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Theosophy – “Mythology Based On History”, excerpted from The Secret Doctrine, by HP Blavatsky

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LOGO-TTS

It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths — known to and communicating with the Greeks — who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis. Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name it is averred came from pelagus, the great sea. Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same archaic tradition of men — or rather of nations — which were saved during the cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that the Chaldean Xisuthrus, the Hindu Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun — the “beloved of the gods,” who rescued him from the flood in a canoe — or the Swedish Belgamer, for whom the gods did the same in the north, are all identical as a personage. But their legends have all sprung from the catastrophe which involved both the continent and the island of Atlantis.

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The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no myth. Biblical events are revealed indeed. But it is neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, nor by a divine finger tracing the record on tablets of stone, but simply through tradition via pagan sources. It was not surely the Pentateuch that Diodorus was repeating when he wrote upon the Titans — the giants born of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who took to themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was Pherecydes quoting from Genesis when giving details on those giants which are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, which race descended from the earliest giants, and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the birth-place of the first giants. The Commentaries on the sacred books explain that the said region was the far north, the polar lands now, the pre-Lemurian earliest continent, embracing once upon a time the present Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.

But who were the Nephilim of Genesis vi. 4? There were Palæolithic and Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the events recorded in the book of the Beginnings. The theological tradition identifies these Nephilim with hairy men or Satyrs, the latter being mythical in the Fifth Race and the former historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races. We have stated elsewhere what the prototypes of these Satyrs were, and have spoken of the bestiality of the early and later Atlantean race. What is the meaning of Poseidon’s amours under such a variety of animal forms? He became a dolphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive Theophane, etc., etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and others devote an enormous space to the meaning of the wordNephilim and explain very little. But Esoteric records show these hairy creatures to be the last descendants of thos

 

e Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on female animals, of species now long extinct; thus producing dumb men, “monsters,” as the Stanzas have it.

Now mythology, built upon Hesiod’s Theogony, which is but a poetised record of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants, called Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they were imprisoned by Kronos for their rebellion against him. All the three are endowed by myth with an hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter standing for races, the former for sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind that in mythology every personage almost is a god or demi-god, and also a king or simple mortal in his second aspect; 1 and that both stand as symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and sub-races, the esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to make room for another. The whole globe is convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the arctic and antarctic poles has but little altered. The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore northern Asia is called the “eternal or perpetual land,” and the Antarctic the “ever living” and “the concealed”; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other regions disappear and reappear in turn, into and above the great waters.

From the first appearance of the great continent of Lemuria, the three polar giants had been imprisoned in their circle by Kronos. Their gaol is surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated by Poseidon (or Neptune, hence by the seas), which they cannot cross; and it is in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three brothers languish. TheIliad (viii., 13) makes of it the Tartaros. When the gods and Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus — the deity of the Fourth Race — the father of the gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants in order to conquer the gods and Titans, and to precipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn. 2The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Râkshasas of Lanka and the Bharateans, the melee of the Atlanteans and Aryans in their supreme struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds (or Peris), became, ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and still later the war between the angels of God and the angels of Satan. Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.

But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar — as it was that of Bailly and Voltaire — that Hesiod’s theogony was based upon historical facts (see Decharme‘s Mythol. de la Grèce Antique), it becomes easier for the occult teachings to find their way into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these passages from mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern learning in this Addendum.

Such symbolisms as are found in all the exoteric creeds, are so many landmarks of prehistoric truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the earliest human races, has become several times since then hyperborean and Saturnine 3, thus showing the Golden Age and reign of Saturn from multiform aspects. It was many-sided in its character indeed — climatically, ethnologically and morally. For, the Third, Lemurian Race must be physiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi-sexual race; and the climate of its dwelling places and continents into that of an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and impurity. The Cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on its way through many nations and through the countless minds which have added their own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a while the Greek interpretations we may seek for some more corroborations of the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.

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1 Thus, for instance, Gyges is a hundred-armed and fifty-headed monster, a demi-god in one case, and a Lydian, the successor of Candaules, king of the country, in another version. The same is found in the Indian Pantheon, where Rishis and the Sons of Brahmâ are reborn as mortals.

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2 The continents perish in turn by fire and water: either through earthquakes and volcanic THEOLOGY BUILT ON HISTORY eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of waters. Our continents have to perish owing to the former cataclysmal process. The incessant earthquakes of this and the past years may be a warning.

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3 Denis, the geographer, tells us that the great sea North of Asia was called glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35). Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny (Book IV., c. 16) corroborate the statement by showing that it is its giant inhabitants who gave it the name. And the Secret Doctrine explains both assertions by telling us that all the continents were formed from North to South; and that as the sudden change of climate dwarfed the race that had been born on it, arresting its growth, so, several degrees southward, various conditions had always produced the tallest men in every new humanity, or race. We see it to this day. The tallest men now found are those in Northern countries, while the smallest are Southern Asiatics, Hindus, Chinamen, Japanese, etc. Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans, Norwegians, Russians, Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and the English, with the inhabitants of central India and the average European on the continent. Thus also the giants of Atlantis, and hence the Titans of Hesiod, are all Northerners.

 

The Secret Doctrine, ii 774–777

THEOLOGY BUILT ON HISTORY
H. P. Blavatsky

Theosophy ~ When Time Will Be No Longer – from “The Secret Doctrine,” HP Blavatsky

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sunset_horse ride

WHEN TIME WILL BE NO LONGER

We are reminded in King’s “Gnostics” that the Greek language has but one word for vowel and voice, and this has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of that well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the Upanishads and thePurânas, “Sound” and “Speech,” may be collated with the Gnostic “Vowels” and the “Voices” of the Thunders and Angels in “Revelation.” The same will be found in Pistis Sophia and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter-of-fact author of “The Gnostics and their Remains.”

Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus – a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly – had received in mystic revelation. It is said that “Marcus had it revealed unto him that ‘the seven heavens‘ 1 . . . . sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete doxology”; in clearer words: “the Sound whereof being carried down (from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and parent of all things that be on earth.” (See “Hippolytu,” vi 48, and King’s Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: “The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels), these (the second logos, or “Sound”) created all on Earth.
Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John’s Apocalyps a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. x 3, 4), “Seven thunders uttered their voices . . . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, ‘Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.’ “The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them “the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father” (i.e., of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus answers: “Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY AND NINE POWERS, and their numbers thereof; and no name is more excellent than all these vowels.” “The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age” – says the Commentary speaking of the “Fires.”
Now it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea – the basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the divine THREE (), making the perfect number ten.Also, these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography – metaphysical and physical – as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years only. (Compare § “Chronology of the Brahmins.”)
Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird – theVahan or vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kâla, “time”) is shown to ride – is the origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phœnix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the “man-lion”Singha, of whose representations the so-called “gnostic gems” are so full. 2 “Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding to their points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet AEHIOYΩ, testifying to the Seven Heavens.” This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as Garuda 3 is that of the great cycle, the “Maha-Kalpa“co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on account of his (Garuda’s) “dazzling splendour,” and called thereupon Gaganeswara, “lord of the sky.” Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes Garuda’s solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King: “Whatever the primary meaning (of the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present shape from INDIA, that true fountain head of gnostic iconography” (Gnostics, p. 218).The mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought into India by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.4 When the seven “thunders,” or “sounds,” or “vowels” – one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round – “had uttered their voices” – but forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him “seal up those things” – what did the Angel “standing upon the sea and upon the earth” do? He lifted his hand to heaven “and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . . that there should be time no longer.” “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the Mystery of God (of the Cycle) should be finished” (x. 7), which means, in theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. “There shall be time no longer” very naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life.
1 The “Heavens” are identical with “Angels,” as already stated.
2 As confessed by King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these gnostic gems are not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to pre-christian periods, and are the work of  magicians (p. 241).
3 The lack of intuition in Orientalists and  antiquarians past and present is remarkable. Thus, Wilson, the translator of Vishnu Purâna, declares in his Preface that in the Garuda Purâna he found “no account of the birth of Garuda.” Considering that an account of “Creation” in general is given therein, and that Garuda is co-eternal with Vishnu, the Maha Kalpa, or Great Life-Cycle, beginning with and ending with the manifesting Vishnu, what other account of Garuda’s birth could be expected !
4 Vide Revelation xvii, verses 2 and 10, and Leviticus xxiii, verses 15 to 18, the first passage speaking of the “Seven Kings,” of whom five have gone, and the second about the “Seven Sabbaths,” etc.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 563–565
H. P. Blavatsky

Theosophy ~ Truth, Part 2

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LOGO-TTS

The Theosophist is, in a sense, a Berkeleian phenomenalist and holds to the axiom, esse est percipi (to exist is to be perceived), in regard to all relative truths. Everything that exists has only a relative reality since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. Maya or illusion is an element which, therefore, enters into all finite things. The cognizer is also a reflection and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as he himself is. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. Everything is illusion outside of eternal Truth, which has neither form, colour, nor limitation. He who has placed himself beyond the veil of maya, the Adept and Initiate, can have no Devachan.Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. Relative truths are relative to our plane of perception at any given time in any particular situation.

