Page 63 (part 10)

, without phosphorus no thought), burning in the fierce flames of his terrestrial passions; the conflagration fired by his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full consciousness gnawing at its heart -- a Prometheus indeed, because a conscious, hence a responsible entity.* The curse of life is great, yet how few are those men, outside some Hindu and Sufi mystics, who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive (objectively) in cor poreal being, or even the universal static Inertia personified in Brahma during his "night's" rest. For, to quote from an able article by one** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is found further on. ** By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, he became a Mahomedan, then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 245 SATAN, A CENTRIPETAL FORCE. who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim to it: -- "Satan, or Lucifer, represents the active, or, as M. Jules Baissac calls it, the 'Centrifugal Energy of the Universe' in a cosmic sense. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time he is pain, which is the Re-action of the pleasure of action, and death - - which is the revolution of life -- Satan, burning in his own hell, produced by the fury of his own momentum -- the expansive disintegration of the nebulae which is to concentrate into new worlds. And fitly is he again and again baffled by the eternal Inertia of the passive energy of the Kosmos -- the inexorable ' I AM ' -- the flint from which the sparks are beaten out. Fitly is he . . . and his adherents . . . consigned to the 'sea of fire,' because it is the Sun (in one sense only in the Cosmic allegory), the fount of life in our system, where they are purified (disintegrated) and churned up to re-arrange them for another life (the resurrection); that Sun which, as the origin of the active principle of our Earth, is at once the Home and the Source of the Mundane Satan. . . ." To demonstrate furthermore the accuracy of Baissac's general theory (in Le Diable et Satan ) cold is known to have a 'Centripetal' effect. "Under the influence of cold everything contracts. . . . Under it life hybernates, or dies out, thought congeals, and fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own Fire-Sea -- it is only in the 'Nifl-heim' (the cold Hell of the Scandinavian Eddas ) of the ' I AM ' that he cannot exist. But for all that there is a kind of Immortal Existence in the Nifl-heim, and that existence must be painless and peaceful, because it is Unconscious and Inactive. In the Kingdom of Jehovah (if this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him) there is no Misery, no War, no marrying and giving in marriage, no change, no Individual Consciousness. * All is absorbed in the spirit of the most Powerful. It is emphatically a kingdom of Peace and loyal Submission as that of the ' Arch-Rebel ' is one of War and Revolution . . . . . It (the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] master, a Guru, he became a mystic; then a theosophist who doubted, despaired; threw up white for black magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning round, anathematized her, re-became an atheist, and died cursing humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe. Furnished with all the esoteric data to write his "War in Heaven," he made a semi-political article out of it, mixing Malthus with Satan, and Darwin with the astral light. Peace be to his -- Shell. He is a warning to the chelas who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India. * The author talks of the active, fighting, damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym of Parabrahm! We have quoted from this article to show where it dissents from theosophic teachings; otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything published in the Theosophist generally is. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 246 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. former) is in fact what Theosophy calls Nirvana. But then Theosophy teaches that separation from the Primal Source having once occurred, Re-union can only be achieved by Will -- Effort -- which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay." It is "Satanic" from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil -- to the Radiant Archangels, Dhyans-Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his own creator and an immortal god -- that men can reach Nirvana and the haven of heavenly divine Peace. To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the Fire-Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumaras, the "Virgin-Angels," (to whom Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels, both belong), the divine "Rebels" -- called by the all-materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or "Deprived" -- preferred the curse of incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery (even if unconscious ) of the beings (evolved as shadows out of their Brethren) through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. If "man's uses of life should be such as neither to animalize nor to spiritualize, but to humanize Self,"* before he can do so, he must be born human not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogis offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity -- created god-like and perfect at first -- and to endow him with human affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural status and, descending on our globe, take up their abode on it for the whole cycle of the Mahayuga, thus exchanging their impersonal individualities for individual personalities -- the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life.