THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

SPIRIT

---

Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p15]

But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is “that” which links spirit to matter, subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the “Ideas” existing in the “Divine Thought” are impressed on Cosmic substance as the “laws of Nature.” Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the “Thought Divine” transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self – or reflective – consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p16]

The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious god, – aye, even the highest – the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p106]

A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in evolution; a reascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards it status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana – the vanishing point of differentiated matter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p176-7]

It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological “Fall,” propagation of one’s kind, whether human or animal, took place through the WILL of the Creators, or of their progeny. It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal man. It has already been stated that, to become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p192]

The Occult doctrine teaches that while the monad is cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim – or Pitris, the lower Dhyan-Chohans – are evolving pari passu with it on a higher and more spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter on their own plane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the incarnating senseless monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly Man” in space – PERFECT MAN. In the Sankhya philosophy, Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something impotent unless he mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left alone, is – senseless.

But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though one and the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in contrary directions – Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. In polarity, on the physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive are mutually attracted, so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other – the two poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p247]

Meanwhile the Occultist goes further, as has been shown in the Commentaries on the Seven Stanzas. Hence he can hardly hope for any help or recognition from science, which will reject both his aniyamsam aniyasam (the absolutely spiritual atom) and his Manasaputras – “mind-born men”. By resolving the “single material element” into one absolute irresolvable element – Spirit, or “Root-matter,” thus placing it at once outside the reach and province of physical philosophy ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p543]

..........

“The universe,” says every Philosophy and Cosmogony, “hath a Ruler (Rulers collectively) set over it, which is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen: which two are the First Power after the ONE.”

These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our illusory universe. The two inseparables remain in the Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into Parabrahm, the One ever changeless. The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-existent,” emanates a pure ethereal LIGHT – a dual light not perceptible to the elementary senses ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p36]

An extra-cosmic god is fatal to philosophy, an intra-cosmic Deity – i.e. Spirit and matter inseparable from each other – is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p41]

Therefore Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness gradually.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p42]

... he, the cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in esoteric order, show the following descending scale:

1.	Mahapurusha or Paramatman	Supreme Spirit
2.	Atman or Purvaja (Protologos)	The living Spirit of Nature
3.	Indriyatman, or Hrishikesa	Spiritual or intellectual soul (One with the senses)
5.	Bhutatman	The living, or Life Soul
6.	Kshetrajna	Embodied soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter
7.	Bhrantidarsanah	False perception – Material Universe

The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form; but, in fact, only Maya, illusion, as all is in our physical universe.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p108]

---

Spirit or Life is indivisible. And when we speak of the seventh principle it is neither quality nor quantity nor yet form that are meant, but rather the space occupied in that ocean of spirit by the results or effects – (beneficent as are all those of a co-worker with nature) – impressed thereon.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 44, Chronological Edition or Letter 121, 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.... To this we reply, if that which the theists call God, and science “Force” and “Potential Energy,” were to become immutable but for one instant even during the Maha-Pralaya, a period when even Brahm the creative architect of the world is said to have merged into non-being, then there could be no manvantara, and space alone would reign unconscious and supreme in the eternity of time.

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

... the sixth and seventh principles apart from the rest constitute the eternal, imperishable, but also unconscious “Monad.” To awaken in it to life the latent consciousness, especially that of personal individuality, requires the monad plus the highest attributes of the fifth – the “animal Soul”; and it is that which makes the ethereal Ego that lives and enjoys bliss in the Devachan.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 194, Barker Numbering.]

... the difficulty I had to labour under to explain the right meaning with an endless and clumsy paragraph before me, that insisted upon non-reincarnation without inserting one word in it to show that the latter had reference but to the animal soul, not Spirit, to the astral, not the Spiritual monad.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 81, Chronological Edition or Letter 246, Barker Numbering.]

And, if at the end of all things – say in some million of millions years hence, Spirit will have to rest in its pure, impersonal non-existence, as the ONE or the Absolute, still there must be “some good” in the cyclic process, since every purified Ego has the chance in the long interims between objective being upon the planets to exist as a Dhyan Chohan – from the lowest “Devachanee” to the highest Planetary – enjoying the fruits of its collective lives.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 93B, Chronological Edition or Letter 315, Barker Numbering.]

In short, Avalokita Isvar literally interpreted means “the Lord that is seen,” “Iswara” implying moreover, rather the adjective than the noun, lordly, self-existent lordliness, not Lord. It is, when correctly interpreted, in one sense “the divine Self perceived or seen by Self,” the Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic distinction from its Universal Source – which becomes the object of perception for, and by the individuality centred in Buddhi, the sixth principle, something that happens only in the highest state of Samadhi. This is applying it to the microcosm. In the other sense Avalokitesvara implies the seventh Universal Principle, as the object perceived by the Universal Buddhi, “Mind” or Intelligence which is the synthetic aggregation of all the Dhyan Chohans, as of all other intelligences whether great or small, that ever were, are or will be.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 111, Chronological Edition or Letter 376, Barker Numbering.]

