THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

ABSOLUTE/ABSOLUTENESS

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An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought – in the words of Mandukya Upanishad, “unthinkable and unspeakable.”
...
Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical ONE ABSOLUTE – BE-NESS – symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity.
...
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p15-16]

There are seven “Paths” or “Ways” to the bliss of Nonexistence, which is absolute Being, Existence, and Consciousness. They were not, because the Universe was, so far, exempt, and existed only in the Divine Thought.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p38-9]

The “Absolute Consciousness,” they tell us, “behind” phenomena, which is only termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, transcends human conception. Man, unable to form one concept except in terms of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution of his being to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only the liberated Spirit is able to faintly realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither it must eventually return. ... As the highest Dhyan Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in that culmination of conscious existence – “the merging of the individual in the universal consciousness” – to use a phrase of Fichte’s – the Finite cannot conceive the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of mental experiences, how can it be said that the “Unconscious” and the Absolute can have even an instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear self-consciousness? A Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal world as the first aspect of the changeless ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. “Spirit and Matter, or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless,” we are taught.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p5]

To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be cognized. Hence the “Eternal Breath which knows itself not.” Infinity cannot comprehend Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion – to the limited senses of those who describe this indescribable – it is unconsciousness and immovableness.... But Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all three one.... We call absolute consciousness “unconsciousness,” because it seems to us that it must necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, “Darkness,” because to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable, ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p56]

Hence Non-being is “ABSOLUTE Being,” in esoteric philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Adi-Budha (first or primeval wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an illusion, Maya, since all the gods, including Brahmâ, have to die at the end of the “Age of Brahmâ”; the abstraction called Parabrahm alone – whether we call it Ensoph, or Herbert Spencer’s Unknowable – being “the One Absolute” Reality. The One secondless Existence is ADVAITA, “Without a Second,” and all the rest is Maya, teaches the Advaita philosophy.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p54 fn]

... no manifest thing can be thought of except as part of a larger whole: the total aggregate being the One manifested Universe that issues from the unmanifested or Absolute – called Non-Being or “No-Number”, to distinguish it from BEING or the “One Number”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p87-8]

All that which is, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, from this qualification alone, stands as the one and only reality – hence, everything extraneous to this absolute, the generative and causative Element, must be an illusion, most undeniably. But this is only so from the purely metaphysical point of view.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p295]

All these personified Powers are not evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole manifestation of the ABSOLUTE all.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p350]

Secondary gods or temporary powers in Nature (the Forces) are doomed to disappear; it is only the spiritual potentiality in man which can lead him to become one with the INFINITE and the ABSOLUTE.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p79 fn]

THUS, ARE THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE, THE EVER-LASTING TRINITY IN ONE – THE MAHAMAYA OF THE ABSOLUTE IS.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p446]

Man is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution – is the “Eternal Pilgrim”, the Protean differentiation in space and time of the One Absolute “unknowable”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p728]

ABSOLUTENESS

A moment’s thought shows that such a state can only be symbolised; to describe it is impossible. Nor can it be symbolised except in negatives; for, since it is the state of Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to describe objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p21]

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 Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p266

... the absoluteness of Non-Being.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p481]

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How can the ABSOLUTE be supposed to think - i.e. to have any relation whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a philosophical, and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Kabala rejects such an idea, and therefore, makes of the one and the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph. In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way – i.e. through the emanation from itself (another absurdity, due this time to the translators of the Kabala) of the Sephiroth.

[The Key to Theosophy p62

Ain-Soph, the endless, or boundless, in and with Nature, the non-existent which IS, but is not a Being.

[The Key to Theosophy p62 fn

ENQ. Then your Absolute thinks?

THEO. No, IT does not; for the simple reason that it is Absolute Thought itself. Nor does it exist, for the same reason, as it is absolute existence, and Be-ness, not a Being. Read the superb Kabalistic poem by Solomon Ben Jehudah Gabirol, in the Kether-Malchut, and you will understand: -- "Thou art one, the root of all numbers, but not as an element of numeration; for unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form. Thou art one, and in the secret of thy unity the wisest of men are lost, because they know it not. Thou art one, and Thy unity is never diminished, never extended, and cannot be changed. Thou art one, and no thought of mine can fix for Thee a limit, or define Thee. Thou ART, but not as one existent, for the understanding and vision of mortals cannot attain to Thy existence, nor determine for Thee the where, the how and the why," etc., etc. In short, our Deity is the eternal, incessantly evolving, not creating, builder of the universe; that universe itself unfolding out of its own essence, not being made. It is a sphere, without circumference, in its symbolism, which has but one ever-acting attribute embracing all other existing or thinkable attributes -- ITSELF. It is the one law, giving the impulse to manifested, eternal, and immutable laws, within that never-manifesting, because absolute LAW, which in its manifesting periods is The ever-Becoming.

