naught else than the absolute Essence itself,” says Shankarâchârya. IT—is “the Spirit of the Fire,” not Fire itself; therefore, “the attributes of the latter, Heat or Flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of that of which that Spirit is the unconscious cause.” Is not the above sentence the true key‐note of later Rosicrucian philosophy? Parabrahman is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and eternity, the “THAT” and “THIS” to which distributive aggregates can not be applied.(36) “In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only;”(37) and the great Shankarâchârya explains that “_This_” refers to the Universe (Jagat); the words, “in the beginning,” meaning before the reproduction of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the _Upanishads_, which state, as in the Secret Doctrine, that “This” cannot create, they do not deny a Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of creators; they simply refuse, very logically, to attribute “creation” and especially formation—something finite—to an Infinite Principle. With them, Parabrahman is a passive because an absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited omniscience and omnipotence that are refused to the latter, because these are still attributes, reflected in man’s perceptions; and because Parabrahman, being the Supreme ALL, the ever invisible Spirit and Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes, the term Absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned from being connected with it. And if the Vedântins postulate attributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it Îshvara _plus_ Mâyâ, and Avidyâ (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than Ignorance), it is difficult to find any Atheism in this conception.(38) Since there can be neither two Infinites nor two Absolutes in a Universe supposed to be boundless, this Self‐Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating personally. To the senses and in the perceptions of finite _beings_, THAT is Non‐_Being_, in the sense that it is the One _Be‐ness_; for, in this ALL lies concealed its coëternal and coëval emanation or inherent radiation, which, becoming periodically Brahmâ (the male‐female Potency), expands itself into the manifested Universe. “Nârâyana moving on the [abstract] Waters of Space,” is transformed into the Waters of concrete substance moved by him, who now becomes the manifested Word or Logos. The orthodox Brâhmans, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and Advaitins, calling them Atheists, are forced, if Manu is any authority in this matter, to accept the death of Brahmâ, the Creator, at the expiration of every Age of this deity—100 Divine Years, a period which in our years requires fifteen figures to express. Yet no philosopher among them will view this “death” in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance from the manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.