3.11. The web of the Universe expands when the Heat of Fire is upon it; it contracts when the heat of the Root of Matter touches it. Then the Elements with their respective Powers, or Intelligences dissociate and scatter, to return into the source of the Root of Matter at the end of the great cycle and merge with it. When the web is cooling, it becomes radiant, the Elements expand and contract through their own selves and hearts; they embrace infinitude.
3.12. Then the self-existent plastic Essence sends the primordial Electric Entity to electrify into life, and separate primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. (i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter). Each of these is a part of the structure of the Universe. Reflecting the Primeval Light (Mahat) like a mirror (It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter), each becomes in turn a world (like a fire that can light an endless amount of candles, without diminishing its flame).
10. Father-Mother spin a web whose upper end is fastened to Spirit (Purusha), the light of the one Darkness, and the lower one to Matter (Prakriti) its (the Spirit’s) shadowy end; and this web is the Universe spun out of the two substances made in one, which is Swabhava (a).
Brahma, as “the germ of unknown Darkness,” is the material from which all evolves and develops “as the web from the spider, as foam from the water,” etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahma the “Creator” is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahma “expands” and becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance. (SD1, 83)
Father-Mother: the male and female principles in root-nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which is the Universe, or the Son. (SD1, 41)
Purusha: Spirit. (SD1, 83)
Prakriti: Matter (SD1, 83)
Darkness: Darkness, then, is the eternal matrix in which the sources of light appear and disappear. “Darkness is Father-Mother: light their son,” says an old Eastern proverb. (SD1, 40-4) …The essence of darkness being absolute light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or the term of absolute rest, or non-being, as it appears to our finite minds. … According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya. (SD1, 70)
Svabhava: the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of “being.” In the Ekasloka-Shastra of Nagarjuna (the Lung-shu of China) called by the Chinese the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the original word of Yeu is “Being” or “Subhava,” “the Substance giving substance to itself,” also explained by him as meaning “without action and with action,” “the nature which has no nature of its own.” Subhava, from which Svabhavat, is composed of two words: Su “fair,” “handsome,” “good”; Sva, “self”; and bhava, “being” or “states of being.” (SD1, 61)
Spirit-Substance spin a web whose upper end is fastened to Spirit, the matter of the Pure Spirit, and the lower one to Matter, Spirit’s shadowy end; and the web is the Universe spun out of the two substances made in one, which is Svhabhava, the plastic essence that fills the Universe.
11. It (the Web) expands when the breath of fire (the Father) is upon it; it contracts when the breath of the mother (the root of Matter) touches it. Then the sons (the Elements with their respective Powers, or Intelligences) dissociate and scatter, to return into their mother’s bosom at the end of the “great day” and rebecome one with her (a). When it (the Web) is cooling, it becomes radiant, its sons expand and contract through their own selves and hearts; they embrace infinitude. (b)
The expanding of the Universe under the breath of Fire is very suggestive in the light of the “Fire mist” period of which modern science speaks so much, and knows in reality so little.
Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the heavenly bodies into their primeval one element, explains the commentary. “Once disintegrated into its primal constituent by getting within the attraction and reach of a focus, or centre of heat (energy), of which many are carried about to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourised and held in “the bosom of the Mother” until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic matter (nebulae) will, by giving it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new growth. (SD1, 83-84)
There is heat internal and heat external in every atom,” say the manuscript Commentaries, to which the writer has had access; “the breath of the Father (or Spirit) and the breath (or heat) of the Mother (matter);” (SD1, 84)
The expanding and contracting of the Web — i.e., the world stuff or atoms — expresses here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean of that which we may call the noumenon of matter emanated by Swabhavat, which causes the universal vibration of atoms. (SD1, 84)
But even this will be found irreconcileable, unless this “something besides heat” is ticketed “Causeless Heat,” the “Breath of Fire,” the all-creative Force plus absolute intelligence, which physical science is not likely to accept. (SD1, 85)
12. Then Svabhava sends Fohat to harden the atoms. Each (of these) is a part of the web (Universe). Reflecting the “Self-Existent Lord” (Primeval Light) like a mirror, each becomes in turn a world.* . . .
* This is said in the sense that the flame from a fire is endless, and that the lights of the whole Universe could be lit at one simple rush-light without diminishing its flame.
“Fohat hardens the atoms”; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter. “He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms” (MSS. Commentaries.)
Fohat: It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation “Cosmic Electricity” sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly known properties of electricity must, in this case, be added others, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that modern science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain-activity are attended by electrical phenomena. (SD1, 85)
Self-Existent Lord: Primeval Light. The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahma or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says Sankhya Sara (p. 16); hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, “That Mahat which was first produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as “I,” that is said to be the second Creation” (Anugita, ch. xxvi.). (SD1, 76)
All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a) the identity of “Father-Mother” with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers” (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity — for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity — electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “There exists an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od,† Ob, and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” (Eliphas Levi’s Kabala): — the first Light of the primordial Elohim — the Adam, “male and female” — or (scientifically) electricity and life. (SD1, 76)
Primordial matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but “a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her first-born, the “four sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,” — the entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of the seven primal “centres of Forces,” or atoms, that develop later into the great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub-elements, known to science. (SD1, 82)
Then the self-existent plastic Essence sends the primordial Electric Entity to electrify into life, and separate primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. (i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter). Each of these is a part of the structure of the Universe. Reflecting the Primeval Light (Mahat) like a mirror (It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter), each becomes in turn a world, (like a fire that can light an endless amount of candles, without diminishing its flame).
No comments:
Post a Comment