Western European stream·Esoteric Buddhism·CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XL
THE UNIVEBSE.
In all Oriental literature bearing on the con- stitution of all the cosmos, frequent reference is made to the days and the nights of Brahma ; the inbreathings and the outbreathings of the creative principle, the periods of manvantara1 and the periods of pralaya. This idea runs into various Eastern mythologies, but in its symbolical aspects we need not follow it here. The process in Nature to which it refers is of course the alternate succession of activity and repose that is observable at every step of the great ascent from the infinitely small to the in- finitely great. Man has a manvantara and pra- laya every four-and-twenty hours, his periods of waking and sleeping ; vegetation follows the same rule from year to year as it subsides and revives with the seasons. The world too has its
1As transliterated into English, this word may be written either
manwantara or manvantara ; and the proper pronunciation is something between the two, with the accent on the second sylla- ble. THE UNIVERSE. 24JI manvantaras and pralayas, when the tide-wave of humanity approaches its shore, runs through the evolution of its seven races, and ebbs away again ; and such a manvantara has been treated by most exoteric religions as the whole cycle of eternity. The major manvantara of our planetary chain is that which comes to an end when the last Dhyan Chohan of the seventh round of perfected humanity passes into Nirvana. And the expression has thus to be regarded as one of considerable elasticity. It may be said in- deed to have infinite elasticity, and that is one explanation of the confusion which has reigned in all treatises on Eastern religions in their pop- ular aspects. All the root-words transferred to popular literature from the secret doctrine have a seven-fold significance, at least for the initiate, while the uninitiated reader, naturally suppos- ing that one word means one thing, and trying always to clear up its meaning by collating its various applications, and striking an average, gets into the most hopeless embarrassment. The planetary chain with which we are con- cerned is not the only one which has our sun as its centre. As there are other planets be- sides the Earth in our chain, so there are other chains besides this in our solar system. There are seven such, and there comes a time when
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all these go into pralaya together. This is spoken of as a solar pralaya, and within the interval between two such pralayas the vast solar manvantara covers seven pralayas and manvantaras of our — and each other — plan- etary chain. Thought is baffled, say even the adepts, in speculating as to how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great cos- mic night in which the whole universe, in its collective enormity, obeys what is manifestly the universal law of activity and repose, and with all its myriad systems passes itself into pralaya. But even that tremendous result, says esoteric science, must surely come. After the pralaya of a single planetary chain there is no necessity for a recommencement of evolutionary activity absolutely de novo. There is only a resumption of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms, which at the end of the last corresponding manvantara had reached only a partial development, are not destroyed. Their life or vital energy passes through a night or period of rest ; they also have, so to speak, a Nirvana of their own, as why should they not, these foetal and infant en- tities ? They are all like ourselves, begotten of the one element. As we have our Dhyan Cho- hans, so have they, in their several kingdoms, elemental guardians, and are as well taken care THE UNIVERSE. 249 of in the mass as humanity is in the mass. The one element not only fills space and is space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic mat- ter. When, however, the hour of the solar pralaya strikes, though the process of man's advance on his last seventh round is precisely the same as usual, each planet, instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible, as he quits it in turn, is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh round of the seventh planetary chain manvantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet, after the exit of man, merely the maya of once living and existing forms. With everv step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs, as he moves on from globe to globe the planet left behind becomes an empty chrysa- loidal case. At his departure there is an out- flow from every kingdom of its entities. Wait- ing to pass into higher forms in due time, they are nevertheless liberated, and to the day of the next evolution they will rest in their lethargic sleep in space, until brought into life again at the new solar manvantara. The old elementals will rest till they are called on to become in their turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable, and animal entities on another and a higher chain of globes on their way to become human entities,
