This Be‐ness is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the One Reality, is also symbolized by the term the Great Breath, a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute BE‐NESS—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity. It may, however, assist the student if a few further explanations are here given. Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of the “First Cause,”(48) which the Occultist more logically derives from the Causeless Cause, the “Eternal,” and the “Unknowable,” may be essentially the same as that of the consciousness which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal Reality pervading the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to the Esoteric and Vedântin tenet.(49) Parabrahman, the One Reality, the Absolute, is the field of Absolute Consciousness, _i.e._, that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object. Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two symbols or aspects of the Absolute, Parabrahman, which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective. Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all manifestation, the Great Breath assumes the character of Pre‐cosmic Ideation. It is the _fons et origo_ of Force and of all individual Consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast scheme of cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, Pre‐cosmic Root‐Substance (Mûlaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the objective planes of Nature. Just as Pre‐cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual Consciousness, so Pre‐cosmic Substance is the substratum of Matter in the various grades of its differentiation.