As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached “reality”; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.

The Secret Doctrine, I, 40

Ideologies or systems which claim to be the absolute Truth are clearly tamasic, static and doomed to atrophy and decay and final extinction. Dogmas and claims to uniqueness arerajasic, partial and ephemeral, ever changing and destined to disappear. In ideologies and dogmas are to be contained the seeds of violence because they violate the absolute truth of unity and endow relative truths with the evil aura of the dire heresy of separateness, the greatest of all sins and their common source. When one party or another, when one sect or the other, thinks itself to be the sole possessor of absolute Truth, it becomes only natural that it should think its neighbour absolutely in the clutches of error or of the “devil,” requiring to be redeemed by force or threats or intimidation, i.e., to be shocked into acquiescence by verbal or physical violence. Alternatively, it may attempt to seduce the unwary by subtle propaganda and theological or political bribes.

But once get a man to see that none of them has the whole truth, but that they are mutually complementary, that the complete truth can be found only in the combined views of all, after that which is false in each of them has been sifted out – then true brotherhood in religion will be established.

The Key to Theosophy

Further,

unless every man is brought to understand, and accept as an axiomatic truth that by wronging one man we wrong not only ourselves but the whole of humanity in the long run, no brotherly feelings such as preached by all the great Reformers, pre-eminently by Buddha and Jesus, are possible on earth.

That which is true on the metaphysical plane must also be true on the physical plane.Satya entails ahimsa, and the degree of ahimsa that a man possesses is the measure of thesatya that he embodies.

THEOSOPHIA is identical with SAT or Absolute Truth, and Theosophy is only a partial emanation from it, the shoreless ocean of universal Truth reflecting the rays of the sun of SAT. In The Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky declared that only the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the archaic ages was now permitted to see the light after long millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. “That which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees.” The great truths, which are the inheritance of the future races, cannot be given out at present, as the fate of every such unfamiliar truth is that, if it falls into the hands of the unready, they will only deceive themselves and deceive others, as the Masters have warned. As esoteric truth is made exoteric, absolute Truth is not only reduced to the illusive plane of the relative, but casts a shadow on the delusive plane of error. Occult Wisdom, dealing with eternal truths and primal causes, becomes almost omnipotent when applied in the right direction; its antithesis is that which deals with illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric modern sciences, with their immense power of destruction.

The ancients managed to throw a thick veil over the nucleus of truth concealed by archetypal symbols, but they also tried to preserve the latter as a record for future generations, sufficiently transparent to allow their wisest men to discern that truth behind the fabulous form of the glyph or allegory. The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear, nor can any pen describe it, unless man finds the answer in the innermost depths of his divine intuitions. No religious founder invented or revealed a new truth as they were all transmitters.

Selecting one or more of those grand verities – actualities visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer – out of the many orally revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the adyta of the temples through initiation, during the MYSTERIES and by personal transmission – they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil of its own local and special symbolism.

The Secret Doctrine, I, xxxvi

Those who do not relish the distinction between esoteric and exoteric truth, the elect and the multitudes, do not really appreciate the tremendous practical potency of pure truths, and the danger of their misuse. In the Milindapanha we are told about the magical power of an act of truth, the power of a pure soul who has embodied a truth and enacted it in his daily life and who can work magic by the simple act of calling that fact to witness. In Theosophical literature, we are clearly told that a man must set and model his daily life upon the truth that the end of life is action and not thought; only such a man becomes worthy of the name of a Theosophist. “The profession of a truth is not yet the enactment of it.” But truth, however distasteful to the generally blind multitudes, has always had her champions and martyrs. Endless is the search for truth, but we secure it only if we are willing to incarnate it in our own lives. “Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us.”

Theosophy thus teaches the transforming power of truth and affirms the teaching of the Gospel, “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.” The early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the GNOSIS, rested on a square, the angles of which representedSige (Silence), Bythos (depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth). The cultists are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of esoteric Wisdom. But –

no great truth was ever accepted a priori, and generally a century or two passed before it began to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such eases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of today are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and vice versa.

