To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

8 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
forth. Theosophy has no name for this Principle except to
call it THAT — the infinite, the uncreate, the rootless root,
the cause without a cause. These phrases are merely an
e¤ort to describe the indescribable, the infinity of infinities,
the boundless essence of divinity which we cannot define.
In short, it posits that marvelous primordial essence which
Genesis calls the darkness on the face of the deep — that
darkness which was sparked into light when the ’elohīm
breathed on the waters of Space.
2) That universes like ‘‘manifesting stars’’ appear and
disappear in tidal flux and ebb, a rhythmic pulsation of
spirit and matter, with every life-spark in the cosmos, from
stars to atoms, pursuing the same cyclic pattern. There is
continual birth and death, appearance and disappearance, of
these ‘‘sparks of Eternity’’ as the rhythm of life brings forth
ever new life forms for returning worlds: galaxies and suns,
human beings, animals, plants, and minerals. All beings
and things have their birth and death cycles, because birth
and death are gateways of life.
3) That all souls, being at their heart the same in essence
as the ‘‘Universal Over-Soul,’’ are required to undergo
the full cycle of imbodiments in material worlds in order
to bring into active expression, by self-e¤ort, their divine
potentialities.
Why does divinity manifest so many times and in so
many di¤erent forms? Every divine seed, every spark of
God, every unit of life, must go through the great cycle of
experience, from the most spiritual realms to the most material,
in order to gain firsthand knowledge of every condition
of being. It must learn by becoming every form, i.e., by