3.10. 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 Swabhava, the plastic
essence that fills the Universe.
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)
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 are infinite.
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).
