Theos-Talk Archives (January 2006 Message tt00163)

1/11/2006 4:45 AM



Dear Cass and Friends:



I do not get the connection between the two quotes. Please help.







HPB in the SECRET DOCTRINE offers this on SYMBOLOGY





"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 two are able to understand the profound logic
of their philosophy. 



The former will allow of no other God than the personified secondary powers
which have worked out the visible universe, and which became with them the
anthropomorphic God of the Christians - the male Jehovah, roaring amid
thunder and lightning. .



The Buddhists maintained that there is no Creator, but an infinitude of
creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the
essence of which is inscrutable - hence not a subject for speculation for
any true philosopher. .



Upon inaugurating an active period, says the SECRET DOCTRINE, an expansion
of this Divine essence from without inwardly and from within outwardly,
occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or
visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces
thus progressively set in motion. .



To use a Metaphor from the Secret Books, which will convey the idea still
more clearly, an out-breathing of the 'unknown essence' produces the world;
and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on
from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite
series, which had no beginning and will have no end." .



This passage will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present
work. Though, as it now stands, it contains nothing new to the Orientalist,
its esoteric interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto
remained entirely unknown to the Western student. 



The first illustration being a plain disc the second one in the Archaic
symbol shows , a disc with a point in it - the first differentiation in the
periodical manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite
"Aditi in THAT" (Rig Veda), the point in the disc, or potential Space within
abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter,
thus It now symbolises a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the
all-embracing absolute Infinitude. 



When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one , it becomes the mundane
cross. Humanity has reached its third root-race; it is the sign for the
origin of human life to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves
only the it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and
the FOURTH race begins. The Cross within a circle symbolises pure Pantheism;
when the Cross was left uninscribed, it became phallic. It had the same and
yet other meanings as a TAU inscribed within a circle or as a "Thor's
hammer," the Jaina cross, so-called, or simply Svastica within a circle 



By the third symbol - the circle divided in two by the horizontal line of
the diameter - the first manifestation of creative (still passive, because
feminine) Nature was meant. The first shadowy perception of man connected
with procreation is feminine, because man knows his mother more than his
father. Hence female deities were more sacred than the male. Nature is
therefore feminine, and, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the spirit
Principle which fructifies it is concealed. By adding to 



the circle with the horizontal line in it, a perpendicular line, the tau was
formed - - the oldest form of the letter. It was the glyph of the third
root-race to the day of its symbolical Fall - i.e., when 



the separation of sexes by natural evolution took place - when the figure
became , the circle, or sexless life modified or separated - a double glyph
or symbol. With the races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology the
sacr', and in Hebrew n'cabvah, of the first-formed races; * then it changed 



into the Egyptian (emblem of life), and still later into the sign of Venus,
Then comes the Svastica (Thor's hammer, or the "Hermetic Cross" now),
entirely separated from its Circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The
esoteric symbol of Kali Yuga is the five-pointed star reversed, thus - the
sign of human sorcery, with its two points (horns) turned heavenward, a
position every Occultist will recognize as one of the "left-hand," and used
in ceremonial magic.



It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of the
public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is wrong and
unjust to regard the Buddhists and Advaitee Occultists as atheists. If not
all of them philosophers, they are, at any rate, all logicians, their
objections and arguments being based on strict reasoning. 



Indeed, if the Parabrahmam of the Hindus may be taken as a representative of
the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute Principle
will be found to be the prototype from which all the others were copied. 



PARABRAHM IS NOT "GOD," BECAUSE IT IS NOT A GOD. 



"It is that which is supreme, and not supreme (paravara)," explains Mandukya
Upanishad (2.28). IT is "Supreme" as CAUSE, not supreme as effect. Parabrahm
is simply, as a "Secondless Reality," the all-inclusive Kosmos - or, rather,
the infinite Cosmic Space - in the highest spiritual sense, of course. .




----------------------------------------------------

* We are told by the Western mathematicians and some American Kabalists,
that in the Kabala also "the value of the Jehovah name is that of the
diameter of a circle." Add to this the fact that Jehovah is the third
Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and you have the key to the mystery. By
certain Kabalistic transformations this name, androgynous in the first
chapters of Genesis, becomes in its transformations entirely masculine,
Cainite and phallic. The fact of choosing a deity among the pagan gods and
making of it a special national God, to call upon it as the "One living
God," the "God of Gods," and then proclaim this worship Monotheistic, does
not change it into the ONE Principle whose "Unity admits not of
multiplication, change, or form," especially in the case of a priapic deity,
as Jehovah now demonstrated to be. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------



Parabrahm is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity
and eternity, the "THAT" and "THIS" to which distributive aggregates can not
be applied. 



"In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only" (Aitareya Upanishad); the
great Sankaracharya, explains that "THIS" referred to the Universe (Jagat);
the sense of the words, "In the beginning," meaning before the reproduction
of the phenomenal Universe. 



Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the Upanishads, which state, as in the
Secret Doctrine, that "this" cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or
rather a collective aggregate of creators, but only refuse, very logically,
to attribute "creation" and especially formation, something finite to an
Infinite Principle. 



With them, Parabrahmam is a passive because an Absolute Cause, the
unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited Omniscience and Omnipotence that are
refused to the latter, because these are still attributes (as reflected in
man's perceptions); and because Parabrahm, being the "Supreme ALL," the ever
invisible spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no
attributes; absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or
conditioned from being connected with it. .





The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Adwaita Vedantin philosophers
as to the above tenet. They show the impossibility of accepting on
philosophical grounds the idea of the absolute ALL creating or even evolving
the "Golden Egg," into which it is said to enter in order to transform
itself into Brahma - the Creator, who expands himself later into gods and
all the visible Universe. 



They say that Absolute Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity
presupposes the limitless extension of something, and the duration of that
"something"; and the One All is like Space - which is its only mental and
physical representation on this Earth, or our plane of existence - neither
an object of, nor a subject to, perception. 



If one could suppose the Eternal Infinite All, the Omnipresent Unity,
instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical manifestation a
manifold Universe or a multiple personality, that Unity would cease to be
one. Locke's idea that "pure Space is capable of neither resistance nor
Motion" - is incorrect. 



Space is neither a "limitless void," nor a "conditioned fulness," but both:
being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity,
which is void only to finite minds,* and on that of mayavic perception, the
Plenum, the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or
unmanifested: it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. 



"What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or
not; whether there be gods or none?" asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism. And
the answer made is - SPACE. 

S D I, pp. 3 - 8



========================================





Dallas



==========================================



-----Original Message-----
From: C Silva
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 7:14 PM



Was it Goethe that said,



"once one truly commits, the whole universe conspires to assist you?" 



If we couple this with what Nietzsche says, it seems to me that it is the
risk takers that benefit the most from existence.



Cass



===============================================



"W.Dallas TenBroeck" 





Dear B A



Re: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 283, wrote:



"For believe me: the secret for harvesting from

existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest

enjoyment is - to live dangerously. "



Allow me to ask:



But -- what constitutes "danger ?"



Does not "existence" mean "to stand out ?"



I wonder who or what "stands," and when it emerges, where is it ?





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