ENQ. I once heard one of your members remarking that Universal Deity, being everywhere, was in vessels of dishonour, as in those of honour, and, therefore, was present in every atom of my cigar ash! Is this not rank blasphemy?

THEO. I do not think so, as simple logic can hardly be regarded as blasphemy. Were we to exclude the Omnipresent Principle from one single mathematical point of the universe, or from a particle of matter occupying any conceivable space, could we still regard it as infinite?

[The Key to Theosophy p65-6

THEO. We cannot pray to the ABSOLUTE for reasons explained before; therefore, we try to replace fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and good-producing actions.

ENQ. Christians would call it pride and blasphemy. Are they wrong?

THEO. Entirely so. It is they, on the contrary, who show Satanic pride in their belief that the Absolute or the Infinite, even if there was such a thing as the possibility of any relation between the unconditioned and the conditioned – will stoop to listen to every foolish or egotistical prayer. And it is they again, who virtually blaspheme, in teaching that an Omniscient and Omnipotent God needs uttered prayers to know what he has to do! This – understood esoterically -- is corroborated by both Buddha and Jesus. The one says "seek nought from the helpless Gods – pray not! but rather act; for darkness will not brighten. Ask nought from silence, for it can neither speak nor hear." And the other – Jesus – recommends: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name (that of Christos) that will I do." Of course, this quotation, if taken in its literal sense, goes against our argument. But if we accept it esoterically, with the full knowledge of the meaning of the term, "Christos," which to us represents Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the "SELF," it comes to this: the only God we must recognise and pray to, or rather act in unison with, is that spirit of God of which our body is the temple, and in which it dwelleth.

[The Key to Theosophy p70-1

This “Higher Self” is ATMA, and of course it is “non-materializable”, as Mr Sinnett says. Even more, it can never be “objective” under any circumstances, even to the highest spiritual perception. For Atman or the Higher Self is really Brahmâ, the ABSOLUTE, and indistinguishable from it.

[The Key to Theosophy p174

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You will be right in referring the “Real Knowledge” and “True Cause” of the verse quoted to the highest plane of spiritual enlightenment; the “greater darkness” into which the perfected “Siddha” is finally merged thereby, is that Absolute Darkness which is Absolute Light. The Real Knowledge here spoken of is not a mental but a spiritual state, implying full union between the Knower and the Known.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 69, Chronological Edition or Letter 204, Barker Numbering.]

... absolute consciousness in Pari-Nirvana.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 70B, Chronological Edition or Letter 207, Barker Numbering.]

... to many such metaphysical minds it would be worse than useless to divulge the fact that the Unmanifested Circle – the Father, or Absolute Life – is non-existent outside the Triangle and Perfect Square, and is only manifested in the Son; and that it is when reversing the action and returning to its absolute state of Unity, and the square expands once more into the Circle, that “the Son returns to the bosom of the Father.” There it remains until called back by his Mother, the “Great Deep,” to remanifest as a triad – the Son partaking at once of the Essence of the Father and of that of the Mother – the active Substance, Prakriti in its differentiated condition. “My Mother – (Sophia, the manifested Wisdom) – took me,” says Jesus in a Gnostic treatise; and he asks his disciples to tarry till he comes. . . The true “Word” may only be found by tracing the mystery of the passage inward and outward of the Eternal Life, through the states typified in these three geometric figures.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 111, Chronological Edition or Letter 379-80, Barker Numbering.]

In short, motion, cosmic matter, duration, space, are everywhere and for perspicuity's sake, let us place or fancy this multiplicity in or at the top of a circle, ("boundless"). They are passive, negative, unconscious, yet ever propelled by their inherent latent life or force. During the day of activity, that cyclic force ejecting from the causative latent principle cosmic matter, like the wheel of a water mill ejects showers of water-dust around its rotating circle, put it in contact with the same principles, but whose condition owing to their finding themselves outside the state of primitive passivity of the eternal immutability has already changed. Thus the same principles begin to acquire so to speak the germs of polarity. Then coming within the Universal mind Dyan Kam develops these germs, conceives, and giving the impulse communicates it to Fohat, who, vibrating along Akasa, Od (a state of cosmic matter, motion, force, etc.) runs along the lines of cosmic manifestations and frames all and everything; blindly – agreed, yet as faithfully in accordance with the prototypes as conceived in the eternal mind as a good mirror reflects your face.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 69, Chronological Edition or L.B.S., APP.I.]

