Stanza VI.

Stanza VI.1.By the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge(a),Kwan-Yin—the Triple of Kwan-Shai-Yin, residing in Kwan-Yin-Tien(b)—Fohat, the Breath of their Progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth, from the lower Abyss,245the Illusive Form of Sien-Tchan246and the Seven Elements.This Stanza is translated from the Chinese text, and the names given as the equivalents of the original terms are preserved. The real Esoteric nomenclature cannot be given, as it would only confuse the reader. The Brâhmanical doctrine has no equivalents for these. Vâch seems, in many an aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan-Yin, but there is no regular worship of Vâch under this name in India, as there is of Kwan-Yin in China. No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus, from the first dawn of popular religions, woman has been regarded and treated as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-Yin and Isis are placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is as sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous to finally separate into distinct sexes.(a)“The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge”is called the“Triple”of Kwan-Shai-Yin, because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the“Mother, the Wife and the Daughter”of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became the“Father, Son and (female) Holy Ghost”—the Shakti or Energy—the Essence of the Three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedântins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Îshvara, the Logos,247is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos, or Verbum of Parabrahman; while in that of the Trans-Himâlayan[pg 161]teachings, it is—in the Hierarchy of their allegorical and metaphysical theogony—the“Mother,”or abstract ideal Matter, Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Nature; from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Budha, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshvara; and from the purely Occult and cosmical, Fohat, the“Son of the Son,”the androgynous energy resulting from this“Light of the Logos,”which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity—which is Life. Says T. Subba Row:Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the Logos, ... not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in Mûlaprakriti. This Light of the Logos is the link ... between objective matter and the subjective Thought of Îshvara [or Logos]. It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with which the Logos works.248(b)“Kwan-Yin-Tien”means the“Melodious Heaven of Sound,”the Abode of Kwan-Yin, or the“Divine Voice.”This“Voice”is a synonym of the Verbum or Word,“Speech,”as the expression of Thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and even the origin of, the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the“Daughter of the Divine Voice,”or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the“Heavenly Man,”or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindû Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of Brahmâ, one“generated by the gods”—is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of theactiveforces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan-Yin is the“Melodious Voice,”so is Vâch“the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water [the female principle] ... who yields us nourishment and sustenance,”as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation with Prajâpati. She is male and femalead libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi—the principle higher than Æther—of Âkâsha, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature. Thus Vâch and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult Sound in Nature and Æther—which“Voice”calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements.Thus, inManu, Brahmâ (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts, male and female, and creating in the latter, who is[pg 162]Vâch, Virâj, who is himself, or Brahmâ again. A learned Vedântin Occultist speaks of this“goddess”as follows, explaining the reason why Îshvara (or Brahmâ) is called Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is called Sabda Brahman:The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical; but if mystical, it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old writers said that Vâch is of four kinds. [SeeRig Vedaand theUpanishads.] Vaikharî Vâch is what we utter. Every kind of Vaikharî Vâch exists in its Madhyama, further in its Pashyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.249The reason why this Pranava is called Vâch is this, that the four principles of the great cosmos correspond to these four forms of Vâch. Now the whole manifested solar system exists in its Sûkshma form in the light or energy of the Logos, because its energy is caught up and transferred to cosmic matter ... the whole cosmos in its objective form is Vaikharî Vâch, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama form, and the Logos itself the Pashyanti form, and Parabrahman the Para aspect of that Vâch. It is by the light of this explanation that we must try to understand certain statements made by various philosophers to the effect that the manifested cosmos is the Verbum manifested as cosmos.2502.The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Laya251Centres(a),against which none will prevail to the Great Day“Be With Us”; and seats the Universe on these Eternal Foundations, surrounding Sien-Tchan with the Elementary Germs(b).(a) The seven Laya Centres are the seven zero-points, using the term zero in the same sense that Chemists do. It indicates, in Esotericism, a point at which the reckoning of differentiation begins. From these Centres—beyond which Esoteric Philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the“Seven Sons”of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers—begins the differentiation of the Elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has often been asked what is the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, for he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been given in the Commentary on Stanza V. As well said in theBhagavadgîtâLectures,“The whole cosmos must necessarily exist in the one source of energy[pg 163]from which this light [Fohat] emanates.”Whether we count the principles in cosmos and man as seven or only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same authority that,“Prajnâ, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter.”For,“just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.”252So does Fohat. Fohat has several meanings, as already shown. He is called the“Builder of the Builders,”the Force that he personifies having formed our Septenary Chain. He is One and Seven, and on the cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the“spirit”of electricity, which is the Life of the Universe. As an abstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life, immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while Science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point toIntelligentLaw andSentientLife, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him, whom the Christians call the“Messengers”of their God (in reality, of the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we the Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light.(b) The“Elementary Germs,”with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the Universe) from Tien-Sin (the“Heaven of Mind,”or that which is absolute), are the Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.3.Of the Seven253—first One manifested, Six concealed; Two manifested, Five concealed; Three manifested, Four concealed; Four produced, Three hidden; Four and One Tsan254revealed, Two and One Half concealed; Six to be manifested, One laid aside(a).Lastly, Seven Small Wheels revolving; one giving birth to the other(b).(a) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a[pg 164]Mahâpralaya (Universal Dissolution), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers also by analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive (though compound) seven Elements on our Earth. Of these, four Elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth—Ether—is only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, as germs, were of course primarily evolved from the One Element in its second stage—“Father-Mother,”the Differentiated World's Soul, not what is termed the“Over-Soul”by Emerson—whether we call it, with Modern Science, cosmic dust and fire-mist, or with Occultism, Âkâsha, Jîvâtmâ, Divine Astral Light, or the“Soul of the World.”But this first stage of Evolution was in due course of time followed by the next. No World, and no heavenly body, could be constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been already sufficiently differentiated from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The latter term is a synonym of Nirvâna. It is, in fact, the Nirvânic dissociation of all substances, merged after a Life-Cycle into the latency of their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the Matter thatwas, the realm of negativeness—wherein lie latent during their period of rest the active Forces of the Universe.Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the standing reproach of the Ancients, that they“supposed their elements simple and undecomposable.”The shades of our pre-historic ancestors might return the compliment to modern Physicists, now that new discoveries in Chemistry have led Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., to admit, that Science is yet a thousand leagues from a knowledge of the compound nature of the simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a thing as a really simple molecule entirely homogeneous isterra incognitain Chemistry.“Where are we to draw the line?”he asks;“is there no way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary examinations so stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, or must we open the examination doors so wide that the number of admissions is limited only by the number of applicants?”And then the learned chemist gives striking instances. He says:Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite atomic weight, it behaved in every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we might indeed add, but from which we could not take away. Yet this yttrium, this supposed homogeneous whole, on being submitted to a certain method of fractionation, is resolved into[pg 165]portions not absolutely identical among themselves, and exhibiting a gradation of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a body betraying all the recognized characters of an element. It had been separated with much difficulty from other bodies which approximated closely to it in their properties, and during this crucial process it had undergone very severe treatment and very close scrutiny. But then came another chemist, who, treating this assumed homogeneous body by a peculiar process of fractionation, resolved it into the two bodies praseodymium and neodymium, between which certain distinctions are perceptible. Further, we even now have no certainty that neodymium and praseodymium are simple bodies. On the contrary, they likewise exhibit symptoms of splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on proper treatment is thus found to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely warranted in asking whether similar results might not be obtained in other elements, perhaps in all elements, if treated in the right way. We may even ask where the process of sorting-out is to stop—a process which of course presupposes variations between the individual molecules of each species. And in these successive separations we naturally find bodies approaching more and more closely to each other.255Once more this reproach against the Ancients is an unwarrantable statement. Their initiated philosophers at any rate, can hardly come under such an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they would have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Æther; their cosmic gods and goddesses would never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and daughters, elements bornfromandwithineach respective Element. Alchemy and Occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and correlative functions and attributes, of every element that enters into the composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire—the latter aterra incognitato this day to Modern Science, which is obliged to call it motion, evolution of light and heat, state of ignition—defining it by its outward aspects in short, in ignorance of its nature.But what Modern Science seems to fail to perceive, is that, differentiated as may have been those simple chemical atoms—which archaic philosophy called“the creators of their respective parents,”fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and these mothers the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example—differentiated as these elements were in the beginning, still, they were not the compound bodies known to Science, as they are now. Neither Water, Air,[pg 166]nor Earth (a synonym for solids generally) existed in their present form, representing the only three states of matter recognized by Science; for all these and even Fire are productions already recombined by the atmospheres of completely formed globes, so that in the first periods of the earth's formation they were something quitesui generis. Now that the conditions and laws ruling our Solar System are fully developed, and that the atmosphere of our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place, in space, of molecules, or rather of atoms, correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and these among the greatest Physicists and Chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope shows only the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether or not atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way, and under the same conditions, as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and reässociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamed of, and incognizable to, Physical Science. As already expressed inFive Years of Theosophy,256the essence of cometary matter, for instance,“is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest Chemists and Physicists of the earth are acquainted.”And even that matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change in its nature.Thus not only the elements of our planet, but even those of all its sisters in the Solar System, differ in their combinations as widely from each other, as from the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits. This is again corroborated by the same man of Science in the lecture referred to above, who quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying“that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous.”He writes:It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of intermediate varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules have gone to, if, as we have reason to believe, the hydrogen, etc., of the fixed stars is composed of molecules identical in[pg 167]all respects with our own.... In the first place we may call in question this absolute molecular identity, since we have hitherto had no means for coming to a conclusion save the means furnished by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for accurately comparing and discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they should be examined under identical states of temperature, pressure, and all other physical conditions. We have certainly seen, in the spectrum of the sun, rays which we have not been able to identify.Therefore, the elements of our planet cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the elements in other worlds. In fact each world has its Fohat, which is omnipresent in its own sphere of action. But there are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of manifestation. The individual Fohats make one universal, collective Fohat—the aspect-entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-ness, Sat.“Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara”—it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we consider as conscious andintelligentForces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it, consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of Matter; and as possible objects of perception to beings endowed with the requisite senses.Enshrined in its pristine, virgin state within the Bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation.“The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.”And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her protean products, which, carried on by the wave of efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward or beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever, unless fate dissociates it by leading it to a“current of efflux”(an Occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary word implies), when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had previously perished, and taking its flight, not into Spaceabovebut into Spacewithin, be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily reabsorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-Alchemist to write the“Life and Adventures of an Atom,”he would secure thereby the supreme scorn of the modern Chemist, though perchance also his subsequent gratitude. Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for a moment step out of the habitual groove of strictly“Exact Science,”as the Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid[pg 168]for his audacity. However it may be,“The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and radiant, and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner Space,”says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on the mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus, the higher atmosphere of every globe, being its mouth, and the lower its lungs, the man of our planet breathes only the“refuse of Mother;”therefore,“he is doomed to die thereon.”He who would allotropize sluggish oxygen into ozone to a measure of alchemical activity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means), would discover thereby a substitute for an“Elixir of Life”and prepare it for practical use.(b) The process referred to as the“Small Wheels, one giving birth to the other,”takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most material world of all in the manifested Kosmos—our terrestrial plane. These“Seven Wheels”are our Planetary Chain. By“Wheels”the various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in this case they refer to our septenary Ring.4.He builds them in the likeness of older Wheels,257Placing them on the Imperishable Centres(a).How does Fohat build them? He collects the Fiery-Dust. He makes Balls of Fire, runs through them, and round them, infusing life thereinto, then sets them into motion; some one way, some the other way. They are cold, he makes them hot. They are dry, he makes them moist. They shine, he fans and cools them(b).Thus acts Fohat from one Twilight to the other, during Seven Eternities.258(a) The Worlds are built“in the likeness of older Wheels”—i.e., of those that had existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya; for the Law for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun to the glow-worm in the grass, is One. There is an everlasting work of perfection with every new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the same. And this Law acts on every planet through minor and varying laws.The“Imperishable [Laya] Centres”have a great importance, and[pg 169]their meaning must be fully understood, if we would have a clear conception of the Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At present, one thing may be stated. The Worlds are built neitherupon, norover, norinthe Laya Centres, the zero-point being a condition, not a mathematical point.(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung, like Rudra from the head of Brahmâ,“from the Brain of the Father and the Bosom of the Mother,”and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female,i.e., polarized himself into positive and negative electricity. He hasSeven Sonswho are hisBrothers. Fohat is forced to be born, time after time, whenever any two of his“Son-Brothers”indulge intoo close contact—whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he unites and binds together those of unlike nature, and separates those of similar temperaments. This, as any one can see, relates, of course, to electricity generated by friction, and to the law of attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven Son-Brothers, however, represent and personify the seven forms of cosmic magnetism, called in Practical Occultism the“Seven Radicals,”whose coöperative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as super-sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of sense; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them, the latter cognizable by our ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious Causes. To attempt a description of such Entities would be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a Great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the Unknown Substance, the more it approaches Reality, as being the farther removed from this world of Mâyâ. Therefore, though the molecular constitution of these bodies is not deducible from their manifestations, on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless, from the standpoint of the Adept Occultist, possess a distinctive objective if not material structure, in the relatively noumenal—as opposed to the phenomenal—Universe. Men of science may term them force or forces generated by matter, or“modes of its motion,”if they will; Occultism sees in these effects Elementals (Forces), and, in the direct causes[pg 170]producing them, intelligent Divine Workmen. The intimate connection of these Elementals, guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers, with the elements of pure Matter—their correlation we might call it—results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists259who call every force and energy—whether light, heat, electricity or cohesion—an“entity”; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise produced by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an entity—thus confusing and identifying that“noise”with the“driver”outside, and the guiding“Master Intelligence”withinthe vehicle. But we do certainly give that name to the“drivers”and to these guiding“Intelligences,”the ruling Dhyân Chohans, as has been shown. The Elementals, the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary causes, and in themselves the effects of primary causes behind the veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the“Ghosts or Shadows of Matter in Motion,”i.e., supersensuous states of Matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels—a purely phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer. The proximate exciting cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver—a supersensuous state of matter in motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind this—just as the owner of the carriage directs the driver from within—stands the higher andnoumenalcause, theIntelligencefrom whose essence radiate these States of“Mother,”generating the countless milliards of Elementals, or Psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water generates its physical infinitesimal Infusoria. It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal body.It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true nature of even terrestrial matter—primordial substance being regarded more as a dream than as a sober reality—the[pg 171]Physicists should, nevertheless, set themselves up as judges of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in various combinations. Scientists know this matter hardly skin-deep, and yet they will dogmatize. It is“a mode of motion”and nothing else! But the“force”that is inherent in a living person's breath, when blowing a speck of dust from the table, is also, undeniably,“a mode of motion.”It is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of the speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed, whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to endow matter—something of which nothing is so far known—with an inherent quality called force, of the nature of which still less is known, is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the acceptation of the intervention of our“Nature-Spirits”in every natural phenomenon.The Occultists—who, if they would express themselves correctly, do not say that matter, but only thesubstanceoressenceof matter, (i.e., Mûlaprakriti, the Root of all) is indestructible and eternal—assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, electricity, magnetism, light, heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, arein esse,i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion which is discussed and explained in the first pages of this volume. When Fohat is said to produce Seven Laya Centres, it means that, for formative or creative purposes, theGreat Law—Theists may call it God—stays, or rather modifies, its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the Manifested Universe.