by Gary Lachman
Seeking to become ripe should be the effort of him who loves wisdom.
But there are methods by which ripeness is attained, for in this holy communion is the primitive storehouse of the most ancient and original science of the human race, with the primitive mysteries also of all science. It is the unique and really illuminated community which is in possession of the key to all mystery, which knows the centre and source of nature and creation. It is a society which unites superior power to its own, and includes members from more than one world. It is the society whose members form a theocratic republic, which one day will be the Regent Mother of the whole World.
From The Secret Doctrine
H.P. BLAVATSKY
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
Stanza I
1. The eternal parent wrapped in her ever invisible robes had slumbered again for seven eternities.
2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.
3. Universal mind was not, for there were no Ah-Hi to contain it.
4. The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
5. Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for father, mother and son were once more one, and the son had not awakened yet for the new wheel, and his pilgrimage thereon.
6. The seven sublime lords and the seven truths had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in Paranishpana, to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.
7. The causes of existence had been done away with; the visible that was and the invisible that is rested in eternal non-being - the one being.
8. Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that all-presence which is sensed by the opened eye of the Dangma.
9. But where was the Dangma when the Alaya of the universe was in Paramartha and the Great Wheel was Anupadaka?
Stanza II
1. Where were the builders, the luminous sons of Manvantaric dawn?
In the unknown darkness in their Ah-Hi Paranishpana. The producers of form from no-form - the root of the world - the Devimatri Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-being.
2. Where was silence? Where the ears to sense it? No, there was neither silence nor sound; naught save ceaseless eternal breath, which knows itself not.
3. The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ; the Matripadma had not yet swollen.
4. Her heart had not yet opened for the one ray to enter, thence to fall, as three into four, into the lap of Maya.
5. The seven sons were not yet born from the web of light. Darkness alone was father-mother, Svabhavat; and Svabhavat was in darkness.
6. These two are the germ, and the germ is one. The universe was still concealed in the divine thought and the divine bosom.
Stanza III
1. The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The mother swells, expanding from within without, like the bud of the lotus.
2. The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe and the germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life.
3. Darkness radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the mother-deep.
The ray shoots through the virgin egg, the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg.
4. Then the three fall into the four. The radiant essence becomes seven inside, seven outside. The luminous egg, which in itself is three, curdles and spreads in milk-white curds throughout the depths of the mother, the root that grows in the depths of the ocean of life.
5. The root remans, the light remains, the curds remain, and still Oeaohoo is one.
6. The root of life was in every drop of the ocean of immortality, and the ocean was radiant light, which was fire, and heat and motion. Darkness vanished and was no more; it disappeared in its own essense, the body of fire and water or father and mother.
7. Behold, 0 Lanoo! The radiant child of the two, the unparallelled refulgent glory: bright space son of dark space, which emerges from the depths of the great dark waters. It is Oeaohoo the younger. He shines forth as the son, he is the blazing divine dragon wisdom; the one is four, and four takes to itself three, and the union produces the Sapta, in who are the seven which become the Tridasa (or the hosts and the multitudes). Behold him lifting the veil and unfurling it from east to west. He shuts out the above, and leaves the below to be seen as the great illusion. He marks the places for the shining ones, and turns the upper into a shoreless sea of fire, and the one manifested into the great waters.
8. Where was the germ and where was now darkness? Where is the spirit of the flame that burns in thy lamp, oh Lanoo? The germ is that, and that is light, the white brilliant son of the dark hidden father.
9. Light is cold flame, and flame is fire, and fire produces heat, which yields water: the water of life in the great mother.
10. Father-mother spin in a web whose upper end is fastened to spirit. The light of the one darkness.
And the lower one to its shadowy end, matter; and this web is the universe spun of the two substances made in one, which is Svabhavat.
11. It expands when the breath of fire is upon it; it contracts when the breath of the mother touches it. Then the sons dissociate and scatter, to return into their mother's bosom and the end of the great day, and re-become one with her; when it is cooling it becomes radiant, and the sons expand and contract through their own selves and hearts; they embrace infinitude.
12. Then Svabhavat sends Fohat to harden the atoms. Each is a part of the web. Reflecting the self-existent lord like a mirror, each becomes in turn a world.
Stanza IV
1. Listen, ye sons of the earth, to your instructors, the sons of the fire. Learn there is neither first nor last, for all is one: number issued from no number.
2. Learn what we who descended from the primordial seven, we who are born from the primordial flame, I have learnt from our fathers.
3. From the effulgency of light, the ray of the ever-darkness, sprung in space the reawakened energies; the one from the egg, the six and the five. Then the three, the one, the four, the one, the five. The twice seven the sum total. And these are the essences, the flames, the elements, the builders, the numbers, the arupa, the rupa and the force of divine man, the sun total. And from the divine man emanated the forms, the sparks, the scared animals and the messengers of the sacred fathers withing the holy four. .
