating from German to English, it is often difficult to determine whether the English word is intended to be capitalized, because all German nouns are always capitalized, therefore I sometimes referred to the original The Secret Doctrine text. Dr. Hartmann included, in the title of these articles, “Aus dem Tibetanische übersetzt,” which in English is: “Translated from the Tibetan.” However, the original stanzas from the Book of Dzyan are in the Senzar language. There is probably a Tibetan translation from the Senzar as we can see Chinese, Tibetan and especially Sanskrit words are found throughout the Stanzas and verses or ślokas. This would indicate the Book of Dzyan exists along with other texts within the secret tradition which is accessible by Masters, Initiates and Chelās within the hidden fastnesses of Tibet, China and India. This corresponds to the tradition from which The Book of the Golden Precepts, parts of which were memorized by H. P. Blavatsky, may have been translated into Tibetan. The idea of an anthropomorphic God as defined with the fundamentalist Christian, Judaic and Islam religions is not conceived in The Secret Doctrine and therefore should not be considered, even with the word brahmā. See Letter X in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett [and others]. Reading and understanding Rig-veda (Ṛg-veda) maṇḍala (book) X, sūkta (hymn) 129 (X.129) may be useful at the beginning of these verses. These articles were reformatted from the originals, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[ii] {R.H.—The type of feeling here is not the lower, desire type feeling but that which absorbs and reflects Buddhi or intuition, which is beyond intellection and the ratiocinative principle.
[iii] Romans IX, 16.
[iv] Philippians II, 13.
[v] Chapter XVIII, 62 and 55.
[vi] Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. The Evolution of the Universe. I. II. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Die Evolution des Weltalls. I. II. Lotusblüten 1, no. 6 (March 1893), 169-190]
[vii] {R.H.—In this series of articles, it will be noticed they were written before the official German edition of The Secret Doctrine, vols. I and II were released, i.e., 1899. Possibly Dr. Hartmann consulted the Third Edition English version of The Secret Doctrine for these articles. The Third Edition of The Secret Doctrine came out in the same year, 1893 these articles came out. Dr. Hartmann frequently referred to the Third Edition for his Lotusblüten journal articles but sometimes referred to The Secret Doctrine, First Edition, before the Third Edition was available to the public. The German Secret Doctrine was based on the Third Edition of The Secret Doctrine.
Dr. Hartmann’s comments do not follow exactly, the English Secret Doctrines, nor the Froebe German editions. Therefore after my first comment about his deviations from the originals, I will not make further notes about his deviations but rather, accept what he has written.
Editions referred to:
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (Adyar, Madras, India: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 35.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, Quest Edition, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (Adyar, Madras, India: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 35.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, Third Edition (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1893), 67.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, The Adyar Edition (Adyar, Madras, India, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1971), 109.
Die Geheimlehre von H. P. Blavatsky, Band I Kosmogenesis, übersetzt von Dr. Phil. Robert Froebe (Leipzig, Verlag Wilhelm Friederich, 1899), 67.
Die Geheimlehre von H. P. Blavatsky, Band I Kosmogenesis, übersetzt von Dr. Phil. Robert Froebe (Den Haag, Verlag J. J. Couvreur, (1 Jan. 1980), 67.}
[viii] {R.H.—The original Secret Doctrine I, has “parent” instead of Hartmann’s “nature.” But, he explains in his commentary after the verse.}
[ix] {R.H.—Such as with mars and mercury, as described in The Secret Doctrine.}
[x] {R.H.—Dhyāni Chohans}
[xi] See A. P. Sinnett, “The Secret Doctrine of Buddhism.”
[xii] “Everything ephemeral is just a parable.” (Goethe, “Faust.”)
[xiii] {R.H.—This is a Tibetan word which has both, an outer and an occult meaning.}
[xiv] John III, 3.
[xv] Bhagavad Gita. Chap. II, verses 12, 16, 20.
[xvi] {R.H.—Also the name of aditi or of dākṣāyaṇī.}
[xvii] Thomas von Kempis, I, 3.
[xviii] Chapter XIII, 15.
[xix] Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. III. IV. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. III. IV. Lotusblüten 1, no. 7 (April 1893), 283-304]
[xx] {R.H.—That = tat. It is a Sanskrit, not a Tibetan word. The most common Tibetan word for “that” is “de,” pronounced “te.”}
[xxi] {R.H.—The French use a comma, whereas the English use a period.}
[xxii] Excerpts from the Secret Doctrine of the East of H. P. Blavatsky. V. VI. Remarks from the translator [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] [Auszüge aus der Geheimlehre des Ostens. V. VI. Lotusblüten 1, no. 8 (May 1893), 356-404]
[xxiii] See: [A. P.] Sinnett. „Die Geheimlehre des Buddhismus.”