“The Great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya, to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara,”says the Occult Catechism. We have said that Laya is what Science may call the zero-point or line; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, thenoumenonof the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognize as“Force”; or again the noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object for finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and also subjectivity; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning, if we try to imagine a“neutral centre”—the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. A“neutral centre”is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter; each of these corresponding to an appropriate[pg 172]set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of, say, the lower in their transformation upwards, they will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, for us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception—or rather, it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special, and not readily discoverable, properties. Seven such“Neutral Centres,”260then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it:Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build ...quickens matter into activity and evolution.The Primordial Atom (Anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its primogeneity; therefore it is called the“Sum Total,”of course, figuratively, as that“Sum Total”is boundless. That which is the abyss of nothingness to the Physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an endless evolution and involution, or reäbsorption of the Kosmos, a process which, according to the Brâhmanical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without beginning or end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since“by all the admissions of modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of nature to run down.”If the tendency of nature“to run down”is to be considered so forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, how, we may ask, do your Positivists and Free-thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx of active stellar systems around us? They had eternity to“run down”in; why, then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only hypothetically believed to be a dead planet,“run down,”and Astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets.261The query is unanswerable. But apart from this, it must be noted that the idea of the amount of“transformable energy”in our[pg 173]little system coming to an end, is based purely on the fallacious conception of a“white-hot, incandescent sun,”perpetually radiating away its heat without compensation into space. To this we reply that nature runs down and disappears from the objective plane, only to reëmerge after a time of rest out of the subjective, and to reäscend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will run down only to reäppear on a more perfect plane after every Pralaya. The Matter of the Eastern philosophers is not the“matter”and Nature of the Western metaphysicians. For what is Matter? And above all, what is our scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so politely defined by Kant as the“science of thelimitsto our knowledge?”To what have the many attempts made by Science to bind, connect, and define all the phenomena of organic life, by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it? To speculation generally—mere soap-bubbles, that have burst one after the other before the men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting hypotheses merely on the one-sided knowledge oftheir“matter.”The behaviour of Uranus and Neptune—whose satellites, four and one in number respectively, revolved, it was thought, in their orbits from East to West, whereas all the other satellites rotate from West to East—is a very good instance, as showing how unreliable are allà priorispeculations, even when based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous hypothesis of the formation of our Solar System out of nebulous rings, put forward by Kant and Laplace, was chiefly based on the assumed fact that all the planets revolved in the same direction. Laplace, relying on this mathematically demonstrated fact in his own time, and calculating on the theory of probabilities, offered to bet three milliards to one that the next planet discovered would have in its system the same peculiarity of motion eastward. The immutable laws of scientific mathematics got“worsted by further experiments and observations.”This idea of Laplace's mistake prevails generally to this day; but some Astronomers have finally succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the error has been in accepting Laplace's assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct thebévue, without attracting general attention, are now being taken. Many such unpleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical character. What further disillusions, then, may there not be[pg 174]in questions concerning a transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches that the so-called“reverse rotation”is a fact.If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of sea-shore, or of fathoming the ultimate nature and essence of these grains, when palpable and visible on the palm of the Naturalist, how can any Materialist limit the laws which govern the changes in the conditions and being of the atoms in Primordial Chaos, or know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of the atoms and molecules, before and after their formation into worlds? These changeless and eternal molecules—far more numberless in space than the grains on the ocean shore—may differ in their constitution along the lines of their planes of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body. Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and each plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data from which to start, in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar system, Astronomers, Geologists, and Physicists, with each new hypothesis, are drifting farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the fathomless depths of speculative ontology.262The Law of Analogy, in the plan of structure between the trans-solar systems and the solar planets, does not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions, to which every visible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science, this Law of Analogy is the first and most important key to cosmic physics; but it has to be studied in its minutest details, and“turned seven times,”before one comes to understand it. Occult Philosophy is the only science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth of the Occultist's proposition,“the Kosmos is eternal in its unconditioned collectivity, and finite only in its conditioned manifestations,”on this one-sided physical enunciation that“it is a necessity of Nature to run down”?263