The Secret Doctrine, II, 442

It is only in the Seventh Race that all error will be made away with, and the advent of Truth will be heralded by the holy “Sons of Light.” Meanwhile the Golden Age of the past will not be realized in the future till humanity, as a whole, feels the need of it. In The Key to Theosophy we are told: –

A maxim in the Persian “Javidan Khirad” says: “Truth is of two kinds – one manifest and self-evident; the other demanding incessantly new demonstrations and proofs.” It is only when this latter kind of truth becomes as universally obvious as it is now dim, and therefore liable to be distorted by sophistry and casuistry; it is only when the two kinds will have become once more one, that all people will be brought to see alike.

Truth, in the former sense, is identical with reality and cuts across the distinction between knowledge and being. Truth, in the latter sense, presupposes this distinction, but also requires us to transcend it, for we cannot effectively demonstrate truth until we embody and become the truth, until we carry out the injunction: “Become what thou art.”

O Teacher, what shall I do to reach to Wisdom?

O Wise one, what, to gain perfection?

Search for the Paths. But, O Lanoo, be of clean heart before thou startest on thy journey. Before thou takest thy first step, learn to discern the real from the false, the ever-fleeting from the everlasting. Learn above all to separate Head-learning from Soul-wisdom, the “Eye” from the “Heart” doctrine.

Yea, ignorance is like unto a closed and airless vessel; the soul a bird shut up within. It warbles not, nor can it stir a feather; but the songster mute and torpid sits, and of exhaustion dies.

But even ignorance is better than Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.

The seeds of Wisdom cannot sprout and grow in airless space. To live and reap experience, the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it towards the Diamond Soul. Seek not those points in Maya’s realm; but soar beyond illusions, search the eternal and the changeless SAT, mistrusting fancy’s false suggestions.

For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects. It needs the gentle breezes of Soul-wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions. Seek, O Beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul.

The Voice of the Silence

Hermes, September 1975
Raghavan Iyer

Theosophy ~ Truth, Part 1

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LOGO-TTS

It is common to make a sharp separation between knowledge and being, truth and reality, between what we affirm to be true or false and what exists or is non-existent. This distinction, which we have inherited from the Greeks, is valuable in itself and is fundamental to modern thought. On the other hand, in classical Indian tradition as in pre-Socratic thought echoed in Plato, truth and reality are often used as interchangeable terms and we are taught that there is a higher level of awareness and apprehension beyond the sensory field in which our knowing and what is known are united and even transcended in a sense of immediate vision and absorption in what is seen. This identification of truth and reality was reaffirmed by Gandhi in his insistence that truth is that which is and error that which is not. Most of what we normally call knowledge has clearly nothing to do with truth as Gandhi understood it, and we are right to distinguish it from being. The modern man is neither willing nor able to grasp reality; he has been trained to develop and use his reason and his feeling in a manner that can give partial formulations of the truth or passing sensations of particular sense-objects. Once we accept the notion that man can be separated and detached from nature, human knowledge and sensation cannot attain to an intuitive insight into the Tattwas, the essences of things. If, however, we start with the ancient axiom that man is the microcosm of the macrocosm, then we can see that the extent of truth that is available to any man is connected with the plane of reality on which he functions. Hence the importance of H.P. Blavatsky’s advocacy of the Platonic standpoint which was abandoned by Aristotle, who was no Initiate, and who has had such a dominant influence upon subsequent thinking in the West.

In theosophical thought we start with a clear conception of the notion of absolute abstract Truth or Reality, SAT, from which is derived satya or truth. The First Fundamental Proposition of The Secret Doctrine urges us to set out with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned being, which is attributeless, which is “Be-ness” rather than Being and is beyond the range and reach of all thought and speculation. Paranishpanna, the summum bonum, is that final state of subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the one absolute Truth (Paramarthasatya) on its plane. Sooner or later, all that now seemingly exists will be in reality in the state of Paranishpanna, the state which leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non-Being or of absolute Being. But there is a great difference between conscious and unconscious “being.” “The condition ofParanishpanna, without Paramartha, the Self-analyzing consciousness (Svasamvedana), is no bliss, but simply extinction.”

