An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine
260
An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine
260Paperback(ABR)
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780835600095 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Quest Books |
| Publication date: | 01/01/1967 |
| Series: | Theosophical Classics |
| Edition description: | ABR |
| Pages: | 260 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x (d) |
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An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine
By H.P. Blavatsky, Elizabeth Preston, Christmas Humphreys
Theosophical Publishing House
Copyright © 1966 Theosophical Publishing House, London, Ltd.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8356-0009-5
CHAPTER 1
PART I
COSMIC EVOLUTION
In Seven Stanzes translated from the Book of Dzyan
STANZA 1
I. "THE ETERNAL PARENT (Space), WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES (a)."
The "Parent Space" is the eternal, ever present Cause of all—the incomprehensible DEITY, whose "invisible Robes" are the mystic root of all Matter, and of the Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from THAT, the causeless cause of both Spirit and Matter. It is, as taught in the esoteric catechism, neither limitless void, nor conditioned fulness, but both. It was and ever will be.
Thus, the "Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial Substance which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from which Akasa radiates.
(a) The Seven Eternities are the seven periods, or a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara, and extending throughout a Maha-Kalpa or "Great Age"—100 years of Brahma—making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each Year of Brahma being composed of 360 Days and of the same number of Nights of Brahma; and a Day of Brahma consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change—or the same—for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the division of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we call the future, to the region of memories that we name the past. In the same way we experience a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance from the earth. It is these "sum-totals" that exist from eternity in the "future," and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity in the "past." No one could say that a bar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered the water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof which at any given moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons and things, which, dropping out of the to-be into the has-been, out of the future into the past—present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass through time and space (as matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these two constitute that "duration" in which alone anything has true existence, were our senses but able to cognize it.
3.... UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI (celestial beings) TO CONTAIN (hence to manifest) IT.
Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will, and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya, when all the existences are dissolved, the "UNIVERSAL MIND" remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute Thought of which Mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the collective hosts of spiritual beings—the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews—who are the vehicle for the manifestation of the Divine or Universal Thought and Will. They are the Intelligent Forces that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they are not "the personifications" of the powers of Nature.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS (Moksha or Nirvana) WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY (Nidana and Maya) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM (b).
(a) There are seven "Paths" or "Ways" to the bliss of Non-Existence, which is absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the Universe was, so far, empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought.
(b) The twelve Nidanas or causes of being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its successor; the sum total of the Nidanas being based on the Four Truths, a doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayana System. They belong to the theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is based upon the great truth that re-incarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this world only entails upon man suffering, misery and pain; death itself being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door through which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on its threshold—Devachan. The Hinayana System, or School of the "Little Vehicle," is of very ancient growth; while the Mahayana is of a later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayana and Mahayana Schools (the latter, that of the "Great Vehicle") both teach the same doctrine in reality. Yana, or Vehicle (in Sanskrit, Vahan) is a mystic expression, both "vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of rebirths and even the false bliss of Devachan by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance.
Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cognizer is also a reflection, and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognize any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (a), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THERE ON (b).
(a) "Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son," says an old Eastern proverb. Light is inconceivable except as coming from some source which is the cause of it; and as, in the instance of primordial light, that source is unknown, though as strongly demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is called "Darkness" by us, from an intellectual point of view. As to borrowed or secondary light, whatever its source, it can be but of a temporary mayavic character. Darkness, then, is the eternal matrix in which the sources of light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to darkness to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our plane. They are interchangeable, and scientifically light is but a mode of darkness and vice versa. Yet both are phenomena of the same noumenon—which is absolute darkness to the scientific mind, and but a grey twilight to the perception of the average mystic, though to that of the spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. When the whole universe was plunged in sleep—had returned to its one primordial element—there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light, and darkness necessarily filled the boundless all.
(b) The Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. They are "once more One" when in the Night of Brahma, during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe has returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to reappear at the following Dawn—as it does periodically. "Karana"—eternal Cause—was alone. To put it more plainly: Karana is alone during the Nights of Brahma. The previous objective Universe has dissolved into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in space, to differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvantaric dawn, which is the commencement of a new Day or new activity of Brahma—the symbol of the Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahma is Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and evolutionary. In the cosmico-physical sense, it is the Universe, the planetary chain and the earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary Spirit, and Man—the Son of the two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth during the "Wheels," or the Manvantaras.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE (a), AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA (b) (absolute perfection, Paranirvana, which is Yong-Grüb) TO BE OUT-BREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS (c).
(a) The seven sublime lords are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyan-Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in the Christian theogony. In the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are, moreover said to send their Bodhisattvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas (of whom vide infra) during every Round and Race.
So far "There are only Four Truths, and Four Vedas"—say the Hindus and Buddhists. For a similar reason Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of Four Gospels. But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on.
(b) "Paranishpanna" is the absolute perfection to which all existences attain at the close of a great period of activity, or Maha Manvantara, and in which they rest during the succeeding period of repose.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our "Universe" is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them "Sons of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute—Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When the "Great Breath" is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity—the One Existence—which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. So also is it when the Divine Breath is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the Great Mother," who then sleeps "wrapped in her invisible Robes."
(c) By "that which is and yet is not" is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of Existence that we can distinguish from Non-existence. The three periods—the Present, the Past, and the Future—are in the esoteric philosophy a compound time; for the three are a composite number only in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity. As said in the Scriptures: "The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is." Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are all derived from our sensations according to the laws of association. Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the individual ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of phenomenal existence. What is Time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our states of consciousness?
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH (a); THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING, THE ONE BEING (b).
