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—
352 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
science,
the Knowledge of Things-in-themselves, and the solution of
the yet more awful riddle approached, before which even the highest
Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance—the Unspeakable
Mystery of that which is called by the Vedantins, Parabrahman.
those who have sought to give a
Therefore, such being the case, all
name to the Incognizable Principle have simply degraded it. Even to
speak of Cosmic Ideation—save in its phe7iomenal aspect—is like trying
to bottle up primordial Chaos, or to put a printed label on Eternity.
What, then, is the "Primordial Substance," that mysterious object of
which Alchemy was ever talking, and which was the subject of philosophical
speculation in every age What can it be finally, even in
its phenomenal pre-differentiation Even that is the All of manifested
Nature and nothing to our senses. It is mentioned under various
names in every cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown
to be, to this day, the ever grasp-eluding Proteus in Nature. We
touch and do not feel it; we look at it without seeing it; we breathe it
and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest
cognition that it is there ; for it is in every molecule of that which, in
our illusion and ignorance, we regard as
Matter in any of its states, or
conceive as a feeling, a thought, an emotion. In short, it is the
Upadhi, or Vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, whether physical,
mental, or psychic. In the opening sentences of Genesis, and in the
Chaldean Cosmogony ; in the Purdnas of India, and in the Book of the
Dead of Egypt ; everywhere it opens the cycle of manifestation It is
termed Chaos, and the Face of the Waters, incubated by the Spirit,
proceeding from the Unknown, whatever that Spirit's name may be.
The authors of the Sacred Scriptures in India go deeper into the
origin of the evolution of things than does Thales or Job, for they say:
From Intelligence [called Mahat, in the Purdnas], associated with Ignorance
[ishvara, as a personal deity], attended by its projective power, in which the quality
of dulness [tantas, insensibility] predominates, proceeds' £'/A^^—from ether, air;
from air, heat; from heat, water; and from water, earth with everything on it.
"From This, from this same Self, was the Ether produced," says the
Veda.''
It thus becomes evident that it is not this Ether—sprung at the
fourth remove from an cmanaiiori of "Intelligence, associated with
Ignorance"—which is the high Principle, the deijic Entity worshipped
by the Greeks and Latins under the name of "Pater, Omnipotens
• Taiitiriyaka Upamskad, Second Valli, First Anuvaka.