Theosophy - Parabrahm by Amaravella (Edward J.Coulomb) - translated by G.R.S. Mead from "Le Lotus" magazine
PARABRAHM
Revised and enlarged by the Author
Amaravella [Edward J Coulomb]
A Translation
by G.R.S. Mead of three articles by Amaravella (M.S.T.),
which were published in Nos. 14, 15, and 16 of “Le
Lotus”
with some additional
Notes by the Author.
Originally printed
by the Theosophical Publishing House, London in 1889
and
reprinted from “Theosophical Siftings” Volume
- 3 -
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me
appear;
And one to me, are shame and fame
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I, the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred SEVEN;
But thou, meek lover of the good !
Find me, and turn thy
back on heaven.
EMERSON
THAT which is
at the same time both ego and non-ego, spirit and matter,
subject and object, the cause and effect, finite and infinite,
moment and eternity, all and nothing, might — if
it could be named — be called Parabrahm. And yet it
could not be said to be so, since it is both being and non-being. [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 45, 53 and 54 (note)] To
essay its praises would be a vain and impious blasphemy,
were it not at once both that which speaks and that which
hears and speech itself. [Ibid Vol I, 9, 11, 14
etseq, and 68]
Nothing! scarcely is the word — though in such favour
with the philosophy of the times — out of our mouths
than the expostulations of common sense and the anathemas
of orthodoxy burst forth from every quarter. Optimistic respectability
with its comfortable solutions will accuse us of being paradoxical,
as if the universe were aught less than one huge paradox.
Content will bear us no good will for disturbing its slumber,
and those grown-up children of hers, reserved for the whip
of experience, will bid us seek in love the key to the mystery,
a key with which the door of the marriage-chamber is locked
for legitimatized prostitution, [Page
4] safe from annoying
visitors from the other world. Lastly, the faithful of a
Christ once palpable and still digestible, specially descended
on earth, the centre of the world, to save man, king of that
earth, having seen the sun stand still to set Joshua at defiance,
fossils brought to light to contradict Genesis, and science
working miracles to defy God, will not easily be prevailed
upon to lose their last revenge and willingly howl with De
Maistre : " Rather eternal damnation than annihilation
!" And yet this Jehovah of theirs, so firmly seated
on a throne of smoke, was very father-like; all the birds
of Heaven could make comfortable nests in his huge beard;
and if so many horrors were committed in his name, no doubt
the reason was that, worn out with amassing his fat fortune
from so small a commencement and achieving the misery of
the world in so short a time, he was sleeping and his lieutenants
forgot to sound the réveil. Let him sleep on, a god whom
his worshippers have made in their own image to pray to in
carefully-warmed churches with knees on discreetly-stuffed
cushions. Let him sleep on in peace, since his slumber has
not sent the world asleep.
And yet it is
in his name that so many learned missionaries and devout
Orientalists have thundered against the atheism of China
and the Buddhist Nirvâna, without being able
to foresee the otherwise terrible nihilism to which their
extreme anthropomorphism was bound to lead them. The materialistic
scepticism which afflicts modern thought is the natural reaction
of a theism which has so absurdly individualized divinity,
just as the flaming sword of anarchy hanging over our civilizations
is the inevitable consequence of our exaggerated individualism.
The over bold speculations of the bank of indulgences, to
which so many small shareholders used to carry their other
world savings, has ended in disastrous failure, and the credit
of "lebon Dieu" is dead from falsification.
Science has judged this murder and failure, and has condemned
man to perish utterly in the corruption of his corpse, without
power to rebel against the heavens thus irrevocably void.
Well was it worth the while of a Barthélémy
Saint-Hilaire to mutter against the monstrous theories
which preach annihilation in Parabrahm as the supreme goal
of our aspirations, or of a Father Prémare, lost in
the maze of his own contradictions, to cry in comic despair: "Reconcile
Tchouhi with himself, if you wish his authority to be worth
anything!" The missionaries would have done better to
have kept their zeal for their more and more empty fold,
than to raise collections from the faithful to build chapels
in the style Jesuitical for infidels whose ancient and vast
temples would have readily given a refuge to the god of the
Westerns, had his Barnums shown themselves less exclusive.
These scholars would have done better to widen their biblical
prejudices than to violate thrice sacred books by churlish
or untrustworthy translations, the majority of which have
to be re-made. Our endeavour has been to force ourselves
upon the nations of the East as masters rather than to make
them our friends, without even inquiring if they were intelligent
to think us ridiculous or proud enough to hate us. We have
shown them our boundless pride before explaining the compass
of our knowledge. We have begun by introducing [Page
5] disorganization
into their social institutions before persuading them of
the justice of our laws. We have laughed at their chronologies
and traditions before discovering that our own were but a
caricature of theirs. We have made of their art, literature
and customs a detestable hotch-potch of colonial wares;
but only in proportion as we widen our religious toleration
and philosophical conceptions do we begin to suspect the
scope of their old thinkers. If, however, these poor heathens
had known the precept to render good for evil, they would
long ago have sent missionaries to Europe to build pagodas.
Their bonzes would have reminded our militant Christians
of the Tykoon's answer to his Minister who was complaining
of Jesuitical intrusion: " How many religions are there
in Japan?". "Thirty-two, sire". " Well,
that will make thirty-three". Their lamas would have
been delighted to find in our churches their confessional
altars, censors, bells, holy water, tonsure, dalmatics, copes
and mitres, and even their Holy Virgin [Compare Abbé Huc,
Marco Polo, Auguste, Keane, Asia and Elisée Reclus;
Nouvelle géographie universelle, vii, 80] These
Chinese would have shown us that the pinching of feet which
prevents their women walking is better than the pinching
of waists which prevents maternity in our own. Their opium
smokers would argue that hashish which makes a man dream
of paradise, is a worthier distraction of leisure that alcohol
which turns him into a brute. Their pundits would have translated
our sacred books, The Manual of the Perfect Christian, The
Ritual of the Greek Church, and the Imitation of Jesus Christ,
which M. Dumas would have done into verse for them. Some
would have regarded our psychology as degrading, and our
Bible as immoral. But others would have discovered that the
history of Lot's daughters was a myth, probably solar, that
even adultery was punishable by our codes, and that the West
should be known before being laughed at. But most of all,
these pious folk would have been astonished at hearing the
names of nihilists and atheists applied to themselves in
the sense that these words bear in the present epoch of anthropomorphic
theology and scholarship.
Antiquity, whose
history is divine rather than human, was not acquainted
with the monstrous conception of nothingness. The mystic
East is still ignorant of this inconceivable nightmare
of a grossly materialistic age; nor do her temples, full
as they are of symbolical deities, contain any fetish so
rude as that of our tabernacles. M. Gustave le Bon has lately
shown in the Revue Scientifique how poor the results
of our policy seem beside the conquests of Islam in Asia
and Africa. The reason is that the religion of Mahomet is
already less materialized than that of the Christ; and, above
all, because the Mussulman is practically pious, while the
European is ideally sceptical. Nothing is more absurd than
the illusion of colonizers who profess to force our industrial
activity and democratic republicanism [It must of
course be understood that the writer here points his criticism
more directly against the French colonial policy] on
a contemplative and apathetic people, ignorant of [Page
6] the social question, if it is not the overweeningness
of frock-coated piety and clerical scholarship which, in
the name of their philosophical littleness and apprehensive
bigotry, upbraid the giants of archaic thought with the greatness
of their conceptions and the superb daring of their logic;
nothing more terrible than the deluge of missions with which
we have flooded the ancient world, missions military, religious,
scientific or commercial, if not the threat of future retaliation
hinted at by such travellers and thinkers as Richtofen, Armand
David, Vasililyer, Elisée Reclus, and Saint Yves d'Alveydre.