1.By the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge(a),Kwan-Yin—the Triple of Kwan-Shai-Yin, residing in Kwan-Yin-Tien(b)—Fohat, the Breath of their Progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth, from the lower Abyss,245the Illusive Form of Sien-Tchan246and the Seven Elements.

This Stanza is translated from the Chinese text, and the names given as the equivalents of the original terms are preserved. The real Esoteric nomenclature cannot be given, as it would only confuse the reader. The Brâhmanical doctrine has no equivalents for these. Vâch seems, in many an aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan-Yin, but there is no regular worship of Vâch under this name in India, as there is of Kwan-Yin in China. No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus, from the first dawn of popular religions, woman has been regarded and treated as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-Yin and Isis are placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is as sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous to finally separate into distinct sexes.

(a)“The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge”is called the“Triple”of Kwan-Shai-Yin, because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the“Mother, the Wife and the Daughter”of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became the“Father, Son and (female) Holy Ghost”—the Shakti or Energy—the Essence of the Three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedântins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Îshvara, the Logos,247is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos, or Verbum of Parabrahman; while in that of the Trans-Himâlayan[pg 161]teachings, it is—in the Hierarchy of their allegorical and metaphysical theogony—the“Mother,”or abstract ideal Matter, Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Nature; from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Budha, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshvara; and from the purely Occult and cosmical, Fohat, the“Son of the Son,”the androgynous energy resulting from this“Light of the Logos,”which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity—which is Life. Says T. Subba Row:

Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the Logos, ... not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in Mûlaprakriti. This Light of the Logos is the link ... between objective matter and the subjective Thought of Îshvara [or Logos]. It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one instrument with which the Logos works.248

(b)“Kwan-Yin-Tien”means the“Melodious Heaven of Sound,”the Abode of Kwan-Yin, or the“Divine Voice.”This“Voice”is a synonym of the Verbum or Word,“Speech,”as the expression of Thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and even the origin of, the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the“Daughter of the Divine Voice,”or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the“Heavenly Man,”or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindû Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of Brahmâ, one“generated by the gods”—is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of theactiveforces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan-Yin is the“Melodious Voice,”so is Vâch“the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water [the female principle] ... who yields us nourishment and sustenance,”as Mother-Nature. She is associated in the work of creation with Prajâpati. She is male and femalead libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi—the principle higher than Æther—of Âkâsha, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature. Thus Vâch and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult Sound in Nature and Æther—which“Voice”calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements.

Thus, inManu, Brahmâ (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into two parts, male and female, and creating in the latter, who is[pg 162]Vâch, Virâj, who is himself, or Brahmâ again. A learned Vedântin Occultist speaks of this“goddess”as follows, explaining the reason why Îshvara (or Brahmâ) is called Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is called Sabda Brahman:

The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly mystical; but if mystical, it has a tremendous significance when properly understood. Our old writers said that Vâch is of four kinds. [SeeRig Vedaand theUpanishads.] Vaikharî Vâch is what we utter. Every kind of Vaikharî Vâch exists in its Madhyama, further in its Pashyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.249The reason why this Pranava is called Vâch is this, that the four principles of the great cosmos correspond to these four forms of Vâch. Now the whole manifested solar system exists in its Sûkshma form in the light or energy of the Logos, because its energy is caught up and transferred to cosmic matter ... the whole cosmos in its objective form is Vaikharî Vâch, the light of the Logos is the Madhyama form, and the Logos itself the Pashyanti form, and Parabrahman the Para aspect of that Vâch. It is by the light of this explanation that we must try to understand certain statements made by various philosophers to the effect that the manifested cosmos is the Verbum manifested as cosmos.250

2.The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Laya251Centres(a),against which none will prevail to the Great Day“Be With Us”; and seats the Universe on these Eternal Foundations, surrounding Sien-Tchan with the Elementary Germs(b).

(a) The seven Laya Centres are the seven zero-points, using the term zero in the same sense that Chemists do. It indicates, in Esotericism, a point at which the reckoning of differentiation begins. From these Centres—beyond which Esoteric Philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines of the“Seven Sons”of Life and Light, the Seven Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers—begins the differentiation of the Elements which enter into the constitution of our Solar System. It has often been asked what is the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, for he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been given in the Commentary on Stanza V. As well said in theBhagavadgîtâLectures,“The whole cosmos must necessarily exist in the one source of energy[pg 163]from which this light [Fohat] emanates.”Whether we count the principles in cosmos and man as seven or only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same authority that,“Prajnâ, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter.”For,“just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.”252So does Fohat. Fohat has several meanings, as already shown. He is called the“Builder of the Builders,”the Force that he personifies having formed our Septenary Chain. He is One and Seven, and on the cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the“spirit”of electricity, which is the Life of the Universe. As an abstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life, immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while Science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point toIntelligentLaw andSentientLife, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him, whom the Christians call the“Messengers”of their God (in reality, of the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we the Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light.

(b) The“Elementary Germs,”with which he fills Sien-Tchan (the Universe) from Tien-Sin (the“Heaven of Mind,”or that which is absolute), are the Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.

3.Of the Seven253—first One manifested, Six concealed; Two manifested, Five concealed; Three manifested, Four concealed; Four produced, Three hidden; Four and One Tsan254revealed, Two and One Half concealed; Six to be manifested, One laid aside(a).Lastly, Seven Small Wheels revolving; one giving birth to the other(b).