The Greeks were then right to distinguish between reality as it presents itself to finite human minds and reality as it is or would be to the Divine Mind. “Divine Thought” does not necessitate the idea of a single Divine thinker. The Universe is in its totality the SAT, with the past and the future crystallized in an eternal Present, the Divine Thought reflected in a secondary or manifest cause. However, as man is indissolubly linked with the universe, and his Manas is connected with MAHAT, it is possible for man to bridge the gap between truth and reality, between knowledge and being, by conscious effort. As man becomes more and more self-conscious, and less and less passive, in his awareness of the universe, he must abandon the distinction between truth and knowledge and redefine his notion of truth so as to make it identical with reality. The real distinction is between head-learning and soul-wisdom. What the pundit or the ignoramus regards as truth is error to the sage and the Adept. The Adept has realized the non-separateness of all that lives and his own unity with the “Rootless Root” of all, which is pure knowledge (Sattwa, which Shankara took to meanBuddhi), eternal, unconditioned reality or SAT.

The world in which we live is itself the shadow of a shadowy reflection, twice removed, of the “World of Truth” or SAT, through which the direct energy that radiates from the ONE REALITY reaches us. That which is manifested cannot be SAT, but is something phenomenal, not everlasting or even sempiternal. This “World of Truth” is described as “a bright star dropped from the heart of Eternity; the beacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being.” The visible sun is itself only the material shadow of the Central Sun of Truth, which illuminates the invisible, intellectual world of Spirit. The ideal conception of the universe is a Golden Egg, with a positive pole that acts in the manifested world of matter, while the negative pole is lost in the unknowable absoluteness of SAT or Be-ness. The first cosmic aspect of the esoteric SAT is the Universal Mind, MAHAT, “the manifested Omniscience,” the root of SELF-Consciousness. The spirit of archaic philosophy cannot be comprehended unless we thoroughly assimilate the concepts of SAT and Asat.

Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the “not yet existing”; for Sat is in itself neither the “existent,” nor “being.” SAT is the immutable, the ever present, changeless and eternal root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting. Sat is born from Asat, and ASAT is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana.

The Secret Doctrine, II, 449-50

The Theosophical Trinity is composed of the Sun (the Father), Mercury or Hermes or Budha (the Son), and Venus or Lucifer, the morning Star (the Holy Ghost, Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth). To these three correspond Atma, Buddhi and Manas in man.

It is useful to distinguish between absolute and relative truth, between truth and error, between reality and illusion, between Paramarthasatya and Samvritisatya. Paramartha is self-consciousness and the word is made up of parama (above everything) and artha(comprehension); and Satya means absolute true being, or esse. The opposite of this absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya, the relative truth only, Samvriti meaning “false conception” and being the origin of illusion, Maya; it is illusion-creating appearance. The two obstacles to the attainment of Paramarthasatya are Parikalpita, the error of believing something to exist or to be real which does not exist and is unreal, and Paratantra, that which exists only through a dependent or causal connection. As a result of Parikalpita, we get tamasic knowledge or “truth,” which is based upon an obsession with the sole reality of a single object or thought, which is, in essence, unreal and non-existent. As a result ofParatantra, we get rajasic knowledge or “truth,” based upon a concern with the differences between seemingly separate, but interdependent and ephemeral, things.

When we have developed the faculties necessary to go beyond Parikalpita and Paratantra,we begin to get sattvic knowledge or truth, based upon the recognition of the unity of all things, their common identity on a single plane of universal, ultimate reality. This is itself only an approximation, imperfect and inadequate, to absolute Truth. Whereas relative truth is ephemeral and can be the subject of controversy and is eventually extinguished, absolute Truth is enduring, beyond dispute and can never be destroyed. Whereas relative truth will triumph over error, absolute Truth ever shines, regardless of whether there are martyrs and witnesses ready to vindicate it and die for it. Hence “the failure to sweep away entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it.” And yet, in the world of manifestation, every error proliferates other errors rapidly, while each truth has to be painfully discovered. “Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way uphill,” says an old proverb.

Hermes, September 1975
Raghavan Iyer

Theosophy ~ The Ape Appeared Later Than Man – from The Secret Doctrine (HP Blavatsky)

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If the Bible combines with archæology and geology to show that human civilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in Asia, dates from geological epochs — why should not the statements of the Secret Doctrine be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or logical and scientific too, to disbelieve, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints 1“were carved by the Dryopithecus monkey“;or, with the Occultist, that the anthropomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded, and even scientifically demonstrated, that “there was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species of mammal identical with species now extant” (Albert Gaudry “Les Enchainements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques” p. 240), and that man was then just as he is now, only taller, and more athletic than we are 2 — then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be the descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the Miocene epoch, 3 is, on the other hand, testified to by several eminent naturalists.

“Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages who had to fight against the mammoth with stone weapons, we find all those craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great intellectual development” (de Quatrefages, “The Human Species, p. 312.)

Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired such brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe the learned Abbé Bourgeois (Vide infra, footnote 3).

As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in Europe among fossils is the “Mentone man” (6 ft. 8 in.), others may yet be excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that “in a tomb of the neolithic age . . . . a skeleton of extraordinary size was found in 1807,” and that it was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.

And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7 ft. to even 9 ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves — on the law of atavism, or the reappearance of ancestral features of character — that there was a time when 9 ft. and 10 ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest Indo-European race.

But as the subject was sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of these early races and what the moderns know now.

The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of Palæolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and Initiates, no one seems to have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended from an alien race, and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before, 4 but their Initiates had preserved all the records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race (Vide about the latter “Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 66, Fifth Edition.) If one allows only twenty years as an average figure for the reign of each King, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.

Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern archæologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 years, and generously concede to Thebes with its hundred gates, 7,000 years from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which show Egyptian priests — Initiates — journeying in a North-Westerly direction, by land, via what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phœnician settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to the West again and arrived, still travelling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent. 5

What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by land may give an idea of the date when such a journey could have been performed on terra firma.

It was —

“When the level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it is now; when the valley of the Somme was not hollowed to the depth it has now attained; when Sicily was joined to Africa, Barbary to Spain,” when “Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not in existence, and the bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were yet unborn. What we know withcertainty is that European man was contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch . . . . that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps 6 and the extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions . . . . It is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia of species yet more ancient . . . . of the Elephas meridionalis of the sands of St. Prest . . . and the Elephas antiquus, assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones are found in company with carved flints in several English caves, associated with those of the Rhinoceros hemitæchus and even of the Machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date . . . . M. E. Lartet is of opinion that there is nothing really impossible in the existence of man as early as the Tertiary period.” 7

If “there is nothing impossible” scientifically in the idea, and it may be admitted that man lived already as early as the Tertiary period, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places the beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back (See Croll’s “Climate and Time“); but there was a time when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.

And if all this may be said of European man, how great is the antiquity of the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the Atlanto-Aryan man? Every educated person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man during the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on Desnoyers in 1863, when he made known to the Institute of France that he had made a discovery “in the undisturbed pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres, proving the co-existence of man and the Elephas meridionalis“ — were equal to the occasion. The later discovery (in 1867) by the Abbé Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was given at the Pre-historic Congress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that the average man of Science will never see but that which he wants to see. 8

1 “The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human hands.” (G. de Mortillet, “Promenades au Musee de St. Germain,” p. 76.)
2 Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Perigord, Joly says of them that “they were of great height, athletic, with a strongly built skeleton . . .” etc. (“Man before Metals,” p.353).
3 “On the shores of the lake of Beauce,” says the Abbé Bourgeois, “man lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared (Aceratherium, Tapir, Mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of Orleanais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopithecus antiquus); therefore, later than man.” (See Comptes Rendus of the “Prehistoric Congress” of 1867 at Paris.)
4 “In making soundings in the stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 25 yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by the river at 8 inches per century (more careful calculations have shown no more than from three to five per century), we must assign to the first of these bricks 12,000 years, and to the second 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations, Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first appearance of man on the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to the European man, who witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity of more than 250,000 years.” (“Man before Metals,“p. 183.) Egyptian Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! (See further.) Note well also that Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
5 Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the main continent in those days. “The ancient inhabitant of Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel. The British Isles were united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since been submerged.” (“Man before Metals,“p. 184.)
6 He witnessed and remembered it too, as “the final disappearance of the largest continent of Atlantis was an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps,” a master writes (See Esoteric Buddhism p. 70). Pari passu, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere disappeared, some land of the new continent emerged from the seas. It is on this colossal cataclysm, which lasted during a period of 150,000 years, that traditions of all the “Deluges” are built, the Jews building their version on an event which took place later in “Poseidonis.”
7 The Antiquity of the Human Race in “Men before Metals,” by M. Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of Toulouse, p. 184.
8 The scientific “jury” disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de Mortillet, Worsaæ, Engelhardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, Hamy, and Cartailhac, saw upon the flints the traces of human handiwork, Steenstrup, Virchow and Desor refused to do so. Still the majority, if we except some English Scientists, are for Bourgeois.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 748–752
H. P. Blavatsky