As our international questions show signs of disappearing
before the social question, so the latter may one day reveal
a still heavier Karma behind it. What will be the outcome
of this continental crisis, of this struggle between yellow
and white, hereafter rendered almost inevitable by our past
barbarity, by the present folly which makes us teach and
arm our enemies of tomorrow, and by the over-population
on the whole surface of the globe ? Without doubt, such a
disturbance of the human race as has not previously been
heard of, of which those great invasions which always came
from the East were the prologue, and of which the forerunners
have already been felt in America. Perhaps, however, the
equilibrium of interests would be more easily established,
if the balance of ideas and passions were then less unstable
than they are at present. The introduction of Theosophy,
which arrived by a Pacific and Orient steamer, between
a chest of adulterated tea and a crate of Indian pottery
manufactured at Lambeth, has been attempted to make us less
pessimistic. We may hope that the brotherhood to which our
Himalayan brothers invite us will be "a new platform
of progress for the whole human race, erected out of the
truths of all civilization."[J.J. Jarves, A Glimpse
at the art of Japan, Sect I.] But it is not our selfish
activity which can avert the danger, much less our scepticism. " In
vain, when the arbitrary Powers of European governmental
anarchy shall once be shattered over the massacred bodies
of their adherents, revolutionary destruction shall cry to
invasion and howl to the deluge: " We are not Christians,
we have no god — no master; what would'st thou with
us?" .The other social states will only have more
contempt for it in their anger, in the name of their own
faith, still more outraged by this universal blasphemy than
by the ignorant fanaticism of our cults and the ferocious
politics of our States. And throughout our wasted civilization
the bloody fruits of this fanaticism and international and
colonial policy will be trodden under foot as a foul vintage". [Saint-Yves
d’ Alveydre, Mission des Juifs, pp 8, 11]
The tree of evil
produces twin poisonous fruits — selfishness,
which prevents our feeling the sufferings of others, and
sways society under the guise of Herbert Spencer's favourite
individualism, and pride, which prevents our understanding
their thoughts, and is the keystone of both intolerance and
materialism. The humbler ancients did not profess to force
on existence the limits of their own intelligence, knowing
that man ever stands between the attainments of the past
and the unknown possibilities of the future; that the world
as it appears to [Page 7] animal
or inferior beings is but an insignificant conception compared
to the view of it with which new faculties and perfected
senses furnish us; knowing, in short, that the All grows,
and is modified incessantly, they did not think All an
expression satisfactory enough to express the beyond of any
particular consciousness or partial existence; they annihilated
their words, thoughts and prayers in the shoreless ocean
where all intellectual knowledge acquired or possible for
man, for humanity, or even for nebulae of collective humanities,
represents but one insignificant drop. Pan was only a secondary
divinity, and, as was said by John of Damascus, absolute
Being, Ehieh contains the All in itself, like an infinite
and indeterminate sea of substance. "Totum enim in
se ipso comprehendens ac veluti quoddam pelagus substantioe
infinitum et indeterminatum". Since
the All which we can conceive is but an infinitesimal part
of Being, the name of Nothing was given to this abyss, of
which sacred conception our idea of Nothingness is naught
but the monstrous and unthinkable antithesis. Poetical exaggeration,
you say ! Nay, rather, the logic of the human mind, which
recognizes its imperfections and feels its proper limits.
For time and space, and every means we have of conceiving
the infinite, are only modes of existence defined in intellect
and matter, and Parabrahm, the source of each, is still beyond
them both. Such conceptions have no doubt been made to baffle
our materialists, already sacred by the infinity of matter,
and seeking from this spectre, inoffensive though it be,
the vain shelter of Positivism. But Occult Science has other
deeds of daring to commit, and is reserving for them other
surprises, for matter, or rather bodies, and the least ponderable
forces, the sum total of the possible knowledge of modern
science, embrace scarcely one of the four or two of the seven
divisions of the totality of existence. There are other means
of knowledge which will be acquired by humanity in the course
of countless ages of transformations by which matter itself
will become more sublimated: by these hypersensitive senses
acquired at present by a few only, consciousness, of which
our own is merely the matrix, will conceive existences of
which our own is but the embryo. To explain such possibilities
would require an angelic language which could explain all
by one word or note; any words of ours are no better than
a babe's puling.
The infinite,
which has been called positive subjectivity transformed
by the understanding into negative objectivity, can only
be conceived indirectly or negatively; and therefore most
of the terms formerly or still applied to the supreme principle
are prefixed by a privative particle, e.g., the A-diti
of the Vedas, the Ain-Soph of the Kabala, the A-peiron
of Anaximander, the Ab-solute, etc. We can show what it
is not, but scarcely say what it is, and almost all the
names given to it are logically insufficient; the best,
or rather, the least objectionable, representation of Parabrahm
would be an indefinite figure like the circle, or a neuter
term like the word That[Compare The Secret
Doctrine, Vol I, 77] or better still, a self-contradictory
expression, as All-nothing. If we conceive a god as cause
or sum of all existence, such a conception [Page
8] necessarily excludes
every idea of partial or personal existence. To say that
he is im-measurable, un-changeable, in-finitely good, is
a prohibition, à la lettre, to appraise his
greatness, power or goodness. In the name of logic, Balzac
made Séraphita say that, seeing God had created
the world out of nothing, either he was not infinite before
this creation, or else he ceased to be so, as soon as the
work from which he has remained distinct came into existence.
In the name of human misery, Stuart Mill maintained that
if the Creator is omnipotent, he cannot be supremely good,
and vice versa. And if theologians should ever extricate
themselves from these dilemmas, a greater would remain
to confront them: either their God is not absolute or else
he possesses neither qualities nor personal existence.
The attribution of quality to the Absolute is a limitation
thereof, that is its destruction: but to attribute to it
personality, the source of all restrictions, is the height
of contradiction. The Absolute is all or nothing; monotheism
should become pantheism, and Jehovah be re-absorbed in Parabrahm.
Nay, more, the Absolute is all and nothing: for what indeed
is the Absolute, if not that which is too infinite to be
great, too eternal to have duration, too perfect to be either
beautiful or good, in short, too everything to be anything
? Spinoza demonstrated the existence of God by a famous proposition;
god is conceived as perfection, but perfection implies existence,
therefore God exists. It is easy to make this argument cut
both ways: if God is perfect, he cannot exist, for all beings
are impermanent in that they exist, and all beings are imperfect,
in the very fact that they are beings. It cannot even be
said that he exists or does not exist, since these two ideas
are complementary. If he is conceived as pure spirit, he
is limited by matter; if he is conceived as cause, he is
limited by effect; and if he is conceived as absolute being,
he is immediately annihilated in non-being. All reasonings
ultimately end in pantheism, and the base of pantheism is
the conception of being — non-being (negative existence).
As it were, through
desert routes, with naught but the relics of perished caravans
to point the track, let us steer to the Absolute by the
failures of those who have trod the way before us. Kant
was the first to denounce the antinomies of pure reason
implied in the conception of time, space, matter and movement,
and only reached an insufficient solution of the difficulty
by his distinction between noumena and phenomena. Herbert
Spencer, though exhaustively developing the series of contradictions,
gives but an imperfect solution in distinguishing determinate
from indeterminate consciousness. Of the intervening schools,
the Scotch idealists, while loyally attacking the problem,
have been led to the strangest conclusions. Hamilton, and
his disciple Mansel, Dean of Saint Paul's, have recognized
the contradiction in the terms infinite, absolute, first
cause, and God, and the consequent necessity of faith without
reason. Materialism, while wagging its head at the deduction,
owes them its gratitude for exorcising the phantom of the
Absolute, of which Kant had slain naught but the body.
By an equitable adjustment of mundane affairs, the priests
of an exaggerated idealism are found to have armed extreme
materialism with its most deadly weapons. The jubilation [Page
9] of the latter, keen as it is, may, perhaps,
be premature. If theism is no match for materialism, pantheism
can meet it on equal terms, and the arena in this hand-to-hand
conflict, which must end in the reconciliation of the combatants,
has no bounds short of the universe itself. Far from demolishing
the Absolute, the philosophers in question have made it invulnerable:
false conceptions alone have gone down before their lances,
and the precise arguments, they have used can be called upon
in startling confirmation of our teachings.
Hamilton formulates in the following terms his so-called
Law of the Conditioned: "All that is conceivable in
thought lies between two extremes, which, as contradictory
to each other, cannot both be true, but of which, as mutual
contradictories, one must". Let us take, for example,
space, of which we cannot, he says, help having conception,
for space is a positive and necessary form of thought [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 14] and we cannot conceive
of anything as outside space. We cannot then represent space
as finite, as a sphere, for instance, which would itself
be surrounded by space, nor yet as infinite, for after darting
our imagination beyond the solar system, the Milky Way, and
even the universe itself, we have not advanced a foot. " It
is in vain", says Pascal, "that we inflate our
conceptions beyond imaginable spaces; we give birth to naught
but atoms at the price of the reality of things. The infinite
is infinitely incomprehensible". Nor any the more
can the infinitely small be conceived, for a portion of space,
however infinitesimal it is supposed to be, has necessarily
extent, and is consequently divisible, even though such infinite
divisibility cannot be represented. Again, if we take
the still more universal and necessary idea of time, we can
attribute to it neither beginning nor end as limits beyond
which it would cease to exist. But the conception of unlimited
time is equally impossible since the only means of arriving
at such an idea is by the infinite addition of limited time — a
process which would itself require an eternity. " The
negation of a commencement of time involves likewise the
affirmation that an infinite time has at every moment already
run; this implies the contradiction that an infinite has
been completed. . . . Triple contradiction of an infinite
concluded, of an infinite commencing, and of two infinities
not exclusive of each other! " . On the other hand,
time of infinitely short duration is inconceivable, nay,
the millionth part of a second, were it indivisible, would
form no part of time. Therefore, space and time are comprised
between the infinitely great or small on the one hand, and
the finite on the other, and these two extremes are equally
inconceivable. "The sum of what I have stated is,
that the Conditioned is that which is alone conceivable or
cogitable; the Unconditioned is that which is inconceivable
or incogitable. The Conditioned or the thinkable lies between
two extremes or poles; and these extremes or poles are
each of them unconditioned, each of them inconceivable, each
of them exclusive or contradictory of the other. Of these
two repugnant opposites, the one is that of Unconditional
or Absolute [Page 10] limitation;
the other that of Unconditional or Absolute illimitation.
'The one we may, therefore, in general, call the Absolutely
Unconditioned, the other the Infinitely Unconditioned; or
more simply, the Absolute and the Infinite; the term Absolute
expressing that which is finished or complete, the term Infinite
that which cannot be terminated or concluded. These terms,
which philosophers have confounded, ought not only to be
distinguished, but opposed as contradictory. ... In other
words, of the Absolute and Infinite we have no conception
at all". [Lectures
on metaphysics, ch xxxviii]
If the premises
are unassailable, the conclusion is far from being so.
First of all, the meaning of the word Absolute is very
variable in philosophy. Some understand the term to mean
that which exists by itself (Swayam-Bhuva) [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 61] and without relation
to anything else, [Ibid, Vol I, 48]: (A-diti); [Ibid,
Vol I, 53] and, it is to be remarked, that the Hindus
apply it in this sense to matter and spirit alike. Others
understand the Absolute to mean that which is perfect or
the height of perfection. Hamilton, in using the word as
a synonym of finite, falls into a contradiction of terms
or a play on words, as we do in speaking of a perfect musician,
a consummate painter, or a finished work of art. The terms
which he opposes to one another, are in reality not the Absolute
and Infinite, but the finite on the one hand and the infinitely
great or small on the other. But are these two notions really
contradictory, or simply super-impossible, and do they not
impose themselves on us, rather than oppose one another?
The infinitely great has for antithesis the infinitely small;
and if these two extremes are synthesized into one term,
the infinite, the finite is comprised in and not excluded
from this synthesis. The finite is part of the infinite,
and this part is itself infinite with respect to its subdivisions,
since every quantity is infinitely divisible. So far, then,
from being the Absolute, the finite is essentially relative;
and Hamilton, in saying that we are incapable of conceiving
time or space either as limited or exempt from limitation,
endeavours to show that we cannot conceive either the relative
as Absolute, or the Absolute as relative, a self-evident
proposition.
The words themselves
remind us that the infinite can be neither defined, explained,
nor figured. It is impossible to perceive it, for all perception
is the perception of a form; but every form is finite,
and all that is finite has a form. We cannot conceive an
infinite form: if we endeavour to imagine an infinite
circle, we can only represent to ourselves a straight line,
and an infinitely straight line is equally unimaginable;
it has been shown that in infinity, dimensions re-absorb
themselves. A form exists by its very limits, and is defined
by the fact that it is distinguished from other forms;
the finite, or conditioned, is that which is capable of
representation or perception. The thought which inspired
the Scotch philosopher is that the finite is unable to satisfy
the human mind, but that the infinite transcends it. And
if we put clearly [Page 11] before
us the dilemma, the suspicion of which drove him to take
refuge in the credo quia absurdum, we find ourselves
before this alternative: either the infinite is a chimaera,
and the human mind a capricious child; or form is an illusion,
and we possess a higher faculty than perception.
The first solution is that which materialism offers. We
have been enabled to hint, and shall proceed to explain that
it contains a contradiction, and that the infinite forces
itself upon us. There are two ways out of this difficulty;
either to bathe one's humiliated brow in holy water, like
Pascal and a host of other proud thinkers, and so throw one's
self into the arms of anthropomorphic religions which revert
to transcendental materialism; or else to become Epicurean
and sceptic, and demand forgetfulness in the sleep of positivism,
which is nothing but a religion in disguise.
The second solution
is that which pantheistic monism puts forward; the
transplendent conception of Parabrahm, with which antiquity
was lighted, is the beacon which Theosophy is relighting
to lead the human mind out of the maze of Mâyâ.
Vain, perchance,
is the wish to define the source of cosmic manifestation,
and to demand the cause of being, for how can we speak
of that which gives birth to the word, and how express
the cause even of the question ? But of a surety, it is
absurd to deny this first cause on the pretext that its
last effects alone fall under our senses, and to insult
eternal immensity in the name of our ephemeral insignificance.
The disinherited might as well deny the existence of banknotes
and content themselves with saying that riches do not constitute
happiness. For the idealists of Scotland all existed by and
in human consciousness: they never seriously maintained,
however, that the infinite does not exist because it cannot
be represented. "I can only be surprised at the importance
attached to the character of inconceivability, when we know
by so many instances that our capacity or incapacity to conceive
a thing has so little to do with the possibility of the thing
in itself, and is only an entirely accidental circumstance
dependent on our habits of mind." [Stuart Mill,
Logic, ii, v. 6]
It was strangely
enough reserved to materialism, after demolishing the sovereignty
of spirit over matter, to affirm that the unthinkable could
not exist, a sophism contradicted, however, both by experience
and reason. For facts are there to prove the infinite,
and it is science herself with her telescopes and microscopes,
that has allowed us to conceive this old word in a new
and grandiose sense. Do they wish to bring us back to the
azure vault and its golden nails ? It is the ancients who
could have discussed the hypothesis of the infinite, for
it is they who worshipped its mystery. After the martyrdom
of Galileo, discussion is superfluous and criminal. The infinite
is everywhere, within us as without, and, though we close
our eyes to shut it out, it pursues us into the shadow and
silence. When Zeno demonstrated that movement was logically
[Page 12] impossible, Diogenes
walked, and the Cynic had the best of the Sophist. If the
infinite does not exist, find the limits of the universe.
And though you should have found them, still would the
fairest of human faculties protest against such imprisonment.
For, though the human mind cannot depict the infinite,
even so it cannot be prevented from conceiving it, or escape
its proper nature to ever surpass its limits. We are told
that the infinite does not exist, because we cannot imagine
the universe as finite; equally well could we reply with
the thought of Hamilton, that the finite does not exist
because we cannot conceive the universe as finite. "The
logical advantage of the atheistic alternative vanishes,
as soon as we view the question from the other side, and
endeavour positively to represent in thought the sum total
of existence as a limited quantity. A limit is itself a
relation; and to conceive a limit as such, is virtually
to acknowledge a correlative on the other side of it. By
a law of thought, the significance of which has not yet
perhaps been fully investigated, it is impossible to conceive
a finite object of any kind, without conceiving it as one
out of many — as related to other objects,
co-existent and antecedent. A first moment of time, a first
unit of space, a definite sum of all existence, are thus
as inconceivable as the opposite suppositions of an infinity
of each. While it is impossible to represent in thought any
object, except as finite, it is equally impossible to represent
any finite object or any aggregate of finite objects as exhausting
the universe of being. Thus the hypothesis which would annihilate
the Infinite is itself shattered to pieces against the rock
of the Absolute",[Mansel, Bampton Lectures, No.2] Moreover,
it is not want of mental power that can prevent the existence
of a host of things with which we are unacquainted: but
a thing that could not exist, would be not only unnamable,
but also unthinkable, and would be neither thing nor word;
and the infinite, word or thing, has caused enough ink-shedding.
And let no one think to escape from the phantom by the substitution
of indefinite for infinite, an excellent expression for sloth
of thought, but of no avail against intuition. Either the
universe has limits or it has none: if it is limited, scientific
instruments are imperfect and intuition deceptive; if it
is infinite, imagination is too weak, and the term indefinite
is merely a statement of such imperfection. But this has
already been stated by the negation contained in the word
in-finite. Fundamentally, these two expressions come precisely
to the same thing; and to be consistent with their after-thought,
the positivists who shield themselves behind the frail rampart
of a syllable, should point their bayonets not only against
the infinite, but also against the indefinite, the universe
and the world, and against everything of which the greatness
troubles the narrowness of their brains. Fortunately, truth
is not renounced so easily as political opinions.
The infinite is the indefinite sum of existing things, and
yet they would suppress the whole in the name of the past.
Strange logic to deny the Absolute in the name of the Relative,
or even spirit in that of matter, as if the effect could
[Page 13] exist or be conceived independently of the cause,
or the subject independently of the object: it resembles
those freethinkers who keep high holiday on Good Friday to
protest against the precepts of the Church, without perceiving
that to do so is a recognition of them. Materialism, denying
the infinite in the name of the finite, and Hume denying
matter in the name of spirit, represent two equally contradictory
extremes. It is impossible to deny either the Absolute or
the Relative, for one of the two at least implies the other,
and in every case both exist simultaneously. The infinite
is proclaimed equally by the impotence of human reason, to
keep from conceiving it, and by the impotence of our senses
to ever discover the confines of the universe. On the other
hand, the infinite forces itself both on our conception and
senses. Is it not then henceforth evident that the finite
and infinite co-exist in the universe, and that two kinds
of faculties are active in us side by side, the one applied
to the finite, formal and sensible, the other clasping the
infinite in an unconscious embrace?
