(Continued.)
After reading what the Secret Doctrine says of the Third Race, one could dream and dream through ages about the grandeur and the beauty of those beings. Well it is to know, that our ethereal bodies were free, luminous and dew-fresh, when they descended with the First Race upon this earth, and that this state will foreshadow the future after the primeval purity is regained. But infinitely better is it to know that the core of our Being, the inner Fire, the Heart and free ideal Mind are of the same substance as that living, breathing and changeless Truth, on which the whole Universe is hinged and in which it floats, reflecting it in a thousand ways in every atom, man and world.
As much of that Truth, as informs a planet is called the Logos, and as much of it again as informs a man is called his Spirit, and they are really the same, though difference in vehicles makes the manifestations seem unlike. And again the manifestations are different because ideas can be manifested only imperfectly and in part, just as in geometry the great, invisible and unprovable space becomes visible by its numerous dividing and subdividing films: points, lines, superficies and solids in their exhaustless and yet harmonious combinations. And yet these floating fragile films are really dividing themselves; the space remains as ever unchanged, unmoved and undivided, and it is always invisible and seemingly vacuous in itself, — but in order to see this vacuity, the resting films for the eye are necessary between which we see the space as interspaces. Yes, these films, the only things we see physically, we see only as limits to our sight and limits to those invisible interspaces which give breadth and depth to the universe, and which are the only things, though invisible, which really concern us in our geometric relations with this world.
As space to form, as darkness to color, and as silence to sound, so is the all-embracing divine spirit to every manifestation of matter, — interpreter, container and expounder of its own spacious changeless Self, whose numberless ideal Rays are defined by their shadowy ends. Yet the inner core of every Spirit-Ray between the defining matter-shadows (for every limited idea has its limits and its shadows in itself), that inner core, the Secret Doctrine says, is void of matter, as we know it. It has mystic breadth and depth and is of the same nature as Divinity itself, from which it is never divided, for even the limits hang in It and can not cut it, just as a man cannot cut space with a knife.
Thus this great Fire of the core, the Fire which has no limits, for it is within and without all limits, ever the same, pure, clear, untrammeled, unconfined, therefore above all, understanding all, this is the Divine Fire, the pure celestial dewdrop in the opened lotus of man's soul, the only treasure which keeps the soul ever fresh and golden and like unto one of the immortal gods.
Then the soul itself is that vehicle, that lotus flower opened to the celestial sunny dew and whose prison of matter is pierced by the divine shafts of light, whose ideas are sunny rays escaping from their prisons of finality with the radiance of Love to all that lives and breathes, whose defining films, under the impact of this expansive tender force become more and more clear as some roseate gauzy clouds proclaiming the glory of the Sun, — and this is the great, golden, all including omniscient Fire of the radiance of the unity of all ideas resting in one Bliss — the second Fire, which is the Divine Fire of the Heart.
Then again the glorious Swallow of the interspaces of the Radiant Stars of the Heart, their Messenger and Ray from each to all, the Builder of the moving systems of the manifestations of the Radiant Truth, which are its collective speech (the Third Logos), the Bird which dives into the depths to save, what it has lost in the past, those dreams dropped from Unity and Truth, the Light in transit, the dark Son of Radiance dissolved in the skies, the Light-bearer, the destroyer of the dark limits, the daring Liberator and Regenerator of Mankind, — the third Divine Fire, the Angelic Mind.
These are the three Stars of the Eternal Radiance resting on dreamy mortal man and awakening his dreams to the consciousness of that great gleaming Self of Wisdom and of Light which needs no fuel to feed upon, for it is itself the fiery Fountain of all life, the knower and container of all things.
Where are the words, where are the colors, where is the music to relate the greatest mystery of life? Words but confine that which opens our prison-house of time and space; colors but darken the pure, the beautiful, the crystalline translucency visible to its endless end; sounds but still the joy of the eternal silent Breath — where no sound is first and no sound is last and the great harmony is only heard.
No! by no outward means comes the great initiation of the human Race. But simply, when the many cease to speak, the One is heard, "the inner sound which kills the outer."
Brotherhood, therefore, thus understood, is the only means of opening the way.
When a Son of Will and Yoga (1) begins to see in his clear rosy skies the dearest smile of the Eternal, the same above, around, and everywhere, then he completely forgets his power of the outer seeing and the shadow of its form, for that smile is so enchanting, so self-sufficient, that the beguiling current of events ceases. The Eternal alone remains, victorious, alone, ideal, true, as if to say: "It is of me that all dreams strive to say; and after me, that all the runners chase, and with my flashes, that all the ripples of the water sparkle. All forms in a different way express my endless form. All ideas are but symbols of the great Truth of mine. All loves seek only me in all the husks of shadows. And though I speak to thee in a different way than to others, and though I am a seemingly different Being, born of thy own divine and undying radiance and of all thy past, yet am I a Ray of the same Eternal, that is seen everywhere and in all forms, for it remains the same forever, unseen, formless, timeless and causeless in thy own inmost depths. Thou hast awakened? Then know: with me, and with my Golden Heart and my Star of Truth in its Divine Bosom thou shalt forever abide."
And what if a man dies?
The radiant smile of the Eternal yet remains on the soul's glorious skies, and in it is all the blessed lustre of the Heaven-World. Dreams upon dreams pass before the soul; and as the golden mountains loom beyond its view and glorify the beauty of the scene, so the Radiance of the Heart Divine shines from beyond the dreams and makes them true. Those moments lived on earth when it flashed through the shadowy curtain of man's life, like summer lightning flashes through the gauzy film of fleecy clouds, those moments never cease in the still air of the Heaven-World. For they are now radiant dreams, the thought-flowers of the Angelic Mind. Their roots grow in the golden soil of the heart, their flowers wave towards those brothers whom they help, and to the earthly dwellers they seem as some strange and fanciful plants, growing upside down. In the musical stillness, in the electric freshness of the Heaven-World the soul holds sway, and the fiery fountain of life leaps high into the balmy air and its waters are fragrant, bright and clear. Here at last the heart may send forth its radiance undisturbed, and learn the depth of its own powers, and so prepare for the next battle in the earth-world, though it is all wrapped in its sweet dreams, yet it is not itself, but others that it sees, and in those others it hears the echo-music of the Universal Heart. So this heaven-world is not a phantasm, but rather the great shore of the infinite ocean of Life Divine, where are the echo-murmuring sea-shells with their imprisoned sprites, whose melodious plaint whispers so sweetly its accord with the victorious song of the World-Soul's ceaseless waves.
(To be continued.)
FOOTNOTE:
1. Secret Doctrine, II, 173. (return to text)