THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

MATTER

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In contradistinction to the manifested universe of matter, the term Mulaprakriti (from Mula, “the root, and prakriti, “nature”), or the unmanifested primordial matter – called by western alchemists Adam’s Earth – is applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious metaphysics, and septenary in esoteric teachings like everything else in the universe. As Mulaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal; as Vyakta, it becomes differentiated and conditioned,...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p10fn]

In Stanza V. the process of world-formation is described: – First, diffused Cosmic Matter, then the fiery “whirlwind,” the first stage in the formation of a nebula. That nebula condenses, and after passing through various transformations, forms a Solar Universe, a planetary chain, or a single planet, as the case may be.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p22]

Thus, the “Robes” stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the ONE infinite Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from which Akasa radiates.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p35]

The ray of the “Ever Darkness” becomes, as it is emitted, a ray of effulgent light or life, and flashes into the “Germ” – the point in the Mundane Egg, represented by matter in its abstract sense. But 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]

Thus is repeated on Earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The “Son” of the immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the undifferentiated cosmic protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on Earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve – our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total – past, present, and future ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p60]

... Parabrahmam or Mulaprakriti, ... these are the two aspects of the ONE. The “Light” is the same Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations. The curds are the first differentiation, and probably refer also to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the origin of the “Milky Way” – the matter we know. This “matter,” which, according to the revelation received from the primeval Dhyani-Buddhas, is, during the periodical sleep of the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisatva – this matter, radical and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the “Star-stuff”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p69]

Fire is Aether in its purest form, and hence is not regarded as matter, but it is the unity of Aether – the second manifested deity in its universality. But there are two “Fires” and a distinction is made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the purely Formless and invisible Fire concealed in the Central Spiritual Sun, is spoken of as “triple” (metaphysically); while the Fire of the manifested Kosmos is Septenary, throughout both the Universe and our Solar System.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p87]

There is an inherent law – not only in the primordial, but also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane – by which Nature correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements; and in which there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature. That which seems rest is only the change of one form into another; the change of substance going hand in hand with that of form – as we are taught in Occult physics, which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the “Conservation of matter” by a considerable time.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p97]

Men of science may term them Force or Forces generated by matter, or “modes of its motion,” if they will; Occultism sees in the effects “Elemental” (forces), and, in the direct causes producing them, intelligent DIVINE Workmen. The intimate connection of those Elementals (guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers)—their correlation we might call it – with the elements of pure Matter, results in our terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc.... Electricity, light, heat, etc., have been aptly termed the “Ghost or Shadow of Matter in Motion,” i.e., supersensuous states of matter whose effects only we are able to cognize.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p146]

The Occultists, who do not say – if they would express themselves correctly – that matter, but only the substance or essence of matter, is in destructible and eternal, (i.e., the Root of all, Mulaprakriti): assert that all the so-called Forces of Nature, Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, are in esse, i.e., in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects of that Universal Motion ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p147]

... the one real absolute Force, the NOUMENON of the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognise as “Force”; or again the Noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object to finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and subjectivity too; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we attempt to imagine a neutral centre – the dream of those who would discover perpetual motion. 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. Such “Seven Neutral Centres,” then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it – “Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build . . .” – quickens matter into activity and evolution.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p148]

There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals or nascent centres of forces – from the first stage of differentiation of (from) Mulaprakriti (or rather Pradhana, primordial homogeneous matter) to its third degree – i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evoluting energy. Three stages (sub-physical) on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective physical side – these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary chain.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p176]

To see and appreciate the difference – the immense gulf that separates terrestrial matter from the finer grades of supersensuous matter – every astronomer, every chemist and physicist ought to be a psychometer, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for himself that difference in which he now refuses to believe.... This is what she [Elizabeth Denton] described in one of her experiments; with a particle of a meteorite placed on her forehead, in an envelope, the lady, not being aware of what it contained, said:

“What a difference between that which we recognise as matter here and that which seems like matter there! In the one, the elements are so coarse and so angular, I wonder that we can endure it all, much more that we can desire to continue our present relations to it; in the other, all the elements are so refined, they are so free from those great, rough angularities, which characterize the elements here, that I can but regard that as by so much the more than this, the real existence.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p201fn]

As to the latter [Dhyani-Chohans] –
They are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that energy, and which is the Dhyani-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the Universal Mind.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p260]

Matter is eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no inorganic or dead matter in nature,...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p280]

“Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it. Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven degrees of density. SURYA(the Sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first, or lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever Unmanifested SAT (Be-ness). All the Central physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first Principle of the BREATH. Nor are any of these any more than the REFLECTIONS of their PRIMARIES which are concealed from the gaze of all but the Dhyan Chohans, whose Corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of the seventh Principle of the Mother substance, and is, therefore, four degrees higher than the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhatu (principal substances in the human body) so there are seven Forces in Man and in all Nature.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p289-90]

Cosmic Ideation is said to be non-existent during Pralayic periods, for the simple reason that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no manifestation of Consciousness, semi-consciousness, or even “unconscious purposiveness,” except through the vehicle of matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human consciousness in its normal state cannot soar beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it is only through some molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or sub-conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is a mere abstraction, both of these aspects of the ABSOLUTE – Cosmic Substance and Cosmic Ideation – are mutually inter-dependent. In strict accuracy – to avoid confusion and mis-conception – the term “Matter” ought to be applied to the aggregate of objects of possible perception, and “Substance” to noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of our plane are the creation of the perceiving Ego – the modifications of its own subjectivity – all the “states of matter representing the aggregate of perceived objects” can have but a relative and purely phenomenal existence for the children of our plane.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p328-30]

The Occultist sees in the manifestation of every force in Nature, the action of the quality, or the special characteristic of its noumenon; which noumenon is a distinct and intelligent Individuality on the other side of the manifested mechanical Universe. Now the Occultist does not deny – on the contrary he will support the claim – that light, heat, electricity and so on are affections (not properties or qualities) of matter. To put it more clearly: matter is the condition – the necessary basis or vehicle, a sine qua non – for the manifestation of these forces, or agents, on this plane.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p493]

The chief and most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view of the Occultists, lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing as inorganic, or dead matter, in nature. Is anything dead or inorganic capable of transformation or change? Occultism asks. And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless?