(a) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a[pg 164]Mahâpralaya (Universal Dissolution), yet this sentence, as any student of Occultism may see, refers also by analogy to the evolution and final formation of the primitive (though compound) seven Elements on our Earth. Of these, four Elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth—Ether—is only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the Fourth Round, and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in the Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, as germs, were of course primarily evolved from the One Element in its second stage—“Father-Mother,”the Differentiated World's Soul, not what is termed the“Over-Soul”by Emerson—whether we call it, with Modern Science, cosmic dust and fire-mist, or with Occultism, Âkâsha, Jîvâtmâ, Divine Astral Light, or the“Soul of the World.”But this first stage of Evolution was in due course of time followed by the next. No World, and no heavenly body, could be constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been already sufficiently differentiated from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The latter term is a synonym of Nirvâna. It is, in fact, the Nirvânic dissociation of all substances, merged after a Life-Cycle into the latency of their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the Matter thatwas, the realm of negativeness—wherein lie latent during their period of rest the active Forces of the Universe.

Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the standing reproach of the Ancients, that they“supposed their elements simple and undecomposable.”The shades of our pre-historic ancestors might return the compliment to modern Physicists, now that new discoveries in Chemistry have led Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., to admit, that Science is yet a thousand leagues from a knowledge of the compound nature of the simplest molecule. From him we learn that such a thing as a really simple molecule entirely homogeneous isterra incognitain Chemistry.“Where are we to draw the line?”he asks;“is there no way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the elementary examinations so stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, or must we open the examination doors so wide that the number of admissions is limited only by the number of applicants?”And then the learned chemist gives striking instances. He says:

Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite atomic weight, it behaved in every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we might indeed add, but from which we could not take away. Yet this yttrium, this supposed homogeneous whole, on being submitted to a certain method of fractionation, is resolved into[pg 165]portions not absolutely identical among themselves, and exhibiting a gradation of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a body betraying all the recognized characters of an element. It had been separated with much difficulty from other bodies which approximated closely to it in their properties, and during this crucial process it had undergone very severe treatment and very close scrutiny. But then came another chemist, who, treating this assumed homogeneous body by a peculiar process of fractionation, resolved it into the two bodies praseodymium and neodymium, between which certain distinctions are perceptible. Further, we even now have no certainty that neodymium and praseodymium are simple bodies. On the contrary, they likewise exhibit symptoms of splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on proper treatment is thus found to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely warranted in asking whether similar results might not be obtained in other elements, perhaps in all elements, if treated in the right way. We may even ask where the process of sorting-out is to stop—a process which of course presupposes variations between the individual molecules of each species. And in these successive separations we naturally find bodies approaching more and more closely to each other.255

Once more this reproach against the Ancients is an unwarrantable statement. Their initiated philosophers at any rate, can hardly come under such an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and religious myths from the beginning. Had they been ignorant of the Heterogeneity of their Elements they would have had no personifications of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Æther; their cosmic gods and goddesses would never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and daughters, elements bornfromandwithineach respective Element. Alchemy and Occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and correlative functions and attributes, of every element that enters into the composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire—the latter aterra incognitato this day to Modern Science, which is obliged to call it motion, evolution of light and heat, state of ignition—defining it by its outward aspects in short, in ignorance of its nature.

But what Modern Science seems to fail to perceive, is that, differentiated as may have been those simple chemical atoms—which archaic philosophy called“the creators of their respective parents,”fathers, brothers, husbands of their mothers, and these mothers the daughters of their own sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example—differentiated as these elements were in the beginning, still, they were not the compound bodies known to Science, as they are now. Neither Water, Air,[pg 166]nor Earth (a synonym for solids generally) existed in their present form, representing the only three states of matter recognized by Science; for all these and even Fire are productions already recombined by the atmospheres of completely formed globes, so that in the first periods of the earth's formation they were something quitesui generis. Now that the conditions and laws ruling our Solar System are fully developed, and that the atmosphere of our earth, as of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its own, Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place, in space, of molecules, or rather of atoms, correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and these among the greatest Physicists and Chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope shows only the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether or not atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way, and under the same conditions, as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and reässociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamed of, and incognizable to, Physical Science. As already expressed inFive Years of Theosophy,256the essence of cometary matter, for instance,“is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest Chemists and Physicists of the earth are acquainted.”And even that matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain change in its nature.

Thus not only the elements of our planet, but even those of all its sisters in the Solar System, differ in their combinations as widely from each other, as from the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits. This is again corroborated by the same man of Science in the lecture referred to above, who quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying“that the elements are not absolutely homogeneous.”He writes:

It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of intermediate varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules have gone to, if, as we have reason to believe, the hydrogen, etc., of the fixed stars is composed of molecules identical in[pg 167]all respects with our own.... In the first place we may call in question this absolute molecular identity, since we have hitherto had no means for coming to a conclusion save the means furnished by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for accurately comparing and discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they should be examined under identical states of temperature, pressure, and all other physical conditions. We have certainly seen, in the spectrum of the sun, rays which we have not been able to identify.

Therefore, the elements of our planet cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the elements in other worlds. In fact each world has its Fohat, which is omnipresent in its own sphere of action. But there are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of manifestation. The individual Fohats make one universal, collective Fohat—the aspect-entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-ness, Sat.“Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara”—it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we consider as conscious andintelligentForces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it, consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of Matter; and as possible objects of perception to beings endowed with the requisite senses.

