Page 37 (part 7)

It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamt of by the most spiritually disposed chemists and physicists. The above views were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest chemist in Russia, and a recognised authority even in Europe -- the late Professor Butlerof. True, he was defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the materializations, so called, in which he believed as Professors Zollner, and Hare did, as Mr. A. Russell Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, and many another Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or secretly. But his argument with regard to the nature of the essence that acts behind the physical phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less scientific and authoritative for all that, and apply admirably to the case in hand. Science has no right to deny to the Occultists their claim to a more profound knowledge of the so-called Forces; which, they say, are only the effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet supersensuous, and beyond any kind of matter with which they (the Scientists) have hitherto become acquainted. The most science can do is to assume the attitude of agnosticism and to maintain it. Then it can say: "Your case is no more proven than is ours; but we confess to knowing nothing in reality either about Force or matter, or that which lies at the bottom of the so-called correlations of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove who is right and who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show courtesy instead of scoffing at each other." But to do this requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of that prestige -- however false -- of infallibility , which the men of Science have acquired among the ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. To blend the two sciences, the archaic and the modern, requires first of all the abandonment of the actual materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious mysticism and even the study of old magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily explained. Just as in old alchemical works the real meaning of the substances and elements meant are concealed under the most ridiculous metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of the Elements (say of fire) concealed in the Vedas, and especially in the Puranas, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no meaning, then indeed all those long legends and allegories about the sacredness of the three types of fire, and the forty - nine original fires -- [[Vol. 1, Page]] 521 CHEMICAL GODS. personified by the Sons of Daksha's daughters and the Rishis, their husbands, "who with the first son of Brahma and his three descendants constitute the forty-nine fires" -- would be idiotic verbiage and no more. But it is not so. Every fire has a distinct function and meaning in the worlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has, moreover, in its essential nature a corresponding relation to one of the human psychic faculties, besides its well determined chemical and physical potencies when coming in contact with the terrestrially differentiated matter. Science has no speculations to offer upon fire per se; Occultism and ancient religious science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely veiled phraseology of the Puranas, where (as in the Vayu Purana ) many of the qualities of the personified fires are explained. Thus, Pavaka is electric, or Vaidyuta , fire; Pavamana, the fire produced by friction , (or Nirmathya ) : and Suchi is solar (or Saura ) fire * -- all these three being the sons of Abhimanin, the Agni (fire), eldest son of Brahma and of Swaha. Pavaka, moreover, is made parent to Kavyavahana, the fire of the Pitris: Suchi to Havyavahana -- the fire of the gods; and Pavamana, to Saharaksha, the fire of the Asuras. Now all this shows that the writers of the Puranas were perfectly conversant with the "Forces" of Science and their correlations; moreover, with the various qualities of the latter in their bearing upon those psychic and physical phenomena which receive no credit and are unknown to physical science now. Very naturally, when an Orientalist, -- especially one with materialistic tendencies -- reads that these are only appellations of fire employed in the invocations and rituals, he calls this "Tantrika superstition and mystification"; and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling, than to give attention to the secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their explanation in the physical correlations of forces, so far as known. So little credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Aryans for knowledge, that even such glaring passages as in Book I. chap. ii, Vishnu Purana , are left without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean? -- "Then Ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of sound and other qualities, existed as distinguishable according to their properties, . . . . but possessing many and various energies and being unconnected, they could not , without combination , create living beings, not having blended with each other. . . . Having combined . . . they assumed through mutual association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and directed by Spirit . . ." etc. This means, of course, that the writers were perfectly acquainted with correlation and were well posted about the origin of Kosmos from the "undiscrete Principle" -- Avyaktanugrahena , as applied [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Called the "drinker of waters," solar heat causing water to evaporate. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 522 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. to Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti conjointly, and not to "Avyakta, either First Cause, or matter," as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no "miraculous creation," but taught the evolution of atoms (on our physical plane), and their first differentiation from laya into the protyle , as Mr. Crookes has suggestively named matter, or primordial substance beyond the zero-line: -- there where we place Mulaprakriti , the " root -Principle" of the world stuff and of all in the world. This can be easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly-published catechism of the Visishtadwaita Vedantins , an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated and taught in the XIth century (its founder, Ramanujacharya, being born in A.D. 1017), at a time when European "Science" still believed in the squareness and flatness of the Earth, of Cosmas-Indicopleustes of the VIth century.