[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 spacial 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]

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]

The old Initiates knew of no “miraculous creation,” but taught the evolution of atoms (on our physical plane), and their first differentiation from laya into the protyle, as Mr. Crookes has suggestively named matter, or primordial substance beyond the zero-line: – there where we place Mulaprakriti, the “root-Principle” of the world stuff and of all in the world.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p522]

And how can it be otherwise? Gross ponderable matter is the body, the Shell of matter or Substance, the female passive principle; and this Fohatic force is the second principle, prana – the male and the active? On our globe this Substance is the second principle of the septenary Element – Earth; in the atmosphere, it is that of air, which is the cosmic gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar body and that of the Seven rays; in sidereal space it corresponds with another principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous Unity alone, the parts are all differentiations.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p525fn]

Here are two elements in the Universe, the one is ponderable matter . . . The second element the all-pervading ether, solar-fire. It is without weight, substance, form, or colour; it is matter infinitely divisible, and its particles repel each other; its rarity is such that we have no word, except ether,* by which to express it. It pervades and fills space, but alone it too is quiescent – dead.† We bring together the two elements, the inert matter, the self-repulsive ether (?) and thereupon dead (?) ponderable matter is vivified” [Ponderable matter may be inert but never dead – this is Occult Law. – H.P.B.]; “through the particles of the ponderable substance the ether [Ether’s second principle. – H.P.B.] penetrates, and, so penetrating, it combines with the ponderable particles and holds them in mass, holds them together in bond of union; they are dissolved in the ether.

* Yet it is not Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of the principles of Akasa.

† And so does prana (Jiva) pervade the whole living body of man; but alone, without having an atom to act upon, it would be quiescent – dead; i.e., would be in laya, or as Mr. Crookes has it, “locked in protyle.” It is the action of Fohat upon a compound or even a simple body that produces life. When a body dies it passes into the same polarity as its male energy and repels therefore the active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, fastens on the parts or molecules, this action being called chemical. Vishnu, the Preserver, transforms himself into Rudra-Siva, the Destroyer – a correlation seemingly unknown to Science.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p525-6 & fns]

“Matter is eternal,” says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter of modern science; not even in its most rarefied gaseous state. Mr. Crookes’ “radiant matter” would appear matter of the grossest kind in the realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure spirit before it has returned back even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore, when the adept or alchemist adds that, though matter is eternal, for it is PRADHANA, 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 pradhana, the beginningless and endless cause, and prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the sloka:

“That which is the unevolved cause is emphatically called by the most eminent sages, pradhana, original base, which is subtile prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at once is, and is not, or is mere process.”*

*That which in modern phraseology is respectively referred to as Spirit and Matter, is ONE in eternity as the perpetual cause, and it is neither Spirit nor matter, but IT – rendered in Sanskrit TAD (“that”), – all that is, was, or will be, all that the imagination of man is capable of conceiving.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p545]

... at the hour of the Pralaya, the two aspects of the unknowable deity, “the Swan in darkness” – Prakriti and Purusha, nature or matter in all its forms and Spirit – no longer subsist but are (absolutely) dissolved,” we learn the conclusive scientific opinion of the great English chemist,...

Nevertheless, it repeats with as much assurance as ever: “MATTER IS ETERNAL, becoming atomic (its aspect) only periodically.” This is as sure as that the other proposition, which is almost unanimously accepted by astronomers and physicists – namely, that the wear and tear of the body of the Universe is steadily going on, and that it will finally lead to the extinction of the Solar fires and the destruction of the Universe – is quite erroneous on the lines traced by Men of Science.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p552]

The many objections raised against the homogeneity of original diffuse matter, on the ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed stars, by some opponents of the modern nebular theory, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the said theory. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to reveal itself as such to the astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The stars do differ in their constituent materials and even exhibit elements quite unknown on earth; nevertheless, this does not affect the point that primeval matter – i.e., as it appeared even in its first differentiation from its laya condition – is yet to this day homogeneous [it has not been differentiated], at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our solar system.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p589]

“Is the Jiva a myth, as science says, or is it not?” ask some Theosophists, wavering between materialistic and idealistic Science. The difficulty of really grasping esoteric problems concerning the “ultimate state of matter” is again the old crux of the objective and the subjective. What is matter? Is the matter of our present objective consciousness anything but our SENSATIONS? True, the sensations we receive come from without, but can we really (except in terms of phenomena) speak of the “gross matter” of this plane as an entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments Occultism answers: True, in reality matter is not independent of, or existent outside, our perceptions. Man is an illusion: granted. But the existence and actuality of other, still more illusive, but not less actual, entities than we are, is not a claim which is lessened, but rather strengthened by this doctrine of Vedantic and even Kantian Idealism.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p603fn]

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 Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p628]

..........

It is on our Earth, then, (the Fourth sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that this middle point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its “first inmetallization” on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid-point of evolution,” it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually transformed into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly re-asserting itself at the expense of the physical, or matter, so that, at the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as free from matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p180-1]

Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of creating, or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent beings – who became collectively a Being or creative God – differentiated already from the one absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned creation.*

* “Creation” – out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p239 & fn]

Differentiated matter existing in the Solar System (let us not touch the whole Kosmos) in seven different conditions, and Prajna, or the capacity of perception, existing likewise in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter, there must necessarily be seven states of consciousness in man; and according to the greater or smaller development of these states, the systems of religions and philosophies were schemed out.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p597fn]

No. II represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into (gross) matter. Astral matter, it must be noted, is fourth state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own “protyle.” There are several “protyles” in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each and all evolved from one of the six “protyles” which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The three “states,” so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the “solid,” “liquid,” and “gaseous,” are only, in strict accuracy, SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic “materializations.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p736 & 7]

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What I mean is that though our teachings insist upon the identity of spirit and matter, and though we say that spirit is potential matter, and matter simply crystallized spirit (e.g., as ice is solidified steam), yet since the original and eternal condition of all is not spirit but meta-spirit, so to speak, (visible and solid matter being simply its periodical manifestation,) we maintain that the term spirit can only be applied to the true individuality.

[The Key to Theosophy, p33]

The identity of our physical origin makes no appeal to our higher and deeper feelings. Matter, deprived of its soul and spirit, or its divine essence, cannot speak to the human heart. But the identity of the soul and spirit, of real, immortal man, as Theosophy teaches us, once proven and deep-rooted in our hearts, would lead us far on the road of real charity and brotherly goodwill.

[The Key to Theosophy, p43]

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]

Matter is the opposite pole of spirit, amd yet the two are one. The essence of all this, i.e., Spirit, Force and Matter, or the three in one is as endless as it is beginningless;...

[The Key to Theosophy, p168]

He is the “man-god” of Plato, who crucifies himself in Space (or the duration of the life cycle) for the redemption of MATTER. This he does by incarnating over and over again, thus leading mankind onward to perfection, and making thereby room for lower forms to develop into higher.

[The Key to Theosophy, p188]

ENQ. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

THEO. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance -- that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.

ENQ. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

THEO. I would put it otherwise and say -- we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.

[The Key to Theosophy, p219-20]

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After circling, so to say, along the arc of the cycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly rotation of the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-man reaches our planet, which is one of the lowest, having lost at every station some of the etherial and acquired an increase of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much equilibrized in him. But then, he has the Earth’s cycle to perform; and, as in the process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle spirit, when arrived at the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man – amidst a nature as primordial, speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological as well as the spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit is thrown over into the still lower worlds – into the sixth “GATI” or “way of rebirth” of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground over in the workshop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother Fount;...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 18, Chronological Edition or Letter 64-5, Barker Numbering.]

To comprehend my answers you will have first of all to view the eternal Essence, the Swabhvat not as a compound element you call spirit-matter, but as the one element for which the English has no name. It is both passive and active, pure Spirit Essence in its absoluteness and repose, pure matter in its finite and conditioned state – even as an imponderable gas or that great unknown which science has pleased to call Force. When poets talk of the “shoreless ocean of immutability” we must regard the term but as a jocular paradox, since we maintain that there is no such thing as immutability – not in our Solar system at least....

Nevertheless, Theism when speaking of mutable immutability is no more absurd than materialistic science talking of “latent potential energy,” and the indestructibility of matter and force. What are we to believe as indestructible? Is it the invisible something that moves matter or the energy of moving bodies! What does modern science know of force proper, or say the forces, the cause or causes of motion? How can there be such a thing as potential energy, i.e., an energy having latent inactive power since it is energy only while it is moving matter, and that if it ever ceased to move matter it would cease to be, and with it matter itself would disappear?

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 65, Chronological Edition or Letter 165-6, Barker Numbering.]

In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an ascending arc. As it is “Spirit” which transforms itself into “matter” and (not “matter” which ascends – but) matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical (progressively of course in each round) and at the same time – as physical intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence – each evoluted race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor, and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled with spiritual intuitiveness.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 66, Chronological Edition or Letter 178, Barker Numbering.]

(2) 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.

(3) As to God – since no one has ever or at any time seen him or it – unless he or it is the very essence and nature of this boundless eternal matter, its energy and motion, we cannot regard him as either eternal or infinite or yet self existing.

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

Well, we believe in the much laughed at phlogiston (see article “What is force and what is matter?” Theosophist, September), and in what some natural philosophers would call nisus, the incessant though perfectly imperceptible (to the ordinary senses) motion or efforts one body is making on another – the pulsations of inert matter – its life. The bodies of the Planetary spirits are formed of that which Priestley and others called Phlogiston and for which we have another name – this essence in its highest seventh state forming that matter of which the organisms of the highest and purest Dhyans are composed, and in its lowest or densest form (so impalpable yet that science calls it energy and force) serving as a cover to the Planetaries of the 1st or lowest degree. In other words we believe in MATTER alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature draws from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can exist. For as Bilfinger truly asserts, “motion is a manner of existence that flows necessarily out of the essence of matter; that matter moves by its own peculiar energies; that its motion is due to the force which is inherent in itself; that the variety of motion and the phenomena that result proceed from the diversity of the properties of the qualities and of the combinations which are originally found in the primitive matter” of which nature is the assemblage and of which your science knows less than one of our Tibetan Yak-drivers of Kant’s metaphysics.

The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence – give it whatever name you will – is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 88, Chronological Edition or Letter 273, 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.]

In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded than in the very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final dispersion of the latter, the phenomenon being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit falling into generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity – a doctrine as old as the world of thought – was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the schools of Alexandria, and made [it] up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or matter – man; and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral triangle, an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt....

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.]

Some of her [Science’s] greatest misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her denial that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term “force” and the absurd and tacitly accepted idea that force is capable of existing per se, or of acting any more than life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter; in other words that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states, the last three on the ascending scale being denied because only science knows nothing of them; and her utter ignorance of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature – magnetism and electricity....

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.]

...Western Science has still three additional states of matter to discover.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 111, Chronological Edition or Letter 374, Barker Numbering.]

The universal mind is the aggregate of all the minds of the Dyan Chohans or Planetaries, the result of the action of Purush on matter, just as the spiritual soul in man is the action of spirit on matter?

