The impalpable atoms of gold scattered through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are not only present there but that they alone give his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the gold to the quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon.
But the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted from the quartz, whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality of things separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are hidden.
Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of things in which no Maya can have any influence.
It is here that the teachings of esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of the greatest importance; but they are secret.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 46 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
STANZA I.
-- Continued .
8.
A LONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP ( a ); AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT A LL- P RESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE " O PENED E YE"* OF THE D ANGMA ( b ).** ( 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 Prabhavapyaya, "the place, or rather plane, whence emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things," says a commentator.
It is not the "Mother of the World," as translated by Wilson (see Book I., Vishnu Purana); 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 Universe." The Puranic Commentators explain it by Karana -- "Cause" -- but the Esoteric philosophy, by the ideal spirit of that cause.
It is, in its secondary stage, the Svabhavat 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 Vedantin views his Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti, the one under two aspects.
It seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the possibility of the Vedanta, and the Uttara-Mimansa especially, having been "evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists," [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In India it is called "The Eye of Siva," but beyond the great range it is known as "Dangma's opened eye" in esoteric phraseology.
** Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jivanmukta, the highest adept, or rather a Mahatma so-called.
His "opened eye" is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, i.e.
, the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable.
This faculty is intimately connected with the "third eye," which mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men.
Fuller explanations will be found in Book II.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 47 THE EYE OF DANGMA.
whereas, it is on the contrary Buddhism (of Gautama, the 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.* The above, according to the teachings of Sri Sankaracharya,** is undeniable.
( 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 Vedantin 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 mesmerised 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.
------- STANZA I.
-- Continued .
9.
B UT WHERE WAS THE D ANGMA WHEN THE A LAYA OF THE U NIVERSE ( Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi ) WAS IN P ARAMARTHA ( a ) ( Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness ) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS A NUPADAKA ( b )?
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * And yet, one, claiming authority, namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied this fact.
This is what he taught his audience, on June the 4th, 1888, in his annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain: "Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism .
.
.
to attain sublime heights of knowledge.
It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine .
.
.
withheld from ordinary men" (!!) And, again: " .
.
.
When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known." And then, contradicting himself, the learned lecturer forthwith informs his audience that "We learn from Lalita-Vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama's time." (!!) But the lecturer seems quite unaware that this kind of torture and self-maceration is precisely the lower form of Yoga, Hatha Yoga, which was "little known" and yet so " common " in Gautama's time.
** It is even argued that all the Six Darsanas (Schools of philosophy) show traces of Buddha's influence, being either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching!
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The common mortal 'can form no conception of the reality of things separated from the Maya which veils them,' indicating the ultimate is beyond ordinary conceptual grasp.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The gold-in-quartz analogy is used to 'shadow forth' the noumenon-phenomenon relation, mapping a microcosmic relation onto the macrocosmic.
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.
Stanza 8 describes the primordial state: 'A LONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE, CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE' — a narrative of cosmic origin.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The noumenon is hidden by Maya and imperceptible to the naked eye; only the Initiate with the 'Eye of Dangma' can perceive it, making the ultimate radically concealed.
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 passage describes a cascade from the One Form of Existence through Svabhavat, Parabrahm, and Mulaprakriti down to the phenomenal world, each level a differentiation of the one source.
A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).
The Initiate is 'rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his predecessors,' implying a chain of transmission across time.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The 'Eye of Dangma' is defined as 'the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable' of the essence of things beyond Maya — salvation through unmediated experiential knowledge.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage explicitly states that the esoteric teachings on Nidanas and the Four Truths 'are secret,' and the entire text is framed as concealed wisdom for the Initiate.
The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. Distinct from inner_light (a static luminous quality or spark, not an alternate seat of identity and agency) and kingdom_within (the claim that the divine realm generally is present inside the individual, not this specific personal higher consciousness).
The 'Eye of Dangma' belongs to the Jivanmukta/Mahatma — a purified soul whose inner spiritual eye perceives what the common mortal cannot, functioning as a higher seat of consciousness.
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 One Form of Existence is described as 'boundless, infinite' and 'stretched' throughout 'universal space,' implying an ontologically infinite cosmos.
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 noumenal essence hidden behind the veil of Maya, accessible only to the Initiate's spiritual eye, constitutes a non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical world.
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 defines Prabhavapyaya as 'the plane whence emerges the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,' naming a directional descent-and-return process rather than a static hierarchy.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The passage applies the human state of 'dreamless sleep' allegorically to the Universe, and describes how 'the individual is conscious in a different plane of his being' in parallel with cosmic states.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The 'One Form of Existence' (Prabhavapyaya) is explicitly described as boundless, infinite, causeless, and the singular basis and source of all things — a textbook monadic first principle.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The 'One Form of Existence' as the singular basis and source of all things, from which heterogeneity developed from homogeneity, asserts ultimate oneness of being.