"Strike out
from the argument the terms Unconditional, Infinite, Absolute,
with their equivalents, and in place of them write 'negation
of conceivability', or ‘absence
of the conditions under which consciousness is possible',
and you find that the argument becomes nonsense ...
"In such correlatives, it is obvious enough that the
negative concept contains something besides the negation
of the positive one; for the things of which equality is
denied are not abolished from consciousness by the denial.
. . Our notion of the Limited is composed, firstly of a consciousness
of some kind of being, and, secondly, of a consciousness
of the limits under which it is known. In the antithetical
notion of the Unlimited, the consciousness of limits is abolished,
but not the consciousness of some kind of being. . . . The
error consists in assuming that consciousness consists of
nothing but limits and conditions, to the entire neglect
of that which is limited and conditioned. . . . There must
be a residuary consciousness of something which filled up
their outlines; and the indefinite something constitutes
our consciousness of the non-relative or absolute". [Herbert
Spencer, First Principles, ch. iv]
Herbert Spencer
recognises that this "indefinite consciousness
of some sort of being is a positive and indestructible element
of thought, and goes so far as to attribute to it the reason
for our belief in objective reality, a belief so deeply rooted
in us that even the conviction of the imperfection of our
senses is not sufficient to destroy it. For a modern, the
affirmation that this subtle "something" is the
one reality and existence, is apparently the resting of the
pyramidal universe on the point of a sharp abstraction:
for the ancients, it was precisely this point which was the
world, and Parabrahm was the immeasurable and unchangeable
base and substratum of all, even of illusion. For, if popular
instinct is not wrong in taking the words image, form, appearance,
etc., as synonyms of mirage, none the more is vulgar sensation
deceived in testifying to us the positive existence of something
exterior. When we say that the world of [Page
14] forms is
illusory, we do not clearly mean that it does not exist,
[Compare The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 10] but
only that its reality is not its appearance, and this cannot
be anything else but the appearance of some reality or other.
It should be understood that Parabrahm is not only outside
the universe, but also in its midst; that it is not an ultimate
abstraction nor the residuum of conceptions which are mutually
destructive, but an essential condition of thought and being — while,
at the same time, it as much transcends thought as it is
beyond existence. Thus we have seen that the finite, being
infinitely divisible, is placed between the infinitely great
and the infinitely small, and, consequently, contains the
infinite in itself. Parabrahm is not only the awful reality
of the infinite, but also the supreme reality, eternally
and universally present beneath the finite. Duration is the
primordial element of consciousness, [Compare The
Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 73, in voc, Sesha] and
Parabrahm is the nought and infinity of duration, the present
and the eternal. Space is the most direct object of perception,
and Parabrahm is the beginning and end of space, both the
point and the unlimited. "In nature nothing is great,
nothing is small, and the structure of the minutest molecule
which escapes our research can well be as complex as the
formation of the planet which gravitates round our sun". [M
Roscoe, Progrès de la chimie moderne, Revue Scientifique,
1st Oct, 1887] If each millionth of a second brought
distinct sensations or new ideas to our consciousness, would
the past moment be of less value to us than a century, and
would the extent of the future be less conceivable ? If our
world should suddenly be increased by millions of cubits,
and we ourselves experience a proportionate growth, what
difference should we see in our environment, and would the
dark depth be less pricked with less imperceptible points
? If all the choirs of heaven should come and sing our hymns,
if every blast of the tempest should come to swell our curses,
the great silence would none the less serenely hover o'er
both blasphemies and hosannahs. The moment, a nothing placed
between the past and the future, and that mathematical abstraction,
the point, are non-existent for the same reason as time without
limits and space without bounds, and these inconceivables
are the signature of Parabrahm in the material world, and
without them existence and thought are impossible. The whole
of time is in each second, the whole of space in each atom,
the least speck of dust is that centre of which the circumference
is nowhere, [Compare The Secret Doctrine,
Vol I, 114] the fulcrum of all evolution. Human evolution
is a copy of cosmic, personal incarnation images the development
of the individual, and physical gestation reproduces the
history of animal transformation. Molecule, cell, star, solar
system, nebulae, and systems of nebulae, are the steps of
an infinite, but infinitely regular, ladder and Parabrahm
is the Alpha and Omega of this progression. [Ibid,
Vol I, 120] For the antithesis between reason and
faith, we substitute the distinction between soul and spirit:
and to the perplexity of Hamilton between the absolute [Page
15] and infinite, we answer that these two terms without
being mutually contradictory, exclude all comparison with
the finite and relative: it was by opposing the finite to
the infinite that Hamilton failed to escape from a contradiction
conceived by himself. If metaphysical logic were still in
fashion, it is thus that we should formulate the law of the
conditioned: "everything which is finite,
that is to say, which has form and is conceivable in thought,
is placed between two extremes apparently contradictory but
absolutely identical".The finite is comprised between
the two infinites of greatness and smallness; but, fundamentally,
no matter by what quantity it can be increased or diminished,
it remains at equal distance from these imperceptible poles.
The infinite is neither long nor short, neither infinitely
great nor infinitely small; the infinite and measurement
have nothing in common, and cannot be compared or opposed.
It is an exaggeration to take the term infinite in the sense
of extreme size. Extreme size, as also extreme minuteness,
belongs to the infinite, and the infinitely great with its
co-equal, the infinitely small, are absorbed in Omnipresence,
which is the very condition of the existence of the finite,
or that which is unchangeable under apparent variations of
time and space.
In the same way
the absolute, with a capital A, the Absolute understood
absolutely, cannot be opposed to the relative. If the absolute
could be compared to the relative, it would be its correlative,
that is to say, relative itself. A thing which is relative,
is only relative, and can only be compared to another relative.
The absolute can be considered as the geometrical locus
of all relatives; but it is still an exaggeration of language
to generalize all relatives into a singular term (as if
anything but the absolute could be unique) and to oppose
this singular relative to the absolute, without
even perceiving that the very generalization which has
been employed to form this relative, has made of it the
absolute! The absolute is the supreme synthesis of all
pairs of relatives, the fixed point on which the equilibrium
of all systems of levers depends. And, as every comparison
supposes a common point, while a resemblance without difference
does not necessarily imply comparison, so relatives imply
the absolute, although the latter is independent of every
particular relative. " By
fusing a series of states of consciousness, in each of which,
as it arises, the limitations and conditions are abolished,
there is produced a consciousness of something unconditioned
..... This consciousness is not the abstract of any one
group of thoughts, ideas, or conceptions; but it is the
abstraction of all thoughts, ideas or conceptions. That
which is common to them all, and cannot be got rid of,
is what we predicate by the word existence. . . . being,
apart from its appearances. The distinction we feel between
special and general existence, is the distinction between
that which is changeable in us, and that which is unchangeable".[Herbert
Spencer, First Principles, chapter iv]
Far from being contradictory, the terms infinite and absolute,
restored to their true sense, are super-imposable and identical.
The infinite is the omnipresence [Page
16] common to all
finites, the absolute that which is common to all relatives.
And so, little by little, we see this great truth start forth,
that Parabrahm is not only the incomprehensible, but also
the base of all comprehension, not only non-existent, but
also the very foundation of being. But here we stumble on
the corpse of another false idea, that of the first cause.
In the second of his Bampton Lectures, so famous in philosophy,
Mansel, while thinking to destroy the absolute, killed for
ever the hypothesis of creation. The fright of this believer
who came into collision with pantheism on all sides, and
ended by abandoning the thread of reason which could no longer
lead him out of a labyrinth of inextricable contradictions
both for materialism and theology, may put us on our guard
against certain secular errors of Western thought, and help
us to elucidate the true conception of Parabrahm. We seek
no other excuse for the frequency or length of quotations.
"There are
three terms familiar as household words in the vocabulary
of philosophy, which must be taken into account in every
system of Metaphysical Theology. To conceive the Deity
as he is, we must conceive him as First Cause, as Absolute,
and as Infinite. By the First Cause is meant that which
produces all things, and is itself produced of none. By
the absolute is meant that which exists by itself, and
having no necessary relation to another being. By the Infinite
is meant that which is free from all possible limitation — that
than which a greater is inconceivable, and which consequently
can receive no additional attribute or more of existence,
which it had not from all eternity."
But these three conceptions, all equally indispensable,
do they not imply contradiction to each other when viewed
in conjunction as attributes of one and the same being ?
A cause cannot, as such, be absolute; the absolute cannot,
as such, be a cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation
to its effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect
is an effect of the cause. On the other hand, the conception
of the absolute implies a possible existence out of all relation.
We attempt to escape from this apparent contradiction, by
introducing the idea of succession in time. The absolute
exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a cause. But
here we are checked by the third conception, that of the
Infinite. How can the Infinite become that which is not from
the first ? If Causation is a possible mode of existence,
that which exists without causing is not infinite; that which
becomes a cause has passed beyond its former limits. Creation
at any particular moment of time being thus inconceivable,
the philosopher is reduced to the alternative of pantheism,
which pronounces the effect to be mere appearance, and merges
all real existence in the cause.
.....Let us, however, suppose for an instant that these
difficulties are surmounted, and the existence of the absolute
securely established on the testimony of reason. Still we
have not succeeded in reconciling this idea with that of
a cause; we have done nothing towards explaining how the
absolute can give rise to the relative, the infinite to the
finite. If the condition of causal activity is a higher state
than that of quiescence, the absolute, whether acting voluntarily [Page
17] or involuntarily, has passed from a condition of
comparative imperfection, to one of comparative perfection,
therefore, was not originally perfect. If the state of activity
is an inferior state to that of quiescence, the absolute,
in becoming a cause, has lost its original perfection. There
remains only the supposition that the two states are equal;
and the act of creation, one of perfect indifference. But
this supposition annihilates the unity of the absolute, or
it annihilates itself. If the act of creation is real, and
yet indifferent, we must admit the possibility of two conceptions
of the absolute, the one as productive, the other as non-productive.
If the act is not real, the supposition itself vanishes,
and we are thrown once more on the alternative of Pantheism.
Again, how can
the relative be conceived as coming into being ? If it
is a distinct reality from the absolute, it must be conceived
as passing from non-existence into existence. But to conceive
an object as non-existent, is again a self-contradiction;
for that, which is conceived, exists as an object of thought,
in and by that conception. We may abstain from thinking of
an object at all, but if we think of it, we cannot but think
of it as existing. [Mansel, Bampton Lectures, No 2
(See Theosophist, Nov 1884] It is possible at one
time not to think of an object at all, and at another to
think of it as already in being; but to think of it in the
act of becoming, in the progress from non-being into being,
is to think that which, in the very thought, annihilates
itself; here, again, the Pantheists' hypothesis seems forced
upon us. We can think of creation only as a change in the
condition of that which already exists; and thus the creature
is conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the being of
the creator". [We
cannot, indeed conceive an object as non-existent,
but the limits of our thought are not necessarily the limits
of existence. We cannot conceive nothing, for the
same reason that we cannot conceive all, because both
are one, beyond the horizon of human thought on this plane]
"The relative
is a reality distinct from the Absolute" here
is the error; creation is a reality distinct from the creator;
here we have anthropomorphism and its results. How can the
relative, that is to say, the finite, the illusory, be a
reality; and how can it be a reality distinct from the absolute,
since the absolute is the necessary reason and foundation
of the relative ? The relative, in so far as it is relative,
cannot be a reality, and the reality beneath the relative
is nought but the absolute itself. We have not, then, to
think of an object passing from non-being into being; in
truth, such a conception would be impossible: we can only
conceive that which is something becoming something
else. But the absolute is not something: we must put a full
stop after the word is, and say the absolute does not become,
but IS.
The problem of
causality is bounded by the relative, and cannot reach
the absolute, any more than a sum of finites can reach
infinity. Indeed, the equally disputed contradictions which
surround these two problems, are equally embarrassing,
because they are twin. Spectators and actors of the universal,
becoming witnesses and factors of operations by which nothing
is self-created, nothing self-destructive, we cannot conceive
an absolutely [Page 18] original
or absolutely final phenomenon apart from other phenomena;
we cannot, without denying the very laws of existence, deny
the precession of a series of causes, or the succession of
a series of effects, culminating in every phenomenon or proceeding
from it. And as our imagination refuses to embrace the infinite,
equally so and consequently it refuses to understand these
series as indefinite: hence we have the notion of first or
final causes. But just as it is impossible for reason to
conceive any duration or magnitude as exhausting the totality
of being, so a first cause and a final effect are equally
unthinkable. Fundamentally, so long as we speak of causes
and effects, we think of phenomena and no more get clear
of the relative, than we do of the finite in dealing with
greatness and smallness. There is no phenomenon which is
not both the cause of effects and the effect of causes; the
incessant connection between these two series constitutes
universal becoming ; becoming supposes something which becomes,
that is to say something which is. Beings and things are
the objects of becoming, its real subject is the immutable
or the omnipresent. Parabrahm has nothing to do with the
connecting causes to effects, [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, sub voc, Fohat] for this connection
is under laws; and how can the Absolute be subjected to laws
?
The notion of
causation is very complex, and it is sometimes difficult
to distinguish between accidents or circumstances which
are secondary causes, and the principal or antecedent cause,
the efficient cause of Aristotle and the Schoolmen. We
do not believe that there exists in our complex universe
a single phenomenon due to only one cause; it is, however,
sufficiently evident that the preponderance of such or such
cause produces such or such phenomenon. In the growth of
a tree the accidents are cultivation and the state of the
soil or temperature; the antecedent is the virtuality in
the germ. When a fruit falls from this tree, the secondary
causes can be the wind, the diseased state of the stalk,
etc., the true efficient cause is clearly gravitation. We
must also distinguish in the chain of phenomena the simple
succession in time of causality properly so called; two
phenomena can follow one another without any necessary connection
existing between them. The mysterious link which connects
a cause with its necessary effect is that which we call karma,
in the broadest sense of the word. We must finally distinguish
material effects, produced by the co-operation of universal
laws or causes, from the volitions of beings, continuous
on more or less independent causes. But it requires no long
reflection to perceive that all natural effects are produced
by forces sent forth to animate and incessantly transform
inert matter. Leibnitz expresses a great truth, when he says
that: " There is not an existence, however humble, which
is not a force, that is to say, a veritable cause. The notion
of force is the very base of the notion of existence and
of being, for every [Page 19] substance
is a force and every thing which is, has a certain potentiality,
a certain causative power."[Franck, Dictionaire
philosophique, article Cause] Without
admitting with Boscovitch that matter consists solely of
centres of forces, we believe that no substance exists which
is not the vehicle (Upadi) of universal force or life
(Jiv).
And although the divisions of the Macrocosm are, as we have
said, purely logical, all activity is classed in the central
column [See
Le Lotus, April 1888. Article “Le Macrocosme”]
of efficient volitions which includes the Saktis as well
as the cosmic laws and the aggregate of individual volitions.
But every activity, in addition to the object for which it
is exercised or manifested, supposes a subject on which it
depends or from which it emanates.
On this point the oriental doctrines demand all our attention.
This subject which is cosmic or individual spirit, appears
to act, think and enjoy, but in reality has nothing to do
with the doings or sufferings of which it is a spectator.
It appears active only from the objective, that is to say,
illusory, point of view.
The Gnostics understood
the mystery of the Holy Trinity, [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 58] for Psellus tells
us in the commentary of his Chaldean oracles that, spirit,
son of spirit, is intellect, the workmen of the fiery world;
that is to say, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, that
Philo calls wisdom, builder of the world; the source, beginning,
and worker of all mental and empyrean operations, the fountain
of life, that Hermes calls the crater. " When the Father,
the first of the Trinity, had made the foundation of (condidisset)
the universal creature, he delivered it to the spirit; it
is the latter which the whole human race, ignorant of the
Father's excellence, has named God. Our doctrine is different;
it is the spirit (mens), the Son of the omnipotent Father,
which has made the foundation of every creature and perfected
it by his operations. For in the Mosaic scriptures, the Father
shows the Son the form or idea of the productions of creatures;
but it is the very Son that is the worker and founder of
the created work." [Kircher, Sphinx Mystagoga].
We again find in the Indian and Kabalistic doctrines this
idea of the creator reabsorbed within himself, after the
emission of a ray in space; it also appears in the myth of
the mutilation of Osiris, and of the eternal fecundity of
Horus, celebrated in the Book of the Dead; and in that of
Zeus reigning in the stead of his dethroned sire. This emanated
light is the androgyne Word or mystic Christ of the primitive
Christians, represented in the catacombs as a being of double
sex, and it it is well understood that this second person
of the Trinity has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Gospels. " The
mystical Christ of the Gnosis of the pre-Christian types
was a being of both sexes, as was the Egyptian [Page
20] Horus and other of the Messiahs. ... This is the
Christ who appears as both male and female in the book of
Revelation. And the same biune type was continued in the
Christian portraits of the Christ. In Didrons 'Iconography'
you will see that Jesus Christ is portrayed as a female with
the beard of a male, and is called Jesus-Christ as St. Sophia." [Gerald
Massey, “The Logia of the Lord”]
It is the bi-sexual
Adonaî, of which mention is made
in the Perfect Way. Lastly, it is to it that are applied
the opening words of the Gospel according to Saint John,
which the Church repeats without understanding: " In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by him; and without him was
not anything made that was made. In him was life; and
the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness [Compare The Secret Doctrine, Vol
I, 70] comprehended it not."
Karma depends entirely on Jiv, and the cause of its existence
disappears for the Jiv-an-Mukta who has once understood the
identity of Jiv and Brahman. The cause of cosmic activity
is Fohatic energy resulting from the blending of Ishwara and Prakriti, and producing the kaleidoscope of combinations
between spirit and matter. But, correctly speaking, Ishwara cannot be called cause, nor Prakriti effect. The real subject
and object sleep the eternal Parabrahmic sleep-waking, whilst
their son, the androgynous Word, wakes and sleeps.
It is thus that
the two breaths of universal respiration are effected.
Brahma breaths, and Manvantaras follow Pralayas; evolutions,
involutions; decay of empires, their greatness; wrinkles,
the dimples of youth; vernal efflorescence, the circling
of dead autumn leaves; and the silence of the night, the
tumult of the day. Brahma breathes [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol 1, 70] and, therefore,
we breathe. If we could place ourselves in the centre of
the universe, at the attachment of that huge pendulum which
is balanced in the infinite, perhaps we should see that,
instead of returning on itself, it described in reality
a circular orbit, that periodic is synonymous with cyclic,
that every rhythm is a wave, that the Naga with
its tail in his mouth, and the wheel of Brahma and his
breathing are symbols of one and the same truth; we should,
perhaps, understand that in Parabrahm is the true identity
of primal causes with final, and we should be able to repeat
what it alone can say, the why and how of the immense evolution
of which it is the beginning and end. But the fond imagination
makes incessantly towards absolute night, from solar Pralaya
to nebulous Pralaya, and lost in the maze of these partial
obscurations, which are ever contained in some vaster Manvantara,
refusing to conceive even the possibility of a universal sleep, when the universe escapes from its embraces, drowned
in [Page
21] immortality,
screams with fear after death and only finds life ever more
fatal and intense! The Adepts themselves declare that, the
duration of a Maha-kalpa "baffles"[Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 21] even their powerful
imagination. When space is no longer great, time no more
long, when words no longer have sense, that which ought not
to be said, can hardly be so. Moreover, as neither cause
nor end can be assigned to this awful breathing, and since
we are compelled to lean on some starting-point, we can,
without practical inconvenience, consider, from, our objective
point of view, the present Manvantara as eternal, or in every
case, the sum of supercosmic principles as co-extensive and
identical with Parabrahm, although, it is equally beyond
its manifestations as in them; and although in it, as Subba
Row says, such centres of energy are innumerable. Thus we
shall see the Kabala sketch the triple ternary of the Sephiroths
in the Absolute by means of the very names of the ineffable
En-Soph.
All the modes of existence which we can know are reduced
to three categories. Practically, there are only bodies endowed
with properties, perceived by beings endowed with faculties.
Theoretically, we attribute colour, weight, movement, and
in general all the properties of bodies to the action of
universal force or life, and we call the substratum of the
properties Matter; on the other hand, the faculties of beings,
consciousness, volition, instinct are equally manifestations
of universal life, and form the contents of that which we
call Spirit. Universal action determined by two other factors;
we say determined, and not caused, to avoid the false notions
with which the problem of causality is obstructed. Spirit
is spectator of the drama which is enacted on the stage of
Matter; Idealism and Materialism would persuade us that the
public or scenery is the cause of action. At most, we can
consider Spirit as the motive (le motif) of evolution,
of which Force is the motor (le moteur), and Matter
that which is moved (le mobile). These three parallel
modes meet only in Parabrahm; that is to say, beyond the
infinite. Their blending, of which universal illusion is
the fruit, is not a combination; Spirit only becomes spirit,
Force only produces force, Matter is only transformed into
matter or, rather, Spirit and Matter remain pure from all
mixture. [Our
languages are so poor, philosophically, that we fear this
will be misunderstood. The Emanations do not transform into
each other, but the Manifestations do, and the three Emanations
co-exist in all Manifestations. What we mean is, that Purusha does
not transform into Prakriti: but both, united during
the manifestations, pass through all transformations. The
trinity is the substratum of the higher manifestations, as
of the lower existences: essence of substance exists on the
spiritual plane as well as on the material one. And the spiritual
substance becoming the material substance, it can be said,
in one sense, that spirit becomes matter: but Essence does
not become Substance any more than matter can produce consciousness.
Consciousness awakes in the material world, because
it is already latent in every atom of matter. The
Holy Trinity resides in the smallest grain of sand as well
as in the highest heavens, and nothing happens, nothing exists
without its co-operation. A triple cause is necessary to
explain the universe, as well as to produce a child: that
is, a father, a mother, and the love, attraction, or force
that unites them. Ishwara, Prakriti, and Fohat]
They only [Page
22] seem to become by the illusory action of Force:
all light is determined by obscurity, all attraction by repulsion;
occultly, it is the same with human affections, and one can
demand, with M. Péladan, virtue from the Elohim of
vices. This double attraction towards the two poles, Spirit
and Matter, existing on all dynamic planes, Force, the source
of all efficient causes, is self-destructive by virtue of
its character of duality: it is because Shiva destroys eternally
the creations of Brahmâ, that Vishnu preserves his apparent
existence. Therefore, Force is only a powerful illusion.
It cannot be taken for absolute cause; firstly, because it
leans on the two other emanations as on a pair of crutches;
secondly, because movement contains that other antimony discussed
since the palmy days of Elaea and Megara. Rest exists nowhere
in nature: everything moves, "everything flows",
says Heraclitus. The instance cited by Herbert Spencer of
a sailor walking on the deck of a vessel in motion, on the
ocean, turning with the earth round the sun which is itself
in motion, is too well known to be repeated; Hartmann reasons
in the same way: "The ball is said to move towards the
target; the target, however, could equally well be said to
proceed towards the ball; and the resistance of the target
to the ball is not so much the resistance of an immovable
target, as the vis viva of a target in motion". But
Parmenides objects that absolute motion is an absurdity,
for movement supposes space and bodies : Zeno shows that
swift-footed Achilles will never overtake the tortoise; Kant
unmasks the relativity of a displacement which, as it supposes
fixed points, cannot exist in the unlimited; and according
to Herbert Spencer, "it is impossible to represent
to the thought the transition between rest and movement,
for they seem to imply an interruption in the law of continuity,
although such a flaw is inconceivable". Fundamentally,
these contradictions, like the others, are purely apparent.
There is in the universe more or less movement, as there
is also more or less space and Time. To say that absolute
rest does not exist in nature and that absolute movement
is absolutely incomprehensible, is the continued assertion
that the Absolute is not the relative. Rest and movement
are correlatives with which the Absolute has nothing in common,
poles apparently opposed, but absolutely identical. Absolute
rest is beyond our conception, and also, according to occult
science, beyond existence. This is the meaning of one of
our first axioms, that nothing is dead in the universe:
that there is not one atom of matter devoid of force, of
capacity for motion, of life, of capacity for transformation;
everything that exists changes, however slowly, and therefore
lives. But if, starting from relative or apparent rest, such
as we can conceive, we follow the increasing velocities of
planets, electricity, light, and thought, where shall we
land after this Course à I'abîme, if
not in Omnipresence, that limit of rapidity, which no longer
requires no time to pass from one point [Page
23] to
another, however distant ? But this Omnipresence, this perfect
motion, is it not the same as perfect rest ? Thus the two
extremities of the scale of velocity unite in Parabrahm;
round the six wheels of Fohat turns the great wheel of Brahma,
invisible owing to its rapidity, which Democritus calls "the
immovable mover", and
of which Mencius says that "its calm commands movement".
Moreover, whatever emanation we endeavour to fathom, it's
Protean form continually escapes us by more and more subtle
transformations and more and more abstract simplifications.
If we wish to seize Matter, it flees before our physical,
astral and spiritual analysis successively, and with Spencer,
we fold in our arms nought but the shadow of the Unknowable.
If we study the nature of Spirit, its omniscience leads us
finally to the Unconscious of Hartmann. The antinomy of these
two primordial emanations is the base of all those which
have troubled philosophy. From the side of the relative,
it eludes human thought; from that of the Absolute, we might
say that it does not exist, if we could say anything.
