THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

ATOMS

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... the term “Point” must not be understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these collectively form “the Germ;” or rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible matter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p57]

“Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers”...; which means that the primordial Electric Entity – for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity – electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “There exists an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od, Ob, and Or, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” ... – the first Light of the primordial Elohim – the Adam, “male and female” – or (scientifically) ELECTRICITY AND LIFE

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p76]

THEN SVABHAVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH (of these) IS A PART OF THE WEB (Primeval Light). REFLECTING THE “SELF-EXISTENT LORD” (Primeval Light) LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.
“Fohat hardens the atoms”, i.e., by infusing energy into them; he scatters the atoms or primordial matter. “He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p85]

... in the Esoteric doctrine it is used figuratively. The “fiery Wind” is the incandescent Cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “Creative Forces.” Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p107]

“If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.”... We will go further than that, and assert that Electricity is not only substance but that it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world according to the eternal Law of KARMA.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p111fn]

It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or æons) of life, MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest “pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom”,...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p116]

... this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p117]

As an abstraction we call it the ONE LIFE;... immanent in every atom of Matter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p139]

... Occult Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place in space of molecules, or of atoms rather, correlating, and thus changing their combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and those among the greatest physicists and chemists, begin to suspect this fact, which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope only shows the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and sidereal substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way and under the same conditions as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in and for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those of dissociation and re-association, differ on every planet; and thus atoms enter into new forms of existence, undreamt of, and incognizable to, physical Science.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p142]

Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation. “The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.” And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever, unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to “a current of EFFLUX” (an occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term implies); when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily re-absorbed.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p143]

A “neutral centre” is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already formed; each of these corresponding, to an appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception into nothing – or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special and not readily discoverable properties....
The Primordial Atom (anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic state, or its primogeneity; therefore it is called “SUM TOTAL,” figuratively, of course, as that “SUM TOTAL” is boundless. That which is the abyss of nothingness to the physicist, who knows only the world of visible causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the Occultist.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p148]

... how can any materialist limit the laws changing the conditions and being of the atoms in primordial chaos, or know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of their atoms and molecules before and after their formation into worlds? These changeless and eternal molecules – far thicker in space than the grains on the ocean shore – may differ in their constitution along the line of their planes of existence, as the soul-substance differs from its vehicle, the body. Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and each plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p150]

... so the Mineral Monad – being at the opposite point of the circle – is also One – and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p178]

1. “Every form on earth, and every speck [atom] in Space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the ‘HEAVENLY MAN’ ... Its [the atom’s] involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object – man; man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this earth; the MONAD, in its absolute totality and awakened condition – as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p183]

(g) The sixth and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and insubstantial – the ideal THOUGHTS of their creators – down to the Atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “Spirits of Atoms” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical Atom – sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p221]

Occultism – which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water – affirms that our whole body is built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p225fn]

But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says:– Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle – whether you call it organic or inorganic – is a life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms and expels those souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries – the living body of man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious LIFE, represented collectively by countless myriads of lives, that follows in its own sporadic way, the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed in the aura of the generators of every future human being, a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p261]

Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reascending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach through individual merits and efforts that plane where it re-becomes the one unconditioned ALL.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p268]

Cosmic Ideation focussed in a principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness of the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi, e.g., through that known as Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi resting on the experience of Manas as its basis—as a stream of spiritual INTUITION.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p329fn]

Esoteric Philosophy is not the only one to reject the idea of any atom being inorganic ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p454]

It is at this period of Evolution that the absolutely eternal universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language “the GREAT BREATH,” differentiates in the primordial, first manifested ATOM. More and more, as chemical and physical sciences progress, does this occult axiom find its corroboration in the world of knowledge: the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of matter are identical in nature and differ from each other only owing to the variety of the distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck of substance, or by the modes of its atomic vibration, gains every day more ground.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p455]

On the question of the “Seven Governors,” as Hermes calls the “Seven Builders,” the Spirits which guide the operations of nature, the animated atoms of which are the shadows, in their world, of their Primaries in the astral realms – this work will, of course, besides the men of Science, have every materialist against it.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p480]

... the atom – the most metaphysical object in creation.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p485]

