The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a
homogeneous basis for apparently widely different things—heterogeneity
developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their
homogeneous protoplasm and Chemists for their protyle, while Science is
looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth,
are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea into the
region of metaphysics, and postulates a “One Form of Existence” as the
basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase, the “One Form of
Existence,” is not altogether correct. The Sanskrit word is Prabhavâpyaya,
“the place [or rather plane] whence is the origination, and into which is
the resolution of all things,” as a commentator says. It is not the
“Mother of the World,” as translated by Wilson;(66) for Jagad Yoni, as
shown by Fitzedward Hall, is scarcely so much the “Mother of the World,”
or the “Womb of the World,” as the “Material Cause of the World.” The
Purânic commentators explain it by Kârana, “Cause,” but Esoteric
Philosophy, by the _ideal spirit of that cause_. In its secondary stage,
it is the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist philosopher, the Eternal Cause and
Effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self‐existent plastic Essence and
the Root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the Vedântin
views his Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It
seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the
possibility of the Vedânta, and the Uttara Mîmânsâ especially, having been
“evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists”; whereas, on the contrary, it
is Buddhism, the teaching of Gautama Buddha, that was “evoked” and
entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial
sketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the _Upanishads_ are made to
rest.(67) According to the teachings of Shrî Shankarâchârya our contention
is undeniable.(68)
(b) “Dreamless Sleep” is one of the seven states of consciousness known in
Oriental Esotericism. In each of these states a different portion of the
mind comes into action; or as a Vedântin would express it, the individual
is conscious in a different plane of his being. The term “Dreamless
Sleep,” in this case, is applied allegorically to the Universe to express
a condition somewhat analogous to that state of consciousness in man,
which, not being remembered in a waking state, seems a blank, just as the
sleep of the mesmerized subject seems to him an unconscious blank when he
returns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and acting
as a conscious individual would.
9. BUT WHERE WAS DANGMA WHEN THE ÂLAYA OF THE UNIVERSE(69) WAS IN
PARAMÂRTHA (_a_),(70) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPÂDAKA (_b_)?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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