COMMENTARIES ON THE SEVEN STANZAS AND THEIR TERMS, ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMERATION, IN STANZAS AND SHLOKAS. STANZA I. I. THE ETERNAL PARENT, WRAPPED IN HER EVER-INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES. The "Parent," Space, is the eternal, ever-present Cause of all-the incomprehensible DEITY, whose “Invisible Robes" are the mystic Root of all Matter, and of the Universe. Space is the one eternal thing that we can most easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by either the presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is without dimension, in every sense, and self-existent. Spirit is the first differentiation from "THAT," the Causeless Cause of both Spirit and Matter. As taught in the Esoteric Catechism, it is neither "limitless void," nor I conditioned fulness," but both. It was and ever will be. 66 Thus, the "Robes" stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is coëternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-Nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the One Infinite Spirit. The Hindûs call it Mûlaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial Substance, which is the basis of the Upâdhi or Vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, psychic or mental. It is the source from which Âkâsha radiates. The word By the "Seven Eternities," æons or periods are meant. Eternity, as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to the Space. Asiatic ear, except in its application to the One Existence; nor is the term "sempiternity," the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a misnomer.* Such words do not and cannot exist in philosophical metaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of ecclesiastical Christianity. The Seven Eternities mean the seven periods, or a period answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara, extending throughout a Mahâkalpa or "Great Age" (100 Years of Brahmâ), making a total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each Year of Brahmâ being composed of 360 Days, and of the same number of Nights of Brahmâ (reckoning by the Chandrâyana or lunar year); and a Day of Brahmâ consisting of 4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These Eternities belong to the most secret calculations, in which, in order to arrive at the true total, every figure must be 7, x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the subjective or real world; and every figure relating to, or representing, the different cycles-from the greatest to the smallest in the objective or unreal world, must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this cannot be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and for the purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. "The number seven," says the Kabalah, "is the great number of the Divine Mysteries"; number ten is that of all human knowledge (the Pythagorean Decad); 1,000 is the number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is also symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure 4 is the male symbol only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is the masculine and the 4 the feminine-the upright and the horizontal in the fourth stage of symbolism, when the symbols become the glyphs of the generative powers on the physical plane. STANZA I.—Continued. 2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION. "Time" is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through Eternal Duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be pro It is stated in Book II. ch. viii, of Vishnu Purana: "By immortality is meant existence to the end of the Kalpa"; and Wilson, the translator, remarks in a foot-note: "This, according to the Vedas, is all that is to be understood of the immortality [or eternity] of the gods; they perish at the end of universal dissolution [or Pralaya]." And Esoteric Philosophy says: "They 'perish' not, but are reabsorbed." TIME AND UNIVERSAL MIND. 69 duced, but "lies asleep." The Present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of Eternal Duration which we call the Future, from that part which we call the Past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change-or the same for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the division of Time known as the Present, comes from the blurring of the momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals, which we call the Future, to the region of memories that we name the Past. In the same way we experience a sensation of duration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person or thing does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its appearance in material form to its disappearance from earth. It is these "sumtotals" that exist from eternity in the Future, and pass by degrees through matter, to exist for eternity in the Past. No one would say. that a bar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence as it left the air, and ceased to exist as it entered the water, and that the bar itself consisted only of that cross-section thereof which at any given. moment coincided with the mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons and things, which, dropping out of the "to be" into the "has been," out of the Future into the Past-present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as it were, of their total selves, as they pass through Time and Space (as Matter) on their way from one eternity to another and these two eternities constitute that Duration in which alone anything has true existence, were our senses but able to cognize it. STANZA I.-Continued. 3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI* TO CONTAIN IT.t “Mind” is a name given to the sum of the States of Consciousness, grouped under Thought, Will and Feeling. During deep sleep ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being "Mind is not," because the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has tempor arily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the long Night of rest called Pralaya, when all the Existences are dissolved, the "Universal Mind" remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute Thought, of which Mind is the concrete relative manifestation. The Ah-hi (Dhyân Chohans) are the collective hosts of spiritual Beings -the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews-who are the Vehicle for the manifestation of the Divine or Universal Thought and Will. They are the Intelligent Forces that give to, and enact in, Nature her "Laws," while they themselves act according to Laws imposed upon them in a similar manner by still higher Powers; but they are not the "personifications" of the Powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This Hierarchy of spiritual Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an army— a host, truly-by means of which the fighting power of a nation manifests itself, and which is composed of army-corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or life, and its limited freedom of action and limited responsibilities; each contained in a larger individuality, to which its own interests are subservient, and each containing lesser individualities in itself. STANZA I.—Continued. 4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS* WERE NOT (a). THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM (6). (a) There are "Seven Paths" or "Ways" to the "Bliss" of NonExistence, which is absolute Being, Existence and Consciousness. They were not, because the Universe, so far, was empty, and existed only in the Divine Thought. (b) For it is . . . the Twelve Nidânas, or Causes of Being. Each is the effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its successor; the sum total of the Nidânas being based on the Four Truths, a doctrine especially characteristic of the Hinayâna System. They belong to the Nirvana. Nippang in Chinese; Neibban in Burmese; Moksha in India. + Nidâna and Mâyà. The "Twelve" Nidânas (in Tibetan Ten-brel Chug-nyi) are the chief causes of existence, effects generated by a concatenation of causes produced. # See Wassilief, Der Buddhismus, pp. 97-128. THE CAUSES OF BEING. 71 theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is a system based upon the great truth that reïncarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in this world entails upon man only suffering, misery and pain; death itself being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door through which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on its threshold-Devachan. The Hinayâna System, or School of the Little Vehicle, is of very ancient growth; while the Mahâyâna, or School of the Great Vehicle, is of a later period, having originated after the death of Buddha. Yet the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have contained such schools from time immemorial, and the Hinayâna and Mahâyâna Schools both teach the same doctrine in reality. Vâna, or Vehicle, is a mystic expression, both "Vehicles" inculcating that man may escape the sufferings of rebirth and even the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and Ignorance. Mâyâ, or Illusion, is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and daubs of colour, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute Existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The Existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyân Chohans, are, comparatively, like the shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless screen. Nevertheless all things are relatively real, for the cognizer is also a reflection, and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things possess, must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; for we cannot cognize any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. But as we rise in the scale of development, we perceive that in the stages through which we have passed, we mistook shadows for realities, and that the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing. with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only |