Faraday, R.J. Boscovitch, and all others, however, who see, in the atoms and molecules, “centres of force,” and in the corresponding element force, an ENTITY BY ITSELF, are far nearer the truth, perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the “old corpuscular Pythagorean theory” (one, by the way, which has never passed to posterity as the great philosopher really taught it), on the ground of its “delusion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p507]

Something dead implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is the most active. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion, and the spatial distance between those particles in their vibratory motion is – considered from another plane of being and [perception – as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to physical science this will be an absurdity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p507fn]

The atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p513]

Even leaving aside the axiom ... that nature abhors vacuum, what is an atom?
... this fundamental principle of the materialists ... “The atom is indivisible, and at the same time we know it to be elastic.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p518-9]

Accept the explanations and teachings of Occultism, and, the blind inertia of physical Science being replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind the veil of matter, motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers. It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of matter, and the infinite divisibility of the atom, that the whole science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamt of by the most spiritually disposed chemists and physicists.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p520]

That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jiva (divine life), and is the sarira (body) of that Jiva which it contains, while every Jiva is in its turn the sarira of the supreme spirit, as “Parabrahm pervades every Jiva, as well as every particle of matter.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p522]

Therefore, when the adept or alchemist adds that, though matter is eternal, for it is PRADHÂNA, yet atoms are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe, it is no such contradiction as a materialist, who believes in nothing beyond the atom, might think. There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested matter, between pradhâna, the beginningless and endless cause, and prakriti, or the manifested effect.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p545]

As to the “elemental atoms,” so called, the Occultists refer to them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindu to Brahmâ when he calls him ANU, the “Atom.” Every elemental atom, in search of which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the Alchemists, is, in their firm belief (when not knowledge), a SOUL; not necessarily a disembodied soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound Souls – an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It requires a metaphysician – and an Eastern metaphysician – to understand our meaning. All those atom-Souls are differentiations from the ONE, and in the same relation to it as the divine Soul – the Buddhi – to its informing and inseparable Spirit, or Atman.
Modern physics, while borrowing from the ancients their atomic theory, forgot one point, the most important of the doctrine; hence they got only the husks and will never be able to get at the kernel. They left behind, in the adoption of physical atoms, the suggestive fact that from Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all those Philosophers believed more or less in ANIMATED atoms, not in invisible specks of so-called “brute” matter. Rotatory motion was generated in their views, by larger (read, more divine and pure) atoms forcing downwards other atoms; the lighter ones being thrust simultaneously upward. The esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve downward and upward of differentiated elements through intercyclic phases of existence, until each reaches again its starting point or birthplace.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p567-8]

Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and materialist, knew and believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that he taught that the Soul (entirely distinct from immortal Spirit when the former is enshrined latent in it, as it is in every atomic speck), was composed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest, roundest, and finest atoms.
And this shows that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by all profane antiquity, meant by the term “ATOM,” a Soul, a Genius or Angel, the first-born of the ever-concealed CAUSE of all causes; and in this sense their teachings become comprehensible. They claimed, as do their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, angels or “demons,” not outside, or independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p568-9]

... the Occultist would put it otherwise. They would say that no atom is ever “created,” for the atoms are eternal within the bosom of the One Atom, – “the atom of atoms” – viewed during Manvantara as the Jagad-Yoni the material causative womb of the world. Pradhâna (unmodified matter), that which is the first form of Prakriti, or material visible, as well as invisible nature, and Purusha, spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupadhi, (without adventitious qualities or attributes) only during Pralaya, and when beyond any of the planes of consciousness of existence. The atom, as known to modern science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is spirit, but is now called “Energy” in Science. The protyle atom has not been comminuted or subtilized: it has simply passed into that plane, which is no plane, but the eternal state of everything beyond the planes of illusion. Both Purusha and Pradhâna are immutable and unconsumable, or Aparinamin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both during the Mayavic periods may be referred to as Vyaya and Parinamin, or that which can expand, pass away and disappear, and is “modifiable.” In this sense Purusha, must of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahmam.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p582]

... that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which, every atom and molecule change and differentiate from their primordial nature.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p582]