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while the germinal entities of the lowest forms — and at that time there will remain but few of such — will hang in space, like drops of water suddenly turned into icicles. They will thaw at the first hot breath of the new solar manvantara, and form the soul of the future globes. The slow development of the vegeta- ble kingdom, up to the period we are now deal- ing with, will have been provided for by the longer interplanetary rest of man. When the solar pralaya comes, the whole purified human- ity merges into Nirvana, and from that inter- solar Nirvana will be reborn in the higher sys- tems. The strings of worlds are destroyed, and vanish like a shadow from the wall when the light is extinguished. " We have every indication," say the adepts, " that at this very moment such a solar pralaya is taking place, while there are two minor ones ending some- where." At the beginning of the solar manvantara the hitherto subjective elements of the material worlds, now scattered in cosmic dust, receiving their impulse from the new Dhyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gone higher) will form into pri- mordial ripples of life, and, separating into dif- ferentiating centres of activity, combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of evolution. THE UNIVERSE. 251 Like every other orb of space, our earth has, be- fore obtaining its ultimate materiality, to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. Nothing in this world now can give us an idea of what an ultimate stage of materiality is like. The French astronomer Flammarion, in a book called " La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes," has approached a conception of this ultimate materiality. The facts are, I am informed, with slight modifications, much as he surmises. In consequence of what he treats as secular re- frigeration, but which more truly is old age and loss of vital power, the solidification and desiccation of the earth at last reaches a point when the whole globe becomes a relaxed con- glomerate. Its period of child-bearing has gone by ; its progeny are all nurtured ; its term of life is finished. Hence its constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion and aggre- gation which held them together. And becom- ing like a corpse, which, abandoned to the work of destruction, leaves each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body, and obey in future the sway of new influences, " the attraction of the moon," suggests M. Flamma- rion, " would itself undertake the task of demo- lition by producing a tidal wave of earth parti- cles instead of an aqueous tide." This last idea must not be regarded as countenanced by oc-
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cult science except so far as it may serve' to illustrate the loss of molecular cohesion in the material of the earth. Occult physics pass fairly into the region of metaphysics, if we seek to obtain some indica- tion of the way in which evolution recommences after a universal pralaya. The one eternal, imperishable thing in the universe, which universal pralayas themselves pass over without destroying, is that which may be regarded indifferently as space, dura- tion, matter, or motion ; not as something hav- ing these four attributes, but as something which is these four things at once, and always. And evolution takes its rise in the atomic po- larity which motion engenders. In cosmogony the positive and the negative, or the active and passive, forces correspond to the male and fe- male principles. The spiritual efflux enters into the veil of cosmic matter ; the active is attracted by the passive principle, and if we may here assist imagination by having recourse to old occult symbology, the great Nag, the serpent emblem of eternity, attracts its tail to its mouth, forming thereby the circle of eter- nity, or rather cycles in eternity. The one and chief attribute of the universal spiritual principle, the unconscious but ever active life- giver, is to expand and shed ; that of the uni- THE UNIVERSE. 253 versal material principle is to gather in and fecundate. Unconscious and non-existing when separate, they become consciousness and life when brought together. The word Brahma comes from the Sanskrit root brih, to expand, grow, or fructify, esoteric cosmogony being but the vivifying expansive force of Nature in its eternal revolution. No one expression can have contributed more to mislead the human mind in basic speculation concerning the origin of things than the word "creation." Talk of cre- ation and we are continually butting against the facts. But once realize that our planet and our- selves are no more creations than an iceberg, but states of being for a given time, — that their present appearance, geological and anthropolog- ical, are transitory and but a condition concom- itant of that stage of evolution at which they have arrived, — and the way has been prepared for correct thinking. Then we are enabled to see what is meant by the one and only princi- ple or element in the universe, and by the treat- ment of that element as androgynous ; also by the proclamation of Hindu philosophy that all things are but maya, transitory states, except the one element which rests during the maha- pralayas only, — the nights of Brahma. Perhaps we have now plunged deeply enough into the fathomless mystery of the great First
