The Theosophical Forum – December 1944

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES — G. de Purucker

Between divinity and the manifested universe there must be intermediate links, because any thinking person can see that Divine Perfection cannot engage in efforts of imperfection. And consequently the sun itself, for example, consists of a fundamental Divine Being breaking up or radiating into the seven solar logoi. Each of these in its turn copies the example of its divine prototype. We see in this example, understandable by children, the reason for the vast and almost incomprehensible range of entities in the manifested universe and accounting for the progressively greater increase of imperfection as our thought ranges from Divinity on the one hand down to the lowest degrees of the manifested world. Now we break up this infinite variety into seven principles or logoi streaming from the Divine One, not one as a symbol of numeration because that springs from the zero, philosophically speaking the All, but One merely in the sense that it is incomprehensible Infinitude which our feeble human minds cannot easily expand to the point of grasping. From the Divine Unity springs forth the manifested world, the physical world of manifestation. And it is for these foregoing reasons that the Masters and H. P. B. insisted so strongly that for the proper comprehension of the Theosophical teachings we should know the seven principles of the universe and man.

Perfection does not produce imperfection. Therefore between the perfection of the Divine Unity and the imperfection of the manifested universe, that dark and somber place, there must be a virtually infinite range of intermediary stages running from Divinity to the utmost dregs of materiality. Thus we call these the seven principles in man from the Atman, corresponding to the Divine in the universe, to the physical body, corresponding to the lowest manifested plane. Man obviously is not divine, neither in devotion nor in thought nor in any characteristic, for if it were so men would be gods. But men are imperfect and it is this range from the perfect to the imperfect in the universe that corresponds to the seven principles of man.



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