4. This was the army of the voice, the divine mother of the seven. The sparks of the seven are subject to, and the servants of the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and the seventh of the seven. These sparks are called spheres, triangles, cubes, lines and modellers; for this stands the eternal Nidana, the Oeaohoo, which is:
5. "Darkness," the boundless or the no-number Adi-nidana Svabhavat:
1. The Adi-Sanat, the number, for he is one.
II. The voice of the Lord Svabhavat, the numbers, for he is one and nine.
III. The "Formless Square." And these three enclosed within the 0 are the sacred four; and the ten are the Arupa universe. Then come the "sons," the seven fighters, the one, the eighth left out, and his breathe which is the lightmaker.
6. Then the second seven who are the Lipika, produced by the three. The rejected son is one; the "sun-sons" are countless.
Stanza V
1. The primordial seven, the first seven breaths of the dragon of wisdom, produce in their turn from their holy circumgyrating breaths the fiery whirlwind.
2. They make of him the messenger of their will; the Dzyu becomes Fohat, the swift son of the divine sons whose sons are the Lipika, runs circular errands. Fohat is the steed and the thought is the rider. He passes like lightning through the fiery clouds; takes thre
e and five and seven strides through the seven regions above, and the seven below he lifts his voice and calls the innumerable sparks, and joins them.
3. He is their guiding spirt and leader; when he commences work he separates the sparks of the lower kingdom that float and thrill with joy in their radiant dwellings, and forms therewith the germs of wheels. He paces them in the six directions of space, and one in the middle: the central wheel.
4. Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the sixth to the seventh, the crown; and army of the sons of light stands at each angle, and the Lipika in the middle wheel, they say: this is good, the first divine world is ready, the first is now the second. Then the divine Arupa reflects itself in Chhaya Loka, the first garment of the Andupadaka.
5. Fohat takes five strides and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the square, for the four holy ones and their armies.
6. The Lipika circumscribe the triangle, the first one, the cube, and the second one, and the pentacle within the egg. Iris the ring called "Pass Not" for those who ascend and descend. Also for those who during the kalpa are progressing towards the great day "Be with us." Thus were formed the Rupa and the Arupa: from one light, seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven lights: the wheels watch the ring.
Stanza VI
1. By the power of the mother of mercy and knowledge, Kwan-Yin, the "triple" of Kwan-Shai-Yin, residing in Kwan-Yin-Tien, Fohat, the breath of the progeny, the son of the sons, having called forth, from the lower abyss, the elusive form of Sien-Tchnag and the seven elements:
2. The swift and radiant one produces the seven Laya centres, against which none will prevail to the great day "Be with us," and seats the universe on these eternal foundations surrounding Tsien-Tchan with the elementary germs.
3. Of the seven: first one manifested, six concealed, two manifested, five concealed, three manifested, four concealed; four produced, three hidden, four and one Tsan revealed; two and one half concealed, six to be manifested, one laid aside. Lastly, seven smalls wheels revolving, one giving birth to the other.
4. He builds them in the likness of older wheels, placing them on imperishable centres. How does Fohat build them? He collects fiery dust. He makes balls of fire, runs through them and round them, infusing life therein, then sets them into motion; some one way, some the other way. They are cold, he makes them hot. They are dry, he makes them moist. They shine: he fans and cools them. Thus acts Fohat from one twilight to the other, during seven eternities.
5. At the fourth the sons are told to create their images. One third refuses, Two obey. The curse is pronounced: they will be born on the fourth, suffer and cause suffering: this is the first war.
6. The older wheels rotated downwards and upwards. The mother's spawn filled the whole. There were battles fought between the creators and the destroyers, and the battles fought for space; the seed appearing and re-appearing continuously.
7. Make they calculations, Lanoo, if thou wouldst learn the correct age of thy small wheel. Is fourth spoke our mother; reach the fourth fruit of the fourth path of knowledge that leads to Nirvanna, and thou shalt comprehend, for thou shalt see.
Stanza VII
1. Behold the beginning of sentient formless life. First the divine, the one from the mother-spirit; then the -spiral, the three from the one, the four from the one, and the five from which the three, the five, and the seven. These are the three-fold, the four-fold downward; the "mind born" sons of the first lord, the shining seven. It is they who are thou, me, him oh Lanoo. They who watch over thee, and thy mother earth.
2. The one ray multiplies the other rays; life precedes form, and life survives the last atom of form. Through the countless rays proceeds the life-ray, the one, like a thread through many jewels.
3. When the one becomes two, then the threefold appears and the three are one; and it is our thread, oh Lanoo, the heart of the man-plant called Saptasarma.
4. It is the root that never dies; the three-tongued flame of the four wicks. The wicks are the sparks, that draw from the three-tongued flame shot out by the seven: their flame, the beams and sparks of one moon reflected in the running waves of all the rivers of earth.
5. The spark hangs from the flame by the finest thread of Fohat. It journeys through the seven worlds of Maya.
It stops in the first and is a metal, and a stone; it passes into the second and behold: a plant; the plant whirls through seven changes and becomes a sacred animal. From the combined attributes of these, Manu, the thinker, is formed. Who forms him? The seven lives and the one life. Who completes him? The five-fold Lha. And who perfects the last body, Fish, sin and soma ...
6. From the first-born, the thread between the silent watcher and the shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every change. The morning sunlight has changed into noonday glory.
7. This is they present wheel, said the flame to the spark, thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee and thou art my Vahan to the day "be with us," when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and me. Then the builders, having donned their first clothing, descend on radiant earth and reign over men who are themselves.
From The writings of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
THE COUNSEL OF THE EXILE
Man has been set amidst the darkness of created things only to demonstrate by his individual light the existence of their Supreme Agent, to convince all who misconstrue it.
All things should speak, since the spirit and the voice of God should fill all, and yet is all mute about us.
It is a sign of the glory of our humanity, as it is an instance of the signal wisdom of Providence, that all such proofs adduced from the external order are thus deceptive in their last analysis ... The entire universe, notwithstanding all the splendours which it displays before our eyes, can never of itself manifest the truly divine treasures.
There is not a man in possession of his true self for whom the temporal universe is not a great allegory or fable which must give place to a grand morality.
At the first glance which man directs upon himself, he will perceive without difficulty that there must be a science or an evident law for his own nature, since there is one for all beings, though it is not universally in all, and since even in the midst of our weakness, our ignorance, and humiliation we are employed only in the search after truth and light. Albeit, therefore, the efforts which man makes daily to attain the end of his researches are so rarely successful, it must not be considered on this account that the end is imaginary, but only that man is deceived as to the road which leads thereto, and is hence in the greatest of privations, since he does not even know the way in which he should walk. The overwhelming misfortune of man is not that he is ignorant of the existence of truth, but that he misconstrues its nature. What errors and what sufferings would have been spared us if, far from seeking truth in the phenomena of material nature, we had resolved to descend into ourselves, and had sought to explain material things by man, and not man by material things; if, fortified by courage and patience, we had preserved in the calm of our imagination the discovery of the light which we desire all of us with so much ardour.
Man is the sole being in the natural order who is not compelled to pursue the same road invariably.
The function of man differs from that of other physical beings, for it is the reparation of the disorders in the universe. Man possesses innumerable vestiges of the faculties resident
in that Agent which produced him; he is the sign or visible expression of the Divinity.
The saintly race of man, engendered from the fount of wonder and the fount of desire and intelligence, was established in the region of temporal immensity like a brilliant star for the diffusion of heavenly light.
I must not conceal that this crass envelope is the actual penalty to which the crime of man has made him subject in the temporal region. Thereby begin and thereby are perpetuated the trials without which he cannot recover his former correspondence with the light.
When God has recourse to such visible signs as the universe to communicate his thought, it is to employ them in favour of beings separated from him. Had all beings remained in his unity, they would not have needed this means to draw towards him. The universe is therefore a sign of God's love for corrupted creatures separated voluntarily from the First Cause and submitted to the laws of justice in the womb of the visible universe. God operates unceasingly to remove the separation so contrary to their felicity.
The wisdom and bounty of the Divine Being are manifested by the birth of man into terrestrial life. He is thus placed in a position to soothe by his labour and striving a part of the evils which the first crime has caused on the earth.
It is perhaps this wrong connection of ideas (that the earth is a mere point in the universe) which has led men to the still falser notion that they are not worthy of the Creator's regard. They have believed themselves to be obeying the dictates of humility when they have denied that the earth and all that the universe contains exists only on man's account, on the ground that the admission of such an idea would be only conceit. But they have not been afraid of the laziness and cowardice which are the inevitable results of this affected modesty. The present day avoidance of the belief that we are the highest in the universe is the reason that we have not the courage to work in order to justify that title, that the duties springing from it seem too laborious, and that we would rather abdicate our position and our rights than realise them in all their consequences. Where is the pilot that will guide us between these hidden reefs of conceit and false humility?
If there be anything deplorable in our existence, it is to know that we ourselves bar the approach of Divinity; it is to be physically aware that the Divinity is ever moving around us, striving to enter our hearts and thus raise us from the dead, to enliven us by the fire of the Spirit. The least ray of the Divine Word suffices to operate this prodigy within us, substituting virtues and characterised faculties in place of the tenebrous state which is peculiar to the region we inhabit. Yet it is the ray of this Word which we drive zealously away as though. it were death.
