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beings.
Thus the three fundamentals express respectively the Be-ness, the Becoming, and
the Being of the everlasting That, which is Life.
The First Stanza describes the state of the Absolute during Pralaya, the "Night
of Brahm," when nothing is in existence, but everything only is. Such a
description can obviously be only a grouping of symbolisms. The only fit symbol
of the Absolute is darkness, "brooding over the face of the deep" (Space). It is
the night of Life, and all Nature sleeps. The worlds were not. The only
description is privative. Time was not; mind was not; "the seven ways to bliss,"
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or the evolutionary paths, were not; the "causes of misery," of the worlds of
illusion, were not; even the hierarchies who would direct the "new wheel," were
not. The first differentiation of the That, viz., Spirit, had not been made.
("That" is a reminiscence of the phrase tat tvam asi "that [i.e., the All] thou
art," found in the Indian Upanishads.) Matter was not; but only its formless
essence.
Nature had thus slept for "seven eternities," however they may have been
registered in a timeless consciousness; for time was not, since there was no
differentiation, hence no succession. Mind was not, having no organ to function
through. All was noumenon. The Great Breath, on whose outgoing energy worlds
sprang into existence, had not yet gone forth. The universe was a blank;
metaphysics had not begun to generate physics; the universe held in solution had
not yet begun to precipitate into crystallization. All life was hidden in the
formless embrace of the protyle, or primal substance. Darkness is the "Father of
Lights," but the Son had not yet been born. When day dawns, Father (Spirit) and
Mother (Substance) unite to beget their Son, who will then cleave the Cimmerian
darkness and issue forth to flood all space.
Stanza II continues the description of the sleeping universe, pointing, however,
to the signs of reawakening. "The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet
flashed into the germ; the mother-lotus had not yet swollen." From the darkness
soon would issue the streak of dawn, splitting open by its light and warmth the
shell of each atom of virgin matter, and letting issue thence the Seven
Creators, who will fashion the universe. In the Mundane Egg the germ of life was
deposited from the preceding Manvantaras, and the Divine Energy, brooding over
it for aeons, caused it to hatch out its brood of new worlds. In immaterial form
within the germ dwelt the archetypal ideas, the (Platonic) memories of former
experiences, which will determine the form of the new structures as the Divine
Architects of the worlds. All things on earth are but patterns of things in the
heavens; spiritual ideas crystallized into concretion on the plane of
manifestation-"sermons in stones." The lotus is the symbol of esoteric teaching
because its seed contains a miniature of the future plant, and because, like
man, it lives in three worlds, the mud (material), the water (typifying the
emotional), and the air (spiritual).
Creation starts with incubation. The Cosmic Egg must be fertilized ere it can be
hatched. A ray, or first emanation, from the Darkness opens the womb of the
Mother (Primal Substance), and it then emanates as three, Father-Mother-Son,
which, with the energy of Fohat makes the quaternary. Thus occultism explains
all the mysteries of the trinity and the Immaculate Conception. The first dogma
of Occultism is universal unity under three aspects. The Son was born from
virgin (i.e., unproductive, unfertilized) matter (Root Substance, the Mother),
when the latter was fecundated by the Father (Spirit).
The archetypal ideas do not imply a Divine Ideator, nor the Divine Thought a
Divine Thinker. The Universe is Thought itself, reflected in a manifested
material. But the Universe is the product, or "Son," which during the prologue
of the drama of the creation lies buried in the Divine Thought. The latter has
"not yet penetrated unto the Divine Bosom."
Stanza III rings with the concluding vibrations of the seventh eternity as they
thrill through boundless space, sounding the cock-crow of a new Manvantaric
daybreak. The Mother (Substance) swells, expanding from within. The vibration
sweeps along, impregnating the quiescent germs of life in the whole expanse.
Darkness gives out light; light drops into virgin matter, opening every bud.
Divine Intelligence impregnates chaos. The germs float together into the World-
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Egg, the ancient symbol of Nature fructified. The aggravation of units of matter
under the impulse of dynamic spirit is symbolized by the term "curdling." Pure
Spirit curdles pure matter into the incipient granules of hyle, or substance.
The serpent symbol is prominent in the early cosmology, typifying at different
times the eternity, infinitude, regeneration and rejuvenation of the universe,
and also wisdom. The familiar serpent with its tail in its mouth was a symbol
not only of eternity and infinitude, but of the globular form of all bodies
shaped out of the fire mist. In general the "fiery serpent" represented the
movement of Divine Wisdom over the face of the waters, or primary elements.
The text of the whole doctrine of the early stages, in fact, of the entire
creative process, is the statement "that there is but One Universal Element,
infinite, unborn and undying, and that all the rest-as the world of phenomena-
are but so many various differentiated aspects and transformations of that One,
from Cosmical down to micro-cosmical effects, from superhuman down to human and
sub-human beings, the totality in short of objective existence."9
Naturally but one tiny segment of all that activity is cognizable by man, whose
perceptive powers are limited to a small range of vibratory sensitivity. Only
that part of nature which comes within hail of his sense equipment, only the
expressions of life which take physical form, are known (directly) to him. Were
it not, says Theosophy, for the fact that superhuman beings, whose cognitive
powers have been vastly extended beyond ordinary human capacity, have imparted
to those qualified to receive it information relative to the upper worlds and
the inner realities of nature, we would know nothing of cosmology.
"In order to obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the
postulate of a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature;
secondly, to have fathomed the meaning of electricity in its true essence; and
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