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VII. Brahman.
The emanation from the ABSOLUTE, etc. (or pure spirit).

[C.W.III, 407]

Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint – ”wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism.” The ONE LIFE is either “MUKTA” (absolute and unconditioned) and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is “BADDHA” (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the ABSOLUTE; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate), of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no universe; existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugas, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara: and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as our correspondent rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti, guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti – the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would say – the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space then, or Fan, Bar-nang (Maha-Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the “Emptiness” is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute.

[C.W.III, 423]

The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with the masculine Brahmâ of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists rightly believe the name derived from the verb “brih,” to grow or increase, and to be, in this sense, the universal expansive force of nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle, or power, spread throughout the universe and which in its collectivity is the one Absoluteness, the one Life and the only Reality.

[C.W.III, 424]

To this teaching every kind of exception will be taken by the Theists and various objections raised by the Spiritualists. It is evident, that we cannot be expected to give within the narrow limits of a short article a full explanation of this highly abstruse and esoteric doctrine. To say that the ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS is Unconscious of its consciousness, hence to the limited intellect of man must be “ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS,” seems like speaking of a square triangle. We hope to develop the proposition more fully in one of the forthcoming numbers of “Fragments of Occult Truth” of which we may publish a series. We will then prove, perhaps, to the satisfaction of the non-prejudiced that the Absolute, or the Unconditioned, and (especially) the unrelated, is a mere fanciful abstraction, a fiction, unless we view it from the standpoint and in the light of the more educated pantheist. To do so, we will have to regard the “Absolute” merely as the aggregate of all intelligences, the totality of all existences, incapable of manifesting itself but through the interrelationship of its parts, as It is absolutely incognizable and non-existent outside its phenomena, and depends entirely on its ever-correlating Forces, dependent in their turn on the ONE GREAT LAW.

[C.W.III, 436 fn]

The term “spirit” coupled with the idea of “embodiment” becomes as incorrect, and as great a fallacy as to represent the non-conditioned, or the Infinite “ALL” (the one Reality) by a limited and conditioned portion of a finite object, one of the evanescent mirages ever flickering and disappearing in our phenomenal world. The “perfected” or rather “Perfect Spirit” – since the Absolute, or limitless UNITY and perfection can neither be divided, nor can it be invested with attributes and degrees involving gradual perfectibility – can become the Unity or Spirit but after having lost every form and shape – (hence body), which would necessarily make of it a DUALITY. It can have no relation to, or concern with, any object of consciousness in our illusionary world, as this alone would involve dualism, which must exist wherever there is any relation at all. Hence – if under the name of “Perfected Spirit” – ABSOLUTE consciousness is meant, then the latter, incapable of either internal or external cognition, must necessarily be viewed as incapable also of a voluntary communication with us mortals.

[C.W.IV, 52]

... the ONE Absolute is not Being – but becoming: the ever-developing, cyclic evolution, the Perpetual Motion of Nature visible and invisible – moving, and breathing even during its long Pralayic Sleep.

[C.W.VI, 10]

... the eternity of the Kosmos, which is but the periodic and objective manifestation of absolute eternity itself, of the forever unknown principle called Parabrahman, Adi-Buddha, the “One and Eternal Wisdom.”

If there is a still greater absurdity than to speak of a cruel God: it is to admit that God, the Great, Absolute Whole, could ever interfere in terrestrial or human affairs. The infinite cannot associate with the finite; the unconditioned ignores the conditioned and the limited. The absolute “Intelligence-Wisdom” cannot act in the restricted space of a small globe. It is omnipresent and latent in the Kosmos, infinite as itself.

[C.W.VIII,87-8]

But can the Absolute have any relation to the conditioned or the finite? Reason and metaphysical philosophy answer alike – No. The “Self-existent” can only be the Absolute, and esoteric philosophy calls it therefore the “Causeless Cause,” the Absolute Root of all, with no attributes, properties or conditions. It is the one UNIVERSAL LAW of which immortal man is a part, and which, therefore, he senses under the only possible aspects – those of absolute immutability transformed into absolute activity – on this plane of illusion – or eternal ceaseless motion, the ever Becoming. Spirit, Matter, Motion, are the three attributes, on this our plane. In that of self-existence the three are ONE and indivisible. Hence we say that Spirit, Matter, and Motion are eternal, because one, under three aspects.

