No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the verses in the Purana, that treat of "creation." Therein Brahma is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated subsequently for the work of "creation." When a translator says, "And from him proceed the potencies to be created, after they had become the real cause": "and from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become the real cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more correct?
Save that one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can be referred.
"Worthiest of ascetics!
through its potency -- i.e.
, through the potency of that cause -- every created thing comes by its inherent or proper nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as contrasted with upadana, the material cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhana implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadana can be speculated upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as the ideal in contradistinction to the real -- or Parabrahm and Isvara -- can find no room in published speculations, since [[Vol.
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that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized.
Hence the "Eternal Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness.
The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned.
In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence.
And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion -- to the limited senses of those who describe this indescribable -- it is unconsciousness and immoveableness.
Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated of water -- wetness being its own attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things.
Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious of it.
But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one.
No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory.
To forget is synonymous with not to remember.
How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or differences.
It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things according to the appearances they assume for ourselves.
We call absolute consciousness "unconsciousness," because it seems to us that it must necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, "Darkness," because to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice.
We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious absolute consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves.
But this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness.
[[Vol.
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STANZA II.
-- Continued .
3.
T HE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM ( a ); THE MATRI-PADMA ( mother lotus ) HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN ( b ).* ( a ) The ray of the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent light or life, and flashes into the "Germ" -- the point in the Mundane Egg, represented by matter in its abstract sense.
But the term "Point" must not be understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these collectively form "the Germ;" or rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.
( b ) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is Padma , the water-lily of India.
The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity,** the active, male, generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the light of the fire, for the passive female principle from which everything in this Universe emanated.
Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother, and Fire is the Father.
Sir W.
Jones (and before him archaic botany) showed that the seeds of the Lotus contain -- even before they germinate -- perfectly formed leaves, the miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its production .
.
.
the seed of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready formed.*** (See Part II., "The Lotus Flower as an Universal Symbol.") This explains the sentence "The Mother had not yet swollen" -- the form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea in Archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic.
(See foot-note to Stanza III.) ** Even in Christianity.
(See Part II., "Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.") *** Gross, "The Heathen Religion," p.
195.
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simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man.
The popular reasons given are, firstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.
Secondly, the fact that the Lotus plant grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above.
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The passage extensively describes the Absolute through negation: 'the Unknown and Unknowable MOVER,' 'unconsciousness and immoveableness,' 'Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness,' and that 'no human reason, even that of an adept, can conceive' it.
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 Lotus is explicitly described as 'a very ancient and favourite simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man,' making each level a legible map of the others.
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 passage narrates the primordial moment of cosmic origin: 'THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM; THE MATRI-PADMA HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN,' describing how the universe came into being from the Absolute.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The passage repeatedly emphasizes the radical concealment of the supreme principle: 'that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an adept, can conceive' and 'the Eternal Breath which knows itself not.'
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
The passage describes Absolute Consciousness as containing 'the cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one,' and states it is 'unconsciousness and immoveableness' to limited senses, indicating pure undivided being without composite attributes.
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 Absolute through 'potencies' to material creation, with the ray flashing into the Germ and the Matri-Padma swelling as successive stages of descent.
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 explicitly states that Fire is the 'active, male, generative principle' and Ether/Water is the 'passive female principle from which everything in this Universe emanated,' presenting the masculine-feminine generative pair as a universal structural feature of creation.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage opens by stating 'No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real sense of the verses in the Purana,' indicating an outer meaning concealing an inner truth accessible only to 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 passage refers to 'the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter,' suggesting a cosmos without bounds.
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 passage describes 'the immaterial world' where 'the spiritual prototypes of all things exist... before those things become materialised on Earth,' a non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical.
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 describes a directional process from the unconditioned Absolute through the ray into the Germ and the swelling of the Matri-Padma, with 'spiritual prototypes of all things exist[ing] in the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.'
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 states the Lotus is 'a very ancient and favourite simile for the Kosmos itself, and also for man,' making the human being a small-scale image of the entire cosmos.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage centers on the 'one (causeless) ideal cause,' the 'Unknown and Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing,' as the absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity flows.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The passage uses apparent contradictions as teaching devices: 'it is unconsciousness and immoveableness' despite being 'Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion,' and 'the Eternal Breath which knows itself not.'
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The passage presents Fire (active, male, generative) and Ether/Water (passive, female) as two poles of the same creative principle, 'the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane).'
The doctrine that reality has two registers — an Absolute truth as the divine or ultimate mind knows it, and a Relative truth as finite human reason perceives and must act on — with both held as legitimate on their own plane rather than the second being simply an error to correct. Distinct from apophatic_theology (a claim about how the divine may be described, by negation) and unity_of_being (a claim that being is ultimately one) in being a claim about two coexisting registers of truth-claim itself.
The passage distinguishes between what the Absolute is in itself ('Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion') and how it appears to limited minds ('unconsciousness and immoveableness'), holding both registers as legitimate on their own plane.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The passage asserts that 'Save that one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can be referred' and that Absolute Consciousness contains all three aspects of cognition 'all three one,' expressing non-duality as a theological claim.
A vertical structure connecting cosmic levels — a tree, pillar, mountain, or ladder linking heaven, earth, and underworld around which the cosmos is organised. Yggdrasil binding the Nine Worlds in Norse cosmology, the Kalevala's Sampo as world-pillar, the Mayan ceiba, the Vedic Aśvattha, the shamanic central tree of Eliade's analyses. Cosmic-structural in character: distinct from sefirot_tree (a kabbalistic emanation diagram) and emanation_hierarchy (an ontological cascade); world_tree_axis is the cosmos's spine rather than the divine's outflow.
The Lotus 'grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above,' presenting a vertical structure connecting cosmic levels.