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, L.B.S.,App.II, p506]

---

From the standpoint of certain Buddhist schools, your correspondent may be right. Their philosophy teaches that even our visible universe assumed an objective form as a result of the fancy followed by the volition or the will of the unknown and supreme adept, differing from Christian theology, however, inasmuch as they teach that instead of calling out our universe from nothingness, he had to exercise this will upon pre-existing matter, eternal and indestructible as to invisible substance, though temporary and ever-changing as to forms. Some higher and still more subtle metaphysical schools of Nepal even go so far as to affirm – on very reasonable grounds too – that this pre-existing and self-existent substance or matter (Svabhavat) is itself without any other creator or ruler; when in the state of activity it is Pravritti, a universal creating principle; when latent and passive, they call this force Nivritti.

[C.W.I, p268]

In order to express our thought more clearly, we will proceed by a question. Though matter may be quite indestructible in its primitive atoms – indestructible, because, as we say, it is the eternal shadow of the eternal Light and co-exists with it – can this matter remain unchangeable in its temporary forms or correlations? Do we not see it, during its ceaseless modifications, destroy today what it created yesterday? Every form, whether it belongs to the objective world or to that which our intelligence alone can perceive, having had a beginning, must have an end. There was a time when it did not exist; there will come a day when it will cease to be. Now, modern science tells us that even our thought is material. However fleeting an idea may be, its conception and its subsequent evolutions require a certain consumption of energy; let the least cerebral motion reverberate in the ether of space and it will produce a disturbance reaching to infinity. Hence, it is a material force, although invisible.

[C.W.II, p19]

Fire is heat – the central point; the perpendicular ray represents the male element or spirit; and the horizontal one the female element – or matter. Spirit vivifies and fructifies the matter, and everything proceeds from the central Point, the focus of Life, and Light, and Heat, represented by the terrestrial fire.

[C.W.II, p145-6]

Here was a permanent, most undeniable proof that matter could be passed through matter; in short, to the vulgar a “miracle”.

[C.W.III, p17]

And evil being infinite and eternal, for it is co-eval with matter, the logical deduction would be that there is neither God nor Devil – as personal Entities, only One Uncreated, Immutable and Absolute Principle or Law: Evil or DEVIL – the deeper it falls into matter, GOOD or GOD as soon as it is purified from the latter and re-becomes again pure unalloyed Spirit or the ABSOLUTE in its everlasting, immutable Subjectivity.

[C.W.III, p299fn]

... the lower angle of the black triangle pointing downward towards the nadir shows – to use a very prosaic phrase of the mediaeval Hermetists – pure or rather “impure matter” as the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” – Spirit – drawn into the vortex of annihilation, that lower world, where forms and shapes and conscious life disappear to be dispersed and return to the mother fount – cosmic matter.

[C.W.III, p315]

For, suppose we endeavour to conceive chaos as the matter of the universe in an unmanifested state, it will be seen at once that though such matter is perfectly inappreciable to ordinary human senses, and to that extent equivalent to “nothing,” creation from such materials is not the production of something which did not exist before, but a change of state imposed upon a portion of universal matter which in its previous state was invisible, intangible and imponderable, but not on that account non-existent.

[C.W.III, p380]

What has become of the particles of matter which composed the physical bodies of “man’s predecessors on the earth”? They have long ago been ground over in the laboratory of Nature, and have entered into the composition of other forms.

[C.W.III, p385]

1) The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced; and Akasa that same cosmic matter – but still more imponderable, its spirit, as it were, “Prakriti” being the body or substance, and Akasa-Sakti its soul or energy.

2) Or, in other words, “Prakriti, Svabhavat or Akasa is – SPACE as the Tibetans have it; Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all; i.e., with substance so imponderable as to be only metaphysically conceivable. Brahmâ, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that field, and Sakti that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahats of Tibet – FO-HAT. “That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which we call space (Sunyata) .. Space is not different from Form. Form is the same as Space; Space is the same as Form

[C.W.III, p405-6fn]

.

The most perfect “Samadhi,” the highest of the “Siddhis” of “Hatha-Yoga” can at best guide the subject to the threshold of the world of invisible matter, not to those of the world of spirit, where the hidden and subtler potencies of nature lie dormant until disturbed . . .

[C.W.IV, p31]

The seven-knotted bamboo-staff of the Yogi is also a “trinity,” since, like everything else, it has two poles or ends and one middle part, yet the stick is a unity, so is matter, whether we call its upper subjective end spirit or its lower end – crystallized spirit.

[C.W.IV, p104]

Only, while the former feeling diffident of its own powers of observation and investigation, cautiously prefers to take its ultimate facts of existence in the material visible universe, scientific Buddhism carries matter into the invisible, and makes it subject to the law of cause and effect in regions, so far, undreamt of by modern material science. There are worlds besides our own – spiritual but in the sight of the short sighted; still material in that of the fearless pioneers of thought: worlds “where devas live and die, and are again reborn.”

[C.W.IV, p173-4]

... “if heat be not a species of motion, it must necessarily be a species of matter,” and adds that the men of science “have preferred to consider heat as a species of motion to the alternative of supposing the creation of a peculiar kind of matter.”

And if so, what is there to warrant us that science will not yet find out her mistake some day, and recognize and call electricity in agreement with the Occultists “a species of a peculiar kind of matter”?

[C.W.IV, p213]

How do they know that those very bodies now called “elementary atoms” are not in their turn compound bodies or molecules, which, when analysed with still greater minuteness, may show containing in themselves the real, primordial, elementary globules, the gross encasement of the still finer atom-spark – the spark of LIFE, the source of Electricity – MATTER still! Truly has Henry Khunrath, the greatest of the alchemists and Rosicrucians of the middle ages, shown spirit in man – as in every atom – as a bright flame enclosed within a more or less transparent globule, which he calls soul. And since the men of science confessedly know nothing of (a) the origin of either matter or force; (b) nor of electricity or life; and (c) their knowledge of the ultimate molecules of inorganic matter amounts to a cipher; why, I ask, should any student of Occultism, whose great masters may know, perchance, of essences which the professors of modern materialistic school can neither “see, smell, nor taste,” why should he be expected to take their definitions as to what is MATTER and what FORCE as the last word of unerring, infallible science?

[C.W.IV, p216-7]

The latest conclusions at which modern chemistry has arrived, it seems, have brought it to reject the word imponderable, and to make away with those textbooks of pre-modern science, which refer the phenomena of heat and electricity to attenuated forms of matter. Nothing, they hold, can be added to, or subtracted from bodies without altering their weight. This was said and written in 1876, by one of the greatest chemists in America. With all that, have they become any the wiser for it? Have they been able to replace by a more scientific theory the old and tabooed “phlogiston theory” of the science of Stahl, Priestley, Scheele, and others? – or, because they have proved, to their own satisfaction, that it is highly unscientific to refer the phenomena of heat and electricity to attenuated forms of matter have they succeeded at the same time in proving what are really, Force, Matter, Energy, Fire, Electricity – LIFE? The Phlogiston of Stahl – a theory of combustion taught by Aristotle and the Greek philosophers – as elaborated by Scheele, the poor Swedish apothecary, a secret student of Occultism, who, as Professor Cooke says of him, “added more knowledge to the stock of chemical science in a single year than did Lavoisier in his lifetime,” was not a mere fanciful speculation, though Lavoisier was permitted to taboo and upset it. But, indeed, were the high priests of modern science to attach more weight to the essence of things than to mere generalizations, then, perhaps, would they be in a better position to tell the world more of the “ultimate structure of matter” than they now are. Lavoisier.

[C.W.IV, p217-8]

Hardly a year after these words had been pronounced, the discovery by Professor Crookes of radiant matter – of which, further on – has nigh upset again all their previous theories.

[C.W.IV, p218]

Light, then, like heat – of which it is the crown – is simply the ghost, the shadow of matter in motion, the boundless, eternal, infinite SPACE, MOTION and DURATION, the trinitarian essence of that which the Deists call God, and we – the One Element; Spirit-matter, or Matter-spirit, whose septenary properties we circumscribe under its triple abstract form in the equilateral triangle. If the mediaeval Theosophists and the modern Occultists, call the Spiritual Soul – the vahan [vehicle] of the seventh, the pure, immaterial spark – “a fire taken from the eternal ocean of light,” they also call it in the esoteric language “a pulsation of the Eternal Motion”; and the latter cannot certainly exist outside of matter. The men of science have just found out “a fourth state of matter,” whereas the Occultists have penetrated ages ago beyond the sixth, and, therefore, do not infer but KNOW of the existence of the seventh – the last.

[C.W.IV, p220]

Thus one, who would go to the trouble of studying the fable of Electra – one of the seven Atlantides – in the light of occult science, would soon discover the real nature of Electricity, and learn that it signifies little whether we call it Force or Matter, since it is both,...

[C.W.IV, p224]

This is why, while science is searching still and may go on searching forever to solve the problem “What is life?” the Occultist can afford to refuse taking the trouble, since he claims, with as much good reason as any given to the contrary, that Life, whether in its latent or dynamical form, is everywhere. That it is as infinite and as indestructible as matter itself, since neither can exist without the other, and that electricity is the very essence and origin of – Life itself. “Purush” is non-existent without “Prakriti”; nor, can Prakriti, or plastic matter have being or exist without Purush, or spirit, vital energy, LIFE. Purush and Prakriti are in short the two poles of the one eternal element, and are synonymous and convertible terms. Our bodies, as organized tissues, are indeed “an unstable arrangement of chemical forces,” plus a molecular force – as Professor Bain calls electricity – raging in it dynamically during life, tearing asunder its particles, at death, to transform itself into a chemical force after the process, and thence again to resurrect as an electrical force or life in every individual atom. Therefore, whether it is called Force or Matter, it will ever remain the Omnipresent Proteus of the Universe, the one element – LIFE – Spirit or Force at its negative, Matter at its positive pole; the former the MATERIO-SPIRITUAL, the latter, the MATERIO-PHYSICAL Universe – Nature, Svabhavat or INDESTRUCTIBLE MATTER.

[C.W.IV, p225-6]

We know of no eastern philosophy that teaches that “matter originated out of Spirit.” Matter is as eternal and indestructible as Spirit and one cannot be made cognizant to our senses without the other – even to our, the highest, spiritual sense. Spirit per se is a non entity and non-existence. It is the negation of every affirmation and of all that is.

[C.W.IV, p297]

The expression “physico-materialism,” as well as its pendant “spirito” or “metaphysico-materialism,” may be newly coined words, but some such are rigorously necessary in a publication like The Theosophist and with its present non-English editor. If they are not clear enough, we hope C.C.M. or some other friend will suggest better. In one sense every Buddhist as well as every Occultist and even most of the educated Spiritualists, are, strictly speaking, Materialists. The whole question lies in the ultimate and scientific decision upon the nature or essence of FORCE. Shall we say that Force is – Spirit, or that Spirit is – a force? Is the latter physical or spiritual, Matter or SPIRIT? If the latter is something – it must be material, otherwise it is but a pure abstraction, a no-thing. Nothing which is capable of producing an effect on any portion of the physical – objective or subjective – Kosmos can be otherwise than material. Mind – whose enormous potentiality is being discovered more and more with every day, could produce no effect were it not material; and believers in a personal God, have themselves either to admit that the deity in doing its work has to use material force to produce a physical effect, or – to advocate miracles, which is an absurdity.

[C.W.IV, p307]

In Mr. Crookes’ miniature apparatus we find ourselves face to face with an infinitude as inconceivable to us as that which must exist in the very depths of the Universe. Here we have the infinitude of velocity; there – the infinitude of space. Are these two transcendent things spirit? No; they are both MATTER; only – at the opposite poles of the same Eternity.

[C.W.IV, p316]

Ahriman “will disappear from the face of the Universe,” when “creation,” or rather matter in its differentiated condition, becomes “pure as on the first day” – i.e., when matter gradually purified becomes once more undifferentiated, or returns to its primitive condition in the seventh state of cosmic dissolution: and this takes place periodically at the Maha-Pralayas or the universal dissipation of objective matter.