And what became of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained only their property of resistance; they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical points ... but if their extension in space was nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming that inner existence, such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical but a metaphysical dimension ... having reduced the geometrical extension of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the direction of their metaphysical dimension. After having lost sight of them in the world of space, the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as a mathematical point... . As a cone stands on its point, or a perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have only a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of thought ...
This is the spirit, the very root of occult doctrine and thought. The “Spirit-Matter” and “Matter-Spirit” extend infinitely in depth, and like “the essence of things” of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external world, is at the lowest end of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter.
The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz and that of occult philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadologie before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz’ and Spinoza’s systems reconciled, the essence and Spirit of esoteric philosophy would be made to appear.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p628-9]

But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add?
They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz – roughly viewed, and leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for the present – may be separated into three distinct Hosts, which, counted from the highest planes, are, firstly, “gods,” or conscious, spiritual Egos; the intelligent architects, who work after the plan in the Divine Mind. Then come the Elementals, or Monads, who form collectively and unconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with their respective realms. Lastly, the atoms, or material molecules, which are informed in their turn by their apperceptive monads, just as every cell in a human body is so informed.) There are shoals of such informed atoms which, in their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of monads, or Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces – Monadless, for they are pure incorporealities, except under certain laws, when they assume a form – not necessarily human. Whence the substance that clothes them – the apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless (“Arupa”) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of monads – each the mirror of its own Universe – and thus individualize for the time being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar atoms. For atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first differentiation, but the principles, corporeal, psychic and Spiritual, of the “Gods,” – themselves the Radiations of primordial nature. Thus, to the eye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the subjective – as influences, and the objective – as mystic FORMS, which, under Karmic law, become a Presence, Spirit and Matter being One, as repeatedly stated. Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit – on the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both – are MAYA.
Atoms are called “Vibrations” in Occultism; ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p632-3]

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”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p635]

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After the changeless (avikara) immutable nature (Essence, sadaikarupa) had awakened and changed (differentiated) into (a state of) causality (avyakta) and from cause (Karana) had become its own discrete effect (vyakta), from invisible it became visible. The smallest of the small (the most atomic of atoms, or aniyamsam aniyasam) became one and the many (ekanekarupa); and producing the Universe produced also the Fourth Loka (our Earth) in the garland of the seven lotuses.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p46-7]

... Worlds and men were in turn formed and destroyed, under the law of evolution and from pre-existing material, until both the planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle: opposite polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the Balance, through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p84]

But to the follower of the true Eastern archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in every atom of nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give life eternal and not physical life alone. For him the Cross and Circle, the Tree or the Tau, are, after every symbol relating to these has been applied to, and read one after another, still a profound mystery in their Past, and it is to that Past alone that he directs his eager gaze.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p588]

The latter (Occultism) teaches that – (a) the life-atoms of our (Prâna) life-principle are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of the Monads. Because (b), as the individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral, or life double, etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies, etc., etc.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p671-2]

Esoteric Science agrees with it [method of evolution], but adds that this law applies only to what is known to it as the Primary Creation – the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms, and the pre-primordial ATOM, at the first differentiation of the former; and that during the period of cyclic evolution in space and time, this law is limited and works only in the lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from simple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial activity recommences.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p731]

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... All is in All; every atom is resolved into one Homogeneity.

[The Key to Theosophy, p84]

Every atom and speck of matter, not of substance only, is imperishable in its essence, but not in its individual consciousness.

[The Key to Theosophy, p108]

We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law.

[The Key to Theosophy, p202]

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But the dead worlds left behind [by] the on-sweeping impulse do not continue dead. Motion is the eternal order of things and affinity or attraction its handmaid of all works. The thrill of life will again re-unite the atoms, and it will stir again in the inert planet when the time comes. Though all its forces have remained in status quo and are now asleep, yet little by little it will – when the hour re-strikes – gather for a new cycle of man-bearing maternity, and give birth to something still higher as moral and physical types than during the preceding manvantara. And its “cosmic atoms already in a differentiated state” (differing – in the producing force, in the mechanical sense, of motions and effects) remains in statu quo as well as globes and everything else in the process of formation...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 46, Chronological Edition or Letter 126, Barker Numbering.]

