CHAPTER II

UNIVERSE, LIFE AND MATTER

Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky

Was not, nor heaven's broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death -- yet there was nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound -- an ocean without light --
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

........

Who knows the secret? Who proclaimed it here?

Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being --
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation came,
Whether Its will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it -- or perchance even He knows not."
"Gazing into eternity . . .
Ere the foundations of the earth were laid,

.....

Thou wert. And when the subterranean flame

Shall burst its prison and devour the frame . . .
Thou shalt be still as Thou wert before
And knew no change, when time shall be no more.
Oh! Endless thought, divine ETERNITY."

Rig Veda

Universe
The Universe is a manifestation of the Universal Life, creator of all things
and beings, of the visible and invisible worlds, all these with the help of
matter. The evolution of the Universe is a long and slow progressive process,
following eternal, unchanged, laws, obeying Creator’s will. The unique
essence, infinite and unknown, exists forever and becomes passive and
active, in harmonious and regular successions.
The cyclic creation and destruction the Universe are assimilated with de
succession of the days and nights of Brahman, the supreme Divinity:
„…If ye know Brahma's Day
Which is a thousand Yugas; if ye know
The thousand Yugas making Brahma's Night,
Then know ye Day and Night as He doth know!“. (Bhagavad-Gita, VIII).
The Universe is characterized by continuous changes, at any moment
everything is passing through more or less noticeable modifications. Even in
the slightest division of time there is nothing not to be modified. The ‘Time’
notion has to be seen as an illusion produced by de succession of our
consciousness situation, during the travel along the Eternal. In The Secret
Doctrine we can read: „Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are all
derived from our sensations according to the laws of Association.
Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they
nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the
individual ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of
phenomenal existence.”

Life and matter

 The greater part of matter is indiscernible to our senses, being too subtle,
it is not perceivable and this is very good. Otherwise, we would be
practically emerged in an ocean of sensations, attacked from all parts by
useless information.
Both life and matter are indestructible, without beginning and end, one
cannot find in nature life without matter and matter without life. Life
penetrates matter, giving it particular characteristics. Through this act, a
possibility of matter becomes reality, delimiting the active character of life
and the passive character of the matter. Matter is, by itself, inert and
shapeless. Life is what animate, sustain and preserve it.
In this Universe called also Maya, a great Illusion, all is changeable, but
also conscious, being endowed with a conscience of its own plan of
concepts. The fact that we are not capable of seeing this does not mean
that it is not true. There is not dead matter, as well as there is not blind law…
The two laws governing the Universe are the one of EVOLUTION and the
one of REINCARNATION, of successive existences, named also KARMA.
The different aspects of life are forming a trinity: The Endless Wisdom, The
Love for all the creatures and The Almighty Will. By Universal Life we
understand God. The three aspects are: Father, Son and Holly Spirit (the
will, the memory and the intelligence), in Christian terms. In the
Theosophical nomenclature we can find The First, The Second and The
Third. In India we may find Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, in Kabbala Kether,
Binah and Chochmach. These aspects can be found in the human spirit,
which is made after God.

The three aspects of matter

Matter has its three aspects or GUNA. The infinite diversity of the Universe
is based on the different combinations of these three Guna or Tendencies.
One by one, they activate themselves, tolerating themselves and
counterbalancing themselves. Their names are, in a sort of ascending
order: INERTIA (TAMAS), MOVEMENT (RADJAS), and EQUILIBRIUM (SATTVA).
Any living creature is categorized after the predominance of one or the
other of the three Guna. When one of them is predominant, the others are
supporting it. For example, water is, through its nature, opposed to fire, but,
through their action, the water is boiling, a very useful process in preparing
the food. These qualities are transmitted both to things and to beings, so, to
man, also. The material science is studying the matter’s attributes, without
taking into account the fact that there are effects that have life as a
cause.

The Worlds of the Universe

 The Universe is structured as a whole with its seven worlds intersecting.
Out of these seven worlds, we only know five, the others being too subtle.
Beginning with the most dense of them, they are:
- The Physical world,
- The Astral world,
- The Mental world,
- The Buddhic world,
- The Atmic world.
ATMAN, the Divine Ray, the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of
the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos
of the Platonists, is the One from Mother-Spirit, the Atma within every man’s
soul, which surpasses thirst and hunger, the sufferance, the oldness and
death, as Brihadranyaka Upanishad says.