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Cause. It is no paradox to say that simply by reason of ignorance do ordinanr theologians think they know so much about God. And it is no exaggeration to say that the wondrously endowed representatives of occult science, whose mortal nature has been so far elevated and purified that their perceptions range over other worlds and other states of existence, and com- mune directly with beings as much greater than ordinary mankind as man is greater than the insects of the field, — it is the mere truth, that they never occupy themselves at all with any conception remotely resembling the God of churches and creeds. Within the limits of the solar system, the mortal adept knows, of his own knowledge, that all things are accounted for by law, working on matter in its diverse forms, plus the guiding and modifying influence of the highest intelligences associated with the solar system, the Dhyan Chohans, the perfected humanity of the last preceding manvantara. These Dhyan Chohans, or planetary spirits, on whose nature it is almost fruitless to ponder until one can at least realize the nature of dis- embodied existence in one's own case, impart to the reawakening worlds at the end of a planetary chain pralaya such impulses that ev- olution feels them throughout its whole prog- ress. The limits of Nature's great law restrain THE UNIVERSE. 255 their action. They cannot say, Let there be paradise throughout space, let all men be born supremely wise and good ; they can only work through the principle of evolution, and they cannot deny to any man who is to be invested with the potentiality of development himself into a Dhyan Chohan the right to do evil if he prefers that to good. Nor can they prevent evil, if done, from producing suffering. Ob- jective life is the soil in which the life-germs are planted ; spiritual existence (the expression being used, remember, in contrast merely to grossly material existence) is the flower to be ultimately obtained. But the human germ is something more than a flower-seed ; it has lib- erty of choice in regard to growing up or grow- ing down, and it could not be developed with- out such liberty being exercised by the plant. This is the necessity of evil. But within the limits that logical necessity prescribes, the Dhyan Chohan impresses his conceptions upon the evolutionary tide, and comprehends the ori- gin of all that he beholds. Surely as we ponder in this way over the magnitude of the cyclic evolution with which esoteric science is in this way engaged, it seems reasonable to postpone considerations as to the origin of the whole cosmos. The ordinary man in this earth-life, with certainly some hundred
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many earth-lives to come, and then very much many important inter-incarnation periods (more important, that is, as regards duration and the prospect of happiness or sorrow) also in pros- pect, may surely be most wisely occupied with the inquiries whose issue will affect practical results than witli speculation in which he is practically quite uninterested. Of course from the point of view of religious speculation rest- ing on no positive knowledge of anything be- yond this life, nothing can be more important or more highly practical than conjectures as to the attributes and probable intentions of the personal, terrible Jehovah, pictured as an om- nipotent tribunal into whose presence the soul at its death is to be introdaced for judgment. But scientific knowledge of spiritual things throws back the day of judgment into a very dim perspective, the intervening period being filled with activity of all kinds. Moreover, it shows mankind that certainly, for millions and millions of centuries to come, it will not be con- fronted with any judge at all, other than that all-pervading judge, that seventh principle, or universal spirit, which exists everywhere, and, operating on matter, provokes the existence of man himself, and the world in which he lives, and the future conditions towards which he is pressing. The seventh principle, undefinable, TEE UNIVERSE. 257 incomprehensible for us at our present stages of enlightenment, is of course the only God recognized by esoteric knowledge, and no per- sonification of this can be otherwise than sym- bolical. And yet in truth esoteric knowledge, giving life and reality to ancient symbolism in one direction as often as it conflicts with modern dogma in the other, shows us how far from absolutely fabulous are even the most anthro- pomorphic notions of Deity associated by ex- oteric tradition with the beginning of the world. The planetary spirit, actually incarnated among men in the first round, was the prototype of personal Deity in all subsequent developments of the idea. The mistake made by uninstructed men in dealing with the idea is merely one of degree. The personal God of an insignificant minor manvantara has been taken for the Cre- ator of the whole cosmos, — a most natural mis- take for people forced, by knowing no more of human destiny than was included in one ob- jective incarnation, to suppose that all beyond was a homogeneous spiritual future. The God of this life, of course, for them, was the God of all lives and worlds and periods. The reader will not misunderstand me, I trust, to mean that esoteric science regards the planetary spirit of the first round as a god.
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As I say, it is concerned with the working of Nature in an immeasurable space, from an im- measurable past, and all through immeasurable future. The enormous areas of time and space in which our solar system operates is explor- able by the mortal adepts of esoteric science. Within those limits they know all that takes place and how it takes place, and they know that everything is accounted for by the con- structive will of the collective host of the planetary spirits, operating under the law of ev- olution that pervades all Nature. They com- mune with these planetary spirits, and learn from them that the law of this is the law of other solar systems as well, into the regions of which the perceptive faculties of the planetary spirits can plunge, as the perceptive faculties of the adepts themselves can plunge into the life of other planets of this chain. The law of alternating activity and repose is operating universally ; for the whole cosmos, even though at unthinkable intervals, pralaya must succeed manvantara, and manvantara pralaya. Will any one ask, To what end does this eternal succession work? It is better to con- fine the question to a single system, and ask, To what end does the original nebula arrange itself in planetary vortices of evolution, and develop worlds in which the universal spirit, reverber- THE UNIVERSE. 259 ating through matter, produces form and life and those higher states of matter in which that which we call subjective or spiritual existence is provided for ? Surely it is end enough to sat- isfy any reasonable mind that such sublimely perfected beings as the planetary spirits them- selves come thus into existence, and live a con- scious life of supreme knowledge and felicity through vistas of time which are equivalent to all we can imagine of eternity. Into this un- utterable greatness every living thing has the opportunity of passing ultimately. The spirit which is in every animated form, and which has even worked up into these from forms we are generally in the habit of calling inan- imate, will slowly but certainly progress on- wards until the working of its untiring influence in matter has evolved a human soul. It does not follow that the plants and animals around us have any principle evolved in them as yet which will assume a human form in the course of the present manvantara; but though the course of an incomplete revolution may be sus- pended by a period of natural repose, it is not rendered abortive. Eventually every spiritual monad, itself a sinless unconscious principle, will work through conscious forms on lower levels, until these, throwing off one after an- other higher and higher forms, will produce that
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in which the God-like consciousness may be fully evoked. Certainly it is not by reason of the grandeur of any human conceptions as to what would be an adequate reason for the ex- istence of the universe that such a consumma- tion can appear an insufficient purpose, not even if the final destiny of the planetary spirit him- self, after periods to which his development from the mineral forms of primeval worlds is but a childhood in the recollection of the man, is to merge his glorified individuality into that sum total of all consciousness, which esoteric meta- physics treat as absolute consciousness, which is non-consciousness. These paradoxical expres- sions are simply counters representing ideas that the human mind is not qualified to apprehend, and it is waste of time to haggle over them. These considerations supply the key to eso- teric Buddhism, a more direct outcome of the universal esoteric doctrine than any other pop- ular religion ; for the effort in its construction has been to make men love virtue for its own sake and for its good effect on their future incarnations, not to keep them in subjection to any priestly system or dogma by terrifying their fancy with the doctrine of a personal judge waiting to try them for more than their lives at their death. Mr. Lillie is mistaken, admirable as his intention has been, and sym« THE UNIVERSE. 261 pathetic as his mind evidently is with the beau- tiful morality and aspiration of Buddhism, in deducing from its temple ritual the notion of a personal God. No such conception enters into the great esoteric doctrine of Nature, of which this volume has furnished an imperfect sketch. Nor even in reference to the farthest regions of the immensity beyond our own planetary sys- tem does the adept exponent of the esoteric doctrine tolerate the adoption of an agnostic attitude. It will not suffice for him to say, "As far as the elevated senses of planetary spirits, whose cognition extends to the outer- most limits of the starry heavens, — as far as their vision can extend Nature is self-sufficing ; as to what may lie beyond we offer no hypoth- esis." What the adept really says on this head is, " The universe is boundless, and it is a stul- tification of thought to talk of any hypothesis setting in beyond the boundless, — on the other side of the limits of the limitless." That which antedates every manifestation of the universe, and would lie beyond the limit of manifestation, if such limit could ever be found, is that which underlies the manifested universe within our own purview, — matter animated by motion, its parabrahm, or spirit. Matter, space, motion, and duration constitute one and the same eternal substance of the universe.
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There is nothing else eternal absolutely. That is the first state of matter, itself perfectly un- cognizable by physical senses, which deal witlji manifested matter, another state altogether. But though thus, in one sense of the word, ma- terialistic, the esoteric doctrine, as any reader of the foregoing explanations will have seen, is as far from resembling the gross narrow-minded conception of Nature, which ordinarily goes by the name of materialism, as the north pole looks away from the south. It stoops to ma- terialism, as it were, to link its methods with the logic of that system, and ascends to the highest realms of idealism to embrace and ex- pound the most exalted aspirations of spirit. As it cannot be too frequently or earnestly re- peated, it is the union of science with Religion, — the bridge by which the most acute and cau- tious pursuers of experimental knowledge may cross over to the most enthusiastic devotee, by means of which the most enthusiastic devotee may return to earth and yet keep heaven still around him.