[C.W.IX, 98]

According to the Eastern philosophy a unity composed of “many entities, parts, or forms” is a compound unity on the plane of Maya – illusion or ignorance. The One universal divine Unity cannot be a differentiated whole, however much “organized into a body of harmony.” Organization implies external work out of materials at hand, and can never be connected with the self-existent, eternal, and unconditioned Absolute Unity.

This ONE SELF, absolute intelligence and existence, therefore non-intelligence and non-existence (to the finite and conditioned perception of man), is “impartite, beyond the range of speech and thought and is the substract of all” teaches Vedantasara in its introductory Stanza.

How, then, can the Infinite and the Boundless, the unconditioned and the absolute, be of any size? The question can only apply to a dwarfed reflection of the uncreate ray on the mayavic plane, or our phenomenal Universe;...

[C.W.IX, 167]

To some minds, very likely. In the opinion of a Vedantin or an Eastern Occultist this “Boundless” is the one deity and the one reality in this universe of Maya, and it is the one everlasting and uncreated principle – everything else being illusionary, because finite, conditioned and transitory.

It cannot be independent, since “existence” is precisely that Deity which we call “Absolute Existence,” of which nothing can be “independent”....

Not Eastern philosophy and metaphysics – the oldest of all. Nothing cannot come out of or from another nothing – if the latter word is accepted in our finite sense. All comes from Nothing, or NO-THING, En-Soph, the Boundless (to us) nothingness! but on the plane of Spirit the noumenon of ALL....

The deity he calls “Nothing” and we “No-thing” can produce nothing, for the simple reason that IT is in itself ALL, the Infinite, Boundless and Absolute, and that even IT could never produce anything outside of itself, since whatever manifests is ITSELF.

[C.W.X, 43]

Demon est Deus inversus is said of a manifested, differentiated deity, or of the Universe of Matter. That which is Absolute cannot even be homogeneous, it is Ain – nothing, or No-thing; and if men of finite intellects will insist upon speculating upon the infinite, and therefore to them unreachable and incomprehensible, otherwise than as a necessary philosophical postulate, then they must expect to be worsted by that same philosophy.

[C.W.X, 151]

A thing cannot be absolute and still subject to change.

[C.W.X, 174]

Q. But are eternal Space and Duration the only attributes of the Infinite?
A. Space and Duration, being eternal, cannot be called attributes, as they are only the aspects of that Infinite. Nor can that Infinite, if you mean by it The Absolute Principle, have any attributes whatever as only that which is itself finite and conditioned can have any relation to something else. All this is philosophically wrong.

[C.W.X, 311]

The Absolute cannot be said to have a consciousness, or, at any rate, a consciousness such as we have here. It has neither consciousness, nor desire, nor wish, nor thought, because it is absolute thought, absolute desire, absolute consciousness, absolute “all”.

[C.W.X, 315]

Q. Then the power or Potentiality which precedes and is higher than the Ah-hi, is the law which necessitates manifestation?
A. Just so; periodical manifestation. When the hour strikes, the law comes into action, and the Ah-hi appear on the first rung of the ladder of manifestation.

Q. But surely this is THE law and not A law?
A. Precisely, since it is absolute and “Secondless” – therefore it is not an attribute, but that Absoluteness itself.

Q. The great difficulty is to account for this law?
A. That would be trying to go beyond the first manifestation and supreme causality. It will take all our limited intellect to vaguely understand even the latter; try as we may, we can never, limited as we are, approach the Absolute, which is to us, at our present stage of mental development, merely a logical speculation, though dating back to thousands and thousands of years.

[C.W.X, 318-9]

Q. But we understand that bliss, as the state of the Absolute, was intended to be referred to.
A. This is still more illogical. How can the ABSOLUTE be said to feel? The Absolute can have no condition nor attribute. It is only that which is finite and differentiated which can have any feeling or attitude predicated of it.

[C.W.X, 322]

Moreover, the Absolute can never be differentiated. Maya is a manifestation; the Absolute can have no manifestation, but only a reflection, a shadow which is radiated periodically from it – not by it.