Modern science is our best ally. Yet it is generally that same science which is made the weapon to break our heads with. However, you will have to bear in mind (a) that we recognize but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself, and which as the Akasa pervades our solar system, every atom being part of itself, pervades throughout space and is space in fact, which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas, and [is] the universal Proteus, the ever active Nature during the Manvantaras;...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 65, Chronological Edition or Letter 168, Barker Numbering.]

For the potentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its “chemical affinity” (?) to coalesce with other like atoms, the aggregate sum of such united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet have been successively passed through.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 180, Barker Numbering.]

The great difficulty in grasping the idea in the above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the one element, of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow, throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but the initial point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution, gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc. incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of evolution and involution in time develop into A’s, B’s, C’s, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms, nor their derived a’s, b’s, c’s, have lost one tittle of their original force or life-essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there is not transformed into something else, as I have already shown in my letter, but with each development of a new centre of activity from within itself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progresses something plus in its differentiation.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 181, Barker Numbering.]

The one element not only fills space and is space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 187, Barker Numbering.]

When we speak of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. – hence is material, is matter itself.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 88, Chronological Edition or Letter 271, Barker Numbering.]

Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily – and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us matter (or nature) acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials ever changing form, combinations and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 88, Chronological Edition or Letter 272, Barker Numbering.]

It is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind – which no one could ever think of calling God – to be eternally evolving subjective matter into objective atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a relative sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise that same involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed laws of nature – which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 90, Chronological Edition or Letter 280, Barker Numbering.]

There is a moment in the existence of every molecule and atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or motion or life (call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant, with the swiftness which surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought, the atom or molecule or an aggregation of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intracosmic matter. It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver to the central mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature, as the trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless they be in connection with matter.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 90, Chronological Edition or Letter 283, Barker Numbering.]

The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous globe; but a gigantic ball of electromagnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the greatest genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 93B, Chronological Edition or Letter 321, Barker Numbering.]

I was not aware that atoms were considered by you as something nihil. Are not the molecules considered in science as compound atoms? Your science knows only of such compound molecules, and a primal atom is and will remain for ever as a hypothetical abstraction for it. Science can know nothing of the nature of atoms outside the region of effects on her globe and even that atom she calls indivisible, which we do not, for we know of the existence and properties of the universal solvent – the essence of the Panchamahabutam – the five elements. Even the existence of the atoms which compose the unseen medium through which the power which magnetises instantly a short iron rod placed across the centre of a hoop two yards in diameter around which a wire thickly covered with indict rubber is coiled – even the existence of such atoms I say, remains an open question and science remains puzzled and embarrassed to decide whether it is an action at a distant without. or with some mysterious medium – or what?

[Letters from Blavatsky to A.P.Sinnett (LBS) Letter II, p515]

When the hour strikes [after Pralaya] the cosmic atoms already in a differentiated state remain statu quo, as well as globes and everything else in the process of formation. Therefore you have seized the idea.

[Letters from Blavatsky to A.P.Sinnett (LBS) Letter II, p517]

---

A current of Akasa directed by a sorcerer at a given object with an evil intent, must either be propelled by such intensity of will as to break through every obstacle and overpower the resistant will of the selected victim, or it will rebound against the sender, and afflict him or her in the same way as it was intended the other should be hurt.

[C.W.II, p218]

... a subtle influence is exerted by people upon the houses and even the localities they live in, the paper they write upon, the clothing they wear, the portion of the Universal Ether (the Aryan Akasa) they exist in – and that this is a permanent influence, perceptible even at the most distant epochs from the time when the individual lived and exerted this influence.

[C.W.II, p397]

The astral light of the Western occultists is the akasa of the Hindus.

[C.W.III, p323]

This power [Kamarupa] can gather akasa or prakriti and mould it into any desired shape.

[C.W.III, p409]

... in Akasa lies that eternal, potential energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself.

[C.W.III, p413fn]

mediumistic rapping is produced by a correlation of vital force, emitted from the person of the rapper, with the potential energy of the ether (akasa).

[C.W.IV, p144]

... there is but one centre of Occult Force in nature.

[C.W.IV, p165]

It is through occult sounds that the adept commands the elemental forces of nature.

