Weekly Quote from The Secret Doctrine by HPB - Weekly Quote from The Secret Doctrine by HPB Archives at Zinester. Inspirational

__ It is the Spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal man that forms the fundamental tenet in the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a process, the student has to believe (a) in the ONE Universal Life, independent of matter (or what Science regards as matter); and (b) in the individual intelligences that animate the various manifestations of this Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in "Vital Force," others do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Sterling's work "Concerning Protoplasm" has made no small havoc of this dogmatic negation. Professor Beale's decision is also in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W. Richardson's lectures on the "Nervous Ether," have been sufficiently quoted from. Thus, opinions are divided.

__The ONE LIFE is closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being - KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally "action," or rather an "effect-producing cause." Esoterically it is quite a different thing in its far-fetching moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, characteristics and awful importance of this eternal immutable law, that no theological definition of a personal deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with the Theists (the Christian Protestants, at any rate), rejoices in a personal male gender, while with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency, "Divine Providence tempers His blessings to secure their better effects," Wogan tells us. Indeed "He" tempers them, which Karma - a sexless principle - does not.

__Throughout the first two Parts, it was shown that, at the first flutter of renascent life, Svabhavat, "the mutable radiance of the Immutable Darkness unconscious in Eternity," passes, at every new rebirth of Kosmos, from an inactive state into one of intense activity; that it differentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation. This work is KARMA.

__The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity. "The one Cosmic atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . . follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA." The atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and "man-bearing" globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms (of which we know only four). For "the blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity" (Book of "The Aphorisms of Tson-ka-pa").

"Thyan-kam" is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of cosmic energy in the right direction.

__The true Buddhist, recognising no "personal god," nor any "Father" and "Creator of Heaven and Earth," still believes in an absolute consciousness, "Adi-Buddhi"; and the Buddhist philosopher knows that there are Planetary Spirits, the "Dhyan Chohans." But though he admits of "spiritual lives," yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, according to his philosophy, are "the maya of the day," the illusion of a "day of Brahma," a short manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years.

__The "Yin-Sin" is not for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly prohibited all such inquiry. If the Dhyan Chohans and all the invisible Beings - the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor centres of Energy - are the direct reflex of the ONE Light, yet men are far removed from these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of "self-produced beings, the creatures of Karma." Thus regarding a personal God "as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men," they teach that only "two things are (objectively) eternal, namely Akasa and Nirvana"; and that these are ONE in reality, and but a maya when divided. "Buddhists deny creation and cannot conceive of a Creator." "Everything has come out of Akasa (or Svabhavat on our earth) in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain existence passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing." (Buddhist Catechism.)

__If a Vedantic Brahmin of the Adwaita Sect, when asked whether he believes in the existence of God, is always likely to answer, as Jacolliot was answered - "I am myself 'God';" a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) would simply laugh, and say in reply, "There is no God; no Creation." Yet the root philosophy of both Adwaita and Buddhist scholars is identical, and both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that every creature on earth, however small and humble, "is an immortal portion of the immortal matter" - for matter with them has quite another significance than it has with either Christian or materialist - and that every creature is subject to Karma.

__The answer of the Brahmin is one which would suggest itself to every ancient philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be; of man's origin, life-cycle - interminable in its duration of successive incarnations or rebirths - and finally of his absorption into the source from which he started.

__But it is not physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the Past, or that of the Future; since no philosopher is able to tell us even what man is, as he is known both to physiology and psychology. In doubt whether man was "a god or beast," he is now connected with the latter and derived from an animal. No doubt that the care of analyzing and classifying the human being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, which occultists - of all men - regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its ground and the wonderful work done by it, the progress achieved in physiology, and even - to a degree - in biology. But man's inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained materialism; for not even the higher psychological philosophy of the West is able, in its present incompleteness and tendency towards a decided agnosticism, to do justice to the inner; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and those states of consciousness, across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying "So far, and no farther shalt thou go."