The Secret Doctrine by H.
P.
Blavatsky -- Vol.
1 [[Vol.
1, Page 25]] PART I .
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
--------------------- SEVEN STANZAS TRANSLATED WITH COMMENTARIES FROM THE SECRET BOOK OF DZYAN.
[[Vol.
1, Page 26]] Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all?
what sheltered?
what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death -- yet there was nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound -- an ocean without light -- The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
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Who knows the secret?
who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being -- Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation came, Whether Its will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it -- or perchance even He knows not." "Gazing into eternity .
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Ere the foundations of the earth were laid, .
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Thou wert.
And when the subterranean flame Shall burst its prison and devour the frame .
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Thou shalt be still as Thou wert before And knew no change, when time shall be no more.
Oh!
endless thought, divine E TERNITY." [[Vol.
1, Page]] 27 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
COSMIC EVOLUTION.
In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.
--------------------- STANZA I.
1.
T HE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
2.
T IME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
3.
U NIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO A H-HI TO CONTAIN IT.
4.
T HE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT.
T HE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.
5.
D ARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.
6.
T HE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, AND THE U NIVERSE, THE SON OF N ECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN P ARANISHPANNA, TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS AND YET IS NOT.
N AUGHT WAS.
7.
T HE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; THE VISIBLE THAT WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON-BEING -- THE ONE BEING.
8.
A LONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE D ANGMA.
9.
B UT WHERE WAS THE D ANGMA WHEN THE A LAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN P ARAMARTHA AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS A NUPADAKA?
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 28 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA II.
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W HERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF M ANVANTARIC DAWN?
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I N THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR A H-HI P ARANISHPANNA.
THE PRODUCERS OF FORM FROM NO-FORM -- THE ROOT OF THE WORLD -- THE D EVAMATRI AND S VABHAVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON-BEING.
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W HERE WAS SILENCE?
W HERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT?
N O, THERE WAS NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND; NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH, WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT.
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T HE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE G ERM; THE M ATRIPADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN.
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H ER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF M AYA.
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T HE SEVEN SONS WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT.
D ARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, S VABHAVAT; AND S VABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
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T HESE TWO ARE THE G ERM, AND THE G ERM IS ONE.
T HE U NIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE D IVINE THOUGHT AND THE D IVINE BOSOM.
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------- STANZA III.
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T HE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE.
T HE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE THE BUD OF THE LOTUS.
2.
T HE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS: T HE DARKNESS THAT BREATHES OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE.
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D ARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE MOTHER-DEEP.
T HE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, THE RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON-ETERNAL GERM, WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD-EGG.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 29 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
4.
T HEN THE THREE FALL INTO THE FOUR.
T HE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE.
T HE LUMINOUS EGG, WHICH IN ITSELF IS THREE, CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK-WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE.
5.
The doctrine of the periodic restoration or recurrence of all things to their original state after vast cycles.
The 'seven eternities' of slumber and the 'new wheel' imply periodic cosmic cycles of dissolution and re-emergence, with the universe returning to and re-emerging from the same undifferentiated state.
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The divine is described almost entirely through negation — 'Nor Aught nor Nought existed,' 'There was not death,' 'nought immortal,' 'Whether Its will created or was mute' — transcending all positive categories.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The entire passage is a narrative of cosmic origin, describing the transition from absolute non-being through the germ, the egg, and the first vibration to the emergence of the manifested universe.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The supreme principle is radically concealed: 'Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?' and 'The Most High Seer…He knows it — or perchance even He knows not,' placing the ultimate beyond all knowledge.
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
The ultimate principle is described as having no parts or divisions: 'the only One,' 'the One form of existence,' 'the germ is one' — pure undivided being prior to all differentiation.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text describes a cascade from the 'Eternal Parent' through the 'One Ray' into 'seven inside, seven outside' and the 'luminous egg' — a chain flowing downward from a single transcendent source through successive levels.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The passage repeatedly invokes masculine-feminine generative principles at the cosmic level: 'Father, Mother and Son were once more one,' 'Darkness alone was Father-Mother, Svabhavat,' establishing gender as a structural feature of creation itself.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The text is framed as a 'Secret Doctrine' translated from a 'Secret Book of Dzyan,' with the explicit question 'Who knows the secret?' marking it as esoteric knowledge reserved for the initiated.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
The pre-creative and creative principle is explicitly described as 'boundless, infinite, causeless' and 'stretched boundless' throughout 'universal space,' affirming ontological infinity.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The entire pre-creative and early creative state described — darkness, slumbering waters of life, the luminous egg, the ray — constitutes a non-physical dimension of reality imperceptible to ordinary senses.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage traces a directional process from undifferentiated unity ('the One form of existence') through the germ, the egg, and the ray into differentiated multiplicity — a staged descent from spirit toward form.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The 'One Solitary Ray' that drops into the Mother-Deep and causes the egg to thrill functions as a mediating creative principle between the transcendent source and the emerging world, analogous to a logos.
The Hermetic doctrine that THE ALL is Mind, and the Universe is mental in nature — a created thought held in the mind of THE ALL. Distinct from unity_of_being in specifying WHAT the underlying oneness is (mind, not an unspecified single substance), and from logos (a mediating ordering word BETWEEN a transcendent God and a separate material world) in collapsing that mediation entirely — under mentalism there is no world outside mind to mediate to.
The universe is described as 'concealed in the Divine Thought and the Divine Bosom' and the 'Eternal Egg' is triggered by a ray — suggesting the cosmos is a mental or thought-based emanation, though not as explicitly as in The Kybalion.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage centers on 'the only One breathed breathless by itself, other than It there nothing since has been' and 'Alone the One form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless' — the absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all flows.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The text employs deliberate contradictions — 'Nor Aught nor Nought existed,' 'There was not death yet there was nought immortal,' 'the One Being' that is also 'eternal non-being' — to destabilise ordinary conceptual frameworks.
The Hermetic doctrine of a measured swing or pendulum motion between poles — action and reaction, flow and outflow, rise and fall — operating in mental, physical, and cosmic-historical registers alike. Distinct from apocatastasis (cosmic-scale eschatological restoration after vast cycles) in naming a constant, ever-present oscillation rather than a singular restorative event.
The cyclical structure of 'seven eternities' and the 'new wheel' implies a measured cosmic oscillation between periods of slumber and manifestation.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The fundamental claim of the passage is that all existence is one: 'Father, Mother and Son were once more one,' 'the germ is one,' 'the only One breathed breathless by itself' — non-duality as the ground of all.
The Hermetic doctrine that nothing rests — matter, energy, mind, and spirit are a single continuum differing only in rate of vibration, from the grossest matter to the least material spirit. Distinct from cosmic_sympathy (affinity resonating BETWEEN separate things) in being a claim about what constitutes any one thing in the first place, and from magical_equilibrium (Lévi's operational balancing technique, which presupposes some vibration doctrine rather than stating this general principle).
Stanza III opens with 'The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude' — vibration as the fundamental dynamic principle initiating cosmic manifestation.