Enshrined in its pristine, virgin state within the Bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation.“The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.”And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her protean products, which, carried on by the wave of efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward or beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever, unless fate dissociates it by leading it to a“current of efflux”(an Occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary word implies), when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had previously perished, and taking its flight, not into Spaceabovebut into Spacewithin, be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily reabsorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist-Alchemist to write the“Life and Adventures of an Atom,”he would secure thereby the supreme scorn of the modern Chemist, though perchance also his subsequent gratitude. Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be intuitional, and would for a moment step out of the habitual groove of strictly“Exact Science,”as the Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid[pg 168]for his audacity. However it may be,“The Breath of the Father-Mother issues cold and radiant, and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner Space,”says the Commentary. Man absorbs cold pure air on the mountain-top, and throws it out impure, hot and transformed. Thus, the higher atmosphere of every globe, being its mouth, and the lower its lungs, the man of our planet breathes only the“refuse of Mother;”therefore,“he is doomed to die thereon.”He who would allotropize sluggish oxygen into ozone to a measure of alchemical activity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means), would discover thereby a substitute for an“Elixir of Life”and prepare it for practical use.

(b) The process referred to as the“Small Wheels, one giving birth to the other,”takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane of the most material world of all in the manifested Kosmos—our terrestrial plane. These“Seven Wheels”are our Planetary Chain. By“Wheels”the various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in this case they refer to our septenary Ring.

4.He builds them in the likeness of older Wheels,257Placing them on the Imperishable Centres(a).

How does Fohat build them? He collects the Fiery-Dust. He makes Balls of Fire, runs through them, and round them, infusing life thereinto, then sets them into motion; some one way, some the other way. They are cold, he makes them hot. They are dry, he makes them moist. They shine, he fans and cools them(b).Thus acts Fohat from one Twilight to the other, during Seven Eternities.258

(a) The Worlds are built“in the likeness of older Wheels”—i.e., of those that had existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya; for the Law for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the Sun to the glow-worm in the grass, is One. There is an everlasting work of perfection with every new appearance, but the Substance-Matter and Forces are all one and the same. And this Law acts on every planet through minor and varying laws.

The“Imperishable [Laya] Centres”have a great importance, and[pg 169]their meaning must be fully understood, if we would have a clear conception of the Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At present, one thing may be stated. The Worlds are built neitherupon, norover, norinthe Laya Centres, the zero-point being a condition, not a mathematical point.

(b) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung, like Rudra from the head of Brahmâ,“from the Brain of the Father and the Bosom of the Mother,”and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female,i.e., polarized himself into positive and negative electricity. He hasSeven Sonswho are hisBrothers. Fohat is forced to be born, time after time, whenever any two of his“Son-Brothers”indulge intoo close contact—whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he unites and binds together those of unlike nature, and separates those of similar temperaments. This, as any one can see, relates, of course, to electricity generated by friction, and to the law of attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven Son-Brothers, however, represent and personify the seven forms of cosmic magnetism, called in Practical Occultism the“Seven Radicals,”whose coöperative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as super-sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of sense; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them, the latter cognizable by our ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious Causes. To attempt a description of such Entities would be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a Great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the Unknown Substance, the more it approaches Reality, as being the farther removed from this world of Mâyâ. Therefore, though the molecular constitution of these bodies is not deducible from their manifestations, on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless, from the standpoint of the Adept Occultist, possess a distinctive objective if not material structure, in the relatively noumenal—as opposed to the phenomenal—Universe. Men of science may term them force or forces generated by matter, or“modes of its motion,”if they will; Occultism sees in these effects Elementals (Forces), and, in the direct causes[pg 170]producing them, intelligent Divine Workmen. The intimate connection of these Elementals, guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers, with the elements of pure Matter—their correlation we might call it—results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists259who call every force and energy—whether light, heat, electricity or cohesion—an“entity”; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise produced by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an entity—thus confusing and identifying that“noise”with the“driver”outside, and the guiding“Master Intelligence”withinthe vehicle. But we do certainly give that name to the“drivers”and to these guiding“Intelligences,”the ruling Dhyân Chohans, as has been shown. The Elementals, the Nature-Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or rather imperceptible, secondary causes, and in themselves the effects of primary causes behind the veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the“Ghosts or Shadows of Matter in Motion,”i.e., supersensuous states of Matter whose effects only we are able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of light is like the sound of the rolling wheels—a purely phenomenal effect, having no existence outside the observer. The proximate exciting cause of the sensation is comparable to the driver—a supersensuous state of matter in motion, a Nature-Force or Elemental. But, behind this—just as the owner of the carriage directs the driver from within—stands the higher andnoumenalcause, theIntelligencefrom whose essence radiate these States of“Mother,”generating the countless milliards of Elementals, or Psychic Nature-Spirits, just as every drop of water generates its physical infinitesimal Infusoria. It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal body.

