Page 15 (part 9)

198, of the same Vishnu Purana it is written, "in this manner were the seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat to Earth" (?). Between Mahat or Maha-Buddhi and "Water, etc.," the difference is very considerable. ** According to the great metaphysician Hegel also. For him Nature was a perpetual becoming. A purely esoteric conception. Creation or Origin, in the Christian sense of the term, is absolutely unthinkable. As the above-quoted thinker said: "God (the Universal Spirit) objectivises himself as Nature , and again rises out of it." [[Vol. 1, Page]] 258 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as air is familiar to us now, cease to be as at present hypothetical, and also an "agent" for so many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Akasa subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, a partial familiarity with the characteristic of matter -- permeability -- which should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next element added to our resources in the next Round, permeability will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this will seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more. Let us return to the life-cycle now. Without entering at length upon the description given of the higher LIVES, we must direct our attention at present simply to the earthly beings and the earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the first Round by the "Devourers" which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, the aerobes do, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so-called Azoic age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious. " Whatsoever quits the Laya State , becomes active life; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION ( the alchemical solvent of Life ) ; Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE , which is neither Spirit nor Matter , both being the absolute life , latent. " ( Book of Dzyan , Comm. III. , par. 18 ). . . . " Spirit is the first differentiation of ( and in ) SPACE ; and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor matter -- that is IT -- the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit and Matter , which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the ONE LIFE or the Intra - Cosmic Breath. " Once more we will say -- like must produce like . Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic atom whether single or complex, and there is life [[Vol. 1, Page]] 259 ATOMS ARE INVISIBLE LIVES. even in laya just as a man in a profound cataleptic state -- to all appearance a corpse -- is still a living being. When the "Devourers" (in whom the men of science are invited to see, with some show of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to this); when the "Devourers," we say, have differentiated "the fire-atoms" by a peculiar process of segmentation, the latter become life-germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the life-germs produce lives of another kind, which work on the structure of our globes. * * * * Thus, in the first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives, i.e. , formed into a sphere -- had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold brightness, nor form nor colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became now in our Round the fire we know throughout the system. The Earth was in her first rupa, the essence of which is the Akasic principle named *** "that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Eliphas Levi calls "the imagination of Nature,"|| probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do. " It is through and from the radiations of the seven bodies of the seven orders of Dhyanis , that the seven discrete quantities ( Elements ), whose motion and harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter , are born. " ( Commentary. ) [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- || Speaking of it in his Preface to the "History of Magic" Eliphas Levi says: "It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from it -- that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it -- that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place. . . . . Astral Light, acting under the impulsion of powerful wills, destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things. . . . God created it on that day when he said: Fiat Lux , and it is directed by the Egregores , i.e. , the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and action." Eliphas Levi ought to have added that the astral light, or primordial substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light , L UX, esoterically explained, is the body of those Spirits themselves , and their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane and the reflected radiance of the Divine Light emanating from the collective body of those who are called the " L IGHTS" and the " F LAMES." But no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence and in such flowing language, as Eliphas Levi. He leads his reader through the most lovely, gorgeously blooming valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren rocky island. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 260 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. The Second Round brings into manifestation the second element A IR, that element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. There have been two occultists only in Europe who have discovered and even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the modern chemists is poison compared with the real universal solvent which could never be thought of unless it existed in nature.