[C.W.IV, p166]

The Seventh State of matter – Life. The Fire and Light of the “Astral Virgin” may be studied by the Hindus in the Fire and Light of Akasa.

[C.W.IV, p264]

... the ignorance of physical science of all the potentialities contained in the astral light or akasa.

[C.W.IV, p489]

... the old Aryan dogma that the Akasa (Ether) is the cradle and grave of objective nature; and that it holds imperishably the records of everything that ever existed, every phenomenon that ever occurred in the outer world.

[C.W.IV, p555]

... the mutual ties created in each birth must weaken and at last grow inert, before it can be reborn. The record of those relationships imperishably endures in the Akasa ...

[C.W.V, p93]

As the thought waves are thus impressed on the tissue, materials are drawn to it from the ocean of akas ...

[C.W.VI, p120]

... the psychometer sees the secrets of the Akasa ...

[C.W.VI, p182]

Every thought, as much as action, is dynamic and is impressed in the imperishable Book of Nature – the Akasa, the objective aspect of the UNMANIFESTED LIFE.

[C.W.VI, p228]

Anima Mundi ... simply the Akasa, the noumenon of the Astral Light, the veil between the Earth and the first waters.

[C.W.VIII, p388]

Akasa is not the Holy Ghost because then Akasa would be Shekinah, while Akasa is the noumenon of the Cosmic Septenary whose soul is Ether. Shekinah is a feminine principle just as the Holy Ghost was with the early Christians ...

[C.W.IX, p389fn]

The Ether or Akasa being the first Idea of the yet uncreated Universe; from which must emanate the future Kosmos, in its descending grades of materiality. The Ether is the “Vast abyss” on which the Spirit “dove-like, sat brooding”; it is also “the face of the waters” on which “the spirit rested”.

[C.W.X, p146]

A contradiction. A thing cannot be absolute and still subject to change. What H.R.H. means to say, we suppose, is that space or the abstract universe (Akasa) is infinite and immutable; but that this universe is subject to changes in its periodical manifestations.

[C.W.X, p174]

Q. What relation have the Astral Light and Akasa to memory?
A. The former is the “tablet of the memory” of the animal man, the latter of the spiritual Ego. The “dreams” of the Ego, as much as the acts of the physical man, arc all recorded, since both are actions based on causes and producing results. Our “dreams” being simply the waking state and actions of the true Self, must be, of course, recorded somewhere....
Q. What, in reality, is the Astral Light?
A. As the Esoteric Philosophy teaches us, the Astral Light is simply the dregs of Akasa or the Universal Ideation in its metaphysical sense. Though invisible, it is yet, so to speak, the phosphorescent radiation of the latter, and is the medium between it and man’s thought-faculties. It is these which pollute the Astral Light, and make it what it is—the storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. In its primordial genesis, the astral light as a radiation is quite pure, though the lower it descends approaching our terrestrial sphere, the more it differentiates, and becomes as a result impure in its very constitution. But man helps considerably in this pollution, and gives it back its essence far worse than when he received it.

[C.W.X, p251]

The first line or diameter is the Mother-Father; from it proceeds the Second Logos, which contains in itself the Third Manifested Word. In the Puranas, for instance, it is again said that the first production of Akasa is Sound, and sound means in this case the “Word”, the expression of the unuttered thought, the manifested Logos,...

[C.W.X, p314]

