272...
FRAGMENTS
[These brief notes from H.P.B.’s pen on a number of unrelated subjects appear from their context to have been written much earlier than the actual date of their publication. Some passages in them are almost identical with certain sentences in Isis Unveiled. Material concerning Bunsen can be found verbatim in the First Draft of The Secret Doctrine. It is most likely that these notes belong to the period of 1885-86, and are for this reason published at this particular point of the chronological series.—Compiler.]
The outward form of idolatry is but a veil, concealing the one Truth like the veil of the Saitic Goddess. Only that truth, being for the few, escapes the majority. To 273the pious profane, the veil recovers a celestial locality thickly peopled with divine beings, dwarfs and giants, good and wicked powers, all of whom are no better than human caricatures. Yet, while for the great majority the space behind the veil is really impenetrable—if it would but confess the real state of its mind—those, endowed with the “third eye” (the eye of Siva), discern in the Cimmerian darkness and chaos a light in whose intense radiance all shape born of human conception disappears, leaving the all-informing divine PRESENCE, to be felt—not seen; sensed—never expressed.
A charming allegory translated from an old Sanskrit manuscript illustrates this idea admirably:
Toward the close of the Pralaya (the intermediate period between two “creations” or evolutions of our phenomenal universe), the great IT, the One that rests in infinity and ever is, dropped its reflection, which expanded in limitless Space, and felt a desire to make itself cognizable by the creatures evolved from its shadow. The reflection assumed the shape of a Mahârâja (great King). Devising means for mankind to learn of his existence, the Mahârâja built of the qualities inherent in him a palace, in which he concealed himself, satisfied that people should perceive the outward form of his dwelling. But when they looked up to the place where stood the palace, whose one corner stretched into the right, and the other into the left infinitude—the little men saw nothing; the palace was mistaken by them for empty space, and being so vast remained invisible to their eyes. Then the Mahârâja resorted to another expedient. He determined to manifest himself to the little creatures whom he pitied—not as a whole but only in his parts. He destroyed the palace built by him from his manifesting qualities, brick by brick, and began throwing the bricks down upon the earth one after the other. Each brick was transformed into an idol, the red ones becoming Gods and the grey ones Goddesses; into these the Devatâs and Devatîs—the qualities and the attributes of the Unseen––entered and animated them.
274 This allegory shows polytheism in its true light and that it rests on the One Unity, as does all the rest. Between the Dii majores and the Dii minores there is in reality no difference. The former are the direct, the latter the broken or refracted, rays of one and the same Luminary. What are Brahmâ, Vishnu and Siva, but the triple Ray that emanates directly from the Light of the World? The three Gods with their Goddesses are the three dual representations of Purusha the Spirit, and Prakriti—matter; the six are synthesized by Svâyambhuva the self-existent, unmanifested Deity. They are only the symbols personifying the Unseen Presence in every phenomenon of nature.
“The seven [regions][1] of Bhûmi, hang by golden threads [beams or rays] from the Spiritual central Sun [or ‘God’]. Higher than all, a Watcher for each [region]. The Suras come down this [beam]. They cross the six and reach the Seventh [our earth]. They are our mother earth’s [Bhûmi] supporters [or guardians]. The eighth watches over the [seven] watchers.”
Suras are in the Vedas deities, or beings, connected with the Sun; in their occult meaning they are the seven chief watchers or guardians of our planetary system. They are positively identical with the “Seven Spirits of the Stars.” The Suras are connected in practical Occultism with the Seven Yogic powers. One of these, Laghima(n) or “the faculty of assuming levity,” is illustrated in a Purâna as rising and descending along a sunbeam to the solar orb with its mysteries; e.g., Khatvânga, in Vishnu-Purâna (Book IV, ch. iv). “It must be equally easy to the adept to travel a ray downwards,” remarks Fitzedward Hall 275(p. 311).[2] And why not, if the action is understood in its right and correct sense?
Eight great Gods are often reckoned, as there are eight points of the compass, four cardinal and four intermediate points over which preside also inferior Lokapâlas or the “doubles” of the greater Gods. Yet, in many instances where the number eight is given, it is only a kind of exoteric shell. Every globe, however, is divided into seven regions, as 7 x 7 = 49 is the mystic number par excellence.
To make it clearer: in each of the seven Root-Races, and in every one of the seven regions into which the Occult Doctrine divides our globe, there appears from the dawn of Humanity the “Watcher” assigned to it in the eternity of the Aeon. He comes first in his own “form,” then each time as an Avatâra.
In a secret work upon the Mysteries and the rites of Initiation, in which very rough but correct prints are given of the sacramental postures, and of the trials to which the postulant was subjected, the following details are found:
(1) The neophyte—representing the Sun, as “Sahasrakirana,” “ he of the thousand rays”—is shown kneeling before the “Hierophant.” The latter is in the act of cutting off seven locks of the neophyte’s long hair,[3] and in 276
- ↑ In every ancient cosmography the universe and the earth are divided into seven parts or regions.
- ↑ [Reference is to H. H. Wilson’s translation of this Purâna, ed. by Fitzedward Hall. London: Trübner & Co., 1864, etc.—Compiler.]
- ↑ See Judges, xvi, again, where Samson, the symbolical personification of the Sun, the Jewish Hercules, speaks of his seven locks which, when cut off, will deprive him of his (physical) strength, i.e., kill the material man, leaving only the spiritual. But the Bible fails to explain, or rather, conceals purposely, the esoteric truth, that the seven locks symbolize the septenary physical or terrestrial man, thus cut off and separated from the spiritual. To this day the High Lamas cut off during public consecrations a lock of the hair of the candidates for the religious life, repeating a formula to the effect that the six others will follow, when the “upâsaka” IS READY. The lock of hair or tonsure of the Roman Catholic priests is a relic of the same mystery-idea.