Universal Consciousness is A–U–M or Pranavam, i.e., Spirit–Breath–Sound–Life. Spirit or Eternal Breath is Motion, and motion animates matter. Eternal Motion is Svara or Vibration, the substratum of the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres. And thus by endless combinations, modifications, and individualisations of the Seven Tattvas or Forces of Nature, which in turn produce every sound, form, and colour, the Divine Mind exhibits periodically aspects of itself to the perception of finite minds. There can be no sound without vibration, for the former is the consequence of the latter. Vibration is caused by the difference in the density of material particles, the solid being moved by the liquid, and the liquid by the gaseous. Divine spirit animates inert mass. Air, breath, life, sound, and form are interconnected. Cosmic mind is the prime mover of everything in the manifested universe. Physical forces are only secondary effects, guided by spiritual forces. Colours of the human voice. Colours of musical instruments. Colours of languages. Table of Tattvas showing their sounds, forms, and colours. The four states of matter correspond to the four states of consciousness.
Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in official as in heterodox Science. The man of Science rejects everything that is not proven to him, while the Theologian accepts everything on blind faith. The Theosophist and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in invisible but potential influences, all share the same contempt. Metaphysics is fiction, like poetry, said a prominent Irish physicist. Kinetic energy is an empty shadow of my mind, mused “Darwin's bulldog.” Tyndall admits how powerless is Science, even over the world of matter. Chaos is Void to sense, latent Deity to reason. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. Chaos is the Spirit of Truth that the world cannot receive because it does not see It or know It. In occult parlance there is no spatial division such as above and below, but an eternal Within, within two other withins, i.e., the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into those of terrestrial objectivity. Fohat, the Light of Logos, turns with his hands the seed and the curds of Cosmic matter in contrary directions. Outside the boundaries of our solar system, there are countless other suns, orbiting around the mysterious Central Spiritual Sun that determines the motion of celestial bodies and their direction. That motion differentiates the primordial homogeneous matter into elements and sub-elements unknown to our earth, which are regarded by modern Science as distinct individual elements, whereas they are merely temporary appearances, changing with every small cycle within the Manvantara. Certain esoteric works call them Kalpic Masks. Fohat is the scientific aspect of Vishnu and Indra, the latter older and more important in the Rig-Veda than his sectarian successor. In Egypt Fohat was known as Tum, issued of Nut-Osiris in his character of a primordial god, creator of heaven and beings. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf or Lucifer-Venus, the twin-star, male at sunrise, female at sunset. Legend is living tradition, far more dependable than actual History, which keeps repeating herself, for she proceeds in cycles. The time is near when dead facts and events, deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism, will re-emerge once more and reappear on the surface.
Explanation of two diagrams from Isis Unveiled, herewith redrawn by Philaletheians, representing the chaotic and the formative periods before and after our universe began to be evolved. A side-by-side comparison of the Hindu and Chaldean Doctrines indicates that the esoteric Brahmanical, Buddhistic, and Chaldean standpoints agree in every respect with the evolutionary theory of modern science.
The Pythagorean Square is the sum of the first numbers, +++, i.e., number , the Tetractys of the Decas. Number is a numerical expression of the mysteries of the whole Kosmos, its microcosmic image or man, and the sum total of all human knowledge. A trinity of Perfect Squares make up the Dodecahedron, a Perfect Number concealed in a Perfect Cube. Thomas Taylor on the eleven faces of the Pythagorean Tetractys: The first tetractys is 1. 2. 3. 4. The second, is the monad, a side, a square, and a cube. The third, is a point, line, a superficies, and a solid. The fourth, is fire, air, water, and earth. The fifth, the pyramid, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the cube. The sixth, seed, length, breadth, and depth. The seventh, man, a house, a street, and a city. The eighth, intellect, science, opinion, and sense. The ninth, the rational, the irascible, the epithymetic parts, and the body. The tenth, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Saturn is the dianoetic tetractys. The Pythagorean World is the Root of Illusion.
The Finns are a wonderfully simple nation, living in perfect touch and harmony with Nature. The old Finns clothed their perceptions of the world in a garland of sublime poetry. The Kalevala is more than 3,000 years old: it dates from the time when the Finnish tribes lived far south of their present home, probably on the Black Sea or the Caspian. The Finns are related to the peoples now settled on the tablelands of Tibet and Central Asia and stand to the Slavonian nations in the same mystical relation as the magicians and sorcerers of Thessaly stood to the rest of the Hellenes. In Russian folklore, Finn is almost a synonym of magician. Their cosmogonic myths and allegories are faithful echoes of the Dhyani-Chohans of the Secret Doctrine, a sublime radiation of Celestial Beings and fountainhead of humanity — formless on the plane of pure subjectivity — and their less spiritual emanations as they descend in the darkness of objectivity. Their beautiful duck corresponds exactly to Kalahamsa, the Swan out of Time and Space, convertible into the Swan in Time and Space of the Secret Doctrine.
At first the cosmogonical idea was one, everywhere. But as nations began fragmenting along tribal grooves, the original idea became gradually veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the intelligent Powers of Nature received divine honours they were hardly entitled to, in others, the very thought of any such Power being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. Homer is silent with respect to the First Principle which, according to Proclus, is the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all silence, more occult than all Essence. The Jews ascended no higher than the immediate artificer of the universe; for they degraded their metaphorical deity, as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God. The Jews invented the Tetragrammaton to celebrate life, to deify multiplication, and to mislead the profane. The Theosophist’s Deity is not the two-faced Tetragrammaton but the Crown, which has nought to do with the material world. The First Cause (Monad) is symbolised by a Point within the Circle of Heaven, or an Equilateral Triangle, from whence the First Cause has radiated is passed over in silence. That Point is the First Logos, not as yet the Architect of the world to be, but the unknown and unknowable cause of the Architect himself. Parabrahman cannot be seen as it is. It can only be seen by Logos but with a veil thrown over it: that veil is Mulaprakriti, the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. Mulaprakriti is the noumenon of matter, and is material to Logos, as any physical object is material to us. The Hidden Deity is represented by the circumference of a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Ain-Soph, the Kabbalistic Parabrahman, is inscrutable, unknowable, and unnameable — a Circle bound by the utmost stretch of our perception to the vault of a sphere. Deity is eternal perpetual motion, ever-becoming, universally-present, ever-existing. The Boundless Circle is its outward veil. Logos, represented by the central mathematical point, is only an organ in cosmic creation, through which radiate the energy and wisdom of Parabrahman. Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to Logos itself. In all those personations of Nature’s Female Powers, there are two distinct aspects: the noumenal and the phenomenal. The one is purely metaphysical, the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the standpoint of human conception. The Powers of Nature all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable veil between Absoluteness and the Logos of Creation. The feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of Light, Sound, and Æther. There are four personations of Vach-Voice, vehicles of divine thought, corresponding with the higher Cosmic Principles. Vach is the female Logos, the loving mother of all that lives, milking forth sustenance and water. The most precious archaic records are utterly unknown to the Orientalists, and the dead-letter sense translations of popular Sanskrit works are merely blinds to the uninitiated. Hence the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, they cut the Gordian knot of their perplexity by declaring the whole cosmogonical scheme figments of Brahmanical fancy and love of exaggeration. Prominent in every Cosmogony are the pre-cosmic Lords of Being, the Prajapatis or “Seven Builders,” symbolised by concentric circles. Osiris is the unknown “black God” because the realm of his noumenon is darkness to the mortal. He is the Egyptian Zagreus. Osiris is Avalokiteshvara, the Universal saviour and All-merciful Master, who moves the Waters of Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ that becomes the Golden Mundane Egg, and in which the male Brahmā is created. And thus, the first Prajapati, Lord of Beings, emerges and becomes the progenitor of mankind. Like Brahmā, Zeus and all other lower deities, Jehovah is an androgyne god. But he is neither the God worshipped by Moses, nor the Father of Jesus, nor yet the Ineffable Name of the Kabbalists. He is merely a composite name for membrum virile and Eve, a hermaphrodite. He is, in one sense, Noah (Hebrew Yah) or, literally translated, inch — the British inch! For those who love Truth for her own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and profit, the Cosmogony of Confucius is the most succinct and perhaps the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies. For those who are familiar with Occult Numerals, the Confucian figures indicate the progressive yet harmonious evolution of Kosmos and its beings, and the culmination of every perfection in heaven and on earth. The archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. All these represent the most abstract and highest cosmogenic visions. Confucius, a contemporary of Pythagoras, was the Easter sage of the ancient world. He taught the sphericity of the Earth and the Heliocentric system; while, at about thrice years later, the infallible Popes threatened and even burnt “heretics” for asserting the same. The great Architect of the Universe gives the first impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping seriatim over each planet, causing each to turn around itself, and all around the Sun. Then after the Solar and Lunar Pitris take charge of their respective planets and earth to the end of the Kalpa. The Rishis are the mind-born sons of Brahmā, not priests. At the end of the first stage of evolution they are transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarshis, while their human doubles appear as heroes, kings, and sages on this earth. There are many Rishis in the Vedas. It must however be understood that in every Creation the Vedas are revealed to the same men only. The opening sentence in every Cosmogony is either a Circle, an Egg, or a Head, often surrounded by Darkness — hence, black doves, black ravens, black tongues, black waters. They all relate to the birth of Universe and Man out of the latent germ in the Eternal Egg dwelling in Darkness. The Raven, yielding the same numerical value as the Head, is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three Root-Races, who vanished from earth forever. Eastern Esotericism asserts that only physical man was created in the image of deity; but that deity is but a minor god. The real God is the Imperishable Higher Ego or Nous, man’s true Individuality that cloths itself in a new personality at every new birth. Yet the Jews degraded the only ennobling religion of humanity to the most unspiritual and gross phallic religion.
The universe of being is subject to changes in its periodical manifestations. Man is the little universe (Microcosm) made in the image of his creator, the Great Universe (Macrocosm). The matter composing the objects we see and touch, continually returns to its pre-primordial condition of purity and light, which no mortal eye can see or bear its radiance. The man of clay was the first human being to appear on earth, the animal kingdoms coming after him. Animals were “created” much later than Adam, and brought to him to be named. Their bodies have been formed out of the cast off atoms of human life-waves that preceded ours. The constitution of man is seven-fold: his Immortal Higher Triad (Divine Self or Spiritual Soul) is his True Individuality; his Lower Tetrad, overshadowed by the Divine Self, is the false individuality (I-ness or “personality”) or soul of the man of clay who, being of the earth earthly, his animal soul and body are perishable — though his molecules are thrown off for the benefit of lower kingdoms. Nirvana is an actionless yet impersonal subjective state, rooted in non-being, and a refuge against rebirth — but the nirvanee can no longer return to earth, should he change his mind. Nirvana is illusion for it does not exist for us. The immortality of Spirit is inculcated on the neophyte by the Hierophant, and realised during Initiation. At the solemn moment of death, no man can fail to see himself under his true colours, and no self-deception is of use to him any longer. Even when drowning, man follows with his mind’s eye the whole of his life marshalling past, with all its events (causes and effects) to the minutest detail, and sees himself as he truly is, in all his moral nakedness, unadorned by either human flattery or self-adulation.
Part 1. The shoreless Ocean of Space is the Light of the Central Sun and First Cause. Space exists whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no universe: during the Maha Yugas, the Pralayas, as well as during the periods of Manvantara. Part 2. Space is Chaos, Unseen and Unknowable Deity that thrills throughout every atom in Boundless Kosmos. Space is filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in a pre-cosmic state. This Abstract Deity is a Single Absolute Omniscience and Intelligence that thrills throughout every atom, and infinitesimal point in boundless Kosmos. The Infinitude of Chaos is the Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life. Part 3. Space is the Pythagorean Monas, Potential Space within Abstract Space. It is symbolised by the Central Point of the Circle. Space and Universe are synonymous. In Space there is not only Matter, Force, and Spirit, but all that and much more. Space is the Soul of the World, the One Element or Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out- and in-breathing of One Boundless Ocean, evolves only to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. Part 4. Space is the Aether of the Greek philosophers or pre-cosmic Mind. Chaos is pre-cosmic Matter. Part 5. Parentless Space is the incomprehensible Deity, whose invisible robes are the mystic root of all matter, whether seen or unseen. Interplanetary Space is full of imponderable substances, interpenetrating each other. They are the direct cause of natural phenomena manifesting through vibration at the lower end. Part 6. Space is a body of limitless extent, whose Septenary Principles manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions. The septenary constitution of Space will become visible when the so-called “fourth dimension of space,” i.e., the sixth characteristic of matter and harbinger of the Sixth Sense, is fully awakened. Part 7. To the profane, Space is Eternal Darkness; to the Initiate, the Celestial Fountain of the Waters of Life. The Dark Energy of Be-ness is reflected in Chaos. The Waters of Life is the Fifth Principle of Kosmos in the lower septenary, however, they differ from the Waters of Salvation. Only earth and water, when warmed by the Sun, can bring forth a living soul. Part 8. Space is Akasha, Soul of the World: potential energy, whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself. Akasha is Aether, the Light of Creative Thought and Causeless Cause of every manifesting intellection, plus the reservoir of all thought because Absolute Thought. Ether is the lowest and grossest from of thought. Part 9. Space is Be-ness: Absolute Subjectivity plus Great Breath or motion unmanifested. Space and Time are forms of the One incognisable Deity. They are forms of That, the Absolute All. Real Time is abstract motion in Space. Part 10. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. Chaos is Void to sense, latent Deity to reason. Nature abhors a vacuum because there is no Spiritual Fire in vacuity. Nihil or Non-being in the mind of Ancient Philosophers became No-thing-ness and Emptiness among modern materialists. Vacuum or Voidness is a perception of lower minds. Vacuum is Absolute Deity, eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is pure, luminous Aether, Infinite Space. The abyss of Nothingness of the profane is the Infinite Space of the Divine Plenum of the Occultist.