Q. What is meant by prototypes existing in the Astral Light? (The Secret Doctrine, Vol.I, 63)
A. Astral Light is here used as a convenient phrase for a term very little understood, viz: “the realm of Akasa, or primordial Light manifested through the divine Ideation.” The latter must be accepted in this particular case as a generic term for the universal and divine mind reflected in the waters of Space or Chaos, which is the Astral Light proper, and a mirror reflecting and reversing a higher plane. In the ABSOLUTE or Divine Thought everything exists and there has been no time when it did not so exist; but Divine Ideation is limited by the Universal Manvantaras. The realm of Akasa is the undifferentiated noumenal and abstract Space which will be occupied by Chidakasam, the field of primordial consciousness. It has several degrees, however, in Occult philosophy; in fact, “seven fields.” The first is the field of latent consciousness which is coeval with the duration of the first and second unmanifested Logoi. It is the “Light which shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not” of St. John’s Gospel. When the hour strikes for the Third Logos to appear, then from the latent potentiality there radiates a lower field of differentiated consciousness, which is Mahat, or the entire collectivity of those Dhyan-Chohans of sentient life of which Fohat is the representative on the objective plane and the Manasaputras on the subjective. The Astral Light is that which mirrors the three higher planes of consciousness, and is above the lower, or terrestrial plane; therefore it does not extend beyond the fourth plane, where, one may say, the Akasa begins.
There is one great difference between the Astral Light and the Akasa which must be remembered. The latter is eternal, the former periodic. The Astral Light changes not only with the Maha manvantaras but also with every sub-period and planetary cycle or Round.
Q. Then do the prototypes exist on a plane higher than that of the Astral Light?
A. The prototypes or ideas of things exist first on the plane of Divine eternal Consciousness and thence become reflected and reversed in the Astral Light, which also reflects on its lower individual plane the life of our Earth, recording it on its “tablets.” Therefore, is the Astral Light called illusion. It is from this that we, in our turn, get our prototypes. Consequently unless the Clairvoyant or SEER can get beyond this plane of illusion, he can never see the Truth, but will be drowned in an ocean of self-deception and hallucinations.
Q. And what is the Akasa proper?
A. The Akasa is the eternal divine consciousness which cannot differentiate, have qualities, or act; action belongs to that which is reflected or mirrored from it. The unconditioned and infinite can have no relation with the finite and conditioned. The Astral Light is the Middle Heaven of the Gnostics, in which is Sophia Achamoth, the mother of the seven builders or Spirits of the Earth, which are not necessarily good, and among which the Gnostics placed Jehovah, whom they called Ildabaoth. (Sophia Achamoth must not be confounded with the divine Sophia.) We may compare the Akasa and the Astral Light, with regard to these prototypes, to the germ in the acorn. The latter, besides containing in itself the astral form of the future oak, conceals the germ from which grows a tree containing millions of forms. These forms are contained in the acorn potentially, yet the development of each particular acorn depends upon extraneous circumstances, physical forces, etc.

[C.W.X, p360-1]

But the ether of which science has a suspicion, is the grosses manifestation of Akasa, though on our plane, for us mortals, it is the seventh principle of the astral light, and three degrees higher than “radiant matter”. When it penetrates, or informs something, it may be molecular because it takes on the form of the latter, and its atoms inform the particles of that “something”. We may perhaps call matter “crystallised ether”.

[C.W.X, p370]

Q. In what relation does Ether stand to Spirit and Matter?
A. Make a difference between Æther and Ether, the former being divine, the latter physical and infernal. Ether is the lowest of the septenate division of Akasa-Pradhana, primordial Fire-Substance. Æther-Akasa is the fifth and sixth principles of the body of Kosmos – thus corresponding to Buddhi-Manas, in Man; Ether is its Kosmic sediment mingling with the highest layer of the Astral Light. Beginning with the fifth root-race, it will develop fully only at the beginning of the fifth round. Æther is Akasa in its higher aspect, and Ether Akasa, in its lowest. In one sense it is equivalent to the Father-Creator, Zeus, Pater Æther; on the other to the infernal Serpent-Tempter, the Astral Light of the Kabalists. In the latter case it is fully differentiated matter, in the former only rudimentally differentiated. In other words, Spirit becomes objective matter; and objective matter rebecomes subjective Spirit, when it eludes our metaphysical senses. Æther has the same relation to the Cosmos and our little Earth, as Manas to the Monad and body. Therefore, Ether has nought to do with Spirit, but a good deal, with subjective matter and our Earth.

[C.W.X, p384]

The “Father” in this verse means the Svabhavat, Father-Mother. The Svabhavat of the Buddhists, the Father-Mother (a compound word) of The Secret Doctrine and the Mulaprakriti of the Vedantins, Mulaprakriti is not Parabrahman, although, so to speak, contemporaneous with it. It may perhaps be defined as the cognizable aspect of it.
This first-born is the Sanskrit aja, the Greek ... or lamb. Lambs, sheep and goats were sacrificed to Kali, the lower aspect of Akasa or the Astral Light. The “only begotten Son” was sacrificed to the Father; that is to say, that the spiritual part of man is sacrificed to the astral.
Grace (...) is a difficult word to translate. It corresponds to the higher aspect of Akasa. The two aspects are as follows:
Spiritual Plane: Alaya (Soul of Universe); Akasa Psychic Plane: Prakriti (Matter or Nature); Astral Light or Serpent.

[C.W.X, p490]

6. And there were set there six waterpots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.
The six waterpots typify the six principles, the seven without Atma, the seventh or universal principle – six from the earthly standpoint including the body. These are the containing principles from Akasa to the Astral; also the four lower principles (the others being latent) filled with Astral Water. The Lower Manas sports in the Astral waves.

[C.W.X, p500-1]

... the blossoms of magic, whether white or black, divine or infernal, spring all from one root. The “breath of Cybele” – Akasa-tattva in India – is the one chief agent, and it underlays the so-called “miracles” and “supernatural” phenomena in all ages, as in every clime. As the parent-root or essence is universal, so are its effects innumerable. Even the greatest adepts can hardly say where its possibilities must stop.

[C.W.XII, p215]

... “something permeable and interpenetrating” all and everywhere, it is Akasa, whose lowest form is the Ether of Space, the latter, however, being considerably different from the “hypothetical agent” or medium of Science.

[C.W.XII, p408]

Auric Envelope; because the substratum of the Aura around man is the universally diffused primordial and pure Akasa, the first film on the boundless and shoreless expanse of Jiva, the immutable Root of all.

[C.W.XII, p607]

Then the new Astral Form, composed partly of the pure Akasic Essence of the Auric “Egg,” and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and misdeeds of the last Personality, is drawn into the woman. Once there, Nature models the foetus of flesh around the Astral, out of the growing materials of the male seed in the female soil. Thus grows out of the essence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon of the dead seed, the physical fruit producing in its turn within itself another and other seeds for future plants.

[C.W.XII, p610]

Thus the statement ... that, in the Tattvic scale, the highest Tattva of all is akasa (followed by [only] four, each of which becomes grosser than its predecessor), if made from the esoteric standpoint, is erroneous. For once Akasa, an almost homogeneous and certainly universal principle, is translated Ether, then Akasa is dwarfed and limited to our visible universe, for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space. Ether, whatever modern Science makes of it, is differentiated Substance; Akasa, having no attributes save one – SOUND, of which it is the substratum – is no substance even exoterically and in the minds of some Orientalists, but rather Chaos, or the Great Spatial Void. Esoterically, Akasa alone is Divine Space, which becomes Ether only on the lowest and last plane, or our visible Universe and Earth. In this case the blind is in the word “attribute,” which is given as Sound! It is no attribute at all, but the primal correlation of Akasa; its primordial manifestation, the Logos, or Divine Ideation made WORD, and that “Word” made flesh. Sound may be considered an “attribute” of Akasa only on the condition of anthropomorphizing the latter. It is not a characteristic of it, though it is certainly as innate in it as the idea “I am I” is innate in our thought.

[C.W.XII, p611]

Akasa is shown black or colourless, whereas, corresponding to Manas, it is indigo;

[C.W.XII, p621]

Taking the case cited, the rays of Akasa and their arrangement which cause a star to be seen, are present all round the person, and at any and every point in the aura the one star exists, but as the perceiver is different from the person in front of whom the star exists, he can see one star only, and that at the point where his organs of astral vision cut the rays of the Akasa/ And it is the same with other pictures that might exist in the aura of anyone. Each picture exists in the entire aura without interfering with any other, and at the same time each or any picture is complete at any one spot or point in the same aura. Hence two seers may, and often do, see two different pictures at the same spot in the astral light.

[C.W.XII, p678]

... Ana signifies the “invisible heaven”, the Heavenly Mother of the terrestrial sea; or esoterically Akasa, the mother of the Astral Light.

[C.W.XIII, p75fn]

Buddha held only two things as eternal – Akasa and nirvana. But Akasa being the same as Aditi, and both being translated “Space”, there is no discrepancy so far, since Nirvana as well as Moksha, is a state.

[C.W.XIV, p411]

--oOo--