Our Solar world

The ensemble of energies that have created our solar world is called
LOGOS, what the Evangel calls „The Word “. His physic body is the Sun. The
Logos is the First-begotten, the Eternal Word, the vibration emanated by
the Universe, He is the manifested God. This manifested Logos is a part of
the Supreme Legislator of the Universe, which is limiting Himself through His
manifestation and creates The Universe contained in Him. Then, the Logos
deploys Himself into His three aspects, as three Great Logos of the cosmic
evolution. The Trinity is the manifested God in the Universe.
The Sun’s rays, as vibrations, carry life away. Their synthesis is called Vital
Air or Solar Prana. This energy originating at the physical Sun is passively
acting upon all the form from the physical world, including the physical
from of the humanity.
What the science call Cosmic Forces, and the religion Angels or Deities
are, in fact, Agents of the Nature’s Laws, the expression of the will of the
Logos.
The Doctrine teaches us that “The AH-HI (Dhyan-Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the
Elohim and "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the
manifestation of the divine or universal thought and will. They are the
Intelligent Forces that give to and enact in Nature her "laws," while
themselves acting according to laws imposed upon them in a similar
manner by still higher Powers; but they are not "the personifications" of the
powers of Nature, as erroneously thought.”
 There are hierarchies bearing the name of the rainbow’s colors, lead by
the seven Planetary Spirits, the Vehicle of the Universe, the Dhyan Chohans.
They are the Hebraic Elohim and the ministers of the Solar Logos. Then
comes the hierarchy of Angels, to whom Archangel Michael belongs. The
celestial Beings, like luminous spheres, extremely bright, are known,
because of this, as the Great Beings of the Spirit. They are the architects of
the world, conserving and conducting it.
Our Solar system, like any other, has been created and is maintained and
controlled by a Being, which is the Solar Logos, what we call God,
immanent in every atom. Everything is in Him and He is in everything. We
came form Him in Him we will return. About His life we know nothing and
we could never know anything. To us is accessible only His manifestation,
which is tripled, although the Logos is only one.
His aspect which creates the worlds is Brahma fro the Hindu and The Holy
Spirit for the Christians. Vishnu, or the Son, is the manifestation that
maintains these worlds, defending them, in the mean time. The
manifestation of the Logos witch is destroying the worlds, when their time
has arrived, is called Shiva or Mahadeva, the Father for the Christians.
The real constructors, are the "Movers", or the "Runners" (Theoi, from
theein=to run), secondary agents, who to the work of formation of then
cosmic matter. Their name is also Nature’s Spirits, being, as they belong to
different elements, as air, fire, water or earth, silphids, salamanders, ondines
and gnomes. The terms air or water do not be understood literally, being
only an illustration of the solid or liquid state, for example. We have to
emphasize that the clairvoyants can see these spirits.
The stars, generally, and the planets specially, are animated by the
Planetary Spirits. They are leading the destiny of the people born under the
sign of these constellations. The Elementals, the Forces of the Nature, are
secondary causes acting sometimes unperceivable, being, also, the
effects of the primary immanent causes of every phenomenon.

What was in the beginning?

In the beginning there were nothing but the Spirit and Space. Searching
for the truth, most of the mentions are from the book of Genesis. It is not
perceived, regrettably, the fact that the introductive part does not
represent, not even by far, the creation of planet Earth. This part so much
studied of the Holy Bible speaks, in fact, about an undefined period of the
evolution of the Universe. The probable purpose is that of encoding the
text. „In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the
earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters “. (Genesis,
1.1, 1.2)
The Hebraic original, different than the canonic text, says: „When
Elohim(s) began to make the heavens and the earth, the earth was without
form and void, and darkness was upon the abyss, and the breath of
Elohim(s) was moving upon the waters “. The meaning of the word
„darkness“ is „Absolute“, which cannot understand the passing Light: „And
the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not“. (Saint
John, 1.5).
Life and matter are opposite elements of the eternal hidden Power,
called Absolute. Virgin Mary is the symbol of this pure, homogenous, state
of the primordial cosmic matter.
What the Holy Books are calling Nothingness, Ain-Soph, or NO-THING, is, a
Void, Chaos, and is imperceptible, due to his high degree of subtleness.
Being the primordial state of existence, the eternal, unlimited and
unchangeable Principle, found everywhere, no speculation could be
possible about him, because he is beyond the power of the human
comprehension, he has no name, and all that can be said is referring only
to the manifested Absolute. An ordinary man cannot understand Him, the
One without a name, about whom no one can say that he exists, or that he
exists not.
H.P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine:
„The fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which all
emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is hung
the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUBSTANCE-
PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.“