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- 7. This is thy present wheel — said the Flame to the Spark. Thou art myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou art my vahan ( vehicle ) to the day, “ Be with us,” when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and me (a), then the builders, having donned their first clothing, descend on radiant earth, and reign over men — who are themselves (b).
(a) The day when “ the spark will re-become the Flame (man will merge into his Dhyan Chohan) myself and others, thyself and me,” as the Stanza has it — means this : In Paranirvana — when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Ego(s) to their original principle — the Past, Present, and even Future
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Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have re-entered the Great Breath. In other words, everything will be “ merged in Brahma ” or the divine unity.
Is this annihilation, as some think ? Or Atheism, as other critics — the worshippers of a personal deity and believers in an unphilosophical paradise — are inclined to suppose ? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism in that which is spirituality of a most refined character. To see in Nirvana annihilation amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless sleep — one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper’s Higher Self is in its original state of absolute consciousness during those hours — that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers only to one side of the question — the most material ; since re-absorption is by no means such a “ dreamless sleep,” but, on the contrary, absolute existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine monad. Nor is the individuality — nor even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind — lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless — from a human standpoint — the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind cannot in its present stage of development transcend, scarcely reach this plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.
(b) The “ Watchers ” reign over man during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race ; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes (see Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon), the incarnated Dhyanis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human kings of other nations ; all were recorded carefully. In the views of symbologists this Mythopœic Age is of course only regarded as a fairy tale. But since traditions and even Chronicles of such dynasties of divine Kings — of gods reigning over men followed by dynasties of Heroes or Giants — exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast
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oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “ fairy tales ” in the same order of events. * However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history — which, for being esoteric and traditional, is none the less more reliable than profane history — we are as entitled to our beliefs as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyani-Buddhas of the two higher groups, namely, the “ Watchers ” or the “ Architects,” furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their vehicles of the lower Kingdoms — and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin — the great spiritual truths of the transcendental worlds. (See Book II., “ Divine Dynasties.”)
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers descended on Earth and reigned over men — “ who are themselves.” The reigning kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future manvantaras they will have risen to higher systems than our planetary world ; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a mankind whose Monads may now yet be imprisoned — semi-conscious — in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the Vegetable world.
Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Septennial nature ; the Spiritual or divine ; the psychic or semi-divine ; the intellectual, the passional, the instinctual, or cognitional ; the semi-corporeal and the purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal way, one in their ultimate essence, seven in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is the one depending upon and subservient to
* See the “ Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago,” by Auguste le Plongeon, who shows the identity between the Egyptian rites and beliefs and those of the people he describes. The ancient hieratic alphabets of the Maya and the Egyptians are almost identical.
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our five physical senses. * Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless lives, the outbreathings of the One Life ; in order that through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reascending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal ; that each atom, we say, may reach through individual merits and efforts that plane where it re-becomes the one unconditioned All. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary “ Road ” hedged in by thorns, that “ goes down first, then —
Winds up hill all the way |
Starting upon the long journey immaculate ; descending more and more into sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested Space — the Pilgrim, having struggled through and suffered in every form of life and being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own image. In order to progress upwards and homewards, the “ God ” has now to ascend the weary uphill path of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of selfconscious existence. Like Visvakarman he has to sacrifice himself to himself in order to redeem all creatures, to resurrect from the many into the One Life. Then he ascends into heaven indeed ; where, plunged into the incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again at the next “ coming,” which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense as the second advent, and the other as the last “ Kalki Avatar.”
* Which are in truth seven as shown later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads.