And if that Worker is the Divine Self, what reason is there that It should humble Itself, or debase Itself? For the very Power that makes man work out his own salvation is that Deity Itself.
originally published in “Lucifer” [this magazine later on renamed “The Theosophical Review”]
The task that I propose is no light one; it is no less than to consider some of the opinions of my fellow-men concerning Deity, and, if possible, to point towards a common ground of agreement or reconciliation between the innumerable ideas put forward on this inexhaustible subject. I write neither as an avowed monotheist, polytheist, nor pantheist; for I would fain believe that every true lover of theosophy is sufficiently imbued with the spirit of expansion and progress and synthesis, not to condemn himself to the narrowing limits of any of these separative ideas, which cannot fail to bring him into conflict with the prejudices of some section or other of his brother-men
I hope to find this common ground of agreement in the concept of the World-Soul in one or other of its aspects or modes; and in this attempt I despair of finding sympathy only from the so-called atheist, whose intellectual negation is frequently, if not invariably, stultified by his actions.
For do we not find the avowed atheist searching for the reason of that which he denies to have any intelligent operation? do we not find him frequently striving for an ideal which can never be attained, if, as he supposes, the present is the outcome of the past interaction of blindly driving force and matter? Why, again, should he work for the improvement of the race if that race, as he himself, is to depart into the void, together with the producer of his and its consciousness? For the body dies and the earth will also die. And if consciousness is a product of organized matter, then the disruption of that organism means inevitably the dissipation of consciousness. Why, then, this effort to benefit that which must, on his own hypothesis, tend inevitably to annihilation?
From materialists of this kind, then, this study will gain little intellectual sympathy, although I may venture to hope that the ideals of their fellow-men which will be brought forward will meet, if not with sympathetic consideration, at least with respect.
Nor will it be any part of my task to criticize, except in the briefest manner, any of the cruder expressions of man's longing after the Divine; but rather to put forward a number of instances of the more perfect expressions of great minds and great teachers who have in some measure sensed the actuality of that mysterious bond that makes all men one.
First, let me say that the term World-Soul is in this study not intended to carry any technical meaning such as that of the Platonic or Neo-platonic All-Soul or Soul of the Universals (Ψνχη τΟυ παντος or τϖν σλων) . “Soul” is here used in a far more general sense, and is intended to denote the underlying and containing “something” under and around every manifested natural form - that something which is of the nature of life, consciousness, or intelligence (of each or all of these), which conditions and is conditioned by that form and no other, which “benefits and is benefited in turn”.
Nor would we exclude anything, not even that which in these latter days is called “inanimate”, from our greater sympathy; for to our true Selves nothing that exists, not even the grain of sand, is in-animate, for then it would be soul-less, and the Divine would be excluded from a portion of Itself.
And in this sacred inquiry let us start with ourselves, where we find a soul vehicled or involved in a body, the home of innumerable “lives”, vehicled again in infinitesimal cells, each the body of a soul. And yet the soul of man is not composed of these “lives”; the consciousness of man is not simply the product or sum of their consciousness, nor is his intelligence a compound of their intelligence. The Soul of man is one, a self-centred unit, indestructible, imperishable, self-motive; it dies not nor comes into being.
Next, let us, taking this as a starting-point, use analogy to aid us, as we ascend towards the region of ideas, and so endeavour to pass behind the veil of the mystery between the inner and the outer. For analogy is the most fruitful method the neophyte can employ if he would widen his understanding, and without it we might well despair of the possibility of knowledge.
Every thing, or rather every soul, may be said to be the mirror of every other soul, just as in the Monadology of Leibnitz; and if it were not that a true knowledge or gnosis or one soul comprises the knowledge of all other souls, and that the cosmos is involved potentially in every atom, then, we might well believe, were our striving towards wisdom vain and our aspiration to reality likewise vain.
Taking, then, the example of the human soul, enshrined or involved in, or involving, a universe of “lives” - whether we regard it as it were a sun in the midst of its system, or as an ocean of light in which the “lives” are bathed - let us try to conceive that there is another and more mighty Life, a Divine Soul, of which the human souls are “lives”, and which we may term the Soul of Humanity. And yet this Soul is not made up of the souls of men, but is a unit of itself, self-motive, and itself, a monad.
Further - for the human mind is so constituted that nothing short of infinitude can suffice it - that this Divine Soul is in its turn a Life, one of an infinite number of “Lives” of a like degree, that enshrine a SOUL transcending them as much as man transcends the “lives” of the universe of his body.
And further still: that THAT which transcends this DIVINE is, in ITS turn,.... But why go further? Is not the series infinite? Where can we set the term, or place a boundary, or limit Infinitude? “So far shall thou go!” The mind in its daring loses itself in the fathomless greatness; the sublimity of its soaring deprives it of the support of the lower air of the intelligence, and it must return to earth to rest its wings.
Thus towards Infinity we rise in our ideation, conceiving every atom as the shrine of a soul and enshrined in a soul; every atom, animal, man; every globe, and system, and universe; every universe of systems, and system of universes - as the body of a soul.
For our universe is neither the first nor the last of its kind; their number is infinite. And when the consummation of our present universe is perfected there will be “another Word on the Tongue of the Ineffable”, as the Gnosis has it; for the Ineffable speaks infinitely, or, as our Brahman brethren say, there are “crores of crores of Brahmas”, or universes.
Thus an infinity in one direction of thought, and equally so an infinity in the other direction. For are not the “lives” of the body, too, the souls of a universe of other invisible “lives”, and these, each in its turn, the suns of still more invisible universes, until the infinitely small blends with the infinitely great and all is One?
Perhaps it may be thought by some that in this concept we have nothing but an infinite series of eternally separated entities; of infinite division; of a chaos of multiplicity; of a stupendous separateness. This might be so if it stood alone; but as, in all things here below, we can have no manifestation without the interplay of contraries, we must take its twin concept to complete it.
In Pluribus Unum et Unum in Pluribus, One in Many and in Many One. “The essential unity of all souls with the Over-Soul” is a fundamental postulate of the Wisdom of all ages. That is to say, all souls are one in essence, whatever forms they may ensoul.
But - what is more; what is almost an over-powering thought, necessary though it be to universal perfectioning - not only the human soul, but even the soul of the very grain of dust (or, at any rate, of what is thought of as a physical atom) has the potentiality of expanding its “awareness” into the All-consciousness.
Every soul is endowed with the power of giving and receiving with respect to every other soul; of passing through every stage of consciousness; of “expanding”; just as the One, the All-Soul, so to say, “contracted” itself into manifestation, into the Many, subordinating Itself to Itself, that every soul might known and become every other soul, by virtue of that Love which is the cause of existence.
Thus, then, every soul aspires to union with its own essence; and this constitutes the religious spirit of mankind, and also our love of Wisdom and our search for Certainty. This constitutes that Path to the Knowledge of Divine Things which today we call Theosophy - that synthesis of true religion, philosophy and science; of right aspiration, right thought and right observation, which the world is every blindly seeking.
And here we would call to mind what has been written at the beginning of this argument concerning the “lives” of our body, and add a thought. Just so, in the religious life, are men little “lives” in the Body of the MASTER, whose consciousness, we may venture to suppose, does not normally contain the whole consciousness of each little life, but whose “Bodily” feelings are these consciousnesses.
For instance, a man does not know in his consciousness the daily life and routine of any of the little lives which make up his body; he does not know in his consciousness whether they are happy or discontented; but his body does know that the lives of these little creatures go to make up a healthy or unhealthy body. In his self-consciousness, however, he does not think of them; they contract him through his body.
And here, if we may again dare to take analogy to guide us, we would venture on a further suggestion. In some sort of way, as with men, so we may imagine it is with those who are in the state of Masterhood. On the consciousness-side of such Masterhood the powers and intelligences, it seems probable, will not be interested in the details of daily life of the little lives that make up the Body of Masterhood, for their little lives do not make up His consciousness. His consciousness is quite other than this; and this I believe is the Mystery of the Christ. God gave of His own Body, in order that man through it could communicate afresh with Him.
On the body-side of such Masterhood, we may venture to believe that for the true lover of the Master, who is also the beloved disciple, every detail of every person's life will become of importance and interest, and he immediately connected with the Master. The body-side of Masterhood may thus be said to be connected with Fate and with the Passions of Humanity.
Our World-Soul, then, for us, is the One Soul of Humanity, which will differ for each soul in proportion to the state of consciousness at which it has arrived. No two souls are alike, just as no two blades of grass or grains of sand are alike; for if they were, as has been well said, there would be no reason why one should be in a particular place or state and not the other, and so the Reason of the universe be stultified.
The term “World”, in our present inquiry, therefore, may be limited to the cycle of manifestation of our particular Humanity, for this is our present world - the collective embodiment of that Divine Soul, which may consequently be referred to as the World-Soul.
This Source of his being, this Essence of his nature, this Something that transcends himself in his highest self-consciousness, man calls by many names, of which the one that obtains most generally in the Western world is, in the English tongue, “God”.
And here, much as I shrink from wounding the feelings of any devout believer, I would protest against the tendency of nearly all unreflecting religionists to limit the Illimitable, to crystallize the Ocean of Being, and to materialise That, which it is blasphemy to name, much less to attempt to dress in the tawdry rags of our own mental equipment.
There are those who will talk of “God” as they would of a human acquaintance, who profess a familiarity that would outrage our feelings of decency if the object of their remarks were even a wise and holy man whom we had learned to reverence
There are others who have such limited notions of the Divine that they cling with desperation to terms that have their origin in the most vulgar misunderstanding, and treat those who will not use their Shibboleths as “atheists”, because they cannot understand that there is a reverence of the mind that transcends terms of the emotions; that there is an aspiration which transcends all endeavour to limit by the names of human qualities that Mystery who simultaneously is both the Source and End of all qualities, and also beyond them all - an aspiration to which such crudities seem little short of blasphemy. If such high reverence is “atheism”, then indeed has language lost all meaning and returned to the inarticulate.
Let us all agree that no definition is possible, and that any enunciation of the Mystery is at best but a temporary stepping-stone to higher and still higher things, and there will no longer be seen the sad spectacle of human beings trying to pour the ocean into a water pot.
For after all what do we fear in the desperation with which we cling to such limiting terms? To me we appear to fear that, where all is so vague and abstract, the goal we propose to ourselves would, without definition, seem too far off for us ever to hope to reach it. But surely we have the infinitude within our own nature? Is there not a “Christ”, which is his true Self, potential en every man; and beyond, the “Fatherhood”; and beyond, the “Father of all Fatherhoods”; and beyond - Ineffable Infinitude? But all within the nature and in the essence of every man; nothing is without, nothing outside of us or beyond us, nothing which is not of the same essence; all is That!
Is it so strange to “go home”? Is it an abstract void, a negation, to know the Fullness of the Self's true Being? Or, on the other hand, is this supreme ideal the vain exaggeration of the personal man expanded to infinity? Is such a faith dictated by self-price and self-conceit? If such a truly reverent longing, the natural expression of the soul's filial love, should be condemned by any, they will first have to show that the great World-teachers have spoken falsely, for the word of no lesser men can come before Their teaching. One and all, the great Teachers have inculcated the certainty of this wisdom and gnosis; and it requires but little study to find how admirably it explains many a seeming contradiction in the general pages of the world-scriptures.
“Be humble if thou wouldst attain to wisdom”; but do not debase yourself. Humility is not slavishness; reverence is not fawning. How can Deity take pleasure in abasement which a noble-minded man could never view without the greatest pity? “I am but as a worm in thy sight”, David is believed to have said; and there are those who rejoice to echo the phrase literally, not knowing the meaning of the mystery-word, that this same “worm”, that is the “scorn of men” but not of God, is the “serpent of wisdom”, kin with the Divine.
For how can even the body, much less the man, the mind, or thinker, be so debased? Each is most honourable in its own domain, and only dishonourable in proportion as it fails to “do its mystery” in sacrifice to the Self, whose “Grace” or Good-will is its very life and being and the well-spring of its action, It is the duty of man to “worship” the Deity and not to grovel; to present that which is “worthy” to the Self, and not to delight in debasement; to value rightly or search out the true worth of the Divine, of Whom he is, and in Whom he lives and moves and has his being.
“And so.... with fear and trembling work out your own salvation;
for the Worker in you, both as to willing and working for well-pleasing, is Deity”.
And if that Worker is the Divine Self, what reason is there that
It should humble Itself, or debase Itself? For the very Power that makes man work
out his own salvation is that Deity Itself.
We shall now be able to understand the words of Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita (vii, 21, 22)”
“Whichever form [ of Deity] a worshipper longs with faith to worship, 'tis I who make his faith steady.
“Endowed with that faith, he strive in the worship of that [form], and obtains therefrom his desires; 'tis I who decree the benefits”.
Yo yo yam yam tanum bhaktah shraddhaya rchitum ichchati,
Tasya tasyachalam shraddham tameva viddhamyaham
Sa taya shraddya yuktustasyaradhanamihate
Labhate cha tath kaman mayaiva vihitan hitan
And again (ix.23):
“Those devotees of other deities also who worship endowed with faith, they too, O son of Kunti, worship Me indeed, thought not according to the ancient rule.”
Yepy anyadevatabhakta yajante shraddhaya'nvitah,
Te'pi mameva Kaunteya yajantyavidhipurvakahm
For Krishna is the World-Soul, the Self of all men(x.20):
“O Lord of Doubt, I am the Self seated
in the heart of all beings. I am the beginning and middle and end of all creatures.” Let us begin with the oldest
scripture of our Aryan race, the Vedas, and continue with the greatest of the
Puranas. Next let us take a glance at Taoism,
the most mystical of the creeds of the Far East; then pass to the Avesta, that
ancient Iranian scripture of the Parsis; and so on to Egypt; first quoting from
the Zohar and other Kabalistic writings which contain some reflection of the wisdom
of the Chaldeans and Egyptians and of the Hellenistic Gnosis, and furnish a key
to the misunderstood scriptures of the Jews. Egypt will bring us to speak of the
wisdom of Thrice-greatest Hermes and the Christianized Gnosis of those who are
now known generally as Gnostics; and this will lead to a quotation from Paul and
some reference to Greek and Roman philosophy, and the ancient systems ascribed
to Orpheus and other great teachers of Hellas. Finally, we shall find identical
ideas among the Scandinavian peoples, and a striking confirmation in Mohammedan
Sufiism. All the writers of these
scriptures, without exception have sense the World-Soul, hymned of It, sought
union with It; for of what else could they
speak? They have glorified that which It is in Its essence, and do not worship
Its grosser and more impermanent manifestations, the changing surface of five-sense
nature. Such an idolatry was reserved for these latter days, when human intellect
worships the ground its body treads on, the gross body of the World-Soul, and
has forgotten whence it came and whiter it will return. Today is an age of popular
deification of matter and the consequent debasement of ideals. Thus, then, let us first turn to that mysterious link with the past,
the Rig Veda. Who knows whence it came? Who can tell its origin? Perchance
those who can read the hidden world-record since the great Deluge of Atlantis could
name its transmitters, and tell of those who withdrew to the “Sacred Island”. Among prayers to the Supreme
Principle, the World-Soul, first must come the famous Gayatri, “the holiest
verse in the Vedas”. It runs as follows,
in what Wilson calls “Sir William Jone's translation of a paraphrastic interpretation:” “Lets us adore the Supremacy of that Divine Sun, the Godhead, Who
illuminates all, Who recreates all, from Whom all proceed, to Whom all must return,
Whom we invoke to direct our Understandings aright in our Progress toward His Holy
Seat.” [Sir W.Jone's Works, xiii. 367. “His Holy Seat” suggests
the thought that the state where He does not move is fixed.] This mantra is
found in the 10th Hymn of the 4th Ashtaka (Eighth) of the Samhita (Collection)
of the Rig Veda, not as in the above
expanded paraphrase, but in an abbreviated form; for “such is the fear entertained
of profaning this text, that copyists of the Vedas not unfrequently refrain from
transcribing it”, says Wilson [in “Vishnu Purana, ii, page 251] ”It
is the duty of every Brahman to repeat it mentally in his morning and
evening devotions”. It is almost to be suspected that the Western world has
not received the correct text, for it is well known that the Brahmans are the proudest
and most exclusive
people in the world where the secrets of their religion are concerned, and it is
reasonable to suppose that a master mantra which pertains to initiation
would not be lightly revealed. But perhaps this is raising an unnecessary suspicion. The subtle metaphysical and mystical interpretations of this most
sacred formula, especially those of the Vedanta school, testify to its sanctity.
The number of interpretations also to which the words of the mantra lend
themselves is very great. The phrasing, for instance, can be taken as neuter or
masculine, and so on. The spirit of the central
thought of the Indian religious world may be further exemplified by another Hymn
translated by Sir William Jones. It
reiterates the most clear-seeing intuition of the human mind, the feeling of identity
with the World-Soul, in a magnificent litany which runs as follows: “May that Soul (Atman)
of mine, which mounts aloft in my waking hours, as an ethereal spark, and which,
even in my slumber, has a like ascent, soaring
to a great distance, as an emanation from the Light of lights, be united by devout
meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and supremely intelligent! “May that Soul of
mine, by means similar to which the low-born perform their menial works, and
the wise, deeply versed in sciences, duly solemnize their
sacrificial rite; that Soul, which was itself the primal oblation placed within
all creatures, be united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest,
and supremely intelligent! “May that Soul of
mine, which is a Ray of perfect Wisdom, pure Intellect and permanent Existence,
which is the inextinguishable Light fixed within created
bodies,without which no good act is performed, be united by devout meditation
with the Spirit supremely blest, and supremely intelligent! “May that Soul of
mine, in which, as an immortal Essence, may be comprised whatever has past,
is present, or will be hereafter; by which the sacrifice,
where seven ministers officiate, is properly solemnized, be united by devout
meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and supremely intelligent! “May that Soul of
mine, into which are inserted, like the spokes of a wheel in the axle of a
car, the holy texts of the Vedas, into which is interwoven
all that belongs to created forms, be united by devout meditation with the Spirit
supremely blest, and supremely intelligent! “May that Soul of
mine, which, distributed in other bodies, guides
mankind, as a skilful charioteer guides his rapid horses with reins; that Soul
which is fixed in my breast, exempt from old age, and extremely swift in its course,
be united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and supremely intelligent!
[Sir W.Jone's Works, xiii. 372,373] If an interpretation of
the last two shlokas may be ventured upon, I would suggest that as to what we
may call the mind-side of things, the “holy
texts of the Vedas”, that is, of the Gnoses of God, are the sacred words (logoi)
or justified utterances, the sounds or forth-soundings, which go straight from
axle to circumference, and keep the soul spherical. Without those sacred sounds
from the mouth of Brahma, the Logos, or World-Soul, we should all return to soul-sparks,
or be extinct. Those sacred sounds may be said to be the rays which proceed from
the stillness, or hub of the Soul, in all directions. They are the powers which
cause consciousness to spread itself in space; they are the props or supports of
all spherical things. In connection with the
last shloka it is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the famous image in
Plato. Here men are to be thought of as horses,
and we are to think of the Soul as lines of consciousness between them all, and
of all the varying lines of consciousness as reins which are in the hands, or directed
by the Atmic Powers, of the Charioteer, the World-Soul. Each little man-soul is
a rein connecting the man with the Great Charioteer of the universe. And here again
we see how the Over-Soul is linked up with every horse by means of reins, yet He
himself is other than all the reins added together. Our Hymn is an instance of the theosophy buried in the Vedas, in
the face of which it is difficult to understand the criticisms of the once paramount
Weber-Mullerite school, which would have set it all down to the imaginings
of a primitive pastoral people. The theosophical student is glad to turn to a
fairer estimate, such as that of Barth, who says: “Neither in the language
nor in the thought of the Rig Veda have
I been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity which so many
are fain to see in it. The poetry it contains appears to me, on the contrary, to
be of a singularly refined character and artificially elaborated, full of allusions
and reticences, of pretensions to mysticism and theosophic insight; and the manner
of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in
use among certain small groups of initiated than the poetic language of a large
community.” [The Religions of India, page xiii] Truly so; and perhaps ere long the methods of the Veda may be better
understood, and it will be recognized that the powers of nature and the moral attributes
of man are fitter aids towards the realization of mystic theogony than are personifications
which include all his vices and his pettiness. As H.W.Wallis says: “The deities of the Rig
Veda differ essentially from
the Gods of Greek or Scandinavian mythology and of the Mahabharata, in
the abstract and almost impersonal nature of their characters. They are little
more than factors in the physical and moral order of the world, apart from which
none, except perhaps Indra, has a self-interested existence.” [ Cosmogony
of the Rig Veda, page 8] To the Greek, Scandinavian
and Mahabharatan deities we may add the Pantheons of other nations as well. The “self-interest” of
their Indras, Zeuses, Jehovahs, and the rest, is explicable when we remember
that they are representations
of the spirit of national time-periods, manifestations of group-minds, for there
are crores of such Brahmas, Jupiters, and Jehovahs in the cosmos. It is time that the Western
nations should remember their birthplace. We are not Semites but Aryans, a younger
branch of the great Aryan race, perchance,
but still Aryans and not Semites. And being so we should remember the wisdom of
our fathers, and put aside the earlier cruder conceptions of one of the later Semite
nations as to Deity. The pre-exilic Jehovah is in his place as the God of a small
warlike nomad tribe, but entirely out of place in the religion of those who profess
to be followers of the Christ. It is high time to lay aside such naïve anthropomorphism,
which the post-exilic learned Jews themselves rejected, as their Kabalah, or Tradition,
and as Philo of Alexandria, prior to Christianity, well testify. The self-limitation
of many a mind in Christendom today is belief in th his “jealous” and “self-interested”
Jehovah as the One God, an idea alien to Aryan Thought. Direful indeed has been
the effect of the “curse” of the “chosen people” on their
spoliators. They were robbed of their Scriptures, deprived of them by force; and
the ravished maiden
of Jewry, forced against her will into the arms of marauding Aryans, has used her
“magic arts” against the folk who hold her prisoner, for today she imprisons
the minds of
those who hold her body captive. In other words, the Western
nations, being the youngest of the Aryan family, and lusty mainly in body, have
in the past given their popular worship
to the dead-letter of that which they have not understood, and so enslaved their
minds and characters with a bibliolatry begotten of formalism by a Rabbinism divorced
from the true spirit of prophecy. Let us hope that all this is past, and that the
twentieth century may see the “prodigal” return “home”, and,
chastened by the experience of his exile, show his real heredity in an activity
that his more sluggish elder
brother in the East, who has never left home, cannot, perchance, manifest in such
abundance. The Aryans have an ancestral religion; and every Aryan in the West should
see to it that he does not pursue after what is a stranger to his blood, to the
rejection of what has been appointed for him. The effort of the Christ was originally
an attempt to universalize religion, and to make active the spirit of all the traditions
of the time and region in which He energized; and the Aryan tradition should not
be excluded. Of course in the above
I speak of the crude ideas of God held by the Hebrew populous, and not of the
Mystery-Deity, the Father, preached openly to
His contemporaries by the Master whom the Jews called Jeschu ha-Notzri, and whom
the West calls Jesus the Nazarene. For did He not say mystically that His hearers
were “of their father the devil”, for they were “Abraham's seed”,
and “Abraham”
was the Ruler of this world? Nor do I mean any disrespect to the Jews of today,
who are no more the Jews of the earlier Bible than we are Goths or Vandals, or
woad-besmeared Britons. I do not write about, or for, “bodies”; I am
writing for
“minds” and “souls” whose ancestry is divine, and not of the
Lord of the Body, call him by what name we may. How long will the little
mind of man persist in telling us the fashion in which God, the Great Mind, “created
the world”;
how long will men ignorantly speak of That which is unutterable, and degrade
the majesty of their Divine Souls
into the poor imaginings of little minds which think in terms of their bodies?
More reverently indeed did our ancestors phrase the mystery. How different are
the beginning of cosmogony as sung of in the Rig Veda! The passage is
doubtless familiar to many of my readers in the noble verse of Colebrooke; but
it should
be made familiar to all.
Ahamatma Gudakesha sarvabhutashyasthitah
And that none may think that all this is bad assertion and supported statement,
let us collect some evidences of wisdom from various climes and races and times,
testimony as convincing and unimpeachable
to the soul-knower as any that the modern scientist possesses for his five-sense
facts.
Ahamadishcha madhyamcha bhutanamanta eva cha
The wealth of material is so great that it is difficult to cull a
passage here and there and leave so much unnoticed. Neither is it easy to know
in what order to take our selections from the world-religions - whether to take
them in sequence of time or dignity of contents.
Nor Aught nor Naught existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed?
Was it the Water's fathomless Abyss?
There was no Death - yet there was naught immortal;
There was no Confine betwixt Day and Night.
The Only One breathed breathless by Itself;
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was; and all at first was veiled
In Gloom profound - an Ocean without Light.
The Germ that still lay covered in the Husk
Burst forth, One Nature, from the fervent Heat.
Who knows the Secret? Who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold Creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into Being:
Who knows from whence this Great Creation sprang?
That whence this All, this Great Creation came -
Whether Its Will created or was mute,
The Most-High Seer that is in highest Heaven,
He knows it - or perchance He even knows it not.
Gazing into Eternity ..
Ere the foundations of the Earth were laid
Thou wert. And when the subterranean Flame
Shall burst its Prison an devour the Frame,
Thou shalt be still as Thou were e'er before,
And know no Change, when Time shall be no more -
O, Endless Thought, Divine Eternity!
[Rig Veda, x, 129]
The following is another and more literal version:
“The non-existent was not, and
the existent was not at that time; there was no air or sky beyond. What was covering
in? and where? under shelter of what? was
there water - a deep depth?
“Death was not nor immortality then; there was no discrimination of night and
day. That one thing breathed without a wind [?breath] of its own self. Apart from
it
there was nothing else at all beyond.
“Darkness there was, hidden in darkness, in the beginning; everything here was an indiscriminate chaos. It was void covered with emptiness, all that was. That one thing was born by the power of warmth.
“So in the beginning arose desire, which was the first seed of mind. The wise found out by thought, searching in the heart, the parentage of the existent in the non-existent.
“Their line was stretched across. What was above? what was below? There were generators, there were mighty powers; svadha below, the presentation of offerings above.
“Who knoweth it forsooth? who can announce it here? whence it was born, whence this creation is? The god s came by the creating of it (i.e. the one thing). Who then knoweth whence it is come into being?
“Whence this creation is come into
being, whether it was ordained or no - He whose eye is over all in the highest
heaven. He indeed knoweth it, or may be He knoweth
it not.” [Wallis, Cosmogony of the Rig Veda, pages 59 and 60]
Even such a wooden translation as the one we have just been reading cannot prevent
the grandeur of the original occasionally peeping through. But how much more noble
are the lines of Colebrooke; and how much still more noble might be the version
of a poet-scholar who had sensed the mystery!
Notice the last lines. Our World-Soul may know, or perchance even He knoweth not. For there are other World-Souls more transcendent still. None knoweth absolutely but the One and Only One.
If, then, we would venture so greatly as to try to lift a tiny corner of the veil of this ultimate mystery, we can do so only by trying to sympathize with the thought of the singer of the sacred verses.
I need hardly point out the similarity of this vision of cosmogenesis with other of the most ancient cosmogonies known to us - for instance, from the traditions of Chaldea and Egypt, from the fragments of Orphicism and the remains of the Trismegistic sermons.
I would first suggest from that from one point of view we may regard the Non-existent as Spirit or Consciousness, and the Existent as Matter. These have to wed in the supreme Sacred Marriage, the Unceasing Union, the Great Work, in order to become self-conscious. They then become Form.
“Heat” or “Warmth” is perhaps the power of expansion, a manifestation of this Holy Desire, the Divine Eros, or Pothos, in Greek. The “one thing” that was born was not as yet Form, we may believe, but the one substance or element, in which everything is compressed into sameness and essence.
The Desire (Kama) that arose in It, is thus the Desire of Spirit for Matter and of matter for Spirit.
This Desire is said to come before Thought. So also in the case of the small cosmos or man, we may say, in terms familiar to some of our readers, that buddhi is the beginning of man. There arises in buddhic substance a desire to become self-consciousness. It thus spits up into mental planes. Desire may be said to be the realization of incompleteness by Spirit and Matter.
The gnosis of the “parentage of the existent in the non-existent” is to be discerned only by the wise in spiritual contemplation; that is to say, perhaps, that such minds alone find how to get from consciousness to self-consciousness; from universals to particulars, or to persons.
The “line” of the next shloka may perhaps be taken as the limit which makes universals become particulars. The “generators” below may be considered as masculine powers, and the “presentation of offerings” above as feminine receptivity or resignation ready to be worked upon; suggesting the birth of the first duality, a division into power and suffering or passion. The offerings may thus be thought of as the sacrifice of Spirit to Matter.
In the next verse the gods are said to proceed from the One Godhead at the birth of the first substance; these gods live within the buddhic element. The true “Beginning” of things is before even this. These gods or powers within matter first had bequeathed on them self-consciousness; instead of being simple nature powers they became gods.
In the last verse “this creation” (or emission or emanation) seems to connote the coming forth into the formal plane-side of things conditioned by the Great Mind.
The World-Soul does not know. Perhaps this dark saying may be understood from the reflection that one never can know what one does oneself. We have to be outside and apart from a thing to know it. Really to know one must be able to unite oneself with, and separate oneself from, either and both, for true knowledge sees from within and without. Hence without “sin” and “Satan” man could never know God. The first thing for real knowledge is to separate oneself form and then unite in experience.
Passing next to a later Hindu-Aryan scripture, let us read how the great sect of the Vaishnavas hymn the Deity, as written in the Vishnu Purana:
“OM! Glory to Him who dwells in all beings (Vasudeva). Victory be to Thee, Thou heart-pervading one (Pundarikaksha). Adoration be to Thee, Thou cause of the existence of all things (Vishvabhavana). Glory be to Thee, Lord of the sense (Hrishikesha), Supreme Spirit (Mahapurusha), Ancient of birth (Purvaja).
[From Vishnu Purana, I. i.; Wilson's translation, i, 1,2]
And later in the same work we read:
“Salutation to Thee, Who art uniform
and manifold, all-pervading, Supreme Spirit, of inconceivable glory, and Who
art simple existence! Salutation to Thee,
O inscrutable,
Who art Truth, and the essence of oblations! [An oblation is a
sacrifice, or the setting aside in order to perceive; just as we have to get outside
a thing in order
to understand it, we have to separate ourselves from it. A sacrifice in this sense
is that which is set aside, something apart; something which for certain purposes,
in order to accomplish certain results, we choose to consider sacred. Sacrifice,
therefore, embraces the idea of limit for a purpose, a setting aside, a breaking-off
of a fraction, or consecration of a portion, that the whole may ultimately be consecrated.]
Salutation to Thee, O lord, Whose nature is unknown, Who art beyond Primeval
Matter, Who existest in five Forms,[These are given by Wilson
(i. 3) as: 1, Bhutatman, one with created things, or Pundarikaksha; 2, Pradhanatman,
one with crude nature; or Vishvabhavana; 3, Indriyatman, one with the senses,
Hrishkesha; 4, Paramatman, Supreme Spirit, or Mahapurusha; and 5, Atman, Living
Soul, animating nature, and existing before it, or Purvaja] as
one with the Elements, with the Faculties, with Matter, with the Living Soul, with
Supreme Spirit!
“Show favour; 0 Soul of the Universe, essence of all things, perishable or
eternal, whether addressed by the designation of Brahma, [Masculine. ] Vishnu,
Shiva, or the like. I adore Thee, 0 God,[Parameshvara, Supreme
Lord, rather. ] Whose
nature is indescribable, Whose purposes are inscrutable, Whose name, even, is unknown.
“For the attributes of appellation or kind are not applicable to Thee, Who
art THAT,
the supreme Brahma, [Neuter ] eternal, unchangeable,
uncreated. [Aja, unborn, rather ]
“But as the accomplishment of our objects cannot be attained except through
some specific form, Thou art termed by us Krishna, Achyuta (Imperishable), Ananta
(Endless),
or Vishnu.
“Thou, unborn (Divinity), art all the object of these impersonations;
Thou
art the gods, and all other beings; Thou art the whole world; Thou art All
“Soul of the Universe, Thou art exempt from change; and there is nothing except
Thee in this whole existence.
“Thou art Brahma, Pashupati,[Shiva, “Lord of (sacred)
animals” ] Aryaman,
Dhatri, and Vidhatri;[Aryaman and Dhatri are two of the Twelve Adityas,
or Sons of Aditi (the Boundless, Infinity), the “Mother”, which were seven
originally, Martanda, the “rejected” Sun, being the eighth.
Later
they
became the Twelve Sun-Gods. Vidhatri is the arranger or disposer, the Kosmokrator
or Demiurge, and is added as a title to Brahma, Vishvakarman (the Omnificent) and
Kama (Desire or Love), the Eros of the Orphic fragments. As Dr Muir says: “This
Kama or Desire, not of sexual enjoyment, but of good in general, is celebrated in
a curious hymn of the Atharva Veda: Kama was born first [the Orphic Protogonos],
Him, neither gods, nor fathers, nor men have equalled. Thou art superior to these,
and for ever great.'” ] thou art India,
[The “Zens dwelling in the Aether” of Homer (Z ενς αιθερι ναιων — Iliad,
ii 412); in the Aether, the Abode of the Gods. The Pater Aether of Virgil. ] Air,
Fire, the Regent of the Waters;[Varuna
(Ooaroona), the Regent of the “Astral” Waters of Space; the Uranus
(Ouranos) of the Greeks, who was emasculated and dethroned by Kronos (by mystical
wordplay or sound-sympathy, equated with Chronos, Time), at the instigation of
his mother and wife Gaea (Earth). From the drops of his Blood (? Fire) sprang the
Gigantes or Titans, and from the Foam (? Air and Water mixed) that gathered round
his limbs in the Sea, sprang Venus Aphrodite (Hesiod, Theog., 180-195).
The Giants may be taken to represent great monadic forces in “bodies”;
Aphrodite may be taken to denote the great buddhic plane (Mahabuddhi). ] the
God of Wealth, [Kuvera,
the Keeper of the Treasures of the Earth, Lord of the Earth, called the Egg of
Jewels, Ratnagarbha ] and
Judge of the Dead; [Antaka the “Ender”, a title of
Tama, the “Restrainer”, the Judge of the Dead. A Vedic Hymn tells us
that Yama “was the first of men that died, and the first that departed to
the [celestial] world”. As Dowson says: “He it was who found out the
way to the home which cannot be taken away: ' Those who are now born [follow] by
their own paths to the place whither our ancient fathers have departed'”. This,
in the more direct tradition of the Vedas, is a glyph of the Race that brought
“ . . . . death into the world
And all our woe, with loss of Eden.”
But Yama, in the later traditions Pitripati and Pretaraja, the “Lord of the
Manes” and “King of the Ghosts”, was also Dharmaraja, “King
of Justice”, our Selves who judge ourselves, in the clear Akashic Light,
while
Chitragupta (the “Hidden Painting or Writing”), the Scribe of Yama, reads
the imprint of our virtues and our vices from the Agrasandhani or “Great Record”, the
Tablets of the World-Memory. Yama is represented as of a green colour, clothed with
red. ] and Thou, though but one,
presidest over the world, with various energies addressed
to various purposes.
“Thou, identical with the Solar Ray, Greatest the universe; all Elementary
Substance is composed of [“Composed of” might be omitted.
This “substance” is better thought of as consciousness or spirit in a
state of different qualities. ] Thy qualities; and Thy Supreme Form
is denoted by the imperishable term Sat [That is, “Being.” ] .
.
.
“To Him Who is one with True Knowledge; Who is, and is not, perceptible, I
bow. Glory be to Him, the Lord Vasudeva!” [Vishnu Purana, V.
xviii; Wilson's trans., v. 14-16 ]
The same strain of adoration is still further emphasized in the Hymn of the Yogins
when Vishnu, in the Boar Incarnation, or Varaha Avatara, raised the Earth out of
the Waters:
“THOU ART, 0 God; there is no supreme condition but Thee.” [Ibid.,
I. iv., i. 63. ]
Or again, as the God. Brahma prays to the Supreme Hari (Vishnu):
“We glorify Him, Who is all things; the Lord supreme over all; unborn, imperishable;
the Protector of the mighty ones of creation, the unperceived [Aprakasha:
Fitzedward Hall tells us that the commentator explains this to mean “Self-illuminated”. ] indivisible
Narayana; [The Son of Nara (Man); also so called because the Waters
(Narâi) were His first Ayana or place of motion] the
smallest of the small, the greatest of the great Elements; in Whom are all things;
from Whom are all things; Who was before existence; the God who is all beings;
Who is the End of ultimate objects; Who is beyond Final Spirit, and is one with
Supreme Soul; Who is contemplated; as the cause of final Liberation, by Sages anxious
to be free.” [Vishnu Purana, I. ix. i 139. ]
As the Avatara Krishna, He is hymned of by Indra after his defeat by Him:
“Who is able to overcome the unborn, un-constituted Lord, Who has willed to
become a mortal, for the good of the world ? ” [Vishnu Purana, V. xxx.; v.
103. ]
And when Krishna is nailed by the arrow to the tree, [The
Christ-consciousness is nailed by the Arrow of Truth to the Tree of Life. Absolute
Truth, not relative
truth, is the shaft from the realms of Reality to
our worlds below. ] and the Kali Yuga begins,
this is how Arjuna, his beloved companion, laments the departure of the Christ-Spirit,
the Mediator, of That which “unites Entity to Non-entity”:
“Hari, Who was our strength, our might, our heroism, our prowess, our prosperity,
our brightness, has left us, and departed. Deprived of Him, our Friend, illustrious,
and ever kindly speaking, we have become as feeble as if made of straw. Purushottama, [Lit.,
the Man Supreme ] Who
was the living vigour of my weapons, my arrows, and my bow, is gone. As long as
we looked upon Him, fortune, fame, wealth, dignity, never abandoned us. But
Govinda [That is, the Herdsman, the same as the Shepherd of Western
tradition. ] is gone
from among us. ... Not I alone, but Earth, has grown old, miserable and lustreless,
in His absence. Krishna ... is gone ! ” [Vishnu Purana, V.
xxxviii.; v. 161 ]
The “vigour of my arrows and my bow” seems to refer mystically to the
great male and female force in the universe, without which the “Earth” grows
old, that is, cannot rejunevate or re-create or refresh itself. It loses its “lustre”,
that is, does not reflect the true Light.
Let us next pass to China and the Far East. Lao-tzu, perhaps the greatest of the
Chinese masters, teaches as follows, in his sublime work the Tao-Teh-King,
or “The
Book of the Perfection of Nature”: [See A Study on
the Popular Religion of the Chinese, by J. J. M. de Groot. Translated from
the Dutch in Les Annales du Musée Guimet, ii. 692 et seq. ]
“There was a time when Heaven and Earth did not exist, but only an unlimited
Space in which reigned absolute immobility. All visible things and all which possess
existence, were born. in that Space from a mighty Principle, Which existed by
Itself, and from Itself developed Itself, and Which, made the heavens revolve and
preserved the universal life; a Principle as to which philosophy declares
we know not the name, and Which for that reason it designates by the simple appellation
Tao, which we may nearly describe as the Universal Soul of Nature, the Universal
Energy of Nature, or simply as Nature.”
And in speaking of the mysterious Tao,[There are, I am well aware,
endless controversies as to the correct rendering of this mystery-name, but this
is not the place to discuss the question. ] the
That which cannot be translated, the nameless Principle, we may with advantage
quote from an essay by a sympathetic
scholar, who writes [See “Taoism”, an essay by Frederic
H. Balfour, in Religious Systems of the World, p. 77] as
follows:
“We are told that It has existed from all eternity. Chuang-tzu, the ablest
writer of the Taoist school, says that there never was a time when It was not. Lao-tzu,
the reputed founder of Taoism, affirms that the image of It existed before God
Himself. [That is here God as the Logos. ] It
is all-pervasive; there is no place where It is not found. It fills the universe
with its grandeur and sublimity;
yet It is so subtle that It exists
in all its plenitude
in the tip of a thread of gossamer. It causes the sun and moon to revolve in their
appointed orbits, and gives life to the most microscopic insect. Formless, It is
the source of every form we see; inaudible, It is the source of every sound we
hear; invisible, It is that which lies behind every external object in the world;
inactive, It yet produces, sustains and vivifies every phenomenon which exists
in all the spheres of being. It is impartial, impersonal, and passionless; [“Passionless” because
It is only in relation to Itself. It has no relation to anything other than Itself;
whereas Passion suggests oneself and another, oneself and something other than
oneself. ] working
out its ends with the remorselessness of fate, yet abounding in beneficence to
all.”
And later on he quotes as follows from Chuang-tzu:
“There was a time when all things had a beginning. The time when there was
yet no beginning had a beginning itself. There was a beginning to the time when the
time
that had no beginning had not begun. There is existence and there is also non-existence.
In the time which had no beginning there existed No-thing. . . . When the time
which had no beginning had not yet begun, then there also existed No-thing. Suddenly,
there was No-thing; but it cannot be known, respecting existence and non-existence,
what was certainly existing and what was not.”
I have given the above as a specimen of subtle metaphysical speculation, and also
as an example to show the utter inadequacy of words to express ideas. The mind
loses itself in endeavouring to. transcend itself, even to the extent of appearing
entirely incomprehensible to those who have not seriously approached the contemplation
of that supreme intuition of humanity, the essential Unity of all things.
But no one should think that this No-thing [That is to say, nothing
we can think of ] is an empty abstraction and pure negation;
it transcends our finite concepts, but is no less the One Reality because of that.
It is the right valuation of these great problems that inspires such noble concepts
of existence and calm contemplation of “death” as those expressed in
the words of Lieh-tzu.
“Death is to life as going away is to coming. How can we know that to die here
is not to be born elsewhere ? How can we tell whether, in their eager rush for life,
men are not under a delusion ? How can I tell whether, if I die today, my lot
may not prove far preferable to what it was when I was originally born? . . .
Ah! men know the dreadfulness of Death; but they do not know its rest. . . . How
excellent is it, that from all antiquity Death has been the common lot of men!
It is repose for the good man, and a hiding-away of the bad. Death is just a going-home-again.
The dead are those who have gone home, while we, who are living, are still wanderers.”
[Op. ct., p. 81. ]
Death is indeed a “going-home”, but a “going-home” that need
not be delayed until the body dies. Mystics understand the meaning of the phrase “those
who go home” when they have “died” to their lower natures, and who
then know the real nature of this illusory existence, although, as the Rishi Narada
reported, it was very pleasant for those “who had forgotten their birthplace”. The
Soul of Humanity, the World-Soul, weeps for her children, who forget their
Mother and, “prodigal sons” that they are, fill their bellies with husks
of the swine.
Continuing our depredations from the shelves of the world-library, we pass to ancient
Persia, or whatever country gave to the world the wisdom of the old Avesta. Written
in a language hardly yet plainly decipherable, it may well be approximated to the
Vedas in antiquity, and its language be referred to one of the first branchlets of the mother of Sanskrit.
In the Zervanist system of the Mazdaeans of Asia Minor [See
my Thrice-greatest Hermes, Volume 1, page 400] Zervan
Akarana, “Time
without Bounds”, is the ineffable All; in this arises Ahura Mazda, the World-Soul,
whose names are many. He is The Being and the One Existence; the One, Who was,
Who is and Who shall ever be. He is Pure Spirit and the Spirit of Spirits; Omniscient
and Omnipotent, the Supreme Sovereign. He is beneficent, benevolent, and merciful
to all. In the Dinkard (ii. 81) He is described as:
“Supreme Sovereign, wise Creator, Supporter, Protector, Giver of good things,
virtuous in actions and merciful.”
Let us next see what the Kabalah has to teach us, and mark the difference of its
great large spirit from the lesser things we have grown used to in the orthodox
tradition.
Solomon ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol, of Cordova, perhaps the greatest of the mediaeval
Kabalistic adepts, thus sings of the World-Soul, or the Supreme Principle, in one
of his philosophical Hymns, called “Kether Malkuth”, or “The Crown
of the Kingdom”:
“Thou art God, Who supportest, by Thy
Divinity, all the things formed, and sustains all the existences by Thy Unity.
Thou art God, and there is not any distinction established between Thy Divinity,
Thy Unity, Thy Eternity, and Thy Existence; because all is only One Mystery, and,
although the names may be distinct, all have only one meaning.
“Thou art Wise. Wisdom which is the fountain of life floweth from Thee; and
compared with Thy Wisdom, all the knowledge of mankind is foolishness.
“Thou art Wise, being from all Eternity; and Wisdom was always nourished by
Thee.
“Thou art Wise; and Thou hast not acquired Thy Wisdom from another than Thyself.
“Thou art wise; and from Thy Wisdom Thou hast made a determining Will, as
the workman or artist does, to draw the Existence from the No-Thing, as the light
which goes
out of the eye extends itself. Thou didst draw from the Source of Light without
the impression of any seal, that is, form, and Thou madest all without any instrument.” [Myer's
Qabbalah, page 3]
See how the mind of this learned Jew regarded the mystery of the “creation” of
the universe. Deity, out of Its Wisdom which is Itself, emanates or evolves a determining
Will to draw “Existence” from the “No-Thing”,
the potentiality of that same Wisdom, for it is No-Thing in that It transcends
all and every thing we can think of, that is to say, the highest conceptions of
human thought. But It is no more “Nothing” than is Deity the “Unconscious”. The
No-Thing is not “nothing”, the Non-conscious is not “unconscious”, but
both are attributes expressive of our ignorance, while asserting that That transcends
all things and all consciousness.
We should do well in this connection to bear in mind the wise words of the Zohar,
and apply the injunction contained therein to the words of the Hymn of the master
of the Kabalah we have just cited, being well assured that he would have permitted
none of his pupils to take the words of his instruction for the real mystery itself.
For the Zohar says:
“Woe to the man who sees in the Torah (Law) [That is, the
Mosaic Books,
the famous “ Five Fifths” ] only simple recitals
and ordinary words ! . . . Each word of the Torah contains an elevated meaning and
a sublime
mystery. [This is, of course, an exaggeration, the perversion
of a truth. ] The recitals of the Torah are the vestments of
the Torah. Woe to him who takes this garment for the Torah itself!” [Zohar,
iii., fol. 152B, as quoted by Myer, op. cit., page 102. ]
Or, again, as Origen, the most philosophical of all the Church Fathers, writes:
“Where can we find a mind so foolish as to suppose that God acted like a common
husbandman, and planted a paradise in Eden, towards the East; and placed in it
a tree of life visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily
teeth obtained life ? And, again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating
what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the
evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts
that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken
place in appearance, and not literally.” [De Principiis,
IV. i.16; A.-N.C.L.; The Writings of Origen (Crombie's trans.), i. 315-316 ]
But then Origen was once the disciple of the Platonist Pantaenus, after the latter's
return from India. Pantaenus was also the teacher of Clement of Alexandria.
Yet one more citation from the Zohar, before we leave the Kabalah.
“The Ancient of the Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a Form, yet also
has not any form. It has a Form through which the universe is maintained. It also
has not any
form, as It cannot be comprehended.” [Zohar, “Idra
Zuta”, iii.
288a; Myer, op. cit., page 274 ]
Passing from Chaldaea and Judea to Egypt and its hoary wisdom, this is what Gaston
Maspero, the veteran French Egyptologist, in his Histoire d'Orient, writes
concerning the ideas of the Egyptians on the Soul of the World:
“ In the beginning was the Noon, the Primordial Ocean, in the infinite Depths
of which floated the germs of all things. From all Eternity God generated Himself
and gave birth to Himself in the Bosom of this Liquid Mass, as yet without form
and without use. This God of the Egyptians is One Being only, perfect, endowed
with knowledge and unfallacious intelligence, incomprehensible in so far as no
one can say in what He is comprehensible. He is the One Only One, He Who exists
essentially, Who alone lives in Substance, the sole Generator in the Heaven and
on the Earth Who is not generated, the Father of Fathers, the Mother of Mothers.” [Quoted
by E. Amélineau in his Essai sur le Gnosticisme Egyptien, in the
series of Les Annales du Musée Guimet, tom. xiv. 282 ]
The Supreme God of the Mysteries whom the Greeks named Ammon, the Egyptians called
Amen. As E. de Rougé says: [Mélanges d'Archéologie,
page 72]
“The name Amen means ' hidden,' ' enveloped,' and by extension ' mystery.'
. . . This God then was called Amen because He represented all that was most secret
in
Divinity.”
In a Hymn to Ammon Ra, speaking of the name Amen, it is said:
“Mysterious is His Name even more than His Births.” [Grébaut,
Hymne à Ammon Ra. ]
And in the invocations, which M. Naville has collected under the title of Litanie
du Soleil, the same God is called “Lord of the Hidden Spheres”, the “Mysterious
One”, the “Hidden”.
“Amen” thus seems to suggest the secret which will only be revealed when
man has risen again into the Great Mother and can thus make the world around undergo
“magical
transformation”, or the “turning of things inside out”, so to say,
whereby that which is secret becomes revealed in its pure nakedness; it is as it
were the going back from form into the “ womb of things”, and so tracing
consciousness back to the Father by means of the light-sparks hidden in every atom.
“Mysterious is His Name even more than His Births.” His Births are the things
He brings forth by means of His Spouse or Syzygy, “Will or Matter. His Name
is the True Sound, which He utters forth from out of Himself, which causes Matter
to bring forth or Himself to bring forth.
Here also is the place for a fine Hymn to the Sun, the masculine sign of the World-Soul,
in which we can see, peeping through, the same mysticism as we find in both the
initiatory Psalms of the Old Testament and certain concepts in the New. Thus it
runs:
“The Princes of Heaven all daily behold the Glory of the King's Crown, upon
the Head of Thee, the Mighty Prince, which is the Crown of Power, which is the Crown
of the Endurance of Thy Government, an Image of Thy Might.
“Songs of Praise to the Creator of Egypt, and of the Shining Barque of the
Lord. Make those to fear who hate Thee, make Thine enemies to blush, Lord and Prince
of the very shining Star-house; Thou Who hast joined together Thy Plantation, Thou
Who seest the Murderer of Thy Child of Man, the Righteous. Let me go to Thee; unite
me with Thee; let me look upon Thy Sunlight, King of the Universe !
“Praise to Thy Face, Beaming Light in the Firmament, to Thee, to the Shining
Lord of Heaven's Barque, to the Creator and Ruler Who renders Justice to all men,
who
delight to see Thee walking in the Web of Thy Splendour.” [From
Uhlemann's Book of the Dead, as quoted in Dunlap's Sod: The Mysteries
of Adoni,
page 187 ]
This beautiful Hymn, like all inspired writing of this description, can be interpreted
in many ways. It reminds me of much that I have pondered over in my Gnostic studies,
and I will, therefore, hazard a suggestion which may be of interest to those who
delight in similar paths of mysticism.
Heaven may be taken for the spiritual soul (Buddhi). The “ Princes of Heaven” are
the powers of this soul, and may be regarded as feminine, when contrasted with
the Atman or Spirit proper.
In this connection “daily” would connote any time-period, every breath
of the Spirit, or Great Breath, in man.
They “behold the Glory”; that is, they come into contact with this Glory
or Shekinah or Presence; they are in definite relation with the Rays of the Spiritual
Sun, in the state of active ecstasies.
The “Crown” thus denotes the state when
the Power of Light or of the Spiritual Sun is not only potential within the brain
and mind, but rays forth; when the man ceases to be only a personality, and begins
to live, as it were, outside himself, as well as inside, when his powers begin
to ray forth, out from personality.
The “Crown of Power” suggests the bringing of oneself into definite
understanding relationship with other people; “Endurance” is stability,
and “Government” is control over matter and others; while “Image” gives
the idea of a raying-forth power which, like a stream of light-sparks, carries
with it the full potencies of all its Father's Power.
“Image” seems to mean a reflection, or something thrown off from the Self,
in a potential condition, not actual, but containing within itself the whole of
its own creator. “ Imagination” in this sense is not a faculty of the
mind, but an atmic spiritual power.
In other words, the Praise giving suggests the state of a man when the powers of
his spiritual soul come regularly into definite relationship with the Power that
rays forth from the Mind of God. This is a Power which enables a man to bring himself
into gnostic relationship with everyone. It is a continuous and stable control
over substance, which is the other half of one's Self; and being an image of God's
Strength or Might, carries with it all the powers of God potentially.
The “Shining Barque of the Lord” may be taken as this spiritual soul
again; and the “Shining Star-house” once more as the same mystery, the
Buddhi, where the atmic or spiritual stars hang themselves out in constellations
and configurations, ordered as the stars of heaven are ordered.
The “Plantation” is perhaps again the selfsame setting-in-order of the
inner stellar world of man's own nature, or may be compared with the Paradise,
in which the Trees of Life are synonyms of the stars.
The “Murderer of Thy Child of Man, the Righteous”, reminds us of Typhon,
the Slayer of Osiris, who is the Son of Man, the Justified, or Righteous.
Let us now turn to another Book of Wisdom, and hear what Hermes, the Thrice-greatest,
has to tell us of the mystery. In the treatise called Poemandres, the “World-Mind”
(Paramatman), the “Mind of all Masterhood”, mirrored in the higher mind
of the initiate, speaks thus to his lower consciousness:
“Thou sayest well, 0 Thou, thus speaking. I, Mind, Myself, am present with
holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously.
“To such My Presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain gnosis of
all things, and win the Father's love by their pure lives, and give Him thanks, invoking
on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with ardent love.
“And ere they give the body up unto its proper death, they turn them with disgust
from its sensations, from knowledge of what things they operate.
“Nay, it is I, the Mind, that will not let the operations which befall the
body work to their natural ends. For, being Doorkeeper, I close up all the entrances,
and cut the mental actions off which base and evil energies induce.” [Corpus
Hermeticum, i. 22; see my Thrice-greatest Hermes,Volume 2, page 14]
.
As it is impossible in the space at my disposal to attempt an analysis of all the
passages cited, I can only suggest briefly a few hints. The Father is here, as
in cognate schools of philosophical mysticism, what the Upanishads of the Veda
call Atman in both cosmos and man. The “hymns” are the “music of
the spheres” of man's inner nature, which sing in harmony only when man becomes
one with the great Soul of Nature. The idea is well expressed by Dryden, who writes:
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.
Seven sounding letters sing the praise of Me,
The immortal God, the almighty Deity;
Father of all, that cannot wearied be.
I am the eternal Viol of all things,
Whereby the melody so sweetly rings
Of heavenly music.
[ Oliver, The Pythagorean Triangle, page 175]
[Pistis
Sophia (Schwartze), p. 357; see my translation, p. 358, and Carl Schmidt's (Koptisch-gnostische
Schriften), i. 232. ] “Not till the Unit is merged in the All, whether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvanic State (negation, only from our plane), not until then is scaled that Peak of Omniscience — the Knowledge of things-in-themselves; and the Solution of the yet more awful Riddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance — the unspeakable Mystery of That which is called by the Vedantins, Parabrahman.”Of course this may be denied by the theist; but let us remember that definition, even of the most metaphysical character, will land the definer in the most preposterous contradictions.
BHAGAVAD GITA, ii. 22 |
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