The double triangles symbolize the Great Passive and the Great Active; the male and female; Purusha and Prakriti. Each triangle is a Trinity because presenting a triple aspect. The white represents in its straight lines: Jnanam – (Knowledge); Jnata – (the Knower); and Jneyam — (that which is known). The black – form, colour, and substance, also the creative, preservative, and destructive forces, and [these] are mutually correlating, etc., etc.

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

---

For us [theosophists], the Spirit is the personal god of each mortal, and his only divine element. The dual soul, on the contrary, is only semidivine. Being a direct emanation from the nous, everything it has of immortal essence, once its earthly cycle is accomplished, must necessarily return to its mother-source,...

[C.W.II, p18]

... the omnipotence of the Lord (the divine I, or spirit, the personal God of every individual.

[C.W.II, p160]

The “perfected” or rather “Perfect Spirit” – since the Absolute, or limitless UNITY and perfection can neither be divided, nor can it be invested with attributes and degrees involving gradual perfectibility – can become the Unity or Spirit but after having lost every form and shape – (hence body), which would necessarily make of it a DUALITY. It can have no relation to, or concern with, any object of consciousness in our illusionary world, as this alone would involve dualism, which must exist wherever there is any relation at all. Hence – if under the name of “Perfected Spirit” – ABSOLUTE consciousness is meant, then the latter, incapable of either internal or external cognition, must necessarily be viewed as incapable also of a voluntary communication with us mortals.

[C.W.IV, p52]

No one ever held – as far as we know that Spirit could be annihilated under whatever circumstances. Spirit can get divorced of its manifested matter, its personality, in which case, it is the latter that is annihilated. Nor do we believe that “Spirit breathed out Matter”; but that, on the contrary, it is Matter which manifests Spirit. Otherwise, it would be a puzzle indeed.

[C.W.IV, p298]

1. The immortal Spirit – sexless, formless (arupa), an emanation from the One universal BREATH.

2. Its Vehicle – the divine Soul – called the “Immortal Ego,” the “Divine monad,” etc., etc., which by accretions from Manas in which burns the ever-existing Jiv – the undying spark – adds to itself at the close of each incarnation the essence of that individuality that was, the aroma of the culled flower that is no more.

[C.W.VII, p185]

For with the Hindus atma or spirit is Arupa (bodiless), and with the Greeks also. Even in the Roman Catholic Church the angels of Light as those of Darkness are absolutely incorporeal: “meri spiritus, omnes corporis expertes” and in the words of the “SECRET DOCTRINE,” primordial.

[C.W.VII, p187]

Eastern wisdom teaches that spirit has to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can reach experience and knowledge. After which only it receives the baptism of soul, or self-consciousness, and may return to its original condition of a god, plus experience, ending with omniscience. In other words, it can return to the original state of homogeneity of primordial essence only through the addition of the fruitage of Karma, which alone is able to create an absolute conscious deity, removed but one degree from the absolute ALL.

[C.W.VIII, p117]

Two things become evident to all in the above passages, now that their false rendering is corrected in the revision text: (a) “the coming of Christ,” means the presence of CHRISTOS in a regenerated world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus; (b) this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or church built by man; for Christ – the true esoteric SAVIOUR – is no man, but the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. He who strives to resurrect the Spirit crucifed in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the “sepulchre” of his sinful flesh; he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him. The “Son of Man” is no child of the bond-woman – flesh, but verily of the free-woman – Spirit, the child of man’s own deeds, and the fruit of his own spiritual labour.

[C.W.VIII, p173]

... the divinely imprisoned Spirit, the exiled “god” within that personality.

[C.W.XII, p16]

True knowledge is of Spirit and in Spirit alone, and cannot be acquired in any other way except through the reign of the higher mind, the only plane from which we can penetrate the depths of the all-pervading Absoluteness.

[C.W.XII, p537]

First the · (Point), the Monad, Bythus (the Deep), the unknown and unknowable Father. Then the (Triangle), Bythus and the first emanated pair or Duad, Nous (Mind) and its syzygy Aletheia (Truth). Then the (Square), the dual Duad Tetraktys or Quaternary, two males || , the Logos (Word) and Anthrôpos (Man), two females, their syzygies, == Zôe (Life) and Ekklesia (the Church or Assembly), Seven in all. The Triangle, the Potentiality of Spirit; the Square, the Potentiality of matter; the Vertical Straight Line, the Potency of Spirit, and the Horizontal, the Potency of matter. Next comes the Pentagram , the Pentad, the mysterious symbol of the Mânasaputras or Sons of Wisdom, which together with their syzygies make 10, or the Decad; and last of all, the Hexalpha or interlaced Triangles the Hexad, which with their syzygies make 12, or the Dodecad. Such are the contents of the Pl‘rôma or Completion, the Ideas in the Divine Mind, 28 in all for Bythus or the Father is not reckoned, as it is the Root of all. The two small circles within the Plerôma are the syzygy Christos-Pneuma (Christ and the Holy Spirit); these are after-emanations, and as such, from one aspect, typify the descent of Spirit to inform and evolve Matter, which essentially proceeds from the same source; and from another, the descent or incarnation of the Kumâras or the Higher Egos of Humanity.

