Theos-Talk Archives (November 2004 Message tt00051)

Nov 7 2004



Re: PROEM of the SD 



Dear Friend:





The PROEM to the SECRET DOCTRINE is reproduced and sent separately.







The PROEM to the SECRET DOCTRINE can be found and down-loaded at:





Phoenix U L T 







PHOENIX ULT www.phx-ult-lodge.org/



Also, Books "on line"



The FRIENDLY PHILOSOPHER (Robert Crosbie)

ETERNAL VERITIES (Robert Crosbie)

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS AT AN INFORMAL "OCEAN " CLASS (R C)

POINT OUT THE WAY [Answers to Questions at an 

"Ocean" Class (J G)

BHAGAVAD GITA and BHAGAVAD GITA NOTES (Judge)

ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT (Judge)

The EPITOME OF THEOSOPHY (Judge)

The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY (Judge)

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS (Judge)

KEY TO THEOSOPHY (HPB) & GLOSSARY (H P B)

THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY (HPB)

THE SECRET DOCTRINE 

ISIS UNVEILED 

PROEM to the SECRET DOCTRINE 



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PROEM to the SECRET DOCTRINE 



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PAGES FROM A PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 



AN Archaic Manuscript - a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to
water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process - is before the
writer's eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull
black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central
point. The first, the student knows to represent Kosmos in Eternity, before
the re-awakening of still slumbering Energy, the emanation of the Word in
later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity
in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point in the
Mundane Egg (see Part II., "The Mundane Egg"), the germ within the latter
which will become the Universe, the ALL, the boundless, periodical Kosmos,
this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns. The one circle
is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its
circumference - a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the
human mind - indicates the abstract, ever incognisable PRESENCE, and its
plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one. Only the face of the
Disk being white and the ground all around black, shows clearly that its
plane is the only knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is
attainable by man. It is on this plane that the Manvantaric manifestations
begin; for it is in this SOUL that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine
Thought,* wherein lies concealed the plan of every future Cosmogony and
Theogony.



* It is hardly necessary to remind the reader once more that the term
"Divine Thought," like that of "Universal Mind," must not be regarded as
even vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited
by man. The "Unconscious," according to von Hartmann, arrived at the vast
creative, or rather Evolutionary Plan, "by a clairvoyant wisdom superior to
all consciousness," which in the Vedantic language would mean absolute
Wisdom. Only those who realize how far Intuition soars above the tardy
processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of
-Footnote continued on next page-



2

THE SECRET DOCTRINE. 



It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning
or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods
reigns the dark mystery of non-Being; unconscious, yet absolute
Consciousness; unrealizable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, "a
chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason." Its one absolute attribute,
which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance
the "Great Breath," * which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the
sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE. That which is motionless cannot be
Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless
within the universal soul. 

Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus,
maintained that Space was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a
ceaseless motion, the latter generating in due course of time, when those
atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing
lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only adding to
the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity - an occult teaching. 

>From the beginning of man's inheritance, from the first appearance of the
architects of the globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognized and
considered under its only philosophical aspect - universal motion, the
thrill of the creative Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the "One
Existence" thus: "Deity is an arcane, living (or moving) FIRE, and the
eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture," - this
trinity including, and being the cause of, every 



-Footnote continued from previous page- that absolute Wisdom which
transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable
into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity,
etc. - all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation, which is again Maya.
Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation. The personal God of
orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents
and feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly
involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the exciting
stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing changelessness to
a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds he presides over.
The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are thus
unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical. 

* Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in Cratylus that aed" is
derived from the verb qevein , "to move," "to run," as the first astronomers
who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets qeoiv ,
the gods. (See Book II., "Symbolism of the Cross and Circle.") Later, the
word produced another term, ajlhvqeia - "the breath of God." 



3

PROEM



phenomenon in Nature.* Intra-Cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; cosmic
motion (the visible, or that which is subject to perception) is finite and
periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the EVER-PRESENT; as a
manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the opposite,
the two being the alpha and omega of successive reconstructions. Kosmos -
the NOUMENON - has nought to do with the causal relations of the phenomenal
World. It is only with reference to the intra-cosmic soul, the ideal Kosmos
in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: "It never had a beginning
nor will it have an end." With regard to its body or Cosmic organization,
though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ever have a last
construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its organization may be regarded
as the first and the last of its kind, as it evolutes every time on a higher
plane . . .

A few years ago only, it was stated that: -



"The esoteric doctrine teaches, like Buddhism and Brahminism, and even the
Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity,
and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In
the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the "Days" and
the "Nights" of Brahma. The latter is either "awake" or "asleep." The
Svabhavikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still
exists in Nepal), speculate only upon the active condition of this
"Essence," which they call Svabhavat, and deem it foolish to theorize upon
the abstract and "unknowable" power in its passive condition. Hence they are
called atheists by both Christian theologians and modern scientists, for
neither of the 



* Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that "it is impossible . . . to form
the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving" ("Prin. of Human
Knowledge," Introd., par. 10), may put the question, "What is that body, the
producer of that motion? Is it a substance? Then you are believers in a
Personal God?" etc., etc. This will be answered farther on, in the Addendum
to this Book; meanwhile, we claim our rights of Conceptionalists as against
Roscelini's materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. "Has science,"
says one of its ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, "revealed anything that
weakens or opposes itself to the ancient words in which the Essence of all
religion, past, present, and to come, is given; to do justly, to love mercy,
to walk humbly before thy God?" Provided we connote by the word God, not the
crude anthropomorphism which is still the backbone of our current theology,
but the symbolic conception of that which is Life and Motion of the
Universe, to know which in physical order is to know time past, present, and
to come, in the existence of successions of phenomena; to know which, in the
moral, is to know what has been, is, and will be, within human
consciousness. (See "Science and the Emotions." A Discourse delivered at
South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, Dec. 27th, 1885.) 



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Best wishes, 





Dallas





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