Awake! Arise! dear child! wish only and thy dream is over! I touch thy lips and eyes and hair with Golden Flowers. I kiss thy heart with singing flame of Hope and Beauty. Open thy eyes: the Sun of the Eternal Truth is shining. Awake, and find thyself an Angel among the Angels, and do not dream thyself a mortal. A child of the ages, take thy hereditary share of endless progress. Thy past went forward to prepare the way, thy future is awaiting thee already. The space of endless blue gives thee access to every star of the Immortal Wisdom. Look! there is no check, no limit — all, all is thine.
The reader may easily see that Humanity is the child and Theosophy is the Angel, who awakes the child, and that Theosophy is no bare system of ideas, but the living speech and light and power of our Elder Brothers, those men who have attained to the Angelic plane, and of that higher plane itself and its innumerable Hosts, who speak through our inner souls, whether they look inside, or interpret the beauty and meaning of the outer nature. And when this is known and felt and assimilated, it is no more the outer nature.
If some one tells you that Theosophy is here in this one book, or in the mind of this one sage or in this society and nowhere else, do not believe him. It is only in your own heart, and it is because your heart is not your own. Your heart dwells in all things, and all things dwell in it — the flowers, the birds, the skies, your dear ones, your country and your God, the hope and joy of all humanity, the brotherhood of all existing. Everywhere it spreads the same mysterious golden glow, embracing and unifying all for it is an ever growing reflection of the Unknown which your soul may worship only in silent adoration.
The unbroken diamond Unity of the World's Heart, of which we are the undetached sparks, is then the reflection of and the outreach to that Infinite, Inscrutable Causeless Cause, which is so singly One, that there is no Second with which to compare, and know it more changeless and all embracing than space in which all planets move, more still, than silence in which all sounds find harmony and rest.
This is the first fundamental proposition of the Secret Doctrine, and with the other two it gives the framework for its philosophy. (1)
Now if the reader has studied well and grasped these three propositions, or rather feels himself in their grasp, if he feels himself a child of a Bright Ray of the Boundless Unknown, a candidate for the Eternal Progress, an heir of all Perfection, Wisdom and Bliss; if he keeps his eyes as free from prejudice as they were free and hopeful in the freshness of his morning, if he keeps his heart aglow, as in the dawn of his childhood, when the first rays of the Sun kissed him sweetly with an undying promise, then well for him if he start all his thoughts from this deepest thought, which is no thought at all, though embracing all thoughts, as space embraces all forms; and starting from it never lose the thread that he may return again free, unbounded and unclouded — a brother of the Stars of the Internal Space.
There is a book so ancient, so venerable, the oldest manuscript in the world, known but to the very few who have deserved to understand it. A few chapters of it, with commentaries added, are translated and published by H. P. Blavatsky, in her great work called "The Secret Doctrine." There the reader may find that these few chapters of the "Book of Dzyan" elucidate Cosmogony in a most logical manner, and not, as does the modern science, from a multitude of the innumerable Gods, called the atoms, of whose origin science, however, is silent, notwithstanding its theory of differentiation from a homogeneous something. The first two chapters of the Book of Dzyan describe that Unknown Unity, where Spirit-Consciousness, which is the Father, and Matter, which is the Mother, and the Universe, which is the Son, were all once more one: where time was not, for it lay asleep in Indefinite Duration; where the Universe was concealed in the Divine Thought and in the Divine Bosom. Then follows a description of how this concealed Universe, the Son — and there are many sons — emerged from this inner condition, its Matter expanding from within outward, and its Spirit appearing as a ray sent from the Unknowable Darkness to enlighten that which, being outward, needs its radiance to shine consciously.
Now, first matter is simply objectivity, very spiritual, homogeneous, clear. This spirit-matter is the Logos, the first Atom-Universe. It becomes now manifested Unity and differentiates into the Seven Lords of Being, which are one in Him, as thoughts are one in a brain. Matter divides also into seven planes, and then again into 49, from the subtlest down to the grossest. The Seven Dhyanis, or Lords, radiate new hosts of being, and so on to Devas, to elementals, even to the smallest mineral atoms, all is branched out and differentiated from that great Tree whose root is the Logos and which grows in the Eternal — Unknowable. The Tree of the Universe is periodical in its manifestation, and the farther the branch from the centre the more frequent is its period.
From Mahamanvantaras of 311,040, 000,000,000 years, to planetary rounds each of many million years, then to human race periods, coinciding with geological periods, then to the tropical years of 25, 868 years, to human life and postmortem rest on the pure mind-plane, and then life again, then to common years, months, days, to the periods of sound several thousand times a second, and even to the 700,000,000,000,000 vibrations in a second in a violet light, all these are expressions of the same law and show that the leaves and shoots vibrate faster than the branches. Of course the Tree symbol should be understood mystically. It illustrates at once involution and evolution, immortality and reincarnation. It shows the Great One Life containing man ("I am the vine, you are the branches"; Gospel of John), men containing cells, cells containing molecules, molecules containing atoms. The one plan throughout the Universe. From it follows that, as the human body restores anew its lost cells in a wound, for instance, so the Planetary Logos restores again the lives of men on earth. This is reincarnation, the reaching and withdrawing of the tentacles of the higher ideal being, who lives through all this time.
That part of us which feels itself a Ray of Light Divine, will live eternally without the circle of the Time, and the phantom of our phenomenal appearance but what cares it? It will go to sleep and pass away, as a lost and disregarded thought, a falsely constructed scheme, who mocked for a time the Unity of the Divine, but could not do it in truth without a Heart with which it refused to merge, and coldly turned its back to the Brotherhood of all mankind, and to the one great consciousness of All. But his angelic, sunny soul, the bright companion who so often spoke to him the words of Truth and Beauty, he of the Unfading Clime where ideas bloom like flowers, he who turns his face towards the utmost Light, he who has dropped again his leaf from the vibrating branch, — how many times he will be listened to again, always beloved, always dear, the Saviour of the phantoms — the strayed thoughts of Heaven, — thoughts of his own in ancient ages.
And so he comes again to the new phantom made from the silvery dream. He comes to a new baby, and the shattered fragments of the old phantom also strive to reach it, to darken the child and to tempt it bitterly. But he watches and enters it more and more as a lower garden of the immortal free ideal world. The child turns then to be a poet, or a Knight who fights for truth and fears no death, or a sage who helps the world, or simply a loving soul, who does its work quietly and is unknown. No wonder that it feels the gratitude and devotion.
One and undivided is the great Divine Soul and one is an Angel and one is the soul of man, — every Atom is one, for it reflects the Highest, in it there is a germ divine of the infinite growth and progress from its own infinite depths, and this is the highest and the first plane of Consciousness — the Divine plane. This is the same everywhere, being One in All, and above all knowledge, though from it spring all potentialities of knowledge and progress.
The second is Spiritual, the Soul of the World or of man, issued from the Divine only for a limited, though very great time, and destined to return back to it.
There the knowledge and the power are free and untrammeled, and united as one great sea, which gets self-conscious quality by the labors of the Mind, whose experiences it accepts not as something foreign, but as self-awakening, and transmits to the Mind as intuition. It does not think; it knows. It is unity of knowledge and existence. It is a reflection of the Divine.
The third is Mind, this is Light, out-reaching from the One Truth, and from One Heart, and from One Soul, descending as a ray to all scattered existence of illusion to take it up into that kingdom where all is One. It is the Immortal Ego of man, his Leader, Guide and Saviour, it is an imperishable individuality which helps mortal, personal man to find an eternal Haven for its mental essence, it is the celestial swallow which dives from the ideal and unfading world into the world of dreams to invite and take the shadows, which are the earthly men, into the dreamless world. That aspect of it which looks and gravitates downward is called the lower mind.
The fourth is the force of desire, which is mortal, for when the desire is attained, then it dies. The possibility of desire itself shows that the Unity is broken. Yet it is useful, preparing for a way and helping the mind to gather its lost dreams into a personality. All passions are really forces of man just as much as of the universe. They are, as it were, a semi-conscious vapor trying to unite by outer agglomeration instead of inner awakening.
The fifth is the vitality which is perfectly instinctual, and gives for a time a rosy light for the pale, lost, dreams of the lower world, according as the attention of the higher three is directed to them periodically.
The sixth is this world of phantoms, of pale, lost dreams, of forms of thought, escaped from the children of the Mind, who were not perfect, dropped from the Unity, mistakes, as it were, for which the Angels are yet responsible, and must gather them through the living creatures of the earth and through man, their crown. For in man meet the two worlds. In his outer nature are creatures of the earth, in his inner depths are angelic forces and deeper yet the light divine itself, his Christ and Saviour, and through him the Saviour of all nature.
The seventh is this physical world and our physical body, an outer shell, a hardened dream, which gives the shape to the molecules of the lowest matter, soaked all through and through with the cohesive force of desire emanated from man.
(To be continued)
FOOTNOTE:
1. The reader is referred to the Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I., pp. 14-17, new edition, pp. 42-45. (return to text)