[C.W.X, 327]

Q. The question really requests an explanation of the cause, in the Absolute, of differentiation.
A. That is outside the province of legitimate speculation. Parabrahm is not a cause, neither is there any cause that can compel it to emanate or create. Strictly speaking, Parabrahm is not even the Absolute but Absoluteness. Parabrahm is not the cause, but the causality, or the propelling but not volitional power, in every manifesting Cause. We may have some hazy idea that there is such a thing as this eternal Causeless Cause or Causality. But to define it is impossible. In the “Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita,” by Mr. Subba Row, it is stated that logically even the First Logos cannot cognize Parabrahm, but only Mulaprakriti, its veil. When, therefore, we have yet no clear idea of Mulaprakriti, the first basic aspect of Parabrahm, what can we know of that Supreme Total which is veiled by Mulaprakriti (the root of nature or Prakriti) even to the Logos

[C.W.X, 336]

... we [occultists] should have to worship many gods or pray to the Absolute, which, having no attributes, can have no ears to hear us.

[C.W.X, 345]

Radiation can come from the Absolute; Emanation cannot. One difference exists in the idea that Radiation is sure, sooner or later, to be withdrawn again while Emanation runs into other emanations and is thoroughly separated and differentiated. Of course at the end of the cycle of time emanation will also be withdrawn into the One Absolute; but meanwhile, during the entire cycle of changes emanation will persist. One thing emanates from the other, and, in fact, from one point of view, emanation is equivalent to Evolution; while “radiation” represents to my mind – in the pre-cosmic period, of course – an instantaneous action like that of a piece of paper set on fire under a burning glass, of which act the Sun knows nothing. Both terms, of course, are used for want of better.

[C.W.X, 359-60]

... we believe in an impersonal and absolute PRINCIPLE, so far beyond human conception that we consider anyone a mere blasphemer and a presumptuous fool who attempts to define this grand universal mystery. All that is taught us concerning this eternal and incomparable Principle, is that it is neither spirit, nor matter, nor substance, nor thought, but the container of all these, the absolute container.

[C.W.XI, 276]

Moreover, as the realm of the only real is distorted by matter, the non-real, and as – from the standpoint of absolute reality – the universe with its conscious and intelligent beings is but a poor phantasmagoria, it follows that it is the shadow of the Real, on the plane of the latter, that is endowed with intelligence and attributes, while the absolute – from our viewpoint – is deprived of all conditioned qualities by the very fact that it is absolute.

[C.W.XI, 278]

To the learner who would study the Esoteric Sciences with their double object: (a) of proving Man to be identical in spiritual and physical essence with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature; and (b) of demonstrating the presence in him of the same potential powers as exist in the creative forces in Nature – to such an one a perfect knowledge of the correspondences between Colours, Sounds and Numbers is the first requisite. As already said, the sacred formula of the Far East, Om Mani Padme Hum, is the one best calculated to make these correspondential qualities and functions clear to the learner.

[C.W.XII, 519]

The Point in the Circle is the Unmanifested Logos, corresponding to Absolute Life an dAbsolute Sound.

[C.W.XII, 564]

Esotericism, pure and simple, speaks of no personal God; therefore are we considered as Atheists. But, in reality, Occult Philosophy, as a whole, is based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God, the Absolute Deity; and if It itself is not speculated upon, as being too sacred and yet incomprehensible as a Unit to the finite intellect, yet the entire philosophy is based upon Its divine Powers as being the source of all that breathes and lives and has its existence.

[C.W.XII, 569]

Based on the same foundation-stone – the ancient Mysteries – the primitive religions, all without one exception, reflect the most important of the once universal beliefs, such, for instance, as an impersonal and universal divine Principle, absolute in its nature, and unknowable to the “brain” intellect, or the conditioned and limited cognition of man. To imagine any witness to it in the manifested universe, other than as Universal Mind, the Soul of the universe – is impossible.

[C.W.XIII, 266-7]

... if the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal One Substance or Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the Absolute Deity, that builds it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, the Angels or Dhyani-Chohans, that emanate from the One Element, which becoming periodically Light and Darkness, remains eternally, in its Root-Principle, the one unknown, yet existing Reality.

[C.W.XIV, 210]

The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the error which the connotation of these words implies, with them the “One and Changeless” – Parabrahman – the Absolute All and One, cannot be conceived as standing in any relation to things finite and conditioned.

[C.W.XIV, 212-3]

The One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can have no relation to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see, from the glorious suns and planets down to the blades of grass and the specks of dust, had been created by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First Energy that proceeded from It, then every such thing would have been perfect, eternal, and unconditioned like its author.

[C.W.XIV, 216-7]

--oOo--