[xxiv] Now that the so-called “hypnotism” has been introduced in Germany, it is to be hoped that fohat, akasa, prana and other universal forces of nature, unknown to modern science, will soon be rediscovered, albeit under modern names.
[xxv] It is much to be regretted that the German language has only the meaningless word Geist for so many different things, for which there are many names in Sanskrit, a circumstance which gives rise to endless misunderstandings in the treatment of mystical objects, and one clear discussion almost impossible. “Spirit” as opposed to matter is an insubstantial nothingness; it only becomes something when it is revealed in substance. Meister Eckhart says: “The soul is spirit according to its highest functions, soul according to the lowest, and so there is a boundary between soul and spirit in the one being. The soul is called spirit when it is above anything co-natural.” The “Dhyan Chohans” could therefore perhaps best be described as the higher spiritual functions of the souls of the planets, or, as Cornelius Agrippa calls them, as their “intelligences.”
[xxvi] Here, the word “mind” means the unity of will and thought, which are separated in imperfect beings. The human, for example, thinks this or that and wants something else, or he makes the decisions of his will dependent on the changing impressions of his imagination. In spiritual beings, will and thought are one with deed. “What God wills he thinks, and what he thinks comes to pass.”
[xxvii] “In the beginning was the deed.” (Goethe. Faust.)
[xxviii] Another word for which there are no terms in German. Perhaps it could be termed “absolute being,” or the underlying truth of all existence; it is the eternal, self-existent reality of which the world of forms and appearances is the manifestation, and which only he who possesses and feels it within himself can know.
[xxix] Mentioned in the Revelation of John “the seven lamp stands which stand before the throne of God.”
[xxx] The personal man can never rise above his personality; he cannot become a god and still exist under the illusion of separateness; but the consciousness of personality disappears when the spirit in man awakens to its divine self-awareness and thereby recognizes itself as one with divinity as a whole. Likewise, the dark can never become light, but when it becomes light, the dark is no longer there.
[xxxi] The whole universe is therefore one large organism, in which are contained many smaller organisms, and each of these organisms constitutes a world in which are contained other worlds, and so down to the microbes and blood cells in the human organism. This affiliation of intellectual classes also explains the elective affinities of soul among human beings, about which philosophers have so often racked their heads without being able to discover the cause.
[xxxii] {R.H.—In the modern pīnyīn system.}
[xxxiii] {R.H.—Kwan Yin is the Chinese representation of Avalokiteśvara, which is male and was replaced as female by the Chinese.}
[xxxiv] See „Lotusblüten.” T. Subba Row: “Vorträge über die Bhagavad Gita” IV, page 46.
[xxxv] As these pages are not written for children or those who are not yet acquainted with occult things, we do not think it necessary to explain what is meant by “elements,” that it does not mean their material manifestations, etc.
[xxxvi] See A. P. Sinnet, “The Secret Doctrine of Buddhism.” We are now in the second half of the fourth round as the life-wave travels from planet to planet. During the first three rounds our earth forms and compacts, during the fourth it hardens, during the next three it “spirituals” again, i.e., it becomes more and more ethereal. Likewise, during the first three rounds, humanity also goes through various stages of evolution which would be difficult to describe. Only in the fourth [round] does man emerge as what we know him for, from the animal-like savage to the “pride of modern civilization.” In the following three rounds mankind will also become more and more spiritual until it consists of godlike beings who finally enter the godhead. Since humanity, divided into genders, it has only existed for 18,618,732 years in this round, it will take some patience to wait for this godlike state to materialize for humanity as a whole.
[xxxvii] The number of planets in our solar system and their composition is discussed elsewhere in the book. Whether the external appearances of these planets are known or unknown to astronomers is irrelevant, for we are not dealing here with physical appearances, but with the principles and beings underlying the appearance.
[xxxviii] According to the Brahmins’ reckoning, such a “day of creation” covers a period of 311,040,000,000,000 of our years.
[xxxix] Our Moon is such a dead, or rather dying, planet as it has lost spiritual life and showers the earth, which is its child, with the “magnetic emanations” of its carcass.
[xl] {R.H.—This is Stanza VI, verse 5, part (a) from the original text of The Secret Doctrine.I., page 213 of Third Edition; page 191 Collected Writings edition.}
[xli] As is described in detail in The Secret Doctrine, the wave of life travels through the seven planets of the solar system on each round. However, these planets are not all in the state of material condensation in which we see our earth; but they are in various states, according as they represent one or the other of the seven principles, so that one planet is known to us only as “thought substance,” another as “astral matter,” another as a “magnetic sphere,” etc. As the wave of life passes from one planet to the other, first the elemental kingdom, then the mineral kingdom, then the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom and finally human forms are developed on them in successive order, but these are still too crude and animal in nature to be viewed to supply the higher spirits embodied in them with the means of bringing its qualities into outward expression.
Each such round brings about in the human forms a new development of intellectual, psychic, spiritual and also physical qualities, as each planet imparts the qualities characterizing it to its inhabitants (whose forms are its products), and as the life wave on a planet (during millions of years) in activity, the realm of phenomena peculiar to the planet in question unfolds there; the races of the inhabitants arise and pass away, until when the planet is exhausted and needs rest, a time of pralaya takes place and the wave of life travels to the next planet, only to return again after eons of years in its circuit.
In order to avoid errors, it should be noted that the seven planets discussed here have nothing to do with the visible planets known to astronomers, which belong to our solar system but not to our earth system. Of this inner ring in our solar system, only the earth and the moon are visible to the eye; Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, etc., belong to other planetary circles in our solar system and are visible because they are in the circles to which they belong at a stage of development approximately similar to that of the earth in the circle to which they belong to whom she belongs. One must not confuse occult science with material science. The latter deals only with what is perceptible to our external senses. However, what is perceptible to the senses is a vanishingly small part of what actually exists. Therefore, before one criticizes or rejects the secret teachings of the East, one should first try to get to know them thoroughly.
[xlii] The greatest thinker of our century would be in an awkward position if only the brain of a baboon, or an orangutang, or even that of a Hottentot, was available to him to exercise his powers of reasoning. The human form certainly belongs to the animal kingdom, but not the human being who lives in it, whose origin is to be sought in the kingdom of light. What is essential in the human organism is the enlivening spiritual “monad”; without it even the most learned man would only be an animal and not immortal; he would be a creature as Goethe presents it as “Mephistopheles” in his “Faust,” and of which he says:
“Would a man’s spirit in his high aspirations
Ever caught by your kind?”
Man’s form, his “spiritual” organization, requires evolution; the essential human being, the “monad,” does not need it; she is what she was from eternity and always will be. It neither progresses nor develops; it is not even touched by the conditions under which the form in which it is embodied lives. It does not belong to this world or this plane of existence. It can be compared to a star that stands in eternal rest in the spiritual firmament, whose light shines and works as a star of hope in earthly people. The more the earthly personality clings to this star of hope and is thus “spiritually” nourished by it, the more man can become enlightened by the monad and become a partaker of its immortality. But the “monad,” which might better be called “god,” does not cling to any personality. In other words: “God forsakes those who forsake him and want nothing to do with him.”
(Compare, Bhagavad Gita II, 12.)
[xliii] The reasons for this are convincingly given in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, but space does not permit us to delve further into the subject, and we can only remark that the main cause is that this part of the period of creation represents the turning point between the spiritual and the material. The earth we now inhabit is the scales, in which everyone is measured according to his worth, whether he is fit for progress or not; it is the place where the law of karma works and everyone gets what is due to him. At the time of the examination, however, no new candidates will be admitted. {R.H.—As Dr. Hartmann says, “the turning point.” This is the point of the life wave has passed the point of: the fourth globe, 3.5 rounds, 4th root-race, 4th sub-race. Thence on, humanity is at the upswing. Thus, this lowest stage of materiality reached that point in the Atlantean root-race in its 4th sub-race, the Turanian.}
[xliv] This by no means speaks for the monkey theory; for not man but the organism in which he inhabits comes from the animal kingdom. But as for the apes themselves, according to the Secret Doctrine, they are not the progenitors of the human race, but degenerate varieties of it, which arose when, at the time of the third race, the forms intended for human dwellings were still imperfect (incomplete) and without understanding. The spiritual inner man is a thing; the external human living organism is different, as every rational person knows instinctively. It was left to the self-conceit of modern anthropologists (!) to confuse the nature of man with his earthly appearance and to start the fairy tale that his divine spirit was the product of the intelligence of a monkey.
[xlv] {R.H.—See The Secret Doctrine I, p. 210-211 Third Edition, pages 188-189 of Collected Writings edition.}
[xlvi] {R.H.—This is Stanza VI, Verse 5, second part (b). See the original text of The Secret Doctrine I., page 213 of the Third Edition; Page 191 The Secret Doctrine I. Collected Writings edition. Dr. Hartmann added a numbered bullet point here.}
[xlvii] {R.H.—Thus, without the esoteric explanation from The Secret Doctrine, which is derived from the secret doctrine of the ages, Christians have only confusion, due to a withholding of knowledge about actual historical events, which, to some degree, vindicates the non-believers, materialists and academics that this was only a story, and nothing more.}
[xlviii] {R.H.—to add confusion to the already confused state of historicity by the Christian Fathers and later doctrinal interpreters, is the fact that the only place in the Bible where Lucifer appears is in Isaiah 14:12 which describes Lucifer as the “Day Star,” referencing a Babylonian King and also the Babylonian empire. The Church however, ascribes it to Satan and has conveniently made it so in order to serve its purposes, to enable a “bad guy.” Esoterically, Lucifer is the Morning Star or Venus.}
[xlix] H. P. Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine” discusses at length the allegory of “the fall,” but space does not allow us to go into the details of their arguments. Still, this teaching contains a clear exposition of the origin of “evil,” [and the Devil] which has puzzled so many theologians and philosophers.
[l] {R.H.—The numbering in Hartmann’s translation does not concur with the original The Secret Doctrine I is Stanza VI. Śloka or verse 6. See page 220 of the Third and Revised Edition, and page 220 of Collected Writings edition.
[li] In Hebrew [Kabala] these seven worlds correspond to the following designations:
Birth. Chesed.
I. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — the archetypal world.
Tephireth.
II. — — — — — — — Hod. Netzach — — —— — — — — the intellectual world.
Yesod.
III. — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — the forming or substantial world.
Malkuth.
IV. — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — the material (physical) world.
Above these, however, is the Formless, the three supreme Sephiroth, or the trinity of Kether (the crown, the nameless), Chokmah (wisdom), and Binah (knowledge).
[lii] The realization that the earth and other celestial bodies are spherical and that the stars are not lights nailed to the firmament is not a recent achievement of science, despite what is said in our schools, but all this was known thousands of years ago.
[liii] Atma-Vidya [ātma-vidyā] is spiritual belief in the true sense of the word. But since this true belief is extremely rare to find in our age, the concept of this word has also been lost to modern times, and it only knows the shadow of it, namely an acceptance of some opinion, but not the living force of belief, knowledge the soul of things that the mind does not yet comprehend.
[liv] {R.H.—Third Edition, vol. I, page 233 ; Collected Writings edition, vol. I, page 213 ; Adyar Edition, vol. I, page 260.}
[lv] The Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, says similarly: “God (the Unity) is the Father of all things, for he is their cause. He gives everything to nature, form and matter. God is the center of all things; the deity has all things in himself, but in one essence, undivided. Insofar as God is in all things, he is the soul of all souls. He is the light of the light, the life of the living, the being of beings, the reason of the reasonable. He is a being who has within himself the essence of all creatures. The likeness which unites creature and divine being is called the preceding image, and there must be as many images in God as there are gradations in nature, but in all the multiplicity of images he sees only the reflection of his own being. The world of the preceding images is nature, which is of God, simply in itself without form or form.” (333, 4.)
[lvi] Since there is only one basic law of order in nature, we also find in material chemistry a similar classification of monatomic, diatomic, tetratomic groups and a similar order among the elementary beings of the astral plane.
[lvii] Referring to man, Eckhart says: “Man, according to the highest part of his inner being, is closer to God than to creatures, and when one asks how great his soul is, one should know that its greatness cannot lull heaven and earth. But only God himself, whom the heavens of all heavens cannot contain. What the soul is at its core has never been recognized.” (89. 23.) “Memory is like the Father, reason is like the Son, will is like the Holy Spirit. But the highest form of the soul, the spark [Monad], corresponds to the unmanifest deity, which is the highest object of the soul. (318, 1.)
[lviii] See, Jakob Boehme, “Von den drei Prinzipien.” XIX. 44.
[lix] A sevenfold group of “heavenly men” or “angels.” “The seven sheaves.”—(Moses XXXVII, 7.)
[lx] In these words is contained a truth of the most far-reaching importance, the general understanding of which alone would be sufficient to bring the world to its senses. Man with all his earthly processes is not immortal. Only the divine being in him is immortal. But this divine being is not the personal man, unless he has united himself with this divine being through perfect sanctification, which will seldom be the case nowadays. A number of extremely important considerations could be linked to this.
[lxi] This “descending” and penetration of the divine nature of this being into the earthly mortal human nature, whereby the latter receives its divine nourishment, which leads it to immortality, was already symbolized by the ancient Egyptians under a ceremony which we find in a similar form among Buddhists in Tibet today, as well as in Christianity, known as the “communion” or “the Lord’s Supper.” Joh. Eckhart says: “God” (the divine entity) draws the soul up to himself through the great gift of his holy body. Whoever receives this food rightly becomes one with it, as flesh and blood are one with my soul. It is the spark of the spirit (in the human being) that enjoys this food and reveals its effect.”
The Bible says: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him” (John VI, 57), and the Bhagavad Gita expresses the same in other words, saying: “He who eats the immortals takes in part of the sacrifice which he offers, that goes to Brahma, the Eternal. Brahma himself is the sacrifice; He is the fire (of love) and the food of fire (the will), and he sacrifices himself” (Chap. IV, 24).
[lxii] In the Catholic Church, Mary, Queen of Heaven, is depicted as standing on the moon. This signifies the soul that has conquered the “moon” (the region of delusion and imagination). Only those soul forces which have outgrown the four lower principles and entered the Trinity attain immortality.
[lxiii] Joh. Scheffler says: “I myself am eternity when I leave time and gather myself in God and God in me.” And Jakob Boehme says: “Whoever lives in time as in eternity, and in eternity as in of time, he is free from all strife.”
[lxiv] See: A. P. Sinnett: “Die Geheimlehre des Buddhismus. [Esoteric Buddhism]”
[lxv] {R.H.—At this point, for those who are following along pari passu with The Secret Doctrine, volume I, here are the corresponding pages to Dr. Hartmann’s Lotusblüten, June 1893 article, pages 466-467:
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (Adyar, Madras, India: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 248.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, Quest Edition, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (Adyar, Madras, India: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 248.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I Cosmogenesis, Third Edition (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1893), 268.
- P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, The Adyar Edition (Adyar, Madras, India, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1971), 293.
Die Geheimlehre von H. P. Blavatsky, Band I Kosmogenesis, übersetzt von Dr. Phil. Robert Froebe (Leipzig, Verlag Wilhelm Friederich, 1899), 268.
Die Geheimlehre von H. P. Blavatsky, Band I Kosmogenesis, übersetzt von Dr. Phil. Robert Froebe (Den Haag, Verlag J. J. Couvreur, (1 Jan. 1980), 268.}
[lxvi] The “Six Sisters” of Earth are not visible planets, but the six etheric and spiritual embodiments of the principles pertaining to the constitution of the earth system. Unfortunately, due to a lack of space in these excerpts, it is not possible for us to touch more than superficially on the detailed explanations of the work, and for a better understanding we must refer the reader who is inclined to criticism to the original itself, in which all possible objections are answered in advance .
[lxvii] “Precisely where concepts are missing, a word appears at the right time.” — (Goethe. “Faust.”)
[lxviii] “Precisely where concepts are missing, a word appears at the right time.” — (Goethe. “Faust.”)
[lxix] “Precisely where concepts are missing, a word appears at the right time.” — (Goethe. “Faust.”)
[lxx] “Precisely where concepts are missing, a word appears at the right time.” — (Goethe. “Faust.”)
[lxxi] “Precisely where concepts are missing, a word appears at the right time.” — (Goethe. “Faust.”)
[lxxii] This is associated with the development of a sixth sense, which H. P. Blavatsky calls “penetrability.”
[lxxiii] {R.H.—Synchronizing here with the additions of The Secret Doctrine: Third Edition, pages 278-279; Quest and Collected Writings Edition, page 258; The Adyar Edition, page 302.}
[lxxiv] As Eugenius Philalethes says, no man has yet seen the earth (its true nature). What we see is only the outward form of matter in its various manifestations, and the earth is now in its state of kāma-rūpa, the lowest of all, from which it will rise by the influence of higher spirit power. Therefore also the air that man breathes is raw animal air, and not the spiritual air which, breathed in by the soul, brings [to] it immortality and everything on our planet is of animal life, the symbol of desire and egoism, penetrated; the air filled with infusoria, the bodies built up by animal microorganisms, etc.