It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire ignorance of the true nature of even terrestrial matter—primordial substance being regarded more as a dream than as a sober reality—the[pg 171]Physicists should, nevertheless, set themselves up as judges of that matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in various combinations. Scientists know this matter hardly skin-deep, and yet they will dogmatize. It is“a mode of motion”and nothing else! But the“force”that is inherent in a living person's breath, when blowing a speck of dust from the table, is also, undeniably,“a mode of motion.”It is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of the speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed, whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to endow matter—something of which nothing is so far known—with an inherent quality called force, of the nature of which still less is known, is to create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the acceptation of the intervention of our“Nature-Spirits”in every natural phenomenon.

The Occultists—who, if they would express themselves correctly, do not say that matter, but only thesubstanceoressenceof matter, (i.e., Mûlaprakriti, the Root of all) is indestructible and eternal—assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, electricity, magnetism, light, heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, arein esse,i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion which is discussed and explained in the first pages of this volume. When Fohat is said to produce Seven Laya Centres, it means that, for formative or creative purposes, theGreat Law—Theists may call it God—stays, or rather modifies, its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the Manifested Universe.“The Great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya, to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara,”says the Occult Catechism. We have said that Laya is what Science may call the zero-point or line; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, thenoumenonof the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognize as“Force”; or again the noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object for finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and also subjectivity; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning, if we try to imagine a“neutral centre”—the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. A“neutral centre”is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter; each of these corresponding to an appropriate[pg 172]set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of, say, the lower in their transformation upwards, they will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, for us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception—or rather, it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special, and not readily discoverable, properties. Seven such“Neutral Centres,”260then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it:

Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build ...

quickens matter into activity and evolution.

The Primordial Atom (Anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its primogeneity; therefore it is called the“Sum Total,”of course, figuratively, as that“Sum Total”is boundless. That which is the abyss of nothingness to the Physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an endless evolution and involution, or reäbsorption of the Kosmos, a process which, according to the Brâhmanical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without beginning or end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since“by all the admissions of modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of nature to run down.”If the tendency of nature“to run down”is to be considered so forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, how, we may ask, do your Positivists and Free-thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx of active stellar systems around us? They had eternity to“run down”in; why, then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only hypothetically believed to be a dead planet,“run down,”and Astronomy does not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets.261The query is unanswerable. But apart from this, it must be noted that the idea of the amount of“transformable energy”in our[pg 173]little system coming to an end, is based purely on the fallacious conception of a“white-hot, incandescent sun,”perpetually radiating away its heat without compensation into space. To this we reply that nature runs down and disappears from the objective plane, only to reëmerge after a time of rest out of the subjective, and to reäscend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature will run down only to reäppear on a more perfect plane after every Pralaya. The Matter of the Eastern philosophers is not the“matter”and Nature of the Western metaphysicians. For what is Matter? And above all, what is our scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so politely defined by Kant as the“science of thelimitsto our knowledge?”To what have the many attempts made by Science to bind, connect, and define all the phenomena of organic life, by mere physical and chemical manifestations, brought it? To speculation generally—mere soap-bubbles, that have burst one after the other before the men of Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting hypotheses merely on the one-sided knowledge oftheir“matter.”The behaviour of Uranus and Neptune—whose satellites, four and one in number respectively, revolved, it was thought, in their orbits from East to West, whereas all the other satellites rotate from West to East—is a very good instance, as showing how unreliable are allà priorispeculations, even when based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous hypothesis of the formation of our Solar System out of nebulous rings, put forward by Kant and Laplace, was chiefly based on the assumed fact that all the planets revolved in the same direction. Laplace, relying on this mathematically demonstrated fact in his own time, and calculating on the theory of probabilities, offered to bet three milliards to one that the next planet discovered would have in its system the same peculiarity of motion eastward. The immutable laws of scientific mathematics got“worsted by further experiments and observations.”This idea of Laplace's mistake prevails generally to this day; but some Astronomers have finally succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the error has been in accepting Laplace's assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct thebévue, without attracting general attention, are now being taken. Many such unpleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical character. What further disillusions, then, may there not be[pg 174]in questions concerning a transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches that the so-called“reverse rotation”is a fact.

If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand covering a few miles of sea-shore, or of fathoming the ultimate nature and essence of these grains, when palpable and visible on the palm of the Naturalist, how can any Materialist limit the laws which govern the changes in the conditions and being of the atoms in Primordial Chaos, or know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of the atoms and molecules, before and after their formation into worlds? These changeless and eternal molecules—far more numberless in space than the grains on the ocean shore—may differ in their constitution along the lines of their planes of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body. Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and each plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption. Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data from which to start, in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar system, Astronomers, Geologists, and Physicists, with each new hypothesis, are drifting farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the fathomless depths of speculative ontology.262The Law of Analogy, in the plan of structure between the trans-solar systems and the solar planets, does not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions, to which every visible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science, this Law of Analogy is the first and most important key to cosmic physics; but it has to be studied in its minutest details, and“turned seven times,”before one comes to understand it. Occult Philosophy is the only science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the untruth of the Occultist's proposition,“the Kosmos is eternal in its unconditioned collectivity, and finite only in its conditioned manifestations,”on this one-sided physical enunciation that“it is a necessity of Nature to run down”?263

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