Once established that for Parabrahm there is neither subject
nor object, we ought logically to conclude that there is
neither cause nor effect, beginning nor end, and that the
conceptions of cause of existence and goal of attainment
exist only in connection with evolution. Our ideas of perfection
are perfectly inapplicable to the Absolute, and it is only
our imperfection which makes us ask whether it deteriorates
in giving birth to the relative. Such an act, if it were
real, could be neither unconscious and necessary, nor conscious
and voluntary. Consciousness, being a relation, cannot be
conceived as the end of cosmic activity, and only represents
a means or incident therein: omniscience being for us identical
with unconsciousness, these two poles of existence should
unite in a superior and inconceivable identity. In the same
way, all our ideas of fate presuppose free-will, and the
greater or less liberty is determined precisely by the less
or greater correspondent necessity. Parabrahm is independent
of these qualifications; for if, on the one hand, every
fatality is a limit, on the other, all liberty to choose
supposes the possibility of choosing the worst, that is to
say, of self-deception. Lastly, our idea of perfection depends
on the apparent contrast between good and evil. This antinomy
of pure sentiment having been disposed of by a more competent
pen than our own, [See in Le Lotus, No.10,
an article by H.P. Blavatsky on "the origin of evil". The
author there refutes the theories of Dr. Maitlander, according
to whom evil arises from the very laws of nature and from
the infinite divisibility of matter, by showing that this
dissolving force is constantly counterbalanced by a universal
tendency to synthesis] we
will limit ourselves to indicating how it is connected with
the apparently inexplicable co-existence of Spirit and Matter.
It is the fashion to father on Eastern mysticism the pessimism
of German schools: but the mystic [Page
24] only despises
his present life because he has glimpses of a mode of existence
infinitely superior, whilst the materialistic nihilist, caught
in the net of illusions, can only aspire to a useless and
impossible suicide. We are very ill-placed to judge of the
value of good and evil; Theosophy widens to a singular degree
our horizon, by teaching at the outset that the sorrows of
physical life are largely compensated by proportionate joys
in Devachan, secondly, that if evil predominates at
present in the world, it is because we are passing through
an inferior period of evolution and are in the inauspicious
age of the
Kali-yug, but that the age of gold will return and
humanity will know spiritual states proportionately exalted,
so as to blot out the evil dream; lastly, that every evil
comes from ignorance, from selfishness and desire; that is
to say, from attachment to matter, but that there exists
within ourselves a principle of knowledge, love and happiness. Duhkham is
a property of Prakriti: evil is the good of matter;
evil only exists in connection with consciousness; further,
the consciousness even of evil is, itself a blessing. There
is something grand in sympathizing with the sorrows of another
or in observing one's own sufferings. It was not without
inward satisfaction that Hartmann and Schopenhauer wrote
their philosophic lamentations. It is because Spirit, the
centre of all consciousness, is naturally Ananda,
blessed;
Ananda, we repeat, not Suhkham. This blessedness
can no more be applied to our highest joys than to our deepest
sorrows. "In
intense pain a point is reached where it is indistinguishable
from its opposite pleasure. This is, indeed, so, but few
have the heroism or the strength to suffer to such a far
point. It is as difficult to reach it by the other road.
Only a chosen few have the gigantic capacity for pleasure,
which will enable them to travel to its other side. Most
have but enough strength to enjoy and to become the slave
of the enjoyment."[Through the Gates of Gold,
page 109] It
has been observed that the acme of pleasure is forgetfulness
of self: he is no artist who has never experienced that dead
faint of contemplation, when, all else forgotten, our very
being, charmed and fascinated, is drawn out of ourselves
into the realized ideal, whether truth embodied in prose
or verse, Galatea vivified in marble, or the music of the
spheres imprisoned in instruments. Unconsciousness is the
unconscious goal of our most enthusiastic aspirations, as
of our never-ending pursuits through over-frequented and
muddy roads. The very sentences we use, "killed with
joy", "lost in rapture", "beyond oneself
with pleasure", etc., show once more that popular sayings
are very wise indeed when not absolutely nonsensical.
So that joy no more than sorrow, virtue than vice, and generally
good than evil, can be considered either metaphysically or
practically as ends in themselves; they are simply means
to raise us to heights from which we [Page
25] shall be able
to view them as identical, and consequently non-existent.
Thus the nightmares of the bitter hours of darkness and the
sweetness of love dreams disappear before the reality of
the dawn.
The error, therefore,
of idealism as of materialism, of atheism as of anthropomorphism,
consists in taking an extreme for a supreme principle.
The dogma of creation arbitrarily cuts the knot of one
difficulty to give rise to a thousand. Positivism does
not solve the problem; it refuses to see it by wrapping
itself in a veil of illusion, thinking to escape the danger,
like the ostrich, by putting its head under its wing. Western
metaphysics, in persisting in taking for real existence
that which is only relative existence, and consequently
absolute illusion, and professing to assign a real cause
to this illusory effect, is lost in a labyrinth of contradictions
which even philosophers, apparently the least idolatrous,
have not been able to reconcile. We therefore see a thinker
like Hartmann, after maintaining that the Unconscious is
forced to give birth to evolution by a feeling of transcendental
pain or inner discomfort, expiating this original impiety
by the monstrous and fatal corollary of universal suicide.
Less repugnant are the theories of Hegel and Schelling, [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 50, 51] who suppose
in pure Being a desire to become conscious, for they are
not more difficult to understand, in spite of their involuntary
absurdity, than the conception consciously symbolized in
the revolt and fall of the angels, or in the theft and punishment
of Prometheus. But the only philosophically satisfactory
interpretation is the insignificance or even the non-existence,
from the Parabrahmic standpoint, of universal illusion. And
when we have completed this conclusion by showing that, from
the relative point of view, it is the Absolute which is non-existent,
we shall understand that the justification of antinomies
consists in the fact that they are indispensable not only
to reason which examines them and to consciousness, but also
to very existence. And if, then, we were asked the raison
d'être of existence, we could answer that such a question,
besides being useless and absurd even to sacrilege, if there
could be any sacrilege therein, seems at least ridiculous
from beings in whom the desire of living is so deeply rooted.
The reason of being is non-being; and the reason of non-being
is being. The means of all knowledge is to identify oneself
with universal unconsciousness. Mystery is necessary for
him who cannot cannot comprehend the incomprehensible. It
is evident, in all cases, that everyone should seek in himself
an answer that can only come from the inmost depths of our
being. Theosophy has this advantage that, while it declares
such problems insoluble from the side of the relative, it
shows us the means of solving them by self-identification
with the Absolute.
"We ought
to begin with pure Being, because it is both pure thought [Page
26] and
immediate, simple and indeterminate, and because
a beginning, although incapable of being made a middle
term, should be able to be ultimately determined. This
pure being is only pure abstraction, and consequently absolute
negation, which, considered in its immediate state, is
non-being. Non-being in so far as it forms a thing immediate
and identical to itself, does not differ from Being.......
If, when it is maintained that the unity of being and nothingness
is incomprehensible, it is meant that it cannot be represented,
even then it is so much the farther from the truth that in
the infinite number of representations there is not one which
contains this unity; and in saying that it is impossible
to represent it, nothing else can be meant but that the notion
is not found in each particular representation exemplified,
if we may use the term . . . Philosophical comprehension
is not ordinary understanding, neither is it arrived at by
the methods commonly employed in the other sciences. ...
A man, perhaps, represents to himself pure Being by the image
of pure light, and pure Nothingness under the image of pure
night. But if this sensible representation is applied to
Being and Nothingness, we shall be easily convinced that
in absolute brightness we can only see as much or as little
as in absolute night. Pure light and pure darkness are two
equally empty determinations. It is only in determinated
night, and light is determined by darkness, as the latter
is by light, that anything can be distinguished; because
obscured light and lightened obscurity contain a difference
which gives them a determinated existence", Hegel [Logique
(traduction de A.Véra) adds
that the truth of being and non-being is in the unity of
the two, and this unity is Becoming. We say that Becoming,
or Illusion, is the opposition or fusion of the two, while
their unity, incomprehensible to thought, but not to intuition,
constitutes the supreme reality, Parabrahm. But it is interesting
to see Western philosophy returning by a circuitous path
to the ancient conception of being — non-being (negative
existence).
Another of the
nature philosophers, perhaps the greatest, although
the least understood, William Oken, whose only fault was
to be born before Darwin, expresses the same truth in a
mathematical form: "The identity of all multiples,
or of all things, with themselves and supreme unity constitutes
the Essence of things ; the limitation or definition of the
Ideal is their Form: this limitation is only an ideal relation.
All plurals are identical to themselves and the supreme principle
in essence ; in other words, all singulars are united by
essence to the supreme One. All diversity of plurals lies
simply in their form, limitation or manifestation.
"There is
only one essence in all things, the O, [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 94] the supreme identity,
but there is an infinite number of forms. The ideal nought
is absolute [Page 27] or monadic
unity, not a singularity, like an individual thing or the
number 1. but an indivisibility or absence of number in which
can be discovered neither the I nor the 2, neither line nor
circle, a pure identity. The mathematical nought is the eternal.
It is not subjected to any definition of time or space, it
is neither finite or infinite, neither great nor small, neither
at rest nor in motion, but it is and is not all these. The
eternal is the nothing of nature.
" The origin
of the singular is nothing else but a manifestation of
the Eternal. Thereby unity, splendour, homogeneity, are
lost and turned into multiplicity, obscurity, diversity.