[C.W.IV, p421]

‘Matter and Life are equally eternal and indestructible,’ for – they are one and identical; the purely subjective – hence (for physical science) unprovable and unverifiable – matter becoming the ONE life or what is generally termed ‘Spirit.’

[C.W.IV, p452]

This is precisely the question we have been asking; and also the reason why, knowing that matter is indestructible, as also spirit or rather energy – we say with all the esoteric Advaitees that matter and spirit are ONE. While we mean cosmic indestructible matter, the Swami speaks of objective and differentiated matter.

[C.W.IV, p567]

Professor Tyndall was anticipated in his opinion on matter by most of the great Philosophers of India. Perhaps Mr. Atkinson is not aware that the Eastern Occultists hold that there is but one element in the universe – infinite, uncreated and indestructible – MATTER; which element manifests itself in seven states – four of which are now known to modern science, and which include the state of Radiant matter discovered by Mr. Crookes, and that three are to be yet discovered in the West. Spirit is the highest state of that matter, they say, since that which is neither matter nor any of its attributes is – NOTHING.

[C.W.IV, p602 fn]

... rather, in order not to displease the modern scientific gentlemen, let us say that the liquid, gaseous and solid states are the three qualities or conditions of matter, which amounts to the same thing. If we add to these three the radiant matter of Mr. Crookes we shall have four – three other states of matter being held in the keeping of Occultists until the Gentlemen of the Academy discover them for themselves. Matter, then, is but a state of Spirit, and vice-versa.

[C.W.V, p52]

The composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the Monadic Essence (if such word be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable and animal though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression.

[C.W.V, p172]

A “spirit” is – spirit only so long as it is formless and arupa; and it loses its name as soon as it becomes entangled in matter or substance of any kind know to up. A “Spiritual Entity” would answer better.

[C.W.VI, p176]

The Doctrine teaches the Presence of a Universal Life (or motion) within which all is, and nothing outside of it can be. This is pure Spirit. Its manifested aspect is cosmic primordial Matter coeval with, since it is, itself. Semi-spiritual in comparison to the first, this vehicle of the Spirit-Life is what Science calls Ether, which fills the boundless space, and it is in this substance, the world-stuff, that germinate all the atoms and molecules of what is called matter. However homogeneous in its eternal origin, this Universal Element, once that its radiations were thrown into the space of the (to be) manifested Universe, the centripetal and centrifugal forces of perpetual motion, of attraction and repulsion, would soon polarize its scattered particles, endowing them with peculiar properties now regarded by Science as various elements distinct from each other.

[C.W.VI, p192]

Mr. Subba Row says, “Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions. These different states of matter do not all come within the range of our present objective consciousness. But they can be objectively perceived by the spiritual ego in man. . . . . Further, Prajna or the capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter. Strictly speaking, there are but six states of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of Cosmic matter in its original undifferentiated condition. Similarly there are six states of differentiated Prajna, the seventh state being a condition of perfect unconsciousness. By differentiated Prajna, I mean the condition in which Prajna is split up into various states of consciousness. Thus we have six states of consciousness, etc., etc.”

[C.W.VII, p291 fn]

The Substantiality of certain Forces of Nature cannot be denied – for it is a fact in Kosmos. No Energy or Force without Matter, no Matter without Force, Energy or Life – however latent. But this ultimate Matter is – Substance or the Noumenon of matter.

[C.W.VIII, p317]

The expression “immaterial Substance” used above in connection with magnetism is a very strange one, and moreover, it is self-contradictory. If, instead of saying that “magnetism . . . . is not only a real, substantial entity but an absolutely immaterial substance,” the writer should have applied this definition to light, sound or any other force in its effects, we would have nothing to say, except to remark that the adjective “supersensuous” would have been more applicable to any force than the word “immaterial.” But to say this of the magnetic fluid is wrong, as it is an essence which is quite perceptible to any clairvoyant, whether in darkness – as in the case of odic emanations – or in light – when animal magnetism is practised. Being then a fluid in a supersensuous state, still matter, it cannot be “immaterial,” and the expression becomes at once as illogical as it is sophistical. With regard to the other forces – if by “immaterial” is meant only that which is objective, but beyond the range of our present normal perceptions or senses, well and good; but then whatever Substantialists may mean by it, we Occultists and Theosophists demur to the form in which they put it. Substance, we are told in philosophical dictionaries and encyclopaedias, is that which underlies outward phenomena; substratum; the permanent subject or cause of phenomena, whether material or spiritual; that in which properties inhere; that which is real in distinction from that which is only apparent – especially in this world of maya. It is in short – real, and the one real Essence. But the Occult sciences, while calling Substance the noumenon of every material form, explain that noumenon as being still matter – only on another plane. That which is noumenon to our human perceptions is matter to those of a Dhyan Chohan. As explained by our learned Vedantin Brother – T. Subba Row – Mulaprakriti, the first universal aspect of Parabrahma, its Kosmic Veil, and whose essence, to us, is unthinkable, is to the LOGOS “as material as any object is material to us” (Notes on Bhag. Gita) Hence – no Occultist would describe Substance as “immaterial” in esse.

[C.W.VIII, p324]

Matter is force and force is matter. It is not quite evident, however, whether this position is strictly reconcilable with the remark that “the primary qualities of matter are all simplifiable into . . . extension and (its) motion (actual or possible).”

If force is a physical existence, and the real substance of matter at the same time, we get back no further into the mystery of what things-in-themselves really are. Physical existence remains the reality behind physical existence and the realization of matter and force, as aspects only of one basis, in no way simplifies the crux.

[C.W.IX, p14]

The two bases of manifested Being – the Logos (spirit) and Mulaprakriti (Matter, or rather its Noumenon), are unified in the absolute reality, but in the Manvantaric Maya, under space and time conditions, they are contrasted though mutually interdependent aspects of the ONE CAUSE.

[C.W.IX, p16]

Eastern philosophy and occultism are based on the absolute unity of the Root Substance, and they recognise only one infinite and universal CAUSE. The Occultists are UNITARIANS par excellence. But there is such a thing as conventional, time-honoured terms with one and the same meaning attached to them all – at any rate on this plane of illusion. And if we want to understand each other, we are forced to use such terms in their generally-accepted sense, and avoid calling mind matter, and vice versa

[C.W.IX, p55]

.

There is a casual remark in Humanism versus Theism to the effect (on the authority of Ueberweg) that “the early Greek thinkers and Sages were Hylo-Zoists.” Aye, learned Doctor; but the early Greek thinkers understood Hylo-Zoism (from “Hyle” primordial matter, or what the greatest chemist in England, Mr. Crookes, has called “protyle,” undifferentiated matter, and “Zoe,” life) in a way very different from yours. So are we, Theosophists and Eastern Occultists, “Hylo-Zoists”; but it is because with us “life” is the synonym both of Spirit and Matter, or the ONE eternal and infinite LIFE whether manifested or otherwise. That LIFE is both the eternal IDEA and its periodical LOGOS. He who has grasped and mastered this doctrine completely has thereby solved the mystery of BEING.

[C.W.IX, p62]

Occult philosophy has it, that motion, cosmic matter, duration, space, are everywhere. Motion is the imperishable life, and is conscious or unconscious, as the case may be. It exists as much during the active period of the Universe, as during Pralaya, or dissolution, when the unconscious life still maintains the matter it animates in sleepless and unceasing motion.

[C.W.IX, p74]

Esoteric Science does not admit of the “existence” of “matter,” as such, in Pralaya. In its noumenal state, dissolved in the “Great Breath,” or its “laya” condition, it can exist only potentially. Occult philosophy, on the contrary, teaches that, during Pralaya, “Naught is. All is ceaseless eternal Breath.”

[C.W.IX, p74fn]

More than any other, the life principle in man is one with which we are most familiar, and yet are so hopelessly ignorant as to its nature. Matter and force are ever found allied. Matter without force, and force without matter, are inconceivable. In the mineral kingdom the universal life energy is one and unindividualized; it begins imperceptibly to differentiate in the vegetable kingdom, and from the lower animals to the higher animals, and man, the differentiation increases at every step in complex progression.

When once the life-principle has commenced to differentiate, and has become sufficiently individualized, does it keep to organisms of the same kind, or does it after the death of one organism go and vivify an organism of another kind? For instance, after the death of a man, does the Kinetic energy which kept him alive up to a certain time go after death and attach itself to a protoplasmic speck of the human kind, or does it go and vivify some animal or vegetable germ?

After the death of a man, the energy of motion which vitalized his frame is said to be partly left in the particles of the dead body in a dormant state, while the main energy goes and unites itself with another set of atoms. Here a distinction is drawn between the dormant life left in the particles of the dead body and the remaining Kinetic energy, which passes off elsewhere to vivify another set of atoms.

[C.W.IX, p75-77]

[the real elements are purer and more spiritual than their representatives on the physical plane]

This is one reason for calling the objective phenomenal world an “illusion.” It is an illusion and ever impermanent because the matter of which the objects are composed continually returns to the primordial condition of matter, where it is invisible to mortal eyes. The earth, water, air, and fire that we think we see are respectively only the effects produced on our senses by the primordial matter held in either of the combinations that bring about the vibration properly belonging to those classes: the moment the combination is entirely broken, the phenomena cease and we see the objects no more.

[C.W.IX, p241]

Q. Could not the term “Protyle” be employed to represent the Laya condition?

A. Scarcely; the Protyle of Professor Crookes is probably used to denote homogeneous matter on the most material plane of all, whereas the substance symbolized by the “Robes” of the “Eternal Parent” is on the seventh plane of matter counting upwards, or rather from without within. This can never be discovered on the lowest, or rather most outward and material plane.

Q. Is there, then, on each of the seven planes, matter relatively homogeneous for every plane?

A. That is so; but such matter is homogeneous only for those who are on the same plane of perception; so that if the Protyle of modern science is ever discovered, it will be homogeneous only to us. The illusion may last for some time, perhaps until the sixth race, for humanity is ever changing, physically and mentally, and let us hope spiritually too, perfecting itself more and more with every race and sub-race.

[C.W.IX, p306]

The “Builders” are a class called, as I already explained, Cosmocratores, or the invisible but intelligent Masons, who fashion matter according to the ideal plan ready for them in that which we call Divine and Cosmic ideation. They were called by the early Masons the “Grand Architect of the Universe” collectively: but now the modern Masons make of their G. A. O. T. U. a personal and singular Deity.

[C.W.X, p341]

Q. Is it to be supposed that the Milky Way is composed of matter in a state of differentiation other than that with which we are acquainted?

A. I thoroughly believe so. It is the store-house of the materials from which the stars, planets and other celestial bodies are produced. Matter in this state does not exist on earth; but that which is already differentiated and found on earth is also found on other planets and vice-versa. But, as I understand, before reaching the planets from its condition in the Milky Way, matter has first to pass through many stages of differentiation. The matter, for instance, within the Solar system is in an entirely different state from that which is outside or beyond the system.

[C.W.X, p373-4]

Q. Spirit and matter are the opposite ends of the same web; light and darkness, heat and cold, void or space and fulness of all that exists are also opposites. In what sense are these three pairs of opposites associated with Spirit and Matter?

A. In the sense in which everything in the universe is associated with either Spirit or Matter, one of these being taken as the permanent element or both. Pure Matter is pure Spirit and cannot be understood even if admitted by our finite intellects. Neither light nor darkness as optical effects, are matter, nor are they spirit, but they are the qualities of the former (matter).

[C.W.X, p383-4]

[I conceive . . . . a limitless, incessantly rolling and waving ocean of life, formless, containing in itself the whole Universe, penetrating all its atoms, continually grouping them, then decomposing their combinations and aggregates, and adjusting them to the various objects of being.]

The Occultists and Theosophists call it “the One Life,” the triply manifested Deity or the three Logoi – the one pole of which is negative, the other positive – and the whole circumference and central point – universal mind and the atom. The latter are both abstractions, yet the only Reality.

[C.W.XIII, p409]

In reading his [Newton’s] works one sees floating in the air the pale images of the same Anaxagoras and Democritus, of Pythagoras, Aristotle, Timæus of Locri, Lucretius, Macrobius, and even our old friend Plutarch. All these have maintained one or the other of these propositions, (1) that the smallest of the particles of matter would be sufficient – owing to its infinite divisibility – to fill infinite space; (2) that there exist two Forces emanated from the Universal Soul, combined in numerical proportions (the centripetal and centrifugal “forces,” of the latter day scientific saints); (3) that there was a mutual attraction of bodies, which attraction causes the latter to, what we now call, gravitate and keeps them within their respective spheres; (4) they hinted most unmistakably at the relation existing between the weight and the density, or the quantity of matter contained in a unit of mass; and (5) taught that the attraction (gravitation) of the planets toward the Sun is in reciprocal proportion to their distance from that luminary.

[C.W.XIII, p87]

To make short work of a very big subject, we have but to institute a brief comparison between the old and the new teachings. That which modern science would make us believe, is this: the atoms possess innate and immutable properties. That which Esoteric, and also exoteric, Eastern philosophy calls divine Spirit-Substance (Purusha-Prakriti) or eternal Spirit-matter, one inseparable from the other, modern Science calls Force and Matter, adding as we do (for it is a Vedantic conception), that, the two being inseparable, matter is but an abstraction (an illusion rather). The properties of matter are, by the Eastern Occultists, summed up in, or brought down to, attraction and repulsion.... Matter, or anything equally conditioned, once that it is declared to be subject to immutable laws, cannot “grope.” But this is a trifle when compared with dead or inanimate matter, producing life, and even psychic phenomena of the highest mentality! Finally, a rigid determinism reigns over all nature. All that which has once happened to our automatical Universe, had to happen, as the future of that Universe is traced in the smallest of its particles or “atoms.” Return these atoms, they say, to the same position and order they were in at the first moment of the evolution of the physical Kosmos, and the same universal phenomena will be repeated in precisely the same order, and the Universe will once more return to its present conditions.

[C.W.XIII, p88-9]

But the period when nascent Humanity, following the law of the natural and dual evolution, was descending along with spirit into matter – is closed. We (Humanity) are now helping matter to ascend toward spirit; and to do that we have to help substance to disenthral itself from the viscous grip of sense. We, of the fifth Root Race, are the direct descendants of the primeval Humanity of that Race; those, who on this side of the Flood tried, by commemorating it, to save the antediluvian Truth and Wisdom, and were worsted in our efforts by the dark genius of the Earth – the spirit of matter, whom the Gnostics called Ialdabaoth and the Jews Jehovah.

[C.W.XIII, p98]

In the Hindu Kathopanishad, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, stands before the original Matter; from their union springs the great Soul of the World, “Maha-Atma, Brahm, the Spirit of Life”; these latter appellations are identical with Universal Soul, or Anima Mundi, and the Astral Light of the Theurgists and Kabalists.

[C.W.XIII, p267-8]

... he [Eliphas Lévi] fails to add that Matter is “primordial” only at the beginning of every new reconstruction of the Universe: matter in abscondito, as it is called by the Alchemists, is eternal, indestructible, without beginning or end. It is regarded by Eastern Occultists as the eternal Root of all, the Mulaprakriti of the Vedantin, and the Svabhavat of the Buddhist; the Divine Essence, in short, of Substance; the radiations from This are periodically aggregated into graduated forms, from pure Spirit to gross Matter; the Root, or Space, is in its abstract presence the Deity Itself, the Ineffable and Unknown One Cause.

[C.W.XIV, p233-4]

---

The will of the fakir-conjurer forms an invisible but yet, to it, perfectly objective matrix, in which the vegetable matter is caused to deposit itself and assume the fixed shape. The will creates; for the will in motion is force, and force produces matter.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p140]

That matter without the spirit which vivifies it, and of which it is but the “gross purgation,” to use a hermetic expression, is nothing but a soulless corpse, whose limbs, in order to be moved in predetermined directions, require an intelligent operator at the great galvanic battery called LIFE!

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p236]

... it may nevertheless be affirmed with perfect reason and upon analogical deductions that nearly all the ancient religions were based on such indestructibility of matter and force – plus the emanation of the whole from an ethereal, spiritual fire – or the central sun, which is God or spirit, on the knowledge of whose potentiality is based ancient theurgic magic.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p243]

The Hermetists and the later Rosicrucians held that all things visible and invisible were produced by the contention of light with darkness, and that every particle of matter contains within itself a spark of the divine essence – or light, spirit – which, through its tendency to free itself from its entanglement and return to the central source, produced motion in the particles, and from motion forms were born.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p258]

Though the privation of the unborn child’s form, as well as of the future form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither substance nor extension nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is still something which is, though its outlines, in order to be, must acquire an objective form – the abstract must become concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of matter is transmitted by energy to universal ether, it becomes a material form, however sublimated.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p310]

Matter is as indestructible and eternal as the immortal spirit itself, but only in its particles, and not as organized forms.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p328]

From whatever aspect we view and question matter, the world-old philosophy that it was vivified and fructified by the eternal idea, or imagination – the abstract outlining and preparing the model for the concrete form – is unavoidable.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p396]

Though matter is coeternal with spirit, that matter is certainly not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man to have been evolved out of his primordial spirit-matter, how can we ever come to any reasonable hypothesis as to the genesis of animate beings?

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p429]

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