The Circle of the Plerôma is bounded by a circumference emanated from Bythus (the Point), this is called the Horus (Boundary), Staurus (Stock, Stake, or Cross) and Metaecheus [...] (Participator); it shuts off the Plerôma (or Completion) from the Hysterema (the Inferiority or Incompletion), the larger from the smaller Circle, the Unmanifested from the Manifested. Within the Circle of the Hysterema is the Square of primordial Matter, or Chaos, emanated by Sophia, called the Ektrôma (or Abortion). Above this is a Triangle, primordial Spirit, called the Common Fruit of the Plerôma, or Jesus, for to all below the Plerôma it appears as a unity. Notice how the Triangle and Square of the Hysterema are the reflection of the Triangle and Square of the Plerôma. Finally the plane of the paper, inclosing and penetrating all, is Sige (Silence).

[C.W.XIII, p16]

[They recognized their “God” and each Adept felt the great “SELF “ within himself.] The “Atman,” the self, the mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the “I am,” the “Ego Sum, “ the “Asmi,” showed his full power to him who could recognize the “still small voice.” From the days of the primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates, repeating to himself as well as his fellow-men, the noble injunction, “O man, know thyself,” he succeeded in recognizing his God within himself. “Ye are gods,” the king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding the scribes that this expression was addressed to other mortal men, claiming for themselves the same privilege without any blasphemy. And, as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we are all “the temple of the living God,” cautiously adds that after all these things are only for the “wise,” and it is “unlawful” to speak of them.

[C.W.XIV, p48]

Now that which is meant here by the personal God of Man is, of course, not his seventh Principle alone, as per se and in essence that is merely a beam of the infinite Ocean of Light. In conjunction with our Divine Soul, the Buddhi, it cannot be called a Duad, as it otherwise might, since, though formed from Atma and Buddhi (the two higher Principles), the former is no entity but an emanation from the Absolute, and indivisible in reality from it.

[C.W.XIV, p49]

Here Spirit denotes Pneuma, collective Deity, manifested in its “Builders,” or, as the Church has it, “the seven Spirits of the Presence,” the mediantibus angelis of whom Thomas Aquinas says that “God never works but through them.”

These seven “rulers” or mediating Angels were the Kabiri Gods of the Ancients....

Kabiri, as a name, is derived from Abir, great, and also from Venus, this Goddess being called to the present day Kabar, as is also her star. The Kabiri were worshipped at Hebron, the city of the Anakim, or anakas (kings, princes). They are the highest Planetary Spirits, the “greatest Gods” and “the powerful.”

[C.W.XIV, p314]

Buddha taught that the primitive Substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is the pure, luminous ether, the boundless, infinite Space.

“... not a void resulting from the absence of forms, but, on the contrary, the foundation of all forms ... [This] denotes it to be the creation of Mâyâ, and all her works are as nothing before the uncreated being, SPIRIT, in whose profound and sacred repose all motion must cease for ever.”

Motion here refers only to illusive objects, to their change as opposed to perpetuity, rest – perpetual motion being the Eternal Law, the ceaseless Breath of the Absolute.

[C.W.XIV, p419]

---

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]

Whenever it is manifested, desiring to impress itself upon humanity in a shape intelligent to our intellect, whether we call it an avatar, or a King Messiah, or a permutation of Divine Spirit, Logos, Christos, it is all one and the same thing. In each case it is “the Father,” who is in the Son, and the Son in “the Father.” The immortal spirit overshadows the mortal man. It enters into him, and pervading his whole being, makes of him a god, who descends into his earthly tabernacle.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p291]

Pure spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man to have been evolved out of this primordial spirit-matter, how can we ever come to any reasonable hypothesis as to the genesis of animate beings?

[Isis Unveiled Vol.I, p429]

..........

“Spirit is the sole, elementary, and primordial unity, and each of its rays is immortal, infinite, and indestructible. Beware of the illusions of matter.”

[Isis Unveiled Vol.II, p607]

There being but ONE Truth, man requires but one church – the Temple of God within us, walled in by matter but penetrable by any one who can find the way; the pure in heart see God.

The trinity of nature is the lock of magic, the trinity of man the key that fits it. Within the solemn precincts of the sanctuary the SUPREME had and has no name. It is unthinkable and unpronounceable; and yet every man finds in himself his god. “Who art thou, O fair being?” inquires the disembodied soul, in the Khordah-Avesta, at the gates of Paradise. “I am, O Soul, thy good and pure thoughts, thy works and thy good law . . . thy angel . . . and thy god.” Then man, or the soul, is reunited with ITSELF, for this “Son of God” is one with him; it is his own mediator, the god of his human soul and his “Justifier.” “God not revealing himself immediately to man, the spirit is his interpreter,” says Plato in the Banquet.

[Isis Unveiled Vol.II, p635]

--oOo--