(a) "The Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to science, but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to exist, an outcome of Nidana and Maya. This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence, into a law that the Universe should exist. According to esoteric teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of all existence, remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most complete abstractions mind can conceive. These abstractions must of necessity be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself to the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which, anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and gods by the common herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause; the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank. This is virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last when we try to trace back the chain of causes and effects, but both science and religion jump to this condition of blankness much more quickly than is necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions. These abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane of existence, until finally they phenomenalize in the form of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics, analogous to that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being, which is the One Being, will appear a paradox to anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of being to our present consciousness of existence; making it a specific, instead of a generic term.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE (a) STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (b); AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE "OPENED EYE" OF THE DANGMA.
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for apparently widely different things—heterogeneity developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for their protyle, while science is looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of Existence" as the basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not altogether correct. The Puranic commentators explain it by Karana, "Cause," but the Esoteric Philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause. It is, in its secondary stage, the Svabhavat of the Buddhist philosopher, the Eternal Cause and Effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self-existent plastic Essence and the Root of all things.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky, Elizabeth Preston, Christmas Humphreys. Copyright © 1966 Theosophical Publishing House, London, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission of Theosophical Publishing House.
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Table of Contents
Contents
EDITORIAL FOREWORD TO THIS ABRIDGEMENT,H. P. BLAVATSKY: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY,
THE GENESIS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE,
PREFACE [Part],
INTRODUCTORY [Part],
VOLUME FIRST COSMOGENESIS,
PROEM [Part],
PART I COSMIC EVOLUTION,
STANZA 1.—THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE [Part],
STANZA 2.—THE IDEA OF DIFFERENTIATION [Part],
STANZA 3.—THE AWAKENING OF KOSMOS [Part],
STANZA 4.—THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES [Part],
STANZA 5.—FOHAT: THE CHILD OF THE SEPTENARY HIERARCHIES [Part],
STANZA 6.—OUR WORLD, ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT [Part],
THEOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS [Part],
EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE GLOBES AND THE MONADS [Part],
STANZA 6.—CONTINUED [Part],
STANZA 7.—THE PARENTS OF MAN ON EARTH [Part],
SUMMING UP [Part],
PART II THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM,
1. SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS [Part],
2. THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE AND ITS KEYS [Part],
3. PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT [Part],
4. CHAOS—THEOS—KOSMOS [Part],
5. THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS [Omitted],
6. THE MUNDANE EGG [Omitted],
7. THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA [Part],
8. THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL [Omitted],
9. DEUS LUNUS [Omitted],
10. TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP [Omitted],
11. DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS [Omitted],
12. THE THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS [Omitted],
13. THE SEVEN CREATIONS [Omitted],
14. THE FOUR ELEMENTS [Omitted],
15. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN [Omitted],
PART III SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED,
1. REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA [Part],
2. MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BUFF [Omitted],
3. AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS NEC NON? [Omitted],
4. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? [Part],
5. THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE [Omitted],
6. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE [Omitted],
7. AN ATTACK ON THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF FORCE BY A MAN OF SCIENCE [Omitted],
8. LIFE, FORCE, OR GRAVITY? [Omitted],
9. THE SOLAR THEORY [Part],
10. THE COMING FORCE [Omitted],
11. ON THE ELEMENTS AND ATOMS [Part],
12. ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS [Omitted],
13. THE MODERN NEBULAR THEORY [Omitted],
14. FORCES—MODES OF MOTION OR INTELLIGENCES? [Part],
15. GODS, MONADS, AND ATOMS [Part],
16. CYCLIC EVOLUTION AND KARMA [Part],
17. THE ZODIAC AND ITS ANTIQUITY [Omitted],
18. SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION [Omitted],
VOLUME SECOND ANTHROPOGENESIS [Part],
PRELIMINARY NOTES [Part],
PART I [Part],
STANZA 1.—BEGINNINGS OF SENTIENT LIFE [Part],
STANZA 2.—NATURE UNAIDED FAILS [Part],
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRAHMINS [Omitted],
STANZA 3.—ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN [Part],
STANZA 4.—CREATION OF THE FIRST RACES [Part],
STANZA 5.—THE EVOLUTION OF THE SECOND RACE [Part],
STANZA 6.—THE EVOLUTION OF THE "SWEAT-BORN" [Part],
STANZA 7.—FROM THE SEMI-DIVINE DOWN TO THE FIRST HUMAN RACES [Part],
STANZA 8.—EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS—THE FIRST FALL [Part],
WHAT MAY BE THE OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING [Part],
STANZA 9.—THE FINAL EVOLUTION OF MAN [Part],
EDENS, SERPENTS AND DRAGONS [Omitted],
THE SONS OF GOD AND THE SACRED ISLAND [Omitted],
STANZA 10.—THE HISTORY OF THE FOURTH RACE [Part],
ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE PURANAS AND GENESIS [Part],
A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE EARLY RACES [Omitted],
STANZA 10.—Continued,
ARE GIANTS A FICTION? [Part],
THE RACES WITH THE "THIRD EYE" [Part],
THE PRIMEVAL MANUS OF HUMANITY [Omitted],
STANZA 11.—THE CIVILIZATION AND DESTRUCTION OF THE THIRD AND FOURTH RACES [Part],
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES TO GIANTS [Omitted],
STANZA 12.—THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS [Part],
WESTERN SPECULATIONS, FOUNDED ON THE GREEK AND PURANIC TRADITIONS,
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA 12 Part],
CONCLUSION [Part],
The Whole of Parts II and III have been omitted,
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS ON H. P. BLAVATSKY AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE,