Lines 1-2

Where were the Builders, the Luminous Sons Of Manvantaric Dawn?… (a)

(a) These are the real creators of the Universe. This doctrine deals only with our Planetary System. They are the architects of it as the “Watchers” of the Seven Spheres which exoterically are the seven planets.

The “Seven Eternities” applies both to the Mahâkalpa or “the Great Age of Brahmâ” as well as to the Solar Pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System on a higher plane.

There are many kinds of Pralaya (dissolution of a thing visible), as will be shown elsewhere.

In the Unknown Darkness in their Ah-hi 80 Paranishpanna. The Producers of Form 81 from No-Form 82—the Root of the World—the Devâmatri 83 and Svabhâvat, rested in the Bliss of Non-being (b).

(b) “Paranishpanna” is the summum bonum, the Absolute, hence the same as Paranirvâna.

Besides being the final state, it is that condition of subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the One Absolute Truth (Paramârthasatya) on its own plane.

It is that state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being, which, as explained, is Absolute Being.

Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna.

But there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious Being.

The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramârtha, the Self-analysing Consciousness (Svasamvedâna), is no bliss, but simply extinction for Seven Eternities.

Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun will get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while a man will.

It is only “with a mind clear and undarkened by Personality, and an assimilation of the merit of manifold Existences devoted to Being in its collectivity [the whole living and sentient Universe],” that one gets rid of personal existence, merging into, becoming one with, the Absolute,84 and continuing in full possession of Paramârtha.

… Where was Silence? Where the ears To Sense It? No, there was neither Silence nor Sound (a)

(a) The idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature, to realize which in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing.

A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination.

The question whether hydrogen and oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one; some arguing that since they are found again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while.

Others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being.

But neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be itself.

Existence as water for oxygen and hydrogen may be said to be a state of Non-Being, which is more real Being than their existence as gases.

It may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the Nights of Brahmâ—to awaken or reäppear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to what we call existence.

naught save Ceaseless Eternal Breath,85 which knows itself not (b).

(b) The “Breath” of the One Existence is only used in application to the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic Esotericism.

In other cases, it is replaced by its equivalent on the material plane—Motion.

The One Eternal Element, or element-containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every sense; coëxistent with which are Endless Duration, Primordial (hence Indestructible) Matter, and Motion—Absolute “Perpetual Motion,” which is the “Breath” of the One Element. This Breath, as seen, can never cease, not even during the Pralayic Eternities.

But the Breath of the One Existence does not, all the same, apply to the One Causeless Cause or the All-Be-ness, in contradistinction to All-Being, which is Brahmâ, or the Universe.

Brahmâ, the four-faced god, who, after lifting the Earth out of the waters, “accomplished the creation,” is held to be only the Instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the Ideal Cause.

No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the verses in the Purânas, that treat of “creation.”

Therein Brahmâ is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the work of “creation.”

For instance, in the Vishnu Purâna,86 the translation, “and from him proceed the potencies to be created, after they have become the real cause,” would perhaps be more correctly rendered, “and from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become the real cause [on the material plane].”

Save that One Causeless Ideal Cause there is no other to which the Universe can be referred. “Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency—i.e., through the potency of that cause—every created thing comes by its inherent or [pg 086]proper nature.”

If, “in the Vedânta and Nyâya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as contrasted with upâdâna, the material cause, [and] in the Sânkhya, pradhâna implies the functions of both”; in the Esoteric Philosophy, which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedânta as expounded by the Advaita Vedântists, none but the upâdâna can be speculated upon.

That which is, in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Visishthadvaitas), as the ideal in contradistinction to the real—or Parabrahman and Îshvara—can find no room in published speculations, since that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an Adept, can conceive.

To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception to be cognized—both limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahman. Hence the “Eternal Breath which knows itself not.” Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness.

The Boundless can have no relation to the Bounded and the Conditioned. In the Occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable Mover, or the Self-Existing, is the Absolute Divine Essence.

And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion—to the limited senses of those who describe this indescribable—it is unconsciousness and immovableness.

Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated of water. This is because wetness is its own attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things.

Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications. It is something to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious of it.

But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one.

No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge which happens to be recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory.

To forget is synonymous with not to remember.

How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or differences!

It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things according to the appearances they assume for ourselves.

We call Absolute Consciousness “unconsciousness” just as we call the Absolute “Darkness”. This is because to our finite understanding, it appears quite impenetrable.

Yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice.

We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious Absolute Consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves.

But this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness.