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622 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Stuff or Cosmic Substance, eternally homogeneous, except during its
periodic existence; then, universally diifused throughout infinite Space,
it differentiates, and gradually forms sidereal bodies from itself They
taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth's rotation, the Heliocentric
System, and the Atomic Vortices—Atoms being in reality
Souls and Intelligences. These "Atomists" were spiritual, most transcendental,
and philosophical Pantheists. It is not they who would
have ever conceived or dreamed that monstrous contrasted progeny, the
nightmare of our modern civilized race : inanimate material and selfguiding
Atoms, on the one hand, and an extra-cosmic God on the other.
It may be useful to show what the Monad was, and what its origin,
in the teachings of the old Initiates.
Modern exact Science, as soon as it
began to grow out of its teens,
perceived the great, and to it hitherto esoteric, axiom, that nothing,
whether in the spiritual, psychic, or physical realm of Being, could
come into existence out of nothing. There is no cause in the manifested
Universe without its adequate effects, whether in Space or Time;
nor can there be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes
its existence to a still higher one—the final and absolute Cause having^
to remain to man for ever an incomprehensible Causeless Cause. But
even this is no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest
philosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had
better be left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which
human reason—however trained in metaphysical subtleties—trembles,
threatening to collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European,
who would undertake to solve the problem of existence, by the articles
of faith of the true Vedantin for instance. Let him read and study the
sublime teachings of Shankaracharya, on the subject of Soul and
Spirit, and the reader will realize what is now said.*
While the Christian is taught that the human Soul is a breath of
God, being created by him for sempiternal existence, having a beginning,
but no end—and therefore never to be called eternal—the Occult
Teaching says: Nothing is created, it is only transformed. Nothing
can manifest itself in this Universe—from a globe down to a vague,
rapid thought—that was not in the Universe already; everything on
the subjective plane is an eternal is; as everything on the objective
plane is an ever-decoming—heceiuse all is transitor5^
* Vtveka ChUd&mani, translated by Mohini M. Chatterji, as "The Crest Jewel of \/isdoJii." See
Theosophist, July and August, 1886.