" (+ —)
is nothing else than the definition of O. This duality
is the monad itself under another form. In multiplication
it is the form alone which changes. The Eternal becomes
the real by a dual division of itself. Once manifested,
it is either positive or negative. Nought differs from infinite
unity only because it is not affirmed.
"+ presupposes O; — presupposes + and O; but
O presupposes neither + nor —. Purely negative quantities
are a nonentity, for they can only be connected with positive
magnitudes. — is the retrogression of + into O.
" The nothing
becomes a something simply by positing itself. The nothing
is simply the neglect to posit itself. The something (+ —)
has not, then, started or emerged from nothing; the nothing
has not produced a correlative: (x —) is not something
else than nothing; all the undivided nothing has become
unity. The nothing, once posited as nothing, equals I.
In this case, we cannot speak of production or evolution,
but of the complete identity and uniformity of the nothing
with the something; it is a product innocent of birth.
"Generally
speaking, there is no nothing. Even nothing is something.
While numbers are, in a mathematical sense, positings and
negations of nothing, they are, in a philosophical sense,
positings and negations of the Eternal. The essence of
numbers is nothing else than the Eternal. [Compare
The Secret Doctrine Vol I, 66, 98] The Eternal alone is
or exists, and nothing but it exists in the existence of
a number. There is nothing, therefore, real but the Eternal. [Oken
understands by real the universe, and by eternal Parabrahm.
This phrase is, therefore, the translation of the Sanskrit.
Sarvam Khalvidam Brahman. (Ibid Vol I. 48] The singular is
nothing by itself, but the Eternal is in it. The existence
of the singular is not its own existence, but that of the
Eternal. There exists nothing but nothing, nothing but the
Eternal; and every individual existence is only an illusory
one.
"As soon
as O exists, it is + —. The realization
of the Eternal is a complete antagonism of itself. The Being
of the Eternal is, therefore, a [Page
28] self-manifestation.
Every act of self-manifestation is double: it is a manifestation
(=+), but a manifestation of itself, and consequently a retrogression
into O ( + — ). It is by negation that the finite
is united to the Eternal. Every disappearance of the finite
is a return to the Eternal." [Oken, Lehrbuch
der Naturphilosophnie; Erster Thiel Mathesis, I Buch, Theosophie (Jena 1809].
Thus we have returned
to our starting-point. Beyond All there is Nothing, and
absolute being cannot be distinguished from Non-being.
We have reached the limits of our thought and even of our
existence, and we ought to conclude in all humility that
of absolute Being we can say nothing. Parabrahm exists
only by the existence of the finite; and in the absence
of the latter, it cannot be said to exist; and this is the
reason of existence. But existence is only an illusion, and,
from the standpoint of Parabrahm, does not exist. In other
words, Parabrahm can be viewed under two complementary and
perfectly symmetrical aspects, like as the two halves of
a picture in a kaleidoscope are always perfectly opposed
to one another, however they may be altered by the turning
of the instrument. The first of these aspects represents
perfect non-existence, or rather does not represent anything,
that is to say, does not exist. The second aspect represents
perfect existence, and should consequently contain all the
elements of existence.
These two halves
are separated by the horizon of eternity. The beyond of
this horizon is as unknowable to us as the other side of
the moon. And as the bright side of the moon does not shine
with its own, but with a reflected light, so the intelligible
side of Parabrahm is only intelligible by the reflection
of the unintelligible in the mirror of illusion. These
two sides are intimately united and the one only exists
by the other. Absolutely, Parabrahm can neither be comprehended
nor represented: it is the white sheet of every figure,
the ineffable, which silence alone can praise. As the substance
of illusion and nothing else, Parabrahm is equally incomprehensible,
for the two limit-lines of existence are parallel, and
the point where they meet is without existence as it is
beyond thought; hence the impossibility of conceiving it
as first cause. But if we consider it at the same time
both as pure existence, that is to say, non-existence,
and as substratum of the relative, that is, the absolute,
we can represent it by the old symbol of Hermes Trismegistus,
the point in the [Page 29] circle.
The point will then be the potentiality of manifestation,
and will represent, compared to the circle, a quantity which
can be neglected and which is non-existent. The circle, in
comparison with the point, will be nowhere. And as an infinity
of points can be taken in the circle, so Parabrahm can be
the substratum of an infinity of illusions. Hartmann reproaches
Schopenhauer with denying a priori the possibility
of having other modes of existence than thought and extent,
and we can suppose, with Subba Row, that other centres of
force exist in Parabrahm besides the Cosmic Logos. If the
number of like centres were unlimited, however awful this
conception of an infinity of universes might be, it would
repair the difficulty which we experience in understanding
Parabrahm as potential, a difficulty, however, for which
our humanity alone is responsible; these universes would
not be necessarily co-existent, but Parabrahm would always
exist by at least one of them; the area of existence in Parabrahm
would be represented, at every given moment, by a certain
circle determined by a certain radius, which circle, the
instant after, would be reabsorbed into its centre to sleep
the sleep of Pralaya, after transmitting its potentialities
of expansion and contraction to another point. [Compare
The Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 172] This would
explain why we cannot conceive the idea of universal Pralaya,
but can only represent Parabrahm as the limit of all existence.
It should be remarked that, in this awful eternity, the chances
for the same point reawakening are 1/∞ that
is to say, none, and then we should understand the depth
of the occult doctrine which teaches that the universe exists
eternally, [Ibid, Vol I, 16] as potentiality,
in Parabrahm, and that, although subject to successive periods
of activity and rest, it never begins its evolution again
on the same level.
We must not, however,
forget that this expansion and contraction are purely negative.
The breathing of Brahma only exists for those who listen
for it, plunged in sacred sleep. Brahma's self knows not
of the breathing. The two aspects of Parabrahm are aspects
of one and the same reality. It is this which Indian philosophy
explains when saying: "Brahm and
Kutâstha are ever one", and: "Tat-wam
asi", that is to say, thou art that, or that is
thou.
Ishwara is Parabrahm, Sakti is Parabrahm, Mulaprakriti
is Parabrahm. The visible side of Parabrahm is the whole
of spiritual manifestation; and the trinity which reduces
itself to unity, the triangle [Compare The Secret
Doctrine, Vol I, 113]. which represents this primordial
manifestation is summed up in one point, in which is contained
the triple potentiality of the entire universe. The point
represents the only form under which the universe exists
externally for and in Parabrahm. The point, in [Page
30] developing
the circle, does none the less remain the point, the centre
of the circle, in the same way as the potentiality of the
germ, asleep in the egg, subsists after the development of
the animal, since the latter possesses, in its turn, the
power of generation. Compared with the Absolute, the grain
is not distinguished from the fruit, nor the effect from
the cause ; compared with the Infinite, point and circle
are identical. One of the Masters writes: "The circle
indicates the bounding, circumscribing quality of the all,
the universal principle which from any given point expands
so as to embrace all things while embodying the potentiality
of every action in the Kosmos. As the point is the centre
round which the circle is traced, they are identical and
one, though from the stand-point of Maya and Avidya (illusion
and ignorance), one is separated from the other by the manifested
triangle. . . ." And further, " Pythagoras had
a reason for never using the useless figure 2, and for altogether
discarding it. The one can, when manifesting, become only
three. The unmanifested, when a simple duality, remains passive
and concealed. . . . The duality could never tarry as such,
and would have to be re-absorbed into the One." The
circle is the symbol of the infinite, and the straight line
of the finite. But even the circle contains three elements — centre,
surface and circumference; and it is impossible to make a
finite figure of two straight lines, the simplest rectilineal
figure being the triangle. The symbol of Parabrahm, therefore,
as base of manifestation, will be the six-pointed star, the
Hindu Sri-Antara, or the Chakram[Compare The
Secret Doctrine, Vol I, 114, 215] of Vishnu, the
buckler of David, or Solomon's seal. He who can decipher
this figure, the synthesis of all occult science, knows the
secret of life and death, of the knowledge of good and evil,
of the philosopher's stone, of the ineffable Word, and of
the quadrature of the circle, as well as the mystery of the
Holy Trinity. The double aspect of Parabrahm is therein shown
by the dark triangle, the reverse of the white or uncoloured
triangle, the illusory reflection of invisible reality. These
complementary triangles represent also, the male and female
principles, triple spirit and triple matter. Attraction or
gravity break this equilibrium; the two triangles, sliding
in opposite directions, lose the equality of their sides.
The fall into matter is accomplished, and the square inscribed
in the circle gives us the algebraical formula of the law
of the conditioned: [Page
31]
Instead of + and —, we could put being and
non-being, spirit and matter, greatness and smallness, good
and evil, light and darkness, etc.
......, the result would be always correct. But the convergence
of
these extremes in the upper half of the circle will remain
always incomprehensible for us, until the mystery of redemption
shall atone for that of incarnation, and the four extremities
of the world disappear with the cross, together with the
two illusions called God and Devil. And such is the grace
I pray to be upon you. AUM !